mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
customs was based on the Roman imperial judicial system. This was
because Constantine, realizing that Catholic bishops were among his
most educated subjects, granted them judicial responsibilities to settle a
variety of legal disputes. A bishop assumed the robes, rings, and special
insignia of a judge of the Roman Empire. Bishops were also accorded
the ceremonial rites of Roman judges—in their basilicas they sat on
thrones, took center stage in processions accompanied by incense and
torches, and expected those speaking to them to kneel. The altar of
Minerva, goddess of wisdom, present in all pagan basilicas, became the
altar of God in a Christian one.
As Christianity spread throughout the empire, Rome loudly claimed
primacy over all other bishoprics because the holy bodies of Saints Peter
and Paul were buried there. Constantinople, the glistening new capital
of the empire, had such a dearth of apostolic bodies that starting in a.d.
356 Saints Timothy, Andrew, and Luke were imported. And Jerusalem,
the location of Christ’s crucifixion, could hardly claim to have his
body. Gradually, other bishoprics accepted Rome’s primacy and looked
to Rome for direction, acknowledging the pope as universal father and
Vicar of Christ, appointed by God himself to nurture his bride, the
church.
Although barbarians periodically poured into Rome and pillaged,
the Goths, Lombards, and Huns were semi-Christian and spared Saint
Peter’s Basilica out of respect or, perhaps, superstition. But when the
Muslim Saracens marched on Rome in 846, church officials knew the
undefended basilica—outside the city walls—would make a tempting
target for plunder. Pious officials opened Peter’s tomb below the altar
and took the skull they found to safety, not knowing, of course, that the
real bones were hidden in the tomb wall. Retreating behind the stout
walls of Rome with the skull, church officials placed it in the Church of
Saint John Lateran, where for centuries it was the object of intense veneration,
though it might have been the skull of a pagan or even a
woman.
While the power of the church waxed over the centuries, the structure
of its holiest basilica was sliding into dereliction. By the time the
popes returned to Rome for good in 1443, the eleven-hundred-year-old
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