"None of my predecessors ever wished to use this profane word. For clearly if one patriarch is called 'universal', then the name 'patriarch' is taken away from the rest... To consent to this wicked word is nothing less than to destroy the faith... It is one thing that we should preserve unity of faith; another, that we ought to repress self-exaltation. But I say it confidently, because whoever so calls himself 'universal bishop', or wishes to be so called, is in his self exaltation Antichrist's precursor, for in his swaggering he sets himself before the rest."
- Gregory I (AD 540-604), Bishop of Rome, on the doctrine of papal supremacy
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