Around the year 250, the issue of Petrine primacy was first raised in a dispute following the Decian persecution. The pope at the time argued that his position should carry greater weight because, as bishop of Rome, he was the successor of Peter. The claim of apostolic succession was not unique in itself: other bishops traced their authority back to the apostolic foundation of their sees. The bishop of Rome claimed to have special privileges on the basis of Rome being the burial place of St. Peter, as well as St. Paul. It is hard to measure the extent to which this concept was accepted, and what implications people outside of Rome would have drawn from it. Schimmelpfennig argues that the idea of the bishop of Rome being the successor of Peter was widely accepted by the fourth century, but that the popes had difficulty in drawing advantage from their position until much later (B. Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy (New York: Columbia Press, 1992), 12-14).

Throughout the 300 years that followed the conversion of Constantine, the period known as "late antiquity," the bishop of Rome coexisted and competed for authority with bishops throughout the Mediterranean world, which until the Arab conquests of the mid-seventh century, remained at least nominally unified. While Rome was always accorded a primacy of honor, in practice other bishops, particularly in the east, did not see that as impinging on their own jurisdiction. Relations between Rome and Constantinople were strained over such things as the taking of the title "ecumenical patriarch" by the bishop of Constantinople. While some popes, such as Leo I (440-461), saw it simply as meaning that the patriarch was part of the empire and even took the title for the papacy, Gregory I (590-604) took offense to that title as a sign of arrogance, and suggested servus servorum dei, "servant of the servants of God," as a proper alternative (Schimmelpfennig, 69-70; see also S. Kuttner, "Universal Pope or Servant of God’s Servants: The Canonists, Papal Titles, and Innocent III," Revue de Droit Canonique 32 (1981): 109-149.). The title pontifex, "high priest" or (literally) "bridge-builder," had been held by Roman emperors as a symbol of their authority over religious matters. Christian emperors relinquished the title Pontifex Maximus as too closely tied with the pagan past (Schimmelpfennig, 34). Bishops, including the bishop of Rome, sometime thereafter, began to make use of pontifex as a title for themselves. The earliest use of pontifex summus to refer to the pope listed in Niermeyer’s Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus is from the "Leonine Sacramentary" of the late sixth century. The title pontifex continued to be a title for both the bishop of Rome and other bishops. (Thus a pontifical is a liturgical book which contains prayers and directions for episcopal liturgies.) For much of the early middle ages, roughly 600-1000, the papacy seems largely to have turned in on itself, focusing on ecclesiastical matters in Italy and the administration of Rome and the surrounding regions. Most popes were either Italian nobles or members of Greek families prominent in the administration of Byzantine Italy. Thus we do not see much development in terms of papal prerogatives and titles until the eleventh century. During this time, however, precedents were set concerning the relation of the papacy with German imperial powers, particularly the right of the pope to crown the Holy Roman Emperor. That precedent, combined with the Donation of Constantine, led to an increase in imperial trappings at papal events in the early eleventh century. The emperor, for example, was expected to lead the pope’s white horse at ceremonies in which both appeared to reflect the emperor’s subordination to the pope. This period also saw the beginnings of the tradition that saints had to be canonized by the pope for their cults to be legal, though canonization would not become a requirement until the thirteenth century (Schimmelpfennig, 118-9, 128). The Gregorian Reform represented both an attempt to free the church from lay interference and an attempt to raise the standing of the papacy within the church. Popes began to assume a more active jurisdictional authority over local churches. Along with that came more exalted language to describe the papacy. Gregory VII’s (1073-1085) Register contains a document titled Dictatus pape, several of the clauses of which reflect this new emphasis: "That only the Roman bishop may rightfully be called universal," "That he alone may use imperial insignia," "That his name alone may be recited in churches," "That this name is unique in the world," "That the Roman bishop, if canonically ordained, is undoubtedly made holy by the merits of Saint Peter…." (Registrum Gregorii VII, ed. E. Caspar, MGH, Ep. sel. t. 2, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1891-9), quoting from Reg. 2.55a.) The first of these clauses especially seems to contradict the precedent set by Gregory I, who had argued against the propriety of such a title. During the twelfth century, there was a continual enlargement of the papacy’s sphere of action, and along with that a growing emphasis placed upon the universality of the pope’s jurisdiction. For example, popes tried to increase their control over the appointment of bishops. Letters emphasized the plenitudo potestatis of the papacy, and the papacy came to be seen as the chief appellate court of Christian Europe. In keeping with this image of supreme judge and lawgiver, popes began to receive a purple mantle at the time of their consecration as bishops of Rome, and eventually this consecration came to be called a coronation. It is in the same period that the papal staff came to be known as the Curia, a term taken from the sphere of secular government (Schimmelpfennig, 135-8). Innocent III (1198-1216) in many ways represents the culmination of this process. He was the first to emphasize the role of the pope as Vicar of Christ. While previous popes had been content with tracing their authority back to Peter, Innocent took the "genealogy" a step further (Schimmelpfennig, 181). Innocent also expanded papal prerogatives of appointment to include reservations for benefices, a right that would be consistently expanded by the Avignon popes. It was also in Innocent’s time that the papacy began to issue charters for universities. In the aftermath of the Great Western Schism (1378-1415), attempts were made by reformers to curtail some of the papal prerogatives, particularly those relating to appointment to benefices. Ultimately these reforms failed, for lack of political support and because once the popes re-established themselves in Rome, they regained much of their earlier strength (Schimmelpfennig, 184, 204-5, 233-6). In conclusion, the language used to describe the papacy reflects its claims to power. Before the papacy had developed its extensive jurisdiction during the high middle ages, its titles for the most part were those used by other bishops, such as papa and episcopus. Once popes had extended their jurisdiction, more exalted titles, such as Vicar of Christ, began to be used, and papal ceremony took on imperial trappings.