Admittadly I haven't read all the Church Fathers, but I can't seem to find any reference in them to either all the patriarchs being equal, or the pope having a primacy of honor. If it is there, probably everyone will just call me an ignorant westerner, and say that I really didn't look, but I figured that it would be easier to ask you: where did that phrase come from?
I know that from very early on the popes rejected it, because Pope Saint Leo the Great around the year 445 Anno Domini said:
"Although bishops have a common dignity, they are not all of the same rank. Even amoung the most blessed Apostles, though they were all alike in honor, there was a certain disctintion in power..." (From a Letter of Pope Leo I to Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica)
and again:
"But the Lord desires that the sacrement of this gift [unity] should pertain to all the Apostles in such a way that it might be found principally in the most blessed Peter, the highest of all the Apostles. And He wanted His gifts to flow into the entire body from Peter himself, as if from the head, in such a way that anyone who had dared to seperate himself from the solidary of Peter would realize that he was himself no longer a sharer in divine mystery[...]The Apostolic See--out of reverence for it, I mean--has on countless occasions been reported to in consultations by bishops even of your province. And through the appeal of various cases to this see, decisions already made have been either revoked or confirmed, as dictated by long-standing custom." (Letter of Pope Leo I to bishops of the Province of Vienne).
Please, if the fathers thought differently, I wish to know. It has confused me why the pope should have a primacy of honor when the only honor to a christian is to be the servant of all--so the specific honor of the pope is to be the Servus Servorum Dei, the slave of the slaves of God. Also because it doesn't seem like Jesus gave Peter a primacy of honor, but rather the keys to the Kingdom, and the sheperding of all his sheep. Please help me understand this.
