Tag Archives: Benedict IX

Person of the Year?

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Are words and symbols enough? Continue reading →

TimeSmallTwo popes had previously been named Time magazine’s Man of the Year. John XXIII was chosen for 1962, the year that he opened the Second Vatican Council and charged it with bringing the Church into the twentieth century, or at least the Age of Enlightenment. It was a dramatic decision. The Church had not convened an ecumenical council in a century, and that last one was called to rubber stamp decisions made by Pope Pius IX. In contrast, John XXIII had set in place a mechanism for listening to new ideas and implementing the best of them.

MOYSmallJohn Paul II was chosen for 1994. By that time the pontiff’s role in undermining the Communist governments in eastern Europe was becoming clear. He provided spiritual support for all of those movements, and he did much more than that for Poland. Many people still do not realize that the Vatican bank underwrote the political campaigns of the Solidarity Trade Union that eventually brought independence and democracy, not to mention the resurgence of Catholicism, to the Polish people.

Plenty of Catholics would argue that either or both of these two dynamic leaders were misguided (or maybe even tools of Satan), but no one could claim that they were ineffective or that their acts were of little consequence. Both pontiffs were masters at public relations, but they also knew how to convert their popularity into meaningful changes. They were actors.

Bestowing this title on Pope Francis seems to me comparable to giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama in his first year in office. I suspect that the people in Oslo would like a do-over on that one. The evaluations of both of these men seemed based not on what they had done so much as what their predecessors had done. Obama seemed ready to disavow Bush’s doctrine of preventive war, and Francis has at least eschewed the plodding mannerisms, luxurious accommodations, and red Prada shoes of Benedict XVI.

FrancisPope Francis has certainly made a number of startling statements and gestures. It is difficult to imagine any of his 263* predecessors uttering the words, “Who am I to judge?” His washing of the feet of others and, indeed, his choice of the name “Francis” were no doubt acts of symbolic importance.

But what has Pope Francis actually done? I read the Time article to see if I missed anything. OK; he has set up some commissions to look into some tricky issues, but that is the same tactic that Clement VII employed back in the sixteenth century to put off Henry VIII’s request for an annulment of his marriage. The only actual act that I could find was the elimination of the rank of “monsignor.” I suppose that that is something, but it did not go far in eliminating the hierarchy. There are still deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, cardinals and who knows how many other levels. The curia may feel threatened, but it has not yet been attacked directly.

Don’t tell me that Pope Francis has done everything that he could be expected to do. He is the man. He can make judgments! For example, he could eliminate the ban on contraceptives tomorrow morning right after his two hours of prayer. There is no basis in scripture, and the reasoning is convoluted. Other popes have contradicted their predecessors on far weaker grounds.

Someday Pope Francis may be widely recognized as a great pope. I strongly feel that Time should have waited for that day and instead selected someone who sacrificed his livelihood if not his life to bring to light the shenanigans in and around the NSA.

* Pope Francis is #266 on the list of popes, but Benedict IX’s name is there three times.

A New Record for Tusculum

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I’ve been to its namesake. Continue reading →

Imagine my surprise to read this item on espn.com today: “Tusculum (College)’s (Bo) Cordell set a Div. II record for career total offense in his final college game while throwing for 569 yards in a 49-42 victory over Mars Hill.” I was quite well acquainted with Tusculum, but not Tusculum College. I had to look it up. It is in Greeneville, TN, and boasts three distinctive features:

  1. It was founded in 1794, which makes it the oldest college in Tennessee. In fact it is older than the state of Tennessee.
  2. It is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.
  3. There are no semesters. Students take one class at a time for eighteen days. This would not have worked too well for me. I once missed more than eighteen days of school in a row.

A little digging produced the origin of the name. The school was named after John Witherspoon’s farm in New Jersey. Both of the founders of the antecedents of Tusculum College were students and admirers of Witherspoon when he was the president of Princeton. Witherspoon named his farm after Tusculum because he was a devotee of Cicero, who had a villa in Tusculum, a city located in the Alban Hills south of Rome.

Tusculum has a long and proud history. Well, nobody actually lives there any more, but if they did, they probably would be quite proud of their history. The legend is that it was founded by Telegonus, a son of Ulysses. During the imperial era the wealthy and powerful Romans constructed villas in Tusculum and the surrounding countryside. During the tenth and eleventh centuries the counts of Tusculum were the dominant force in Roman politics, occasionally challenged by the Crescentius family that was based in the Sabine Hills to the north. Three Tusculans in a row, Benedict VIII, his brother John XIX, and their nephew Benedict IX (who was officially the pontiff on three different occasions) sat in St. Peter’s Throne and ruled all of Christendom (in a spiritual way) as well as the Papal States of central Italy (in every way).

Alas, Tusculum was completely destroyed by the Romans in 1191. There are no remnants of the city of the twelfth century. No stone was left upon a stone.

I went to visit Tusculum in 2011. Our driver told us that we were the only people who had ever asked him to take them to Tusculum. It is now a park and an archeological site. I was interested in seeing what remained of the medieval Tusculum with which I was familiar. The answer was nothing. The archeological digs were unearthing remains of the imperial city that was buried beneath the medieval city. The latter had been completely obliterated by the Romans.

You can read about my trip to Tusculum here.

Choosing the Next Pope

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Who will emerge from the next conclave? Continue reading →

In a short while pope #266 will be chosen. Who will it be? I have no idea, but I do know a few things about the way that he will be chosen.

The group that chooses the pope is known as the “Sacred College of Cardinals.” At one time the cardinals served as the link between the pope, who is the Bishop of Rome, and the suburbicarian dioceses of the surrounding countryside. In those days there were only a handful of cardinals, and their primary job was to meet with the pope and then return to the hinterlands to explain his policies to the people there. After the Roman Empire virtually abandoned Italy in the fourth century, the pope was forced to take on many civil responsibilities. From 800 through 1870 the pope was universally recognized as the monarch of a strip of central Italy that stretched from coast to coast. The number of cardinals increased, but they still served as advisers and legates.

There is, in fact, no limit on the number of cardinals, and there are no guidelines (that I know of) for the qualifications. All (or at least nearly all) of the current cardinals are bishops. That is a relatively recent development. In the nineteenth century, for example, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli served as Secretary of State for Pope Pius IX, and he never even became a priest. One cardinal, a Portuguese prince, was only seven-years old when he received his red hat. He probably had to grow into it.

Nowadays, “cardinal” is considered a rank that allows the recipient to wear a variety of red garments and to vote for the pope. When a cardinal reaches the age of eighty, however, although he is still allowed to wear red, he can no longer vote for the pope. So, Pope Benedict will have absolutely no say in choosing his successor.

Well, I should probably amend that last statement to say that he will have no direct say in choosing his successor. Of the 117 electors, 67 were appointed by Pope Benedict. All of the others were appointed by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. Since these two popes had remarkably similar ideas on how the Church should be managed, it seems inevitable that the next pope will not favor radically different notions.

The cardinals have been choosing the pope for about half of the history of the Church. That policy was implemented in 1059 by Pope Nicholas II. Perhaps the most surprising fact about the history of the papacy is that prior to 1059 there was no established method for selecting the pontiff! Some popes were elected by the Roman citizens, some were elected by the clergy, some were appointed by kings or emperors, and there is no record at all as to how quite a few assumed the office. It was not uncommon for more than one man to claim the papacy, and the matter was occasionally settled violently.

For centuries the papal election took place in whatever city the pope had perished. The electors now always meet in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican to choose the new pontiff. This process is called a conclave, which means “with a key.” The cardinals and a few attendants (Pope Pius XII’s attendants were nuns!) are locked in until they come to agreement. In the past this process has sometimes taken years! The longest one was held in Viterbo, starting in 1268. In 1271 the cardinals finally chose a man (not a priest) who at the time was taking part in the ill-fated Seventh Crusade, but not until after the impatient residents of Viterbo had hired carpenters to remove the roof of the room in which the cardinals had been locked.

All who participate in the conclave are sworn to secrecy. There is no official record of any of the votes or of the process by which the decisions are made. The official explanation is that the electors make themselves open to the Holy Ghost, and the third person of the Trinity inspires them to choose the best man. Some information, however, inevitably leaks out from one source or another. A Jesuit priest named Malachi Martin was a Vatican insider for several twentieth-century conclaves. He claimed that Cardinal Siri was elected pope at two different conclaves. Circumstances allegedly forced him to turn down the office on both occasions.

The essential requirements for being pope are remarkably simple. Each papabile must be a male Catholic, but not necessarily a priest. Many popes were not ordained as priests until after they were elected, and one, Adrian V, never did become one. Incidentally, this certainly qualifies as one of the most inexplicable piece of papal trivia. The pope is, by definition, the Bishop of Rome. Every bishop must be a priest. Therefore, most people would conclude that every pope had been a priest. The lesson to take home is that when it comes to the papacy there is an exception to almost every rule, even the tautologies.

There is no age requirement for the papacy. Pope John XII was a teenager when he was elected in the tenth century. His father made the arrangements (by paying off Roman nobility) for his ascendancy on his deathbed. Pope Benedict IX was also very young at his coronation (yes, the Pope until recently wore a crown called the “tiara”). One monk reported that this Benedict was only ten-years old, but historians today think that he was at least twice that.

I don’t expect the current College of Cardinals to choose another teenager. John XII was evidently murdered by a jealous husband who found him in bed with his wife. Benedict IX, who was accused of equally deplorable shenanigans, was driven from the papacy, regained it, and then sold the office to his godfather so that he could get married. After being jilted by his intended spouse, he eventually regained the throne once more, but he was finally overthrown in a second coup in 1048.

I guarantee that the new pope will not be a woman. The legend of Pope Joan is not taken seriously by any historians.

I doubt that the pope will be married, but it is possible. According to the Bible St. Peter, the first pope, had a wife. Not only was Pope Adrian II (867-872) married, but he lived with his wife after he became pope! A few other popes may have also been married. Many popes fathered children before they assumed the office. Pope Alexander VI had at least eight offspring whom he recognized, and he continued his promiscuous lifestyle as pope, although he traded in his long-time mistress for a newer model. His predecessor, Pope Innocent VIII, may have had twice that many kids. Life was different in fifteenth-century Rome.

The new pope will choose his own name. This tradition was started by the above-mentioned John XII, whose real name was Octavian. Prior to that time popes continued to use their given names. We will get some indication as to the pope’s intentions by his choice. If he chooses Pius, Gregory, or Paul, you can expect him to continue the conservative bent of the last few decades. If he chooses some other name, he may be making some other kind of statement. Benedict XVI, for example, chose his name as a tribute to the two previous Benedicts, who were intellectuals, Benedict XV during World War I and Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century.

No one has ever chosen the name Peter. That would be a striking statement that the new pontiff intended to return the Church to its roots. Don’t hold your breath.

Papal Resignations

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Very few popes have ever resigned. Continue reading →

Pope Benedict XVI announced today that he will resign at the end of the month. This is indeed big news because very few of the 263 popes have resigned, and almost every one of those occasions was very controversial.

I have already encountered quite a bit of misleading and outright erroneous information concerning papal resignations. For example, the New York Times website quoted Donald Prudlo, associate professor of history at Jacksonville (AL) State University:

At the end of the 13th century, a very holy hermit named Peter was elected as Pope Celestine V in order to break a deadlock in the conclave that had lasted nearly three years. He was elected because of his personal holiness, sort of a unity candidate. And once he got there, being a hermit, not used to the ways of the Roman Curia, he found himself somewhat unsuited to the task, that it wasn’t just holiness but also some shrewdness and prudence that was also required. So within six months he knew that he was really unequal to the task, and so he gathered the cardinals together in a consistory, just as was recently done, a couple hours ago, and he announced to the cardinals his intention to resign.

Well, he got the time period right. God only knows why the cardinals selected this recluse in the first place. Living alone in a cave in the mountains, the man had eschewed human contact entirely for decades. A letter signed by the hermit had been sent to the conclave. It warned the cardinals that God would wreak vengeance on them and all Christianity if they did not forthwith select a new pope. The cardinals reportedly were so impressed with him that they set aside their previously irreconcilable political differences and endorsed Peter. That is the official account, but anyone who has studied the conclaves of that era would detect the odor of fish. Cardinals are not allowed to disclose the details of conclaves. So, no one can contest the official version.

To me the most annoying aspect of Professor’s Prudlo’s quote is the phrase “once he got there.” “There” must, of course, be Rome, of which the pontiff is by definition the bishop. However, Pope Celestine never once set foot in the Eternal City. Instead, King Charles II of Naples, who may well have been responsible for the letter, convinced His Holiness to take up residence in Castel Nuovo in his capital. Celestine was a total disaster as pope, probably the most incompetent and irresponsible pontiff ever, which is saying something. He kept no records and even bestowed the same benefice (income-generating office) on more than one person. At the instigation of the king, who was French, he appointed a large number of cardinals, most of whom were also French. Celestine never “announced to the cardinals his intention to resign.” Rather, Cardinal Benedict Caetani, drew up a letter of resignation and somehow induced the pontiff to sign it.

That is not the end of the story. Caetani was then swiftly elected as Pope Boniface VIII, and for no specific reason he cast the former pope in prison, which is where he died. I wrote about this episode here.

Very little is known of the popes of the first few centuries. The story has come down that Pope Pontian, who was exiled to the salt mines of Sardinia, might have resigned so that someone else could serve as the Bishop of Rome (whom no one thought of as the pope at the time). He might have done so, but then again some of his predecessors might also have hung up their miters. In fact, Clement I, the fourth pope, wrote in some of his letters that St. Peter himself had consecrated him (Clement) as Bishop of Rome. If so, then the first pope to resign must have been the very first pope, St. Peter!

The last pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII in 1415. What a story that was! At the time there were three claimants to the papal throne, and all three arguably had legitimate cases. One of them, John XXIII (no, not that John XXIII) called a council in Constance, a city next to a very deep lake in southern Germany, in order to resolve the situation. He badly misjudged the politics, however, and the council put him on trial for five felonies, deposed him, and threw him in prison. A second claimant, Benedict XIII, had been holed up in a corner of Spain for some time. He refused to come to the council and was also eventually deposed.

Pope Gregory also rejected the council’s summons. However, after the other two claimants had been deposed, he sent a letter through an emissary in which he expressed his willingness to resign. It is worth noting that he died before the council could agree on his successor, Pope Martin V. So, assuming that Pope Benedict lives to see his successor chosen, it will be the first time since the thirteenth century that the Church will have both a pope and a living ex-pope.

Did you notice anything strange in the above paragraph? Martin V was chosen, not by the college of cardinals but by the council, which included many clergy of much lower rank and was heavily influenced by Emperor Sigismund. The problem was that during the Western Schism, which had gone on for decades, there had been multiple papal claimants each supported by influential spiritual and civil leaders. Each pontiff had appointed cardinals loyal to him and had excommunicated those appointed by rivals. So, it was easier for everyone at Constance just to ignore canon law for a while. Hundreds of those who refused to go along found their way to the bottom of the lake. The surviving cardinals were reinstated, regardless of who had appointed them. What else could they do? Pope Martin himself had been appointed by the deposed and disgraced John XXIII.

I wrote about the Council of Constance here.

I cannot leave this subject without bringing up the one pope who certainly resigned of his own accord. Here is what Professor Prudlo had to say about Pope Benedict IX:

And then, at a rather low point in the Church’s history, Pope Benedict IX, in the 1040s, resigned and attempted to re-acquire the papacy several times. But according to good reports, he too died in penance at the monastery of Grottaferrata outside of Rome.

In point of fact, no one disputes the fact that Pope Benedict IX sold the papacy to his godfather, John Gratian, who became Pope Gregory VI. At the time Benedict had been pontiff for more than a decade, but he was still a young man, and he wanted to get married. However, his prospective father-in-law would only approve if Benedict abdicated. Yes, some popes have been married, but no pope that we know of ever got married while he was pontiff.

After Gregory had been deposed by the emperor, a jilted Benedict managed to acquire the papacy again for a short while. The “good reports” that he retired to Grottaferrata really amount to the word of one monk. Via e-mail I personally asked Santo Lucà, a professor at La Sapienza who is probably the world’s expert on the history of Grottaferrata, whether he thought that the pope had retired there. His answer: “Assolutamente no!”

* * *
So why have so few popes resigned? The primary answer is that from 800 until 1870 the pope was the monarch of central Italy. Most of the popes of that period amassed great amounts of wealth and spread it among family members. They did not resign for the same reason that very few kings and queens have abdicated — they knew that they had the best gig in town. Furthermore, unlike kings and queens, the popes had very limited control over their successors. In many cases the successor had little respect for the work of the predecessor, and the popes knew that. The best way for a pope to protect his historical legacy was to stretch it out as long as possible. When the duties became too much for an aging pontiff, he customarily assigned the most important tasks to a relative, usually a nephew.

Since 1870 the popes have been too busy to resign. Pius IX devoted himself to overthrowing the Italian (and to an extent American) government in order to reclaim his territory. Leo XIII was busy with his poetry, his snuff, his movies, and his cocaine-laced wine. Pius X fought against modernism. Benedict XV fought for peace. Pius XI and Pius XII had to confront the Nazis, the fascists, and the communists. John XXIII (yes, that John XXIII) tried to drag the Church into the twentieth century. Paul VI tried to smooth the feathers that had been ruffled by his predecessor. John Paul I only lasted a month. John Paul II worked to destroy communism and to restore conservative traditions.

Only Benedict XVI had no clear mission. It is a little-known fact that he had asked to resign when John Paul II was still alive. Why are people surprised that an 86-year-old man would want some rest?

Grottaferrata and Santo Lucà (Part 3)

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A reply from Santo Lucà! Continue reading →

I finally received a reply to the e-mail that I sent to Professor Lucà on May 31. In it I posed two questions: 1) Did he think that the young Theophylact, the future Pope Benedict IX, might have been educated by the Basilian monks? This would have meant that he would have been one of the very few Romans who could speak and read Greek. 2) Did he believe the legend that Benedict and his brothers retired as monks in Grottaferrata?

His answer to the first question was this:

credo proprio di no; sono i monaci ‘basiliani’ che parlano il latino!

He says that he does not believe so. There are Basilian monks who speak Latin.

I have to wonder if he understood what I was getting at. Theophylact’s family was the most prominent in central Italy. Not only was the monastery near to the family’s home in Tusculum; Theophylact’s grandfather had actually donated the land on which it was constructed. If Theophylact was not educated by the Basilians, then he must have been instructed elsewhere. Surely his family must have tried to provide him what he needed for the career that they planned for him.

I have read that he was a student of Lawrence, but Lawrence was in Montecassino for much of Theophylact’s youth, and Montecassino is much further away. In addition he became Archbishop of Amalfi in 1029, three years before Theophylact assumed the throne. So, it does not seem unreasonable to speculate whether Theophylact’s family might have taken advantage of its relationship with the monks to help groom Theophylact for his imminent career as pontiff. And if the monks did perform this service, I find it hard to believe that they did not teach him the Greek language, which they used for all of their services.

There are a few other facts that support this hypothesis. The three Tusculan popes (Benedict IX and his two uncles) had much better relations with the Greek church than either their predecessors or their successors. In fact, the Great Schism occurred in 1054 in the very first stable pontificate after Benedict’s! Furthermore, it is fairly well documented that Benedict IX and St. Bartholomew, the hegumen of the abbey, had a pretty good relationship throughout his pontificates.

The answer to the second question was:

assolutamente no!

You do not need to be a native-born Italian to figure out what that one means. I think that the legend that Benedict repented, retired, and became a Basilian monk was perpetrated by Luke, the Basilian monk who wrote the biography of St. Bartholomew. Here is what Capitani wrote about the subject in his his entry in Enciclopedia dei Papi (2000):

Le ultime considerazioni fatte circa i documenti del 1055 e del 1056, nei quali il nome di Benedetto appare ancora – e non quello di Teofilatto, come ci si sarebbe dovuti attendere, in caso di pentimento del Tuscolano – escludono ogni verosimiglianza delle notizie contenute nelle agiografie di Bartolomeo di Grottaferrata, che avrebbe operato una sorta di conversione sul “terribile” pontefice, ritiratosi in penitenza nel monastero.

Basically this says that the erstwhile pope was still using the name Benedict in official documents in 1055 and 1056, the year of his death. So, it seems very unlikely that he would have repented as stated in the hagiographies of Bartholomew of Grottaferrata. If he did not abandon his claim to the papacy, he almost certainly did not become a monk either.

I sure would like to know what did happen to him in the decade or more after he lost the papacy.