Faith and Leadership: The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church 0739171321, 9780739171325

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Faith and Leadership

Faith and Leadership The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church Michael P. Riccards

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published by Lexington Books A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.lexingtonbooks.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2012 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Riccards, Michael P. Faith and leadership : the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church / Michael P. Riccards. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-7132-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-7133-2 (electronic) 1. Papacy—History. 2. Christian leadership—Catholic Church. 3. Authority— Religious aspects—Catholic Church. I. Title. BX957.R53 2012 262'.1309—dc23 2011052625

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

To: Cheryl Anne Flagg Because friendship is the rarest gift of all

CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

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The Primitive Church From the Bishop of Rome to Pope (Peter to Leo the Great, 500 A.D.) The Threats to Orthodoxy Beyond the End of the Empire, 500–800 The Medieval Papacy Moves East From Abuses to Reforms, 800–1100 The Papal Monarchy, 1100–1500 The Worldly Popes The Protestant Reformation The Timidity of Reform The Catholic Reformation The Council as a Reform Movement Religious Wars and Religious Repression The Enlightenment The Church Confronts the Leviathan The Church and the Ancien Regime The Emperor’s Attacks on the Papacy Pius IX: The First Modern Pope Leo XIII: The Soul of the Industrial State vii

1 13 29 39 51 61 69 81 111 133 155 163 179 209 223 239 259 275 297

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Contents

Pius X: Moods of Piety and Repression Benedict XV and the Mad Dogs of War Pius XI and the New Men of Violence Pius XII and the Spiritual Twilight of the West John XXIII and the Promise of Aggiornamento Paul VI: The Perils of Aggiornamento John Paul II: The Uneasy Agenda of Restoration

323 341 365 403 439 475 525

Postscript: Benedict XVI (2005– ) Conclusion

589 597

Selected Bibliography Index About the Author

601 603 615

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have been encouraged by several people to finish my history of the papacy and leadership: my former bishop, his Excellency Daniel P. Reilly of Worcester, one of the truly great princes of the Church, and Rev. Richard Lewandowski, a beloved priest, chaplain, writer, and friend who epitomizes to me the rediscovered paradigm of love and forgiveness. A previous study, The Vicars of Christ, covered the modern papacy; I had the rare opportunity to present that work in person to the late Pope John Paul II in 1999. The opinions expressed in this study are of course mine alone. As usual, I am appreciative of the dedicated efforts of Cheryl Flagg and also of Jarrett Chapin who have labored diligently with me on this volume. Professor Lawrence G. Duggan of the University of Delaware has shared with me his meticulous and learned observations. None of them is responsible for my statements in this volume.

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INTRODUCTION When I previously published my books about the papacy, The Vicars of Christ and The Papacy and the End of Christendom, I was scrupulous in reminding you the reader that I came to this important topic not as a theologian or as a church historian, but as a student of leadership who first developed his interests by studying the American presidency, and not in working on the development of canon law, liturgical studies, or sacred theologies. I acknowledge of course that Roman Catholicism is the faith of my birth—it was according to its ancient rituals that I was baptized, confirmed and married. And with God’s good will, I will be buried according to its last rites. Like many American Catholics, I have some reservations about its current leadership, its mandatory celibate male priesthood in the West, and some of its theological positions on ethics and sexual practices. I do not see those reservations as examples of “cafeteria Catholicism,” as some say, but as instances of a person using his own judgment to form his conscience, usually called the use of “right reason.” That individual approach was in fact stressed by leaders of the Church sitting in the General Council of Vatican II. Some leaders of the Church have become too harsh and overly judgmental over the years. I have been drawn more to the simple admonitions of the Polish Sister, Faustina Kowalska (1905– 38), now a saint, who reminded us of the merits of Divine Love and Mercy— and of Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John (3:17), “I have not come to judge mankind, but to save it.” In that view, mercy is such a powerful disposition that only God has it in limitless supply; and we should accept His outstretched hand, His Son’s sacrifice on the cross, and the Sister’s prayers for our immortal souls. If I were a theologian, I would say that Sister Faustina has given us the Catholic paradigm of the twenty-first century. My historical approach here, however, is not to predict the future, but to analyze the papacy as a management structure resting on a large heterogeneous community of faith. How the popes exercise and have exercised leadership over the complex Roman Catholic Church are central questions of this work.

The Centralized Papacy Any man undertaking the daunting task of being pope performs a variety of roles, some appropriate not just during his own term in office, but also beyond that time. Stretched out over two millennia, the papacy is not a simple institution to understand, for it surely has changed, as has much of the world. The word “pope” was used in the early centuries for nearly any bishop in the West and for xi

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the archbishop of Alexandria in the East. By the early sixth century, the word was in the West pretty much confined to the bishop of Rome. But we should strive to understand those changes, rather than simply believe that the papacy and the expressions of the faith were always the same. They are not—the modern papacy with its absolutist status, its emphasis on its teaching magisterium, its pronouncements on infallibility, its denigration of the power of local bishops, and its ignorance of the importance of the laity are especially prominent recently. The augmented papacy is a product of Vatican I (1869–70), and reflects its deferential attitude toward the papacy, the defense of the then embattled pope, and the challenges of nationalist governments seeking to reduce the realm of the Church in the nineteenth century. The pope of that time, Pius IX, at first embraced the liberal world, and then became, in his own words, “a prisoner in the Vatican.” The recent emphasis on the magisterium, or the teaching authority of the pope, was mostly developed though under Pius XII (1939–58), and continued under John Paul II (1978–2005). John Paul II’s followers have said that many of his statements approached infallible status, although the Vatican currently does not support such a broad definition. Although claims of infallibility have been made over the centuries, it was formally decreed at Vatican I and it has been invoked only twice in recent times: before the council in 1869 to justify the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception (that Mary was conceived without original sin) and the Assumption (that Mary was raised body and soul into heaven) in 1950. These are rare uses of a great claim to power, employed in the service of the most popular saint of Catholicism, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Claims of infallibility have also been made for general councils as well, as we will see. The apogee of the centralized papacy was the long reign of the telegenic, gifted, and extremely popular and remarkable Polish actor-turned-priest, Karol Wojtyla, John Paul II. He and television were made for each other. Some of his critics say he was a poor manager of the Holy See and of the Church overall, but he was an inspiring presence and a fine and a much revered religious leader to the world.1

The Changing Church Thus the papacy changed, and so has the world over two millennia. In place of the Roman Empire strung together by a network of roads and tax collectors, efficient armies, and Greek classical philosophy, we now have the American empire of military power and commercialism with its commitment to vague, Enlightenment ideals of individualism, representative government, national selfdetermination, and the spirit of optimistic progress. Much has happened between the world of Augustus and era of post-World War II American hegemony, between the world that Jesus knew and walked in, and the modern culture that we

Introduction

are a part of. Yet in all those periods, the papacy has survived—even in the worst of times with the persecution of martyrs in various empires; with death, pestilence and famine that so plagued Rome and the Western cities; with the growth of Catholic universities and subtle theologies; and during the licentious periods of abuse, simony, and illicit sexuality that has plagued the Holy Church. It then resorted to its own counter reformation at the Council of Trent and defensiveness over the centuries against wayward ideas and disobedient princes. One sees the Church involved in creating its own fortresses against the corrosive effects of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, and the world of ideas that were a prominent part of the nineteenth century. At times, the papacy looked as if it were ready to close up shop and be demolished, but it was the forces of opposition that stumbled, and once again for the Church the gates of Hell did not prevail.

The Changing Papacy Then suddenly as the two great world wars of the twentieth century swept across the globe, the papacy became a voice of reason, of peace, of persuasion. But those wars were won not by calming influences, but by the valor of men and women who took up arms and defeated and destroyed the forces of evil often in the most brutal ways.2 The Church in the latter part of the twentieth century, especially under Paul VI (1963–78) and John Paul II (1978–2005) tried to focus attention on human sexuality, but its regulations in light of clerical pedophilia and the advances of reproductive science and its benefits to humankind, just do not seem to ring true.3 There are two ways of moral teaching: by exhortation and by example. The latter is more telling and much more difficult. Still, with all its problems recently and over the centuries, the papacy has become more visible, more telegenic, more respected by outside religions, such that even its bitterest opponents must acknowledge its achievements on a variety of issues. This book attempts to explore the differing challenges confronting the popes as leaders and as managers over their international community of faith. Beginning with the Middle Ages the papacy waged wars of defense and destruction, raised up armies, created diplomatic corps, engaged intensely in guile and intrigue, and established alliances with princes and potentates of dubious reputation. Now new assets are being exploited: a worldwide media, easy transportation of its agents, a somewhat more sympathetic hearing for its orthodoxy in major venues of opinion. Of course, most popes attempted to influence events, and they often faced harsh realities as they endeavored to have their policies and their objectives prevail, but now they have a global audience. And, as the funeral of John Paul II and the installation of Benedict XVI in 2005 demonstrated, no institution in the West—including the British monarchy—is better at pomp, symbolism, staged

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responses, subtle master strokes than the age-old papacy, largely built on the language and practices of tradition.

Models of the Church The historians of organizational behavior often look at models or paradigms. In trying to explain such activities, I will also do so as a way of emphasizing continuity; but still people are so complex, and there are many mixtures of management styles in performing leadership tasks. The purpose of a model is to illustrate, not to gloss over or to fix firmly patterns of executive behavior. I hope that this study of leadership styles will not discourage students from studying Church history, from searching archival documents, and from examining more complex relationships on important topics such as human sexuality, personal ethics, the sacred span of life, the ways to guarantee social justice, and the need for peace and international harmony. My book hopefully will be seen as one study in further discussions on the papacy, how it should relate to its own communities and to other people. Gregory the Great said it best—the pope is “the servant of the servants of God.” What a humble definition of the position by such an accomplished and proud man. I am not the only individual who has tried to link up the Church and the papacy to various models; one respected example is the work of the late Avery Cardinal Dulles S.J.4 He argued that looking at the Church now and in the past, one can see different types of organization, rhetoric, theological positions that have emerged. It is best to let him speak for himself as he indicates what his concerns are. 1. The Church as an Institution. The Church is a visible structure with a stable organizational base, and features a model that was in use as early as the Patristic period or later in the early Middle Ages. But it was accentuated under Vatican I. That Council emphasized the role of the hierarchical structure of the Church, especially the “Charism of Truth” possessed by the bishops. The Church had a strong sense of corporate identity with a relatively passive laity. The archetypical pope under that model is, of course, Pius IX. But Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, and in various ways John Paul II also qualify. Here the pope is seen as being at the very pinnacle of a hierarchy, the supreme authority figure. 2. The Church as a Mystical Community. The Church can be seen as a community that is marked both externally and internally with an inner sense of spiritual life. It is characterized by faith, discipline, and the seven sacraments. The “Body of Christ” is an organic metaphor, used by St. Paul in Corinthians 12:1214, which can change and adapt to explain the dynamics of the Catholic Church. Members of the Church are bound together by a mystical communion through the grace of Christ. Vatican II reformulated this metaphor into “the people of God,” an expression currently out of favor under the papacies of John

Introduction Paul II and Benedict XVI. The pope is the Vicar of Christ, with a direct link to Jesus’ commission to St. Peter. 3. The Church as Sacrament. Here the Church is seen as the sacrament of Christ who makes himself real and present. In addition, the Church is the custodian of the seven visible sacraments. The main emphasis though is on the sacrament of the Eucharist, which in Catholic theology is not merely the memorial of Christ’s Last Supper, but is actually the Body and Blood of the Savior. The sacraments in general are seen as mutual interactions that encourage people to achieve salvation. But the Church of today is linked to the Church of apostolic times, and God’s redemptive grace extends to all. The pope is viewed as the supreme pastor of the Church whose major public pronounces are linked up with the sacraments, especially when he performs the Eucharist and ordinations. 4. The Church as Herald. The Church is presented as an instrument to proclaim the word of God—to receive and proclaim the message of “the good news” of Jesus Christ. Christianity and Catholicism in particular is a proselytizing religion, heeding the call of Christ to go out and teach the world. The Church is a stable community living in history, and in Cardinal Dulles’s language, “the magisterium of the Church is, to be sure, not over the word of God, but under it.” In this model, the pope is the primary preacher of the Word of God. 5. The Church as Servant. The Church, especially from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, saw the papal encyclicals emanating from Gregory XVI to Pius XII as documents that deplored the modern eras and the very concept of modernity itself. Then in 1962, Pope John XXIII chastised those “prophets of doom” who “can see nothing but prevarication and ruin” in the way of the world. His Council, Vatican II, recognized the legitimacy of human culture and especially the sciences. The Church was portrayed as a servant, with a mission to bind up the wounds of humankind, to be a suffering servant, and to foster the process of healing. Actually the theme of being a servant is an old view in Catholicism, and was present earlier in Judaism. As we have noted, one of the greatest and most determined popes, Gregory the Great (590–604) called himself “ the servant of the servants of God”—that is, a leader who was somehow sensitive to the needs of the priests who are privileged to carry on the work of God. 6. Cardinal Dulles added later another model, seeing the Church as a Community of Disciples, as a witness to the need for economic justice, social equity, and to foster peaceful settlements among nations. It is a demanding model—a call to continuous service for a Christian life. For that reason it may appeal only to a small group of dedicated disciples and depends on a prior calling or a vocation.

Thus each model of the Church is often linked up historically with a dominant leadership style. The pope is first of all a pastor, the bishop of Rome, the patriarch of the diocese, a primate in the Western Church, the Vicar of Christ. He is a teacher, a role model, an administrator, a lawgiver, a manager, and a national figure—often today a celebrity. As will be seen, the papacy of course moved from being the bishopric of Rome in the empire’s great capital to a regional prominence being shared in some ways with the bishop of Constantino-

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ple. He became later a primary voice in the Church’s affairs as Constantine the Great made the Church a protected institution and a far-reaching religious force. And with the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, the papacy became the only real unifying authority in the western part of the empire. The papacy had become an agent for delivering food supplies, protecting the city from the barbarian tribes, and furthering social stability.

The Thesis Thus the use of metaphors—or the coming together of uncommon associations or concepts and similes—can add a new dimension to explanations. The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, with the parts of its hierarchy being similar to the parts of the body of the Savior. Or the Church is akin to a community of disciples who originally gathered around the Living Christ. Metaphors and similes are rich extensions of initial images. These are the ways the Church seeks at different times to explain itself. But it is the central thesis of this work that one can understand the leadership or managerial style of the Church by comparing it to the larger developments of the temporal environment around it. Such a view is at variance with those who see the Church as simply a divinely ordained association of faith. But the Church lives in time and in place, just as its most central dogmas are expressed in the limitations of human language. There is no meta-language to explain the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the divine motherhood of Mary. There are only Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and now our vernacular tongues in which to pray. Then also, the Christian Church and the Catholic Church that it became, adapted remarkably to the outside world despite waves of persecutions. Where the Church did not adapt such as with Clement XI’s decision to ban Chinese and Malabar rites in the early eighteenth century, the results were catastrophic for the Church. Finally in 1939, Pius XII rescinded parts of the ban, but it was too late. The major change though in refusing to adapt in general was the reign of Pius IX and Vatican I. It set the pace for a century of recalcitrance, and created a very different management dilemma. Let us though begin at the beginning: when the primitive Christian Church began its organizational and leadership structures, it paralleled the communitarian ways of the Jewish synagogues from which it emerged in the Middle East. The synagogues had a fairly collective leadership, but with some role differentiations. The same held true for the primitive church with its own roles for men and women. They called those roles “charismas”—gifts from the Holy Spirit. At first, Christianity had no book like Judaism did, but as the original disciples died, there began to emerge gospels of all sorts along with the earlier letters of St. Paul written in Greek—and they became the books of the Jesus communi-

Introduction

ties. The local churches began to move toward a common liturgy—usually the Eucharistic ceremonies and the adoption of baptism. The latter had Jewish roots, and of course the Eucharist was the Passover feast redone again and again, and transformed into Christ’s Real Presence in sacrifice. The early churches left the synagogues and used large common rooms to practice their faith. Priests and bishops began to emerge from the community, and the decentralized local churches were very much bishop-driven organizations. In Rome and elsewhere, they heeded St. Paul’s admonition that they become in effect miniature welfare states, ministering to the needs of the most vulnerable, as the Roman Empire had initially done in its flowering. Just as the emperors sent out their troops to the frontiers to defeat and then govern the barbarians, the Church had often sent out its missionaries to convert and baptize those uncultivated and violent men. The Dark Ages led to a decentralized state and a decentralized Church. The Church though protected the manuscripts of culture, and eventually established cathedral schools and much later early universities. The decentralization of the Church and the state led to corruption as a way of life, for one can accumulate wealth in the most brutal of times. Reformers like the emperor Diocletian, who ended up persecuting the Church, sought to regularize the crumbling empire by dividing it up and establishing clearer lines of succession. Then he retired to his new castle-city in Dalmatia (currently Split), was buried in the temple, but was eventually cast out of his final resting place when the temple became a church. He was on the wrong side of history. But the Church learned from his organizational strengths and adapted some of those patterns as its management style. Even today, the Church calls its major divisions “dioceses.” The popes and the non-Roman leaders retained much of the style of the older Roman Empire in terms of patterns of authority and ways of doing things. The popes were even called “pontiffs,” similar to the titles of Roman religious priests, and bishops of Rome issued decretals, or regulations, to the other churches. Even in an early dispute the third bishop of Rome, probably an association secretary, issued a letter of admonition to the community in Antioch, and then followed up by sending a team to see if his words had changed behavior— an old Roman practice. Even the great Council of Nicaea under Emperor Constantine used the procedures that governed the Roman city-state’s deliberations. The end of persecutions under Constantine and his predecessor, and the establishment of Christianity as the sole state religion under Theodosius, led to a very different Church organizationally. Now the pope or bishop of Rome had to relate directly to the emperor and his agents, often far away. The emperor’s court became more lavish, more ornate, and more bureaucratic, and so did the Roman Church. But within the Church, as probably in the emperor’s armies, there was a strong element of pietistic reform. It was epitomized in the Church by the monk-pope Gregory the Great. He sought to end simony, concubinage, multiple office holding, and excessive secularization. He insisted on controlling the choice and discipline of bishops. Against a declining empire in the West, he tried in an age of

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very weak communications to create a more unified Church centered in Rome. As political and social disintegration prevailed in the West, strong noble families moved to create and unify fiefdoms. And the Church responded too, by making the papacy more regal, more imposing, and more intrusive. Innocent III became a powerful, far-reaching papal monarch, and constantly bested the temporal monarchs, for he had one major trump card that they did not have—he could deny practicing and non-practicing Catholics access to the sacraments and the next life. Just as the monarchs created court bureaucracies, courts of justice, trained clerks, written statutory decrees, so did the imperial papacy. Just as the temporal monarchs dealt with resistance and dissent, so too a Church that suffered oppression began to advocate inquisitions against heretics, and crusades against foreign and domestic invaders. The Church was not just in the world, in the high Middle Ages it was the driving force in the West. And the new religious orders—especially the Franciscans and Dominicans—became the new evangelists pushing the faith beyond the old Roman Empire’s borders. Once again opulence and decadence began setting in, as the Church was deeply impacted by the seamy side of the emerging Renaissance. At first, the West rediscovered the closed cultures of Greece and Rome. And then, that rediscovery led to Church leaders emulating the ways of Italian city-states with their high level of intrigue and their elegant structures and court styles. If one looks today at the Doge’s Palace in Venice, for example, it may very well have been the home of a prince of the Church—they seem interchangeable. Rome, which once had a population of only twenty thousand people in the Dark Ages, became a new metropolitan area in the Renaissance. The popes and cardinals often came from city-states nobility, and they rivaled their relatives. They competed for the same artists and sculptors, feasted with the same men of letters, and at times seemed more interested in reading Cicero than in reading the gospels. The Church did not oppose the Renaissance—it adapted it as its own, and Church monuments today far exceed in beauty and complexity the legacy of the city-states, except perhaps in Florence. It was those monuments of secular beauty that so excited people and so alienated Martin Luther during his visit to Rome. The heartland, especially Germany, deplored paying for those extravagances, and the Church in Rome spent little effort on spiritual matters. Rightfully, many of the local churches far away from the action resented deeply the Renaissance Church, a Church that did what the other city-states in Italy did. It created administrative structures to raise up armies, tax people, engage in duplicitous diplomacy, plot assassinations, and military coups. The Church in Rome was another Italian city-state—only with spiritual assets as part of its arsenal. The Protestant Reformation was meant as a cleansing, a return to the primitive church of the past. But eventually its lack of a unified core of beliefs and liturgy led to a total fragmentation of Latin Christianity. As Luther admitted near the end of his life—the Church which was once too papal was becoming

Introduction

too evangelical. As the Roman Church lost huge parts of northern Europe to the reformers, it moved to deal with the revolution in thought and practices that was occurring. It re-invigorated the Inquisition (after focusing on the Jews), and reestablished an Index of Forbidden Books—for Luther had shown the power of the written word and the printing press. The Church strengthened its Curia or bureaucracy, and the new orders, especially the Jesuits, were to bring the missionary vision into the New World and in Asia. They were the storm troopers of the papacy. And the Church—once the only patron of the sciences—seemed at times to turn on its younger sister and thwarted some of the greatest scientists of the Renaissance world. Suddenly the world of science and faith spun apart. Also the emergence of humanism, the beginnings of capitalism, and the increase of materialism led to a new generation of intellectuals who turned to reason not faith for enlightenment. Whereas the Church has once fallen back on Aquinas and his reconciliation of Aristotle to the traditional faith, the defensive post-Reformation Church did not have the wisdom or the courage to push forward to a Catholic Enlightenment of note. The Church was on the defensive, in part where it has been ever since. Its core values and stylized rituals were subject not to debate, but more to ridicule. The papacy could not deal with this new twist—except to condemn it. Historians often like to write of the terrible record of the Church during periods of decadence and corruption, the eras of the so-called “bad popes.” But the Church can always deal with or even tolerate corruption; it cannot deal with ridicule, and that was the legacy of the Enlightenment. In terms of their leadership style, the popes and their courts sputtered and moved toward internal reform—finally coming in bits and pieces in the Council of Trent. But the Church reformers did not recognize our thesis—how influenced the Church is and must be by the external environment. Indeed the Council sought to both purify the Church and to seal it off hermetically from the world around it. The Enlightenment was a brief springtime of reason; it was followed by the French Revolution and a new order of things that were viciously anti-religious and anti-Church. The Roman Church during the French Revolution and during Napoleon seemed ready to collapse. It was persecuted at a level reminiscent of the late Roman Empire, and its schools, its churches, its liturgical calendar, and its hierarchy were all under attack in France, once called, “the oldest daughter of the Church.” The popes in captivity and in exile were far removed from the Church bureaucracy and Rome’s historic symbolism. The papacy was partially saved by Napoleon’s overreaching ambition and the strong anti-French military alliance that defeated him and drove him into exile. Astute Church diplomats, such as Ercole Consalvi, were there at the Congress of Vienna peace conference trying to protect the Church’s temporal interests, and Consalvi at least did fairly well considering the weak Holy See’s position at the time. But he was unable to convince the pope not to go back to things as usual, including the restrictions on the Jews in the Papal States, and not to allow the conservative wing of the Curia to re-establish the ways of doing things

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that so many people hated. The stubborn popes had prevailed over Napoleon, now they intended to prevail over the new forces of liberalism, toleration, and self-government. This Church would not adapt to the environment, it would fight changes in all categories—political, religious, social, philosophical, scientific, and thus become increasingly irrelevant to the world it was supposed to serve. The enlightened despots in the West changed their nations’ very culture and even their infrastructure; the unenlightened princes of the Church wanted to change nothing. So the papal Curia turned the Holy See’s committees into rigid structures to administer the Council of Trent’s final declarations, and tighten up control on the Papal States just when the opposite was needed. But even the conservative cardinals saw that the Church’s prestige and relevancy was slipping away very profoundly, so they turned to a moderate liberal who in turn ushered in some modest domestic and humanitarian reform. As is so often the case with reformers in the political world however, the popular sentiment shifted very quickly and very profoundly, and Pius IX and his allies lost their control of the situation to the more radical, nationalistic elements of what became the Italian Risorgimento. Forced into exile, Pio Nono returned and proceeded with a reactionary agenda. His reign lasted the longest in papal history, and that was unfortunate for it turned the Church even more into a papal autocracy, fostering a cult of personality, and emphasizing the emotional rather that the rational. Most importantly, the once adaptable and flexible Church became even more restricted to confines of the Vatican. Pius IX provided the Church with a list of endless errors that embraced most of the modern world’s tendencies, and one of his successors—Pius X—re-instituted those condemnations. The Church grew more papal, more pietistic, and more out of touch with the world. There were, though, endless attempts by local clergy and educated Catholic laymen to reach out to the world, and many were denounced by the conservative Curia as “modernists.” Some of those denounced individuals included two men who later became popes! The Church of Rome was run like an Italian agency—haughty, paper driven, rigidly traditional, rule bound, and precedent oriented. Elements of that management style persist today—but to a lesser extent. It was the terrible wars of the twentieth century that changed the Church’s role in the world. The forces of nationalism, romanticism, and secularism led to a re-evaluation of the notions of reason and secular progress. Mass deaths in war and in genocide made humankind re-think its most basic existential assumptions. And the Church stayed the same—traditional, pietistic, rigidly dogmatic, but the world changed, and suddenly religion became once again a predictable sanctuary from the horrors of the twentieth century. When the history of those times is written, the long chronicle of violence will overwhelm even the atrocities of centuries before. Faced with the explosions of democratic aspirations and anti-colonialism,

Introduction

the elderly John XXIII sought to open up the windows of the Vatican and let in the benevolent winds of social change. He did, but the traditional Church had for too long opposed new ideas and new ways of doing things. The new wine began to burst the old wineskins. Attempts to redefine the metaphors of the Church, the role of the laity, the extrinsic worth of religious toleration, the community of believers were just too much for the popes and individual bishops to handle. The Church fathers of Vatican II had not put in place the management structures to assimilate those changes, although parishes began to multiply the number of social ministries—a similar strategy to the secular growth of the welfare state after World War II. Still it was hard to overturn the Council of Trent and Vatican I in a few short years. And so the progressive Church faced major declines in traditional indices of devout life. Finally faced with the bankruptcy of the Tridentine Church and the upheavals after Vatican II, the next papal conclave tuned to a non-Italian who began a major restoration of papal authority and traditional dogma—and did so in the very vocabulary of Vatican II in which he was a bit player. John Paul II was a media superstar for over a quarter of a century. In Rome the conservative elements of the Curia re-asserted themselves—hounding dissident theologians and community-church organizers in the Church, depreciating local and national bishop conferences, ending liturgical experimentation, and promoting an augmented version of the papal magisterium. Because of modern communications and easy travel, the papacy is a very different and very visible symbol of the Roman Catholic Church visiting places once deemed exotic and far away. Thus it is that by understanding the complex past that we can better come to grips with the Church and its leaders.

Notes 1. George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Harper Collins, 1999). 2. Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939– 1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 3. Thomas C. Fox, Sexuality and Catholicism (New York: George Braziller, 2000). 4. Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2002).

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The Primitive Church Some time during the reign of Caesar Augustus, there was born around 4 B.C. probably in Bethlehem or Nazareth a Jewish boy, Joshua, or Jesus as he came to be called. Augustus was the great-nephew and the heir of the most important Roman of the time, Julius Caesar, whom many considered the most formidable figure in all of antiquity.1 Julius Caesar is now known to us mainly through Shakespeare’s tragedy and from Caesar’s own commentaries on the waging of war in Gaul. Otherwise he is generally unremembered. 2

The Good News Jesus was born in an obscure area of the Roman Empire, living in the town of Nazareth with a young mother and a father who was a craftsman and a supposed descendant from the royal line of King David.3 His birth was told and is retold in the most charming of stories and memorialized in the crèches originated by St. Francis; but we know very little of Jesus’ coming of age, except that he became a follower of the strenuously judgmental prophet John the Baptizer (the Baptist) who was eventually beheaded by King Herod for his criticism of the monarch and Herod’s immoral practices.4 Perhaps from the age of thirty, and for fewer than three years, Jesus of Nazareth walked the area around the Sea of Galilee, preaching mostly to Jews in his native tongue of Aramaic. 5 Over the years, some have said that he had a secret message, a “gnosis” that only the elect could comprehend—for that was frequently true of the prophets of the pagan cults. In fact, Jesus spoke in parables to facilitate understanding by even the most poor and uneducated. When asked to sum up his message, he said simply it is to love God and one’s neighbor. Although he could be stern and clinically discerning at times, Jesus insisted that the harsh God presented in the Old Testament was really the God of love in the new covenant. As for himself, he remarked that he had not come to judge the world, but to save it. Jesus proclaimed that the “Kingdom of God is within you,” although at times he referred to the near future as the day of judgment. About 90 percent of his ethical injunctions were common to other Jewish teachers, but he also insisted that he alone on earth could forgive sins.6 After less than three years of ministry, he had established a local reputation as a preacher, a prophet, a miracle worker, and a rabbi or teacher. The Gospels record some thirty-five miracles that he performed, including exorcisms of the devil.7 He called himself in the words of Daniel (7:12-14) the Son of Man, human—all too human like the rest of us. But he also insisted that “before Abra1

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ham was I am,” a reference to God’s naming of Himself when He addressed Moses. Others called him the long-awaited Messiah, the anointed one of the Jewish tradition. Still many more would call him the Son of God. After Jesus challenged the authority of the priest caste in Jerusalem and in the neighboring region, some Jewish and Roman leaders conspired to try, convict, and crucify him. The Gospels tell us that he suffered enormously from the most degrading method of capital punishment, that he forgave his enemies, and that after he gave up his spirit he was laid in a new tomb by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. But on the third day after his death, some women followers led by Mary Magdalene and the apostles claimed that he rose again, and spoke with them. After spending forty days with his traumatized followers he ascended into heaven, not like Elijah in a fiery chariot, but by his own power. 8 There had been prophets before Jesus; there had been good men martyred before and after his time in Jerusalem. Their names were often well-known, especially in a Jewish environment that was so heavily charged with eschatology (a preoccupation with the final events of the world). They came and they went, but Jesus’ impact was direct, immediate, and long lasting. His followers—later dubbed by historians “the Jesus movement”—went to pray in synagogues, for they were still observant Jews. But eventually their numbers became larger, and conflicts arose between the different factions, especially in Jerusalem and Antioch. Thus from the beginning, anti-Christianity and anti-Semitism fed off one another. Jesus would never have recognized that conflict, for as he insisted to his disciples, he came not to overturn the Mosaic laws, but to observe them, to obey the Hebrew prophesies, and to converse with the spirits of Moses and Elijah . . . or so his apostles clearly saw and remembered. But he changed one precept surely—he abandoned the old ritualistic sacrifices of animals, so familiar to Jews and pagans alike, and substituted in their place his Eucharistic sacrifice of bread and wine to be identified as his body and blood as he observed the Jewish Passover. The Eucharist and the Baptism rite, the latter carried over from John the Baptizer and even before, became the cores of the new belief system. Oddly, Jesus was himself baptized by John, but the Gospels do not record that he ever baptized anyone.9 The Jesus movement spread and reached even beyond Jewish centers outside of Jerusalem. Some say that Jesus’ message prevailed over pagan cults and Greek philosophy because of its appeal to the urban working class, or because of the support of rich and influential women. Unfortunately, sociology for us is always a better explanation than religion. For whatever reasons, the Jesus movement or “the Way” became an underground force that was first called Christianity by its critics in Antioch. Christianity obviously appealed to the spiritual hunger of many people, but so did the other cults that were around at that time. Thomas Bokenkotter has written that the most important competing cults of the time were the Dionysian and Orphic mysteries of Thrace; the Eleusinian cult

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from Eleusis near Athens; the religion of the great mother, Cybele, from Anatolia in Asia Minor; the Persian religion of Mithra; and the Egyptian cult of Isis and Osiris. In fact some belief systems like Mithranism did a better job explaining one of the harshest mysteries of life—the presence and incredible power of evil in a world supposedly created by a benevolent creator. But it was the philosophy of the Nazarene that triumphed.10 In a critical church council at Jerusalem about 50 A.D., Jesus’ adherents met to confront the question about whether the movement should continue to be seen as an offshoot of Judaism, still respecting its rules regarding diet, the Sabbath, and circumcision, or whether it was to free itself from those roots and become a universal religion. Jesus’ example gave credence to both views. Then in one of the most critical moments in history, the primitive church cast its lot with Paul, an aggressive new convert to the faith of Jesus, and the Gentile world opened up. Most importantly Peter and James, the brother or halfbrother or cousin of Jesus, supported those overtures, although they sought to have their adherents still respect many Jewish practices.11

The Apostle Peter Peter’s background is an important story for those interested in the papacy. He was born Simon, the son of Jonas, was married, and fished for a living in the Sea of Galilee. The Acts of the Apostles indicates that he was illiterate or uneducated (4:13).12 Of the twelve apostles, he became almost immediately the leader, even though he was sometimes rather harshly treated by Jesus, who even referred to him once as the tempter, Satan. We know from Peter and from others that he denied three times in one day that he knew Jesus after his Master’s capture. He is an example for all of us who sin repeatedly. After Jesus’ death, he worked closely with James and performed miracles himself as a witness to Christ’s powers.13 Peter is a real historical figure who is mentioned nearly two hundred times in nine of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. He, like Jesus, was a famed healer, but he was clear where his powers came from: “Men of Nazareth listen to me: I speak of Jesus of Nazareth, a man singled out by God and made known to you through miracles, portents and signs, where God worked among you through Him as you well know.” He spoke the good news in the Aramaic tongue like his Savior, and there is some historical speculation that Peter was early on a disciple of John the Baptist. He lived for a while in Capernaum with his wife and mother-in-law, and that town became consequently a center for Jesus’ ministry in Galilee.14 Of course, Peter’s overriding message was Jesus’ resurrection, and he would have agreed with Paul: “If Christ was not raised, then our Gospel is null and void, and so too is your faith.” After the crucifixion, the followers of Jesus fled, going back to their homes, many to the Galilee area. It was Peter and James

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though who were the unquestioned leaders of the faithful during that period. Later Peter was arrested by authorities several times, a testimony that even they seemed to recognize his preeminence.15

The Apostle to the Gentiles The other great figure in early Christianity was Paul, a small, balding, intense man, who was born in Syria-Cilica, in the city of Tarsus, to a family of Pharisees. He was supposedly a student in Jerusalem of the great Jewish liberal teacher Gamaliel, and Paul (born Saul) was by trade a tentmaker. Somehow, probably through his father, a soldier, the family acquired Roman citizenship. At first, Paul was a vigorous opponent of the new religion of the crucified Christ, though he had never met Jesus. As the familiar story goes, on the road to Damascus, outside the city gates, he had a blinding encounter with Jesus (“an appearance”) and was thrown from his horse and experienced a profound conversion. Soon he called himself “the apostle to the Gentiles,” and he swept across the Mediterranean area, causing controversy wherever he went, setting up Christian communities, and above all preaching the gospel of the resurrection. His letters were written, starting some twenty years after Jesus’ death and years before any of the canonical Gospel accounts, as far as we can decipher. These epistles are the first great Christological works of the Church and its believers. 16 They are also important historical records. In his letter to the Romans (16:7), for example, he cites that among the most outstanding apostles was a woman named Junia, who was in Christ before he was—a telling testimonial of the importance of women in the early Jesus movement. 17 Paul was eventually arrested and referred his case to the emperor—the right of every Roman citizen at the time. Unfortunately the emperor then was the wildly anti-Christian and partially deranged Nero. Even today, across from the port that leads to the fabled island of Capri, is a simple plaque that marks where St. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, landed. He was transported to Rome and for several years was kept under house arrest before he was beheaded. His grave is thought to be where his Basilica is located today—on the Via Ostiense in that city. At that time Nero was engaged in a major persecution, blaming the Christians for a devastating fire in Rome, which he himself may have instigated, and Paul was probably sentenced to death around 65 A.D. and executed during that period. 18

The Church in Rome Catholics and others believe that Sts. Peter and Paul went to Rome, and that the former became the head of the church, and also died in that city. Legend has it

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that Peter was crucified upside down at his request (considering himself unworthy to die as his Master had), sometime between 64 and 68 A.D. near where St. Peter’s Basilica is today on the south side of the Vatican. Catholic papal tradition has also insisted that Peter was the first “pope” and the first bishop of Rome. But the Church in Rome in those days was ruled more by a committee or group of believers, similar to the synagogues of the time, than by one bishop or head. Undoubtedly though, Peter was instantly recognized as preeminent because of his direct association with Jesus. Still, the first several bishops or elders of Rome after Peter were in fact much more operatives in a collegial environment than powerful churchmen. The first pope to function as the sole bishop of Rome was Pius I (c. 142–c. 155).19 And in terms of teaching authority, the early Bishops of Rome were more involved in local administration and avoiding the wrath of Roman oppressors than in providing spiritual guidance for the whole Church. Rome, however, became one of the most important sees—in large part because of the unique role of that city in the empire and also because of its philanthropic wealth. The Catholic Church has argued that Peter’s role was directly linked to Jesus’ charge “thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against thee” (Matthew 16:13-19). Thus Peter and his successors were to have the keys to the kingdom of God with the powers to bind and to loosen, an expression also used in Isaiah 22:22 to open and to shut. The word “rock” is seen as a pun made by Jesus on the word Peter, but the later Church employed it for its own purposes as a telling metaphor to cover its supremacy in areas beyond penance; it became the central expression used by the Church in medieval political thought. Overall there was not a single method of administrating the Catholic Church since its governance varied depending on the locale. The tradition of extensive centralization is a relatively recent one in the Catholic Church, starting mainly in the nineteenth century, and certainly does not represent what took place during the period of the primitive origins of the Church. The early “popes,” still called the bishops of Rome until the third century or so, were elders who were involved in the administration of the Church, some of whom suffered martyrdom in the first centuries of the Church. Thus some of the popes whose names we barely know today gave their lives for the young Christian faith. The notion of a continued line of succession from Peter gained credence with an authority named Hegesippus (c. 110–c. 180) who was in Rome around 160 A.D. He wrote his memoirs which were quoted later by the influential Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 275–339). Eusebius argued that there was an unbroken historical line of bishops in the principal churches, and he went on to name the bishops of Rome from the very beginning. The validity of his observations have been questioned by other historians, but his assertion was reiterated by the important theologian, Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–c.. 207), who also argued for a continuous tradition from the apostles to his own times.

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Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, who in turn was a disciple of John the Evangelist.20

The Primitive Church The very earliest interpretations of Christianity which eventually developed a wide-spread following, however, came not from Peter or from James in Jerusalem; rather they are embodied in the letters of Paul to various communities of faith, the epistles that we know so well today.21 He took seriously the mandate attributed to Jesus to go spread the gospel to all nations. The early church of the apostles, and the more complicated church of the later apologists, started with the simple Good News of Jesus’ Resurrection spread most vociferously by Paul. Jesus died for our sins, finally overcoming the curse of Adam, which theologians later called “Original Sin.” More skeptical observers have made light of the concept of Original Sin which the Book of Genesis traces to woman’s and man’s desire to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Why would God punish humanity for such an exercise of the very reason which God gave his creatures in the first place? But one can say that the Fall of Man and Original Sin is a mythological formulation of a very important change that took place in the history of humankind. Sometime in the evolutionary development of the species, man became able to be self-conscious—that is, he was aware that he was conscious. That extraordinary change is what makes us different from other creatures on earth. By becoming self-conscious we became capable of evil, of treachery, or selfknowledge and pride, and of philosophy and religion. This development is metaphorically explained in the concept of Original Sin, and the Resurrection of Christ is meant to show that humankind can overcome those negative consequences of consciousness through a higher state of awareness. To some extent that change in thinking is also a part of Buddha’s message, except orthodox Christians also believe that Jesus was the Son of God. Thus rather than disregard the Fall of Man as a childish story, it can be seen as a way that Biblical poets tried to explain what was one of the most important transformations in history. It was this central story of sin and redemption that Paul groped with his entire career. Originally, the followers of the Jesus movement began as a branch of traditional Judaism that became, in the lifetime of the apostles, a universal movement. Under Paul, it appealed mainly to the Greek-speaking and Romangoverned world. The “Apostolic generation” fits into three decades where differences became apparent. First from 30–40 A.D., Jesus was proclaimed as the “Messiah” in the Jewish Oriental circles; then from 40–50 A.D. the JewishChristian mission was directed to the Jews of the Dispersion and dealt with the resulting tensions; and from 50–60 A.D., the extension of the Church to the Greek world occurred.22

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The Gospels and the epistles became the products of the second generation of Christians after the apostles who saw, touched, and ate with Jesus, had died away. As the faith spread, the major teaching tool was the epistle sent to outlying communities. Paul was the first in those letters to give an account of the Last Supper and to assert the claims of a risen Christ. And he was also a fierce critic who deplored evidence of drunkenness and endless acrimony among contentious Christian peoples.23 The historian Herbert Musurillo has reminded us that the faith initially spread from the apostles and the bishops, from Palestine to Antioch and Syria; in Antioch, as noted, they were first labeled dismissively as “Christians.” The Gospel news then went throughout Asia Minor, Greece, Cyprus, North Africa, and then Italy, especially into Rome. In the second century, the faith made its way into Gaul, Germany, Carthage, and even the Black Sea region. Although the Romans had a record of general toleration toward a variety of religious sentiments, being for the most part protective of Judaism, the authorities began to have serious reservations about the new Christian cult. One had to be careful, they reasoned, of anything that undercut popular morals and of any secret opposition that might lead to challenges to the peaceful order of the state. Some rumors charged that the Christians were a threat to the empire, were particularly given to immoral excesses, and that the Eucharist was really a variation of cannibalism.24 Nero, who succeeded to the emperor’s throne, blamed the Christians for the burning of Rome, and even the historian Tacitus concluded at the time that the Christians were being punished for their “hatred of the human race.” In a more moderate tone, the proconsul Pliny wrote to Emperor Trajan (98–117) that Christians were being asked to sacrifice to the pagan gods and to the emperor to verify their loyalty.25 What should be done if they refused? The emperor wisely counseled moderation, for he was no Nero. But later in the period 249 to 250, Emperor Decius proclaimed Christianity illegal and resumed persecutions of the cult. During the second and third centuries, Christianity was often under active assault, and Roman citizens who declared that faith theirs were often exiled and humiliated. Those not citizens were nailed to a cross, burned on a pyre, or even thrown to the wild animals in the circus—images that two thousand years later are still part of the vivid chronicles of the martyrs. 26 As it grew up, the Church was originally a collection of local communities in which the Last Supper was replicated and readings of Christ’s life and teachings became the essence of the early liturgy. Their orthodoxy was challenged by a legion of heresies, the most important at that time being Gnosticism. 27 That religious tradition was diverse and complicated, but generally it postulated a secret doctrine that was given only to the initiated. Although Gnosticism certainly predated Christianity, a variation of that belief system was robust in the Roman Empire, despite its preoccupation with “se-

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cret” knowledge available only to an elite. In general, Gnostics insisted that the world was the product of evil forces with scattered fragments of a higher spiritual realm in it. Human beings were bound to cosmic forces or “archons” (rulers) and could be freed only by releasing the divine spark in them. By mastering mystical practices, spells, and words they could ascend to the higher spiritual realms of light and truth. Gnosticism had a complex theological system with many spiritual forces—one of whom was Christ. The lowest level was the Demiurge, the God of the Old Testament, who created the world. On a higher plane, Sophia (Wisdom) had become a part of their world, liberated though by Jesus. Some Gnostics saw Jesus’ death and resurrection as a spiritual, not a physical or historical occurrence. It is hard to believe that this long-lasting belief system seriously challenged orthodox Christianity throughout the early third century, although apparently it did.28 The Church fought this and numerous other heresies energetically and also adapted to the world of Greek intellectual thought. Soon the followers of the Jewish prophet from Nazareth spoke and taught in Greek, and the four canonical gospels were written actually in that tongue. The epistles of Paul, which predated all the Gospels, were also written in Greek, the language of the educated.

In the Desert Another very different strand of Christianity that emerged in the third century was monasticism, which emphasized the importance of chastity, and which grew up at first in the Egyptian deserts, far away from Rome. It would become an important source of renewal and institutional purification for the Church. The major father of monasticism was St. Anthony (270–356) who fled the world and the dangers of apostasy to serve God in solitude as a hermit in the Egyptian desert. He and others of a like-mindedness lived in colonies, called “laurai,” and focused on poverty and obedience, as well as chastity. Since they wished to leave the world and its attractions, they were celibate and avoided the distractions of wife or family. At this time, many priests were still married, although most bishops were not, and many monks were not ordained, but in fact stayed laymen. In the East, monks adopted the rule of St. Basil (330–379) which emphasized leading a holy life and singing the praises of God in the Divine Office, while repenting for one’s sins, and doing penance. The life of St. Anthony became famous with the circulation of a pious biography compiled by St. Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373). And it was Athanasius who in turn introduced monasticism into the West; the regulations governing that life were at first specific to each local group, but later a more prominent Rule was formulated by St. Benedict of Nursia (480–543) who provided for a less strict and narrow set of practices. Still he emphasized the physical seclusion of the monks, and the need

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for monks to be committed for life to the particular monastery in which their vows were made. Over the centuries, the Western monks became involved more in scholarship and teaching, unlike in the East where their counterparts refused to engage in such diversions. And monasticism became increasingly important to the developing papacy.29

Managing the New Faith Initially the Gospels told Christians that the Kingdom of God was at hand, and that they would see the end of the world in their lifetimes, thus freeing them from the need to consider permanent organizations. But as time passed that assurance had to change, and with it came a more developed theology—one that dealt with how Jesus atoned for all sins since Adam, how He and the Father related to each other metaphysically, and how Almighty God could become man in a woman’s womb. Complicated discussions and debates took place over the doctrine of the Trinity, settled in part later by the power of the Emperor Constantine and expressed in the deliberations of the Council of Nicaea. During this period of time, the importance of Rome grew and so did its conservative, legalistic approach to theology. The everyday morality promulgated later by the Church was influenced by the precepts of the Roman orator Cicero and the Stoics with their emphasis on natural law. The Church thus began to adapt itself not just organizationally, but philosophically as well. It is hard for us to appreciate fully that in the era of the primitive church there were still many men and women who had heard directly the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth. He was not simply a great religious figure, but a real man who lived in their times. Peter’s association with Jesus was one of the closest human ties the latter had, save for his mother Mary, although at times the apostle abandoned his Master. Even if the primitive church did not have popes as often described, the early Christian community accepted Peter’s preeminence, even over Paul and James, the supposed blood relative of Jesus. 30 What we also see very early is the unique importance of bishops in the life of this Church. Usually elected by the local people and their clergy, the bishops often became judges in disputes, diplomats in secular controversies between rulers, and powerful teachers of the newly formulated doctrines on God, Jesus, and Christian life. They accepted notions of apostolic succession and of their direct relationship to Christ’s own disciples on earth, emphasizing their central function in protecting and promoting the faith. They became the very definers of orthodoxy in the early church, and none was more respected than the bishop of Rome, as successor to St. Peter. Almost from the beginning, the followers of Jesus coalesced into small groups of dedicated believers who possessed the oral tradition and stories of his

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ministry, death, and resurrection. They met in upper rooms, in Jewish synagogues, and in house-churches to pray and re-enact the Last Supper. Of course, Christians acknowledged the primacy of the Jewish group led by Peter the Apostle and the relative of Jesus, James. Small groups grew up in the major cities of the Near East and then farther away, including Rome. The early apostles, both male and female, spread the faith, but the major missionary influence was, as noted, Paul, a convert who never met Jesus but whom he saw in visions. His letters are strong messages of exhortation aimed at establishing common beliefs and common traditions in diverse locations. Since Christianity triumphed eventually over heresies, and then over its enemies in the early centuries, we assume that organizationally the churches were in good shape. But if Paul is to be believed, there were numerous problems in these communities, which he was not above denouncing, admonishing, and scolding. Over the early generations, the churches the apostles left behind moved from being a collective leadership that had roles for both men and women—roles such as lector, presbyter, catechist, prophetess, miracle worker, and hosts of other respected positions. Gradually the organizational style evolved with the leadership being in the hands of bishops, some of whom became martyrs to the faith. Indeed the important Christian apologist, Tertullian, was correct—the blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church. And the seedtime of faith overcame its own weaknesses, its own divisions, and its own venalities to become a compelling alternative vision of life on earth and life in eternity.

Notes 1. Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor (New York: Random House, 2006), and Luke 2:l. 2. Adrian Keith Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 3. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 3 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991). 4. Luke 3:1. 5. Henri Daniel-Rops, Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant Publishing, 1981). 6. Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977). 7. Grant, Jesus, 37. 8. Raymond Edward Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Getheseme to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narrative in the Four Gospels, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1993, 1994). 9. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985);

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Granham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 10. Thomas S. Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church, rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Image Books, 1990), 24. 11. Robert Eisenman, James, the Brother of Jesus (New York: Penguin, 1997). 12. Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: Harper Collin, 2005); The Acts of the Apostles actually calls them “uneducated.” 13. Michael Grant, St. Peter: A Biography (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1994). 14. Grant, St. Peter, 4, 5, 35. 15. Grant, St. Peter, 89. 16. Michael Grant, Saint Paul (London: Phoenix Press, 1976); Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul His Story (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Johannes Weiss, Earliest Christianity; A History of the Period A.D. 30–150 (New York: Harpers, 1937), vol. 2; Hyman MacCoby, The Mythmaker Paul and the Invention of Christianity (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1986) challenges nearly all of these propositions; also: Arthur Cushman McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Ages (New York: Charles Scribners, 1898). 17. Rena Pederson, The Lost Apostle: Searching for the Truth about Junia (San Francisco: Josey Bass, 2006); Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (New York: Harper, 1993) in which Paul is cited as calling Junia “foremost among the apostles,” 33. 18. L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2004). 19. Richard McBrien, Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (San Francisco: Harper, 2000). 20. McBrien, Lives, pt. I. 21. F. F. Bruce, Men and Movements in the Primitive Church: Studies in Early Non-Pauline Christianity (Exeter, Great Britain: The PaterNoster Press, 1979); Jules Lebreton and Jacques Zeiller, The History of the Primitive Church (New York: Macmillan, 1944), vol. 1; Maurice Goguel, The Primitive Church (New York: Macmillan, 1964); Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1968). 22. Gregory Dix, Jew and Greek: A Study in the Primitive Church (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1955), 27. 23. Herbert Musurillo, The Fathers of the Primitive Church (New York: New American Library, 1966); Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement and Origen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966). 24. Musurillo, The Fathers, 19: Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A Histo-

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ry of the Popes, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 25. Musurillo, The Fathers, 19–20. 26. Musurillo, The Fathers, 20–21. 27. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1989); Hans Jones, The Gnostic Religion; The Message of the Alien God and the Beginning of Christianity, 2d ed., rev. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970); Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, The Gospel of Judas: From Codex Tchacos (New York: National Geographic 2006). 28. Philip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 30; Bart D. Ehrman, The Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faith We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 29. “Monasticism” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent. org/cathen/10459a.htm. 30. Musurillo, The Fathers, passim.

Chapter 2

From the Bishop of Rome to Pope (Peter to Leo the Great, 500 A.D.) Although there is some debate about whether the apostle Peter can really be considered the first bishop of Rome, there can be no doubt that his stature in the Church was acknowledged by all, and that he emigrated to and died in the capital city of Rome. His earliest successors—if they are that—are a bit cloudy, but they were probably chosen by the Christian community in Rome, and may have included St. Linus (63–78?) and St. Anacletus (79–91?). Tradition has it that it was St. Clement (91–101) who was the author of The First Epistle of Clement, on whom St. Peter laid his hands, and who was entrusted with the Apostle’s chair. Is it possible he was really an elder who was the corresponding secretary of the Church in Rome? One of the original apostles, John, was probably still alive in nearby Ephesus, but it was to Rome that leadership fell.1 That letter was sent to the church in Corinth and insisted that the faithful there should restore the elders who had been summarily dismissed. It was one of the first—if not the first—attempt by the church in Rome to intervene in the affairs of another ancient church. Furthermore, Clement used the example of Roman secular authorities by sending three of his agents to observe the progress that was being made on the controversy, and he recommended exile for the troublemakers in the congregation. Thus the historian, Richard McBrien, has observed that the influence of the traditions of Roman rule on Church functions was substantial even very early. In 180, Irenaeus of Lyons was already calling Rome “the great and illustrious Church” that held a “commanding position” to which “the faithful everywhere, must resort.” He mentions that the Church in Rome has been founded by the apostles Peter and Paul.2 Rome was a special place; it was called urbs, not simply a civitas.

The Second Century In the second century of the Church’s existence, Rome showed some interest in standardizing the liturgy of the Mass and in waging its ancient battle against the 13

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Gnostic heresy.3 It is probable that St. Pius I (c. 142–c. 155), who was then functioning as the bishop of Rome, held a synod of presbyters in 144 aimed at excommunicating a wealthy bishop, Marcion, and to curtail Gnostic influence. In the second century, various bishops of Rome also were involved in a bitter dispute over the date when the celebration of Easter should occur in the liturgical calendar. The churches in Asia Minor kept the date of the Jewish Passover (fourteen Nisan) as the date of Easter, regardless of whether it fell on Sunday or not. The difference of opinion divided Rome and the Eastern Church, and also split Rome off from its other traditional allied churches as well. It was Pope Victor I (189–198), an African by birth, who resolved the issue by harshly settling the Easter date controversy, and threatening to excommunicate his opponents. He had also excommunicated those who taught that Jesus was not the risen Son of God. It was during the early third century that one pope, St. Callistus I (217– 222), was accused of doctrinal error in not supporting vigorously enough the view that Christ was a distinct person in the Trinity, and for being lax in disciplinary matters. Another pope, St. Pontian (230–235) actually resigned from the papacy after only several months in office. Still during that brief time, Pontian approved the condemnation of Origen, a major theologian of the time, who was eventually expelled from his teaching position, the priesthood, and his home in Egypt.4 Another pope during this same period, St. Fabian (236–250), was a respected Roman clergyman who was attending a meeting to choose a new bishop of Rome to replace the martyred pope, Pontian, when one of the doves outside the hall flew in, and supposedly landed on his head, signifying to the people that he was the choice of the Holy Spirit! He went on to reorganize the local Roman clergy, divided the city into seven regions, started building projects, and was eventually arrested and died sometime during the Decius persecutions. His successors had to deal with a major controversy about the validity of baptism performed by heretics and schismatics, which the Roman popes upheld as still acceptable. Thus it is the sacrament and not the sanctity of the priest that counts. One of the bishops of Rome, St. Stephen I (254–257), in making his controversial decision appealed to the powers granted in Matthew 16:18 that acknowledged St. Peter’s authority. Still another one of these popes, St. Marcellinus (296–304), was himself the subject of a significant dispute when it was alleged that during the Diocletian persecutions he surrendered to the Roman authorities copies of the Sacred Scriptures and other religious books, and even offered incense to the pagan gods. Interestingly, St. Augustine who was sensitive to any such disloyalty to the Church never raised this charge. Nonetheless Marcellinus either abdicated or was deposed after those indiscretions. Thus not only were the bishops of Rome involved in difficult doctrinal decisions, but influential elements of the Church expected strong orthodox leadership from them. 5 The persecutions of the Church, and its usually heroic responses, laid the groundwork for a long and difficult period, which was ended by a remarkable

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change of attitude on the part of several emperors. First Maxentius promulgated in 311 a sort of edict of toleration, but then in the eventful year 312 Constantine defeated him (he was also Constantine’s brother-in-law) at the Battle of Milvian Bridge. Constantine’s sudden conversion on the battlefield eventually led to Christianity becoming the official religion of the empire. It would turn the known world upside down and change the very nature of Christianity. Furthermore in the long run, it would alter the responsibilities and roles of the bishops of Rome. As Constantine moved his residence to Ravenna and then to Constantinople, the Roman see became more important to the western empire, and that area was left in the hands of the pope.

The Conversion of Constantine The background to this remarkable conversion of Constantine is this: In 192, the empire was wracked by another civil war, and beginning in 217, the empire had twelve emperors in succession, not one of whom died peacefully. The German tribes became an increasing threat, especially the Franks and the Goths. Meanwhile the economic base of the empire deteriorated under the pressures of war and the demands of maintaining standing armies. In 250, Emperor Decius (reign 249–25l) made a major attempt to guarantee greater loyalty to the empire and the emperor by insisting that all had to worship the pagan gods. Emperor Valerian (253–260) continued that attack by forcing his decrees on upperclass converts to Christianity, and by ordering the extermination of bishops and priests. Pope Sixtus I and the deaconal college were killed in 258 during the Valerian persecutions. But after Valerian was captured by the Persians, his son and his co-regent Gallienus, released the clergy and ended the persecutions, probably fearing more bad luck. For forty years, the Christian church experienced peace. 6 In 284, Diocletian (284–305) assumed the throne and imposed a more structured organization and general order on the empire. One of his “Caesars” was Flavius Constantius, whose son by his first marriage (or by a liaison) with Helena, probably a barmaid, was Constantine. Constantine was born at Naissus (Nish) in Serbia, sometime between 273 and 275. Living at the emperor’s court, which constantly moved across the empire and its frontiers, Constantine’s presence assured Diocletian of his father’s loyalty. Diocletian was a rather conservative soldier, and he respected the old order and the old gods of paganism, although he avoided approving the new mystery cults with their weird enthusiasms. He was at first a moderate, even toward the clannish Christianity, which was making some headway in the urban middle and lower classes. Indeed his wife and daughter may have become quietly Christian converts. In 298, Diocletian accepted the view of some of his court that the Christians were responsible for the alleged displeasure of the pagan gods and, after twenty years of toleration, he began again to attack the cult. Constantine’s father, how-

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ever, did not totally accept the emperor’s new harsh policies. Meanwhile, Constantius was aging rapidly, and asked that his son be released to be with him. Like his father, Constantine was also tolerant of the Christians, although he personally was dedicated to the gods Mars, Hercules, and especially the Unconquered Sun. Then in a critical battle in October 312, near the Milvian Bridge, he crossed the Tiber River, defeated the opposing armies, had the drowned Maxentius beheaded, and entered Rome in triumph. The Roman senate consequently elected Constantine senior Augustus. It was not unusual for Roman generals to go to war against each other. However, what made this battle so important was that Constantine became in some vague way aligned with Christianity. Some commentators have seen his conversion as opportunistic, but Christianity appealed to only a minority of the population—about 10 percent. Later Constantine and his co-emperor Licinius gave the Christians full toleration in the Edict of Milan (313). 7 But before the battle, he claimed to have a vision from God, which his army also saw, and which featured a cross of light on the sun with the following words emboldened, “In this [sign] conquer.” He bore witness by having his forces wear on their banner the new insignia, PX, a reference to the first two insignias of Christos. After the battle Constantine ended up subsidizing the Christian church from the public coffers and guaranteeing the clergy waivers from serving in public office and other civic obligations. Although he was not baptized until the end of his life, Constantine linked up his good fortune with the Christian God. A. H. M. Jones speculated that Constantine may have put some credence in the rumor that the Christian God was particularly prone to visit terrible illnesses on emperors who persecuted the Christians, so he treaded lightly. 8 Also Constantine, like most Romans, may have had a deep respect for the old ways of stability, and prized the unity of a faith that could bind the state together. Although Christians were surely a minority in the empire at the time, they would be dependable allies in the shifting alliances of imperial politics. Still the Christians were ferociously contentious in matters of theological disputes about complex topics, such as the Trinity and the definition of Christ’s nature. Again and again, Constantine, who could not write Latin well, but calling himself the “Bishop of External Affairs,” would interfere in Church disputes, formulate theological definitions to questions he probably barely understood, and call church councils together all in order to further unity and a respect for the divinity who had been so good to him. The first major heresy he dealt with was the Donatists in Africa. To hear the controversy, he nominated three bishops from Gaul and Melchiades, who was the bishop of Rome. Thus this council of bishops was to become an extension of the emperor. But Melchiades added fifteen Italian bishops and made the group a synod that met at the Lateran palace, originally a gift from the emperor. The synod condemned Donatus, his followers and their views that there was a need to rebaptize lay people and to reordain clergy who had not defended the faith during the Diocletian persecutions. The Donatists however appealed to the emperor who summoned then a council of Church leaders from the West to meet at

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Arles in 314. No one, including the pope, challenged Constantine’s authority to hear such an appeal, and this time, the emperor did not include the bishop of Rome to oversee the council, but asked the bishop of Arles to serve that function instead. The new pope, Sylvester I (314–35), did though send two presbyters and two deacons to represent him. When the council ended, it forwarded to Pope Sylvester the decisions, and in Richard McBrien’s words, “acknowledged his primacy over the West (although not over the whole Church) and asked him to circulate the decisions to the other churches.”9 The Arles Council also dealt with the disputed issue of the date of Easter, matters of Church discipline, the residence of clergy, and the problems of usury. The council sought to excommunicate charioteers and actors; even some pagans considered them to be evil influences. But Constantine in many ways was a vacillating administrator, and continued to hear Donatist claims. Eventually he banished their leaders, depriving them of their churches, and began in effect a persecution of those wayward Christians. Since the emperor loved unity and hated to face discord, the Church that so appreciated its independence had to accept his protection and consequently his benevolent interference. The most important council under Constantine was held at Nicaea in 325, a gathering that Sylvester I did not attend, supposedly because of his advanced age and illness. He did send though two presbyters who signed the acts of the council “after the presiding bishops and before the other bishops.” 10 There at Nicaea, the emperor came face to face with the Arian heresy that so wracked his empire. Arius, a priest from Alexandria (250/256–336), was a charming and charismatic personality who was fairly elderly at the time, and he had been an adherent of Origen’s Neoplatonism. From that vantage point, he concluded that the Son cannot be equal in the same sense to God the Father. Arius proposed that the Son was posterior to the Father, who was thus not always a Father. He created the Son out of nothing, like the rest of the universe. This belief was clearly at variance with the traditional Trinitarian view of three equal persons in one God, and the powerful bishops of the Alexandria area denounced the views of Arius and his followers. Constantine was not a very learned man, but he sensed the potential hazards of disharmony, especially in the eastern part of his empire. Privately, he declared that the theological controversy was in his opinion “extremely trifling,” but to deal with the matter, he summoned all 1,800 bishops in the empire to a universal church council that he would attend. Some accounts record that about 300 bishops came—mostly from the East, since the Western Church seemed mainly unconcerned by the matter, and travel was difficult. Still the procedures were those that resembled the ones used in the Roman senate and nearby town councils, and Constantine played an active role, being moderate and patient during the deliberations.11 With only two negative votes, the council approved the familiar Nicene Creed that became, after some modifications at the council at Constantinople in 38l, “We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible. And in One Lord Jesus Christ, the only

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begotten Son of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father . . . and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father [later added: and the Son].” It was the classic formulation of the Trinitarian position, and probably owed its origins, according to Joseph Ratzinger, to the Jerusalem baptismal creed or to the Apostles’ Creed (c. 140 A.D.). For some reason, Constantine insisted however that the relation of the Father to the Son be described in the word “homoousios”—or of one essence. Later this addition led to an enormous controversy in the Church, especially in the East. The Arian faction though initially accepted the emperor’s approved creed with some important reservations. The council also revisited the issue of an appropriate date for Easter, severing it from the celebration of Jewish Passover. As for Constantine, he above all wanted compromise and unity. The emperor characterized himself as a “fellow servant” to the bishops, and he resolved to reach out to the surviving Arians for their approval. He soon got annoyed though with the intensely orthodox bishops who insisted on routing the heretics, and so the controversy continued to rage on. Later to celebrate his thirtieth anniversary as emperor, he ordered another universal council to be held in Jerusalem, where he erected a magnificent church on the supposed site of the Holy Sepulcher. Once again in discussions, he wavered on the Trinity issue, favoring at one time the Arians’ position! And once again the issue of Arianism was fully debated, although the emperor informed the bishops that he had received from Arius and his followers an orthodox confession of faith. But in the end a spirit of contentiousness continued to prevail. Constantine was a great builder of churches to honor the faith, but he was ineffective as a unifier of Christian dogma and belief. In 330 he transferred the capital of the empire to Byzantium, which helped lead to the collapse of the Western empire. One ugly legend has it that he ended up murdering his wife and his son and was overwhelmed by remorse and guilt. Finally he was baptized on his deathbed in 337—the sacrament was supposed to be able to guarantee absolution for the worse of mortal sins, which he may indeed have committed. After his death the East considered him a saint, but the West did not. Still whatever happened in his long reign, he changed the very nature of Christianity’s relationships to the state. Theologian Adolf von Harnack concluded that the final outcome of Constantine’s conversion was that it left “the world in possession of all except its gods.”12 During Constantine’s eventful reign, he clearly was more important than the individual bishops of the major sees—including the bishop of Rome. For most of Constantine’s era, the pope was Sylvester I whose pontificate lasted for nearly twenty-two years, and yet who had remarkably little impact on the Church, especially compared to the emperor’s actions. Later a fake document appeared in the eighth or ninth century that was called “The Donation of Constantine,” and which supposedly granted to Pope Sylvester and thus his successors control over Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West. It was clearly the intention of the author(s) to establish the independ-

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ence of the Church from secular control. But the expansion of the Renaissance world of scholarship led to the judgment that the document was a forgery. Still it exercised considerable influence in buttressing the powers of the medieval papacy.

The Church after Constantine One of the consequences of Constantine’s rule was an increase in the new Christian churches and shrines, especially in Rome, although strong elements of respect for paganism remained in the city and in the empire. In 391, Emperor Theodosius I prohibited pagan cults and made Christianity the official and only religion of the Roman state. In the early 400s, however, there was a rebuilding of older pagan temples, indicating strong residual support for the old faiths. As the empire was split, the imperial power was centered in Constantinople. Many Greek-speaking inhabitants left Rome, and the Latin language became more widespread in the West. The Roman bishops, seeking to control the situation, started to emphasize that common language and also a common liturgy because Christian orthodox leaders feared that diversity would lead to more heretics and schematics. Pope Leo I (440–461) took the step of urging secular authorities to use force in quelling those diverse views, and even the Jews—long tolerated by Roman civil authorities—began to be persecuted.13 Early Christianity at first used multipurpose halls for its worship, but the church of the bishop of Rome eventually was (and still is, in theory) the Lateran complex with a basilica, baptistery, and residence donated by Constantine. Some ten thousand people could fit into that one structure. There were also titular churches dotting the city with about four to five presbyters assigned to each. Thus the Christian community was gaining a substantial presence in the first few decades after Constantine. Even some fairly conservative Senate families had Christian members. But the Church was also very adept at integrating pagan customs into its own most important celebrations and ways of worship. For example, the date of December 25 chosen for the birth of Jesus was an appropriation of the former festival of the “Invincible Sun,” a favorite of Constantine when he was young. In the eastern part of the empire, Jesus’ birth was celebrated later in early January. The Roman Church also pushed for standardization of celebrations commemorating martyrs. We actually still hear in the Canon of the Mass a recitation of some of those Roman martyrs and Christian leaders, including St. Peter. As noted, the respect for St. Peter, of course, was linked up to a notion of apostolic succession from that saint on down to the Roman bishops. Clement, said to be the second or third successor to Peter, is supposed to have testified that he was expressly given by St. Peter the power to bind or to loose. Later Pope Leo I used the Roman law he was so familiar with to underscore the papal claims to be the heir to St. Peter. Leo also argued that the pope was the vicar of

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St. Peter, the vicar of Christ, and of the entire Church. It was Sts. Peter and Paul, he said, not Romulus and Remus who were the true patrons of the city, and these apostles are still remembered jointly on June 29. Pope Leo added to the cult of the Petrine papacy by being buried in what was then St. Peter’s Basilica. In the early centuries, the bishops of Rome extended their control over the lower clergy as well. During Pope Zosimus’s brief reign (417–418), it was promulgated that a male had to be twenty-five or thirty years old to be a deacon or presbyter respectively. Since the fourth century, the policy was that the clergy, especially the upper hierarchy, were to lead celibate lives, although some bishops were sired by fathers who were themselves bishops. Clerical marriage in the Western Church was declared formally at the Second Lateran Council in 1139 not only unlawful but invalid.14

After Nicaea Several popes of the fourth century had to deal with controversies and conflicts as they defended the Nicene Creed. In one case it actually led to the emergence of the election of an anti-pope. One of the popes, Liberius (352–366), who was sent into exile by Emperor Constantius II, buckled in his support for the Nicene language (“one in being with the Father”), and was weak in opposing Felix, an “anti-pope” supported by the emperor. It was the people of Rome, however, who insisted that Liberius be returned to office, chanting “One God, one Christ, one bishop.” Later he was seen by some though as a betrayer of the true faith, and his hesitation was used centuries later as an example of why popes are really not infallible. His successor, Saint Damasus I (366–384), had actually supported Felix, but he too became a strong advocate of an expanded papacy during his own term in office. He was brutal in his repression of heresies, and insisted that Rome was the only apostolic see—that is, that the bishop of Rome or the pope was a direct successor of St. Peter. Rome alone was to be the court of appeal for ecclesiastical disputes in the West. In the fourth century the papacy, starting with Pope Siricius (384–399), also began to become more bureaucratic, issuing “decretals” or imperial-like edicts on issues or controversies that came before it. One of the major figures of this period was St. Innocent I (401–417), who was the son of a previous pope (Anastasius I), and who not only exercised leadership over the West, but also claimed authority over the church in the East. He insisted that the bishop of Rome was “the head and the summit of the episcopate.” During his time in office, he stood firm against Alaric, the Visigoth leader, even though the barbarian chieftain besieged, raped, and ruined Rome in 410. Innocent also vigorously opposed the heresy of Pelagianism, a belief system that denied the tenet of Original Sin, and thus rejected the need for grace to obtain salvation. The heresy continued after his death. When one of his successors,

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Saint Boniface I (418–422), supported the previous papal determinations on their general authority, his followers added the famous principle, “Rome has spoken, the case is finished.” Once again faced with doctrinal divisions, the Church leaders in the midfifth century finally convened a council at Ephesus in 431, which formally affirmed the nature of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “Theotokos,” as the “Godbearer.” Again it was an emperor of the time, Theodosius II, and Bishop Cyril of Alexandria and not the pope, St. Celestine I (422–432), who provided the important dogmatic leadership on the issue. Still by mid-century, the papacy had developed from the clouds of collegial leadership to a strong pastoral and political role.

The Fall of Rome The great English historian, Edward Gibbon, examined the fall of the Roman empire and attributed it to a variety of causes: the decadence of Roman life, the physical weakness of its young men, the end of the martial spirit, unfair taxation, population pressures, and a host of other reasons. But he also cited two other causes: the growth and power of the barbarian tribes and the increasing attraction of the otherworldly philosophy of early Christianity. In terms of the invasion of the barbarian tribes, there were enormous migratory pressures from the eastern Germanic tribes, most notably the Goths, who probably originally came from Scandinavia before they moved to the region north of the Black Sea. The eastern tribes also included the Vandals, the Gepids, the Burgundians, and the Lombards. To the west were other German tribes: the Franks, the Saxons, the Thuringians, and the Alamani. It was the eastern European tribes, and not the western tribes, who were the most threatening to the Roman Empire, especially the Goths. The Roman Empire was faced with this challenge, and also with that of the Parthian Empire in Persia. In 247, and again in 251, the Goths humiliated the Roman army, and the emperor, Decius, was actually killed in battle. The Goths moved boldly to raid the cities of the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean; they had now become a naval power. But in 269, the emperor, Claudius II (268–270), defeated the Goths and restored peace. His successor, Aurelian (270–275), was more modest in his objectives and withdrew Roman forces from Dacia (Romania), and the Danube River became the de facto northern frontier of his empire. In 324, Constantine actually concluded a treaty with the Visigoths, making them “confederates” of the empire—that is, paying them a subsidy to help defend the Roman Empire. Both Diocletian and Constantine as well undertook a major reorganization of the empire. The empire was governed from two co-equal centers in Rome and in what became Constantinople (“the new Rome”) by two co-equal emperors. The government would be divided into civilian and military authorities. The

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civilian government would have prefectures with ministers, and those regions were further divided into dioceses, each ruled by a vicar. Thus there were two prefectures in the West and two in the East. The first embraced the area of Gaul, Spain, Britain, Portugal, and Morocco, and the prefecture of Italy, which also included Switzerland, the area between the Alps and the Danube, and the coastal lands of North Africa, except for Egypt and Morocco. The eastern empire embraced the prefecture of Illyricum and the prefecture of the Orient. As noted, it was from the Diocletian reforms and those advanced by Constantine after him that the Catholic Church adopted the term “diocese” as its own. 15 The historian J. B. Bury argued that the empire had a scarcity of military manpower. As a rule, in rural states a nation should be able to recruit an army equal to about 10 percent of its population, while industrialized nations that need manufacturing personnel have staffing needs that are more complicated. But the Roman Empire of that time could not raise such numbers because of the physical weaknesses of its own boys and the high degree of civilized tastes. So these emperors went to the mountains of the Balkans to recruit troops. At first those so-called barbarian tribes were not allowed to be in the army, but finally the Germans were admitted into those forces, took over the command structures, and eventually became the real power behind the thrones of weak Roman-bred governors. Thus the barbarians were not at the gates, but actually in the palaces.16 Regarding the second cause, the growth of the Christian church, it is surely true that the Christian sensibilities were different from those in the Roman nobility exemplified in its long history. Whether that constitutes “subversion of the old order” is another matter. If Christianity can be blamed for providing another worldview, then so can the other competing religions and cults that have been mentioned. It is difficult to accuse Christianity because it contrasted itself with the inadequacies of the Roman religion and ethics. Obviously many nonorthodox people felt some spiritual hunger as well in the fifth century. The Roman Empire in the West is dated as collapsing officially in 476, but the eastern empire—with its orthodox Christian faith—lasted another thousand years. It was Constantine who moved the imperial capital to Byzantium, not the popes. And during the early Middle Ages, the popes actually appealed again and again to the emperors for protection against the invading tribes. The empire abandoned Rome before the Romans abandoned the empire. The early popes were not individuals who desired the end of the empire, but they were people who often filled in the void with their own food supplies, charity, and diplomacy even while they lacked military troops. The western empire fell because of its own decadence and its love of creature comforts, not because of Christianity which focused on the other world. In the period from 300 to 600, social conditions were to lead to a marked increase in the number of poor within the citizenry of the Empire. Christianity stressed the importance of having a love for the poor, and the bishops became the main instrument for organizing the forces of philanthropy. Mobility on the land and uncontrolled migration into the city forced the Christian church to deal

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with a very different sense of privation. Christians had been told, in the words of St. Paul, to become “cheerful givers,” and St. Cyril of Alexander wrote that a good bishop must understand the art of “governing the poor.” With the shifting emphasis in civil government, the Roman concept of a commonwealth of citizens gave way to a society of believers, having regard for each other and dedicated to Jesus’ admonitions on caring.17

Leo I: The Pope Becomes Peter Once Again Thus by the sixth century, the Greco-Roman politics of the empire were overcome by the new threat of the Teutonic tribes invading western Europe. Some of the prominent churchmen believed that the Roman Empire was really a gift from God, meant to protect the faith and the Roman papacy; any threats were traumatic to all who loved order. In 440, the papacy was to undergo a remarkable development under a new activist pope, Leo I. Leo was born of Tuscan parents of the family of Quintianus, living in the city of Rome. He was only a deacon when he was elected pope at age 39, but Leo had been sent previously on a diplomatic mission by the imperial agents to Gaul, and acquired a broader perspective of the threats to the empire. In the past, Leo had also been a strong opponent of the Nestorian and Pelagian heresies. He was a strong advocate of papal supremacy, and insisted in his time that he was St. Peter’s heir on earth, and thus the recipient of all of the apostle’s authority and rights. Pope Leo frequently used the “rock” analogy as the basis for his claims, and insisted that he had supervisory authority over all the other bishops as well. Leo started by seeking control over the bishops of Italy, including the usually autonomous north. He established uniform standards and settled disputes, and he was a strong and continuous advocate of the promulgations of the council of Chalcedon (451), which asserted the true divinity and true humanity of Jesus in two autonomous but related persons. 18 Leo also moved forcefully to settle disputes in the influential North African church, and he supported the idea of bishops being elected by local clergy and prominent laity. He was an energetic and alert advocate of the orthodox faith, and used the anniversaries of his inauguration as pope as occasions to send letters to the Church, reaffirming his authority on particular issues. Obviously with so much of his real power due to the support of the western emperor, Leo had great difficulties commanding assent in the Eastern church. In 449, Leo sent a letter called a Tome to Bishop Flavian of Constantinople, which condemned the Monophysite view that Jesus’ human nature was subsumed in his divine nature. The Emperor Theodosius II called another council at Ephesus in 449, but it declined to read Leo’s Tome aloud, and seemed to support the Monophysite heresy.

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An angry pope responded by refusing to respect its deliberations, even referring to it as a “robber council.” Two years later, the Emperor Marcion called together another ecumenical council at Chalcedon that endorsed Leo’s teaching—thus reaffirming that he was “the voice of Peter.” His allies chanted in the council, “Peter has spoken through Leo.” Even with that victory, Leo refused to accept the council’s palliative that acknowledged Constantinople as a see on a par with Rome. He protected not just the faith, but the unquestioned primacy of Rome.19 Another major heresy also commanded his attention—the continuation of the belief system called Manicheanism that divided the world between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Leo was especially critical of the Manicheans saying that they were linked to the devil and flowed into a cesspool with unholy pagans, morally blind Jews dedicated to the pleasures of the flesh, those who believed in magic, and other prominent heretics. In one of the first examples of church-sanctioned persecutions, if not the first major example, he also called for an alliance of church and state to carry out religious purges. Some of Pope Leo’s sermons and homilies are still available to posterity. His work was clear and convincing, and his Latin apparently was rhythmic and pleasant to listen to. His formulations of theology, especially on the issues of the nature of Jesus and the Incarnation, were strongly orthodox, but not as subtle and far-reaching as some of those of St. Augustine or the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church. He was a supreme teacher, but not a towering intellectual figure, although surely standing above many of the popes before and immediately after his reign. His major contribution was his emphasis on the primacy of the pope, continuously insisting that there was a direct lineage to St. Peter—a view that he developed more clearly than any of his predecessors. He was speaking with the voice of Peter.20 But Leo has become best known to posterity for his courageous meeting in 452 with Attila the Hun near the city of Mantua. Apparently some Etruscan priests had approached him about their performing incantations to their gods to stop the invaders, and the pope granted his approval to do so. But they pushed to make it a public ceremony, and it never took place. Instead the pope waited for the Huns, who were marauding their way through northern Italy toward Rome. Their leader, Attila, though, had a great respect for personal courage, and for men who were obvious figures of religious or supernatural authority. He may have been a barbarian, but he was not a fool. Leo appeared impressively dressed in full papal regalia, unarmed, carrying only a cross and accompanied by a delegation from the frightened Roman senate. The protectors of the empire were crumbling—the days of the Caesars were done. Remarkably Attila heeded the pope’s words and retreated beyond the Danube River. Three years later the same pope confronted the Vandal tribal king Gaiseric outside the crumbling walls of the Roman city. Gaiseric did not withdraw, but he avoided burning the city or slaying its inhabitants. The pope’s interventions added enormously to the prestige of his office and helped to create the image of the Roman Catholic Church as the major civilizing agency in the

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West. Later in 476, the western half of the Roman political empire “fell.” As for Leo I, he died earlier in 461, and was buried appropriately under the portico of St. Peter’s and later moved inside the old basilica. In both the West and in the East—that was so problematic to him—he was honored as “The Great” and given his own feast day.21 Even in those early centuries, and in what is often seen as the dim times of history, the leadership of Leo I shines through the mist. He was a vigorous defender of the papacy, a great teacher, an above average theologian, and a bureaucrat with a fierce commitment to Roman orthodoxy, order and tradition. Lastly he was personally courageous, a church father who inspired even the new tribes as they moved relentlessly into the center of once imperial Italy. Thus, throughout the period from the conversion of Constantine to the late antiquity of the sixth century, the cohesive influence of the Catholic Church was becoming more apparent, especially in the West. In 476, the western part of the Roman Empire did indeed fall after the end of the very brief reign (475–476) of the early teenage Emperor Romulus Augustus or Augustulus (“little Augustus”). He was originally situated in Ravenna, a small port town near Bologna, the then capital of the empire in the West, but his life was spared by the barbarian forces. He was sent into exile in Naples, living on the famed estate of the Lucullus family for thirty-five years, and receiving from the new rulers a large annual pension. At times, the attitudes of the barbarian tribes were brutal and clear. Earlier, Alaric and the Goths had sacked the capital of Rome, and the so-called barbarians looted, burned, and desecrated the city. Alaric supposedly confined his pillage to three days and avoided robbing St. Peter’s. When some Romans asked sarcastically what they could keep for themselves, Alaric answered bluntly, “Your lives.”22 Despite the view that the barbarians overwhelmed the empire and the capital city, in fact sometimes they still kept in place many of the empire’s laws and administrative structures. Indeed the distinction between Roman and nonRoman began to blur as Germanic leaders came to command the highest military positions in the empire, and that joining of culture added to political integration, best expressed in the strength of an imperial civil service. These barbarian invaders often kept Roman law, administration, coinage, ceremonies, and patronage systems intact. And so elements of the old empire persevered, somewhat in fact even in hostile hands.

The Role of the Bishops The early theological language of the Church was crafted by theologian-bishops who for several centuries led those councils, often under discerning imperial eyes. At several of these critical church councils, the bishop of Rome was not even in attendance, although some of his delegates usually were. The decrees

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were then a product of an eastern Mediterranean consensus, not a series of dicta imposed from on high. As has been seen, the primitive church developed a sacred canon of scriptures to be read at the Eucharistic services, and had a common sense of unity due to the intense persecutions. In the East and then in the West, the Christian church began to recognize a sense of hierarchy, with the most important figure being “the episcope” (or a sort of bishop) who controlled matters of worship and administration, and who met with other bishops and assemblies (or “synods”) to decide on matters of importance. The episcope supervised presbyters (or elders or priests) and was served by deacons and other officials. The historian of the early papacy, Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, noted that the church in Rome in the middle of the third century (250 A.D. or so), for example, had an episcope, forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two exorcists, lectors and ostiaries. There were also 1,500 widows and other needy people who were supported along with the clergy by the church community. The number of Christians thus increased substantially, and the stories of the Gospels spread across the various social classes of the empire. A former slave, Callistus (217–222), became the bishop of Rome, and Christians migrated into the emperor’s court even before the end of the second century. Callistus went beyond the early rituals, and even used his position as bishop to make official pronouncements on the nature of marriage and the definition of mortal sin. He recast his authority in the Roman church, employing metaphysical language and citing the scriptural distinction between the wheat and the chaff (Matthew 13:29). There were some conflicts with Callistus’s definitions, but in the end he prevailed. The position of the bishop of Rome was enhanced by the reverential visits of out-of-city bishops to the capital city. And it appears that some of the bishops of Rome such as Victor, Callistus, Cornelius, and Stephen interfered in broader Christian affairs. Still they were only successful when their views rested on a substantial church-wide consensus. As Schimmelpfennig concluded, “Demands for special privileges, on the other hand, were criticized or rejected.” 23 The stature of Rome, especially after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., had given it some sort of primacy that began to emerge in a more apparent and visible way. The importance of Sts. Peter and Paul to the status of Rome was generally enshrined early on in the life and liturgy of the Church. Thus Peter went from becoming the bedrock of the Church to the beginning of the line of apostolic succession, the direct link from the primary apostle to the bishops of Rome. Some Catholic theologians maintain, however, that it is the full collection of bishops across the world who share in the apostolic succession, that their authority comes from those apostles closest to Jesus to their modern day successors. But especially since Vatican I and the mid-nineteenth century, the emphasis has been on St. Peter and on the bishop of Rome. It is therefore ironic that the earliest formulations of the Christian credo were done without much consultation with the bishops of Rome.

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What is remarkable is not that there was so much difference of opinion, but how strong a consensus there was on these complex Christological questions. A considerable number of people in very different locales held many of the same subtle views about these issues of faith. Christianity spread, and the bishop of Rome often mediated with the more pliant emperors, finally accepting Constantine into the Church and welcoming the designation as the state religion. Paganism continued throughout the empire however, and some emperors invited or accepted at times the so-called barbarian hordes into their armies and into their inner councils. Often, the bishops of Rome fed the people, paid the troops, and caused treaties to be crafted in order to protect the city that they were now in charge of when the emperor’s court moved east. As the imperial presence declined, the bishop of Rome—sooner or later called the pope—stepped into the breach. Indeed Leo the Great and later Gregory the Great were only two of the most dramatic pastors in the history of the city. They were in a sense the city managers of the city of Rome, and the governing landlord of the outlying estates. By the end of the sixth century, the popes were not just involved in a mere scramble for power as much as they were providing desperately needed services to the populace.

Notes 1. Geoffrey Barraclough, Medieval Papacy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), 14; Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press), 9–11. 2. Richard McBrien, Lives of the Pope: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1997), 36; Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 1. 3. Raymond E. Brown, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York: Paulist Press, 1984). 4. Barraclough, Medieval Papacy, 16. 5. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, pt. 1. 6. A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, rev. ed. (New York: Collier Books, 1962); Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2000). 7. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 55–85. 8. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 80–82. 9. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 57. 10. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 58. 11. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 120–133. 12. N. H. Baynes, “Constantine the Great,” Proceedings of the British Academy 15 (1929): 341–442; B. J. Kidd, A History of the Church to A.D. 461 (New York: AMS Press, 1936); A. E. Burn, The Council of Nicea, http://mb-

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soft.com/believe/txc/nicaea.htm. 13. Barraclough, Medieval Papacy, 16–19; R. A. Marcus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 14. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, pt. 1. 15. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols. (London: Penguin Press, 1994). 16. J. B. Bury, “The Invasion of the Western Roman Empire by Barbarian Tribes,” http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/barbarians.htm. 17. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Adversity, A.D. 200–1000, 2d. ed. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005); Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2002), 45. 18. Trevor Jalland, The Life and Times of Leo the Great (New York: Macmillan, 1941). 19. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 176–77. 20. Jalland, Leo, passim. 21. Thomas S. Burns, Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C.–400 A.D. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 22. Henry Chadwick, The Role of the Christian Bishops in Ancient Society: Protocol of the Thirty-fifth Colloquy, 25 February 1979 (Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 1980). 23. Bernard Schimmelpfennig, Papacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 14.

Chapter 3

The Threats to Orthodoxy Unlike the pagans and the Jews, the Christians had a fear about the contaminations of heresies. The pagans were not theologically driven. The Greeks and the Romans were polytheists with various gods, household deities, and spirits. They had myths, but not dogma. The Jews were a theologically disputatious people whose rabbis laid great emphasis on debate and dialogue. The Christians, though, were an intolerant people theologically, and many of their greatest theologians of the faith came from the East. In an unfinished work, St. Augustine lists eighty-eight heresies that emerged up to his time. These conflicts and the early definitions of dogma were important, for they provided the very tenets of the faith that the popes have defended since then.1

Speaking Greek and Then Latin The fathers of the Church were not papal historians or court figures; they were bishops or monks and even at times hermits who helped to formulate the major articles of the faith. The Church placed great emphasis on traditional ties with the Scriptures and on the canonical or accepted gospels. The major intellectual language of the time was Greek, and the fourth gospel, John, especially uses Greek philosophical terms in explaining Jesus’ relationship to God the Father. He was “the Logos,” the Word that was with God and was God.2 Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) has pointed out how as early as the second or third centuries the Apostles’ Creed was in its original formulations the embodiment of some of these beliefs on Jesus. The format was a question-andanswer form rather than a prayer.3 Actually, the four canonical gospels are being portrayed by some authors today as narrow tools of control by the orthodox male-oriented hierarchical church at that time. But the teachings of Jesus were passed down before the first canonical gospel (sometimes called the “Q” document) was written. The Church and its oral traditions predate the written gospels. Although some modern liberal commentators have argued that the other “gospels” and “sayings of Jesus” are actually older than the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it is un29

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likely that this is so. Liberal and feminist scholars have also emphasized these alternative “gospels” with their portrait of a Jesus of contemplation, with a doctrine that respects diversity, and in which Christ becomes an enlightened nonsexist Buddha who never endowed any church with authority. Or is Christ a sort of “Teacher of Righteousness” who seems to delve into the Gnostic traditions. The problem with those speculations is that the oral tradition(s) was formed by men and women who actually lived with a real-life Jesus—a human person in front of their line of sight.4 Just as the early church in Rome adopted Roman law as a model for its later canon law and used the organizational structures of Emperor Diocletian to set up its infrastructure, so too many of the brightest intellectual lights tried to turn to Greek with its subtleties to explain the mysteries of the faith. Latin at that time did not have the same linguistic differences and nuances, nor certainly did the working-class Aramaic that Jesus and the apostles spoke. And so the early Church moved toward greater role differentiation in its administration, more authority in its communities, and more philosophical distinctions than at first would seem to exist. These were the dogmatic and managerial consequences of the delay of the Second Coming of Christ.5 In Weberian sociological terms, the “charismatic” group was giving way to the “traditional,” and then to the “bureaucratic” models of organization.6 With Jesus and with St. Peter, the gospel was linked to the miracles that left men and women in awe. With the Jesus movement, called “The Way,” they remembered those wonders, and left those traditional stories embedded in oral testimony and then in the Gospels. And the primitive or early church laid out the offices and the worship forms (probably basically the celebration of the Eucharist and Baptism) that characterized this new cult of true believers. It is no coincidence that one of the first great papal “disputes” was over fixing a date for celebrating Easter, for the Resurrection was the great promise of the Jesus theology.

The Church Fathers As the offices became differentiated, the bishops of Rome were not the most significant theologians of the primitive church. The major dogmas of the Church were passed down from its earliest days: that God exists, that Jesus was His Son, that there was a resurrection of the soul, that Jesus came in a spirit of forgiveness and atonement, and that his followers should proclaim his actions and words. But the Church immediately faced difficult challenges to explain the relationship of the Father and the Son (and both to the Holy Spirit), and the relationship between Jesus as a man (which some had known and seen firsthand) and Jesus as God. Those outside the Church grew confused. Was Christianity a polytheistic religion unlike Judaism? Was Jesus really a human with a touch of divinity, not a co-equal in every way with God the Father? The very nature of Je-

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sus was so essential to the faith that those questions took on a central importance, and it was around them that the early theology revolved and around them that the early heresies grew up. Second only to the apostles were the early Church Patristic Fathers. Their names are now almost unknown to popular histories, but they provided some of the dogmatic understandings that have entered into childhood creeds and into the Church’s most important early councils. There is no a simple list of Church fathers whose writings so influenced the thought of the early Church—some philosophers, some theologians, some holy people. Historian Mike Aquilina has identified over one hundred such figures. The Jesuit historian and philosopher Frederick Copleston listed in his magisterial work the following breakdown of philosophers during the Patristic period: the Greek Apologists heavily influenced by the work of Plato and the Neoplatonists (Aristides, St. Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus); the writers against Gnosticism (St. Irenaeus, Hippolytus); the Latin Apologists (Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Arnobius, Lactantius); the Catechetical School of Alexandria, (Clement and Origen); the Greek fathers (St. Basil, Eusebius, St. Gregory of Nyssa), and the revered fathers especially St. Ambrose of Milan and later St. John Damascene (655?–750?).7 Copleston argued that the early Church Apologists and Fathers sought to ward off intellectual attacks levied by pagan and classical philosophers, and also to use actually the tools of philosophy to penetrate some of the secrets of Revelation. The Christian intellectuals turned to Plato and to neo-Platonism, and also to Stoicism with its emphasis on natural law, and those approaches became dominant until the medievalists, especially St. Thomas Aquinas, embraced the categories and distinctions of Aristotle. In the Vatican Apartments today is a famous picture by Raphael called The Academy in which Plato and Aristotle walk out of a Greek academy nearly arm in arm. Plato is pointing up to the forms in heaven, and Aristotle out toward the ground. Together they divided up the conceptual universe. There is no in-between, and early on the Church intellectuals looked up to idealism rather than empiricism. Some like Clement of Alexandria and St. Augustine even thought that Plato had borrowed his wisdom from Moses and the Hebrew prophets. Later on in the fourth century, St. Augustine would adopt Neoplatonism as ardently as Aquinas would later adopt Aristotle. Another philosopher of the time, St. Justin, had a more complicated journey; he actually moved philosophically from Stoicism to being a Peripatetic to being a Pythagorean, then to Plato, and then finally to Christianity. For him, the best elements of Platonism were a preparation for the wisdom of Christianity, and Christ was the Logos incarnate. Justin was martyred for his beliefs in Rome in 164.8 The Greek Apologists also focused on the virulent and powerful intellectual tradition of Gnosticism which, as has been seen, celebrated a special knowledge that explained the universe, God, and salvation. Adolf von Harnack called Gnosticism “the acute elevation of Christianity.”9 Actually Gnosticism predated

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Christianity, or at least a manifestation of it did, and it had Oriental and Hellenistic elements in its earlier expressions.10 By the second century A.D., it became a real threat to Christianity since it dealt with some of the same concerns that many intellectuals or people of thought had.11 Tertullian, a Roman jurist by training, writing in fluent Latin criticized the entire Greek tradition, not just Gnosticism, which he saw as a threat. He himself ended up adhering to a puritanical heresy, Montanism, and fell outside the Church’s favor. But in the process he helped to provide the Church with a new Latin philosophical vocabulary that it would employ later to great advantage. Because of the ties of Gnosticism to Hellenistic philosophy, the Church Fathers were often leery of the influence of the latter as well. 12 Clement of Alexandria argued that Christian wisdom was the real gnosis, and philosophy was only a preparation for the truths of Christianity. The philosopher Origen of Alexandria was also influenced by Greek thought, and he became a major figure of the Church. To prevent distraction, he had himself castrated, a difficult sacrifice for even the most committed scholar! Later he was tortured for his faith in the persecutions ordered by Decius. Origen was credited with writing hundreds of works on all sorts of topics in which he attempted to reconcile Platonism with Christianity, but in the process he too, like Tertullian, crossed over the uncertain orthodox line in explaining the nature of the Scriptures. God is the creator, evil is the privation of good not a creation, and the Logos (the Idea of Ideas) is the moderator between God and others. In the godhead is also the Holy Spirit. Souls exist in a preexistence state, and there is a full restoration of things in God. In a sense, Origen, like St. Augustine, tried to do to Plato what Aquinas was to do later to Aristotle, which is to incorporate him into the Christian faith. 13 In the fourth century the Greek fathers, especially St. Athanasius and St. Gregory Nazianzen, concentrated more on theological than philosophical questions. The first was a dedicated foe of the Arian heresy, which denied the parity of the Son to the Father; the latter thinker became a major theologian on the Trinity and the nature of Christ. The Church historian Eusebius also respected Greek philosophy, and like St. Augustine stressed the alleged affinity between Plato and Moses. He and other Church Fathers accepted the importance of Platonic categories and definitions in their discussions. Another Greek father, St. John of Damascus, living in the eighth century, helped however to lay the groundwork for Aristotle. Only in the Middle Ages though were the scholastics able to enshrine “the Master of them that know,” as Dante called Aristotle, over Plato. In their works the early Church Fathers became important because they provided many of the arguments and the new varied vocabulary that transformed Christianity from a Hebraic sect into a universal religion. Their words became the very language of the creeds of the early Church as it sought to explain the nature of God and the nature of Jesus on earth and in heaven. Those understandings influenced very much the orthodoxy taught and proclaimed by the Church and the bishops of Rome.

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Dogmas and Heresies The basic dogmas of the Christian Church, especially during the formative years were the product of real controversies with heretics, emperors, and renegade schools of philosophy. There were some major bishops, mainly in the East and in Rome, who played some roles in the development of Christian doctrine. The great historian of that intellectual metamorphosis is Jaroslav Pelikan, who defined Christian dogma in the very beginning of his work as “what the church of Jesus Christ believes, teaches, and confesses on the basis of the word of God.” The Epistle of James (2:19) tells us that even the demons “believe.” But what do they and we believe?14 The early Church’s initial understandings came from the church at Jerusalem, “the church from which every church took its start, the capital city of the citizens of the New Covenant.” As we have seen, the question of the validity of the Mosaic law was raised almost immediately, the law which the Jesus community in the area first held on to, but of which St. Paul in part had forced St. Peter to take a more critical view. While these men started with Jesus and followed “The Way,” they ended up metaphorically becoming the new and true Israel. Thus Christianity became a heresy of Judaism before it had to worry about heresies of its own. As they disputed and then embraced classical thought, the Christian Fathers argued that Plato in his travels or in his speculations had absorbed the teachings and truths of the Old Testament. They especially focused on Plato’s dialogue on the soul, Timeaus, which has some Christian overtones. However, the Christians insisted that God created the universe out of nothing, discarding any sort of pantheistic alternative. Then of course they had to face the vexing argument of where did evil come from, if not from the Creator of all things. Finally in 529, the Emperor Justinian I (527–565) closed the philosophical school at Athens—a symbolic triumph of Christianity over classicism. Some orthodox Catholic intellectuals did not lament that decision, for they recalled Tertullian’s earlier sneer, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” He even called the great Plato “the caterer to all these heretics.” Now the Church faced one less opponent in the world. With the demise of the Greek academies and the previous fall of the empire in the West, the Catholic Church would assume an enlarged importance, never foreseen.15

St. Augustine: Refining the Faith For over a thousand years, from the epistles of St. Paul to the architectonic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, the most influential theological work came from the pen of a bishop in a minor-level diocese in North Africa. Born in Tagaste in 354, Augustine was educated as a Christian by his mother, Monica, but he moved away from those influences and gave himself over to the study of

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the classics and also to the pleasures of the flesh that he had outlined in his famed Confessions. That work is often portrayed as the first autobiography, but it is really a long passionate prayer to the glory and worship of the Christian God. In 372, Augustine had a son, Adeodatus, after a liaison with a young woman. But Augustine also turned to the study of Cicero and the art of rhetoric, and in 373, he embraced the faith of the Manichaeans. Originally constructed by the Persian Mani (215–276), that faith sought to explain the presence of evil as an ongoing force in human life. Augustine was a dedicated intellectual, and he read all he could about the Manichaean faith and became one of its most articulate spokesmen in the Carthage area.16 But Augustine began to have questions about Manichaeanism and even though he may have been a part of its lower hierarchy, he aggressively sought answers to his questions. When he met one of the Manichaean bishops, he found him to be rather ignorant, especially of the sciences. For nine years, however, he was a dedicated follower of that faith, and in 383 he went on to Milan to study and teach rhetoric, and there he fell under the spell of St. Ambrose, the Catholic bishop of that city. For three years, he continued his philosophical journey— from the skepticism of the Academics, to Neoplatonic philosophy, to Plotinus. At that time, his patient mother Monica joined him in Milan, encouraged him to take a fiancée, and he in turn sent his mistress away. Finally at thirty-three years of age, he converted to Catholicism and was baptized along with his son in 387 by Bishop Ambrose. He established a sort of academy, dedicated to the study of literature and philosophy informed by his new faith. At first, Augustine had no clerical ambitions, but when he went to Hippo to visit a friend he was surrounded by the faithful who begged that he be consecrated a priest. He was ordained in 391, but still he returned to a hermit’s life at Tagaste. At the age of forty-two, however, he was named the new bishop of Hippo. Augustine the theologian ended up providing for the early Church major disquisitions on predestination, atonement, the Trinity, grace, and Original Sin—topics that were touched on only partially in the works of St. Paul, and rarely mentioned in the four canonical gospels the Orthodox Church finally agreed on. And Augustine was also a polemist who was a vigorous opponent of the major heresies of the time. Ironically, first he focused on the Manichaeans whom he knew so well and from the inside. He was committed to bringing them into Catholic orthodoxy. At Hippo, Augustine confronted Felix, one of the elect of that sect and publicly vanquished him in debate. Felix turned around and embraced Catholicism. Then in his writings on the Manichaeans, Augustine dealt with the problem of evil, proclaiming that God is good and that evil comes from the liberty of action given to man. In his theology, he also had to deal with the vexatious issues of free will, predestination, and grace. Augustine turned his critical intelligence to the Donatists who had insisted that those who denounced the Catholic faith in the past could not be legitimate ministers any more. The proper dispensing of the sacraments in that view de-

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pended on the holiness of the priests. Most leaders of the Catholic Church, for a variety of reasons, rejected that puritanical position. The Donatists received increasing support from those who detested Roman rule, and those who disdained individuals who had succumbed to its pressures and threats while avowed Christians. Efforts to heal the schism were unsuccessful within the Church, and Augustine ended up writing long treatments on the authority and attributes of the Church, a much broader discussion than simply a tract dealing with the Donatists. Augustine then challenged the Pelagians who had discounted the doctrine of Original Sin and its impact on human nature. His influence helped to buttress Pope Zosimus’s hesitating views, and it led to a condemnation of Pelagianism in 418. As he grew older, Augustine continued to do battle. He took on the important Arians who had insisted that Jesus was not God but man, denying his divinity—the very essence of the controversy that earlier led to Constantine calling the Council of Nicaea. Worn out by controversies and sensing the impending end of the Empire, Augustine died in 430. He has been said by many in his time and beyond to be a towering presence in Christian thought, one respected even by some of the central figures of Protestantism—leaders who felt especially close to him on the issue of predestination. One such figure, Adolf von Harnack, argued, “It would seem that the miserable existence of the Roman Empire in the West was prolonged until then, only to permit Augustine’s influence to be exercised on universal history.” Augustine wrote his major works in the more concise and structured Latin, rather than in the subtleties of Greek, and thus he helped make it the dominant language of philosophy so important in the medieval period and beyond. Augustine’s towering work also made believers come to view the intellectual influence in the Church moving from the eastern part of the Empire to the West. And in the process, he himself became a strong proponent of the bishop of Rome’s primacy. Most controversial and confusing though was his position on the difficult issue of predestination. Since God is the master of all, knows all before it happens, and is the sole distributor of gratuitous grace, what is the role of free will and of individual merit in his theology? Augustine seemed to be saying that for the elect “this will is prepared by God.” How can these two principles be reconciled? Man is not the master of his first thoughts, but can exert some influence on its reflections. God of course knows already what responses the soul will have, and God determines whether the will is going to decide for good or evil. So it is He who gives grace to the elect and informs their choices. Thus no person can claim credit for his good actions, because good comes from grace—an echo of St. Paul and also very close, but not identical to the views of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Because of the importance of baptism in the life of the elect by washing away Original Sin, Augustine remarkably maintained that unbaptized infants went to hell. Although he was a major theologian of the Church, the Church has had a difficult time with his brutal exclusion of the very young under the age of

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reason, and also his insistence on the importance of both God’s gratuitous grace and man’s free will. To confuse the issue, he once told the Manicheans, “All men can be saved if they wish.” If his statements seem contradictory, perhaps they simply were.17 Not until the more moderate and reasonable St. Thomas Aquinas, with his emphasis on Aristotle rather than Plato, would the Catholic Church have another such towering intellectual presence in the world of thought. The powerful Pope Gregory the Great would especially help to popularize St. Augustine’s theories during his papacy. Augustine is of course best known to most of us today not for his theology, but for his Confessions, an intense searching of his soul for God.18 And in political philosophy, he is remembered for how articulately he defended Christianity in the City of God from the charges that it helped to destroy the Empire because of its other-worldly attitudes. In that treatment, he contrasted the City of God and the city of Babylon, with the latter characterized by immorality and general bad behavior. In his most famous adage, he remarked that a kingdom without justice is but a band of robbers. 19 By the time of his death, the Empire was clearly crumbling in the West, and would finally cease its death rattle in 476. The popes in turn respected St. Augustine’s doctrinal explanations. This view can be seen most graphically in a letter from Pope Celestine I in 431 that counseled, “So great was his knowledge that my predecessors have always placed him in the rank of the masters.”20

The Established Church Thus by the middle of the fifth century, the Catholic Church in the West had changed its structures, its liturgy, and its eschatology as it moved from being a sect to the established religion of the collapsing empire. The bishop of Rome, the pope, represented to many the voice of orthodoxy, of tradition, of apostolic continuity. The Roman style, even without the vibrant capital city of Rome, stressed the legalistic, hierarchical, paper-driven approach that has so characterized the medieval and modern Roman Catholic Church. The early centuries witnessed a succession of popes opposing heresies, seeking to instruct ecumenical councils, and informing issues like Leo I’s famed “Tome” that dealt with central issues of faith. There were of course other powerful Church sees in Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem among others, but it was Rome that was most persistent in defending the faith. Popes were, however, dependent on the general Christian consensus on matters of doctrine and on towering figures like Tertullian and St. Augustine who taught the Church how to think in new vocabularies and terminology.

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Notes 1. Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). 2. Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity (New York: Harper, 1957); Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (New York: A. A. Knopf, 2007). 3. Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 51. 4. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979); Philip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), chap. 5; John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus (New York: Harper Collins, 1998). 5. Max Weber, “Politics As a Vocation,” 1919, http://media.pfeiffer.edu/ lridener/dss/ Weber/polvoc.html. 6. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy (London: Burns Oates & Washborne, 1946–1986), vol. 2, pt. 1; Arthur Cushman McGifferrt, A History of Christian Thought (London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947). 7. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 2, pt. 1. 8. Hans Jones, The Gnostic Religion; The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2d ed., rev. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), xvi. 9. Jones, The Gnostic Religion, 21–42. 10. Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 30; McGiffert, Christian Thought, passim. 11. Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 127. 12. Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 27–28. 13. Pelikan, Christian Doctrine, vol. 1, pt. I. 14. Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, 36–49. 15. Garry Wills, Saint Augustine (New York: Penguin, 2005); Garry Wills, Saint Augustine’s Childhood: Confessions (London: Continuum, 2001). 16. Garry Wills, Saint Augustine’s Conversion (New York: Viking, 2004). 17. Eugène Portalié, “The Teaching of St. Augustine of Hippo,” Catholic Encylcopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02091a.htm. 18. The Confessions of St. Augustine, ed. Rex Warner (New York: New American Library, 1963). 19. St. Augustine, City of God (New York: Modern Library, 2000). 20. Portalié, “Teaching,” 16.

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Beyond the End of the Empire, 500–800 The period from 150 A.D. to 750 A.D. has also been known as Late Antiquity and embraces the collapse of the Roman and the Persian empires and the rise of both Christianity and later Islam. Civilization circled around the Mediterranean Sea and was heavily influenced then by Greek civilization in all its manifestations. G. W. Bowersock has argued that even the Mosaics in the East shared “the persistent tradition of Greek taste that could embrace Judaism, Christianity and Islam in a fundamentally Semitic land, and they support the extent to which these three monotheist religions could themselves embrace Hellenism.”1

Church Authority Rome was an empire of record keeping, and the Church, as its successor in many ways, became over the years a very literate institution, with an educated organization added to a dedicated bureaucracy, having its own archives and later its own code of law and courts. The Emperor Constantine and his successors granted the bishops the right to act as judges in matters of Church discipline, but the movement of imperial authority to the East left final jurisdiction often in Milan or Ravenna, rather than in Rome. Soon the Church leaders became bolder, including the eloquent bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose (339–397). Ambrose was from a brilliant, wealthy, aristocratic family, and was appointed lay governor of his province by the emperor. He was a believer in Christianity, but was not even baptized at the time of his selection as bishop of Milan. He had the support of both the Arian and the Catholic factions at first. Ambrose at one point warned the Emperor Valentinian that there was a rightful division between the things of the Church and those of the state. But on matters of faith bishops are accustomed to being the “judge of Christian emperors, not emperors of bishops.” He vigorously condemned Emperor Theodosius who had ordered the massacre of seven thousand people in Thessalonica, and demanded that he perform a severe and humiliating public penance. Ambrose was only one figure in the authority and managerial structure of the newly powerful Church.2 39

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Over the early centuries there was also a steady increase in the powers of the bishops of Rome, later called the “pope” by the time of Damascus (366–84) or Siricius (384–399). Leo I, for example, insisted that the Emperor Valentinian III had to support his authority over the churches in the West, and he even wrote the Eastern Roman emperor as well to explain to him his duty to protect the Church. Pope Felix III (483–492) went further and reminded the emperor of his time that he was bound to obey God’s laws and the injunctions of the Church. Earlier in the fourth century (c. 385), Bishop Siricius had already issued the first “decretal” or administrative regulations on the topic of Church discipline in the communities of Spain. But it was Pope Gelasius I (492–496), the first pope to be called the “vicar of Christ,” who told the Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I in his incipit Duo Sunt (494) that there were two powers in the world—the holy authority of the bishops and the royal power—and that the emperor must obey the bishop of Rome on matters of faith and Church discipline. His argument was actually justified on the ground of non-interference in each other’s primary realm. It was a distinction that would impact on Western political thought for nearly one thousand years. However, as pope he had to deal with more mundane problems in Rome by himself, without royal support, and even used his own fortune to meet the needs of its people.3 Later Pope Symmachus (498–514) argued that no lesser power could judge a superior power, which was, of course in his judgment, the pope. The papacy had come a long way from Constantine’s time! In practical terms, the power of the bishop of Rome though did diminish with the increasing distance from the city of Rome as one moved to greater Italy, the Western Empire, and the Eastern Empire in descending order.4 The fall of the Western Empire in 476 clearly left the papacy as the only major integrating force remaining in many areas. The Church is often portrayed as groping indecently for power at that time, anxious to best the secular authorities and to use the respect that common people and the nobility alike had for the sacred to further the ambitions of the clergy, especially the hierarchy. But one can make a more convincing case that the Church authorities moved into a vacuum left as secular authority flowed east, following the only functioning emperor and his court. As noted, the eastern half of the Roman Empire lasted another one thousand years. Thus the “fall” was a western phenomenon, but the two halves of Christianity eventually were rent asunder because of developments other than their politics. Some of the reasons for that split were cultural, some economic, and some were theological. The Greek language also permitted very different definitions at times than the languages used in the West, and that furthered schismatic tendencies. It was into this complex arena that the papacy continued to function and eventually to grow in influence and wealth. And as it did, so too it became soiled by the secular, by the powerful, and by the raw ambitions that control brings as it often overwhelms the Gospel’s gentle admonitions. As G. K. Chesterton judged, “If the world grows too worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church;

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but if the Church grows too worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldliness by the world.”5

After Leo the Great The popes immediately after Leo the Great dealt with those increasing tensions between the East and the West. The emperor and the patriarch in Constantinople supported making concessions to the theological view called Monophysitism, a belief that denied that Christ had a human as well as a divine nature, and which was condemned as a heresy by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Pope Felix III (recalculated as Felix II), a relative of Gregory the Great, finally excommunicated the bishops of Antioch and Alexandria and also the patriarch Acacius, an action that led to a schism that lasted for thirty-five years until 519, and which was also the beginning of the historic split that remains today. 6 Other problems began to emerge. Archdeacon Symmachus was elected pope in 498, while at the same time a minority faction chose the archpriest of Santa Prassede, Laurentius. Symmachus was finally recognized by Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, and the new pope then gave his opponent the diocese of Nocera in Campanula as a consolation prize. But other disputes arose when a senator Festus, a supporter of Laurentius, accused the pope of various crimes. The pope, however, refused to appear before the king to answer the charges, and insisted that no secular rulers had jurisdiction over him. Consequently, a synod of bishops was called together by the king in 502, but it too ruled that no human court could try Symmachus. The judgment of a pope was left to God alone. The king then installed Laurentius as pope, and the schism continued for four years until he turned on Laurentius. Eventually faced with political problems of his own, the king restored the pope as the pontiff of Rome. The pope thus continued on, alienating still other figures, especially in the East. It was his successor, St. Hormisdas (514–523), who finally ended the Acadian Schism and helped establish closer relations with the more orthodox emperor, Justin I. Consequently, the Eastern bishops and the patriarch of Constantinople signed a statement that actually reaffirmed the pope’s primacy. 7 A decade later in 533, a priest named Mercury was elected pope—he became the first pope to change his name, in this case from that of a pagan god to John II (533–535). The changing of a pope’s name eventually became a part of the tradition of the office. Unfortunately, John ended up contradicting a teaching of one of his predecessors on a matter of dogma, and in a dispute on the Chalcedon declarations, he appealed to the emperor for support; the emperor reaffirmed the papal decision, and in his answer called Rome “the head of all the Churches.”8 Controversies on the nature of Christ’s person continued. One pope intimately involved in such dispute was Vigilius (537–55), who was known for his corrupt practices. Actually he came from a distinguished Roman family. He en-

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tered the clergy and over the years climbed the ladder of clerical preferment where he won the support of Pope Boniface II (530–32). Boniface even proclaimed that he wanted Vigilius to be his successor, but under intense pressure from the clergy in Rome, Boniface withdrew his decree and actually burned it. Later Vigilius was appointed by Pope Agapetus I (535–36) to be papal representative to Constantinople, where he soon formed a secret alliance with the Empress Theodora who wanted to interfere in the Church’s politics in the eastern capital. It turned out that Vigilius was quietly a supporter of the Monophysite faction in the Church, and opposed the dogmatic statements at the Council at Chalcedon. Tradition has it that Vigilius agreed to support Theodora’s designs if she in turn would help him become pope, and if she also committed herself to giving him a large bribe. He returned to Rome with some expectations, but had to face the opposition of Pope Silverius (536–537), who had been appointed pope through the efforts of the king of the Goths. The Byzantine commander in Rome promptly forced Silverius out, and Vigilius (537–555) was elected and crowned in 537. After such treatment Silverius died, and Vigilius was elected by the Roman clergy to be pope. But to the Empress Theodora’s dismay, he did not carry through on his earlier promises. In 540, Vigilius continued publicly to support the orthodox declarations of the council or synods at Ephesus and Chalcedon, and the pronouncements of Pope Leo I on the nature of Jesus Christ. But the emperor, then Justinian, who was married to Theodora and who considered himself a theologian, desired to find a common theological ground with the Monophysite faction in order to promote stability in the empire. He decided to do that by condemning the heresies of Origen, an early Christian father of the Church. And the emperor issued an edict also condemning the Three Chapters, a series of letters or statements on the heresy of Nestorianism (that Jesus had two natures in one person). Under imperial pressure the bishops in the East concurred, but those in the West did not. The pope also refused to concur and was summoned to Constantinople by the emperor. His problems were accentuated by attacks by the Goths on Rome in his absence. The pope wavered back and forth as to whether to condemn the Three Chapters. The West regarded his decision not as a question of simple theological speculation on the issue, but as an unraveling of the Chalcedon Council edicts. In 550, a synod of influential African bishops meeting at Carthage actually excommunicated the pope. After eight years in Constantinople, the pope was allowed to return, but he died en route in 555. 9 Those disputes revolved around Greek words dealing with “nature,” “person,” and “will” in ways that are so very complex and subtle. At stake though were the basic understanding of Christ, his relationship to God the Father, and his real humanity. If one considers those understandings too difficult to comprehend today, very substantial segments of the hierarchy and of the clergy of the time felt otherwise, and they were intensely committed to orthodoxy, especially as formulated in the councils’ or synods’ interpretations, and they expected Pe-

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ter’s representatives to uphold those traditions. Vigilius had compromised himself too often and too early, to be effective on that issue during his long papacy. Still no one seemed to deny the authority of Leo the Great that loomed over the Church during those debates. Even the emperor, who wanted to challenge the Three Chapters in his extreme documents, did not attack Pope Leo personally.

Gregory the Great This period has been called the early Middle Ages (476 to 1000) or pejoratively “the Dark Ages” by some groups of historians. Actually the reference “dark” is to the lack of written sources or records rather than a dearth of enlightenment. Still the beginning of the Middle Ages marked the coming and the success of the Germanic invasions and later the Slavic migrations in the South. Some German historians have termed the period the “Volkerwanderung” or the “wanderings of the peoples,”10 and these invasions led to the demise of the Roman Empire in the West and often turmoil in the city of Rome and environs. Out of this chaotic and gasping environment came one of the most powerful popes in history, Gregory I, (590–604) whose tenure also marks a watershed in the chronicles of the early Middle Ages. Gregory came from a wealthy patrician family in Rome, and his mother and two of his aunts have been canonized. It is said that he was a saint educated among saints.11 Born in 540 when his city was besieged by the Goths and other barbarian tribes, he was well educated and was an exceptional student. At the age of thirty, he was appointed prefect of the city of Rome, although in 574 Gregory gave up his position and wealth to become a monk. Then in 578, the pope ordered him to be ordained and made him one of the seven deacons of Rome—much to Gregory’s opposition. Fearing an invasion by the Lombards, Pope Pelagius II (579–590) sought help from the Emperor Tiberius in Constantinople. Gregory went with an embassy to the east to garner support, and stayed for six long years. He clearly disliked the whole atmosphere of the stylized court there, and he sought to continue his simple monastic regimen away from home. While in that capital city, however, he got involved in a bitter controversy with the patriarch of Constantinople on the issue of the resurrection of Christ, and finally the emperor had to intervene in the dispute. After his six years there, Gregory returned without bringing back any tangible support from Constantinople for the problems facing his beloved Rome. He went back to the monastic life and lectured on the Scriptures. It was during this period that he is supposed to have observed that the young fair men from Britain, whom he met in Rome, were not Angles, but angels—a view that allegedly influenced much later his dogged attempts to convert that island and his overall commitment to evangelization. Gregory continued to be a trusted papal aide and also became the secretary to Pope Pelagius II. In 589, Italy experienced great floods and with them came

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widespread disease. When the pope died in 590, Gregory was elected by an enthusiastic clergy and the people of Rome to be Pelagius’s successor. Gregory however appealed to the emperor to void the election, but in the end the emperor refused. During the time while he waited for an answer, Gregory still led the pious response to the horrors of the plagues and asked for widespread processions dedicated to the Virgin Mary to pray for the end of the epidemics. When he finally learned of his confirmation by the emperor, he rushed to leave the city, but was intercepted by the populace and was then consecrated. On assuming the papacy, Gregory immediately moved to compose a textbook on what constituted a good bishop. Around 590, the pope actually issued a manual on “Pastoral Care,” which was nominally addressed to John, Bishop of Ravenna, and which outlined the duties and obligations of the clergy. It was apparently well-received and widely circulated, especially in Spain, Gaul, Italy and even far away Britain. It embraced four parts: the selection of clergy; the sort of life a pastor should live; the best methods for dealing with different types of people; and the necessity to guard against egotism and personal ambition. Like physicians ministering to the body, a clergyman must have knowledge of the government of souls. Priests should practice in life what they have learned by study on this subject, “For certainly no one does more harm in the Church than one who has the name and rank of sanctity, while he acts perversely.” Gregory also took to task those who are not humble, or who are lazy, or who seek “pre-eminence.” Those drawn to the clerical life should set a good example, avoid the pleasures of the flesh and the desire for wealth. One should be quick to pardon offenses, sympathize with others, and convey a good physical impression. The pastor should be pure in thought, firm in action, discreet in his dealings, proficient in speech, a good neighbor, exalted above all in contemplation, humility, righteousness, and a leader in action. Obviously the same teaching style is not advantageous for all people. Gregory then listed the categories of different sorts of people, such as: men-women; rich-poor; joyful-sad; wise-dull; impatient-patient; meek-passionate; and so on. According to those characteristics, people were to be admonished differently. Still it is by sound deeds, good living, holy utterances, and strict self-discipline that pastors should lead their flock.12 As pope, he was preoccupied with stopping the Lombards from invading Italy, and Gregory was not above paying one of its chieftains, Ariulf, to end his siege of Rome; like Leo, Gregory I was to receive the title “the Great,” partially because they were deliverers of their city. He pushed for a lasting peace between the Lombards and the Roman Empire—which did not last long however. Gregory sought to further missionary work to convert the invading tribes, but they were often more likely to become Arians than Catholics. The spreading of the faith to the outlying areas in Europe was to become one of the continuing preoccupations of the papacy throughout the Middle Ages. His greatest missionary achievement though, was his sending a convert called Augustine (not the theologian) and others to convert and to baptize the

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Angles, whom he called “the Angels of God.” It has been said by Edward Gibbon that Julius Caesar needed six Roman legions to conquer Britain, but Gregory needed only forty missionaries. Centuries after his death, the pope came to be seen as a major figure of Christianity, a faithful theological follower of St. Augustine of Hippo, and a stalwart defender of the expanded papacy. He was called “The Consul of God”—a reference to his deep devotion to God and to the defense of the city of Rome. With his monastic background, he exposed the Church to the purifying influences of monasticism and the need to readjust its laws, its protocols, and its priorities, even amid the turmoil of invasions in the West. Gregory underscored his personal commitment to monasticism by removing lay people from positions of authority and replacing them with monks. And continuing his reform agenda, he called together at St. Peter’s a synod of bishops and priests that dealt with his continuing concern over Church discipline. Because of the breakdown of civil government and the dislocations caused by the onslaught of the Lombards, he cared for the population, distributed corn to feed them, and gave alms to the poor. Gregory was also preoccupied with reforming the Roman liturgy, although it is not clear what changes were actually dictated by him personally. He did alter the language of the Canon of the Mass, placed the Pater Noster earlier, laid out where the Alleluia should be said, and curtailed some of the privileges of deacons and subdeacons. What exactly he did in furthering the so-called Gregorian chant is not clear. Gregory was intensely involved in the secular management of the Papal States and of the Church’s lands in Sicily and Africa. He was scrupulously honest in his management of the Church’s assets. He was a master of detail, and his records show an unusual command of the issues that goes far beyond the usual reach of popes. Like Leo the Great, Gregory was a strong advocate of Rome’s jurisdiction over the Western Church, and intervened at times in the elections and/or selections of bishops and in disciplining them for transgressions. In the early years of his reign, Gregory was often involved in the selection of bishops, and he was also instrumental in the trial of six wayward bishops. He also took special umbrage when the patriarch of Constantinople was gratuitously called “the ecumenical bishop,” and insisted that the bishops of the other ancient sees of Christendom discredit any public use of that term which he found so offensive. He was sure that the primacy of Rome rested on the apostolic claims that see had over the Church in general—rights inherited from St. Peter himself. In his time, he even raised up and paid troops to protect Rome and its environs. Gregory at one time wearily called himself “the paymaster of the Lombards”—an obvious reference to his bribes and gifts to those tribes. He moved to establish treaties with those invaders, which in turn rankled the emperor in the East. But Gregory’s policy objectives were twofold: to keep the Lombards out of control in Rome and to maintain his diplomatic leverage to

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appoint governors, send ambassadors, and negotiate peace treaties on behalf of the Church. He believed however that the emperors should protect the Church and promote the peace of the faith, as well as suppress heresy and carry out the Church’s disciplinary penalties against wayward monks and other clergy. Still he did try at times to keep the Church authorities out of secular matters as best he could, probably to protect the Church, rather than out of respect for the state. Although he was intensely committed to evangelism, he opposed the compulsory baptism of Jews. Gregory was above all a legalist and an administrator, deeply dedicated though to the supremacy of the See of St. Peter. Operating in a vacuum in the West, he became a protector of Rome and the outlying areas—and he did so often in the face of opposition or general lethargy on the part of the emperor who lived in the East. He died in 604.

After Gregory the Great The successors of Gregory the Great surely lived in his shadow, and to some extent, they often retreated from his monastic rigor. The successors of Gregory seemed to be divided into those who supported and those who opposed his great reform policies. Diocesan (or secular) clergy came back in favor, and some popes were generally less amenable to spending Church money to provide grain and supplies to the populace of Rome. In the early seventh century, the Emperor Phocas even rejected Justinian’s admonition that the See of St. Peter be acknowledged as the head of all the churches, including Constantinople. 13 The papacy reached a low point in this period when Honorius I (625–638) was actually condemned by the Third Council of Constantinople in 680–681. He had supported the notion that Christ had two natures (human and divine), but he rejected the view that Christ also had two wills. The council would not accept his view, and actually condemned him by name. Pope Leo II (682–683) in 683 approved the council’s actions, and thus agreed with its censure. Honorius’s deviance would later be used in the nineteenth century as another example that a pope could commit doctrinal error and was not infallible. Richard McBrien has argued that some apologists have simply excused Pope Honorius for “imprudent expression” and not heresy, and that he had not been teaching a matter of dogma in a solemn way for the Universal Church. That pope was more successful as an administrator of the diocese of Rome than as a theologian, and he restored the valuable aqueduct system and improved the city and the Church’s buildings. The battle over the one-will heresy, however, continued through several papacies. Another controversial pope, Eugenius I (654–657), was actually elected before his predecessor, St. Martin I (649–654), was gone from office. Martin had been involved in a dispute with the emperor, and was thus still alive and living

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in exile when a compromise solution on the issue of Christ’s two wills was presented to Rome. But the clergy and the laity refused to allow Eugenius to accept the compromise, and a schism resulted between Rome and Constantinople. Future emperors’ lack of support for the heresy and the condemnation by the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681) however tipped the scales heavily against Monothelitism. In the reign of Sergius I (687–701), it was again the local Roman clergy that elected the pope, and it was the imperial troops which protected the pope from an attempt by the emperor to imprison him. The emperor in the east had sought to extract concessions for the Eastern Church and for the city of Constantinople. Sergius thus became the symbol of Roman orthodoxy—an impression he furthered by restoring the basilicas of both St. Peter and St. Paul in the city.14 In the eighth century, the papacy again protected the city from the invading Lombards and had to deal with the East and with the emperor’s personal opposition to religious icons or sacred images. Then Pope Zacharias (741–752) made an historic move to check the power of the Lombards in Italy by fostering closer relations with the Franks. In a critical decision, the pope supported Pepin III’s election as the first Carolingian king and making the crown hereditary, which was not the Frankish tradition. Consequently, his successor Pope Stephen III (752–757) traveled over the Alps to anoint Pepin, and the papacy consequently acquired the protection of the new Frankish monarch, thereby guaranteeing independence from both the invaders and the authorities in Constantinople. In a dramatic departure, the pope went to Ponthion and threw himself at Pepin’s feet, asking him to save St. Peter’s Basilica from the Lombards. The Frankish leader agreed, and gave the papacy a donation that extended its reach to include Rome, Ravenna, and other nearby states and territories. In the end, Pepin expelled the Lombards from the region, and the Papal States came into existence.

Charles the Great In 768, just before his death, Pepin divided up his realm between his two sons, the most popular being the strong, impressive, and vigorous Charles. Charles also inherited the title of “Patricius Romanus” which meant he had a special obligation to protect the temporal jurisdiction of the Holy See. Charles spent years fighting the barbarian tribes in the north and in the interior regions of Europe, and he always prevailed. In 772, Pope Stephen III died and was succeeded by Hadrian I (Adrian I 772–795) who almost immediately faced the hostile forces of the Lombards who even organized a coup against him in the Curia spearheaded by the papal chamberlain. In the spring of 773, Charles advanced with his forces into Italy and entered Rome like the conquerors of old. He engaged in long talks with Hadrian and was consecrated in 774 as the champion of the Catholic Church. Twenty-six years later, Constantine went to Rome and was crowned and anointed Roman emperor by Pope Leo III (795–816) on

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Christmas Sunday 800. In the intervening years, Charles again waged a continuing series of battles against a variety of tribes, most especially the Saxons, whom he vanquished and then gave them a choice—baptism or death. He subsequently divided the Saxon area into missionary districts, and moved to invade Spain.15 In protecting the Church and the papacy, Charles inevitably got involved in Church business including the work of synods and councils in defining dogmas. Taking a page from Constantine, Charles entered the thickets of theology, and defended the Western Church’s dogma in the use of the phrase “Filioque,” which meant that the Holy Ghost proceeded from both the Father and the Son. He encouraged tithing to the Church, the creation of choirs, and a better translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible. Charles also promoted cathedral schools, and they became centers for the study of Western liberal arts and the passing down of learning across the centuries. Central to those efforts was Alcuin, a devoted British monk and man of letters.16 Charles even intervened in opposing the Adoptionist heresy, which maintained that Jesus was at some time “adopted” by God the Father, and in the Iconoclastic dispute over religious images with Constantinople. To unite the East and the West, the pope sought to encourage Charles to marry Empress Irene of Constantinople, but nothing came of his matchmaking. Pope Leo III, who succeeded Hadrian I, was a Roman by birth and had been a cardinal priest and chief of the pontifical treasury. He was chosen in 795 and almost immediately the relations of Hadrian moved to topple him. First he was informed by Charles that there should be clear coordination of spiritual and temporal powers, and he pointedly reminded the pope of his spiritual obligations. But the pope was under too great a siege to worry much about such chastisements, and was forced in 799 to flee through the Flaminian Gate, and in the process was severely injured. Legend has it that his assailants had actually cut off his tongue and gouged out his eyes. But somehow his faculties were restored. Charles’s forces rescued the pope, and he convened a synod to hear charges against Leo. But the Frankish bishops refused to review the charges against Leo, and the pope openly swore his innocence at St. Peter’s. That was enough for Charles. As noted, two days later, on Christmas Day 800 Charles was crowned by the pope and declared Emperor and Augustus. His younger son was also anointed the King of the Franks. Over the centuries, Charles’s successors especially Louis the Pious in 817, Otto I in 962, and Henry II in 1020 all acknowledged the Patrimony of St. Peter and the importance of defending the papacy, and when Charles died he was labeled Charlemagne, Charles the Great. There was some effort to have him canonized, but it was never fulfilled. 17 Some scholars have argued that the Western empire really extended beyond the fifth century’s “fall of Rome.” They insist that the ties of European commerce and the common ecological systems of the Mediterranean Basin continued to bind people together after political unification ended. The barbarians have been portrayed by some historians as adaptive peoples who did not upend the Empire, but actually changed their behavior and accepted classical styles and

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customs. As for Christianity, religion is often pictured as too ethereal, too otherworldly to be that important in a secular world. But recent studies show that Christianity with its developing common creeds and liturgies, its common prayer books, and its visions of being a universal religion was really the chief cohesive element after the fall of Rome. The Church by necessity was decentralized, but it still developed or accepted changes in practice, such as the cult of the saints and the development of cemeteries to curry popular favor. The early medieval period saw a drop of Rome’s city population from five hundred thousand at its height in classical times to only fifty thousand. Grass grew in the streets and many lights went out. But meanwhile the population increased in the cities of the East, especially in Constantinople. And in the West, it was the Catholic Church that provided the few remaining structures of community that were present. The popes, with all their inadequacies and some venalities, generally tried to protect the deposit of the faith and the people and institutions of Rome and its neighboring areas. They became by reason of the power vacuum in the West diplomats and providers of social services. Besides the presence of an overarching papacy, the popes still looked for a secular defender of the faith. The Eastern emperors and their representatives in the West refused the role, and so the popes eventually turned to the Franks. It is no coincidence that it was the pope and not Pepin who first knelt down in front of the other’s feet. 18

Notes 1. G. W. Bowersock, Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 5; Bernard Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). 2. Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy, 26. 3. Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy, 33 4. Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy, 36–45. 5. Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy, 36-45. 6. Richard McBrien, Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (San Francisco: Harper, 1997), 79–82. 7. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 86–87. 8. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 89. 9. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 91–93. 10. Theodore E. Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages,’” Speculum 17, no. 2 (April 1942), 226–42; Robert S. Lopez, The Tenth Century: How Dark the Dark Ages? (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1959). 11. This section is intensely indebted to Jeffrey Richards, Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great (Boston: Rutledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) and “Pope St. Gregory I (the Great),” Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06780a.htm.

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12. Medieval Sourcebook: Gregory the Great: The Book of Pastoral Rule, c. 590 in “Medieval Sourcebook,” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/590 greg1-pastoralrule2.html. 13. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 99. 14. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 115. 15. Sidney Painter, A History of the Middle Ages: 284–1500 (New York: Knopf, 1953); Norman Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely rev. and expanded ed. of Medieval History, the Life and Death of a Civilization (New York: Harper, 1994). 16. Alessandro Barbero, Charlemagne: Father of a Continent (Berkeley: University of California, 2004). 17. Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (New York: Norton, 1939). 18. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity AD 150–750 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1971), 32.

Chapter 5

The Medieval Papacy Moves East Even with its more determined ecclesiastical managers in the West, the Catholic Church was to lose control over important and historic areas of the Eastern Mediterranean basin in the early Middle Ages. First, Eastern Orthodoxy was to sever its ties to the unified Christian community after a series of political, doctrinal and personal disputes. By 1054, Pope Leo IX (1049–1054) in Rome, and the Patriarch in Constantinople, Michael Cerularius (1043–1059), would in an unseemly and un-Christian conclusion to their differences excommunicate each other. Those undeniable expressions of Church hostility survived until the rapprochements of Pope Paul VI (1963–1978); even with the condemnations lifted, the historic divisions still cut too deep to be patched over. Around 600 there began to emerge the Islamic prophet Mohammed, who with his dedicated troops spread the new Muslim faith across the Middle East and into North Africa. Eventually, the Islamic forces would reach as far as the historic gates of Vienna and the plains of Spain. We are still the heirs to that conflict and the religions bitterness between those two faiths.

Schisms The Eastern Orthodox church is often stereotyped as an ossified collection of dogmas and practices that are more rarefied than their counterparts in Western Catholicism and later Protestantism. But this was not always the case. As has been seen, Christianity was originally a religion of the eastern part of the Mediterranean world. Before there was a Jesus community in Rome, there were established groups dedicated to “The Way” in the Middle East. Before Peter was heralded as a leader in Rome, he was, with James, a head of the church in Jerusalem. The language, the symbols, the complex dogmatic base of Christianity in the first centuries were Greek, and it was the Middle East and North Africa that provided the intellectual leadership behind the church councils and the Church’s statements of faith. But when Constantine decided to create a “New Rome” on 51

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the straits of the Bosporus to replace the “Old Rome” on the banks of the Tiber and named it after himself, he furthered the forces of division inherent in the late Roman empire. Thus the leader who so prized unity was more responsible than anyone for its divisions. Let us look for once at the controversy not from the West and the papacy’s perspective, but from the East. Despite its reputation for being rigid, ritualistic, and narrowly pietistic, the Eastern Church relied on a pronounced historic sense of tradition in many cases and disputes.1 The East displayed profound respect for their religious inheritance, the words of the Apostles, and the early Church fathers. They saw salvation as a personal deification allowed through the grace of God. They opposed the new or any innovations in theology. To them heresy meant promoting “a new faith,” and central to their belief was the authority of the Scriptures and the oral traditions of the Church, which were not superseded by the pope or the magisterium. The East sought to hold to the traditions of the Apostolic Fathers, and not to do theology. They preferred the verdicts of a church council to that of the pope, but the councils themselves were supposed to be committed to strict orthodoxy. Those early councils dealt mainly with the issues of Jesus’ humanity and divinity and his relationship to the Father, and were generally accepted by both East and West. The official date of the final break came with the excommunication of Primate Cerularius of Constantinople, by the legates of the pope in 1054. Earlier, especially in the ninth to the eleventh centuries, the two sections ripped apart, and consequently made the East weaker in opposing the more aggressive forms of Islam. Meanwhile the West saw the acceleration of the centralizing tendencies of the papacy. Both the West and the East had to accept, though, the historic record of the traditional orthodoxy of Rome. Rome was correct repeatedly in the great doctrinal controversies over the centuries, reflecting, it was said, St. Peter’s legacy. Pope Leo I was cited often, especially for his rock-like integrity expressed by his agents at the Council of Chalcedon, and for many in the East, the pope of Rome took precedence over even the church in Constantinople. Again and again the Church of Rome was victorious in protecting the tenets of orthodoxy. The one vexatious exception was Pope Honorius I who seemed to accept the heresy of Monothelitism which was condemned in 680. Even Pope Leo II in the West had called his predecessor’s action a “pollution of the unpolluted rule of the apostolic tradition.”2 Generally, though, Old Rome was a pillar of tradition, as St. Peter the Apostle, it was claimed, spoke through the popes of the time. Over the years, Constantinople often deferred to Rome on doctrine, especially if there could be asserted a tie of that doctrinal claim to tradition and the Scriptures. Still the East insisted that the pope was the chief bishop only when he was committed to orthodoxy. The opponents of Old Rome eventually did not look toward the even older sees of Jerusalem or Antioch, which predated Peter at Rome, because they had fallen under Islamic rule, and the Christian communities and their leadership were decimated.

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Why then did a split come? Theologically, the East opposed any variance from traditional doctrines and practices, even in such minor matters as the proper style of the tonsure of monks. The Eastern leaders also denounced the Frankish church, a protector of Rome, which would not accept Mary’s title as “Theotokus,” a “Bearer of Christ.”3 The empires were at odds over both institutional management and church politics. They also disagreed about the nature of what Jaroslav Pelikan called “the Episcopal office and its powers, as well as in the understanding of the priestly office itself.”4 They were at loggerheads over whether one had to have a bishop perform confirmations, and if the Church needed compulsory celibacy of the clergy. The two empires were split about the partaking of the Eucharist every day or mixing water with wine, and on regulations on fasting and the use of leavened bread. But of course one of the great controversies was the issue of whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father, or whether it was just through the Father, as the East maintained. Again for the East, this question revolved around the Franks and others introducing heresy into the Nicene Creed formula. In 767 Pepin actually held a council between Rome and the Greeks about the issues and also on the use of images of the saints. But the “Filioque” controversy, as it was called, was seen by the East as Rome trying to change the most basic definitions of theological orthodoxy, the Trinity. Charlemagne supported the Frankish position as did a reluctant Pope Leo III. But the pope tried not to push the issue to a point of contention. The Greeks reminded the Romans that Popes Leo I, Gregory I, and others did not use that expression. The First Council of Constantinople proclaimed that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father, but made no mention of the Son. However, St. Augustine in the West argued in his lengthy tract on the Trinity that the Holy Spirit was the love, unity, and holiness by which the Father and the Son were joined.5

Icons Another area of intense difference between the East and the West was the issue of Iconoclasm, a heresy paramount in the eighth and ninth centuries that aimed to destroy the images of Christ, the saints, and Mary. Those differences helped to prepare the path for the schism of Photius the Patriarch of Constantinople (856–867; 877–886), and may have been influenced by the views of the Muslims who held that any picture, statue, or representation of the human form was an abomination. Other Christians argued that images violated the First Commandment, which forbids having other gods before Yahweh. The whole treatment of the nature of Christ reflected the beliefs that one held on the nature of the Godhead and Christianity’s commitment to monotheism. The emphasis on the oneness of God seemed to some Westerners an undue deference to traditional Judaism and the continuing influence of the Jews on Christianity. The Mus-

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lims expressed their view that the West’s emphasis really led to a polytheism, which they had rejected in their own history. Thus the East and the West had intense disagreements over the use of religious images and relics in their devotions. The position of the Western Church was more moderate—it allowed the veneration of icons and relics to remind the faithful of saintly life. One should not adore such images, but one could venerate them. In the East, the charges against icons was led by the irascible Emperor Leo III the Saurian. He believed that images were a major obstacle to the conversion of Jews and Muslims to Christianity, and it was his mission to purify the Church. He used the Patriarch of Constantinople as his agent in this controversy, and commenced a major assault on the monastic orders who were dedicated defenders of the veneration of saints. The pope who dealt with the issue most extensively at first was Gregory II (713–731), who received an appeal from the emperor in the East commanding him to accept the latter’s views and enforce his edicts. The pope carefully explained the difference between images and idolatry and went on to castigate the emperor for his interference in Church discipline and belief. Emperor Leo III (717–741) also had undiplomatically threatened to come to Rome and destroy the statue of St. Peter and imprison Gregory. Gregory’s response was blunt and courageous—he could easily escape into the Campania regions, and besides as pope he would never accept the emperor’s rules or his new policy on icons. Leo insisted that the Church had recognized him as “Emperor and Priest,” but Pope Gregory countered that that was a title for rulers who defended the faith. But in the East, the emperor continued to persecute the monks, and relics and the bodies of saints were destroyed. In Rome, Ravenna and Naples, the populace attacked the emperor’s edict, and those responses helped to lay the background for the beginnings of what later became the Papal States. Gregory II then refused to relay taxes to Constantinople and began in effect the severing of the Western region. Gregory II died in 731, but his successor Gregory III (731–741) continued the defense of icons. Emperor Leo then moved to gain control of Sicily and Southern Italy, but the pope held a synod that excommunicated the iconoclast. Leo sent his army to Sicily, but it was destroyed by a storm at sea. In 741, the emperor died, but his son Constantine V continued his policies. His bishops in the East loyally supported the new Emperor, and monks were continually persecuted. The Empress Irene, however, succeeded her husband as regent, and she began to undo the Iconoclast policy. Pictures and images were restored, and the issue seemed concluded. Then her successors went back and forth about the controversy, while Rome remained steadfast. In 814, a new wave of iconoclasm began, and the orthodox, pro-icon Patriarch of Constantinople was ruthlessly persecuted. Eventually the tensions on the issue helped to fuel the Great Schism of Photius (842–867). The regent, Theodora, finally ended the Iconoclastic persecutions, released the exiles, and ended the prison terms of those who supported veneration of

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icons. In 842, the faithful processed back, and the defeat of iconoclasm became in the Eastern Orthodox tradition a triumph over its foes. As for Rome, it had stayed resolute, and the people and the synods reaffirmed their beliefs in the proper use of images. But the bitterness of the long controversy added to the eventual division of Christendom.6

The Rise of Medieval Islam After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Christianity in the West faced the assaults of the barbarian tribes. In the East, with its functioning emperors and armies, the Church faced a very different set of challenges later—the rise of Islam. In 570, Mohammed (“the Praised One”) was born into the family of Hashim, although his father died right after his birth and his mother died when he was only six. In his young years he was a shepherd and a caravan leader, and at the age of twenty-five he married a rich widow, Khedival, fifteen years older than he was. She became a major influence on his life and mission. The only one of their children who grew to adulthood was Fatima whom he loved dearly. At that time, Arabia was a land characterized by warring tribes that were somewhat involved in commerce. As he went about his and his wife’s business in Syria and Palestine, Mohammed came into contact with Christians and Jews. In 612, at the age of forty, he claimed he was visited by the Angel Gabriel, and he became a prophet of Allah, the one God. But his preaching made him an unwanted person in Mecca, and he was driven out of the city—the so-called Hegira or the Flight. Mohammed proved to be a determined military strategist as he waged war across the peninsula, and in the process he demolished the tribal idols of the Kabala. In the end he united the tribes of Arabia, and died in 633. Mohammed’s sayings and commentaries were collected in the Koran, the sacred book of Islam. Personally he lived a simple life, avoided alcohol, was nervous, quiet and had great powers of imagination. Still he could be ruthless, a case in point is how he dealt with the Jews who refused to accept his message as he had expected them to. His ascendancy and that of Mohammedanism was due largely to the problems of the Byzantine Empire, the split in the Christian Church with its schisms and various heresies, and the collapse of the Roman and Persian empires. When power passed to the caliphs after the Prophet died, they moved quickly to capture the Middle East, Sicily, Egypt, North Africa and even Spain. It was at Tours, France, in 732 that Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne, stopped the forces of Islam in the West. Later the Mohammedans captured huge territories in the east: Persia, Afghanistan, and parts of India. It was only the fierce Mongols and the Turks in the thirteenth century who stopped the advance. But they then adopted Mohammedanism themselves, and in 1453, finally overthrew the crumbling Byzantine Em-

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pire. They advanced toward Europe again, and were stopped by Jon Subieski at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Mohammedanism had its own divisions, most especially between the Sunni who acknowledged the secession of the first three caliphs, and the Shiah (Shiites) who honored Ali, Mohammed’s cousin and son in law, as the successor of the Prophet. The faith is presented in the Koran and its traditions. Its credo is simple, “There is no God but the true God, and Mohammed is his Prophet.” The Islamic faith embraces one God, the presence of angels, resurrection and judgment day, and predetermination. And Islam stresses frequent prayer and purification, alms, fasting, and a pilgrimage to Mecca. Jesus is mentioned as a prophet, and there are numerous respectful references in the Koran to his mother Mary who is called the Virgin. Lastly, polygamy and slavery are permitted—practices accepted in the Old Testament as well. Prayers are said, usually by men, five times a day. The admonition to love one another, applies though mainly to those within the faith. Like Christianity of that time, and other faiths of that period, the Islamite traditions insisted on the fusion of Church and state. This was an empire that never knew the Western sort of Enlightenment and its celebration of the separation of church and state. Paradise is portrayed as sensual and mainly physical.7

Waging War in the Holy Land At first, the capture of the Holy Land by Islam did not affect the ability of Christians and Jews to visit the sacred places. But as Islam became less tolerant of other religions, those shrines were sealed off from outsiders and even from older residents of different faiths living there. Then on November 17, 1095, at Clermont, France, a propitious move was embraced by Pope Urban II, who reigned from 1088 to 1099. Urban was born Otho of Lagery into a French family of knights; he studied at Cluny and was deeply committed to the reforms of Gregory VII. When he was chosen pope himself after a bitter series of Church disputes, Urban remarked of Gregory’s legacy, “all that he rejected, I reject, what he condemned I condemn, what he loved I embrace, what he considered as Catholic, I confirm and approve.” Urban was a tall and courtly figure, and represented a new aggressiveness in the medieval papacy and the Latin Church. He had to deal with the conflict from an anti-pope, Guibert of Ravenna (Clement III, 1080, 1084– 1100), and during many of those years of his reign, he wandered around in exile in southern Italy. Then Urban received a plea from the Eastern emperor, Alexius Comnenus I (1081–1118) for help against the aggressive Seljuk Turks who were threatening Constantinople under the Islamic flag. Urban went on to recount alleged atrocities committed against Christians by the Turks, calling them a race that was despicable, degenerate, and enslaved by demons.

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The pope insisted that Christendom reopen the roads of pilgrimage, and the response of his audience was an enthusiastic: “God wills it.” He proclaimed the total remission of sins for those who joined what became known as the “Holy Crusades.” Those soldiers of Christ wore a red cross and pledged their fidelity to free the Holy Land. There really were no formal Crusades before Urban’s dramatic call to arms. Some historians say that a plenary indulgence was granted to all who made the journey. In addition, Urban was interested in getting Christian warriors to stop attacking each other by channeling their aggressions, and in the process of reasserting papal authority after all of the problems he confronted in office. The response was immediate and enthusiastic.8 Various versions of the spirited speech are given in the online “Medieval Source Book.” “All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious in the name of Christ!” Despite all his efforts, Urban never saw the conquest of Jerusalem. 9 In addition to his clarion call for the Crusades, he did insist on a defense of papal prerogatives in France during the marriage dispute of Philip I, and he returned in triumph to Rome. His allies controlled northern and central Italy and forced Emperor Henry IV to leave Italy. His reach finally extended in Sicily where his ally Count Roger became the papal legate. In 1098, the pope held a church council aimed at reconciling the Greeks and Latins on the “Filioque” controversy. In many ways—in his impressive vision and in his exertion of papal presumptions over kings and emperors—he was a true follow of Gregory.10 As for the future of the Crusades, the pilgrimage was a form of penance for the forgiveness of sins. At first it was the poor who answered the call. In France, Peter the Hermit led the first group to rescue Jerusalem. He traveled across Germany, picking up hordes of adventurers as he walked, and often attacking Jews. The group made their trek across Hungary on to Constantinople, but the local crowd was not exactly what the emperor in the East had in mind. He warned the ragtag group, known as the “People’s Crusade,” not to go on, but they did and were wiped out in a matter of hours. In 1097, a real fighting force of nobles arrived to do battle with the Turks, cutting their bodies to ribbons and even eating their adversaries when they were hungry and under attack. The Turks were obviously fearful of such barbarities and were reluctant to do battle with such people. Eventually led by Raymond, the count of Toulouse, the Crusaders captured Jerusalem and processed around the ancient city. Raymond wrote the pope that they traipsed around in Saracen blood up to the knees of their horses. St. Augustine had much earlier laid out rules for a just war; they were forgotten by the Crusaders in the field. New branches of warrior-monks also grew up. First there were the Knights Templar who were influenced by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. On a more benevolent side, St. Francis of Assisi visited the Muslim leaders and expressed his

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sympathies for them as fellow human beings, and explained the teachings of Jesus—but that was a rare sentiment. The Christians sought to convert the adherents of Mohammed, but were not very successful. Still Gregory IX (12271241) insisted that legitimate conversions be encouraged, but few Christian fighters cared much, as conditions worsened in the Holy Land. As they moved from one Crusade to another, the warriors faced increasing disillusionment, disappointment, and confusion. The East which started the call provided little in the way of arms and material. The Crusaders were a Western Catholic enterprise. Their troubles were compounded by the arrival of a great Arab warrior, Saladin, who proved to be a most formidable foe for the Christian noblemen. In 1179, the Third Lateran Council gave a limited indulgence to those fighting heretics, especially the Cathurs in France—far from the Holy Land. The great figures of the Third Crusade in 1189 were Frederick Barbarossa, who died in transit, and Richard the Lionhearted. Even that crusade ended in disarray. The monarchs of France and England laid a tax on their kingdoms to assist the Crusades, but to no avail. The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204), approved by Innocent III, swept toward Constantinople, which led to a Western assault of the city they were supposed to protect. The Venetians in the forefront began the looting efforts, and quite appropriately in this melee a prostitute sat in glee on the revered Patriarch’s chair. Innocent was dismayed at what he saw as a great betrayal by the West. The whole enterprise was getting out of control, and it was accentuated by the “Children’s Crusade,” a march led by two children from Western Europe to go to the Holy Land. They moved to Rome, where Innocent, who should have known better, proclaimed that they put the adult warriors to shame. But no ships were available for the trip, and the children drifted back to their homes. In 1220, Frederick II of the Roman Empire gained control of parts of Jerusalem. Ironically Pope Gregory IX had previously excommunicated him, and now had to hail him as a hero. By 1244 the Turks had regained control of the region, which they held until 1917. Other crusades would continue, but in 1459 when Pope Pius II (1458–1464) pushed for a final crusade, few volunteers emerged. Later he died of the plague, and his vision was unrealized. The Crusades were a papal-driven effort to the extent that the popes even at times had to threaten excommunication to kings and nobles reluctant to take up the sword.11 The West had learned the lessons of the barbarian tribes all too well, and ignored the salutary gospels of Jesus and St. Francis or even the moderating influence of St. Augustine’s views on limited war. The Crusades, in their seizure and sacking of Constantinople, only furthered the divisions between the East and West. Later popes would encourage crusades against heresies, and that attitude eventually led to the wars of religion after the Reformation. John Paul II, in a series of confessions of the sins of the Church, especially mentioned the abuses of the Crusades. It seems to be a habit of the papacy to face outside threats by tightening up internally and stifling the Church’s hierarchy. Perhaps it is a management style similar to the centralization of the commander-in-chief powers under U.S. presi-

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dents in times of war. But its consequences for a voluntary religious association can be deep and far-reaching. As the papacy looked East in the early Middle Ages and beyond, it saw major and long-standing challenges that impacted on the Church and on its authority, and most profound was the split with the Eastern Orthodox faithful who had lived often in the sites of the great early councils that defined the faith. For a variety of cultural, religious and political reasons, the two sections split off and have remained so up to this day. To lose some of the faithful to assorted heresies that so plagued the Church was one matter, to lose half the known Church was a serious blow to the papacy and to the whole Christian community of faith. Those tensions and splits led to weaknesses that helped fuel the successes of Islam, a belief system of fighters and scholars that once presided over the most advanced civilization of the early Middle Ages. It was the Muslims and a few Catholic monks who preserved the cultural heritage of ancient Greeks and ended up sparking the Renaissance and early science. The popes, trying to rescue the Holy Lands from the forces of Islam, initiated a series of hapless and bloody wars that they labeled “crusades.” Then together with the emerging Inquisition, which was originally a tool of the Church and the Spanish throne to destroy Muslim and Jewish influences in the West, the Crusades marked the papacy as a center of repression and intolerance. Almost as if compensating for the loss of Greek Orthodoxy, the Church in the West heeded Christ’s admonition to baptize the world. The papacy spearheaded a series of evangelic forays that added converts to the ranks of the Catholic Church, and the missionaries became a calling for some of the major religious orders, old and new. The papacy was now moving into the political realm never dreamt of by even Leo the Great and Gregory the Great at the height of their ambitions.

Notes 1. Janoslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 600–1700, vol. 2 of Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom The Christian Tradition: History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1974), 1–15. 2. Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 151–52. 3. Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 172. 4. Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 174. 5. Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 196; St. Augustine, On the Holy Trinity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1956). 6. Adrian Fortescue, “Iconoclasmism,” Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07620a.htm. 7. Karen Armstrong, Muhammed: A Biography of the Prophet (New York: HarperCollins, 1993); Hans Küng, Islam: Past, Present, and Future (Oxford: Oneworld Books, 2007). 8. Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cam-

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bridge University Press, 1951–1954); Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2006). 9. Medieval Sourcebook: Urban II (1088-1099): Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095, Five versions of the Speech in “Medieval Sourcebook,” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/urban2-5vers.html. 10. Richard Urban Butler, “Urban II” in Catholic Encylopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15210a.htm. 11. Brian Moynahan, The Faith: A History of Christianity (New York: Doubleday, 2002), chaps. 11–12.

Chapter 6

From Abuses to Reforms, 800–1100 The period from 800 to 1048 has been characterized by Richard McBrien as a profound nadir in the history of the papacy, but eventually that period led to the reform reign of Hildebrand (Gregory VII). Indeed at first those centuries were times of major political corruption, the selling of ecclesiastical offices, concubinage, corruption, and endless brutality. Five or six popes were murdered in that era alone, and the Church’s power was often in the hands of cynical families of the Roman aristocracy or power-hungry German kings. The body of Pope Formosus (891–896) was even exhumed by Pope Stephen VI (896–897) at the insistence of co-emperor Lambert and his mother. Formosus, former bishop of Porto, was posthumously put on trial in a macabre display of abuse called “the Cadaver Synod.” He was tried for perjury, coveting the papacy, and having transferred from one bishopric to another. His papal acts were declared void, and three fingers of his corpse’s right hand were cut off. Later Stephen was deposed, imprisoned and strangled to death. And on it continued. In addition, demands to govern the Papal States shifted more of the focus of the papacy to secular happenings and away from the concerns of being the heirs of St. Peter.1

The Perils of the Papacy As has been seen, Pope Leo III faced such an onslaught of charges from his enemies in the Roman nobility that he needed Charlemagne’s personal intercession to survive, and became the only pope “to offer obeisance to a Western emperor.” He had been accused of perjury and adultery, but swore his innocence on the Scriptures. Despite his dependence, he still resisted Charlemagne’s attempt to add the phrase “Filioque” to the Nicene Creed, fearing the reaction of the orthodox Greeks.2 Symbolically, it was during this early period that a Roman-born pope, Leo IV (847–855), erected a forty-foot wall surrounding the Vatican area, later called the “Leonine City,” to protect the city from the invading Saracens. (It was also during this time that a weird tale began to circulate that he was succeeded by a woman, Pope Joan.) One of his many successors was the assertive Nicholas 61

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I (856–867), who reaffirmed the theory of a strong papacy, and who proclaimed that the pope was supreme over both the East and the West. He excommunicated opponents, including Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople. The patriarch reciprocated with his own excommunication of the pope. Later Pope John VIII (872– 882) was also assassinated, and another, Benedict VI (896), was elected after having been defrocked for immoral conduct twice (once when he was a subdeacon and once when he was a priest).3 An even lower point was reached with the reign of Sergius III (904–911) who was supposed to have killed his predecessor Leo V (903–04 or 905) and the rival antipope Christopher. Sergius also probably fathered an illegitimate son who became Pope John XI (931–935/6). Sometime afterwards, Leo VIII (963– 965), a layman at the time of his election, came to power after deposing his predecessor, John XII (955–964); indeed a series of laymen were elected in the tenth century. McBrien records that one pope, John XII (955–964), was only eighteen years old when he was chosen because of the power of his dying father, Alberic II, then ruler of Rome. John was deposed and restored, and eventually died at age twenty-eight, in the arms of a married woman. Subsequently, there was the probable abduction of Pope John XVIII (1003 or 1004–1009) who left the papacy and became a monk. McBrien has called the whole period “the pornacracy” of the papacy. Family disputes, imperial interference, and weak attempts at Church reform pockmarked the rest of the century. 4 Elections often involved the participation of the Roman clergy and Roman nobility, but finally the French-born pope and bishop of Florence, Gerard de Bourgogne, Nicholas II (1058–1061), restricted voting in papal elections to only cardinal bishops, with the approval of clergy and laity at the end of the process. Like some of the other popes before Hildebrand, Nicholas was an advocate of reform efforts, including attacking the abuses of simony, concubinage, clerical marriage, and lay investiture. Nicholas also established a formal alliance with the Normans in southern Italy.

Living in Rome The Church was by necessity mainly local in its day-to-day ministry, although probably many people in rural areas were not very observant. Still some of the faithful’s genuine religious enthusiasm showed how examples of popular devotion remained vibrant in the lives of those living away from Rome and its sins. The continuing decentralization of the Church in many areas of administration in that period may have actually safeguarded it from its own corruption, protecting sections from the moral rot that would spread in future centuries when Rome was a cesspool of bribery and brutality. The orthodox faith was often followed more intensely in the monastic communities that lay mostly in the countryside. 5 The end of the first millennium of Christianity saw Rome as a city plagued by malaria, conquered by invading forces, and governed often by the adherents of decadence and immorality. It was becoming in many ways no longer the great

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capital, but a smaller frontier town on the border of the empire. The central institution of the Roman region was more and more the papacy, and the popes came into increasing conflict with both the local nobles on one side, and with the powerful forces of righteous reformers on the other. The papacy also began to take on some of the administrative practices of Germanic princes, with their chancery positions and with even some Germanic influence on the liturgy. The Lateran palace and nearby buildings were the hub of the Church’s formal organization in Rome at the time, and the city was divided into twelve districts, and each region had in turn twelve deacons—important preliminary steps into what would become the development of the College of Cardinals. The cardinal priests, for example, were specifically assigned just to the Lateran.6 In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the College of Cardinals in 1059 was transformed into a Senate of the Roman Church—cardinals were used often as legates of the pope—and the Curia became the most important bureaucracy in the world, especially with the development of canon law. The popes began to emphasize their imperial pretensions as well, and the miter, the palium, and the tiara all became symbols of their asserted authority. 7 The office itself cast a wider net with its increasing power over the Papal States. The split between Rome and Constantinople continued, focusing theologically on the nature of the Holy Trinity, but that division was magnified by strong political, cultural and linguistic differences. As has been seen, having been abandoned by the emperor living in the east, the papacy was forced to look to the German nobles for support as they had once looked to the Franks. Papal legates presided over the synods in Germany, and German monasteries and convents were founded in that once faraway region. Some German kings, when they became emperors, became forceful protectors of the papacy in the bargain. Otto the Great in 962 and Henry II in 1020 especially supported papal claims in the northern Italian area, and there was introduced a levy or tax called “Peter’s penny” which was first collected in England and was adopted later in Poland and Holland for use by the papacy.8 Internally, the popes had to face the strong reformist spirit that was focused in the major monasteries in the West, most notably Cluny, with its historically disciplined Benedictine system. The papacy would seek to contain those impulses, and then to divert the influence of those reform sentiments for its own purposes. But the currents of reform proved so strong that eventually the papacy embraced them, especially in the person of Hildebrand. In another development, in 993, Pope John XV (985–996) began to centralize the process of making saints, thus increasing the power of the Holy See over the devotional life of the people. Previously it was a local process and tradition, meant often to honor regional figures who led a holy life, although some favorites were not terribly holy. The first such saint honored by a pope was a German bishop from Augsburg, Ulric. By the pontificate of Leo IX (1049–1054), that papal power of canonization became even more structured and bureaucratized. 9 All partnerships in power are invitations to conflict. The Germanic kings and the popes were involved in long battles over who had the authority to invest

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abbots and bishops in the Church. Henry III actually used his power to place popes on the throne of St. Peter, although he was legitimately concerned about reforming the Church. For the popes and their clerical allies, these reforms were meant not just for spiritual renewal, but also to strengthen their own power over the far-flung Church in the process. One major focal point was the emphasis on celibacy for all ordained orders—from subdeacons to bishops. Its dual purposes were to further the committing of one’s life and dedicated efforts to the Church, and also to prevent the children of clerics from inheriting property and ecclesiastical positions. Later it was seen by critics as a way for the male hierarchy to maintain central control over its priests and nuns.10 With the ascendancy of Leo IX, the popes also began to promulgate more of a reform agenda with a major assault upon simony or the buying of offices in the Church. The practice of simony was one of the reasons that the Church pressed for the election of bishops by the clergy, and by the monks for an abbot’s investiture. To be beholden to political figures was seen in their minds as being akin to simony or the bartering of offices for favors. Under Pope Urban II (1088– 1099), conflicts began to increase with princes over the investiture of prelates by rulers, and challenges began to grow, particularly with the behavior of the monarchs of England and France.11 As noted, in terms of electing a pope, Nicholas II had the cardinals designated as the sole group eligible to elect a pope, ending once and for all the role of the laity in Rome in the process. There were three groups—bishops, deacons, and priests—in what became the College of Cardinals. The popes were also assisted by the specialized and increasingly professional bureaucracy that became the Roman Curia, with its committees being often led by these cardinals; the Church also formally adopted a full-scale court system as well, using its canon law as the basis of jurisdiction. The importance of monasteries continued to grow, including the influence of hermits who were more active than their name usually implies.

The Reforms of Hildebrand The path of even the most accomplished reform popes did not run smooth, as can be seen in the extraordinary life and career of Hildebrand, who took the name Gregory VII (1073–1085). Hildebrand came from a humble family, and his father was either a carpenter or a peasant. At an early age, Hildebrand was sent to Rome to be educated at a monastery where his uncle was abbot. He became a Benedictine monk and was associated with John Gratian who later became Pope Gregory VI (1045–1046). Hildebrand was Gregory’s chaplain and loyally followed him into exile, staying with him until the deposed pontiff’s death. He returned to Rome under Pope Leo IX (1049–1054), and was appointed the administrator of the Patrimo-

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ny of St. Peter’s. He proved to be splendid administrator and protected the Holy See’s lands and increased its income. Hildebrand was also named by Leo IX the promisor of the monastery of St. Paul extra Muros where he struggled to restore monastic discipline, celibacy, and the ascetic way of life. When Leo died, Hildebrand was the choice of many to be his successor, but he advocated the cause of the Bishop of Eichstadt who became in 1055 Pope Victor II (1055–1057). Over the years, Hildebrand became more preoccupied diplomatically with the causes of the Holy See, and emerged as the political manager of several other papal candidates. He was especially interested in the establishment of the College of Cardinals, and also secured an alliance during that time with the Normans. For more than two decades, he was an important functionary for various popes, until in 1073, on the death of Pope Alexander II (1061–1073), the Roman clergy and people went into the streets chanting, “Let Hildebrand be pope.” And so it was done.12 Hildebrand was characterized at the time as “a devout man, a man majestic in human and divine knowledge, a distinguished lover of equity and justice, a man firm in adversity and temperate in prosperity, a man, according to the Apostle, of good behavior, blameless, modest, sober, chaste, given to hospitality, and one that ruleth well his own home.” Hildebrand waited for royal approval of his election—the last time that an emperor would have the opportunity to approve a papal choice. When his election was announced, Hildebrand was ordained to the priesthood, and then was consecrated pope in 1073.13 Commentators of the time then and now have often cited this period as one of terrible dislocations and venality on the part of the Church. The Carolingian Empire was gone, and the remaining institutions of the West were under considerable strain. The Church was seen as given over to “luxury and fornication,” and one observer commented that “Christ was as if asleep in the vessel of the Church.” Whether those were exaggerations or not, even the new pope lamented the irregular lives lived by many bishops who were motivated more by worldly gain than spiritual concerns. At one point, he added, “And those among whom I live—Romans, Lombards, and Normans—are as I have often told them, worse than Jews or Pagans.”14 The pope turned his attention especially to the abuses of simony and violations of clerical chastity. Being the consummate diplomat, he moved also to firm up his position by striking an alliance with some major princes in Southern Italy. He sought to check the power of the Normans in that region, and dispatched the Catholic Patriarch of Venice to Constantinople to effectuate a reunion with the East, and eventually he initiated an early effort to liberate the Holy Sepulcher from the Seljuk Turks. In a synod held in 1074, Gregory ordered a major reform of the clergy aimed at stopping clerics from being appointed through payments, ending the purchasing of churches or ecclesiastical rights, excluding those violating chastity from the priesthood, and ordering the faithful to reject any clerics who disobeyed those rules. Gregory’s policies resulted in a firestorm of criticism in the Western church, and enormous opposition arose from married clergy and recal-

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citrant bishops. The pope also confronted directly the disobedient behavior of Emperor Henry IV of Germany who insisted on interfering in the selection of bishops. In 1075, a synod held at Rome condemned any person, including a prince, who conferred an investiture of any church office. The emperor was cited to appear in Rome in 1076 to answer for his conduct in interfering in ecclesiastical appointments. Henry in turn convened his own meeting of supporters and declared the pope deposed—a decision obediently supported by two synods of Lombard bishops. The pope’s response was excommunication and a statement relieving the emperor’s subjects from any allegiance to the monarch. Henry soon faced disloyalty from Saxons at all levels, and he was given by the nobles one year to reconcile with the pope or lose his throne. A troubled Henry crossed the Alps and appeared at Canossa where he was dressed shoeless in simple robes as a penitent seeking forgiveness. There he waited for three days in the ice and snow until Gregory agreed to see him and forgive his trespasses. The pope was reluctant, but as a priest he had to grant forgiveness for one’s sins. But Henry continued his opposition later, and even tried to unseat the pope again. He was excommunicated once more in 1080. With the Lombards’ support, Henry put forward the Archbishop of Ravenna to be pope, who even took the name Clement III. The emperor invaded Rome in 1081, and by 1084 he was successful in driving Gregory into exile at Sant’Angelo castle. Again Gregory excommunicated him, but Henry insisted on entering Rome, Clement (1080; 1084–1100) was officially consecrated “pope,” and Henry was consequently crowned emperor. But the Norman duke, an ally of Gregory, began a forced march into the city, and Henry fled up the coast. Unfortunately, though the Normans proved to be horrible rulers, and Gregory, facing popular discontent because of his allies’ behavior, fled to Monte Cassino and then to Salerno where he died. His last words were, “I have loved justice and hated inequity, and therefore I die in exile.” He was by all accounts one of the most accomplished and dedicated popes in the history of the Church. As for Henry, he was forced to abdicate in 1105, and admitted that he had dealt unjustly with Gregory.15

The Fate of Reforms Well before the end of the ninth century, aristocratic families had moved to take over the major institutions left in Rome and elsewhere, including the Church. Economic changes began to define European history, as different elements of the nobility jousted for power. The Church became more important, and its leaders made a tacit compromise with the folk religions and superstitions of the rural people. Earlier, Gregory the Great had permitted such a compromise, and at the same time focused on developing basic theological teachings with an increasing

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emphasis on Jesus as God’s Son and mankind’s Savior. In terms of the institutional Church, the later Hildebrand reforms were, in Norman Cantor’s words, “much more than the work of one man; it was the culmination of a large and complex upheaval within monasticism itself.” The monks with their learning and communal strength become an ideologically radical movement aimed at changing the Church and Western Civilization. Most of the reform elements came far from Rome—especially from northern Italy and the Rhineland. As for the popes, they also became more involved in safeguarding the Church from heresies and in providing the theological underpinnings for the Church in its continuing controversies with other Christians. The moral reaches of the papacy melted into the new political strengths of the popes, such that by the end of the first millennium the Church seemed far, far away from the simple Gospel. It took the efforts of Hildebrand, though, to fill the ranks of the Church with men and women dedicated to holiness and to service. The administrative style of the papacy changed once again as it embraced its new reform agenda. Hildebrand’s reach extended to more control over the Western Church, a monastic dose of discipline and order, and an insistence on pushing the reforms that enlightened Catholics wanted to be enacted. He moved to affiliate the Church with German political barons to give that Church the power to Christianize the new Europe. It took centuries for the Church to reap the benefits of strong papal leadership, monastic presence in the hinterlands, and dedicated missionaries. By the end of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Catholic Church and its papacy were the pre-eminent institutions in the Western world. The language the educated classes spoke was the product of the Benedictine monastic system, the philosophy that emerged came from orthodox theology, and the culture that began to break through the Dark Ages was in the custody of the Roman Catholic Church. In managing the Roman Church the papacy emphasized more its temporal powers, but used its spiritual authority to guide, lead, chastise and browbeat kings and nobility. The Dark Ages was a time of general decline and violence, and the papacy began to reform its ways and add to its sway. The Dark Ages were a time of both barbarians and missionaries.

Notes 1. Richard McBrien, Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (San Francisco: Harper, 2000), 144–51. 2. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 123–32; J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 110. 3. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 141–43; Claudio Rendina, The Popes: Histories and Secrets (Washington, D.C.: Seven Locks Press, 2002), 222–26. 4. Mc Brien, Lives of the Popes, 151. 5. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, pt. 4; Rendina, Popes, 243–47, E. R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes (New York: Dial Press, 1969).

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6. Bernard Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 117; Norman Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely rev. and expanded ed. of Medieval History, the Life and Death of a Civilization (New York: Harper, 1993), chap. 3; Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary, 176– 77. 7. Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy, 119. 8. Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy, 122–24. 9. Peter Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981). 10. Thomas C. Fox, Sexuality and Catholicism (New York: George Braziller, 1955), pt. 6. An interesting comparison is Serge Sauveron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000). 11. Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy, passim. 12. Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 130–31; Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1955). 13. Horace Mann, “Pope Gregory VI,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06791a.htm. 14. Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 120–22. 15. Thomas Oestereich, “Pope St. Gregory VII,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm.

Chapter 7

The Papal Monarchy, 1100–1500 One noted theologian, Yves Cardinal Congar, concluded that the eleventh century marked a major metamorphosis in the theology of the Church. “That turning point is, of course, embodied in the person of Gregory VII.” In pursuing his reform agenda, Gregory ended up making the Catholic Church even more of a legal institution—with established canon lawyers, legal and historical precedents, and papal edicts. At the very center of this network sat the new style papacy. Gregory insisted that in 1073 that the title “pope” would now be reserved only for the bishop of Rome. Later a successor, the even more powerful Innocent III (1198–1216), would extend the papal jurisdiction from the whole Church to the whole world. This period of time was particularly critical for the Western Church as it emphasized its secular influence across Europe. The most important developments were the popes as agents of reform, their involvement in disputes with secular authorities especially over investiture, and military efforts associated with the early Crusades. By 1050 the conversion of Europe was nearly complete. The period of the eleventh century was, in the words of Colin Morris, the “golden age of the Papacy.” As noted, the times also experienced great social changes and the growth of learning. Early on, the churches and the monasteries were really controlled by private owners, as bishops turned their religious offices into cash transactions, and Church benefits were often bought and sold, especially in the eleventh century. The hallmarks of this new Christian Europe included universities, hospitals, clerical celibacy, canon law, a strong papal government with an established college of cardinals in which the role of bishops and church bureaucrats would become accentuated.1

After Hildebrand After Gregory’s death, the factions supporting and opposing his reforms continued to do battle. As we have seen, in 1088 the former reform abbot at Cluny and bishop of Rosita, Oddone (di Chatillon) was elected pope. The election had been held outside of Rome since the forces of the “anti-pope” Clement III controlled 69

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the city. The new orthodox pope took the name Urban II, and as noted he presented himself as a follower of Gregory VII; but even with his diplomatic skills he could not pacify Emperor Henry IV. Later with the support of Henry’s son, Conrad, and with a display of force and bribery, Urban retook Rome and the historic palace of the papacy. In 1095 he instigated the First Crusade in part to divert the monarchs from competing with each other, and he was somewhat successful in instituting reforms in the Church in France and Spain. But Urban, despite his efforts, could not heal the “Filioque” split with the East. In the Roman Catholic Church, as in so many institutions, reforms, such as Gregory’s, are not permanent. 2 Since Constantine, the Church had benefited from its close alliances with Western princes and nobles—at least financially and politically. But for every advantage, there is a liability, and the popes began to act more like the very secular leaders they dealt with, while at the same time insisting that their judgments were informed by religion and God’s good graces. As has been recorded rather graphically in the conflict between Gregory and Henry, the medieval controversies especially in the eleventh century between the papacy and the Roman emperors centered often in Germany. At first, the appointment of many Church officials laid in the hands of designated secular authorities. Church offices were up for sale (simony), and the Holy Roman Emperor even had the ability to appoint the pope, although the pontiff would appoint and crown succeeding emperors. Reformers led by Gregory and his allies fought the practice of simony and were insistent on re-affirming the supremacy of the religious realm. Then in 1056, the six-year-old Henry IV became the German king after the death of his father, and the Church reformers made their move to curtail lay investiture. In 1059, a church council ruled that secular leaders were not to interfere in papal elections, and it established formally the College of Cardinals to perform the election function.3 The assertive Gregory VII had insisted that the Church was founded by God and that only the pope could appoint or depose clergyman or transfer them. As Henry matured, he became more aware of the pope’s power grab, and called Gregory not a pope, but “a false monk” whose alleged election was void. He noted that he was empowered as king by the grace of God to depose the pope. Later, his son Henry V in 1106 continued to insist on investiture, for Church appointments were linked with control of large tracts of land in the empire. 4 Meanwhile in England, the Church had similar problems, but in 1107 some sensible compromise was struck. Henry I of England gave up his right to invest bishops and abbots, but required them to do homage to him for their landed properties. Several years later in 1122, the papacy and the German king signed the Concordat of Worms which ended investiture, but which still allowed secular authorities to have significant influence in the appointment process. The Church controlled the ring and staff as symbols of ecclesiastical power, but the king in Germany controlled the lance and scepter as temporal signs of deference to the monarch.5

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The investiture controversy resulted in pitched battles, armed marches on Rome, the exiles of popes, and the choice of anti-popes. But for Germany at least, the central authority of the emperors declined, and local nobles became more important. Not until Bismarck in the nineteenth century would Germany be united again. The Church and the secular powers had once operated under a dual jurisdictional political theory, each respecting the checks and limitations of a balanced system. But the controversy over lay investiture of bishops and abbots was a full blown battle over raw power, and each side maneuvered to control the other. The Church was successful in some ways in limiting the Holy Roman Emperor, but it facilitated the growth of the power of the princes or local nobles, and in the process created opportunities for them to abandon Rome and support the nationalistic tendencies of wayward religious leaders. Thus came Martin Luther. The reforms of Gregory VII were in the end not totally successful, as the papacy and its allies faced enormous opposition from the clergy and also from the rising aristocracy. Appropriately enough, Gregory died in exile, and his immediate successors were either representatives of the conservative wing of the College of Cardinals or often reformers drawn from their ranks. Even the determined Urban II spent a considerable amount of his tenure out of Rome, and tried instead to restore the religious spirit by declaring the Crusades. Finally Pope Callistus II (1119–1124), originally named Guido of Vienne, France, reached a compromise on the investiture issue with the emperor and others. Popes after Gregory wavered; some as Innocent II (Gregorio Papareschi, 1130–1143) supported his reforms and his claims to power, but others such as the elderly Celestine II (Guido di Castello, 1143–1144) reversed some of those positions. Some of the popes as Hadrian IV (Nicholas Breakspear of England, 1154–1159) ended up at loggerheads with the Roman commune. Another major figure of the twelfth century was Pope Alexander III (Orlando Bandinelli, 1150–1181), a canon lawyer from Siena. He extended missionary activities east of the Baltic Sea; battled Frederick Barbarossa and anti-popes; checked Henry II of England for the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170; protected priests in faraway Finland; and convened the Third Lateran Council which extended the principle of two-thirds majority rule in papal elections. Like Innocent III he bettered secular sovereigns and interfered in their affairs. And as the decades passed, anti-popes continued to spring up. Those situations, along with disputes with the German emperors, continued, as did the illfated Crusades. Matters were not running smoothly for the Roman Catholic Church. Then at the end of the twelfth century the papacy was to see an extraordinary figure come to power.6

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Innocent III The high point of papal power in the twelfth century and in the Middle Ages in general came during the papacy of Innocent III (1198–1216). It was during this period that the papacy achieved it greatest ascendancy, ecclesiastically and politically. With that power would come responsibility, far different from what previous popes and people had expected. Born Lothario Trasimund of Segno in 1160 (?) at Anagi, Innocent was educated in Rome and in Paris, and studied law at Bologna, becoming a major jurist of his time. He held a variety of positions under several popes including his uncle, Clement III (1187–1191), and was elected pope at the age of 37. With the death of Henry VI in 1197, the new pope was able to restore papal power in the Papal States and in the city of Rome. Weary of Germanic rule, the Italians now welcomed the pope’s control over the peninsula.7 Innocent though was a person of great principle, and after Henry VI’s death, he accepted the responsibility to protect Henry’s young son’s right to rule Sicily. He invested the new Francis II as the king of that island in 1198, and continued to watch over his interests. He even encouraged him to marry Constance of Hungary to protect the young man’s throne. At the same time, Innocent faced a major division over who should succeed Henry VI in Germany with the Ghibelline (favoring the imperial power) and Guelph (favoring the papacy) factions supporting different candidates. He stayed neutral at first while the battle ensued. When one of the candidates, Philip of Swabia, protested that the pope was supporting the other candidate, Innocent responded that while he had no desire to intervene, he would protect the rights of the Church. But in fact he did encourage Philip’s opponent, Otto IV, as King of Rome. Innocent insisted that the papacy had a special relationship to the empire, one granted to it by Charlemagne. Thus the pope alone had the right to anoint, consecrate, and crown the king. It was a view that commanded a great deal of support at that time, and increased Otto’s standing when he was crowned by the pope in Rome in 1209. In return, Otto promised to respect various claims of the papacy in Italy; increase his guardianship of Sicily; adhere to the rights of the papacy in spiritual matters dealing with the hierarchy; protect the pope’s claim to revenues from vacant sees and ecclesiastical estates; and accept the need to combat heresies. But Otto finally decided to attack Frederick II, violating Innocent’s express prohibitions, and consequently the pope excommunicated him in 1210. Innocent formed an alliance with Philip Augustus of France and with some other German princes in order to depose Otto; consequently, the emperor was excommunicated, and Frederick II became the new emperor. In addition in another dispute, the pope sided with Philip’s wife to prevent the king from ending their marriage. In 1199, Innocent actually laid an interdict forbidding the sacraments on the entire population of France. Popular resentment of the king forced him to give up his position.

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Innocent III also intervened in a dispute over the selection of the archbishop of Canterbury. Instead of accepting any of the claims of the disputants, he named a compromise choice that King John refused to agree to. The pope then laid that island under an interdict and excommunicated the king. John caved in and even gave his kingdom away to the pope, making England a fiefdom of the papacy. Angry nobles resented John’s capitulation and forced him to sign the historic Magna Carta agreement, which the pope in turn declared null and void, because it was a product of violence. Still it became the precursor of AngloAmerican liberties.8 Over the years, the expansive pope interfered in the affairs of Leon, Portugal, Norway, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and also laid the groundwork for the Fourth Crusade. In the last, the wily Venetians proved to be a treacherous ally and induced the Crusaders to be diverted from the Holy Land. The pope angrily excommunicated the Venetians for their actions, but to no avail. Innocent also convened an ecumenical council, known as the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, which approved a crusade and attacked the Albigensian and the Waldensean heresies. It was also the council that used the word “transubstantiation” for the first time to describe the consecration of the Eucharist. Innocent, the consummate politician and church diplomat, was to make the acquaintance of two less than imperial figures, but ones of great consequence for the Church: St. Dominic and St. Francis, mendicants who aimed at reforming the Church by bringing it back to its original values. The first went after the intellectual underpinnings of heresies, and the latter went after the hearts of humankind. Innocent died in 1216 in Perugia. By all accounts, the medieval papacy had reached its high water mark in terms of power and influence in the world. Innocent, a legalistic figure preoccupied with moral laxity and doctrinal orthodoxy, also became a major figure in European politics, and for a while seemed to know no boundaries. No king, no emperor, no prince was more powerful a figure in the world at that time than Innocent III. The ambitions of Innocent III and his immediate successors, however, had to face the increasing desire of the monarchies in England and France to expand the centralization of power, to tax more the Church, and to encourage a sense of nationalism. In Rome, the aristocratic families were so powerful that they moved to limit the authority of the papacy in their city and in the Papal States.9 The century after Innocent’s breathtaking reign was one of great difficulties. The Church’s leadership became more brutal, epitomized by the actions of Innocent IV (1243–1254) who approved the use of torture by secular authorities during the Inquisition. Later one candidate was elected pope while visiting Rome only on business, and one was a widower with two children.10 One pope, Innocent V (1276), was a Dominican, and he insisted on still wearing his white cassock when in office, a color that all later popes eventually adopted. A Portuguese-born pope, John XXI (Pedro Juliao, 1276–1277), issued a bull, Relatio nimus implacida (1277), which Étienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, used to condemn 219 philosophical and theological statements, including 10 made by St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of all Catholic theologians and the future touch-

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stone of orthodoxy. That pope died when the ceiling of his study collapsed on him. His successor, Nicholas III (Giovanni Gaetano of the Orsini family) (1277– 80), was another devotee of nepotism, and the poet Dante put him in Hell for his misdeeds. One of his successors, Boniface VIII (Benedetto Gaetani, 1295–1303) was a canon lawyer who took a very broad view of both the temporal and spiritual powers of the papacy. He was a vain man with a short temper who moved from one diplomatic failure to another. In opposing the taxing of the clergy, he proclaimed, “The laity have always been hostile to the clergy.” He plundered the Church, demanded special treatment for his family, and got embroiled in a major conflict with Philip IV of France. In his bull Unam Sanctam (1302), he declared that outside the Church there is no salvation or remission of sin, a position some previous popes had held since Gregory VII. All human creatures are subject to the Roman pontiff.11

From Exile to Excess The papacy of Innocent III is often praised by historians—clerical and lay—as the high point of the papacy’s powers. Obviously if power is defined as the ability to prevail, this judgment is certainly true. His management style was highly authoritarian, broadly based, detail-oriented, and he wished to bring every other major international authority to heel. He recklessly used interdict and excommunication for more than just religious or doctrinal purposes. That style allowed him to prevail over secular authorities with whom he was predisposed to do battle. Rather than celebrate that management style and its supposed legacy, one should see Innocent as one major reason that the Church experienced deep trouble with kings and nobles and other elements of the Church’s hierarchy in coming centuries. Those continuous battles with monarchs and fights over control of lands, especially in Sicily, led to a serious loss of moral authority. For most of the fourteenth century, the papacy literally moved to southern France where it remained for seven decades, and its return led to a major schism and a variety of anti-popes. The Frenchman Raymond Bertrand de Got, Clement V (1305–1314), went to Avignon in order to avoid the pressures of the powerful Roman families, especially the Colonna and the Orsini clans. The papacy and its Curia lived in royal fashion, and the popes of this period added to their revenues by establishing more taxes on church appointments, special levies, and the sales of dispensations. They lived in a world of expensive clothes, fine silverware, and gilded plates—symbols of this world’s affluence. Corruption dripped down to the lower clergy, priests who sold indulgences, and monks who did not observe their vows.12 Popes excommunicated leading philosophical critics, including such eminent authorities as Marsilius of Padua and William Ockham. In turn, Ockham

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charged the pope with seventy errors and seven heresies. Under pressure from some noblemen, Pope Clement V actually sought to suppress the Knights Templar, important allies in the brutalities of the Crusades. Conflicts with the Holy Roman Empire also continued to put the papacy at risk, and the Catholic kings of France and of England were caught up in a conflict that became the Hundred Years War. Under intense pressure from the saintly Catherine of Siena, Pope Gregory XI (Pierre Roger de Beaufort, 1370–1378) left Avignon France and restored the papal court in Rome. But in the interim, he urged war against the city states in Northern Italy, and ended up excommunicating the entire city of Florence.13 The poet Petrarch called this period in Avignon the “Babylonian captivity” of the papacy, and the popes obviously became beholden to the protections of French influence. The return to Rome did not solve the Church’s problems. It led instead to the Western Schism (1378–1417), and the return also resulted in a series of popes and anti-popes who divided the allegiances of Christianity. At one time, in 1408, there were actually three popes claiming to rule concurrently. The Church Council of Constance in 1414 deposed one pope, and got a second to resign and elected a unity candidate, Martin V, (Oddone Colonna, 1417– 1431), a Vatican diplomat from a noble family. He was not an energetic reformer, but he pushed for vague concordats, and re-granted to Jews privileges that they had lost under the oppressive anti-pope Benedict XIII.14 In the fourteenth century, Western Europe was also impacted by the Black Plague, starting in the late 1340s and killing between one-third and two-thirds of the population. There are a variety of theories of its origin; most commentators say it was from fleas on rodents arriving from ships from Asia carrying a form of bubonic plague. The devastation led to the West becoming increasingly morbid and depressing. The results also included a depopulation of Europe, a rise in the cost of labor, a loss of faith in the Church, economic recession, and peasant uprisings. Cynicism grew toward important religious leaders, and monasteries that took in the ill were especially hard hit.15 Martin V was a unity pope, but he continued to be occupied with the favors of the papacy, and he denied the powers of any church councils to hear appeals of papal decisions. He also undertook to restore ties to the Greek Church, but he failed. Invasions of the Papal States continued under his successors, and it took considerable time and effort to contain them. Notable successors included Nicholas V (1447–1455) (Tommaso Parentucelli), bishop from Bologna and a friend of humanists of his time, who is best remembered as the first Renaissance pope. Nicholas began to restore order to the city of Rome, drove mercenary troops out of the Papal States, and reached some détente with the German King, Frederick III, eventually crowning him in St. Peter’s. He bought off one anti-pope, Felix V, getting him to resign and made him a cardinal. Nicholas loved Greek and Roman literature and upgraded the Vatican Library, and he restored churches, bridges and roads, hired the great artist Fra Angelica, and made the Church the very center of dynamic Western Culture. On the darker side, he granted the king of Portugal the right to reduce unbelievers to hereditary slavery and legitimized

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the slave trade in two papal bulls. To his deep sorrow, the Turks took control of Constantinople in 1453 during his reign. That Renaissance light was succeeded by the first of the Borgia popes, Callistus III (1455–1458), who went back to the world of the Crusades, indulgences, and higher taxes, thus raising opposition especially in France and Germany. He also restored anti-Semitic policies that banned interactions between Christians and Jews. His nephew would be the infamous Alexander VI, and Callistis was one of the major practitioners of nepotism in the history of the papacy. The papacy at the end of the century alternated between a burst of the Renaissance spirit and the corrupt world of the decades to come. Those two trends were best epitomized by Sixtus IV (147l–84). Born into a poor family near Genoa, Francesco della Rovere became a Franciscan, taught at the University of Pavia, was elected the head of the order, and then was chosen a cardinal. As pope he instigated a war against the city state of Ferrara by Venice; under pressure from King Ferdinand he supported the Inquisition in Spain; and he was also notorious for his embrace of nepotism, appointing a total of six nephews to the College of Cardinals. He was unfortunately involved in the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478 which led to the murder of Giulano de’Medici and the near death of his brother, the brilliant Lorenzo the Magnificent. He even once placed Venice under interdict—depriving the inhabitants of the sacraments. He also alienated Louis XI of France and several of the major city states of Italy, and as pope sidestepped the reform drives of the Council of Constance. To pay for his military efforts and the bill for his nepotism, he opened up the floodgates of indulgences and other revenue sources. He was a major patron of the early Renaissance artists building the Sistine Chapel, the Sistine Bridge, and the Via Sistina road to Castel Sant’Angelo; Sixtus enlarged the Vatican Library, started the Sistine Choir, laid the basis for the Capitoline Museums, and made Rome a center for arts, for letters, and even for the exploration of the sciences. Sixtus was in many ways one of the first modern urban planners, and he was more of a secular prince than a holy or committed Christian. Within the larger contexts of history, Sixtus became one of the factors leading to the Protestant revolt.16 His papacy was in one sense the culmination of several trends present in the papacy for centuries.

Gaining Power The Middle Ages had been represented as the high point of the power and influence of the Roman Catholic Church and its pontiff. No longer did the popes just deal with matters of doctrinal purity and uniform liturgy. They blustered and intrigued with the most egoistical monarchs and noble families. In the past, Christian leaders opposed heresies, but refused to counsel persecution of their opponents. But as Christianity became the established religion, it moved to create alliances with secular rulers. Eventually the popes laid their moral authority

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behind what became the Inquisition and the Crusades. The Church that had emphasized the importance of personal commitment to the true faith became an engine of intolerance and base superstition. Yet side by side with those developments were dedicated monks and clerical scholars who preserved and promoted the remnants of Western Civilization that would have been nearly submerged by the tides of barbarism. Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars for example met in Spain to review the powerful and newly resurrected works of Aristotle. By 1300, Dante would call him “the Master of those who know.” St. Thomas Aquinas actually quoted Muslim and Jewish commentators on Aristotle in his encyclopedic Summa Theologica.17 Culture was preserved by the Benedictine monasteries, and the faith was defended by St. Dominic and his order. Later the Dominicans proved to be both fine intellectuals and preachers, and also the animators of the Inquisition. The popes also came into contact with St. Francis and his order that appealed to the better natures of humankind. In one sense, those two figures represented the extreme poles of Catholicism: intellectual, judgmental, righteous, but also warm, open, and forgiving. The most powerful pope of the Middle Ages admitted both of those saints to his presence. Innocent III realized that the Church was greater than his legalistic temperament. But as the papacy moved into the vacuum in Western Europe after the fall of Rome, it realized that it had limited resources to carry on any military actions in a violent world. It sought to use its moral authority to woo powerful secular allies and so became contaminated in the process. The popes turned to the emperors in the east, and then to the Franks, and then the Germans, and then to the Normans. And back and forth they shifted alliances, aiming at first to protect the papacy and the Church, and then aggrandizing their office. As the popes became secular princes, they interfered in dynastic conflicts, accepted being guardians of young nobility, interjected themselves in marital conflicts, and even did battle with princes. One of the great stakes in the investiture controversy for the papacy and the Curia was the ability to control bishops, abbots, and church officials who tended to side with the men who appointed them. At stake as usual was also the ownership of land and wealth associated with high lay and clerical positions. Monarchs like Henry IV of Germany and later Henry VIII of England risked the enmity of the popes because of the wealth of the Church officials and their holdings. As Eamon Duffy has shown so ably, while Henry VIII cut off the people from the pope and became the head of the English Church, the people retained their Catholic customs and dogmas. Only when Elizabeth, his daughter by his second wife, feared a Church attack on her legitimacy did she move to create a new church, with a new liturgy and prayer book. 18 The popes also saw their prerogatives and their revenues as bound together. What was good for the papacy was good for the Church, and what was good for the Church was good for all of Christianity. It is easy to see how they made such facile identifications. The leadership style of popes varied in the Middle Ages. Some were reformers in the mold of Hildebrand, others were more conciliatory

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toward the outside world. Despite his Herculean efforts, Hildebrand was not totally successful in enacting the reform agenda in a still very decentralized Church. The same restraints were faced centuries later, but less so, by Innocent III. In the early Middle Ages, there were ineffective systemic checks and balances between the Church and secular authorities. Some commentators like to believe that this separation of powers was a precursor of what eventually evolved into constitutional governments, including the American— with its distinctive separation of powers in three branches and in a federal system of states and a national government. That analogy maybe stretching it a bit, but surely there was a element of restraint that prevailed in the early Middle Ages. But Lord Acton was correct that power corrupts, and as popes faced the problems of the decline of the empire, they turned to secular concerns. At first it was a matter of necessity, and then of choice, and eventually the papacy outstripped the secular world. The papacy created its own laws, its own diplomatic corps, and even sought to raise up armed forces to deal with aggressive princes and ambitious families. The popes played a balance-of-power game too frequently, supporting the lesser powers against major threats to their control over the papal territories and the greater wealth of the Church. E. R. Chamberlin wrote a book titled The Bad Popes, and bad some of them were at that time.19 But at other times popes picked up the mantle of reform, most notably Gregory the Great, Gregory VII, and Innocent III and were only partially successful, for the forces of aggrandizement and the alliances of power were too great for even the most determined reformer. In the fifteenth century, many of these popes were sons of the Renaissance—they were admirers of its ways and its elegant styles. They really were patrons of the arts, as well as patronage spoilsmen. By the time the Renaissance began, the cries for reform continued, but so did the abuses.

Notes 1. Richard McBrien, Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (San Francisco: Harper, 1997), 181. 2. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 190–92. 3. Bernard Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 172; Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), chap. 7. 4. Morris, Papal Monarchy, chap. 5; Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State 1050–1300 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1988). 5. Klemens Löffler, “Conflict of Investitures,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08084c.htm. 6. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 193; John Julius Norwich, Absolute Monarch: A History of the Papacy (New York: Random House, 2011); Marshall W.

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Baldwin, Alexander III and the Twelfth Century (New York: Newman Press, 1968). 7. Joseph Clayton, Pope Innocent and His Times (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1941); Leonard Elliott-Binns, Innocent III (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1968); James M. Powell, ed., Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World?, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1994); Sidney Raymond Packard, Europe and the Church under Innocent III, rev. ed., (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968); Kenneth Pennington, Pope and Bishops: The Papal Monarchy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984); Reginald L. Pool, Lectures on the History of the Papal Chancery down to the Time of Innocent III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915); Jane E. Sayers, Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198– 1216 (New York: Longman, 1994); Charles E. Smith, Innocent III, Church Defender (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951); Helen Tillman, Pope Innocent III (New York: North Holland Publishing Co, 1980); Daniel Philip Waley, The Papal State in the Thirteenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1961); Michael Riccards, “The Leadership Styles of Pope Innocent III,” www.hallnj.org. 8. Christopher Cheney, Pope Innocent III and England (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1976). 9. Morris, Papal Monarchy, chap. 7. 10. J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 196. 11. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 229–32. 12. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 232–34. 13. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 245–47; Edmund Gardner, “St. Catherine of Siena,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ 03447a.htm. 14. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 253–55. 15. Norman Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely rev. and expanded ed. of Medieval History, the Life and Death of a Civilization (New York: Harper, 1994), and his In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made (Collingdale, Penn.: Diane Publishing Co., 2004). 16. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 264–66. 17. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, passim. 18. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 19. E. R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes (New York: Dial Press, 1969).

Chapter 8

The Worldly Popes In the year 1500, the Roman Catholic Church celebrated a jubilee—a time of prayer and penance in which plenary indulgences proliferated across Christendom.1 Unfortunately the pope of that time was Alexander VI (1492–1503), one of the more personally corrupt and worldly of all the men who have occupied the Chair of St. Peter. He was born Rodrigo de Borgia y Borgia near Valencia, Spain. He was a nephew of the Borgia pope, Calixtus III (1455–1458) who named him a cardinal deacon at the age of the twenty-five, and a year later he became the powerful vice chancellor of the Holy See.

The Career of a Spoilsman From that sinecure he accumulated an enormous fortune while living a promiscuous lifestyle—extraordinary but not unusual in those rather loose times. 2 He sired at least seven children, both before and maybe after his election as pope. His mistresses were beautiful, sometimes married, and generally well-known; and, unlike other clergy who had strayed from the straight and narrow, Alexander rarely seemed bothered by the gap between his personal life and the moral admonitions befitting his august offices. Throughout his career, he was more a Borgia prince than a true dedicated churchman.3 The focal point of his passionate interest was not the great Church he nominally led spiritually, but the farreaching and oftentimes tempestuous family that he spawned. Unlike other popes even in his lifetime, he showed little propensity to reaffirm the faith in any long-term and concerted ways. Alexander VI was certainly an immoral man, and an unworthy priest. This was the temporal leader of the Catholic Church as it entered the new century. He came to the papacy in 1492 in a way worthy of the Borgias. Indeed any study of his papal leadership must acknowledge the role that the degenerate Borgia family culture played in the moral development of Rodrigo. The decadent Curial environment of his young manhood helps to explain the reign of Alexander VI—to explain it, but not to justify it—for he became its best defender and promoter. 81

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Rodrigo’s early patron was his Spanish uncle, the first Borgia pope, Calixtus III, himself a brilliant canon lawyer. Serving as the bishop of Valencia, Calixtus was elected at the age of seventy-seven as a compromise candidate between the warring Orsini and Colonna clans in Rome. He immediately began to organize a great crusade to free Constantinople from the Turks, and he became obsessed with the Turkish threat, even to the extent of stripping the volumes in the Vatican library of their gold and silver to support his war chest. Still he was rather ill during most of his term, which in many ways limited his effectiveness. One commentator of the time concluded that the Vatican resembled an infirmary, where the pope suffering from gout was surrounded by soft candlelight, ambitious nephews, and mendicant friars.4 There are two types of people who come to Rome: those who wish to save their souls and those that are content to lose them. Calixtus taught his Spanish relations a well-worn lesson they could not have easily learned anywhere else— the art and science of nepotism in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Surely no one learned those lessons better than Rodrigo. But still, despite his quick promotions, Rodrigo must have been a rather competent bureaucrat and Vatican retainer. For over thirty years he was a member of the Curia, held posts of responsibility under five very different sorts of popes, and was a king-maker in several papal conclaves. Thus he was not just promoted by the Calixtus circle, but learned his values under a variety of papal role models. And for over three decades he was not a satellite personality, but a major figure in the Vatican. He was called “the most sensual man in Rome” and he lived up to that accolade.5 What he believed about the Church and the dogmatic controversies of the time seemed to have been lost even to his latter-day apologists.6 Quite probably his election was greeted warmly by the Roman populace since he was so well known, and since he was a master at the art of crowd pleasing. But as the years passed, disillusionment set in. In 1501, Augustino Vespucci wrote to Niccolò Machiavelli that the pope had turned the Vatican palace into a brothel. And a hostile king Ferdinand of Naples concluded that “the Pope leads such a life that he is abominated by all, without any regard for the throne he occupies.” 7

The World of the Curia The world Rodrigo knew mainly was that of the Curia—populated by a very small number of Church princes who as a matter of practice profited from their positions of honor. Even though he was Spanish by birth, Rodrigo lived in the era of the worldly pontiffs and the treacheries that so characterized Italian politics. It is hard at times to judge if Italy corrupted the Church more than the Church corrupted Italy. As pope, Rodrigo would prove to be very adept at playing off the forces of clan warfare, tyrannical rule, and popular resentments so prevalent in that peninsula. He would be accused of exhibiting the vices of many

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of those rulers: duplicity, unscrupulous alliances, and even poisoning his rivals. The city-states that commanded the most attention at that time were in northern Italy, generally outside the papal provinces. Some retained feudal ties of loyalty to the Holy See, most did not. Their style of politics exhibited several common characteristics. Often the small republics as a way of government failed in those areas, and tyrants, usually military adventurers called condottieri, took over power. In a world with little legitimate authority, there were endless examples of palace intrigue and personal treachery. To please the masses, the regimes were deeply immersed in promoting dazzling pageantry, the visual arts, and often serious education. The large cities—Venice and Milan—were characterized by “perpetual quarrels and immortal hatreds.”8 And in their lifestyles, rulers exhibited a passion for travel, displays of gorgeous women, and unbridled sensuality. Prominent illegitimacy was accepted and offspring easily promoted, sometimes into the highest offices of the Church. Despite outward amity, princes feared for their lives and for their regimes. They seemed to cover over their internal anxieties with glistening jewels, elaborate firearms, masquerades and balls, and pageants featuring rare animals and large collections of beasts. In those city-states there was much spilling of blood, well-directed assassinations, iron-clad loyalties, and an emphasis on extended families. The effective prince, in Machiavelli’s famous terms, needed to be both a lion and a fox, and it was better to be feared than to be loved. Princes and tyrants, armed to the teeth, built fortress castles and promoted dynastic marriages even though they themselves were rarely from the nobility. They flaunted glittering possessions, prized gold and silver, and loved fine horses. The much-vaunted social style was called “arquzia”—not the intellectual dialogue of important ideas but brilliant banter and witty repartee.9

The Rise to Power It was that style of leadership, those core values, that Rodrigo internalized. His Curia environment was replete with family representatives from those city-states who lived even better than their secular counterparts. In such a world, Rodrigo shamelessly moved and handsomely succeeded. Years before his election as pontiff, Rodrigo Borgia had established a reputation for excess. At the age of twenty-nine, the young cardinal even received a reprimand from the jaded Pope Paul II (1464–1471) who warned against associations with loose women, worldly frivolities, and general lust. Paul insisted that “all Siena is talking about this orgy . . . our displeasure is beyond words . . . a cardinal should be beyond reproach.”10 Still in that period of time, the waning of the fifteenth century, it appeared that the papacy, even with all those abuses, had reached its high point in terms of power, influence, splendor, and control. As noted, sweeping across Italy and other developed parts of Europe were the beginnings of the Renaissance, starting

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in Florence with the rediscovery of classical values and classical languages. At times the works of Greek and Roman authors seemed to rival in inspiration the precepts of the sacred scriptures, even in some Church circles. The open spirit of the Renaissance and its stress on individualism and its “terrible” (or passionately intense) men also led to the great and treacherous families of the Italian citystates—the environment in which the Borgias so thrived.11 Most historians agree that Rodrigo Borgia may have been decadent, but he was also a man of some talent and ability. Still more contemporary historians argue that the decadency of the Borgias, especially Rodrigo, was a myth started by King Ferrante of Naples which set the tone of the very negative historical record. Rodrigo’s extraordinary wealth was built on revenues accumulated from his church offices, especially the vice chancellor’s position, several abbeys in Italy and Spain, and three bishoprics among others. When the faint of heart and the orthodox protested the pardons for major crimes that he sold, he blithely responded, “It is not God’s wish that a sinner should die, but that he should live—and pay.”12 In the conclave of 1484, he made his move to acquire the papacy, but the level of distrust and animosity toward him was so high that he became “a bridesmaid instead of a bride.” One envoy watching the proceedings wrote back home that “he who enters the conclave a pope leaves it a cardinal.” Thus a famous cliché was born. Instead of Borgia, the cardinals turned to Giovanni Battista Cibó, the bishop of Molfetta and himself the father of three illegitimate children before his ordination. He called himself Innocent VIII (1484–1492), and he flooded the conclave with written promises meant to entice the cardinals, promises which he later ignored. Innocent was not very innocent at all, for he was as secular and as involved as any Renaissance prince in promoting his family. Indeed he was the first pope to acknowledge openly his illegitimate children and not try to pawn them off as his nephews. He was called “at once weak and obstinate, rash and cowardly, accepting advice on all sides and acting upon none.”13 Even with this change in power, Rodrigo remained an important figure in the world of Curial politics. The historian Gasparino of Verona wrote of him at the time, “He is handsome; of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with honeyed and choice eloquence. The beautiful women, on whom his eyes are cast, he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more powerfully than the magnet.”14 Borgia seemed easygoing, passive, and generally indifferent to the demands of his office, insisting instead on supporting his large family by acquiring more and more gold.15 Then in the year 1492, Innocent died and the conclave turned to Borgia. The cardinal knew the game all too well. He remarked in passing that he had enough gold to fill the Sistine Chapel, and in one sense he did. He shamelessly bribed and manipulated his fellow cardinals who were themselves rather rich. 16 As he entered the conclave, he knew it was critical that he garner the vote of Ascanio Cardinal Sforza, and he offered him the vice chancellorship and promised a large cash payment. Legend has it before the dawn of the next day, four mule-

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drawn wagons of bullion were shipped from the Borgias to the Sforza palace. Still one vote short in the conclave, Rodrigo managed to convince the ninetysix-year-old cardinal of Venice to swap his vote for five thousand ducats of gold. Some apologists have argued that Borgia was elected unanimously and did not need to resort to bribery, and that paying off cardinals was simply a common practice for most popes of the time. In any case, when all was said and done, Rodrigo Borgia shouted out gleefully, “I am the pope, I am the pontiff, I am the Vicar of Christ.”17 And so he was. At first even Alexander VI seemed more restrained than Innocent had been. At sixty years old he was still a handsome, robust, and generous man who, like many Renaissance princes, loved to support and engage in public festivals. One Ferrarese envoy optimistically reported that the new pope had promised to reform the Curia, dismiss the secretaries, keep his sons out of Rome, and make worthy appointments. “It is said that he would be a glorious Pontiff, and will have no need for guardians.”18

The Vices of Office He was indeed a hard-working and accomplished administrator and was portrayed sympathetically in Rome as a second Caesar, having come to save the city. Alexander advocated the propagation of the faith in such diverse places as Greenland, the Congo, Granada, the West Indies, and various Portuguese possessions, and he pushed for internal Church reforms in Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, England, and Ireland. He defended ecclesiastical rights, controlled the powers of the dynasties in the Papal States, and promoted acts of piety toward the saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary. In his bull, Inter caetera, he settled the New World boundaries between Spain and Portugal and paid nominal attention to promoting a crusade against the Turks.19 Thus he seemed to take his duties seriously. But his critics have given history a very different picture from that of a dedicated churchman. The notable Florentine historian of the time, Francesco Guicciardini, recorded “these virtues were bound up with far greater faults. His manner of living was dissolute. He knew neither shame nor sincerity, neither faith nor religion. Moreover, he was possessed by an insatiable greed, and overwhelming ambition and a burning passion for the advancement of his many children who, in order to carry out his iniquitous designs, did not scruple to employ the most heinous means.” 20 His contemporary, Machiavelli, simply concluded that, of all the pontiffs, Alexander knew best how much he could accomplish with money and by force. His judged that Alexander “thought only of deceiving people, and he always found victims for his deceptions. There never was a man capable of such convincing asseverations, or so ready to swear the truth of something, who would honor his word less.” He concluded once that Alexander’s tastes were summarized as “luxury, simony, and cruelty.”

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As opposition mounted, his critics focused on his personal promiscuity and his nepotism. As noted, the pope, especially before his election, was prone to liaisons with attractive women, including married ones. One of his best known mistresses, Giulia Farnese, was a beautiful and voluptuous woman who was nicknamed by Alexander’s critics “Christ’s Bride,” and a picture of her shows her to have been a stunning figure. As soon as he was installed, Alexander made her young brother, Alessandro Farnese, a cardinal—“the petticoat cardinal” the Romans sneered (vulgarly called “cardinale fregnese”)—a man who later went on to become Pope Paul III (1534–1549).22

Papal Diplomacy While those associations of the Borgias caught the public attention, the one family member who has garnered more historical interest than any other was his son Cesare, who at age eighteen was made cardinal, bishop of Pampaluna, and archbishop of his father’s previous diocese of Valencia. As in any dynastic regime, Alexander moved to marry off his children including Cesare, so as to solidify foreign alliances, creating ties especially with Spain and various principalities in the complexity called Italy. To further buttress his position, Alexander also made another dynastic marriage, to the family of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, who were the patrons of Christopher Columbus, and in the process the pope added his support for their conquests in the New World.23 In the north of the Italian peninsula were the revered city-states, with their republics now in shambles and their rule devolving to despotic family regimes, such as the Medici in Florence, Sforza in Milan, Este in Ferrara, Baglioni in Perugia, and Malatesta in Rimini. In the words of E. R. Chamberlin, “They maintained their petty power by a series of shifting allegiances, each heralded by treachery, for in the narrow confines of the peninsula there was neither space nor time to establish long-lasting treaties.”23 Alexander played the game of intrigue and dynastic marriages with the best of them. The one major nation, however, that Alexander did not align the papacy with was France—so often the historic guardian of the Church in the past; but in this period an ambitious power being headed by a strange monarch, the homely, stuttering, hunchback Charles VIII. At first Alexander tried quietly to put together an Italian league—a special project of his uncle which embraced a collection of papal interests, Venice, Milan, and eventually Siena, Ferrara and Mantua, which was meant to curtail foreign influence in the peninsula. To strengthen his position, the pope firmed up his reign and the powers of his ambitious family by marrying off his son Giofré to the daughter of King Alphonso II of Naples. When Charles asserted his hereditary claim to the throne of Naples, the pope ignored him and, partially as a result of that slight, Alexander incurred the powerful wrath of Giuliano Cardinal della Rovere (later Pope Julius II) who charged

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the pope with corruption and simony. To Alexander’s consternation, della Rovere also called for a church council to depose the pope. That appeal was especially threatening in those days. The issue of whether a general church council could take precedence over the pope was a controversy with deep roots in the Catholic Church. The current balance today is clearly tilted toward the papacy. That has been especially so since Vatican I’s pronouncement acknowledging the infallibility of the pope, when he speaks ex cathedra on matters of faith or morals. But that view has not always been accepted in the Church. As has been seen, there have been councils, especially in the early centuries of organized Christianity, that have found popes guilty of heresy, of schismatic behavior, of corruption, and even of doctrinal error. In some important councils that defined critical church dogmas, such as the landmark Council of Nicaea in 325, it was the emperor who called that assembly together, not the pope. But the view that an ecumenical council was superior to the pope gained special support when the Council of Constance (1415–1418) helped heal the Great Schism, which originally witnessed the claims of three separate popes, each with his own supporters and papal residence. That scandal was ended by the Emperor Sigismund and the council, and in the process established the principle that the general councils held their authority directly from Christ and that everyone, including the pope, is bound to obey their decrees. It was this council at Constance to which opponents of the popes in the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century referred when they wished to curtail or depose incumbents. Thus the great threat to the stability of Alexander’s reign was the ambitious French king Charles, supported by some of the pope’s most determined enemies. Although Alexander engaged in the usual papal rhetoric of freeing the Holy Land from the control of the Muslims, he surreptitiously appealed over the heads of the Christian princes and peoples to the Sultan Bajazet for help against the French. Unfortunately for him, some of his written messages fell into the hands of the French, and the pope was accused of treachery with heathen allies. This was in marked contrast to King Charles, who also argued that one of the reasons he was moving to conquer Naples was to set the stage for a battle against the fearsome Turks. Caught up in dreams of conquest, King Charles’s forces moved deliberately down the peninsula of Italy encountering little real opposition. He was welcomed in Florence, for example, by the fiery monk Savonarola and later triumphed in the confused city of Rome. Alexander, fearing the imminent threat of Charles’s armies, decided to flee Rome, but later he changed his mind. When asked to resist, he snapped back, “You will cost me my head; let the French put themselves wherever they please.” Soon, at the very end of the year 1494, the French armies controlled Rome. But Charles, still a Catholic prince with devout Catholic subjects, refused to force Alexander out of office as the pope’s enemies demanded, and decided instead on making some rather modest demands. He of course also recognized that he was a prince of many states, and he once sarcas-

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tically said, “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.” Despite the successes of Charles, the papacy remained a powerful lure to the young monarch. When the two leaders signed an agreement, it stated: “Our Holy Father shall remain the king’s good father, and the king shall remain a good and devoted son of Our Holy Father.” Charles seemed to have prevailed clearly by overwhelming force of arms, although the king wished for strong support from the pontiff so that he could become the new king of Naples, and he also wished to be named formally the leader of the impending crusade. As a sign of cooperation, Alexander for a while even allowed his son, Cesare Borgia, to travel to Naples with the French forces. Caught up in his sense of destiny, Charles claimed that when he entered Capua, he saw in a dream a royal standard saying “Missus a Deo” (“I am the envoy of God”) and was instructed to move on to the Holy Land and to recapture the tomb of Christ. The French progressed to Naples, where soon they learned the cunning ways of a people who had survived there over the centuries. In response, the pope called forth his son Giovanni, the duke of Gandia, who was then in Spain, to be the commander of the papal forces and the legate of the Patrimony of St. Peter and also the city of Perugia. Eventually the pope’s forces and the Orsini clan drove the French out of Italy, and after the important battle of Fornovo on July 6, 1495, Charles began his retreat back to France. To check Charles, the pope continued his close association with Spain’s sovereign, formed an alliance with the Spanish king, the Holy Roman emperor, Venice, and Milan, and also reaffirmed his ties with the Kingdom of Naples by supporting the coronation of Frederick III, son of Ferdinand I of Aragon, in 1497. 24

Savonarola Enters It was during this period, from 1495 to 1498, that Alexander also was forced to deal with a powerful and angry prophet arising in the city of Florence. One of the most vocal critics of his reign was Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498), a passionate Dominican preacher who took over control of the important city of Florence and helped to force out the powerful Medici clan. Savonarola came from a well-established professional family in Ferrara and, already as a youth, was fixated on abolishing corruption and decadence. He called himself a partisan of truth and a despiser of perishable things. He seemed at an early age overwhelmed with the miseries of the world and its hypocrisies. “To be considered a man,” he proclaimed, “you must defile your mouth with the most filthy and brutal and tremendous blasphemies.” He was critical of the “animal virtue of sex” and felt that “all vices were lauded and all virtues derided” in the times he lived. Savonarola soon acquired a reputation as a charismatic preacher, and in 1490 was recalled to Florence ironically by Lorenzo de Medici. Within several years he grew increasingly powerful and aligned himself with Charles VIII, see-

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ing him as the instrument of the Church’s purification. For him the invasion was a divine punishment aimed at eradicating the corruptions of Italy, especially those brought on by the papacy. When Charles temporized about the pope, Savonarola also attacked him: “Most Christian Prince, you have incurred the wrath of God by neglecting the work of reforming the Church which, by my mouth, He has charged you to undertake.” At first Alexander, an amiable and tolerant man, ignored Savonarola’s denunciations. But when the preacher made common cause with his enemy, and when eventually the friar supported the summoning of a general council aimed at toppling the pontiff, Alexander extracted revenge. The city of Florence was infected by the monk’s fervor, and it began a great moral crusade led by children—a precursor of Mao Zedong’s Red Guards in modern day Communist China. Enormous crowds swelled the city to hear Savonarola’s denunciations. In 1493 the fiery preacher observed, “In the primitive Church the chalices were out of wood, the prelates of gold; in these days the Church hath chalices of gold and prelates of wood.” At first Alexander moved cautiously, and on July 21, 1495, he politely summoned the friar to Rome to give testimony on his so-called revelations from God. Savonarola declined, claiming illness. Then in 1496 he flouted Alexander’s directives that he should not preach until those issues under examination by the Holy See were settled. The pope let it be known, however, that he would not press the matter if Savonarola would just avoid dealing with questions of politics, but extremists have a dynamic all their own. In February 1497, Savonarola set aflame, in the central square of Florence, a “bonfire of the vanities” that torched offensive paintings, books, bottles of perfume, mirrors, dolls, playing cards, and gambling tables, among other items. Later that year the pope excommunicated him, and Savonarola turned around and challenged the very legitimacy of the papal brief of condemnation. He later asked for the pope’s pardon, but then he defied him once again by preaching publicly. The Florentine authorities grew weary of his flagrant actions and, fearing that the pope might lay an interdict on the city, withdrew their support. Raising the stakes, Savonarola called on the sovereigns of Europe to summon a church council to reform the Church and to depose Alexander. That step marked the end of his freedom. He was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to be hanged and his remains were burnt in the Piazza della Signoria. Thus one popular critic was eliminated from one of the more important cities on the peninsula.25

The Death of a Prince But Alexander’s reign was not without pain and defeat. During his prolonged battles with Charles VIII, the pope came face to face with tragedy. In June 1494, his son, the duke of Gandia, disappeared and later was found dead in a river, having been stabbed nine times. Without mercy, Roman critics concluded, “Tru-

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ly, now, is Alexander VI the fisher of men.” A shocked pope went into a period of deep mourning and depression. It was said that his son was the victim of an ill-planned love affair, or of the revenge of the clans in Rome, or more likely was killed because of the jealousy of his brother Cesare. Ironically, Alexander came out of his grief with the view that his son’s untimely death was God’s warning to mend his own life and reform the Church. He observed, “It must be that God thus punishes us for our sins, for the Duke has done nothing to deserve so terrible a fate . . . . Meanwhile we are resolved without delay to think of the Church first and foremost, and not of ourselves nor of our privileges. We must begin by reforming ourselves. The reformation of the Church we entrust to six most reverend cardinals whom I will proceed to nominate, with two assessors from the Rota. In particular, benefices will henceforth be given upon merit, and the cardinals’ vote will determine all promotions.” He concluded, “We renounce all nepotism. We will begin the reform with ourselves and so proceed through all levels of the Church until the whole work is accomplished.” A committee of six cardinals was named to lead the reform agenda and in about a month and a half’s time, they formed a list that condemned simony, loose living among clergy, the involvement of the clergy in worldly affairs, the keeping of concubines, ostentatious display of wealth with large numbers of servants, strolling players and musicians in bishops’ palaces, the mismanagement of the government of Rome, and the alienation of papal territories. But Alexander, growing increasingly lethargic, did not approve the bull. Once again, Alexander had betrayed his sacred obligation, and once more Alexander was not to be judged by mortal men. Recovering from his grief and temporary contrition, Alexander then put in motion a complex plan to place Cesare Borgia on the throne of Naples. First the pope’s daughter, Lucrezia, who was already married, was encouraged to ask for an annulment, on the bogus ground that the marriage was never consummated, so that the Borgia family could form an alliance that would allow them to control the kingdom of Naples. Then Cesare resigned his position as a cardinal to explore other opportunities; it was briefly commented, probably somewhat sarcastically, that he did it to save his soul. In fact, salvation had little to do with Cesare’s decision. He was being groomed at the age of twenty-two to take over the kingdom of Naples.26 Cesare left Italy to find a noble-born bride and to cement another sort of an alliance—one ironically with the papacy’s previous enemy, France. King Louis XII, who had succeeded Charles, found a mate to whom Cesare stayed married for only four months, whereupon Louis then began a major invasion of Italy. The pope, meanwhile, sought to establish an independent state for his son in Italy, and when King Louis captured Milan, Cesare began to acquire the cities of Imola and Forli as he moved toward taking over most of the Romagna region. Alexander was delighted at his son’s apparent successes, and on February 26, 1500, Cesare entered Rome like the conquerors of old. A period of licentiousness resulted, murders dotted the Roman landscape, and Cesare brutally extended his rule in a way his father never could. As time passed, Alexander became

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concerned not with the evil deeds around him, but with unorthodox ideas and their promulgation. The offerings for the jubilee year 1500 became a part of the Borgia war chest, and Cesare was the major beneficiary. In a city of seventy thousand people, over two hundred thousand pilgrims came to visit. Undoubtedly they experienced firsthand the corruption and immoralities so at variance with the faith that had brought them to the Church’s capital city. Indeed the pope’s avarice knew few bounds in those years. As men were named cardinals, they paid dearly for the honor by giving twenty thousand or more ducats to the pope’s emissaries. Simony was back in bloom once again. Alexander even postponed the beginning of Lent in the city of Ferrara so the people could eat handsomely and have festivals marking the arrival of his daughter. And as his reign continued, so did the corruption, family alliances, and secular pomp. In the hot and humid summer of 1503, Alexander VI despondently watched his cousin’s funeral from his view in the Vatican Palace, when an owl suddenly flew in the room and ominously expired at his feet. Soon Alexander himself became very ill and died; rumors spread that he had passed away in the way Borgias so often employed against their enemies—death by arsenic poisoning. As the pope lay dying, a very ill Cesare ordered the looting of the Vatican quarters.27 Bitter critics claimed that by Alexander’s deathbed could be seen the devil disguised in the shape of an ape who jumped out of the chamber. The pontiff’s face quickly discolored and became greatly distorted, and porters had to stuff the corpse of the late pope into too small a coffin. One commentator recorded, “The decomposition and blackness of his face increased constantly so that he looked at eight o’clock when I saw him like the blackest cloth or the blackest negro, completely spotted, the nose swollen, the mouth quite large, the tongue swollen up, doubled so it started out of his lips, the mouth open, in short so horrible that no one saw anything similar or declared to know of it.” It was recorded “no candles were lit, no priest or other person of dignity attended the corpse.” Guicciardini concluded, “He was more evil and more lucky than, perhaps, any other pope for many ages before.”28

The Warrior Pope The basic principles of Alexander’s foreign policy were fairly set by the time of his death: to break the power of the noble families and clans around Rome likely to challenge him in the city and in the papal territories; to curtail both Habsburg and French hegemony in Italy; to plant his own sons on important thrones so as to promote his family’s destiny, to create a dynastic legacy, and also to protect the Holy See’s flanks. The College of Cardinals however still contained men who belonged to

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some of those clans and families, and others who supported various nations’ objectives besides those of the papacy. In October 1503, the conclave chose Francesco Todeschini-Piccolomini, a nephew of Pius II and a well-regarded diplomat and church administrator. He took the name of Pius III. He was meant to be a respite from the endless turmoil and extensive corruption of the Borgia papacy.29 However, he died abruptly seventeen days later. The cardinals then turned to one of Alexander’s fiercest critics, Giuliano della Rovere, a nephew of Sixtus IV (1471–1484), who had risen up the ladder of preferment, accumulating great wealth, and fathering three daughters when he was a cardinal. Apparently before his election as pope, he promised special treatment to Cesare Borgia in order to guarantee his support and to get the votes of the Borgia allies, the eight Spanish cardinals. Eventually as expected, the pope turned on Cesare and drove him out of the city, and started promoting a long critique of the corruptions of the Borgias—a view that greatly influenced historians then and now.30 The new pontiff took the name of Julius II (1503–1513) and is best remembered today more as a determined military figure than as a dedicated religious shepherd. He is also celebrated as the difficult patron of some of the greatest artistic geniuses of the Renaissance—Bramante the architect, Raphael the painter, and of course the universal genius Michelangelo.31 Born probably in 1445 near Savona on the Ligurian cost, Giuliano della Rovere came from an impoverished but noble family. Luckily for him, though, he was also the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV and was encouraged by his family to use the Church as the testing ground for success and ambition. At the age of eighteen, he was named bishop of Carpentras and later the cardinal-priest of San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains). As was the corrupt tradition of the time, he was given other dioceses, including Avignon and various abbeys and benefices, most notably the position of cardinal-bishop of St. Sabina.32 Giuliano was educated by the Franciscan order in Perugia and was trained in canon law, although he never aspired to a life of scholarship or excelled in learning. He was characterized at the time as a man who was not particularly brilliant, despite having a fine literary education, and as a serious and prudent fellow though somewhat rough in manner. Later to his contemporaries, he seemed more rash than prudent. He was of medium height for that time, well proportioned but with a short, thick neck, a round face, full checks, a rosy complexion and large eyes. At the end of his tenure, he grew a beard which was contrary to the long tradition that popes were clean-shaven. He was given to furious outbursts of anger, seemed to be impetuous to the extreme, and was the epitome of what Italians called terribilità, a man exhibiting frightening behavior when crossed. Contemporaries say that even his portrait had the effect of making the viewer shudder. At a young age, Giuliano became associated with the interests of the Kingdom of Naples, and in the process alienated the powerful Sforza family in Milan. Over the years in the papal court he was involved in various diplomatic representations, but occasionally annoyed even his uncle Sixtus IV with his oppos-

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ing views. At one time he was accused of plotting to kill a rival cousin, Girolamo Riario, a charge that probably was not true. He was influential in supporting the alliance established by Florence, Milan, and Naples meant to contain the powerful and independent city-state of Venice. As a sign of Sixtus’s favor, he was granted the bishopric of Bologna, where he came into contact with the Bentivoglio clan—a family that would prove to be an important rival during his tumultuous papacy.33 Through the skillful use of bribes, he aided in the election of Innocent VIII in 1484 and became one of his closest advisors, perhaps wielding even greater influence than he did under his uncle. In Innocent’s papal court, Giuliano was especially vocal in urging that the pope support the Neapolitan barons in their war in 1485 against King Ferrante, probably because of his desire to protect the interests of his brother Giovanni, rather than being concerned about the territories of the papacy. His diplomatic skills were melded with an appreciation of the use of military troops and the practical need to garner money to raise up and furnish armies, two attributes that would characterize his own papacy. With the death of Innocent, Giuliano had to face the frightening personal consequences that might result from the ascendancy of his enemy Alexander VI. He soon went into a self-imposed exile for about a decade, and during those years encouraged the French king, Charles VIII, to invade Italy and to call for a church council to depose Alexander on charges of simony. For over twenty years, those two men both as young and as mature ecclesiastical players had grown old together in the College of Cardinals. Both men were favored by the politics of nepotism and both had enriched themselves by the benefices (incomeproducing ecclesiastical offices) bestowed on them by papal relations and allies. Alexander, of course, was more of a sensuous libertine, but his rival did not lead a life of celibacy either. As noted, as a cardinal, Giuliano fathered three daughters, although sensuality surely was not the powerful impetus that drove his personality the way that it did Rodrigo Borgia. Giuliano regarded Alexander as an unscrupulous and dangerous Borgia family member, the head of a clan capable of great treachery and unbridled violence. And as for Alexander, he was actually somewhat frightened of his more serious rival, although at times he did concede that he was a man of his word.34 Against all patriotic sentiments that a Renaissance Italian might harbor, Giuliano had encouraged Charles VIII to invade the peninsula and thus end Alexander’s reign. Charles in turn flattered Giuliano by saying on one occasion, “By God, this man has come for the good of Christendom.” But as Charles tempered his treatment of the pope, Giuliano began to fade into the background, especially as the French armies moved successfully down through Italy. Instead of toppling the pope, in March 1493 Charles brokered an agreement with Alexander VI aimed at protecting Giuliano’s properties and privileges, but the cardinal in exile showed little gratitude toward either king or pope. 35 When the young Charles died prematurely on April 7, 1498, he was succeeded by his distant cousin, Louis d’Orleans, who inherited the former’s claim to the kingdom of Naples and who also had, through his grandmother, a claim to

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the duchy of Milan. Giuliano quickly became the new monarch’s advisor, especially in his conflicts against the pope and papal interests. When Louis invaded Milan, Giuliano was in the procession that marked his triumph.

Doing Battle Then Alexander died, and in September 1503 Giuliano returned to Rome after nearly a decade in exile to take part in the papal conclave to elect a successor. The thirty-seven cardinals chose Piccolomini who died after less than a month’s time, but the next conclave chose Giuliano who took the name of Julius. To win the election he made an alliance of convenience with Cesare Borgia and garnered the votes of the Spanish cardinals. Still Julius was disgusted at his own behavior, and warned, “See the problems, which the mess Pope Alexander left behind him, is leading to, with so many cardinals. Necessity forces men to do what they don’t want to do, so long as they’re in the hands of others; but once they’re free, they can behave differently.”36 Although Julius had encouraged French monarchs to violate Italian interests and had shown a distinct partiality toward the French regime, as pope he was quickly identified as a strong-willed leader who insisted on protecting the Church’s privileges and territories. It had been historical papal policy to oppose having any one major power exercise control over both northern and southern Italy, territories above and below the Papal States, and such a policy Julius vigorously implemented. Louis’s ambitions in asserting claims in both Naples and Milan were clearly in true collision with that traditional view. Throughout his reign, Julius sought to create in Italy a balance of power and to force out foreign powers. Thus was the irony of his position as pope, considering his earlier advocacy of French domination of Italy. To support his objectives, Julius first had to exert some strong control over the disloyal barons in the Papal States and to reassert the temporal interests of the Church in those areas. But as Julius was planning for his coronation, Venice moved quickly into the papal province of the Romagna, which drew the pope’s considerable wrath. Almost immediately he began his strategy to break the power of the Venetians. Candidly, Julius was to observe that wherever the Venetians went, “by sea or land, especially in Italy, they are too overbearing. . . . I know what’s in my interests and [those] of the Church and my family; but it’s also in the interest of Italy and of the world.”37 In September 1504, the French regime and Spanish king concluded a series of treaties at Blois, which ended the conflict between them over the question of the future of the Kingdom of Naples and led to a joint alliance against Venice. The pope supported their peace efforts and also moved to solidify the cooperation of the major feuding noble Roman clans, the Orsini and the Colonna, which so upset the stability of the city. With Rome at peace, Julius then sent arms to subdue Perugia and Bologna in order to strengthen his position in the north.

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With twenty-four cardinals accompanying him, the pope dramatically left Rome on August 25, 1506, and personally led the army’s expedition, finally conquering both cities. One of Julius’s biographers, Christine Shaw, described the pope’s entry into Perugia on September 13: He was met at the gates by the priors of the city government, dressed in new rose-coloured robes, who handed him the keys to the city. They and other officials, together with a crowd of doctors from the university, accompanied him as he was carried to the cathedral in his papal seat. Their progress was slowed by the performances of various Latin songs (Julius began to chafe at the delays), and the dispute over precedence that was almost as much a part of the routine at such formal entries as the interminable songs and mimes—the dispute on this occasion between the Dominicans and the Canons Regular. (Another customary diversion that Julius might happily have done without was the seizure of his mule, when he dismounted near the gates, by a group of youths who had met him outside the city: it cost him fifty ducats to ransom it.) On reaching the cathedral he prayed and heard a Te Deum sung by his own choir, and then was carried to the palace of the priors.38 On November 11, 1506, in the city of Bologna, where Julius had been bishop, the pope marched through the city and forced out the powerful Bentivogilo family who had been abandoned by their previous ally, Louis XII. Now he turned his attention to humbling Venice.39 But there were other monarchs with equally far-reaching ambitions. Maximilian, the Habsburg king, had already decided to claim the imperial crown of Rome and to restore the rights of the empire in the process. He informed Pope Julius that he wished to be crowned formally as king of the Romans and had already assumed the title “Roman Emperor-Elect.” When that occurred, Julius diplomatically said little, but France and Venice vehemently objected to Maximilian’s ambitions. As for the pope, he was still more concerned that Venice be forced to give up the papal territories that it had seized early in his reign. On one occasion, he threatened Venice’s envoy, Francesco Pisani, and predicted, “I will make Venice again a little fishing village.” The response of the envoy was especially confrontational, “Unless you are reasonable, Holy Father, we will make you a little parish priest.” 40 As his allies and enemies would find out, the pope would prove to be a determined foe. Single-mindedly, he encouraged the kings of France and Spain to join the League of Cambrai to oppose Venice, which they did in December 1508. Ferrara, Mantua, and Urbino soon joined the alliance. In effect Julius was inviting foreign troops once again into a war against an Italian power. Using his powers as pope, he threatened to excommunicate the people of Venice, and consequently some of its leaders appealed for a church council to curtail his activities and perhaps displace him.41

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On the Offensive Facing increasingly powerful Venetian opposition, Julius suddenly made an abrupt turn in policy and warned that if Venice were defeated and there was a continuing foreign presence in Italy, the Church would be deleteriously impacted. He then concluded a treaty with Venice in 1510, in which Venice renounced its claims on the cities of the Romagna region, long a point of contention with the pope, and agreed to some concessions on church offices and jurisdictions. 42 The pope then tried to reassert control over Ferrara, an ancient fiefdom of the Church, and he demanded the termination of any claims by the duke there. Angry at Julius’s betrayal, King Louis decided to assemble a Church synod at Tours in September 1510 so as to repudiate the view that the pope had any right to claim obedience from the faithful when he made war on Christian princes for temporal reasons. As a result, the French clergy loyally reaffirmed the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which in 1438 had carved out nationalistic claims meant to protect the French church vis-à-vis the pope. The king then allied himself with the emperor and promoted a general council at Pisa, which later moved to Milan. The rebel cardinals charged that Julius had broken his vows at his election when he swore to call a council within two years.43 During these conflicts Julius ironically became in many Italians’ eyes a patriotic warrior against the foreign powers, especially France and the Holy Roman Emperor. He visited the frontlines, prayed with the troops in trenches, recited verses of Virgil, and appeared unceremoniously at some of the most dangerous spots. In March 1511, he suffered a disastrous turn of fate when his armies lost control of Bologna, and the crowds angrily destroyed a bronze statue of Julius II done by the celebrated Michelangelo. It appeared that his luck as a warrior priest had run its course.44 Rebellious cardinals supported by the emperor and the king of France met at Pisa to challenge his authority and to demand reform of the Church and its Curia. The wheel had come full circle as he now had to face the disturbing fate of a council doing to him what he wished to do to Alexander VI. Meanwhile Emperor Maximilian was secretly writing letters proclaiming the strange idea that he would turn Julius out of office and become the next pope himself. The pope repeatedly referred to the emperor as bestia, “fool” or “blockhead.”45 But indeed if Julius could meld the religious office of pope and the secular post of military leader, why not vice versa? Amid all the chaos at this time, a young Augustinian, Martin Luther, was visiting Rome on business for his order while the pope was out of the city. Then on June 27, 1511, the pope regained the initiative and called for a new church council to be held at the Lateran and scheduled to begin in April 1512. The pope vigorously condemned the schismatic cardinals’ meeting in Pisa and laid that city under interdict, denying it the sacraments and the ministries of the Church’s clergy. Later under tremendous stresses, Julius fell deathly ill and his

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demise was reported. The papal apartment was even ransacked, and riots began in the streets, and the unhappy barons of Rome came into the daylight. But Julius refused to die, and peace was finally restored to the city. Upon his miraculous recovery, the pope became even more dedicated to driving the French armies out of Italy, as if that objective gave his life new meaning. He formed a new anti-French coalition, the Holy Alliance, finalized on October 5, 1511, and concluded a treaty to hire Swiss mercenary troops to add to his own forces. On April 11, 1512, the French and papal forces faced each other at the important battle of Ravenna, and the king’s armies finally prevailed. The cardinals pleaded with the pope to sue for peace, and Julius even considered fleeing the city. At first he seemed to accept the articles of peace, but tough Swiss troops proved to be an important barrier providing protection for the pope, and they eventually captured Milan in June. Julius returned to the full trappings of his high ecclesiastical office and made great use of pomp at the opening of the Lateran Council on May 3, 1512. Facing continued strong opposition, the French armies eventually retreated, and the pope restored control over Bologna. The pope, who had so recently seemed ready to flee himself, now watched as the city of Rome celebrated his victory over the foreign invaders. By 1512 the recalcitrant city-states and principalities were falling all over themselves to acknowledge the power and wisdom of Julius II, the new patriot pope of Italy. His battle cry was clear: “Out with the barbarians.” The pope had driven the French out, it was true, but in the process the Spanish had gained control of the Kingdom of Naples, and the emperor was even stronger in the north. In February 1513, the pope became seriously ill again and asked for the cardinals to pray for his soul, saying that he had been a great sinner and had not governed the Church as he should have. At his death he was eulogized as a guardian of justice, a proper aggrandizer of the Roman Catholic Church, and a fervent protector against tyrants and outside barbarians. The definitive historian of the papacy, Ludwig von Pastor, judged him to be one of the greatest popes since Innocent III (1198-1216). But others said that the “terrible pope,” this man of great and ferocious energy, was a vicar of Christ who was mainly secular in his interests, and who introduced a new religion that had little to do with Jesus Christ. One contemporary, Bernardo Cardinal Dovizi da Bibbiena, simply concluded of Julius, “I have never known a greater madman.” Overall Julius was a man of monumental individuality, whose energy infused not only his armies, but also the great artists around him in the city-state that he labored to reconstruct.46

The Medici Pope Of all the popes of the Renaissance, none had better epitomized its ideals and its weaknesses than the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Giovanni

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de’Medici, or Leo X (1513–1521). He was born in 1475 to the greatest of all of the Renaissance families that controlled the greatest of all the Renaissance cities, Florence. Lorenzo clearly had his son placed early on his ecclesiastical pathways and used his enormous influence and prestige to move him to the pinnacles of power. Giovanni was admitted to the clerical state at the tender age of seven, named a cardinal-deacon of Santa Maria in Dominica at the age of thirteen, and was chosen pope at thirty-seven. For all his good fortune, Giovanni received considerable counsel early on from his wise father, who worried about the corrupting influences of the papal court and that “sink of iniquity,” as he characterized Rome. He reminded Giovanni that he owed his position as the youngest member of the College of Cardinals to God’s favor, and that he could repay Him only by leading a pious, chaste, and exemplary life. Lorenzo recognized that this son had an obligation to prefer the Church and the Apostolic See over his family and his native city, and that he should be vigilant and unassuming in his behavior. He advised his son to be attentive in his conduct and to confide little in others. In his dealings with the pope, then Innocent VIII, his son was admonished not to trouble him too often and to converse with him only on agreeable topics.47 It was for good reason that Lorenzo was called by his contemporaries “the most glorious man that could be found.” And his death severely affected Florence, the Medici fortunes, and the fate of his young son. Like Julius II, Giovanni de’Medici foresaw evil portents when Alexander the Borgia pope replaced Innocent VIII, and he urged his colleagues to flee “the rapacious wolf.” In Florence, Savonarola had taken over power from the Medici family, and he too turned against Alexander. Those times represented the nadir of Giovanni’s career, a career that seemed to be among the most gifted in the Renaissance Church. Consequently three cardinals, Giuliano della Rovere (Julius II), Giulio de’Medici (Clement VII) and Giovanni—all future popes—went into exile, and watched as Italy faced turmoil, major dislocations, and war. 48 However with Alexander’s death and after the brief reign of Pius III, Julius assumed the papacy, and the fortunes of Giovanni brightened. In Rome his palace became a center for the flourishing of the arts in ways that only a Medici prince could know and appreciate. But these two men, of course, were very different. Julius was a rough-spoken and passionate personality who once admonished Michelangelo, then completing a sculpture of him, not to put a book but a sword in his hand, saying “I am no schoolman!” Several years later after Julius died, the humanist Erasmus penned a scurrilous anonymous play in which St. Peter prevents the pope from approaching the gates of paradise because of his secular papacy. Machiavelli probably would have agreed when he observed, “Only those who have abandoned the art of plain speaking and have lost the habit of right thinking extol the Pontiff’s memory above that of his predecessors.” But it was the great Raphael who preserved Julius best in his portrait done in the pontiff’s later years that had him sitting at rest—an imposing, tired, yet still powerful figure. Giovanni, unlike Julius, was a true Renaissance prince and humanist, but this was the world he inherited.49

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After Pius III’s death, twenty-four cardinals met in conclave. Giovanni arrived in a litter due to an illness, and the Sacred College debated for more than a week before selecting the cultured, younger man whose health they thought was a bit tenuous and who they assumed would not have a long-standing papacy either. Thus at the age of thirty-seven, the second son of Lorenzo de’Medici became pope. He was viewed rather favorably, was known to all as a lover of literature and the fine arts, and elected without recourse to simony or bribery. The Venetian ambassador, Marino Giorgi, observed that the new pope was “a very good-tempered and generous man, who shrinks from severe exertion and desires peace. He would never be drawn into war unless entangled in it by his adherents. He loves the sciences and is well versed in literature and canon law, but above all else he is an excellent musician.” The new pope took the name of Leo, and he appeared to his contemporaries as tall and dignified with a large head and rather weak vision. He loved and supported the good things of life and was supposed to have said, “Since God has given us the Papacy . . . let us enjoy it.” He inherited from the frugal Julius a full treasury that he promptly squandered on entertainments, sports, and celebrations. He was fascinated by rare animals and created a famous stir when he received a huge elephant as a gift from the king on Portugal for one of his extravaganzas.50 At first Leo shared Julius’s disdain for the French and supported the Spaniards who had helped the Medici family come back into power in Florence. The young pope seemed initially frivolous and flighty, but it soon became apparent that he shared Julius’s vision of the need to rid Italy of foreign powers and Alexander’s desire to weld central Italy into one important Church-led state. Like Alexander, but not like Julius, he too pushed for his family’s interests in his foreign policy ventures. Although Leo had promised that he would not attempt any move against the French monarch, he retained Julius’s reservations toward King Louis’s ambitions. He watched with increasing anxiety as Louis firmed up his relations with the Venetian state. The French had a long history of animosity toward the Medici family; when he was a cardinal, Leo had actually been imprisoned at Ravenna by them. While the power of the French state was increasingly apparent, the Swiss refused Louis’s entreaties and remained staunch allies of the papacy. Leo also pursued Henry VIII in England as a way of checking Louis’s ambition, and expressed “paternal kindness” for Henry’s achievements and his alliance. In addition, the pope appealed to the Venetians to end their partiality toward the French, and he even sent an envoy to that city to argue that the king’s age and sexual appetites would become increasingly burdensome with the presence in court of a new, young wife whom he had taken. Still Leo periodically appealed to Louis for peace, and earlier had received some support from the king’s religiously devout first wife. By seeking to check Louis, the pope’s prestige increased substantially, while he also kept in mind the importance of providing for the interests of the

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Medici family. Leo helped unite Tuscany, Ferrara, and Urbino for his nephew Lorenzo and helped promote his brother’s control over the Kingdom of Naples. He proposed a treaty to the French and then renewed his treaties with Louis’s rivals, the houses of Aragon and Austria. Obviously Louis was dismayed by the pope’s deviousness. Leo’s reservations about Louis continued with his successor, Francis I, a twenty-two-year-old who has been called “courageous even to a romantic extreme.” He had dreams of being a great conqueror and attempted to neutralize the influence of Henry VIII, Ferdinand of Aragon, and the emperor-elect Maximilian in order to obtain his objectives. He even reached out to the pope for some support and reaffirmed his nation’s traditional alliance with Venice. At the battle of Marignano in September 1515, the French monarch courageously led his troops to victory, and eventually the pope was forced to accept a treaty acknowledging that fact. The two leaders pledged to assist in each other’s defense, and the king promised to protect the Medici family and their control of Florence. The pope in turn surrendered the cities of Parma and Piacenza. On one occasion, the king acknowledged to Leo that France and his predecessor Julius II had been enemies, but he admitted that Julius was “a most excellent commander, and would have made a much better general of an army than a Roman pontiff.” The two parties agreed to end the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438 that provided for extensive privileges to the French church without reference to the papacy. As noted, the Pragmatic Sanction had included provisions acknowledging the authority of the general councils and regulations, the conferring of benefices and other Church positions, the celebration of the divine office, and the election of bishops by cathedral chapels and abbots by their abbeys. This new concordat also provided for an end to the call for periodic church councils, a concession that was an important victory for the papacy. At first Leo had to reassert a position of neutrality among the European princes, while he watched approvingly as Ferdinand I, emperor Maximilian I, and Henry VIII established an anti-French alliance. But when Ferdinand died, leadership passed to the unreliable Maximilian. Still the pope moved very deliberately in giving any aid to France despite his earlier treaty commitments, and focused most of his energies in foreign policy, especially on trying to take over the duchy of Urbino. While the pope continued to express concern about Francis’s ambitions, his critical attention extended also to the young Charles V, who, through the varying legacies of his family, sought to assume the title of King of the Romans (the Habsburg throne), the Spanish kingdom, and the Kingdom of Naples—a vast collection of states that represented a real threat to traditional papal foreign policy of balance of power. Lastly, in order to keep the peace in Europe, Leo tried to garner some common support from the Christian monarchs for a new crusade in Turkey against the Ottoman Empire. But the conflicts and confrontations in western Europe were too strong to be transferred to a great crusade against the Muslims. Still the prestige of the pope as a powerful leader and as a shrewd diplomat was deeply admired, although he was not personally trusted by the major princ-

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es. Leo spent considerable Church funds in his various battles, including his attempt to take over the duchy of Ferrara. And he negotiated with Francis I, and then with his enemies, in order to wrestle the city of Milan from French domination.51 Thus the pope had absolutely no scruples in making alliances with different kings and princes, abandoning them easily, lying about the provisions of their treaties, and generally proving to be an unfaithful ally. Still Leo shared the general historical objective of the Holy See as he strove to balance the great powers of Europe: to prevent any one of them from gaining control of both northern and southern Italy. It must be remembered that Leo was a Medici, and he learned the amoral ways of diplomacy, uncertain alliance building, and the fragility of commitments at an early age. He was an integral part of the attempts to return his family to Florence after its exile and to restore it to its former grandeur. He was then a cardinal and a skilled master in what historian Ludwig von Pastor called “the habit of insincerity.”52 Although he was a gentle and cultured man, he seemed to elicit some powerful opposition. In an extraordinary turn of events, a group of cardinals led by Alfonso Petrucci sought to poison the pope. Leo found out about it, and finally enacted a variety of penalties and retributions. As usual one cause was a sense of slight about the granting of papal favors, and another because some papal policies deleteriously impacted on Petrucci’s brother, who was deprived of his position in Siena. The pope closed the gates of the Vatican, ordered the College of Cardinals into session, had some of the culprits tried and tortured, granted some leniency, had others executed, and moved to pack the College of Cardinals with more reliable men. He created thirty-one cardinals, the largest group in the history of the Church up to that time. The Lateran Council convened reluctantly by Julius had been dismissed in 1517, even though Leo had encouraged it to undertake a reform of the Church. Thus there was then little organized opposition to Leo’s policies in his later years.53 The cities of Florence and Rome were finally safely in the hands of the Medici leaders, and in May 1521 the pope signed a treaty between the Holy See and the emperor to check the French king. Under all those stresses and strains, Leo grew weary and, after the French loss of Milan and just before his forty-sixth birthday, he died—some said of poison. He had spent lavishly, increased the abuses of office peddling, and prepared the way for a sense of outrage that fueled the Reformation. Guicciardini concluded that he was a prince who “deceived the high expectations entertained of him when he was raised to the Papacy, since he therein displayed more cunning and less goodness than the world had imagined of him.” Another commentator, Fra Paolo, noted, “Leo X displayed a singular proficiency in polite literature, wonderful humanity, benevolence and mildness, the greatest liberality, and an extreme inclination to favour excellent and learned men; insomuch, that for a long course of years, no one had sat on the pontifical throne that could in any way be compared to him. He would, indeed, have been a perfect pontiff, if to these accomplishments he had united some knowledge to matters of religion, and a greater inclination to piety, to neither of which he ap-

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peared to pay any great attention.” His supporter, Erasmus, was more charitable, concluding that he gave three benefits to mankind: “the restoration of Christian piety, the revival of letters, and the establishment of peace throughout Christendom.” Unlike Alexander and Julius, Pope Leo at least performed publicly his ecclesiastical duties conscientiously, as befitted well the high office that he held. Still some insisted that he was not concerned about the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, or that he was really an atheist, or that he referred dismissively to “this fable of Christ.”54 Overall he enjoyed life a bit too much, prized the hunts, the parades, the banquets, the dazzling display of arts, so much so that he neglected to see the rot and decadence that was fueling the fires of a German revolt that would eventually shake the very foundations of Christendom and the papacy as well. His contemporaries and some latter-day historians were correct—he was too often a man of extravagance and frivolity, and while life is meant to be enjoyed, there is a season of seriousness that has to mark people’s attentions. Leo would have been a better pope if he had listened to his father’s admonitions a generation ago—Rome was a sinkhole, and it corrupted the Church that was in turn corrupting it.

Managing a Renaissance Church For many contemporary observers, the papacy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries seemed to have reached the epitome of power and influence, making a remarkable rebound from the Avignon captivity (1309–1377) and the Great Schism (1378–1417). Those worldly popes were Renaissance princes, who at times bested even the most powerful monarchs and the most unscrupulous of diplomats. Apologists of that papacy point out, with some justification, that the rapaciousness of the political order around them required that the Catholic Church be safeguarded by having an autonomous state, well-protected and armed to stave off conquest. To support these ecclesiastical monarchs, there needed to be a dependable corps of able courtiers, so they adopted a typical Italian strategy—they gave positions of preferment and patronage to their relatives. They were the least untrustworthy of one’s potential enemies. The Borgia and the Medici popes made prudent calculations befitting the environment they lived in, and their reigns consequently became synonymous with nepotism. To solidify their power, to fund their expensive wars and papal courts, they sold what they had available to them—the offices of the Roman Catholic Church and later the spiritual bequests of the Christian ways of life. The Renaissance was a time of extremes, and the popes of that era exhibited many of the same vices and virtues as their secular counterparts. However their leadership styles varied: Alexander was a great libertine, who submerged Church interests to accommodate the ambitions of his far-flung family. In the

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process, though, he sought to create a cohesive papally directed central region of Italy that would grant his family hereditary rights and guarantee the Church some sense of security and autonomy. He was a remarkably tolerant man in many ways, but he seemed to be a pope who engaged in all sorts of immoralities to advance his cause. His successor, Julius II, did not feel the need to bathe the Holy See in his family’s relations. He seemed to believe that the sheer force of his personality could hold together the traditional territories of the papacy. Even before his coronation was celebrated, however, the Venetians moved to control towns that were traditionally in fealty to the pope. To those who argue that the papacy should have simply avoided the politics of the secular world, this episode is a hard-learned lesson. Julius protected the temporal interests of the Catholic Church by the brutal acts of war and by the armies that he led. That style is so dissonant with the modern images of the papacy that he remains a much criticized exception in that reformulation of the office. A warrior king is a noble tradition, a warrior pope is a blasphemy. A man of terrible passions, Julius showed how much of leadership is due to the alchemy of personality and the sheer level of physical energy. The first Medici pope was different in temperament, but he also moved to protect Church interests by preventing any one power from gaining control over all of Italy. While Julius used his arms to prevent such hegemony, Leo X emphasized duplicitous diplomacy and fickle treaty making. Deceit is often the best weapon of the weak, and the city-states and papal regions were comparatively weak next to the great European powers. Leo at first pushed for a Christian peace among those powers and asked them to rescue the Holy Land. But his good wishes were not reciprocated and his fairly gentle ways may have emboldened some to pursue the assassination attempt on his life. To those who advocated peace and good works, the papacy of this Medici pope is little consolation about the viability of such a pacific approach. He demoted his assailants, downgraded the Curia, and upended the opposition to his policies in the Church. Leo, a rather sensitive soul, paid the price of being a Renaissance prince. As his father could have taught him, one can do good only if one stays in power. And what shall we say of the western Church? Popes are supposed to be above all vicars of Christ rather than warriors, shrewd diplomats, or patrons of high art. They should be concerned with the major expectations of their role—to teach and to protect the deposit of the Christian faith. In that perspective, the worldly popes came remarkably close at times to being a public scandal for the Church. But the problems of the Roman Catholic Church were more extensive than the several men sitting on the top of an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. Throughout western Europe the dry rot of corrupt men in high positions in the Church had taken place, affecting the lower clergy, the bishops and the monasteries. Surely the papacy had suffered the aftereffects of the years in Avignon and the Great Schism with three popes competing for dominance. The greatest asset of the Roman Catholic Church has been its sense of a continuous line of doctrine and

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leaders tracing back to St. Peter and to the Gospels. Schisms and exiles strike at the very heart of that cultural and theological stability. Yet when the Council of Constance ended that schism, it ironically restored a single pope, Martin V, who began a restoration of the power of that unique office. Thus the triumph of conciliarism actually led to a restoration of papal authority and prestige. During this period, there were widespread and publicly recognized instances of clerical abuses and neglect of parishes. Clerical concubinage was so widespread that it may have reached one-third of the clergy, and Pope Pius II even considered allowing priests to marry to end the scandal. Absentee bishops were often a way of life; and monasteries, once the very centers of Church and papal reform efforts, were becoming repositories of lethargy, laxness, wealth, and even immorality. Although there were many sensational exposés that are overdrawn, too often the basic values of monastic life—prayer, penitence, renunciation, dedication—were lost as the houses of monks and nuns became havens for those who ignored the demands of that way of life. In Spain, for example, some kings made their old concubines abbesses; in Friesland pregnant nuns resorted to abortion and infanticide. In Rome there were instances of priests who held the Eucharist up to public scorn rather than worship. But there were also many parishes and monasteries in which standards of devotion and faith remained high, and church attendance, respect for the Blessed Virgin Mary, religious endowments, and religious fervor flourished. Still, by the year 1500, there was talk of the de-Christianization of western Europe as there was in the latter part of the twentieth century. Perhaps western Europe had never been as Christian as is generally believed; perhaps the Middle Ages was really a thin Catholic veneer covering over deep plateaus of cynicism, despair, pagan superstitions, and general unbelief. But if so, the Renaissance Church and the Renaissance popes were presiding over a rollback of the hardearned gains of missionaries and dedicated clergy.55 It has been found in empirical studies that leadership is grounded in the dynamics of trust and the importance of personal example. The popes of this time did not foster such a type of common respect, especially concerning the high religious office they held. And in life, example is more telling than exhortation, and those popes could rarely offer much in the way of legitimate admonition that could be taught and accepted seriously. They abused the Church, and in the process they opened it up to a far greater schism than ever before and to the ways of both protesting and orthodox reformations.

Notes 1. Giuseppe Portigliotti, The Borgias: Alexander VI, Caesar, Lucrezia (New York: Knopf, 1927), 29. 2. Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1900), vol. 7, pt. 1, 324.

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3. Peter Partner, The Papal State under Martin V: The Administration and Government of the Temporal Power in the Early Fifteenth Century (London: British School at Rome, 1958). Also of interest is his earlier “Camera Papae: Problems of Papal Finance in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 4 (1953): 55–68; and more comprehensive Peter Partner, Renaissance Rome 1500–1559: A Portrait of a Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450– 1521 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979). 4. Arnold H. Mathew, The Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI (London: Stanley Paul and Co., 1924), 26; Michael Mallett, The Borgias: The Rise and Fall of the Most Infamous Family in History (Chicago: Academy Publishers, 2005). 5. Giovanna R. Solari, The House of Farnese (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1968), 15. 6. Peter De Roo, ed., Material for a History of Pope Alexander VI, His Relatives and His Time, vol. 2, From the Cradle to the Throne (New York: Universal Knowledge Foundation, 1924). 7. Portigliotti, Borgias, 51, 98. 8. Geoffrey Barraclough, Papal Provisions: Aspects of Church History, Constitutional, Legal, and Administrative, in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1935); D. S. Chambers, “The Economic Predicament of Renaissance Cardinals,” Studies in Medieval Renaissance History 3 (1966), 289–311; for a broader context see: Harry G. Hynes, The Privileges of Cardinals: Commentary with Historical Notes (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1945), 7–13; Sergio Bertelli, Franco Cardini, Elvira Garbero Zonci, et al., The Courts of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Facts on File, 1985); Edward G. Gardner, Dukes & Poets in Ferrara: A Study in the Poetry, Religion and Politics of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (1904; reprint, New York: Haskell House, 1968), 29; L. Collison-Morley, The Story of the Sforzas (New York: Dutton and Co., 1934); Solari, House of Farnese; Kate Simon, A Renaissance Tapestry: The Gonzaga of Mantua (New York: Harper and Row, 1988); Maria Bellonci, A Prince of Mantua: The Life and Times of Vincenzo Gonzaga (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1956); C. F. Black, “The Baglioni as Tyrants of Perugia, 1488–1540,” English Historical Review 85, no. 335 (1970), 245–81. 9. Gardner, Dukes& Poets, passim; Collison-Morley, Sforzas, passim. 10. E. R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes (New York: Dial Press, 1969), 61; Ivan Cloulas, The Borgias (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1993), 85; Frederick Baron Corvo, Chronicles of the House of Borgia (1901; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1962). 11. Charles Grant Robertson, Caesar Borgia: The Stanhope Essay for 1891 (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1891), 1–15; Orestes Ferrara, The Borgia Pope: Alexander the Sixth (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1940). 12. Chamberlin, Bad Popes, 167; William Miller, Mediaeval Rome; From

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Hildebrand to Clement VIII: 1073–1600 (London: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1902); Gerald Noll, The Renaissance Popes (London: Constable, 2006). 13. Chamberlin, Bad Popes, 167–69; Edward Armstrong, Lorenzo De’ Medici and Florence in the Fifteenth Century (London: G. Putnam’s, 1923), 221. 14. Ferdinand Gregorovius, Lucretia Borgia: According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day (1903; reprint, New York: B. Blom, 1968), 9; Rachel Erlanger, Lucretia Borgia: A Biography (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1978). 15. Richard McBrien, Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco 1997), 266–67; Erlanger, Lucrezia Borgia, passim. 16. Chamberlin, Bad Popes, 70. 17. De Roo, Material, vol. 2, 376; J. H. Whetfield, “New Views of the Borgias,” History 28 (March 1944): 77–88; Margaret Yeo, The Greatest of the Borgias (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1952) on St. Francis Borgia (1510– 1572). 18. Mathew, Rodrigo Borgia, 73. 19. De Roo, Material, vol. 3, passim; Sidney Z. Ehler and John B. Morrall, eds., Church and State through the Centuries: A Collection of Historical Documents with Commentaries (London: Burns & Oates, 1954); H. Vander Linden, “Alexander VI and the Demarcation of the Maritime and Colonial Domains of Spain and Portugal, 1493–1494,” American Historical Review 22, no. 1 (October 1916): 1–20. 20. Chamberlin, Bad Popes, 173; a slightly different translation is in Francesco Guicciardini, History of Italy, trans. Sidney Alexander (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 10. 21. Cloulas, Borgias, 25; Machiavelli’s remarks are in The Prince, chap. 18; and his poem The First Decennale (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). 22. Chamberlin, Bad Popes, 178–79. 23. Chamberlin, Bad Popes, 180. 24. On conciliarism, see Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (London: Cambridge University Press, 1955); Paul E. Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963); Hans Küng, Infallible? An Inquiry (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), 113–16; John B. Morrall, Gerson and the Great Schism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1960; Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1923), vol. 5, 448, 472; Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome, vol. 7, pt. 1, 364–80; Cloulas, Borgias, 110–14. 25. Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Four Lawgivers: Savonarola, Machiavelli, Castiglioni, Aretino (New York: World Publishing Co., 1933) pt. 1; Pierre Van Paasen, The Crown of Fire: The Life and Times of Girolamo

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Savonarola (New York: Scribner, 1960), Chamberlin, Bad Popes, 189; his Advent sermon of 1493 is cited in John C. Olin, ed., The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyala: Reform in the Church 1495–1540 (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), xvii. 26. William Harrison Woodward, Cesare Borgia, a Biography (New York: E. Dutton, 1914), 113. 27. Chamberlin, Bad Popes, 191–93, 204. 28. Johann Burchard, Pope Alexander and His Court, Extracts from the Latin Diary of Johannes Burchardus (New York: N. L. Brown, 1921), 186; Johann Burchard, At the Court of Borgia: Being an Account of the Reign of Pope Alexander VI, ed. Geoffrey Parker (London: The Folio Society, 1963). 29. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 269–70. 30. Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome, vol. 8, pt. 1, passim; M. Creighton, A History of the Papacy from the Schism to the Sack of Rome (1897; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1974), chap. 12. 31. James H. Beck, Three Worlds of Michelangelo (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999); Loren Partridge and Randolph Starn, A Renaissance Likeness: Art and Culture in Raphael’s Julius II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Christoph R. Frommel, “Papal Policy: The Planning of Rome during Renaissance,” in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds., Art and History: Images and Their Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 39– 60. 32. McBrien, History of Popes, 270. 33. Christine Shaw, Julius II: The Warrior Pope (London: Blackwell, 1993), 12–46. 34. Shaw, Julius II, 81–89. 35. Shaw, Julius II, 97–99. 36. Shaw, Julius II, 113–21; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, chap.1. 37. Shaw, Julius II, 36; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, chap. 2. 38. Shaw, Julius II, 154–55; Charles L. Stinger, “Roma Triumphans: Triumphs in the Thought and Ceremonies of Renaissance Rome,” in Paul Maurice Clogan, ed., Medievalia et Humanistica: Studies in Medieval & Renaissance Culture (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), 189–200. Also of interest is Stanislaus von Moss, “The Palace as a Fortress: Rome and Bologna under Pope Julius II,” in Harry A. Millon and Linda Nochlin, eds., Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978), 46–79. 39. Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome, vol. 8, 50. 40. Shaw, Julius II, 58. 41. Felix Gilbert, The Pope, His Banker and Venice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), on the loan Julius encouraged from the wealthy Agostino Chigi to Venice; Pastor, History of Popes, vol. 6, chap. 4. 42. Arthur Gobineau, The Golden Flower (1924; reprint, Freeport N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1968), 83–102. 43. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, chap. 6–7. 44. Shaw, Julius II, 78.

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45. Walter Ullmann, “Julius II and the Schismatic Cardinals,” Studies in Church History 9 (1972), 177–93 which argues that these cardinals were genuinely concerned by Julius’s administration and his betrayal of his promise to call a Church Council; Shaw, Julius II, 219; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, chap. 6. 46. Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome, vol. 8, pt. 7, 114. 47. Herbert M. Vaughan, The Medici Popes (Leo X and Clement VII) (1908; reprint, Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1971), 27. 48. Henry Edward Napier, Florentine History from the Earliest Authentic Records to the Ascension of Ferdinand the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany (London: Edward Maxon, 1847), vol. 4, chap. 10; Armstrong, Lorenzo De’ Medici, passim. 49. Vaughan, Medici Popes, 103; Beck, Three Worlds of Michelangelo, passim; Desiderius Erasmus, The Julius Exclusus, trans. Paul Pascal (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968). 50. Silvio A. Bedini, The Pope’s Elephant (Nashville, Tenn.: J. S. Sanders and Co., 1998); William Roscoe, The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth (London: George Bell & Sons, 1888), vol. 1, chap. 10; Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome, chap. 3; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 8, 75–76. 51. Roscoe, Leo X, vol. 1, 370–83 and vol. 2, 2–53, 357–59. The concordat permitted the French monarch the right to nominate individuals to all higher church offices (bishops, abbots and priors) and allowed the pope to name only lesser ones. But the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438, which controlled papal rights, was terminated. That concordat lasted until the French Revolution in 1789. See McBrien, History of Popes, 273; Kenneth M. Setton, “Pope Leo X and the Turkish Peril,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 113, no. 6 (December 1969): 367–424. 52. Black, “The Baglioni as Tyrants of Perugia,” 45–81; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 8, 86; C. F. Black, “Perugia and Papal Absolutism in the Sixteenth Century,” English Historical Review 96, no. 380 (July 1981): 509–38. 53. G. F. Young, The Medici (New York: Modern Library, 1933), chaps. 13, 15, 17; Creighton, History of the Papacy, vol. 5, chap. 10; R. J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Gobineau, Golden Flower, chap. 4; Nelson H. Minnich, “Concepts of Reform Proposed at the Fifth Lateran Council,” Archivum Historiae Pontificial 7 (1969), 163–251. The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1717) was later dwarfed by the more important Council of Trent. But in its deliberations it dealt with the abuses associated with past papal elections, some of the issues raised at the Pisa-Milan Council, reform of canon law, the discipline of religious orders, evangelicalism and the New World, Curial taxation, the nature of the individual soul, overall church discipline, censorship of books, the crusade against the Turks, the constraints on the popes dealing with the French Church, and even the practices of pawn shops. 54. John D’Amico, “Papal History and Curial Reform in the Renaissance,” Archivum Historiae Pontifical 18 (1990): 157–210; Vaughan, Medici, 201; Ros-

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coe, Leo the Tenth, vol. 2, 383–88; Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1953), chap. 28 55. Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (London: Basil Blackwell, 1987), chap. 1; Joseph Lortz, How the Reformation Came (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964).

Chapter 9

The Protestant Reformation The Roman Catholic Church was no stranger to heresy, schism and apostasy. Since its very beginnings, the tenets of the faith, the very dogmas of organized Christianity, have been the subject of fierce controversy and divisions. In the past, though, the Church was able to suppress the forces of heresy and apostasy, usually because of energetic, reforming popes, such as Gregory VII (1073– 1085), Alexander III (1159–1181) and Innocent III (1198–1215), through the effectiveness of church councils that laid out the parameters of orthodoxy, or through the powerful intercessions of lay authorities, such as the Emperor Constantine I at the Council of Nicaea, and Sigismund, who summoned the Council of Constance to end the schism of the three popes.1 But the popes of the high Renaissance were not ecclesiastical reformers; they were diplomats, warriors, and dilettante scholars. Generally they opposed church councils and sought to check any attempt by secular authorities to reform the Church in their charge. And the economic stability of their reigns rested too heavily on the structure of privileges and benefits made possible by the very abuses that corrupted the Church organization.

Creating the Reformation Thus the Protestant Reformation approached, under the initial aegis of an intense Catholic friar, the Augustinian scholar, Martin Luther. There are as many explanations for the rise of the Protestant movement as there are commentators. Some stress the abuses of the Church hierarchy, the changing economy of the late Renaissance period, the anxieties of society as it departed in significant ways from traditional and feudal village life to a more dynamic capitalistic economy, and the animosities of the Germanic and other non-Latin peoples toward the rapaciousness of the Latin Church.2 In addition, the invention of the printing press gave Luther a major opportunity to tell his dissenting story; it has been estimated that the Protestant movement had a twenty-to-one advantage in sympathies among the printers. Luther could have been easily crushed as had heretics before him—but the 111

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Habsburg-Spanish thrones were occupied by Charles V, who was preoccupied with the threat of the invading Muslim Turks and the incredible pressures of his far-flung empire, which included the recently discovered territories of the New World as well. At times, the papacy exhibited its own failure of nerve in dealing with Luther, fearful of alienating important German princes, who were needed for allegiance to the Holy See’s foreign policy aims in the Holy Roman Empire and for securing the Papal States in Italy. 3 Often the Reformation is seen as a great divide in European intellectual thought—relating to the Renaissance with its strong emphasis on individualism, or the late Middle Ages with a renewed sense of community and piety, or the Enlightenment with its stress on reason. Luther disliked most of the classical philosophers, instead being indebted more to St. Augustine and St. Paul. Like all complex movements, the causes of the Reformation can be so over-investigated that one loses any initial appreciation of its consequences. Our approach here is that the Reformation rested on what its founders claimed—a very different understanding of religious dogma, and that its development was very much an assault on papal leadership and its inability to once again purify the Church of their fathers and of themselves.4 Surely we know from our own times how important ideas are in impacting on society and on people in general. But those ideas, beliefs, and ideologies are all grounded in the happenings, the circumstances, the vocabularies of specific eras and periods. So too the assault on the Roman Church rested on major changes that were taking place in the economic, political, demographic and social contexts of western Europe. Despite the stereotype that the pre-Reformation social order was remarkably stable and regulated, in fact the end of the fifteenth century was a time of farreaching and complex changes. In terms of population, western Europe was seeing a rebound from the scourges of the Black Death, the continuing hostilities of war, and the increase of malaria. But at the mid-point of the next century, rapid population growth had led to inflation, higher farm and land prices, lower wages, and popular unrest.5 Those times were eras of discovery and exploration in the New World, and also of massive emigration across the plains of eastern Europe. The influx of silver, the varied commodities from America, and to a lesser extent the importation of gold, all added to inflation and the loss of real wages and purchasing power—causes that fueled the fires of discontent and general unhappiness. Towns and cities were growing up, although only 10 to 15 percent of the population lived in even moderate sized urban areas. Society was less feudal in its relationships, but was still characterized by a regulated and hierarchical structure. People, however, were bound together by bonds of personal obligations and a sense of duty not clearly dictated and framed by formal law. Nation-states were becoming more dynastic and centralized, except in Italy and Germany, which stayed divided into hosts of political jurisdictions. The most pervasive force in the West remained the Roman Catholic Church, which had grown rich and powerful, controlling some one-third of the

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real estate of the Holy Roman Empire. In its relentless search for revenues, the papal court too often treated the pious German people as a cash cow for its ventures, and Luther won considerable support when he castigated the Italians for their haughty disdain of the so-called barbarous people of the north. Peasants and other groups in the cities were increasingly unhappy with monastic enterprises such as tanneries, mills, printing shops, and even taverns that were operated by clergy. There was an increase in lay literacy with the greater availability of printed matter and the establishment of new universities and centers of learning, all of which aided in furthering a more critical view of life. It has been said that the people were more often preoccupied with the devil than with the love of God. But those times were more complicated than that. In Flanders it has been estimated that 40 percent of the people were Christians of good character, while 10 percent were fervent practitioners of the faith, and the rest were rather indifferent. Rates of religiosity are rather inexact even today with our techniques of survey research. We do know, however, that the times were characterized by a fervent piety of many common people, a deep preoccupation with the hovering presence of death, and a real acknowledgment of the movement of the devil in the world of man.6 In Martin Luther, many of these developments and sentiments came together.

The Challenges of Luther Luther was the son of a Thuringian miner and later small-time entrepreneur who had plans for his son to enter into the law as a prelude for a career in the civil service or administration. Martin entered the University at Erfurt in 1501 and was exposed to traditional Christian philosophy and Latin culture. Then while on a journey in 1505, he was caught in a frightening thunderstorm that led him to vow to Saint Anne (the patron saint of miners) that he would dedicate his life to the religious life. Against his father’s strong objections, he chose the respected and highly regarded Order of Observant Augustinians. He said on one occasion that not only his father, but even God and the devil had opposed his vocation. Luther’s quick conversion seemed to parallel the sudden conversion of St. Paul. Despite Martin’s commitment to an austere way of seeking salvation, he remained deeply rent by a sense of sin and the magnitude of God’s presence, especially when compared to the puniness of man’s efforts to know Him. Overshadowing his personal anguish was an all-pervasive dread of death, the cold finality that was merited by Original Sin. Although Luther came to realize that it was Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and His unique mission that was man’s only lifeline to salvation, it was by faith alone, rather than through strenuous penances and good works, that one came to be saved. In this interpretation, Luther emphasized his debt to St. Paul and to St. Augustine by insisting on justification by faith alone, through a commitment to what he called “the theology of the cross.”7

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On his spiritual journey, Luther was becoming a successful university teacher and a preacher of some renown. In 1508 he was transferred to the order’s house in Wittenberg, but then returned to Erfurt. In 1510–11, he went to Rome on behalf of the order, although the pope was not in the city at the time. Later Luther acknowledged he was upset by the moral laxity of the city and the apparent cynicism that characterized the priesthood there. In the intervening years he took his doctorate and concentrated even more on explicating the epistles of St. Paul. Later Luther testified that he experienced a profound insight while in the tower of a local monastery, which helped him to understand the entire issue of justification and salvation. There he realized that only by Christ’s sudden intervention can one be saved. The role of good works and the intermediary status of the Church thus became moot.8 Then in 1517, the same year Pope Leo ended the Fifth Lateran Council, Martin Luther came to the popular forefront by a broad-based attack on the doctrine of papal indulgences then being offered near Wittenberg by a Dominican preacher, Johann Tetzel. The Catholic Church has maintained that it alone has the power to forgive sins in God’s name, citing Christ’s admonition in the Bible that the apostles were empowered to bind and to loosen matters on earth. But as the formal doctrine of penance was developed, orthodox Church theologians in the West came to insist that while confessors could remit the guilt of sin, there remained a temporal punishment that had to be worked off by good works here on earth or by time in purgatory. The concept of purgatory and a fully developed theory of indulgences went together. Since the saints, the Blessed Virgin, and especially Jesus Christ himself, were so meritorious, they created an excess of good works, which accumulated in a sort of “treasury of merit” that could be applied against the temporal punishment of others. The excess was expressed in terms of days such as one hundred days’ indulgence, which would cancel one hundred days of ecclesiastical penalties. In 1095 Pope Urban II had granted what some historians argue was a plenary or full indulgence to all those who participated in the First Crusade to rescue the Holy Land. Under a bull issued in 1343 by Pope Clement VI, the papacy became intimately associated with the administration of this treasury. Later in 1476, in a very controversial move, Pope Sixtus IV insisted that indulgences could be extended to freeing souls from purgatory.9 In 1517, Pope Leo X sold the See of Mainz to a twenty-four-year-old dissolute prince, Albert of Brandenburg, for fourteen thousand golden ducats plus another ten thousand for a confirmation of other offices in Magdeburg and Halberstadt. It was agreed that Albert could raise the money by peddling indulgences. Tetzel and a representative of the banking house of Fugger were sent to serve as middlemen in the process. The slogan for such apparent selling of indulgences was “as soon as the coin in the coffers rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” Even the supporters of the papacy were becoming increasingly shocked by the extension of the indulgence concept to cover souls in purgatory and the callous selling of spiritual benefits for such earthly objectives as the construction of

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the new St. Peter’s Basilica and the raising of funds to wage various papal military campaigns. Luther had protested in the past to the secular sovereign about the false impressions being given to the faithful, calling them a public scandal. When this practice continued, he undertook what was the usual custom in the universities of his time; he posted his “Ninety-Five Theses” written in Latin on a placard on the door of the university chapel—a sort of community bulletin board at Wittenburg.10

Luther versus the Papacy In his disputations, Luther denied that an indulgence could remit guilt or punishment from sin. It could only remit ecclesiastical penalties, and it could not be applied to persons already dead. Luther entered the controversy as a loyal son of the Church and a person who was deeply devoted to the papacy and supposedly an admirer of the enlightened Pope Leo X. Years later in 1545, he maintained, “I was so drunk, yes submerged in the pope’s dogmas, that I would have been ready to murder all, if I could have, or to cooperate willingly with the murderers of all who would take but a syllable from obedience to the pope.” He was at the time, he maintained, “an arch-papist” and “a slave of the [liturgical] mass.” He even opposed Erasmus’s criticisms of the papacy, and claimed that he “would have defended the mass and celibacy.” The Church of the pope was the true church, and Luther said he “stubbornly and reverently worshipped there with a true heart.” As for his dedication to his vocation, Luther insisted, “if ever a monk went to heaven through monkery, I intended to get there likewise.” 11 His order, the Augustinians, were especially devoted to the papacy and inculcated that respect into its novices. Luther initially criticized indulgences because they turned people away from a need for forgiveness and depreciated the pastoral roles of priests. His criticisms of indulgences, however, soon became indirectly an attack upon the authority of the Church and the very apex of that authority, the Roman pontiff. Before 1518, Luther did not even mention Leo X by name, but by 1520 he was addressing an “Open Letter to Pope Leo X,” and criticizing the idea that the pope was really the Vicar of Christ since such a designation emphasized the absence of Christ from His own Church. Luther insisted that his theses were simply propositions submitted for debate and discussion and not an attack on the Church. He did maintain that any Christian who was truly contrite had good reason to believe that guilt and punishment were remitted even without any indulgences. The real treasury of the Church, he maintained, was the Gospel of the saving grace of God and not the storehouse of excess good works. 12 Luther insisted he would rather see the demise of St. Peter’s Basilica than tolerate any scandal that would mislead the faithful. If the pope had the discretionary power to grant indulgences, as some maintained, Luther sarcastically wondered why he did not out of love simply empty purgatory of all souls there

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rather than worrying about building new church edifices on earth. The orthodox defense by Church authorities to Luther’s theses was not a simple invitation to engage in academic debate. As early as 1518, his work was in Leo’s hands who at first pursued a policy of caution. In his defense, Luther insisted that the Church had not formulated a ruling that indulgences extended to the souls in purgatory, even though the influential Dominican theologian St. Thomas Aquinas had supported complete papal discretion in this area. Thus the attack by Luther, an Augustinian, was seen by some as an attack on the powerful Dominican order—in fact, Pope Leo at first called the controversy another squabbling among monks. And he is supposed to have counseled, “Luther is a drunken German. He will feel different when he is sober,” and “Friar Martin is a brilliant chap. The whole row is due to the envy of the monks.” 13 Trying to explain his attitude toward the pope at that time, Luther sharply charged, “He is a man like all others. Many popes have been pleased not only by errors and vices but even by monstrosities. I listened to the pope as pope, i.e., when he speaks in and according to the canons or when he makes a decision in accordance with the council. I do not listen to him, however, when he speaks merely his own opinion; otherwise, I might be forced to say with those who know Christ only poorly that the horrible murders, committed by Julius II against Christian people, were really benefits conferred on the sheep of Christ by a devoted pastor.” Luther resorted to the authority of the Scriptures and to the early Church Fathers for support. Still he insisted on his loyalty to the papacy, “Holy Father, I cast myself at your feet with all that I am and possess. Raise me up or slay me, summon me hither or thither, approve me or reprove me as you please. I will listen to your voice as the voice of Christ ruling and speaking in you.” At first he attacked Leo’s flatterers rather than the pope himself. But by late 1518, Luther was under criticism from Church authorities, and his views gradually became more radical.14 His major critic was the papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan (Tommaso de Vio) who was sent to the Diet of Augsburg to challenge Luther. He too was a Dominican. Twenty years later Luther insisted, “If the cardinal had acted more modestly in Augsburg and had accepted me as a supplicant, things would never have gone so far, for at that time I still knew little of the errors of the pope!” On August 7, 1518, Luther was summoned to Rome to answer for his views. Ten days before, the Emperor Maximilian had sent a letter to the pope, denouncing Luther as a heretic and offering to use his temporal powers to support any Church action against him. Overcoming his usual caution, Pope Leo actually instructed Cardinal Cajetan to arrest Luther and hold him. If he recanted his views, he was to be received back into the Church, but if he did not, he was to be branded a heretic and excommunicated, as were his supporters. Luther appealed to Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony, against any forcible attempt to send him to Rome for judgment. At that time Frederick was opposing the election of Maximilian’s grandson, Charles of Spain, as the next king of the Romans and Maximilian’s heir. The papacy also opposed his elec-

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tion, preferring Francis I of France in order to balance Habsburg power on the continent. Thus Leo and Cajetan needed Frederick’s support, and consequently they did not push for Luther’s extradition.15 On October 7, Luther arrived for the Diet at Augsburg and appeared before Cajetan, a strong defender in the past of papal authority. At first the cardinal dealt with Luther rather gently, although the envoy stressed his positions on indulgences and papal supremacy. The pope, he insisted, was superior not just to church councils, but even to the Scriptures and anything else in the Church— positions that Luther claimed were in violation of historic Catholic traditions. Luther insisted that his only goal was to shield the Church from ridicule and to ensure that the Christian church could defend itself from criticisms. Most importantly for Luther, the cardinal also established as a point of theology that no one could be certain that his contrition was sufficient to lead to forgiveness. Luther had preached that the words of Christ in the priest’s absolution led to the certainty of forgiveness. Such surety went to the heart of Luther’s own personal anxieties. In their discussions, he pleaded with the cardinal to show some compassion and to intercede with Leo on his behalf, but above all, he appealed to the right of conscience. After Luther’s interview and the exchange of opinions between him and the cardinal, Frederick refused to deliver Luther to Rome; in part his was a response of a German monarch protecting a German subject and a state-employed university professor. At first Luther himself had pronounced, “I worship and follow the Roman church in all things,” but in November 1518, Leo issued a papal bull, Cum postquam, which reaffirmed the practices governing papal indulgences and threatened excommunication of those who disagreed. A stoic Luther concluded, “I expect anathemas from Rome any day,” and he put his affairs in order. 16

Luther in Revolt Meanwhile Pope Leo X awarded the Golden Rose to Frederick of Saxony in order to solidify his support against Charles of Spain. Luther privately was expressing his disillusionment with the pope, while he was warned by friends not to push his position too hard. It was the public attacks on Luther made by a Catholic theologian, Johann Eck (Johann Maier) from the German University of Ingolstadt that persuaded him to openly challenge the papacy. Eck insisted that Luther’s theses would lead to devastating effects on the faithful’s regard for the pope and for the Church hierarchy. Luther was at first reluctant to engage in a major debate on the topic of papal authority rather than on indulgences, but he insisted, “I fear neither the pope nor the name of the pope, much less those little popes and puppets.” He denied that the bishop of Rome was the head of the Church by divine right, but he did acknowledge that he was the leader of the western Church by tradition, and had authority as did earthly monarchs to com-

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mand people’s obedience. Still the keys to the kingdom belonged to the whole Church, Luther maintained, and not just the popes. In his debates with Eck held at the University of Leipzig in 1519, the Church theologian scored one telling point against Luther. He charged that Luther’s views were closely related to the opinions of condemned heretics John Hus and John Wycliff. Luther protested, but later he came to agree that Hus and his followers were indeed Christians and evangelical. Luther also insisted that the authority of the Scriptures took precedence over church councils as well as over the pope. In this debate, he lost some significant political and academic support as a result of his increasingly dissident theological positions and his endorsement of Hus’s heresy.17 Still Frederick refused to turn Luther over to Rome for reasons that are still somewhat unclear. In 1520, Pope Leo appointed several commissions to prepare a denunciation of Luther’s views. Finally in his bull, Exsurge Domine, issued on June 15, 1520, Leo warned that Luther would be excommunicated within sixty days if he did not recant. Faced with that direct challenge, Luther began to identify the pope now with the Anti-Christ and with the works of Satan. He came to associate the papacy with a malicious tyranny opposing the souls of the faithful, and he attacked “Roman and ecclesiastical tyrants who, without maintaining faith in Christ, multiply their laws into infinity and thus ensnare the wretched conscience of the Christian brethren.” Even initial supporters, like Erasmus, urged Luther not to push a split with the Church; but increasingly Luther saw his personal controversy as a battle for the very souls of the Christian faithful. 18 Soon he began writing for a larger audience in German as well as Latin. His most famous work, An Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), outlined in a popular form the basis of his opposition. Still in his work at the time, Luther continued to acknowledge at least publicly the need to respect the pope as the Fourth Commandment enjoined people to respect all authority. He would accept what the pope did if it rested on the Scriptures, he maintained, but there was a need for a church council to strip the pope of his worldly pomp. “Hear this, pope, not most holy, but most sinful: God will destroy your See straight from heaven and plunge it into the depths of hell,” Luther warned. 19 Luther was finally condemned in the papal bull for errors that were characterized as “pestiferous, pernicious, scandalous, seductive of pious and simple minds” and which cut to the “nerve of ecclesiastical discipline, obedience.” Undeterred, he expanded his criticisms, going after the sacramental system of the Church as well—arguing at that time for the legitimacy of only Baptism, the Eucharist, and penance. Despite his arguments, efforts were still made to reconcile Pope Leo and Luther. Luther in a public letter to the pope somewhat disingenuously insisted that Leo was an innocent, and in the process he deflected Eck’s criticism that he was blaspheming a pious man in his attacks on the papacy. On November 17, Luther appealed for a general council, and on December 10 he dramatically burned a copy of the bull of excommunication. He began to see himself as a prophet in the Old Testament sense and warned “even if St.

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Peter would preside at Rome today, I would deny that the Roman bishop is pope. The pope is a fictitious thing in this world; he never was, nor is, nor will be; he is only fabricated.” Luther even began to criticize the ancient tradition that St. Peter had lived in Rome for twenty-five years which was an important part of papal claims of authority.20 Luther thus was excommunicated, but remarkably he still did not leave the monastery of his order and retained his monk’s cowl for three more years. He was preparing for another dramatic presentation—his address to the imperial Diet of Worms, which was scheduled to open on January 27, 1521. After being notified of a condemnation from the prestigious faculty of the University of Paris, he arrived in Worms to appear before Emperor Charles V and the estates, ready to answer the charges orchestrated by the papal nuncio, Girolamo Aleandro, on the nature of papal authority. On April 18, in the evening, he delivered a ten-minute speech in Latin and in German that defended his writings. He acknowledged his authorship of those works attributed to him and answered questions directed by the archbishop of Trier, John von der Ecken. It was there that Luther appealed to the right of conscience and is supposed to have said, “Here I stand. I can do no other.”21 It was a position of principled courage, and surely Luther knew the possible consequences for his life and liberty, if his protectors compromised. He had to deal with the orthodox view that individual interpretations of the Scriptures, even those held in good conscience, could lead to an unraveling of Christianity—which in fact happened somewhat. One of the consequences of the Reformation was the division of the Catholic Church and then a series of subsequent squabbles and sectarian divisions that followed. Luther himself was to complain, “Previously, Satan wanted to make us too papal; now he wants to make us too evangelical.” Soon Luther was faced with other reformers who had even more radical views on monasticism, celibacy, communion, and church artwork and images.22 Thus as Protestantism grew, initially out of a repudiation of the papacy and its leadership style of the period, Luther and others came to see that office not only as decadent but as tyrannical as well. Finally the once orthodox Augustinian concluded, “My conscience has been freed, and that is the most complete liberation. Therefore, I am still a monk and yet not a monk. I am a new creature, not of the pope, but of Christ.” As the years passed by, Luther continued to remind people of why he rebelled against the papacy. The Holy See did not wish to reform itself or the Church, and Luther had become increasingly angered by the recalcitrance. The papacy, Luther insisted, cared little about the destruction of souls. “These souls shout eternal accusation of the papacy, which is obligated to bring them back to God.” When groups of cardinals dedicated to Church reform years later listed clerical abuses and the responsibilities of the pope for those problems, Luther grew smug, for it seemed an odd vindication. Still on one occasion he acknowledged, “I am compelled to confess it, my doctrine has produced many scandals. Yea, I cannot deny it, these things often

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terrify me; above all when my conscience reminds me that I have destroyed the present state of the Church, so calm and peaceable under the Papacy. . . . The nobles and peasants have begun to live comfortably with their beliefs; they are swine, they think like swine, they die like swine . . . . It is an incontestable experience that we preachers are now more contemptible, more idle, than we were even under the shadow of the Papistry.” One of the Church’s greatest orthodox reformers of the period, Gasparo Cardinal Contarini, acknowledged on the issue of justification; “The foundation of the Lutheran edifice is true, we must say nothing against it but we must accept it as true and Catholic, indeed as the foundation of the Christian religion.” But his view was not to prevail, and it was to bring suspicion on even this most orthodox of men. Luther’s friend and colleague, Philip Melanchthon, years later looking at the turmoil and change, concluded that Luther could be coarse, but in the end the world and the Church needed “a stern physician,” and at the time he indeed fit the part. Luther retained throughout his life a deep hatred for Tetzel and later for Pope Leo, and he continuously personalized his enemies, unleashing his great polemical gifts and insisting that the devil and Anti-Christ occupied the Holy See to the great peril of the souls of common people and its pastors alike. 23

Leo’s Reactions The Reformation is usually seen through the prism of how one views Martin Luther. But for the purposes of this book it is critical to evaluate Leo X’s reactions and his leadership in handling the beginnings of the Lutheran revolt. The pope’s initial interest at this time was not Luther, but whether to support the election of Charles I of Spain as the new Habsburg emperor. Leo, at first, did not fully comprehend the widespread appeal that Luther would generate—indeed neither did the German himself. Leo surely was aware of the bitter criticisms of the nobility and its control of the episcopal sees in the German states, but he himself was no role model to be criticizing the worldliness of the higher clergy. The lower clergy had no fixed salaries at that time and lived off tithes and stole fees, existing often in a state of near poverty. Unlike in other periods, families did not encourage their best sons and brothers to enter the priesthood. Indeed it was often a refuge for those unfit for the ways of the world. The work of tending to the souls of the faithful more often fell to the mendicant friars rather than to diocesan priests, and there was an extensive array of religious orders that became very rich and avoided any reform of their operations. Consequently, there also grew up extensive lay hatred of clerical abuses, and in Germany a special disdain toward the Italian pope and the Roman Curia. As noted, the schism of 1378 had added to the confusion and disgust directed at the Holy See. Increasingly there also arose in Germany a barbed literature that attacked the papacy and its alleged divine origins. Strong clerical

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leaders had in the past supported the authority of the general councils to keep the papacy in check. And the rise of the humanistic spirit in universities and princely courts in Germany added still another threat to the stability of the traditional Church.24 Leo was oblivious to all that at first. As early as April 1514, years before Luther’s theses, Adrian of Utrecht (later Pope Hadrian [Adrian]VI) appealed to Cardinal Carvajal to warn the pope of “the cankerous disease” of heretical writings. Leo hesitated, as was his style, although he probably saw no need to change papal practices. The Catholic German people were seen too often by him as a cash cow for paying for his expensive papal court and the continuation of Pope Julius’s basilica at St. Peter’s. Despite warnings that there was much discontent in Germany, the pope specifically allowed a continuation of Julius’s indulgence policies, pledged to the expensive basilica project. Indulgences thus became as much a monetary transfer as an act of piety. When Albert of Brandenburg received Luther’s theses, he sent them on to the pope with the hope “that His Holiness would grasp the situation so as to meet the error at once, as occasion offers and as the exigency requires, and not lay the responsibility on us.” Tetzel too complained that Luther’s activities were a great scandal that would lead people to “despise the supremacy and authority of the Pope and the Holy Roman See.”25 When the archbishop of Mainz informed Leo of Luther’s doctrines, the pope responded in early 1518 with efforts to put to rest the controversy. First he instructed Gabriel della Volta, vicar general of the Augustinians, to deal with his confrere, Luther, and to get him to cease promulgating his views. Luther responded with a refusal and also a letter to Leo X. As a defensive action, he insisted on arguing publicly that one could not be excommunicated from the Church since the communion of the Church was invisible. The Holy See soon began the process of closer scrutiny, and the papal fiscal procurator levied the charge of propagating false doctrines against Luther. As noted, that review led to a summons for Luther to appear in Rome within sixty days to give an accounting of his controversial views or he was to be subject to superior ecclesiastical penalties. Luther responded with a show of contempt for the Dominicans, the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, and various Curial officials. He insisted that the Scriptures alone were infallible and both councils and popes were subject to error. He also appealed to the elector Frederick for protection, and he sought support from Maximilian to defend the honor of his university, and by implication he himself, Luther. As has been seen, the Curia directed Cardinal Cajetan to call Luther before him and to get him to restrict his views. If not, he was to be arrested and delivered in Rome to appear before the pope himself. The cardinal was to declare that Luther and his followers were heretics and, if any prince gave him assistance, his lands were to be placed under interdict. For those who insist that Leo and his court consistently acted weakly, the record is quite varied. On August 2, 1518, the pope wrote to the elector of Saxony asking for cooperation in delivering Luther, but Frederick refused, arguing for a hearing be-

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fore impartial judges in Germany instead. Much to the consternation of some of his allies, Leo accepted that arrangement. Thus Luther appeared at Augsburg instead of Rome. Later Luther appealed to the pope, saying that he had submitted these issues directly to Leo X and asking for his protection. As has been seen, the pope’s response to these proceedings was to lay out specific judgments dated November 9, 1518, on the indulgence question. Referring to the scriptural passages on the keys of Christ’s Kingdom, the pope insisted that he could remit both the guilt and the punishment of sins—guilt through the sacrament of penance and temporal punishment through indulgences. Furthermore the pope could draw on the treasury of good works to grant indulgences to those both living and also in purgatory. All must accept his formulation or face excommunication. Luther was not mentioned by name. But the dislike of the selling of indulgences was so strong in parts of Germany that the pope undercut his own position against Luther. Representing the pope’s diplomatic inclinations, the Holy See continued to negotiate quietly with Luther but to no avail. On March 3, 1519, Luther had written to Leo insisting that it had never been his intention to attack the authority of the Roman Catholic Church or the pope. Privately though he was referring to the pope as either the Anti-Christ or his agent. Rome for a while remained silent in dealing with Luther’s case. The pope instead focused on the imperial election, and only after Charles was successful did the Curia resume its trial of Luther in an open consistory held on January 9, 1520. Now the elector of Saxony was the subject of Curial criticism for his defense of the dissident theologian. Consequently, the pope set up several commissions to deal with Luther and his controversy, but Luther had announced his severance from the institutional church by then. He also made the important strategic move to link up his unorthodox religious positions with German national sentiment. On one occasion he pleaded, “Oh, noble princes how long will you forsake your country and people to the prey of these ravening wolves.” The pope eventually condemned Luther, and pleaded for the traditional loyal support of the German people. Leo’s chief agent in this affair was Girolamo Aleandro, a brilliant scholar who was the papal librarian. At first Luther denounced the bull as spurious; but later, as noted, he had the bull of condemnation burned, and commented, “It is necessary that the Pope and the Papal See be also burned. He who does not resist the Papacy with all his heart cannot obtain eternal salvation.” Aleandro was instructed to petition the emperor and the princes to arrest Luther, and deliver him to Rome for punishment. The emperor did support the Church and the pope’s decrees on the matter, but that was not enough. Frederick of Savoy continued to stand firm with Luther as anti-papal sentiment increased in German territories. Consequently Luther was called to account for his views—but at Worms rather than Rome.26

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The Divorce from Rome At Worms the Imperial Diet supported Charles’s pro-papal position. Luther’s allies were deeply disturbed. The Edict of Worms condemned Luther and attacked what it called his evil teachings. While the emperor was issuing his edict against Luther, his political alliance with the pope was being firmed up. Leo had finally consented to Charles’s election to the imperial throne, even though he still feared his ascendancy in Europe; but now he also dallied with Francis I and proposed a secret treaty to defend French interests and to refuse to invest Charles with the crown of Naples. But Francis had a way of insulting the pope with his abrupt demands and seemed to want to pick a quarrel with the Holy See, even when the pope showed accommodation. Consequently Leo was becoming increasingly grateful for Charles’s support, including his determined attempts to curtail the Lutheran revolt in Germany. Even so the pope periodically resorted to his Medici traditions by double-dealing and making treaties with both sides—the French and the imperialists. As news from Germany became more distressing, Leo and his advisors, however, grew more sensitive to Charles’s opinions and needs. The pope in return finally acknowledged Charles as “the emperor-elect of the Romans”—that is, the heir to Maximilian I’s title. A grateful Leo wrote to Charles that there were “two planets in heaven”—the sun and the moon, the pope and the emperor, “to whom all other princes are subject and owe obedience.” As noted, some of the cardinals were upset that the imperialists had insisted that Luther be given a hearing at the Diet in the first place. Originally Leo wanted to grant him instead a safe conduct pass only to Rome for a hearing. But by then Luther had burned the papal bull excommunicating him and several books of canon law. To garner support, the pope’s agents insisted that Luther was not only seeking to overthrow the influence of the Church, but also secular authority as well. As the dispute continued, Leo became increasingly preoccupied with the Lutheran revolt and the news he was receiving of heretical inroads being made in Germany. The pope appealed to Charles and identified him with the great protectors of the Church in history, including Constantine, Charlemagne, and Otto. To eliminate any ambiguity on the issue, Leo finally condemned Luther as a heretic and formally excommunicated him on January 3, 1521. Some papal supporters felt that Charles was using the Lutheran threat to gain leverage over the pope for other policies that he wanted. But in fact Charles did not press such an advantage, for he was indeed a serious and loyal Catholic. The pope soon received both good and bad news. Lutheran sentiment was growing in Germany and later in Denmark and Switzerland. But in Spain, Portugal and Poland the heresy seemed contained. In France the centralized monarchy proved to be rather effective in controlling dissent, as Francis insisted that Luther’s works be burned, and the theology faculty at the University of Paris condemned the German’s work, as did the faculties in Louvain and Cologne. And in

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England, Henry VIII wrote a book criticizing Luther, to which the University of Oxford added its condemnation.27

Leo’s Leadership In his convoluted foreign policy, Leo finally invested Charles V with the crown of Naples, while the pope planned the expulsion of the French from Italy. In response, an angry Francis prohibited any transfer of French money to Rome and boasted that he would enter Rome and “impose laws on the pope.” But the French suffered severe losses in northern Italy. Before his sudden death Leo saw the fruits of some of his victories. Then on the evening of December 1–2, 1521, he died at the young age of forty-six. It was alleged that he too was poisoned by his enemies. In dealing with the Lutheran threat, Leo like most leaders resorted to familiar behavior. As expected, a man used to the ways of guile and diplomacy tried at first to ignore the challenges of this obscure theologian from Germany. He thought the controversy was a battle between two religious orders and not a major problem. But very soon the pope and his advisors realized that the attack on indulgences was a prelude to a general attack on the papacy. Leo probably understood that even before Luther could admit to it himself, certainly before Luther could admit it to others. The pope then resorted to tried-and-true strategies. He instructed the Augustinians to control their errant confrere, which they were unable or unwilling to do. He then gave Luther the chance to recant and to resume his place in the bosom of the Holy Mother Church. Luther equivocated—both standing his ground and pledging himself to fidelity to the Church and even to the pontiff. Leo then sent his agents to confront Luther and try to extract from him a vow of obedience and a recantation—which only helped to radicalize Luther. Leo had appealed as popes had done in the past to the secular authorities to enforce the Church’s judgment, but this time he faced recalcitrance from German princes and some indifference from his own hierarchy. Luther was to be shipped off to Rome for interrogation. As history has shown, from the distant past to twenty-first-century theologians, the verdict of those trials or conversations were often predetermined. Luther surely had a right to fear that his recalcitrance and dissent could very well lead to a fate similar to that of John Hus— persecution and death. Luther could be obnoxious, vulgar, and fanatical, but he was also a courageous and solitary soul during this period. The pope escalated the penalties, and Luther increased his rhetorical criticisms of the Church, moving on to attack its more basic accepted dogmas, including the number of sacraments, the nature of faith, and the essence of a religious community under Christ Jesus. He was excommunicated, his works publicly burned, and his associates placed under ecclesiastical scrutiny.

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Those strategies for dealing with heretics had worked before. But Luther changed the rules of the game in two important ways. First he appealed to the wellsprings of support for German nationalism: and did so in the German language against the Roman court and its pope. Theology had a very limited audience even then, but nationalism was an explosive force against the international church in general. Luther was also a master of vitriolic propaganda and populist warfare, and with the increasing prominence of the printing press, his private war of conscience became a public battle for minds and hearts across Europe. The Church had no effective counter to his gift for popular exposition of ideas and resentments.28 Still the papacy held the allegiance of Emperor Charles V and, if he were not so preoccupied with problems in Spain and the Muslims in Turkey, he might have been able to focus his powerful efforts on the religious revolt taking place in Germany. In many ways Gutenberg and the armies of Islam were Luther’s greatest allies during this important period of history. As his reign ended, Leo must have thought that he had effectively contained the basic thrust of the new heresy, and indeed it would have seemed so. But what happened was that Lutheranism became the beginning of a much larger Reformation, which the papacy could not imagine or control by its traditional methods of sanctions, threats, and expressions of authority.

The Reformed Churches The new Protestant impulse embraced different nations and leaders, and some of them even Luther condemned, for in many ways he remained more Catholic than evangelical. The Catholic apologists were right on one issue—the challenge to papal authority would lead to a proliferation of sects with very different religious views. The Reformed Churches of Germany and of French Switzerland took their leadership from men like Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, each of whom wished to create on earth a kingdom of God for the elect. Even more of a purist strain came from the Anabaptists and their modern descendants, who advocated a complete divorce of the church from the larger community, and a still more personal strain grew up that emphasized pietism. As early as 1519, Zwingli, a priest and a humanist, preached a Lutheran message in Zurich that rejected the papacy and embraced the total relevance of the Scriptures. He attacked the veneration of images, Lenten fasting, and clerical celibacy and advocated a return to the primitive faith of the early Church fathers. He urged the abolition of the Mass and the smashing of cathedral organs. In opposition to Luther, he rejected any version of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Under his direction, Zurich was to become a theocratic community, a new Israel with the religious elect as the ruling elite.29 That spirit was to be furthered by the activities of a one-time student for the priesthood and later the law, John Calvin, who fled to France and Geneva. His

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Institutes of the Christian Religion set forth a vision of a religious society, sideby-side with his pessimistic view about human nature. Man is depraved mainly due to Adam’s fall, and yet he was told to set up a holy commonwealth here on earth. One should profess the faith, live an upright life, and participate in the sacraments, Calvin said. The upright life would involve austere deportment and abandonment of amusements and all public vices such as card playing, gambling, and drunkenness. The chief aim of man was not to save himself or to be assured of salvation, but to honor God. Man after all was predestined one way or another to go to heaven or not go, despite his efforts. Calvin admitted that when he was young, he “was so strongly devoted to the superstitions of the pope.” It was by a great miracle then that Luther restored him to “the pure truth.” Calvin attacked the doctrines of Rome as “stinking excrement,” and charged that the Church had always been “afflicted by the desire of lust for rule.” “The golden vessels and costly vestments that swell the pride of the papists serve only pomp and ambition and corrupt the pure teaching mission of the church,” he concluded. The popes, he observed, were lawless rulers whose tyranny was worse than those of secular princes. The papacy was the ultimate source of hypocrisy, occupied by those who “defile themselves in spiritual fornication.” They and the established church were responsible for the growing unbelief. The world for Calvin was a grim place, one in which “luxury increases daily, lawless passions are influenced, and human beings continue in their crimes and profligacy more shameless than ever.”30 Soon Calvinism spread to France, Holland, England, Scotland, and New England. A lesser socially active variation of the Reformed church movement led to Anabaptism. Its adherents made up a church of separatists, of martyrs, of strict morality, and deep piety. They supported adult baptism, thus their name. The church became a “gathered society” and not the full and larger community. They insisted on religious liberty and strict separation of church and state—which is why the Baptists were so important in colonial American politics. They repudiated war and capital punishment, and avoided ostentatious displays of any type. Another sentiment led to an emphasis on both mysticism and rationality— traditions that were somewhat contradictory, but which were persistent themes in traditional Catholicism. The latter perspective led to a discrediting of rival systems of religious thought that left only mysticism as an alternative. Those sentiments lent themselves to a celebration of the free spirit and to various universal ethical applications. Under pressure from the emperor, there was a series of colloquies or dialogues, which took place between the Catholics and the Lutherans trying to find common ground to end the religious division. In 1530 at Augsburg, Lutheran and the Catholic authorities met and sought to recognize the substantial common elements they embraced, but the issues of transubstantiation and justification by faith alone were stumbling blocks to further reconciliation. In 1541, participants at a diet in Regensburg tried again to bring Protestants and Catholics together but ultimately failed. Later in 1555 intense religious conflicts finally led to the

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Peace of Augsburg and to a doctrine of cuius region, eius religio—“he who reigns (may impose) his religion” or the settlement that the religion of the prince (Catholic or Lutheran only) determined the religion of those who lived in his territory. Thus Emperor Charles’s policy of complete victory over the heretics was thwarted, and eventually this head of one of the most far-flung collections of kingdoms in the history of mankind resigned his crown in 1556, and thus concluded his overreaching ambition. Consequently the Catholic Church was faced with four great dissenting traditions and the political disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire. Nationalism would become even more of an important force in European life and even more of a problem for the international Church.31 However in France the centralization of power in the hands of the monarchy prevented Protestant penetration as Henry II, who succeeded Francis in 1547, resorted to arrests and trials. In England the mood of Henry VIII, honored once by the pope as “Defender of the Faith,” changed. The major cause was that the king had initially married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon, having received a papal dispensation for such a union, which Pope Julius matter-offactly granted in 1503. But Queen Catherine was unable to give him a male heir, so Henry insisted on putting her aside and marrying again. He appealed for a papal annulment, citing the Old Testament prohibition in the book of Leviticus that it was unlawful to marry one’s brother’s widow. As will be seen, the pope, then Clement VII, entertained the king’s request, but he had no desire to overturn Julius’s initial decision. He may have even suggested bigamy as being preferable, but he finally sent his agents to London. Unfortunately for both Henry and Clement, Catherine was the aunt of Emperor Charles, who controlled the pope’s fate at the time. Catherine refused various compromises and insisted that her first marriage to Henry’s brother Arthur had never been consummated. The pope attempted to forestall making any decision so as not to alienate either important prince. Finally Henry insisted on a decision. Impatient over the papal procrastination and pressed by his mistress Anne Boleyn for marriage, he severed the papacy from the English church, but did not touch any dogma. Henry promptly granted himself a divorce from Queen Catherine, and married his pregnant mistress Anne, whom he made queen for a thousand days. A Luther or Calvin he was not. In 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which acknowledged the king as the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England. They rejected the authority of the pope, whom they styled simply the “bishop of Rome.” It was clearly a nationalistic appeal.32 Henry made two major changes. He suppressed the monasteries and moved to control their enormous wealth, and he also insisted that the Bible be translated into the vernacular and put into the churches. Basically, though, he left the doctrines and the rituals of the traditional Catholic Church alone. It has been said that he promoted schism but not heresy, a policy that pleased neither the reformers nor the traditional Catholics. Only later under Queen Elizabeth, his daughter by his second wife, would the Protestant Reformation really take hold in England.

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Thus by the end of the sixteenth century the Roman Catholic Church was severely rent asunder, and the papacy was unable to deal with the causes and consequences of those divisions. The much-heralded unity of Christendom was no more. The loyal adherents of the papacy and the Roman Church were left to face the need for a reformation of their own. For the errors of the formal Church hierarchy, the blatant abuse of power and position, the moral corruptions of hypocrisy and neglect had taken an enormous toll. Luther had argued persuasively that the church of their fathers, the church of the popes and the saints, was not able to reform itself. And the question before the remnants of that church now was whether he was indeed correct.

Notes 1. Richard E. Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christ’s Divinity in the Last Days of Rome (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1999); John Hine Mundy and Kennerly M. Wood, eds., The Council of Constance: The Unification of the Church (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961); Brian Tierney, Foundations of Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955). 2. Gerhard Ritter, “Why the Reformation Occurred in Germany,” Church History 27, no. 2 (June 1958): 99–106; Gerald Strauss, Manifestations of Discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971); Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations (Cambridge, Mass., Blackwell, 1996); Hilaire Belloc, How the Reformation Happened (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1959); Abraham Friesen, Reformation and Utopia: The Marxist Interpretation the Reformation and Its Antecedents (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1974); Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany (1946; reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), chap.13. 3. Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978), 79. 4. George H. Tavard, Holy Writ or Holy Church: The Crisis of the Protestant Reformation (London: Burns & Oates, 1959); Gordon Leff, The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook: An Essay on Intellectual and Spiritual Change in the Fourteenth Century (New York: NYU Press, 1976); R. R. Pose, The Modern Devotion Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968); Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed., Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning: Three Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Lisa Jardin, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996); William J. Bouwsma, “The Two Faces of Humanism,” in Heiko A. Oberman and Thomas A. Brady, Jr., eds., Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of Its European Transformation (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 3–60; Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the Euro-

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pean Transformation (London: Basil Blackwell, 1987); James D. Tracy, Europe’s Reformations 1450–1650 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999); George Kenneth Brown, Italy and the Reformation to 1550 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933). 5. Roland H. Bainton, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952), 8; Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). 6. Bainton, Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, 49–53. 7. Bainton, Here I Stand, passim; Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Richard Marius, Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Lawrence Murphy, “The Prologue of Martin Luther to the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1509): The Clash of Philosophy and Theology,” Archive of Reformation History 67 (1976): 54–75; A. G. Dickens, Reformation and Society in Sixteenth-Century Europe (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966). 8. Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1962); Jaroslav Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma, 1300–1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984); G. N. Clark, et al., eds., The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 2, The Reformation 1520– 1559, ed. G. R. Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), chap. 3; Preserved Smith, “Luther’s Early Development in the Light of PsychoAnalysis,” American Journal of Psychology 24, no. 3 (1913): 359–77. 9. Bainton, Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, introduction; Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 10. A. G. Dickens, The Age of Humanism and Reformation: Europe in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), pt. 4; Philip Hughes, A History of the Church, vol. 3, The Revolt against the Church: Aquinas to Luther (London: Sheed and Ward, 1947), 502. 11. Scott H. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 8. 12. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy , 21–30. 13. Bainton, Here I Stand, 85; Lindberg, European Reformations, 77; John W. O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform: A Study in Renaissance Thought (London: E. J. Brill, 1968). 14. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 39–41, 53. 15. Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, vol. 7 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1923). 16. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 60–70. 17. Martin Luther, Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (New York: Anchor, 1962), intro.; Roy Pascal, The Social Basis of the German Reformation (1933; reprint, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1971),

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chap. 1. 18. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 83–99. 19. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 105; Luther, Martin Luther, 403–88. 20. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 109–19. 21. Bainton, Here I Stand, passim. 22. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 138; Mark U. Edwards, Jr., Luther and the False Brethren (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975). 23. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 143–49; Hans J. Hillerbrand, “The Anti-Christ in the Early German Reformation: Reflections on Theology and Propaganda,” in Andrew C. Fix and Susan C. Karant-Nunn, eds., Germania Illustrata (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 18, 1992), 3– 12; Scott H. Hendrix and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., Philip Melanchthon: Then and Now (1497–1997); Essays Celebrating the 500th Anniversary of the Birth of Philip Melanchthon (Columbia, S.C.: Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, 1999); Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Michael Rogness, Philip Melanchthon: Reformer without Honor (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1969); James William Richard, Philip Melanchthon: The Protestant Preceptor of Germany 1497–1560 (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1907). 24. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 7, 299–307. 25. Pastor, History of the Popes, 315–56. 26. Pastor, History of the Popes, 362–415; Bainton, Here I Stand, chaps. 9– 12. 27. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 8, 20–40; Andrew Wheatcroft, The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), chap. 4; Richard Rex, “The English Campaign against Luther in the 1520s,” in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 39 (1989), 85–106. 28. Hughes, A History of the Church, vol. 3, chap. 5, pt. 3; Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and the Protestant Revolt: A New Approach to the Disruption of Western Christendom,” in Robert M. Kingdom, ed., Transition and Revolution: Problems and Issues of European Renaissance and Reformation History (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Co., 1974), 235–70. 29. Bainton, Reformation of Sixteenth Century, chap. 4; Dickens, Age of Humanism, 157–81; Erwin Iserloh, Joseph Glazik, and Hubert Jedin, Reformation and Counter Reformation (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), section 1; Henrich Borkamm, Luther in Mid-Career 1521–1530 (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 1983); Thomas M. Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, 2 vol. (1906–1907; reprint, Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1972); John S. Oyer, Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964). 30. Bainton, Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, 110–17; William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 10–11, 36, 59, 62, 65; Lewis W. Spitz, The Protestant Reformation 1517–1559 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), chap. 4. 31. Wheatcroft, Habsburgs, chap. 4; Basil Hall, “The Colloquies between

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Catholic and Protestants, 1539–41,” Studies in Church History 7 (1971): 256; Peter Matheson, Cardinal Contarini at Regensburg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); Hastings E. Eells, “The Failure of Church Unification Efforts during the German Reformation,” Archive for Reformation History 42 (1951):160–74. 32. Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, vol. 2, book 4; Pierre Crabitès, Clement VII and Henry VIII (London: George Routledge & Son, 1936); Francis S. Betten, From Many Centuries: A Collection of Historical Popes (1938; reprint, Freeport, Conn.: Books for Libraries, 1968), chap. 12; Spitz, Protestant Reformation, chap. 5; G. Constant, The Reformation in England, 2 vols. (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1934); John Hungerford Pollen, The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth: A Study of Their Politics, Civil Life, and Government; from the Fall of the Old Church to the Advent of the Counter Reformation (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920); Hilare Belloc, Characters of the Reformation (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1940), esp. chap. 1–5; Edward V. Cardinal, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, Legate to the Courts of Henry VIII and Charles V (Boston: Chapman & Grimes, 1935); Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) on the persistence of medieval Christianity up and beyond the Reformation.

Chapter 10

The Timidity of Reform Clearly Leo’s leadership had failed, for he left the papacy financially and morally bankrupt. But by his designs and by his yardstick, he gave it anew a true Renaissance flair with his love of arts and letters, and a true Medici mark with his personal duplicity and shifting foreign alliances. With the French regime on the defensive, his alliance with Charles V at first made eminent sense. Now at his death, in December 1521, the conclave filled with his loyalists was deeply divided between the advocates of the emperor and the supporters of Francis I. The imperial adherents supported the election of Leo’s nephew, Giulio de’Medici, the cardinal vice chancellor who would later become Pope Clement VII. From England the candidacy of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, who declared that he was ready to pay one hundred thousand ducats to assure his election, was touted, a choice that Henry VIII enthusiastically supported. Earlier in 1520, Francis I had pledged to spend one million golden thalers to secure the election of an ally to the papacy. Clearly much was at stake.1

The Outsider The conclave was also seriously divided on the basis of age and seniority in the Curia, and as a result a large number of aspirants emerged. From all of this confusion came an astonishing result. The cardinals compromised on a non-Italian, the archbishop of Utrecht, Adrian Floreszoon Boeyens Dedel (1459–1523), who was not even at the conclave. Deval was the son of a carpenter, and had been an academic at the University of Louvain, an able church administrator, an inquisitor in Spain, and an early proponent of vigorous reform, focusing on containing the Lutheran revolt. Hadrian (Adrian) was considered an ally of Emperor Charles V because he had been his tutor in Spain. The new pope was criticized by the Italians for being a barbarian—that is, a person who was foreign to their customs. Hadrian kept his name as pope, and it was rumored that after his election, he asked that 133

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simple lodgings in Rome be found for him! He was clearly being stamped as a foreign neophyte. Actually he was a fine scholar, a quiet and pious man who appeared calm, and was pale-skinned, of medium height with an aquiline nose and small lively eyes. He was an early riser, who was given to austerity in his personal habits and was deeply dedicated to the well-being of the Church. He left France for Rome, taking the sea route so he could avoid dealing with secular princes and inadvertently giving offense to the imperialists, the French, or the English. He clearly intended to keep the papacy politically neutral. Hadrian VI immediately informed the Curia of his insistence on reform and of the need to cut papal spending and curtail honors. He was soon talking of major changes in the Church’s operations, but he lacked the sort of widespread support that one needs to make such alterations in an institution. He curtailed Leo’s spending, made enemies because of his frugalities, and was candid in his assessment of Curial abuses. It was said that when he was asked to do a favor, he would say, “We shall see,” and then he would do as he pleased. The pope also denounced the sale of favors and avoided elaborate displays or extravagances. Hadrian’s brief tenure in office, one year and eight months, is a telling example of the problem of reform leaders who are not able to build lasting coalitions. He was and remained always a stranger—a stranger in a treacherous situation in a cynical and corrupt city.2 With his regime of discipline and denial, the pope hoped to eliminate the causes of the defections of people like Luther and to heal the Church. Early on Hadrian had warned Pope Leo of the impending threat from heretics. Now as pontiff, he decided that the Diet in Germany had to enforce the Edict of Worms that it had earlier agreed upon. In his communications, he reaffirmed his deep respect for the German people and remarked that he found it incredible that that pious nation could fall under the influence of what he characterized as a petty monk and apostate, who was seducing souls from the Savior and his apostles. He warned that the forces of rebellion would strike at secular authority as well as the Church, and concluded that Luther set a worse example than even Mohammed. In his instructions to his agents, the pope remarkably acknowledged the abuses of the prelates and clergy, especially the Roman Curia, and concluded “the malady is deeply rooted. It takes many forms.” His candor rocked the established Church hierarchy, but Luther’s response was typically dismissive. He denounced the new pope as another Anti-Christ and proclaimed, “The pope is a magister noster of Louvain; in that university such asses are crowned; out of his mouth Satan speaks.” He then urged religious to break their vows, marry, and seize and divide up their orders’ property.3 To garner support against the Lutherans, the pope appealed to his friend Erasmus, the prestigious scholar, asking him to support his Church, but the humanist had made a career out of being a trimmer. The illegitimate child of probably a priest and educated by the Brethren of the Common Life, Erasmus en-

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tered the Augustinian order, attracted more by its strict religious discipline than by a sense of a true clerical calling. Soon he left for Paris to study theology and was committed to the new traditions of humanism. He was later invited to visit England, and there he met such major figures as Sir Thomas More, who became a friend for life. Erasmus was a peripatetic scholar whose fame grew as he traveled, making him the most famous European humanist and a recognized New Testament scholar. He was the epitome of the Renaissance man who knew no national boundaries. At the height of his fame, an estimated 40 percent of all published works in Europe came from his pen. Erasmus praised the early primitive church, and often sarcastically criticized the abuses of the current Roman Catholic hierarchy. He authored an anonymous pamphlet attacking Pope Julius II as he fictitiously arrived at St. Peter’s gates. Erasmus stressed the importance of piety and learning, but he refused to depart from the common consensus of Christendom. He became an international figure with his collections of classical proverbs called Adages that were organized under various topics or themes and published throughout Europe. Erasmus’s most famous work, Praise of Folly, satirizes contemporary society and reaffirms traditional Christianity as the highest wisdom. At the same time, he continued his scholarly exegesis on the patristic fathers: Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Origen. His most scholarly publication was the translation of the New Testament into Greek. Erasmus’s work attracted the praise of Pope Leo X and the interest of Martin Luther. The German reforming theologian requested Erasmus’s support in his battle with the Roman Curia, but Erasmus refused to be committed, saying that he really had not read Luther’s work, but had encouraged moderation on all sides. After the pope’s condemnation, Erasmus became leery of the explosive implications of the Lutheran movement. Since he had been so critical of the Renaissance Church, the new reformers thought that Erasmus would be a sympathetic soul. Orthodox Catholics, equally disappointed, saw Erasmus as having laid the groundwork for the Reformation, and on at least one occasion the Holy See had his work scrutinized. There is no question that the Catholic Erasmus had influenced Luther and Zwingli. His views on transubstantiation were often vaguely unorthodox. His opinion on salvation embraced some of Luther’s emphasis on God’s overriding role in human affairs, but still he insisted on the importance of good works or merit in life. In many ways he came to epitomize not the humane man of moderation—which he was—but rather the intellectual’s inability to embrace the intensity of the world of action, choice, and commitment. Eventually he was offered a cardinal’s hat by Pope Paul III, although his works ended up on the Index of Forbidden Books. Clearly he disappointed the more radical Protestants, for he seemed to share their sense of criticism and grievances against the Church. But he lived off the patronage of Catholic princes and felt comfortable only in the family of the traditional Church. His classical training, his respect for simplified and primitive Christianity, and his usual sense

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of tolerance provided for some a middle path between a break with the Church and a continuation of its decadence. Because of that moderation, Erasmus seemed at times to be an opportunist, who had few strong commitments about the great issues he was involved in against his will. His image as a preeminent intellectual put him in a very visible role that led to his continuing discomfort. One could never imagine him following Thomas More to the gallows or saying with the headstrong Luther, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” In his quest to contain the Lutheran heresy, the pope appealed even to Ulrich Zwingli, but Zwingli had moved too far toward Lutheranism to be persuaded. Apologists of the Roman Church warned that without a hierarchy and a respect for authority, every person could become his own spiritual expert and judge. The rise of printing, the advance of literacy, and the easy availability of vernacular translations of the Bible provided the means to further this religious individualism. But just as Luther appealed to conscience against the Church, so other reformers also appealed to conscience against his views. The first major departure came in the Swiss Confederation with the initial activities of Zwingli, who as early as 1519 preached a series of sermons at Zurich that laid the groundwork for a more radical reformation. Like Luther, he was an individual whose views initially drew on the new humanism and on the criticisms of Erasmus. He too was a foe of indulgences and also of the hiring of Swiss mercenaries in the continuing wars in Italy. Although he respected Luther’s courage, he rejected his view that Christ was somehow present in the bread and wine (a doctrine labeled “consubstantiation”). Communion was instead just a symbolic act, he argued. Politically Zwingli extended his crusade against the five Catholic canton centers which were moving toward an alliance with the Habsburgs to protect themselves from the reformers. As Zwingli’s views became more radical, even Luther became disenchanted with his rival, to the extent of wishing him ill in his battles against the Catholics, supposedly the common enemy. 4 The pope also tried unsuccessfully to keep Scandinavia in the Church, and he appealed to the Catholic European powers to join in a defense against Islam. There was some urgency to the latter matter. The Sultan Suleyman I had taken Belgrade and was moving on the Isle of Rhodes. The pope tried to maintain a neutral position in the conflict between Charles and Francis, emphasizing instead the Moslem threat. However, he arrested Francesco Cardinal Soderini who was a close ally of the French king, thereby forfeiting Francis’s goodwill; and the king ordered the invasion of Lombardy. The pope responded by entering into a defensive alliance with the emperor, the king of England, the archduke of Austria, and the duke of Milan and other Italian city-states represented by a cardinal, Guilio de’Medici, to stop the French movements back to Italy. Thus his neutrality policy unraveled. Finally, worn out by the office and by a long Italian summer, Hadrian died in 1523. As with so many reformers, his end was greeted with joy. The Church that needed reform was not ready for reform. One historical

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judgment was simply, “The significance of his career lay not in his achievements, but in his aims.”5

The Return of the Medici The papal court and Curia welcomed the passing of Hadrian, for his reign was one of thin gruel and moral exhortation. Those appointees of Alexander, Julius, and especially Leo, were used to a Renaissance expression of the Holy See, and despite the advances of the Protestant revolt, they were simply unwilling to end the good times—even for the sake of the Church. Hadrian had been a short-lived mistake. The College of Cardinals would not elect another non-Italian to the papacy until 1978. And so the conclave met and chose Giulio de’Medici, the illegitimate son of Giuliano de’Medici and a cousin of Leo X. The Medicis were back in power, but this time the conclave chose a pale imitation of Leo—a person who embodied his weaknesses but not Leo’s skills. A major historian and observer of the time, Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), concluded, “He was rather morose and disagreeable, reported to be avaricious, by no means trustworthy and naturally disinclined to do a kindness.”6 Thus at a critical time in its history, the Church went into a tailspin from the new pope’s disastrous policies and from the increasingly hostile environment around him. The premier historian of the papacy, Ludwig von Pastor, judged the papacy of Giulio de’Medici a severe trial that God visited on his Church. For us it is also a good example of the perils of weak leadership. Oddly enough Giulio’s record was an impressive one before he assumed the papacy and took the name of Clement VII (1523–1534). Although he had been born out of wedlock, Leo had given him a dispensation so he could be ordained, and gradually he made his way up the ecclesiastical hierarchy, becoming the cardinal archbishop of Florence and the powerful vice chancellor of the Holy See. Another historian of the papacy, Otto von Ranke, judged that he spoke with knowledge on a variety of subjects, was possessed with an extraordinary acuteness, and had a deep sense of sagacity.7 The death of Hadrian led to another complicated and fairly long conclave that lasted six weeks. Giulio was seen as a supporter of imperial interests and thus opposed to the French. He was recognized as the leader of a group of cardinals who had been nominated by Leo, and throughout the conclave, this hard core of sixteen to eighteen supporters stood firmly with him, refusing to accept any compromise. In the end he prevailed—in large part because of his reputation for seriousness and moderation that he exhibited in his previous Curial post. Clement knew the game well, and one envoy from Bologna remarked that the new pope “granted more favours on the first days of his reign than Adrian did in his whole lifetime.”8 Still, Clement cut an imposing figure, being tall and graceful and somewhat handsome. But he lacked a sense of decisiveness that is so central to leaders,

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especially during times of crisis. The ambassador from Venice, Marco Foscaro, observed that the pope was “a sensible man but slow in decisions, which explains his irresolution for action. He talks well, he sees everything, but is very timid. He suffers no control in state affairs—he listens to everyone and then does as he pleases. He is just and God-fearing.” Gasparo Contarini, a Vatican diplomat and later a cardinal, characterized Clement as weak and a coward. Clement was less frivolous than Leo, it was true, more of a hard worker and much more secretive. But he took an interminable length of time to make a decision. He was Hamlet before Shakespeare had written the play. On one occasion, Contarini actually said to Pope Clement VII, “I can see that Your Holiness has certain interests as the ruler of a temporal state and is about to take one of two courses of action: either to prefer these particular interests to the common good, or to aim principally at the common good of Christendom and at universal peace, allowing the particular interests to fall into the background.” The pope replied that he was not pursuing his interests, but the Church’s. Contarini further insisted, “Your Holiness should not suppose that the well-being of the Church of Christ is bound up with this little temporal state. Before even such a state existed, there was a Church, and indeed the Church was then in her best condition. The Church is the community of all Christians. The Papal state is simply the state of an Italian prince joined to the Church.” Clement admitted the truth of that statement, but observed, “Nowadays the world has been reduced to such a state that the astutest and craftiest man gains most applause and fame, while if one acts otherwise one is simply considered a good natured but worthless fellow.” Contarini could only reply, “If Your Holiness were to consider all the contents of Holy Scripture, which cannot err, he would see that nothing is stronger and more vigorous than truth, virtue, goodness and a right intention. In many individual cases I have tested this and found it true.”9 In the end nothing came of the conversation. Clement’s foreign policy initially was one meant to control French influence and to expel them from the Italian regions, but like Hadrian he was unwilling to become involved in offensive operations against France, preferring instead to stress the need for peace among Christian states to ward off Turkish aggressiveness. Like the previous Medici pope, he was not above moving effortlessly from one side to another, from France to the emperor and back again, always seeking to protect the Papal States and also safeguard his family’s interests in Florence. But unlike in Leo’s time, Clement was faced with fewer options and had to deal with a more aggressive Emperor Charles, and in the end this brought Italy and Rome horrible fortunes. As the French reestablished themselves in Milan, Francis, in a spirit of compromise, approached the pope with promises of restoring the Italian territories in Parma and Piacenza, the protection of the papal salt monopoly in Milan, the guarantee of Medici rule in Florence, and the protection of papal interests in Ferrara. In light of these developments, the pope decided to inform Charles of

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his conversations with the French monarch, and the emperor became furious, promising, “I shall go into Italy, and revenge myself on those who have injured me, especially that poltroon, the pope. Someday, perhaps, Martin Luther will become a man of weight.”10 Carefully mobilizing his force, Charles ended up prevailing against the French forces in Italy and controlling Milan and Naples. Clement had severely miscalculated, and the pope was forced to pay an indemnity and ally himself with the emperor. The dramatic capture of the king of France by the imperial armies and his forced exile to Spain on June 15, 1525, added to Charles’s immense power and prestige. Responding to the challenges, Clement moved slowly in trying to put together a defensive alliance embracing France and England in order to check imperial power. But his policies became increasingly unrealistic after the king of France accepted Charles’s terms and surrendered important claims in Burgundy, Charolais, Flanders, and Artois, as well as in Naples, Milan, Genoa, and Asti. Francis even promised to support Charles’s eventual march on Rome and his subsequent attack on the independence of the Holy See. Francis was simply concerned about ending his own personal captivity and returning to France; once there he soon sought to find ways to repudiate the very agreements he had just signed. To support Francis’s claims, the pope argued that a treaty signed under duress was not binding on the king, and he explored the possibilities of creating a league or an alliance against Charles that would embrace France, Milan, Florence, and Venice.11 But the pope’s enemies were to prove more determined than his allies, and the emperor’s forces invaded Italy and sacked Rome on May 6, 1527, the first time that had occurred since the eleventh century. Clement barely escaped to the fortress Castel Sant’Angelo, but was made to surrender in the end, and was actually imprisoned for more than six months. The capture of Rome and the marauding behavior of the imperial forces led to even greater hatred of the invading armies, for enough instances of vandalism and desecration occurred that it disabused people of any notion that these were indeed Catholic armies in the service of a Catholic king. It was reported that Charles himself wore mourning for the sack of Rome while he was attending the celebrations of the birth of his son, Philip II. But Clement’s foreign policy was an absolute disaster in terms of what it brought Italy, the Eternal City, and papal interests. The historic fear on the part of the papacy, which concerned the capture of Rome and attacks on the physical center of the Church, had now come to pass. Clement was left with little alternative but to accept a humiliating peace treaty. He had to acquiesce in the occupation of major cities within the Papal States, guarantee a pledge of neutrality, and pay a large indemnity. One of the few expressions of support for his weakened position came from Henry VIII of England who issued a formal protest against the imprisonment of the pope.12 Clement consequently went into exile in Orvieto and then in Viterbo, complaining, “They have plundered me of all I possess, even the canopy above my bed is not mine, it is borrowed.” Learning his lesson, in the future the pope tried

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to avoid siding with either the emperor or with the anti-imperial league. Finally the emperor’s forces left the city of Rome, and the frightened Romans invited the pope to return, which he eventually did. The city he reentered was experiencing widespread poverty, misery, destruction, and food shortages. He sadly wrote to Charles, “Before our distracted gaze lies a pitiable and mangled corpse and nothing can mitigate our sorrows, nothing can build anew the city and the Church save the prospect of that peace and undisturbed repose, which depends on your moderation and equity of mind.”13 The emperor, though, was too wise to push his victory over the pope too far. To guarantee the pope’s continuing support, Charles promised to restore the Medici as rulers of Florence and also to transfer Cervia and Ravenna to papal control. The Florentines, however, fought to be freed from any Medici restoration and the members of the League—specifically Venice and Ferrara—refused to meet the papacy’s demands for the return of the territories they held. Meanwhile France continued its warfare in different areas of Italy. Eventually the emperor felt the need to win over Clement’s allegiance in a more positive way despite his clear-cut military victory over papal forces. The pope was a loser, but he was still the pope. In return Clement formally crowned Charles at Bologna with the imperial crown, thus personally acknowledging both the bankruptcy of his foreign policy and the weakness of papal armed efforts. Besides his worries over the emperor’s designs on Italy, the pope was also concerned about the considerable advance of Lutheran sentiment in Germany. He had received strong warnings from his representative Aleandro that he must reform the Curia, insist on the loyalty of German Catholic bishops, and transfer the Inquisition from lay to clerical control. The envoy further advocated imposing an interdict in certain dissenting regions, and an embargo on trade in the empire, coupled with a crackdown on the University of Wittenberg and the elector of Saxony.14 Clement decided to send another trusted emissary, Lorenzo Cardinal Campeggio, as his legate for Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and three northern kingdoms to assess the situation once again. The cardinal quickly recognized that he was sent on a very unpopular errand, and that there was enormous animosity toward the Holy See in Germany, even among loyal Catholics. He was presented at the Diet with a series of complaints from German princes against the Curia, and he soon realized that there was little desire even among the Church’s allies to enforce the anti-Lutheran resolutions of the Edict of Worms. Charles had originally supported the edict, but he also insisted that the pope had to summon a general council to deal with the grievances that had led to the advancing heresy. He suggested that it take place in a city called Trent. Living in a fantasy world, the Curia and the pope seemed to be confident that the emperor’s will would simply prevail in Germany and that the Lutheran movement would be rolled back. But Luther shrewdly conceded to civil authorities the right

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to regulate religious activities, and thus attracted more German princes to support his cause against the international papacy. On June 15, 1530, Charles arrived at Augsburg and a new diet was called to deal with the heightening religious division. As noted, the result was a so-called “confession” that included the Protestant demand for a new church council— probably a delaying tactic to buy time, rather than a real acceptance of the desirability of doctrinal reconciliation with the Catholics. The false assumption of Charles and others was that the reformers were really still a part of the established church ready to return home if only the right compromise were crafted. Besides the call for a council, the Protestants demanded communion under both species, the marriage of the clergy, and changes in the canon of the Mass and other ceremonies—requests that on the face of it seemed reasonable.15 In Rome there was a very substantial division of opinion in the Curia over the demand for a church council. But the emperor had strongly supported the council idea, and the pope came to accept the changes in communion and the marriage of the clergy as necessary steps toward reconciliation. To the Protestant reformers it was too little and too late. Also while Charles committed himself personally to end the heresy, support elsewhere among other Catholic powers was clearly lacking. Several Italian city-states refused to resort to force in dealing with the religious controversy, and Francis I of France also expressed no real enthusiasm about getting involved in that dispute as well. As time passed, Charles also realized he needed Protestant support for his crusade against the Turks, especially after their perilous invasion of Hungary, and the pope probably agreed with the emperor’s temporizing in this case. Soon, in October 1529, the Muslim forces began to threaten the city of Vienna, but finally withdrew because of the impending winter and news of Christian reinforcements. The pope sought to rally Christian opinion to protect the eastern frontier, but there was again little ardor for such a crusade. Meanwhile the Protestant reformation made important advances.16 Having become so dependent on the emperor, the pope felt the need to shift emphasis and explore closer ties with the emperor’s rival, Francis I. At first, Clement pushed for a simple reconciliation between the two young Catholic monarchs, emphasizing especially the Turkish threat. But Clement went beyond mild exhortations and approved a proposed marriage between Francis’s son and his grandniece, Catherine de’Medici, an arrangement that was being formalized when the pope and Charles were signing a secret treaty pledging that each would not form alliances with other princes. The emperor’s response to news of the pope’s dynastic tie to Francis’s house was predictably unhappy. Consequently the pope traveled to France to meet with the king and to marry his grandniece to Henry, Duke of Orleans. At their meeting, once again Francis reiterated his opposition to any church council, and the vacillating pope was clearly threatened by his recalcitrance. Having alienated Charles and having not fully won the commitment of Francis, the pope added to his problems through his inept handling of a petition from Henry VIII for an annulment of his marriage. As noted before, the king, once celebrated as the “Defender of the Faith”

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by Leo X, was increasingly distraught with the Holy See’s treatment of his annulment request. The Church’s powerful legate in England, Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, had come to accept his king’s wishes to put aside Queen Catherine of Aragon, and had personally sought to process Henry’s appeal through normal Church channels.17 Clement’s eventual judgment against annulment was probably based on a mixture of religious and political factors. He was strongly advised by cardinals that the teachings of the Church foreclosed any annulment in those circumstances, although Henry’s advocates argued that Pope Alexander VI had granted his daughter Lucretia the same sort of annulment under similar conditions. In England there was also a sense that because of the long nine-year delay in judgment by the Holy See, even the Curia and the pope must have recognized some serious extenuating circumstances, else why would it take so long? But the pope’s advisors insisted that Henry’s marriage was indeed valid, and Catherine showed no inclination to just go away quietly or to accept a compromise. The dignified queen was not another serving lady; she was in fact the aunt of Emperor Charles, who at that time seemed to be the most powerful sovereign in the world. The papal decision took a serious toll on relations with England, leading to a full-blown schism and the threatened excommunication of Henry by the pope, a step which Clement in typical fashion postponed. Wolsey, who had been unable to deliver the Holy See’s approval for his monarch, was eventually dismissed and charged with high treason. Before his death, the once powerful prince of the Church enunciated a caveat that might characterize many of our lives, “If I had served God as diligently as I have done my King, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is the just reward I must receive, for in my diligence, pains, and studies to serve the King, I looked not to my duty towards God, but only to the gratification of the King’s wishes.” He died on the way to his trial. He was replaced by Thomas Cranmer, the chaplain of the Boleyn family. Henry’s new love was Anne Boleyn, whom he eventually married. Still, the king sought to persuade the pope to accept his decision, and he even sent Anne Boleyn’s father to talk to Clement and to the emperor, supposedly on the need for a crusade against the Turks. Meanwhile some major universities, led by the University of Paris under pressure from Francis I, supported the English king’s claims, while powerful cardinals advised Clement that a dispensation would not be in order. There was even some thought that Henry should be told to engage in bigamy as a way out of the problem, although how serious that advice was is unclear.18 On January 25, 1533, Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn who was pregnant at the time. By July the pope excommunicated the king, then he postponed its implementation several times, hoping to get Henry to accept a hearing before a group of special legates at Avignon who were to review the controversy. Hen-

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ry defiantly countered with an appeal for a church council. On June 15, 1534, Henry VIII approved a series of resolutions that legally ended the pope’s jurisdiction over the English Church and which also declared the king’s first marriage null and void. Nearly all the clergy in England took an oath acknowledging royal supremacy over the Catholic Church in their nation. The excommunication that Clement had actually postponed was to be his last public act, and he died on September 25, 1534. One-time adviser to the pope, Gucciardini, concluded, “He was hated by the Curia, distrusted by monarchs, leaving behind him a hatred and oppressive memory.” Henry ended up with six wives and eventually one sickly son, Edward, who died at age sixteen, after a regency run by his maternal uncle, Thomas Seymour. The king never sired the adult male heir to the throne that he so desired. His daughter Mary, born of his first marriage, became a queen devoted to the old religion, and then his second daughter, Elizabeth, by Anne Boleyn, went on to rule for forty-five years and established Protestantism as the permanent state religion of England. Henry, after his own schism, had flirted with the Lutheran reform, but then insisted that his church return to the Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation, clerical celibacy, communion under one species, private confession, and traditional Masses. On his death bed, Henry placed his young son in the hands of Protestant advisors, yet he insisted that a large number of Masses be said for his immortal soul.19

Paul III’s Initiatives The reign of Clement represents one of the real low points in papal leadership. His foreign policy juggling, as well as his continued uncertainties toward the Protestant reformation, led the Roman Church into a continuing decline that spelled, for many, a sense of confusion, and at times despair. The conclave that met to choose a successor embraced thirty-five cardinals, nearly all of whom were appointees of the two Medici popes. One, Alessandro Farnese, had been chosen by Alexander VI, and it was he who was so crudely referred to by the Romans as the “petticoat cardinal.” He was the brother of Giulia Orsini, whose lover was Rodrigo Cardinal Borgia. Thus Alexander appointed her relative to the Sacred College of Cardinals. He symbolized to many the very epitome of the decadent Roman papal court. But in fact Alessandro matured into a fine Curial diplomat, who at the time of his election as pope had become the dean of the Sacred College, having served for some forty years as a cardinal. He was highly respected by previous popes, and it has been said that even Clement put him forth as possible successor. Alessandro Farnese was a man of considerable personal charm, intelligence, and culture, who was scrupulously neutral over the years concerning the dis-

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putes between France and the empire. He had been, though, an early supporter of a general council to deal with the hazardous state of the church.20 Paul III was a consummate diplomat, who projected an image of great deliberateness and personal integrity. He spoke slowly and proceeded with great caution in his actions, keeping confidences to himself. During most of his papacy he carefully balanced Charles V and Francis I, avoiding taking sides. When on one occasion the emperor bragged that he would challenge Francis to a oneon-one contest of arms, the pope objected that such a proposal should even be pronounced in his presence.21 Paul III often put the interests of his Farnese family above that of the Roman Church. And he was especially prone to seek the advice of astrologers on matters of importance—behavior that was generally criticized by Church officials when others resorted to it. Despite his limitations and hesitations, Paul began the process of serious reform and eventually overcame the objections of secular princes to convene the beginnings of the Council of Trent. Paul is frequently portrayed as a reluctant reformer, but in fact he recognized from the beginning the need to clean house and negotiate carefully the distances between the two great Catholic monarchs in calling a church council. Still as pope, he feared unleashing the forces of conciliarism which would restrict the hard-fought gains of the papacy since Martin V. And he was genuinely disturbed by the advancing challenges of the Lutheran heresy and the real difficulties posed by an aggressive Turkish Islam—said by some to have designs on capturing even Rome itself. Initially he not only faced the opposition of Francis I in calling a council, but even some of his own cardinals. One observer wrote to Ferdinand I, the king of Hungary and Bohemia, “The lords of the Church are so preoccupied with their pleasures and schemes of ambition that they know nothing of what is going on in distant Germany.”22 As expected, the king of France continued to oppose a council because it would unite some of the conflicting parties in Germany and ameliorate some of the problems faced by his opponent, Charles V. In fact in 1536 and in 1544 Francis had actually made an alliance with the Turks against the emperor. The Lutherans, despite their early calls for a church council, opposed its convening as well. Martin Luther explained, “We, through the Holy Spirit, are certain of all things, and have no need in truth of any council; but Christendom has need of one, that those errors may be acknowledged in which it has been so long lain.”23 The Protestant political and military alliance, the Schmalkaldic League, opposed any council, and said so publicly in December 1535. Charles had recognized the League three years before, thus giving it some legitimacy. Francis in turn lent his support to the League and argued that despite his persecutions of Protestants in France, he was actually a friend of the Protestant states in Germany. But the emperor insisted on a council and that proved decisive for such a calling, especially in the eyes of the pope. Paul finally convened the council and

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chose an appropriate site that would offend few. At first he favored Mantua or Venezia. Then in the summer of 1536, warfare broke out between the two Catholic monarchs, disrupting once again planning for the council. Frustrated, the pope tried to broker a peace and also to convene the council. Faced with a stream of steady delays, Paul decided to move toward unilaterally beginning the reform of the Roman Catholic Church. He surely knew what the problems were. Paul created a commission of cardinals to consider the calls for reform, and in addition he instructed three other cardinals to examine all offices belonging to the States of the Church. The pope would need more allies in the College of Cardinals, and so he moved to create more cardinals, including two youthful nephews of his. Bitter criticism was directed at the pope from the Curia and from some Catholic monarchs, but the pope, armed with the names of some highly regarded Church figures, pursued his plan. He recognized all too well that in politics, even in Church politics, allies are more important than hours of persuasion and years of education. In 1537 a group headed by Cardinal Contarini reported to the pope, emphasizing the importance of changes in clerical attire, the saying of offices, priestly education, residential requirements, and a general prohibition on gambling, theater attendance, and frequenting of taverns. The pope himself, seeking to set a different tone, refused to allow his own nephews to take part in a popular carnival.24 As if to underscore the concerns of many about continuing scandalous activities, the reform memorials, addressed formally to him, were blunt and to the point. They outlined the widespread moral laxity that was plaguing the Roman Catholic Church, especially due to benefices. They called on the pontiff to account for much needed moral leadership. Catholic reformers had focused on the continuing controversy of whether the pope should receive money for ecclesiastical honors and offices. Some concluded that it was simply a veiled form of simony. Paul knew the situation by heart, for the report that came back in many ways reflected his policies and his imprint. He may have been a protégé of Alexander VI and a court figure in the Renaissance period, but Paul had seen much over the years in Rome, and he surely realized that the Roman Catholic Church now was living in grave peril. The statement issued by the commission concluded: “Throughout the whole world, almost all the shepherds have deserted the flocks and entrusted them to hirelings.” The commission also focused on laxity and corruption in the monastic houses—once the very seedbeds of Church reform in past centuries. Bishops were enjoined to keep close scrutiny over the publications of printed books and to prohibit public discussions of theological questions. Dispensations were to be restricted, especially in cases of marriage and release from religious vows. In a direct reference to the pope, the authors of the memorial reminded him of the need to restore the Church of God to “a fair and dovelike purity and to inward unity,” and they urged the pontiff to emulate the charity and inspiration of his namesake, St. Paul.25 The report to the pope eventually made its way into the hands of the enemies of the Church and was printed in 1538. Luther gleefully published the re-

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port in German, and characterized the authors as “liars . . . desperate rascals reforming the Church with cajolery.” Still he concluded, “One must not curse but pray that God’s name be hallowed and honoured, the pope’s name reviled and cursed together with his god, the devil.”26 The pope then accepted the recommendations and proceeded to deal with the College of Cardinals, but he encountered enormous opposition. Interestingly, many of the controversial findings ended up being used in the Council of Trent’s deliberations in 1545—years later than the pope had hoped for. Thus to many of his contemporaries and to some historians, Paul III was remembered more for his inconsistencies and temporizing than as a true reform pope. Like his predecessors he too showed extensive preoccupation with the Turks and the rising tides of Islam. He stressed the importance of a common crusade of Christian nations, while he was neutral between France and the Habsburgs. He generously praised Charles’s expedition against Islam and his capture of Tunis. There was excitement that the emperor would now turn his troops to Constantinople, striking a critical blow against the Moslem forces. The pope even hosted a reception for Charles V in Rome, set for April 5, 1535—a far cry from Clement’s experiences with the same emperor. The continuing conflict between the two Christian nations, however, gave the Turks and Sultan Suleyman a real opportunity to move into western Europe. When the Turks declared war on Venice, the emperor and the pope acquired that powerful city as an important ally which eventually became a part of the Holy League. The pope also spent considerable time in dealing with the problems of the Papal States, and learning how to protect the interests of his Farnese family. Despite his long-standing concerns, at times he had to defer in his foreign policy objectives to the emperor’s vague promises to curtail the Lutheran heresy. In one important sense, he had little choice but to accept that reassurance. To support Charles’s new militancy, the pope proceeded to raise fifty thousand scudi, and promised to support the Catholic forces opposed to the Protestants. Meanwhile Charles continually insisted on extending himself to get both sides to reach common doctrinal ground, and used his role as emperor to effect some reconciliation. At times the Lutherans were suspicious, and at other times the Catholics, especially the Curia, were disturbed with his moderating influence after having heard his repeated commitments to orthodoxy. However, even the emperor had limitations on his ability to override the fierce sectarian commitments of many of his adherents.27 As has been seen, Charles continued to push for a church council and suggested as noted the city of Trent, near the Alpine border of Germany and Italy. And Francis I continued to oppose such a gathering, and his cardinals were vigorous in representing his opinion. The pope recognized the need for Charles’s support, and yet he tried to keep the French king satisfied. His foreign policy was best summarized in his admonition, “Neutrality in Rome, like our daily

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bread, must be regarded as a necessity.” Faced with problems in England because of Henry VIII’s schism, he surely did not want to alienate the important Catholic monarchy in France.28 Despite his advancing age and deteriorating health, the pope decided to travel to Busseto to meet face to face with the emperor. The pope proposed to postpone the council, a change that the emperor’s agents vigorously opposed, arguing against any alteration in place or time of the council. But the pope eventually put off the council. Meanwhile the emperor announced his alliance with Henry VIII so as, he claimed, to check any combination of problems due to the opposition of Francis and of the Turks. To garner his support, the pope was informed by imperial agents that Francis was actually proposing an agreement with the Landgrave of Hesse and was ready to introduce Protestantism into Luxembourg. But Paul, wise in the ways of diplomacy, did not rise to the bait on that occasion, and philosophically expressed his views that an alliance with Henry VIII would prove to be worse than an agreement even with the Turks. In March 1545, the great pamphleteer and controversialist, Martin Luther, was heard again on the subject of the papacy. He called this pope, Paul, “the allhellish father,” “the Ass-Pope with long ass’s ears,” “the destroyer of Christianity,” and the “Devil’s apostle” among other epithets. He denounced any idea of a church council, saying “Since they believe that there is neither God nor hell nor life after this life, but live and die like cow, sow, or any other cattle, it is indeed laughable that they should hold seal or brief or reformation.” Calvin followed up with a pamphlet of his own attacking Paul III.29 Frustrated by his lack of progress in pacifying Germany, the emperor decided to resort to taking up arms against the Protestant states, and Pope Paul made plans for war as well, waiting though for Charles’s lead. In December 1545, the Council of Trent was opened by the pope’s legates. Even at the very beginning there were important differences of approach. The emperor hoped that the council would first take up the issue of internal reforms, and thus bring Protestants back to the Church. Instead the pope and the Curial leaders favored agreeing first on statements of doctrine. On February 18, 1546, Martin Luther died. The fate that he had once feared most came to him. Still his powerful legacy took firm root in the northern European areas, despite the counter-offensives of the Church. Luther once observed, “Everyone must fight his own battle with death himself, alone. We can shout into another’s ears, but every one must himself be prepared for the time of death, for I will not be with you, nor you with me. Therefore everyone must himself know and be armed with the chief things which concern a Christian.” Later Emperor Charles quietly stood at Luther’s simple tomb at Castle Church and was urged by his companions to have the body exhumed and burned. He responded in typical fashion, “I do not make war on dead men.” What started as an intense cleric pleading for Church reforms became the spiritual movement of the Protestant Reformation.30 The Protestant states became increasingly more aggressive through their Schmalkaldic League, a military alliance meant to protect the gains of the

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Reformation. And despite the emperor’s persistent efforts, Protestant sentiment in and outside the League opposed cooperating with any general council. Finally the pope and Charles forged a common military alliance to go to war against the League and against “other German teachers of error,” as the treaty they signed recorded. The emperor’s armies were clearly and quickly intimidating to their foes, and prevailed over Protestant forces, but the emperor was a man of practical toleration and extended the hand of forgiveness toward the defeated in ways that made Paul uncomfortable. The last thing the pope wanted was victory adulterated by any agreements with the Protestants. Those wary sentiments were probably accentuated by the pope’s typical Italian disdain of Spanish rule on the peninsula, especially in the case of Charles who controlled at the time both Milan and Naples.31 When the treaties with the defeated Protestant estates were concluded, they were done without the pope or his legates having been involved. It was clear that the emperor’s intention was to protect his personal authority and not necessarily to support the hierarchical power of the papacy. Meanwhile the emperor’s agents grew more arrogant in Rome, and even threatened the pope as they had his predecessor. But a cooler Paul III remarked that he was an old man who would in any case rather die the death of a martyr. Meanwhile the Council of Trent was moving toward some serious theological discussions on the role of faith and justification—the core of Luther’s original attacks. However on the date of the seventh session, spotted fever began to make its way through the city. The council was then moved to Bologna. Bitterly the emperor remarked that the pope could think of nothing but prolonging his days on earth and aggrandizing his family. He was simply an obstinate old man who was working for the destruction of the Church, Charles concluded. On March 31, 1547, Francis I of France died, and Charles seemed stronger than ever. On September 10, 1547, an imperial viceroy murdered the pope’s illegitimate son, Pierre Luigi Farnese, and the news reached the Vatican. Paul was sure that the emperor was involved.32 The pope then considered a defensive alliance with France, Venice, Urbano, and Switzerland in order to check the aggrandized power of Charles V. As for the emperor, he was moving toward calling together a new diet at Augsburg to end sectarian hatred. Now he was becoming more closely involved in doctrinal disputes in the name of law and order. On November 9, 1549, the aged pope died. The confusing and transitional papacy of Alessandro Farnese came to an indecisive end. Historians still are uncertain as to whether he was a committed reformer, the father of the great Council of Trent, or an opportunist unable to make at times a prompt and effective decision. Was he really a throwback to the Renaissance papacy or the beginning of a more rigorous Church impulse? Or could he be all of the above, as well as a very cautious diplomat? Historical figures tend to have broader interests and ambiguities than history sometimes allows. In the case of Paul, he was an obstinate old man who understood the problems of calling any church coun-

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cil, and who insisted that such a council must focus on the doctrinal unity of the Roman Catholic Church and not be totally subsumed by Charles’s interests of pacifying the unpacifiable, that is, the Protestant reformers who had gone far beyond the limits of what a general or ecumenical council could embrace. Thus the papacy of Paul III is properly seen as the beginning of the institutional reforms embodied in the Council of Trent, which helped to frame the basic understandings that governed the Roman Catholic Church until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

The Council Resumes The death of Paul III led to a prolonged and embarrassing deadlock in the conclave, pitting once again the adherents of the emperor against the king of France, now Henry II. For ten weeks, from November 29, 1549, to February 7, 1550, the cardinals were unable to agree even though an Englishman, Reginald Pole, the candidate of the imperial forces, missed being the choice by only one vote. But he was not Italian, at age forty-five was considered too young, and was suspected by some of harboring views on justification that were too close to those of Martin Luther. Finally the exhausted conclave overrode imperial objections and pledged its unanimous support to Giovanni Maria del Monte, a native-born Roman who had been a chamberlain to Julius II, governor of the eternal city under Clement VII, archbishop under Clement, and legate at Bologna. He had also represented Pope Paul as co-president of the Council of Trent and supported expressions of reform. He took the name Julius III in gratitude to a predecessor’s early support of his career. Julius’s reign had a strange sense of déjà vu. He seemed to many to emulate the older Renaissance popes rather than the younger reformers, and he was prone to lavish displays of ceremony, festivals, and entertainment. He even continued to have a court jester. The historian Richard McBrien recorded that Julius “created a scandal because of his infatuation with a fifteen year old boy whom he picked up in the streets of Parma, had his brother adopt, and made a cardinal and head of the secretariat of state. [The boy ended up in prison for criminal activity.]” Julius lacked polish and a sense of firmness in his dealings with people. It was said that he preferred to be surrounded by contented people. He spent money somewhat lavishly at first, tended to gamble, enjoyed the chase, and supported the frivolities of the theater of the time.33 He too pushed his family relations for church positions—it seemed like the old times were back. However, Julius also realized the need to continue the Council of Trent, a pledge that he had made in the conclave. He received the enthusiastic support of the emperor, despite the latter’s earlier reservations, and now incurred the criticism of the French king. Still the emperor insisted that the Protestant view be represented at the council, and it was in several sessions, but their demands included acknowledgment of the supremacy of church councils

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over the papacy, a re-debating of previously agreed upon articles, and a statement affirming the sole supremacy of the Scriptures. Thus the emperor supported the council, while the French king did not, and the latter even encouraged opposition outside his country. The French were loyal to the Church, Henry lamely insisted, but he wished to have nothing to do with anything that might undermine the Gallican understandings limiting the papacy in his nation. Once again, however, conflict between secular authorities led to another suspension of the council in April 1552. This time it was in part precipitated by Julius’s attempt to force Ottavio Farnese, Pope Paul III’s grandson and a French supporter, out of power in the city of Parma. In addition, the final alliance between the French king and the Protestant princes led to Charles V mobilizing his armies to put down their common enemies. The papacy joined with the emperor, and when the French defeated them, the German princes took up arms against Charles. The pope fell back on a policy of Christian neutrality, and he retreated to a new villa where he conducted little Church business for the remainder of his reign. He did, however, recognize the constitution of the Society of Jesus, and lifted the papal interdict on England laid by Paul III. Then on March 23, 1555, he died. Julius matched the attitudes of the Renaissance papacy with his own ways. Embracing a real sense of reform, he called for the council to go ahead and pushed for internal Church reforms on his own, just as his immediate predecessor had. He recognized that he could not wait for Trent to tell him what he already knew about the abuses of office in the Curia and the state of the Church. But his own behavior in the management of his own office undercut his apparent commitments. The Church again was not well served by Peter’s successor. The new pope, Marcello Cervini, had been an administrator of several Italian dioceses and at one time was the head of the Vatican Library. He had been an ally of Paul III and opposed Julius III’s lifestyle. Keeping his Christian name, the new pope (Marcellus II) died within three weeks, serving from April 10 to May 1, 1555, leaving the reform agenda once again up in the air. He was followed by Gian Pietro Carafa, the dean of the College of Cardinals and a dedicated reformer, who had co-founded a famed religious order, the Theatines, known for its austere poverty and dedicated to Church reforms. As the conclave began, the imperial and French forces led to a deadlock, until finally the cardinals accepted the seventy-nine-year-old prelate and archbishop of Naples, who took the name Paul IV. Based on his dedication and aesthetic lifestyle, he held great promise, but in fact that was not to be. Carafa established himself as a frighteningly intolerant pope who turned reform into an expanded Roman Inquisition. He got the Church involved in an unnecessary war with Spain, denounced the tolerant Peace of Augsburg between the Catholics and the Protestants, and after the death of Queen Mary I of England demanded that the Church be granted restitution for its lost properties. That position only made Queen Elizabeth even more of a

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problem for English Catholics, but also increased her already apparent disdain for the papacy. The pope insisted that he could marshal the forces of reform better on his own; and so he abandoned the Council of Trent. He created a parallel structure of some sixty Church officials that ended up not functioning as a reform committee at all. He emphasized a strengthened Roman Inquisition, even attending its sessions at times. One prominent cardinal, Giovanni Morone, a very respected Church leader and a critical figure of the Council of Trent’s last period, felt its punishments and was actually imprisoned for heresy. The pope in 1557 reaffirmed the Index of Forbidden Books, and forced Jews into the various ghettos of Rome and the Papal States, making them wear distinctive headgear. When he died in 1559, crowds destroyed the headquarters of the Inquisition, released its prisoners, and upended the pope’s statue in the capital.34 Despite his record of genuine dedication to the Church, he epitomized how all too easily in the Church and elsewhere, reform in religion can lead to authoritarianism and intolerance. It was at this point that the Church truly began to turn the Catholic Reformation into the harsh Counter Reformation of history. The leadership of the popes in the Protestant Reformation period led to a rather timid commitment to rapid and far-reaching change. The dynamics of the papacy of that time did not give even the most dedicated pontiff the ability or resources to reform the Curia, reorient the institutional Church, and balance the pressures of the Catholic monarchs.

Notes 1. Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1923), vol. 9, 7–11. 2. E. R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes (New York: Dial Press, 1969), 255; Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (New York: AMS Press, 1967), vol. 3, pt. 2, chap. 5; Barbara McClung Hallman, Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 17. 3. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 9, 142; John C. Olin, The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola: Reform in the Church 1495–1540 (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), chap. 9; Mandell Creighton, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome (London: Longmans, Green, 1903) vol. 5, 184–235. 4. A. G. Dickens, The Age of Humanism and Reformation: Europe in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 55; Roland Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969). 5. Richard McBrien, Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco 1997), 278–79; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 9, 125.

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6. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes, 258; Francisco Guicciardini, The History of Italy (New York: Macmillan, 1969), book 16. 7. G. F. Young, The Medici (New York: Modern Library, 1933), 320; Niccolò Machiavelli, The Chief Works and Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), vol. 2. 8. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 9, 232–44. 9. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes, 260; Wilhelm Schenk, Reginald Pole, Cardinal of England (New York: Longman, Green and Co., 1950), 51–52. 10. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 9, 270. 11. Pastor, History of the Popes, 284–99; Thomas O. Summers, The Lives of the Popes (Nashville, Tenn.: A. H. Redford, 1876), vol. III, chaps. 10–11, 81– 106. 12. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 9, 462; Lillian Browne Olf, The Sword of Saint Michael: Saint Pius V 1504–1572 (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Bruce Publishing Co., 1945), 94. 13. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 10, 2–31; E. R. Chamberlin, The Sack of Rome (London: B. T. Batsford, 1979); Melissa Meriam Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth Century Florence and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), chap. 7. 14. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 10, 107–8; James A. Froude, Lectures on the Council of Trent, Delivered at Oxford 1892–3 (1896; reprint, Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1968), chap. 4. 15. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 10, 122–30; Edward V. Cardinal, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, Legate to the Courts of Henry VIII and Charles V (Boston: Chapman & Grimes, 1935); Royall Tyler, The Emperor Charles the Fifth (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956), chaps. 4 and 5. 16. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 10, 145–83; R. J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), chap. 8; Guicciardini, History of Italy, book 17. 17. Lewis W. Spitz, The Protestant Reformation, 1517–1559 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), chap. 5; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 10, 271; Joseph Lecler, Toleration and Reformation (New York: Association Press, 1960), vol. 1. 18. A. F. Pollard, Wolsey: Church and State in Sixteenth Century England (New York: Harper, 1966); Charles W. Ferguson, Naked to Mine Enemies: The Life of Cardinal Wolsey (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958); Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pt. 2; G. N. Clark, et al., eds., The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 2, The Reformation 1520–1559, ed. G. R. Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), chap.7. 19. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes, 285; G. W. Searle, The Counter Reformation (London: University of London, 1974), 8.

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20. Summers, Lives of Popes, vol. 3, chap. 12. 21. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 11, 2–35. 22. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 11, 45. 23. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 67; Olf, Sword of Saint Michael, 61 on Luther’s observations on scandals. 24. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 11, 139, 151–52; “Proposal of a Select Committee of Cardinals,” in Elizabeth G. Gleason, Reform Thought in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981), 81–100. 25. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 11, 169. 26. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 11, 179. 27. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 11, pp. 21, 272, 297; Karl Brandi, The Emperor Charles V: The Growth and Destiny of a Man and of a World Empire (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1939), chap. 3, 5. 28. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 12, 133, 151–52; Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Atheneum, 1976), pt. 5. 29. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 12, 215–16. 30. Spitz, Protestant Reformation, 88, 121. 31. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 12, 289–320. 32. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 12, 333, 369. 33. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 13, 65; McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 283; Alessandro Nova, The Artistic Patronage of Pope Julius II (1550–1553): Profane Imagery and Buildings for the De Monte Family in Rome (New York: Garland Publishers, 1988); A. Lynn Martin, Henry III and the Jesuit Politicians (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1973). 34. McBrien, Lives of Popes, 284–85.

Chapter 11

The Catholic Reformation The story of the end of Christendom—as a unifying force and a single belief system—often follows a regular historical treatment. Thus is it said: the late medieval Church became rigid and ossified, and the forces of humanism transformed themselves into the Italian Renaissance. The Church, emulating society rather than vice versa, especially in Italy, became increasingly a decadent, money-grubbing secular institution. Out of northern Europe came the fiercely righteous sentiments of Martin Luther who, in countless acts of audacity and bravery, destroyed the whole of the Roman Church in large areas of Europe. Individualism, conscience, capitalism, democracy, and nationalism all blossomed forth into the light of day. And the Roman Church retreated into a defensive Counter Reformation that made it even more isolated and vulnerable in the coming centuries. But in fact, the forces of criticism that so animated Luther and his followers were part of a general revulsion against Roman rule and the papal court. A great many Catholic clergy and laity began a Catholic Reformation—one that relied heavily on the rebirth of devotion and a proliferation of new religious orders, houses and associations. But those adherents remained loyal to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. The drama of the Protestant Reformation has often overwhelmed those more quiet Catholic efforts. In addition, many of the same popes and Curial staff people who seemed to be so stubborn and against real reform were also responsible for enormous missionary efforts intensely characteristic of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, when the West discovered the New World and the Church discovered new fields for missionary work. No study of papal leadership can ignore either of those remarkable developments.

The Early Reformers One of the earliest reformers in this period was the archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, who was the confessor of Queen Isabella, a major supporter of the Inquisition, and the founder of the University of Alcalá. The 155

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university became a virtual seminary of prospective bishops and a center for Christian humanistic studies, as he helped to establish Spain as one of the bulwarks of the Catholic Church. Another early example of serious religious reform came with the establishment in 1517 of a confraternity called the Society or Oratory of the Divine Love. The Confraternity was founded in Genoa in 1497 by a prominent layman, Ettore Vernazza, and several friends, and was aimed at the personal sanctification of its members through devotion and good works. The Oratorio was identified with other associations in Italy, especially the Oratory of St. Jerome founded earlier in Vicenza in 1494, and was linked with religious revivals such as those of St. Bernadine of Siena and St. John of Capistrano. Women played an important role in those movements, especially St. Catherine of Genoa. Between 1514 and 1517, the Oratory was established in Rome—an event of major consequence. Fervently loyal to the Church, its members engaged in religious exercises, prayer and preaching, the frequent reception of the sacraments, and works of charity.1 In 1519, Giulio de’Medici (later Pope Clement VII) founded the Confraternità della Carità to support the poor, visit the imprisoned, and bury the destitute dead. Another well-known order, the Theatines, was founded to reform clerical life. Its founders were Gaetano da Thiene and his influential colleague Gian Pietro Carafa (later Pope Paul IV). The participants dressed in black, wore a high collar, white stockings, and were clean shaven. They lived in general seclusion and were deeply involved in prayer, meditation, and the study of the Scriptures, and were devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the frequent reception of the sacraments. They made a deep impression in 1523 by their dedication in caring for the sick during the plague. Clement VII also looked with favor on the group and conferred new indulgences on them. 2 Under Carafa’s intense leadership, the order, especially in Venice, came in close contact with the likes of Gasparo Contarini, Reginald Pole, and the great reformer of the Benedictine Order, Gregorio Cortese. The Theatine Order became a virtual seminary for prospective bishops, as the historian Pastor put it, because it dedicated itself to spearheading Catholic reform. As Protestants and Catholics alike admitted, the abuses of bishops and their frequent absence from their dioceses were legendary and became topics for Carafa’s close scrutiny. He focused on what he called the causes of heresy: bad preaching, bad books, and bad ways of living. One of Carafa’s friends and allies undertook major reforms in the diocese of Verona—Gian Matteo Giberti, a Sicilian by birth, the illegitimate son of a Genoese admiral, and a protégé of Giulio Cardinal de’Medici. Giberti stressed the rejuvenation of the clergy in Verona, a task that Pope Clement also supported. He went from village to village, minutely examining the state of the parishes and the preparation of the clergy. Giberti stressed the importance of the sacred liturgy and regular church attendance. Parish priests were made more responsible for the special works being done in the name of the Church in their area. Giberti also founded a charitable society to further work with the poor. With the pope’s approval, he extended his reform efforts to the religious orders as well, some of

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which had wallowed in considerable laxity during this time. Other bishops, encouraged by his example, began similar reform efforts, including establishing synods to push for Church rejuvenation. Giberti’s work came to the attention of Charles Cardinal Borromeo of Milan, later a major figure at the Council of Trent. Other efforts blossomed as well. In Venice, Girolamo Emiliani pushed to open orphanages in that city, Brescia and Bergamo. In the village of Somasca he founded a new religious association dedicated to helping orphans, the poor, and the sick; the order was soon called Somaschi. Meanwhile in Milan, a nobleman, Antonio Maria Zaccaria, created a new order called the Barnabites which emphasized public penance and outdoor missionary work. 3 The reform spirit also animated the newly established Capuchins, an austere branch of the Franciscans aimed at helping the common folk of Italy. 4 The Augustinians (with the Brethren of the Common Life) also saw the beginnings of reform efforts as well. There was a separation in the Carmelite Order of the Calced (those who wore sandals on their feet) and the Discalced (Sandalless). This latter movement was led by the extraordinary St. Teresa of Avila. 5 Again Clement protected the more austere reformers in those established orders. Thus Pope Clement, for all his hesitations, could be counted on to encourage those who sought to purify and upgrade the Church regular. At the very end of his reign was the beginning of an even more eventful religious association—the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits. The Society of Jesus was founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, an intense Spanish soldier, who was severely wounded during a military engagement in Pampeluna. While recuperating from his wounds, Ignatius underwent a conversion, which led him to dedicate his life to the Church. With nine companions, Ignatius pledged the new Society to the propagation of the Catholic faith, and required a special vow of unconditional obedience to the papacy. That commitment would lead to special missionary efforts throughout the world, as far-flung as St. Francis Xavier in India and Japan, Matteo Ricci in China, Roberto Nobili in India, and Manuel de Nóbrega in Brazil. Their strong focus was on creating institutions of learning dedicated to the sixteenth-century concepts of Christian humanism. Under Peter Canisius’s leadership, the Jesuits were especially prominent in Germany in opposing the Lutherans. The Society was also committed to early forms of spiritual revival and missionary work. Ignatius’s devotional volume, The Spiritual Exercises, became a standard textbook on piety and strenuous religious self-examination. At Ignatius’s death, the Society had grown to 1,000 members, and by the year 1600 that number had reached 8,500 in twenty-three provinces. The Jesuits soon acquired a reputation for shrewdness, dedication, loyalty to the papacy, as well as for deviousness, mental reservations, and unscrupulousness in manipulating powerful people. Ironically both the powerful and the papacy would turn on the Society and nearly destroy it in the next century. 6 If Clement proved to be an ally, Paul III was even more committed to supporting the Catholic reformers, especially in dealing with the Italian clergy. The

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older orders had proven very resistant to change, even to Giberti’s efforts. Still Giberti remained the great beacon of reform, and he sent his decrees to Pope Paul for approval which the pontiff enthusiastically gave. The bishops in Italy, following his example, began to take the lead in such varied places as Mantua, Spoleto, Foligno, Troja, Brindisi, Trent, Brescia, Padua, Treviso, Faenza, Nocera, Carpentras, Chieti, Genoa, Reggio, Modena, and Bologna. The Augustinians were led by a reforming friar, Girolamo Seripando, whom Pope Paul later named a cardinal and a legate to preside over the Council of Trent. In addition, the pope turned his attention several times to the reform of the Dominicans as well, especially regarding the question of laxity in preaching which was supposed to be their specialty. Some of the older orders, once the very centers of Church reform and rejuvenation in past centuries, proved to be very resistant to change and upgrading. One can see that especially in the continuing conflict that took place in the Franciscan Order over the emergence of the Capuchins. 7 Paul, like Clement, supported the new orders that seemed to offer such promise including the Theatines and the older Oratory of Divine Love, from which the former had emerged. He also supported Zaccaria’s congregation and embraced a sisterhood called the “Angelicals” which founded a convent in Milan. Added to that was a new community of nuns, the Ursulines, who did not live together but in their families’ homes, coming together for prayer and devotion. At one point Pope Paul III intervened directly to prevent a break-up of that community and to recognize its worth.8 Except for the Jesuits, mostly all of those reforms were Italian-based, but in Spain and elsewhere the same spirit was beginning to emerge. For example, John of Avila began a series of well-received preaching activities that in fact even led to him being scrutinized by the Inquisition. Nonetheless, he penned two major works on asceticism that were meant as guides to the Christian life. The second figure, John of God, hailing from Andalucía, was a soldier who had been moved by the sermons of John of Avila. He devoted his life to administering to the needs of the sick, and founded what became known as the Hospitallers. This group, originating in Spain, later spread to other areas of Europe under different names.

The Missionary Impulse The loss of northern Europe to the Catholic Church was still profoundly shocking to a church that had certainly known heresy and schism from its very beginnings. Eventually that division resulted in the end of Christendom as a concept and as a way of life, and resulted in intense conflict and fratricidal religious wars. Ironically this same period—the period of the Renaissance and Counter Reformation popes—also led to a period of remarkable conversions, rivaling, even if not surpassing, the conversions of the Germanic tribes after the fall of the Roman Empire.9

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What is even more telling is that many of the attributes that led to the disruptions of the Reformation played major roles in the exploration and colonization of the new worlds. Those discoverers, conquistadors, and imperial agents were advocates of nationalism, materialism, and private initiative. They had left in their minds the communal world of the medieval church with its limited view of science and technology, and its preoccupation with loyalty, charity, and limited ambition. As happens sometimes in life, our vices become our virtues, and our virtues the source of our vices. Many of these adventurers were dedicated Roman Catholics, who justified their voyages with the rationale that they were involved in reaching out to bring the faith to savages, heathens, and the uninitiated in Christ Jesus. It is frequently maintained in our more cynical age that religion was only a guise to cover over their avarice. But the longstanding devoutness and religious dedication of the lives of so many of these brave men is too obvious to be simply dismissed as a ruse. And the Church knew that evangelization became in many lands much more than the official ideology for imperial expansion and mercenary administration. Thus, just when it seemed that Catholicism was waning, it began an incredibly aggressive missionary effort to bring the faith to the new lands being discovered and exploited outside of Europe. Except for Calvin at times, Protestantism was not interested in missionary efforts until several centuries later. Luther and his allies were more involved in creating state churches than in a counter-effort to Catholicism’s universality. They also believed that the end of the world was imminent, and that the obligation to preach the Gospel throughout the world applied only to the original apostles. Also the Protestants lacked dedicated monks, who for over a thousand years were the main agents for the propagation of the faith. The Roman Catholic Church used its traditional mechanisms for the new missionary work, except it was now involved heavily in dealing with the issues of the human condition of the Indians and their souls. The later creation of a permanent bureaucracy—the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in the Curia—led to an experienced institutional group that persisted in that dedication, even if a particular pope or prince was not interested in missionary efforts. The first major declarations by the Church concerning these new lands were Pope Alexander VI’s decrees, Inter caetera and Dudum siquidem, both promulgated in 1493, which donated, granted and assigned to various Catholic monarchs and their royal descendants “the newly discovered and yet to be discovered lands” and gave “them exclusive responsibility for converting their native inhabitants to the Christian faith.” The Spanish, who did very well under this division, ended up supporting papal claims at the same time as the papacy was under serious criticism and attack elsewhere. Thus it became a union of convenience.10 Before Alexander, previous popes had granted the Portuguese a monopoly over territories on the west coast of Africa. The monarch was given the power, among other things, to propagate the faith and also to enslave the natives. Despite that precedent, Church missionaries and various popes would denounce

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slavery and also forced conversions to the faith. At times, missionary monks and priests, especially in Latin America, did try to protect the native Indians from the more brutal expressions of the Spanish conquistadors and royal governors. For example in 1537, Paul III issued a bull, Sublimis Deus, that pronounced “Indians are true men.” However, their attitudes toward forced conversions were more checkered than one would think. After all, St. Thomas Aquinas had insisted that “the act of faith is an action proper to the will”—that is, it should be voluntary. But still the rights of so-called primitive peoples or “Caribs” were blatantly ignored for the greater good of spreading the faith. The infidels must accept the authority of the Church as well as that of the Castilian crown. As the warrior Hernán Cortés insisted, “Our principal intention must be directed towards the service and honor of God, our Lord, and the reason the Holy Father granted the emperor, my Lord, dominion over these peoples . . . is that these peoples be converted to our Holy Catholic faith.”11 In 2000, Pope John Paul II denounced both slavery and the imperialistic conquests of native peoples, and requested God’s forgiveness for those responsible for such violations. The most important responsibility of the papacy at this time was not to divide up the territories, but to encourage and assign missionaries to further the propagation of the faith. That policy was obvious from the very beginning of the age of exploration. Prince Henry the Navigator’s early efforts to establish Portuguese colonies in Africa led to Catholic missions being established there. Columbus, a devout Catholic layman in many complex ways, encouraged missionary efforts, and by 1511 three episcopal sees were actually established in America: Havana, Lima, and Santo Domingo. In his bull of April 25, 1521, Pope Leo X authorized the Franciscan monks in the New World to perform religious rites and generally not to be hindered. He even gave them certain privileges that usually belonged to bishops. Hadrian (Adrian) VI expanded those powers to include more functions of the episcopacy, especially in matters relating to the conversion of the Indians. 12 In Asia, as early as 1458, the Portuguese made Goa the center of their efforts, and later in 1542 the Jesuits sent Francis Xavier to that colony. He moved on to India, Indochina, and southern Japan, bringing the faith with him. He even set out for China, but died on an island overlooking the coast of China in 1552. That last nation was especially difficult in which to apply Christian teachings, even after the visits of the brilliant Matteo Ricci who arrived in 1582. Ricci was a fascinating and erudite scientist and thinker who sought to fuse Christianity and traditional Chinese values. Unfortunately, Pope Clement XI cut off those missionary approaches and greatly impeded any missionary efforts in that vastly populous land. Roberto de Nobili, another seventeenth-century Jesuit, tried his hand at converting India. He was not as successful as the efforts in the Philippines, where an Asian nation became nearly totally Roman Catholic. The Holy See was unwilling to leave those important converting opportunities just to the religious orders; and in 1622 Pope Gregory XV established the Sacred Congrega-

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tion for the Propagation of the Faith, which was to centralize all missionary activity under papal aegis.13 Thus in the mid and late sixteenth century, the Catholic Church experienced an enormous increase in conversions and adherents in a very different environment than northern Europe. It saw important, but limited reform efforts encouraged by new associations, orders and oratories that aimed at purging and refreshing the battered Church. It had happened before that the Church would be refreshed from its abbeys, its monasteries, and its nunneries, which in turn feed into the mainstream institutions. Reform bishops, especially in Spain and Italy, became important role models for what the Church should be. In the former country, major figures of the Catholic Reformation and the more aggressive Counter Reformation seemed to dominate the Church at times. Francesco Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros who began those efforts, followed by Hadrian VI, Carafa, Contarini, theologians at the Council of Trent, influential Spanish mystics, and the Society of Jesus: all had Spanish roots.14 Those changes were limited in size and influence. The Church needed a general council. And the council was to deal with both dogma and church practices, with both theology and day-to-day operations in parish life. It was to those tasks that the lengthy Council of Trent would direct its attention. Beyond the new pieties would emerge a conservative, organized and defensive movement—the so-called Counter Reformation. The papacy would now reach a clear ascendancy in that period and with those attitudes.

Notes 1. Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1923), vol. 10, chap. 12; Eva-Maria Jung, “On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth Century Italy,” Journal of History of Ideas 14, no. 4 (1953): 511–27; Francesco C. Cesareo, Humanism and Catholic Reform: The Life and Work of Gregorio Cortese, 1483–1548 (New York: Peter Lang, 1990); K. J. von Hefele, The Life of Cardinal Ximenez (London: Catholic Publishing and Booksellers, 1860), chaps. 17–18; Delio Cantimori, “The Problem of Heresy: The History of the Reformation and of the Italian Heresies and the History of Religious Life in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century-The Relation between Two Kinds of Research,” in Eric Cochrane, ed., The Late Italian Renaissance 1525–1630 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), 211–376. 2. John C. Olin, The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola: Reform in the Church 1495–1540 (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), especially chap. 2; Pierre Janelle, The Catholic Reformation (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1963); Frederic C. Church, The Italian Reformers 1534–1564 (1932; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1972); Marvin R. O’Connell, The Counter Reformation, 1559–1610 (New York: Harper & Row, 1974); Henri Daniel-Rops, The Catholic Reformation (New York: E. Dutton, 1963).

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3. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 10, 393–431. 4. Father Cuthbert, The Capuchins: A Contribution to the History of the Counter Reformation, 2 vols. (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929). 5. Lewis W. Spitz, The Protestant Reformation 1517–1559 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 290–92. 6. Christopher Hollis, A History of the Jesuits (London: Veidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), chaps. 1–2; William V. Bangert, A History of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1972); James Brodrick, The Origin of the Jesuits (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986). 7. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 10, 503–10, 523–27; Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). 8. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 10, 523–27. 9. John A. Crow, The Epic of Latin America, 4th ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), chap. 15. 10. Kenneth Scott Latourette, Three Centuries of Advance; AD 1500–AD 1800 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1939), chap. 1; Luis N. Rivera, A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest of the Americas (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 25; Philip D. Curtin, The World and the West: The European Challenge and the Overseas Response in the Age of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 11. Susan E. Ramirez, ed., Indian-Religious Relations in Colonial America (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989); John H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Lewis Hanke, “Pope Paul III and the American Indians,” Harvard Theological Review 30, no. 2 (1937): 65–102. 12. Charles S. Braden, Religious Aspects of the Conquest of Mexico (1930, reprint; New York: AMS Press, 1966), 132–33; Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), chap. 6; Ramsey MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), chap. 4, which chronicles previous successes in assimilating Church dogma to alien cultures. 13. Thomas S. Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1990), chap. 21. 14. H. Outram Evennett, The Spirit of the Counter Reformation (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 16.

Chapter 12

The Council as a Reform Movement The Council of Trent is an especially difficult historical phenomenon to appreciate for several reasons. First, on paper the council lasted from 1545 to 1563, although most of the work was completed in less than four years total time. Second, despite its historical reputation as a council of great and paramount importance, it took a long time to implement its changes throughout the Church. Still in retrospect, the Council of Trent had enormous implications in transforming the beleaguered Catholic Church of the Renaissance and Reformation into a more centralized, more legalistic, more conservative, and more structured institution. The council was in a true sense a reform caucus—that is, a group process with its own dynamics and rules.1 First, the council was called and reconvened by the popes in their capacity as supreme vicars of Christ—initially, though, at the insistence of Emperor Charles V and many Church reformers. The council was controlled by papal agents—the legates—who presided over the council deliberations and referred major points of contention to the Holy See. Despite the severe misgivings of various popes, there was no real threat that the conciliarism of the past would erupt or that the supremacy of the papacy would be denied. Even though several Protestant theologians were invited to various sessions, as Charles V repeatedly had demanded, their role was minimal. It has been frequently asserted that the theology of the Catholic Church was not fully formed, that the Reformation forced the Church to define more coherently the basic dogmas of the faith. There is some truth to that observation, although most of the major councils have ended up redefining doctrine, for they are usually called together because of conflict and confusion. Still the major doctrines of the Council of Trent were not remarkable and wayward innovations. There was surely some difficulty with particular issues such as the matter of faith and justification, especially in light of Luther and Calvin’s challenges, but that prolonged deliberation was recognition of the complexities of a very difficult issue that had been wrestled with even before the times of the orthodox St. Augustine, who favored a version of predestination. The collegiality of the council in the early session was aided by the very small number of participants, initially usually some thirty to thirty-five, and the 163

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fact that some of that number were loyal Italian prelates strongly encouraged by Pope Paul to travel north to Trent. Only sixty prelates participated in the important debate over justification. This compares with over five hundred prelates at the Council of Constance in 1414–1418. Many of the early recommendations on Church reform came originally from the reform bishops, who were engaged in correcting their own dioceses, or from cardinals who had given Pope Paul the publicized report on the urgent need to clean house. Little that emerged out of Trent was wildly new or shockingly innovative either in dogma or in practice. Thus Trent was in many ways a conservative reform movement that codified and advocated a broad agenda of change and centralized administration. 2

The Chronology As has been noted, Pope Paul III called the council to convene at Mantua on May 23, 1537, but he backed off due to strong French opposition. Then in 1538 he pushed for a council at Vicenza, but ran into indifference from the emperor who had supported the council so vigorously at first. Finally in 1542, the pope chose Trent as the site, and after still another postponement, the council met on December 13, 1545. The first period of the council lasted until March 11, 1547. The council immediately had to confront the question of whether it would focus on the definitions of dogma, which was the pope’s preference, or internal reforms of the Church, the emperor’s emphasis. The result was a compromise to treat both those subjects concurrently, a settlement which is obvious if one reads in chronological order the final decrees that came out of that period. In those sessions, the role of the papal legates was critical in setting the pace and the tone of the meetings, and their control increased as time went by. Since voting was done by individuals and not by nations (as happened in the previous Council of Constance), the influence of Italian bishops was dominant. Still the participants could be bluntly candid in their observations. In March 1546, the legates at Trent concluded, “It seems that two things about the court at Rome rob it of credit and scandalize the world: first, its avarice, and second, its pomp and luxury.” In that first period the council reaffirmed the Nicene Creed with its emphasis on the divinity of Christ, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and traditional definitions of the importance of Church, and it focused on familiar statements dealing with Baptism, resurrection, and eternal life. Rejecting Luther’s views, the council also insisted on the validity of both the Scriptures and the unwritten Tradition as sources of religious truth. The Church—and not the individual— was cited as having the sole right to interpret the Bible, and the Vulgate version (mainly the work of St. Jerome) was proclaimed the authoritative text. The seven sacraments were affirmed as ordained by Christ, and renewed emphasis was

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placed on the role of Baptism and Confirmation in the lives of observant Catholics.3 Most importantly the council dealt with the much-debated issue of justification and merit, with a final statement being issued on January 13, 1547. One way to facilitate consensus building is to not take definitive stands. The council avoided dealing with the subtle philosophical differences expressed by various Catholic schools of theology such as the Thomists, Scotists, and Augustinians. Ambiguous statements at times are meant to say different things to different audiences. The council fathers, however, recognized that Christ died for all people, and that one must be born again in Christ, and made just by His grace, to be saved. Jesus was the second Adam sent to earn forgiveness for the latter’s Original Sin. In adults, the beginning of justification must proceed from the predisposing grace of God through Jesus Christ, without any merit on the part of individuals. Man is never able through his own free will and without the grace of God to move himself up in His sight. That view seems rather close to Luther’s, although not as rigid as Calvin’s view of predestination. Indeed in 1999, representatives of the Catholic and Lutheran churches signed an agreement at Augsburg reaffirming their common acceptance of God’s predisposition. But the participants at Trent, quoting extensively from St. Paul’s letters, insisted on the voluntary reception of the grace and gifts of God by man, on the importance of adding hope and charity to faith, remembering that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17, 20). No one can be certain that he has attained the grace of God, and therefore no one should be boasting of the certainty of the remission of his sins. “Do you see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only,” it is said in James 2:24. The Gospel of Matthew (10:22; 24:13) further tells us, “He that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.” And again quoting St. Paul who so influenced Luther, the council recalled his words, “Abound in every good work, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (I Corinthians 15:58). And again, “For God is not unjust, that He should forget your work, and the love which you have shown in His name” (Hebrews 6:10). Thus the council members staked out a more nuanced position, one that reaffirmed the importance of merit and also the centrality of good works. 4 As their effort was coming to a completion, an epidemic swept through the city of Trent and on March 11, 1547, the council was transferred to Bologna. Consequently the council ended up being essentially suspended for four years until a new pope, Julius III (1550–1555), reconvened it at Trent. GirolamoSeripando, the Augustinian General, judged the first period of the council in a critical light. He found it characterized by “irresolution, ignorance, incredible stupidity.” This second period of deliberations (1551–1552) dealt with the important role of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and the council fathers supported the notion of transubstantiation against the teachings of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. The concept of transubstantiation was not new to Trent; the word was widely used in the latter part of the twelfth century, and there was some reference to it in the Lateran Council in 1215. The final exposition of the doctrine,

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though, was based primarily on the vocabulary of Aristotle, as reformulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. The council, essentially at Trent, declared that the substance of bread and wine became the actual body and blood of Christ, even though the appearance (“the accidents”) was the same. It is the Real Presence the faithful is experiencing, not a symbolic expression of Christ or an imitation of the Last Supper. The Lutherans, arriving at the church council in January 1552, insisted on reopening the discussions of subjects previously settled at the earlier sessions. They argued strenuously that bishops should not be held to any oath of allegiance to the papacy, as they were at the time, and that all parties must acknowledge the overall supremacy of church councils over the pope. Their demands were rejected. Meanwhile a revolt against Charles V by some German princes backed by France resulted in another suspension of the council on April 28, 1552. A weary Charles ended up handing over to his brother Ferdinand the conduct of German affairs, and he in turn approved a settlement formulated at Augsburg in 1555. As noted, the peace mandated that each prince was allowed to choose the religion of the state (at first either Catholicism or Lutheranism). The pope disapproved of the settlement, but it prevailed. 5

Paul IV As we have seen, after the death of Julius on March 23, 1555, the cardinals turned to Marcello Cervini (April 9–May 1, 1555) a committed reformer, Church diplomat, and later the Vatican librarian. He was a strong supporter of the policies of Paul III, and also a critic of Julius’s benevolent nepotism. He kept his Christian name and started his reign with an intense effort to codify reform proclamations. To avoid any charges of nepotism, he banned his relatives from Rome. But the pace of work and his weak health took a toll, and his reign lasted twenty-two days. With Marcello II dead, the cardinals elected the devout and harsh Giovanni Pietro Carafa, who took the name Paul IV (1555–1559). Once pope, he insisted that he, rather than a council, could reform the Church most expeditiously. He hated Protestantism, suspected even his closest colleagues of heresy and disloyalty, and had some cardinals brought before the Inquisition. On February 16, 1559, he issued a bull, Cum ex Apostolatus, pronouncing that all heretical sovereigns forfeited their rights to rule by the mere fact of their heresy. In a move of enormous symbolism, he added all of Erasmus’s works to the Index of Forbidden Books. The age of Christian humanism was abruptly ended. The pope’s reign was one of great strife, rumor-mongering and suspicion. He is quoted as having said, “Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him.” He was without doubt a sincere man, dedicated to Church reform, but Paul was betrayed by his own cardinal-nephew, who furthered an unfortunate war with Spain. The consequence was the alienation of the Netherlands and eventually the termination of papal relations with England,

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Flanders, and Spain. Looking back on his years in office, Paul IV himself concluded, “From the time of St. Peter there never has been a pontificate more unfortunate as mine.”6 His successor was a more tolerant churchman, Pius IV (1559–1565) or Gian Angelo Medici. He was personally a rather pleasant contrast to his grim predecessor. Although he was elected with the strong support of Carafa’s followers, he surprisingly called Giovanni Cardinal Morone back to power and placed on trial two of Paul IV’s powerful nephews, Carlo Cardinal Carafa and Giovanni, Duke of Palino. They were quickly found guilty of advocating war with Spain, of committing murder, and on planning other crimes. As noted, Pius was by training and by temperament a diplomat, and he reversed the anti-imperial policy of his predecessor and focused instead on promoting Church reforms. Eventually in 1564 he dismissed four hundred superfluous papal courtiers to show his own views toward Roman Curial placemen. Pius called the council back into session on January 18, 1562, but its tone was very different. Charles V’s son, Philip II, pushed to strengthen the authority of the Spanish bishops vis-à-vis the papacy, thus creating some immediate problems for the legates. Still the Spanish faction at the council came around to support the decisions of the two previous periods, for the king remained a devout and loyal Catholic. The French and the imperial bishops, however, wanted those proclamations declared null and void, and thus create a virtually new council that could make additional concessions to the Protestants. By then any hope of reconciliation with the Protestants was gone, and the defensiveness that is so associated with the Counter Reformation came to the forefront. Central to the tone was the presence of the Jesuits, who quickly became a major force in the Church with their intense devotion to the papacy. The cohesiveness of the reform caucus at first began to break down somewhat during this period, as strong secular princes tried to influence the deliberations of the council with their own ideas of Church reform, and their own supporters became prominent among the ranks of the bishops. But the council was steered carefully through this time by the very able legate, Giovanni Morone of Modena, who had actually been jailed by Paul IV and held at the Castel Sant’Angelo for supposed heresy and false views on justification, the invocation of the saints, and the veneration of relics. Politics in the Roman Catholic Church at that time was treacherous, even for those who were seemingly orthodox! What Morone did was to reach separate agreements with various nations’ representatives. He offered to support the claim of Ferdinand’s son, Maximilian, to being king of the Romans and heir to the empire. Morone then approached the major French cardinal, Guise of Lorraine, giving him an equal position with the other papal legates; Spain consequently became less difficult to deal with. Morone did not reconsider the decisions of the previous two periods, but just took them for granted and moved on. The last period of the council began on January 18, 1562, and affirmed that Christ was indeed present under either species of Communion and emphasized the importance of the sacrifice of the Mass, the sacrament of marriage, and

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pushed other Church reforms. Most importantly, the council established clerical seminaries and regulated the appointment of bishops, provincial and diocesan synods, and other convocations. This policy on seminarians resulted in a major professionalization of the priesthood and a vast improvement in Church education. During the time of Luther, even in highly literate Germany, 70 percent of the clergy had no college education. Now that would profoundly change. On December 4, 1563, the Council of Trent finally ended, and on January 26, 1564, Pius IV published a summary of the Tridentine decrees called “The Creed of Pius IV.” Other implementation tasks were left to the papacy as well. In 1566, the Roman catechism was published, in 1568 a breviary, and in 1570 the missal followed. The Mass of Pius IV became the standard Latin liturgy used until Vatican II.7 As for the Catholic princes and the Council of Trent, France did not formally approve of many of the decrees; Philip II concurred in 1565 only after considerable reservations; the German Diet simply refused to go along; Portugal, the emperor, and the Church in the south of Switzerland, however, did fall in line. Years of reform led to obvious changes, but the plurality of offices continued for at least a generation after Trent, and after Paul IV’s decree of 1557. The practice of gathering or bundling together benefices (perpetual income that was attached to sacred offices) and conferring them as a group on one individual person continued as well.8

The Counter Reformation Popes The Reformation did not yield to the Church’s reform efforts, and Protestantism grew entrenched, especially in England under Elizabeth I, who was eventually excommunicated. Pius IV also gave the French regime one hundred thousand scudi to fight the Huguenot influence in what was a long and brutal series of civil wars. Short on funds, the pope began to raise taxes in the Papal States. Opposition immediately sprang up, leading to an assassination attempt on his life. Pius IV retained a Renaissance pope’s love of artists and architecture, which increased demands on an already strained treasury, but his successor Pius V (1566–1572), Michele Ghislieri, did not exhibit such sentiments. In his youth Ghislieri had been a poor shepherd boy who had entered the Dominican order at the age of fourteen, and eventually made his career as the Grand Inquisitor—a mentality that he never seemed to abandon. Early in his career, he was sent to Como to fight the forces of Calvinism and was a model inquisitor, if such a title can be levied without condemnation. The inquisition process, in sixteenth-century Italy, involved bringing the denounced person to an exhaustive trial, where he was given every chance to repent. If he continued in his erroneous ways, he was handed over to the state, which imposed a penalty that could include death for violation of the laws. This was the world in which Ghislieri (Pius V) had lived for years, becoming the commissar-general of the

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Inquisition, the prefect of the Palace of the Inquisition, and finally the Grand Inquisitor of the Roman Church. Because of his opposition to Pius IV, Ghislieri went into exile. Now as pope, Pius V reemerged in public life, committed to the reforms of the Council of Trent, and insisting on a strict, austere lifestyle, both in his court and in the city of Rome. He ate by himself, which was a papal custom that lasted until the mid-twentieth century, and continued to wear his white Dominican habit, which remains the papal dress even today. In many ways he was an extremist, unwilling to compromise on moral or dogmatic issues, and was a man given to explosive passions. One observer concluded that his impetuosity and fierceness made him sometimes misunderstand the people with whom he had to deal. Pius V pushed for a new catechism and breviary, and curtailed indulgences and dispensations. He celebrated the methods of the Inquisition, expelled Jews from the Papal States, and created a new Congregation of the Index, which led to a flood of printers fleeing to Germany and Switzerland. He rehabilitated the Carafa family for some reason, excommunicated Elizabeth I in 1570, encouraged Catherine de Medici’s and Charles IX’s attacks on French Huguenots, and supported Philip II’s campaign in the Netherlands, although he advocated that Philip personally visit the Low Countries. When asked to rescind his excommunication of Elizabeth, he assumed that such requests showed the true power of his actions in the eyes of the English court and people. He was wrong, and he was misinformed. Pius had not received notice that attempts to overthrow the monarch, which he approved of, had been thwarted. In other controversies, Pius nominated a candidate to the duchy of Tuscany and consequently alienated Emperor Maximilian II. He often operated at cross purposes with King Philip II of Spain, usually a strong ally of the papacy, who sought to direct the operations of the Church in his nation. Pius was successful, however, in cementing a Catholic alliance, which defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. In general, and despite periodic conflicts, Pius V knew that he was very dependent on Philip II’s protection, once saying to the monarch, “All Christianity depends upon you. This Holy See has no other defender.” When the Catholic churches in the Netherlands were pillaged and destroyed by the Protestants, he appealed directly to the king. The pope provided money and troops to defend Queen Catherine de Medici and France against the Huguenots, when some of them had reportedly hatched a plot to kill Mary Stuart and Francis II. 9 The Counter Reformation popes of the latter part of the sixteenth century do not represent a high point in the history of that institution, although they rarely engaged in the colorful abuses of their predecessors. With the death of the austere Pius V, Gregory XIII (Ugo Boncompagni, 1572–1585) assumed office; he was a diplomat and a fine Vatican administrator by training who had substantial support from King Philip II of Spain when he was chosen pope. Gregory also had been an active participant in the Council of Trent’s sessions in 1561–1563 and was heavily influenced by Charles Cardinal Borromeo, who in Milan was proving to be the model bishop of the Tridentine period. 10 Before the Reformation, the popes often received strong criticism from the most orthodox of

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Catholics, such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s admonitions to Pope Eugenius III (1145-1153) and St. Catherine of Siena’s pleas to Pope Gregory XI (1371– 1378). But after the Protestant revolt, the faithful were less critical of the pontiffs—in part to protect the Church from further assaults. The Church thus was being more centralized, more doctrinaire, and more papal in its orientations. Gregory strongly supported higher education and reconstituted the Roman College, later called the Gregorian University in his honor. He supported the German and English colleges as well as other national colleges. He also established permanent resident papal nuncios sent to secular courts. But Gregory is best known for his reform of the calendar in 1582, which introduced the concept of leap years. During his reign, in August 1572, Catherine de Medici approved the killing of five thousand to ten thousand Huguenots in Paris and other French cities. Catherine was the queen consort of Henry II who had been killed in 1559. As regent, she eventually saw three of her sons become kings of France: Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. She was also the daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, and she therefore was related to Pope Clement VII. She struggled in that period to contain the forces that favored Spain and the papacy against France. After her sons in power died, she was forced to put up with endless civil wars and the schemes of Catholic extremists. Catherine resorted at first to a policy of religious toleration, which antagonized some of her co-religionists. Finally she married off one of her many daughters to Henry Navarre, who became Henry IV. Despite her edicts of toleration, she is associated with the St. Bartholomew Day’s massacre of Huguenots in August 1572. This tragedy was precipitated by an abortive attempt against Admiral Gaspard de Coligny and his followers. For three days the brutalities continued. When it was over, the pope acknowledged Catherine’s victory with the singing of the hymn “Te Deum,” a joyous celebration of her triumph. Only later did he acknowledge the wanton destruction of human life, arguing that such conduct was unlawful and forbidden by God. Still the pope pushed Philip II of Spain to wage war against British Queen Elizabeth I; the Protestants maintained that the pope even supported assassination plots against her. His strenuous activities in foreign affairs led to more taxes being levied, and increased violent opposition in the Papal States and in the city of Rome. Gregory was a fervent advocate of missionary efforts, especially those of the Jesuits in Asia. He also extended the Church’s approval to the more benign efforts of the important Congregation of the Oratory founded by St. Philip Neri, and confirmed the efforts of St. Teresa of Avila to reform the Carmelite Order. 11 His successor was Sixtus V (Felice Peretti, 1585–1590). Peretti began his career as an eloquent spokesman in the Franciscan order, who was not reluctant to criticize Catholic monarchs of the era and who was personally close to St. Philip Neri. He could be sarcastic at times, and consequently ended up out of favor in certain imperial circles. However, in 1585 he was acclaimed by a voice vote in the conclave. Sixtus immediately moved against bandits in the Papal States and drove gamblers, fortunetellers, blasphemers, and prostitutes out of

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Rome. It is said that children in Rome were scared by their parents who at the time would simply yell, “Hush! Sixtus is passing by!” and watch them quake. He was not reluctant to place cardinals and laymen under arrest. Sixtus was above all an activist manager of the Counter Reformation papacy; building up the treasury, draining the Pontine marshes, protecting the Jews from harassment, planting trees throughout the Papal States, and setting the famed obelisk of Nero in St. Peter’s Square. In dealing with disorders, he moved quickly to crush the opposition, ordering public executions and placing the heads of rebels on the bridge of Sant’Angelo. He slashed expenditures, raised taxes, borrowed extensively, and sold offices to reestablish the papacy’s wealth. Ironically he came from the gentle Franciscan order and actually had been their vicar general. Although he had served as an inquisitor in Venice, and was at one time Pius V’s confessor, Gregory XIII had no use for him. Thus before he was elected pope, he retired and actually had his pension slashed. As pope, Sixtus’s major efforts included reorganizing the Roman Curia, setting the maximum number of cardinals at seventy, creating a new papal bureaucracy, and instituted “ad limina” visits for each bishop to come to the Holy See. He supported the Spanish regime and suffered a major defeat with the destruction of its great Armada in 1588. He also initiated missionary efforts in Asia and South America. Sixtus presided over the transformation of Rome from a Renaissance to a baroque city. Indeed his architectural efforts are still apparent with the great obelisks, the enlarged Quirinal palace, the Lateran palace, and the completion of the dome of St. Peter’s. Above all, Sixtus recognized the need to adjust the internal bureaucracies of the Church so as to create more efficient and manageable offices and to foster some executive control over the post-Tridentine church. As he must have recognized, the Church needed not only dogmatic clarity and a deeper piety, but also major realignments in her management structures.12 Sixtus’s reign was followed by other popes of lesser significance. Urban VII (Giambattista Castagna) was a papal legate to France and headed a Curial office, and was governor in the Papal States before ascending to the papacy. He too participated in the later sessions of the Council of Trent and was an inquisitor general. His reign lasted less than two weeks (October 5–16, 1590). His successor, Gregory XIV (Niccolo Sfondrati), was pope for less than one year. He also had been an ally of St. Charles Borromeo, and was a participant at Trent. He had the strong support of Spain in the conclave, and ended up abandoning Sixtus’s careful balancing act between Spain and France, committing himself totally to the former nation. He had placed considerable confidence in his twenty-nine-year-old nephew, naming him cardinal secretary of state. Unrest grew in Rome during the latter’s administration, especially during the periods of food shortages. Gregory tightened up residential requirements for the Catholic hierarchy, curtailed celebration of Mass in private homes, and encouraged an improved Vulgate translation of the Bible as his contribution to the Counter Reformation. Gregory was succeeded by another short-lived papacy, that of Innocent IX (Giovanni Antonio Facchinetti, October 29–December 30, 1591). He

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too had been an active participant at the Council of Trent, and he helped to forge the important anti-Turkish alliance. Innocent proved to be a pro-Spanish pontiff as well, but his papacy ended after two months.13 The century concluded with the papacy of Clement VIII (Ippolito Aldobrandini, 1592–1605), an austere and rigid pontiff. He was a devoted follower of the recommendations of the Council of Trent, even though he personally enjoyed pomp and display, and was sometimes prone to nepotism. He promoted a corrected Vulgate Bible, and fostered the vigorous administration of the Index of Forbidden Books, adding to it a ban on Jewish books. He sought to reconcile the Jesuits and the Dominicans, and used his good offices to affect a peace between France and Spain in 1598. He was a strong supporter of the Inquisition, which in 1600 ordered the death of the heretic philosopher, Giordano Bruno, an event that helped give to the Counter Reformation its reputation for intolerance. The pope, however, did accept privately the Edict of Nantes in 1598 that guaranteed religious freedom to the French Huguenots, and emphasized once again the Holy See’s neutrality between France and Spain. In addition, the pope encouraged individuals to accept the recommendations of the Synod of BrestLitovsk (1596) that brought millions of Catholics in Poland and Byelorussia to the Roman Catholic Church. He also sent St. Francis de Sales to Switzerland to combat the Protestant influence there. Lastly, Clement presided over the jubilee of 1600—so different from Alexander Borgia’s activities of one hundred years before.14

Implementing the Council As one historian, Pierre Janelle, concluded, “The history of the papacy in the century which followed Trent discloses a succession of grave, virtuous, wellmeaning popes.” The long road of implementing the policies of the Trent Council was by no means a sure and easy one. Pius V had tried to reform the Curia and the city of Rome, as well as the Church. At one point, he warned against selling ecclesiastical positions, saying, “Better starve than lose your souls.” 15 As noted, his aggressive work was continued by Gregory XIII, a superb administrator and organizer who pushed for reform of canon law. He established a committee of cardinals, which included the most dedicated reformers led by the saintly cardinal, Charles Borromeo. Borromeo became the model of a Tridentine bishop with his energetic transformation of the historically important diocese of Milan. When he took over that large diocese of nearly nine hundred thousand individuals, the Church there was riddled with ignorance and immorality. The priests did not even know the words of absolution, and many lay people could not recite the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Dances were held in churches and in convents. Borromeo’s work was codified in his Acts of the Church of Milan, which became a blueprint for reform. His aggressive spirit led him into numerous conflicts with the ruling Spanish governors of the city, and several

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times he was nearly killed, but his moral influence was felt throughout the Church.16 As has also been seen, Sixtus V was an energetic supporter of reorganizing the Curia, but he was dedicated to making the papacy more wealthy and independent, and so he resorted to heavy taxation and the more aggressive sales of papal offices. But the work of implementing the policies of the Council of Trent led to the important role of the Jesuits in establishing educational institutions across Catholic Europe. Even in Germany, Peter Canisius had begun a major intellectual effort to spread the faith in all areas, from universities to catechisms. The Catholic Church began to make progress in the Rhineland and in Bavaria in the 1560s–1580s, and in the early seventeenth century Catholics grew stronger in northwest, central and southern Germany. Great successes took place in the Habsburg territories, which embraced Augsburg, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary. Ferdinand, taking over the empire from Charles V, had been educated by the Jesuits and insisted that he would “rather rule a country ruined, than a country damned.” The Church grew stronger in the Walloon provinces as well. In Poland and Switzerland a Catholic revival took place, and papal nuncios were sent out to watch over the Church’s interests. In France the matter was more complex. The French kings, especially Charles IX and Henry III, were Catholics, but fearing the Spanish influence in Europe they did not wish to alienate their Protestant countrymen or upset Queen Elizabeth’s support in checking the Spanish. Consequently the Catholics and the French Huguenots engaged in a series of bloody struggles. Yet France would also produce numerous saints and missionaries, as will be seen later, especially in the lives of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Francis de Sales. In England the Catholic Church went through a variety of dramatic changes: Catholic humanism, the schism of Henry VIII, the restoration of Mary Tudor, the firming up of the Protestant establishment under Elizabeth, and a later series of long and difficult struggles between the two faiths. In Ireland, partly as a result of the English establishment, the Church became a rallying point for Irish nationalism.17 Studies of the Curia in the post-Tridentine period show fewer changes than is usually assumed. The decrees of Trent did not succeed immediately—more often in history, ideas prevail less because of their persuasiveness rather than the simple fact that one’s opponents die off eventually. So too, some nepotism, benefices, political appointees, and expensive courts continued through the end of the sixteenth century. But new appointees made by reform popes led to major changes in the style of the Roman Curia. It moved from being a powerful consistory to a major bureaucracy, heading up the new congregations of the Holy See. In part the influence of Borromeo, this time on clerical promotions in 1562 and 1563, added to the influence of the reformers. Sixtus had set the number of cardinals at seventy—to imitate the seventy ancients of the Old Testament who had assisted Moses; the number would include six cardinal bishops, fifty cardinal priests and fourteen cardinal deacons.18 Thus the number of cardinals was eventually limited until expanded by Pope John XXIII in the twentieth century.

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By the end of the sixteenth century and the opening of the seventeenth century, the bishops experienced increasing centralization and had to petition Rome to hold local and regional synods that, in fact, had been mandated by the Council of Trent. The development of a more powerful papacy paralleled the development of absolute Western monarchs.19 The view that some territories irrevocably left the Church and became Protestant is an oversimplification. There were significant regions that were reconnected or firmed up for the traditional faith in western and central Europe. Unified Christendom received other blows with the rise of stronger monarchies in western Europe. For example, in France the House of Valois, especially under Francis I, not only moved to centralize administration, but to continue to curtail the powers of the Church and to foster alliances with Turks against other Christian princes. In England, the War of the Roses destroyed many traditional political obligations, which reached a high point in the centralization of authority under the Tudors. In Spain, the union of Aragon and Castile, and the expulsion of the Moors from Granada, resulted in an increasingly powerful monarchy. The Counter Reformation led to an aggressive anti-Lutheran and antievangelical attitude. The Church slowly became purged of some of its abuses, and emerged more centralized, more legalistic, and more bureaucratic. The shorthand expressions of the Church became the instruments of repression: the Inquisition, the Index of Forbidden Books, the excommunication of heretics and princes, and the uneasy merger of doctrine, liturgy, rules, regulations, and declarations of policy.20 Thus at the turn of the century, the papal leadership style was strongly influenced by two major socializing factors. First, nearly all of those popes had gone through the long Council of Trent, and most of them had been active participants. As the council moved along, it was less open to discussions about the Protestant challenges and more likely to foster a defensive fortress mentality, which later became hardened into the attitudes that to so many characterized the historical view of the Council of Trent. Second, many of these Counter Reformation popes had come through the career paths of being a part of the Italian Inquisition. They were responsible for curtailing any evidence of heresy and doctrinal deviation that they saw. In some cases they actually extended their purview to cover perfectly orthodox clergymen, in one case the very powerful Cardinal Morone, who was so critical to the fortunes of the Catholic Church at the end of the Council of Trent. That Inquisition experience helped to reinforce the intolerance and the crude defensiveness that weakened the Catholic Church as it confronted a very different seventeenth century. Popes, like all of us, go through certain critical life experiences, and those life experiences impact on how they lead the institutions that are in their charge. Most of those older Italian men of the sixteenth century, as they moved along on their career paths, had served as diplomats or Curial bureaucrats, and in many cases had represented the interests of the Holy See in various locales. Those experiences gave them a vast knowledge of the needs of the Church, but also

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tended to isolate them from some of the more mellow influences that come with living the normal pastoral life of a resident bishop in his diocese or as a parish priest. At first the popes of the Counter Reformation faced an extremely difficult situation, having lost nearly half of Christendom to the Protestants. Through the incredible efforts of missionaries, many of whose names are known only to God, the Catholic Church may have more than made up that number of souls in the New World. It is appropriate, but ironic, to observe that much of the strength that came forward from missionary efforts also came out of the type of world that had so imperiled the Church—a world that was increasingly materialistic, secular, adventuresome, and individualistic, rather than communal, regulated, and hierarchical. In one country, Spain, conquistadors were ironically called “warrior-saints.” Thus it was that the Church both benefitted and lost from the enormous changes that took place in the world around it. Those positive efforts, especially under the influence of the Jesuits, strengthened the papacy to bring forth fresh Christians in the New World. Indeed the work of Catholic missionaries in this period of time is extraordinary, matched only by the efforts of the early martyrs and saints in converting the pagan Roman Empire to Christianity. Nonetheless the very strength of the papacy, the strength that allowed it to mobilize and send off thousands of men to overseas areas, also meant that it sometimes responded to challenges with considerable heavy-handedness. The Church, along with many of the Protestant leaders, played major roles in the terrible religious wars that haunted Europe later. The next challenge that faced the Catholic Church would not be another religious heresy, brought by the minds of people like Luther and Calvin, but the free-floating ideas that came out of the Enlightenment with its emphasis on reason, progress, and secularism. The world before the Catholic Church was not one of the grand inquisitor, but one of the free-thinking philosophers.

Notes 1. Hubert Jedin, A History of The Council of Trent (London: Thomas Nelson, 1957), especially vol. 2, chap. 13; Eleanor V. Lewis, “Concepts of the Church at the First Period of the Council of Trent 1545–1547,” (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1970). 2. John Roche, “The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action,” American Political Science Review 55, no. 4 (Oct. 1961): 799–816 for a comparable approach. 3. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Barbara McClung Hallman, Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 63. 4. The following discussion is from The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H. J. Schroeder (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books, 1978); Hu-

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bert Jedin, Crisis and Closure of the Council of Trent: A Retrospective View from the Second Vatican Council (London: Sheed and Ward, 1967); John B. Tomaro, “The Papacy and the Implementation of the Council of Trent, 1564– 1558,” pt. 2 (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1974); Robert Trisco, “The Debates on the Election of Bishops in the Council of Trent,” The Jurist 34 (1974): 257–91; Gordon J. Spykman, Attrition and Contrition at the Council of Trent (Amsterdam: J. Hikok N. V. Kampen, 1955); Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), chap. 1; Francesco C. Cesareo, Humanism and Catholic Reform: The Life and Work of Gregorio Cortese (1483–1548) (New York: Peter Lang, 1990); James Bruce Ross, “Gasparo Contarini and His Friends,” Studies in the Renaissance 17 (2003): 192–232; Richard M. Douglas, Jacopo Sadoleto, 1477–1547, Humanist and Reformer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), chap. 11; Eric Cochrane, “New Light on Post-Tridentine Italy: A Note on Recent Counter Reformation Scholarship,” Catholic Historical Review 56, no. 2 (1971): 291– 319; John Bossey, “The Counter Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe,” Past and Present 47 (1970): 51–70; William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), chap. 7; Elizabeth G. Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome and Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Henry D. Wojtyska, Cardinal Hosius, Legate of the Council of Trent (Rome: Institute of Ecclesiastical Studies, 1967); Gregory Grabka, “Cardinal Hosius and the Council of Trent,” Theological Studies 7 (1946): 558–76; H. Outram Evennett, The Cardinal of Lorraine and the Council of Trent: A Study in the Counter Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930); Hubert Jedin, Papal Legate at the Council of Trent, Cardinal Seripando (London: B. Herder Book Co., 1947). On the 1990 statement, see: “Joint Declaration on Justification,” Origins 29 (June 24, 1999): 85–92. 5. Philip Benedict, “The Catholic Response to Protestantism: Church Authority and Popular Polity in Rouen, 1560–1600,” in James Obelkevich, ed., Religion and the People 800–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 68; Theodore Castell, “Calvin and Trent,” Harvard Theological Review 63, no. 1 (1970): 91–117. An attempt to bridge Catholic and Lutheran thought at the Council led to the discussion of “double” justification, which the Council rejected. The first involved the transformation of Christian life, which must involve good works, and yet one must always rely on God’s forgiveness through Christ. See: James F. McCue, “Double Justification at the Council of Trent: Piety and Theology in Sixteenth Century Roman Catholicism,” in Carter Lindberg, ed., Piety, Politics, and Ethics: Reformation Studies in Honor of George Wolfgang Forell (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1984), 39–56. Calvin dismissed Trent as “a diseased whore.” See Robert M. Kingdon, “Some French Reactions to the Council of Trent,” Church History 33, no. 2 (1964): 149–55; G. W. Searle, The Counter Reformation (London: University of London, 1974), 90. Seripando’s remark is in Paul Johnson, A History of

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Christianity (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 299. 6. Robert C. Jenkins, Romanism: A Doctrinal and Historical Examination of the Creed of Pope Pius IV (London: Religious Tract Society, 1882); John Hungerford Pollen, The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth: A Study of Their Politics, Civil Life, and Government; from the Fall of the Old Church to the Advent of the Counter Reformation (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920), 48–51; William V. Hudon, Marcello Cervini and Ecclesiastical Government in Tridentine Italy (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992); Johnson, History of Christianity, 299. 7. Leopold von Ranke, A History of the Popes: Their Church and State, vol. 1 (1901; reprint, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966), book 1; Searle, The Counter Reformation, 92–96; W. Hares, The Council of Trent and the Creed of Pope Pius IV (Lahore: Northern India Printing and Publishing Co., 1936); Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 16, 81. 8. Robert C. Jenkins, The Story of the Carafa: The Pontificate of Paul IV with All That Followed after His Death in the Pontificate of Pius IV (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886); James E. Wall, “The Excommunication and Deposition of Queen Elizabeth by Pope Paul V: A Study of the Historical Antecedents and the Effects of the Bull,” Regnans in Excelsis (M.A. thesis, Niagara University, 1961); Searle, Counter Reformation, 96; Hallman, Italian Cardinals, 4; Thomas Ignatius Crimando, “France and the Council of Trent 1560–1589” (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1984); Kingdon, “Some French Reactions.” 9. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 16, 183; Garnett Lee White, “Anglican Reactions to the Council of Trent in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1975); C. M. Antony, Saint Pius V: Pope of the Holy Rosary (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911); “S. Pius V: The Father of Christendom,” Dublin Review 7 (October 1866): 273–344; Lillian Browne Olf, The Sword of Saint Michael: Saint Pius V, 1504–1572 (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Bruce Publishing Co., 1945); Robin Anderson, St. Pius V: A Brief Account of His Life, Times, Virtues and Miracles (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books, 1978); Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 18. 10. Margaret Yeo, Reformer: St. Charles Borromeo (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Bruce Publishing Co., 1938); John R. Quinn, The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly Call to Christianity Unity (New York: Crossroad Publishers, 1999), 45– 48; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 19. 11. H. Outram Evennett, The Spirit of the Counter Reformation (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 119; John Jay, Pope Gregory XIII and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew (New York: Trow’s Printing and Bookbinding, 1885); Philippe Erlanger, St. Bartholomew’s Night: The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962); Cathleen Medwick, Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1999); Pastor, History of Popes, vol. 19, 508. 12. Joseph Alexander Hübner, The Life and Times of Sixtus the Fifth (New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1873); Pope Sixtus V, “A Declaration of the

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Sentence and Disposition of Elizabeth,” [1588] in D. M. Rogers, English Recusant Literature 1550–1640, vol. 370 (Chico, Ca: Scholars Press, 1977); Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 21. 13. Ranke, A History of the Popes, vol. 1, book 4; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 22. 14. Ranke, A History of the Popes, book 4; Pastor, History of Popes, vols. 23–24. 15. Pierre Janelle, The Catholic Reformation (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1963); Eric Cochrane, “New Light on Post-Tridentine Italy,” Catholic Historical Review 56, no. 2 (1970): 291–319; Robert H. Murray, The Political Consequences of the Reformation: Studies in Sixteenth Century Political Thought (New York: Russell & Russell, 1960). 16. John M. Headley and John B. Tomaro, eds., San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1988); John Bossy, “Counter Reformation and the People,” Past and Present 47 (1970): 51–70; John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400–1700 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Francesco C. Cesareo, “‘Padre et Pastor Vostro’: Girolamo Seripando and the Restoration of the Episcopate in Solerno,” Historian 61, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 579–95; Louis Ponnelle and Louis Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times (1515–1595) (London: Sheed and Ward, 1932). 17. Erwin Iserloh, Joseph Glizik, and Hubert Jedin, eds., Reformation and Counter Reformation (New York: Seabury Press, 1980); Henry Lucas, “Survival of the Catholic Faith in the Sixteenth Century,” Catholic Historical Review 29, no. 1 (1943): 25–52. 18. A. V. Antonovics, “Counter Reformation Cardinals 1534–90,” European Studies Review 2, no. 4 (1972): 301–28. 19. John B. Tomaro, “The Papacy and the Implementation of the Council of Trent: 1564–1588, Pt. 2” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1974); G. W. Searle, The Counter Reformation (London: London University Press, 1974), 18. 20. Herbert T. Mayer, The Story of the Council of Trent (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing Co., 1962).

Chapter 13

Religious Wars and Religious Repression The seventeenth century would witness the vigorous continuation of many of the energetic activities of the Counter Reformation papacy. Occasionally those popes would continue to engage in acts of common nepotism and in the princely arts of rebuilding the city of Rome. But they were also extremely involved in furthering missionary activities, both in Protestant areas and in the nonEuropean world. They strove to implement the discipline and reforms embodied in the Tridentine decrees, and encouraged a new sense of piety that was moving from Spain to the increasingly powerful French nation. Equally apparent, however, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church was also becoming identified with the forces of repression and religious wars. Surely Protestant partisans were guilty of being obsessed with both causes; but the Catholic Church would attract more historical and contemporary attention for its activities, because it was more centralized, more coordinated, and justified more often publicly its actions than the varied efforts of Protestant preachers and Protestant states.1

The Inquisitions Much to its detriment, the Church consequently would become linked with the purpose and the punishments associated with the Inquisition, especially the version of it identified with the fanatical Spanish spirit. But the Inquisition was not unique to Spain; it went back to Alexander III in 1179 and to the powerful autocratic pontiff of the Middle Ages, Innocent III (1198–1216), both of whom sanctioned such harsh treatments in dealing with the Albigensian heresy in southern France. In Innocent’s bull Licet perfidia Judaeorum (1199), he insisted, however, on the toleration of the Jews, opposed their forced baptism, and forbade violence by Christians against individual Jews and Jewish cemeteries and corpses. The rationale for such tolerance is a bit strained to our ears: “Although the infidelity of the Jews must be condemned on multiple grounds, they must not be severely persecuted by the faithful, because by reason of them our faith is established as true.” Originally the Inquisition had no jurisdiction over Jews, but it 179

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became an early tool of anti-Semitism. From 1481 to 1525, 90 percent of the victims of the Spanish Inquisition may have been Jews who had been forced into Baptism or who were reluctant to relinquish Jewish practices and beliefs. In 1231, Gregory IX published a constitution that structured such watchdog efforts by making the Inquisition independent of bishops and prelates. He also advocated life imprisonment for heretics who repented and the death penalty for those who did not. It was felt that the corrupted soul of a heretic was better served by his being burnt at the stake than by eternal damnation in the next world. At least one might repent at the last minute, it was argued!2 The secular rulers were expected to enforce those harsh sanctions and generally they did. When in 1521 the Venetian senate refused on one occasion to apply such penalties, Leo X threatened the members with Church sanctions. The judges, or inquisitors, were usually from the ranks of the Dominican or the Franciscan orders, and originally those inquisitors rode the circuit like American judges on the western frontier, looking for cases to hear and heretics to punish. Gradually each tribunal was given a specific territory or jurisdiction over which to preside, although there was often local opposition to cooperating with the judges. On a baser level, some inquisitors became enriched through bribes and fines and from the confiscation of possessions of those eventually found guilty. 3 Usually the judges themselves brought the charges, sometimes based on only fanciful rumors, with the accused not knowing the charges and not getting the opportunity to confront their critics. Lawyers could not represent such clients, for they themselves would then be called accomplices to the alleged crimes. The Inquisition was often a real hindrance to commercial enterprises, especially mapmakers and printers, and it introduced torture, which actually had been banned under Church canon law, as a way of facilitating its work. In theory, the Inquisition tribunals did not formally inflict corporal punishment, but were supposed only to levy the prescribed ecclesiastical penances for the benefit of heretics, who were encouraged to return to the faith. Imprisonment for those convicted of heresy was common; for those who did not abjure, the State, not the Church, could inflict the death penalty, usually by fire, carried out in a public place. At the high point of the Inquisition—in the latter half of the thirteenth century—even the papacy had problems interfering with its proceedings. In 1311 and 1312, Pope Clement V tried to restrain some of the more egregious abuses by increasing the power of local bishops to oversee those proceedings. But as has been seen, the Inquisition proved to be rather effective during the Counter Reformation, especially in Spain and Italy, and a few popes such as Pius V and Sixtus V actually came up through the harsh ranks of the inquisitors to positions of Church leadership and responsibility. The most famous persecution was the burning in 1600 of the ex-Dominican preacher Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) at Campo di Fiori in Rome, for having expressed vaguely unorthodox views about God and the universe. He was born in Nola, Italy, and trained as a Dominican monk, but in 1576 he was forced to leave his priory because of a charge of heresy. Over the years he wandered to

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Geneva, Paris, and London. For two years, he was under the protection of the French ambassador in England and became friends with the English man of letters, Sir Philip Sidney. He also wrote various philosophical tracts and later traveled throughout Germany, France, and Switzerland.4 Bruno returned to Italy and was arrested by the Inquisition in 1592, tried as a heretic, imprisoned in Venice and later in Rome, and then burnt at the stake. His crime was that he blended mystical neo-Platonism, pantheism, and Pythagorean belief in an unsteady mix that argued that the universe is infinite, that God is the universal world-soul, and that all material things are manifestations of the one infinite principle. Some of his views influenced the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and the German thinker Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. In the year 2000 the Vatican secretary of state, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, expressed regrets for the violence of the Church’s response, calling it “a sad episode of modern Christian history,” although he still referred to Bruno’s doctrinal errors. For a century and a half, Bruno’s statue in Rome has been a rallying point for free-thinkers and anti-clerical figures prominent in Italian politics.5 It was in Spain that the Inquisition achieved its greatest notoriety, especially under the fanatical leadership of Tomás de Torquemada (1420–1498). He was the first Grand Inquisitor of Spain and was also the prior of the Dominican monastery of Santa Cruz at Segovia for over two decades. Torquemada was closely associated with the religious policies of Ferdinand and Isabella, and was partly responsible for the expulsion of one hundred and sixty thousand Jews from Spain in 1492. Named as Grand Inquisitor of Castile and Leon in 1478 and later other territories, he was especially concerned that Jewish and Muslim converts to Catholicism were threatening the religious and social life of Spain. He organized the Spanish Inquisition and promulgated twenty-eight articles for the guidance of inquisitors for offenses beyond heresy and apostasy. Some two thousand people were burned during his tenure. Finally in 1494, Alexander VI appointed four assistants to curtail his powers. Historically the early Church, a missionary Church, had made no distinction between the status of those baptized as infants and those baptized after being converted. But the focus of the Inquisition changed, especially in Spain; such persecutions became more focused on the purity of one’s “blood” rather than on one’s formal religion. Thus the linkage of anti-Semitism and crackpot theories of racial purity—an association so onerously familiar to the twentieth century— grew up. In addition to its scrutiny of heretics and Jews, the Inquisition in Spain also extended its attacks to the mystic Illuminists, probably because many of them also had Jewish or Muslim traditions. The exact numbers of people who were persecuted is still subject to great dispute, and the foes of the Church over the years have added to the totals. Nonetheless the numbers are not the only issue; what is important was the continued identification of the Roman Catholic Church with the forces of brutality, repression, and intolerance. The Inquisition spread even into the New World, focusing often on sorcery. By 1570, the Inquisition had a tribunal in Peru and in

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Mexico City, aimed at freeing “the land from Jews and heretics.” In Goa, India, alone the Inquisition took some 3,800 lives in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Finally it was the armies of Napoleon that suppressed the Spanish Inquisition, for such superstitions in a peculiar way violated the emperor’s sense of liberty and reason. Thus the papacy in the Counter Reformation period became closely and irrevocably associated with the forces of repression, intolerance, and ignorance. As noted, a few of those popes in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had been inquisitors themselves, and they entered the papacy with experiences that were molded by the rigors and mentality of the Inquisition. More recent studies of the Inquisition have actually downplayed the role of the papacy and even circumscribed the religious aspects of such prosecutions. As noted, in Spain it appears that greater emphasis was placed in later years on the importance of blood purity or ethnic solidarity than on religious orthodoxy. Even the loose-living Alexander VI restricted converts and their descendants to the fourth generation from being accepted in the religious orders. Some historians have argued that the number of executions was fortunately lower than has been usually assumed, and the censorship system appears to have been less effective. Even the auto-da-fé (rituals of public penance) is now seen, not as a forced sign of Spanish piety, as much as a system used by inquisitors to bolster their uncertain political standing.6 Whether such revisionist claims are valid or not is unclear. What we do know is that foreign propagandists and anti-Spanish leaders skillfully used the frightening image of the Inquisition to blacken the Church and, by implication, the popes’ reputation. That easy indictment continues today.

Keepers of the Legacy When Clement died, he was succeeded by Leo XI, a Medici who was the nephew of Leo X and a close friend of St. Philip Neri. Born Alessandro Ottaviano de Medici, he had served as bishop of Florence, papal legate to France, and cardinal bishop at both Albano and Palestrina. He was elected with the strong support of France, thereby immediately incurring the opposition of Spain. He reigned only from April 15 to April 27, 1605. The era of his successor, Paul V (1605–1621), who was born Camillo Borghese, lasted much longer and proved to be more eventful, often though in rather negative ways. He was a comparatively young choice, being elected pope at the age of fifty-three. At that conclave, an early likely choice was close to being chosen by acclamation, until an opponent rose up in the conclave and objected. The Curial conclave then elected the objector, who in turn refused the papacy. Borghese emerged from the resulting confusion. The new young pope entered with grandiose dreams of expanding the powers of that position to its past glories. But in foreign policy, he was often guilty

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of poor judgment in his relations with various states, and that foreign policy reflected an aggrandized view of the papacy that was simply not relevant to the times. The powers of the Holy See no longer ran that broad and deep in European life. Over the years the pope tangled with a host of monarchs and with the independent city-state of Venice, even putting that important region under interdict, thus denying observant Catholics the sacraments. The senate of Venice promptly declared the interdict invalid, and its clergy disregarded the pope’s injunction. Tension grew so intense that the city came close to embracing Protestantism, stopped only by the direct intervention of King Henry IV of France. By April 1607, the pope lifted the interdict—a true declaration of defeat. The critical papal historian of the period, Guicciardini, judged Paul V to be a rigid man who was “so averse to anything intellectual that everyone has to play dense and ignorant to be in his favor.”7 Paul ended up also alienating both the French and English regimes. After the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt in 1605 by a few Catholics to blow up the Parliament and the royal family, the English Parliament declared that the pope had no right to depose princes and that its citizens had to take an oath so swearing. The pope denounced the oath and left Catholics in that nation even more vulnerable to the attacks of Protestant leaders. With regard to Catholic France, Paul challenged the list of special privileges called Gallicanism that popes over the past centuries had been forced to accept. In what became a nationalist battle, the Estates General in 1614 promulgated the French king’s authority as being given from God, and it refused to support the decrees of the Council of Trent. By the end of his reign, Paul had alienated important Catholic monarchs, and consequently placed the Church even more at the mercies of the Spanish crown, with its immense imperialist ambitions and its aggressive style of Catholic proselytizing.

The Papacy and the Jews It was also in this period of the Counter Reformation that a major change took place in the papal policies dealing with the Jews. It has been stated frequently that Catholicism has had a long, checkered history of anti-Semitism, and that Jewish communities have often returned that animus. But in fact there was also a fairly long tradition, from Gregory the Great (590–604) to the mid-sixteenth century, in which the popes often but not always protected the Jews in Rome and in the surrounding papal territories, despite expressions of anti-Semitism. Nominally they were protected as a prelude to their supposed eventual conversion to the true faith, but in fact many of the popes of those centuries simply adopted a policy of laissez-faire and tacit toleration. In some cases the popes, such as Martin V in 1422 and 1429, even intervened to curtail anti-Semitic sermons of Franciscan and Dominican preachers, who seemed to delight in regaling their audiences with inflammatory charges of Jewish deicide and the alleged

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Jewish murder of children. Quite understandably, Jewish commentators have referred to those charges as “blood libels.”8 The oldest settlement of Jews in Italy was in Rome, which dates back before the reign of the Caesars. More prominent was the eventual blossoming of Jewish culture in Sicily and later in the Kingdom of Naples. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Rome became the center of Jewish activity, especially after the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. As part of the spirit of the Renaissance, Christians even began to study Hebrew, as well as Greek and Latin to better understand the Scriptures. In 1516, Venice established the first Jewish ghetto, an area meant to be an enclosed neighborhood in the medieval sense. But later, under Paul IV, the term took on more pejorative connotations. Other citystates soon followed the papal lead and created ghettos, which were aimed at restricting Jewish activity and movement. Only in 1870 with the arrival of the Italian Risorgimento, did the Roman ghetto restrictions begin to cease.9 The reasoning behind the tolerant attitudes of many popes generally prevailed until the Counter Reformation, although they were not always consistent. The popes claimed that they had extended their goodwill and protection to the Jews in accordance with the laudable mandates of Christian piety and humanity. Innocent III in 1205, for example, acknowledged the need to deal with conversion in a long-term perspective which generally meant leaving Jews alone. In 1236, one of his successors, Gregory IX, granted special privileges to recent converts and noted, “We embrace with particular love converts from Judaism.” He criticized the massacre of 2,500 Jews, who were sent to their deaths on the pretext that they had refused Baptism; the pope reaffirmed traditional Catholic teaching that conversions must be voluntary in order to be valid. Some popes advocated more intensive efforts at conversion, but most popes including Martin V, who mandated a distinguishing garb so one could identify Jews, refused to countenance an aggressive conversion policy. Indeed the mandate for distinctive clothing and marking went back to Lateran IV in 1215. With Paul IV that more tolerant policy would be radically altered. Caught up in the intensity of the war against the Protestant heresy, Paul turned his attentions toward the Jews as well. His bull, Cum nimis absurdum, issued in 1555 ruled that all the Jews in the Papal States had to live in a ghetto, that they had to sell their real property to Christians, and that they were limited to selling only the necessities of life and secondhand clothes. For the next fifty years those strict restrictions were standard papal policy, and remnants of those restrictions lasted for more than three centuries. Paul insisted that the Church take seriously its traditional admonitions on the need to encourage the conversion of the Jewish people. His bull concluded that the Jews should acknowledge the piety and kindness of the Apostolic See, while recognizing their errors and making haste to arrive at “the true light of the Catholic faith.”10 Paul IV’s successor, Pius IV, continued some of his predecessors’ harsh policies, although he did at times make various concessions to the Jews. However, in 1577 Gregory XIII ordered that the “reality of Christ” be preached and announced to the Jews on each Sabbath in an oratory chosen in Rome. He resur-

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rected previous papal policies that had been ignored, which ordered that prelates identify competent preachers who could go into the synagogues on the Sabbath and speak (preferably in Hebrew) concerning the Gospels. In a gentler mode, Sixtus V eased up somewhat on those policies and reexamined the papal order of 1569 that expelled the Jews from all the cities of the Papal States except Rome and Ancona. He also allowed Jewish physicians to care for Christians— probably more for the benefit of the latter than out of respect for the former. During their reigns, Popes Pius V (1566–1572) and Clement VIII (1592– 1605) felt the need to revisit the issue of expelling Jews from the Papal States except for the two cities mentioned, although restrictions on Oriental Jews tended to be less harsh than those aimed at Italian Jews. In his dealings, the very orthodox Pius V accused Jews of having abused the privileges that were granted in the past by receiving forbidden goods, despoiling good Christian women, and dealing with magic and incantations that involved Satan. Clement later added to the censures by condemning Jews for usury abuses in their money-lending activities. Publication of the Talmud also got caught up in the censorship restrictions of the Inquisition, although Paul IV had actually demanded money from the Jews for permitting the publication of that work. He also celebrated the publication in 1558 in Venice of De Judaeis et Aliis Infidelibus, a manual for dealing with Jewish affairs and a tract emphasizing conversion techniques. 11 Thus the spirit of the Counter Reformation heralded a change in papal relations toward the Jewish community in Rome, which had an impact on much of Catholic Europe. The easy toleration of many popes but certainly not all from Gregory the Great to Martin V was abruptly laid aside. The ambiguities, the deliberate forgetfulness, and the normal lapses that had led to some considerable leeway for Jews were abrogated. The new Inquisition popes set a more rigid tone for different policies—ones that had led communities into fiery antiSemitism and strident intolerance, traditions that have come down to recent times. Those sentiments became another part of the complex legacy of the Counter Reformation papacy, an office that was so different from the moderate expressions of some of the medieval popes. The more onerous restrictions on the Jews were more a product of the general defensiveness of Catholicism after the Council of Trent, rather than simply an unbroken extension of intolerance from earlier times and earlier pontificates.

The Religious Wars The intensity of religious sentiment and conflicts can be seen even more graphically in the resulting sectarian wars. As noted, after a thirty-five-year reign, a weary and dispirited Charles V abdicated and retired to a monastery in 1556, a year after the Peace of Augsburg was concluded. He granted Austria, Bohemia, and non-occupied Hungary to his brother Ferdinand, who became the next Holy Roman emperor. The rest of his far-flung empire went to his son, who took the

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title Philip II of Spain. Thus the permanent division of the once expansive House of Habsburg was effected. Philip eventually extended his control to Portugal, the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, parts of Burgundy, Milan, Naples, and much of America, as well as other areas. For five years, 1553-1558, he was the titular king of England because of his marriage to Mary Tudor, and he claimed the French throne as well. He was a fierce and dedicated Catholic, but one who constantly challenged and feuded with the pope, claiming precedent over the pontiffs in the control of the Church in his realm. He was a rather grim and intensely private man, given to endless procrastination in making decisions. During much of his reign, Spain was the aggressive focal point of the Church’s Counter Reformation, and beginning in this same period (1550) his nation experienced a golden age that lasted for a century, during which time Spain became the very center of Western arts and letters.12 During Philip’s reign, the combined fleets of the Spanish, the Papal States, the Austrian empire, and Venice defeated a vastly superior armada of the Turks at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, although the Turks recovered more quickly than expected from that loss. Philip also moved to crush anti-Catholic sentiment in the Netherlands, which eventually led to a major revolt there, and finally to the autonomy of Protestant-leaning provinces. Both Protestants and Catholics in the Netherlands had originally petitioned Philip not to bring the Spanish Inquisition into their native country, but their pleas were ignored. Consequently antiCatholic violence swept through the area, and the king responded with troops, inquisitors, and the confiscation of land. One of those affected was William of Orange (known as “William the Silent”) who became a major leader in the successful anti-Spanish movement. The southern part of the Netherlands supported Philip II. The north, which was more Protestant, formed a union that eventually became known as Holland or the Dutch Republic. At first, Queen Elizabeth I of England surreptitiously sent aid to the Protestant forces in the Netherlands, and Philip’s agents in consultation with the pope sought to crush the rebellion and also to invade England, so as to overthrow Elizabeth and place her half-sister, the Catholic Mary Stuart, on the throne. In 1587 Elizabeth had Mary Stuart executed, considering her as a threat to her throne. A year later the Spanish Armada set sail to support an invasion of England, but the smaller and lighter English forces with help from a great storm (“the Protestant wind”) defeated the Spanish fleet. In 1598, Philip died. The Netherlands were eventually partitioned in 1609. The decline of Spain as a great nation would soon begin. One of the reasons for that eclipse was that the ablest Spaniards were often going into the Church, rather than into the military or the royal court. The fiercely Catholic nation was swept by a deep spiritual feeling that sought its inspiration in the examples of the saints and the mystics, rather than warriors and diplomats.13 The popes in this period had to face an aggressive Spain and also now a divided France. In France, the Church was confronted with a very difficult set of problems as a result of the so-called wars of religion. After nearly forty years of

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civil war, 1562–98, a strong monarchy began to emerge, leading France to become the premier nation of Europe and the world, thus replacing Spain. The religious conflict in that nation was actually a backdrop to the advance of a more centralized government aimed at controlling the nobility and the autonomous regions. Despite its sectarian Catholic bearings, the French church under the monarchs historically was generally quite independent of the papacy, and opposed for the longest time the decrees of the Council of Trent. The monarchs finally curtailed the Calvinists (Huguenots), not so much to please the Counter Reformation popes as to limit any opposition to their absolutist rule. With the death of King Henry II in 1559, Catherine de Medici, an Italian by birth, governed France in the name of her minor-age son, but she appeared at times too irresolute. In the last four decades of the sixteenth century, France experienced four civil wars in which religion was a theme, but not the sole cause. In 1589, the throne went to Henry of Navarre (Henry IV), a nominal Huguenot who established the House of Bourbon and finally converted to Catholicism for political reasons, much to the delight of Sixtus V. The king’s reasons were supposedly summarized in his cynical observation: “Paris is well worth a Mass.” In 1593, Henry IV was absolved by Clement VIII for his sins and heretical past. But recognizing the fears of his former Huguenot allies, the monarch in 1598 issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted protection to the Protestants to practice their faith, provide for their own defense and fortify towns, and worship according to their likes. Protestantism was barred, though, from Catholic episcopal towns and the environs of Paris. Large segments of the French opposed the toleration decree, but Henry insisted on it and reached some accommodation even with the Jesuits, despite Pope Clement VIII’s nominal opposition to his edict. Instead of focusing on sectarian differences, the king spent the rest of his reign stressing economic development and the beginning of a mercantile state promoting manufacturing and trade. In 1610 he was assassinated by a fanatic who saw the king as a threat to the Catholic faith. The Edict lasted until the reign of Louis XIV, who brokered no real opposition—lay or ecclesiastical—to his autocratic realm.14 Political power then passed to Cardinal Richelieu who ruled on behalf of Henry’s family and heirs. The cardinal pushed also for peace, economic development, and a check to Habsburg power in Europe. He showed little interest in religious matters, despite his ecclesiastical rank, and treated easily with nonCatholic kings and ministers to further France’s political objectives. Religion and politics mixed in another long and distinctive struggle. In Germany, from 1618 to 1648, the Thirty Years’ War left those regions split, isolated, and devastated. The absence of a strong monarchy and the divisions caused by the Reformation resulted in a major social decline and vast economic difficulties. The emphasis on transatlantic trade and the role of Dutch banking interests also hurt Germany’s commerce. Originally, the Peace of Augsburg, signed in 1555, had led to a guarantee that each monarch, Catholic or Lutheran, could dictate the religion of his subjects. Consequently each side, Catholic and

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Protestant, jockeyed for more land and control, strove to convert wavering princes, and solicited help from outside European powers. All this helped lay the groundwork for the major conflicts that would rip that region apart. The resulting Thirty Years’ War was at first a religious war, but it became a German constitutional battle between the emperor and the individual states, and then a conflict between France and the Habsburgs, and the Spanish and the Dutch, with the kings of Denmark and Sweden and the prince of Transylvania at times also involved. Obviously the Peace of Augsburg did not settle the problems of religious conflict in Germany. Tensions seriously increased during the reign of Rudolf II (1576–1612), the then Holy Roman emperor, when Protestant churches in parts of Germany were destroyed and the rights of Protestants to worship were seriously obstructed in some of those regions. The Protestants put together the Evangelical Union, a defensive alliance that opposed the Catholic League. The union attacked first in Bohemia, and later Protestants invaded Prague and seized two of the Habsburg king’s ministers and threw them out of the palace window. The “Defenestration of Prague,” as it was termed, marked the beginning of the nationwide Protestant revolt. Protestant forces spread their control into other parts of the Habsburg empire, even threatening Vienna at one time. Dissensions in their ranks, however, fractured the union, and Ferdinand, the new Holy Roman emperor since August 1619, took the offensive. The Catholic forces moved back into Bohemia and proved to be successful in the resulting campaigns. In the second phase of the war, various German Protestant states sought foreign assistance against the Catholic armies. England, France, and other western European powers feared the increasing power of the Habsburgs, but since they were allies of Spain they decided to stay out of the war. Instead King Christian of Denmark and Norway chose to intervene, seeking to take control of the Danish duchy of Holstein, Germany. The Duke of Friedland, Albrecht von Wallenstein, led an army of mercenaries in the service of Ferdinand and swept toward a series of victories in northern Germany, leaving destruction in his path. The Danes retreated, and on March 6, 1629, Ferdinand issued the Edict of Restitution, which ended all titles to Catholic properties that had been expropriated since the Peace of Augsburg. The king of Denmark also accepted the loss of various holdings in Germany in the same year. The triumph of Ferdinand’s forces led to deep concerns over growing Habsburg power. The French minister, Cardinal Richelieu, steered Louis XIII and his government toward a foreign policy of assisting the Protestant forces. But because of the domestic situation in France, he had to rely instead on Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who was concerned about the fate of northern German Protestants. In 1630, the Swedish monarch entered the conflict first at Pomerania. The war intensified and the imperial armies gained control of Magdeburg, Germany, leaving hosts of Protestants dead and much of the city destroyed by fire.15 The Swedes marched into southern Germany and even took control of Mu-

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nich. Gustavus Adolphus died in battle in 1632. In 1634 Wallenstein, who once again was leading the imperial troops, fell under suspicion of treason by his own adherents and was assassinated. In 1635 the Peace of Prague ended the third phase of the war and gave the Saxon Lutherans some concessions. The final phase of the war was a powerful conflict between the Habsburgs and Richelieu’s France over control of western Europe. Religion had faded into the background as an animating force of war—it was now a battle over political supremacy. France declared war on Spain and allied itself with Sweden and with various German Protestant leaders. The conflict continued from 1635 to 1648, causing endless casualties and destruction. Finally a peace was agreed to on October 24 at Westphalia which led to the normalization of Swiss boundaries, the establishment of the Dutch republic, and severely weakened the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg power. France was in ascendancy and the unification of Germany had to wait until the mid-nineteenth century. An estimated one-third to one-half of all German people died in those terrible wars, and two-thirds of the industrial, commercial, and agricultural capacity of Germany was destroyed. The religious motives of the war had been long since lost during its long duration. Plague, typhus, and dysentery killed even more people than the Thirty Years’ War. As one observer wrote, “We fought the first war like angels, the second like men, and the third like devils.”16 Only the origins and the name of the war signified its original sectarian impulses, but it created once again the impression that Christianity was not a passive humanitarian endeavor, but a formidable, destructive example of how the impulses of religion once again promoted intolerance, hatred and mass destruction. And the Church and the papacy, which were so often instrumental in the past in insisting on “the truce of God,” were now seen in a very different light.

Galileo Recants No event has come to symbolize more the tone and temper of the Counter Reformation papacy than the trial of the famed astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei. Since then, it has been transformed from a case of academic backbiting and religious infighting to a general indictment of the Roman Catholic Church for its alleged intolerance, arrogant anti-intellectualism, and hostility to the methods of science and the promise of progress. Yet the events of that trial are better known to history than the circumstances surrounding the controversy. Galileo was born in 1564, the same year that marked the death of Michelangelo and the arrival of William Shakespeare. Galileo originally wanted to be a monk, but his musician father disapproved and his son entered the University of Pisa and went from the study of medicine to mathematics. In 1589, he became a professor of mathematics at Pisa, and in 1592 he was appointed to a modestly paid chair at the University of Padua.

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Early in his career, Galileo began to build a telescope and observe the heavens, coming up with the most interesting and startling findings. At first he had the support of the Jesuits, who had a history of interest in astronomy, and Galileo had a rather supportive audience with the conservative Pope Paul V. Based on his observations, Galileo gradually became convinced of the truth of the work of the Polish astronomer and monk Nicolaus Copernicus, who argued that the earth revolved around the sun, not vice versa. Further establishing his reputation, Galileo wrote a book on the new science that introduced a view of motion that anticipated the important work of Isaac Newton. He went on to Florence, where he became the chief mathematician and philosopher to the grand duke of Tuscany. As the years passed, the implications of the Copernican system became a matter of greater interest to him and of greater concern to the pope’s advisors. To his critics, Galileo seemed to be challenging, as were few others in this period, the Ptolemaic view of the universe and reaffirming Copernicus’s work. Galileo’s initial foes were laypeople, usually academics who were characteristic of that nasty breed endemic to university politics, then and today. They combined with the Dominicans, the keepers of the keys of the Inquisition, who were committed to Aristotelian cosmology and scholastic philosophy. As noted, the Jesuits also had a strong interest in astronomy and actually supported Galileo at the early period of his troubles. In 1615, Galileo made a major mistake in issuing a long letter that became public and touched on the relationships of astronomy to Scripture. For effect, he quoted the revered St. Augustine and cited his views that while everything in the Bible was true, not everything was to be taken literally. Galileo thus supported a liberal position of interpreting the Bible—a proposal that came perilously close to the Protestant view affirming individual interpretation of the Scriptures, which was condemned at the Council of Trent. In 1615 and early 1616, the Holy Office criticized Copernicus’s book and placed it on the Index of Forbidden Books. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, an erudite Vatican official, a Jesuit, a relative of Machiavelli, and a theologian whose own work had in 1590 been placed on the Index and who had been a part of Bruno’s condemnation, was delegated to inform Galileo of the Copernicus decision. But Bellarmine did not do so in any way that made specific judgments about Galileo’s writings. The astronomer apparently acquiesced in Bellarmine’s views; but he later inferred nonetheless that the cardinal said he would be allowed to discuss the heliocentric position if it were presented as a hypothesis. 17 After years of silence, Galileo was delighted with the news of the election to the papacy of Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini), a friend who once had written an ode, Adulatio perniciosa in praise of Galileo, and who announced that he would welcome him to the Vatican. He even once characterized Galileo as a man “whose fame shines in the sky and is spread over the whole world.” However, the new pope on taking office hardened his views and refused to retract the Church’s condemnation of Copernicus’s work. He told Galileo to avoid discussions of theology and to treat the heliocentric view only as an hypothesis. Later

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in his written dialogues, Galileo incurred the animosity of his previous allies, the powerful Jesuits, and the pope eventually moved charges against his own onetime friend to the dreaded Inquisition, which in turn took the ailing seventyyear-old scientist to task. He was called to trial and detained for twenty-two days facing the Holy Office’s proceedings in its headquarters at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Apparently even the judges realized the weakness of the case that was being presented, and sought to broker a settlement with Galileo that finally led to his recantation. A fabricated legend has it that at the end of his trial, he was supposed to have quietly muttered, “Eppur si muove” (“nonetheless it [the earth] does move”). The pope and his advisors though rejected the moderate settlement and summoned Galileo under threat of actual torture to reframe his answers, and eventually they forced him to live under house arrest until his death in 1642. When years later it was proposed that a monument be placed at his burial site, an aged and angry Urban VIII refused. In the late seventeenth century, the first monument to him was erected, and he was finally buried in Florence in the Church of Santa Croce near the remains of Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The poet Lord Byron later wrote that there lived in repose “the starry Galileo, with his woes.” Galileo’s works were finally taken off the Index of Forbidden Books in the early nineteenth century, and in 1893 the intellectual pope, Leo XIII, in his Providentissimus Deus, enunciated a view of interpreting Scriptures that was similar to Galileo’s early propositions.18 The Galileo affair became a vivid illustration to many of the inevitable conflict between enlightened science and superstitious religion. In 1896, the historian Andrew Dickson White summarized that view by saying that after the victory over Galileo, “conscientious churchmen exulted.” A century later the same position was put forth by Georges Minois with his observation that the Church attacked the scientific method itself and made the cultivation of science “incompatible with a clerical career.” In 1981 Pope John Paul II, a Polish admirer of Copernicus, appointed a committee to study the case, and in 1992 he endorsed an apology saying that Galileo’s judges were engaged in “subjective error,” and that his conviction was a result of “tragic mutual incomprehension.” The Vatican later categorized Galileo as “ a man of faith.”19 In many ways, Urban himself was a victim of a system that withheld vital information on the matter from the pope, and which represented Galileo’s views in such a manner that it looked as if he were holding the pope up to ridicule. And the Church’s officials were not used to the ideology and methodology of the new science, as they faced different definitions of motion, substance, and necessity. It has even been argued that one source of opposition to Galileo was that his views threatened the Tridentine definition of the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. A more likely explanation is that Galileo’s views on the interpretation of the Bible ran counter to the Council of Trent’s admonitions meant to contain Protestantism. As Bellarmine warned, the motion of the earth was not a matter of faith; but it was a matter of prudence that the Church not encourage views contrary to

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the common argument of the Holy Fathers—that is the old, revered commentators of the Scriptures who in fact accepted the Ptolemaic view. One authority has concluded that the Galileo affair was not about astronomy, but about the Council of Trent. In that sense Galileo was a direct casualty of the Counter Reformation.20 He also seemed to enjoy baiting the hierarchy—a dangerous sport in his time. Actually Urban was not a narrow-minded orthodox cleric, but a rather good classical scholar, who fashioned himself as a Renaissance pope. He had been a successful papal diplomat and was committed to the new reforming religious orders, even though he himself was often guilty of nepotism. He also updated the breviary, the missal, and the canonization process. In foreign affairs, he seemed to support Cardinal Richelieu’s anti-Habsburg foreign policy, even to the extraordinary extent of indirectly accepting an alliance with Protestant King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Urban also made unsuccessful overtures to English Catholics then in the midst of great persecution in their homeland. Lastly, he supported the arts, especially the works of the fine architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who redefined the very nature of St. Peter’s Square. But for all his efforts and diplomatic ventures, he is remembered for one visible event—the persecution of his one-time friend Galileo. As for the Church, the result was obvious—the tying together of the noose of the Inquisition, threats of torture, the anti-scientific orientation of theologians, and another arrogant pope. In one important sense, the Church has not yet recovered—for her leaders placed her so intensely on the wrong side of history. 21

The Changing States From 1620 to 1660, Europe went through major changes as economic and intellectual leadership passed from Spain and Italy to the northern European countries, especially England, Holland and France. Historians have maintained that religion was involved in that shift, and some have argued that Protestantism provided the energy and the justification for the rise of capitalism and consequently the Enlightenment. The German sociologist Max Weber insisted that the Protestant ethic epitomized by John Calvin, among others, laid the groundwork for a new economic system that emphasized individualism, thrift, profit, and initiative. This “calling” included a form of “worldly asceticism,” that favored the formation of a rational, bureaucratic, capitalistic society. Even in Catholic countries such as France and Austria, it was often the Protestants who built up industry and fostered the new commerce.22 Many of those new capitalist entrepreneurs were immigrants who came from four major areas in Europe: the Flemish, Jews from Lisbon and Seville, southern Germans from Augsburg, and Unitarians from Como, Locarno, Milan, and Lucca. Some of the exiles were in fact Roman Catholics, who left the restrictions of their homelands and went to areas that were less bound up with the

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constraints and traditions of the Counter Reformation. Ironically those Catholic regions had seen the growth in previous centuries of medieval capitalism and greater initiatives in economic activities. It appears then that it was not Catholic dogma per se as much as the new forms of social control emanating from the Catholic Counter Reformation that presented a threat to these new elites. The papacy had to deal with powerful secular states led by determined princes who pressed for a strengthening of the new bureaucracies in their societies. Church leaders, with many institutional problems in those regions, still supported the preservation of clerical wealth, the erection of magnificent church buildings, and the promotion of more elaborate devotions. The theological rigidity in many Catholic areas led to economic decline and also to new devotions and mysticism, and greater intolerance of outsiders. The tenor of the mid-seventeenth century was aggravated by revolution and by war. In England, the Puritans held power from 1640 to 1660; in France there was a series of widespread revolts; in the Netherlands a palace revolt occurred; in Portugal, Naples, Bohemia, and elsewhere upheavals and crises took place. The most bloody series of events of course was the Thirty Years’ War. Overall there were constant battles across Europe between the crown and the nobility or the legislative branch of government, for want of a better term. As the nationstate became more centralized, the Catholic Church in some nations simply became a government department of a secular regime, and the Church itself became more of a bureaucracy after the reforms of Pope Sixtus V. The once colorful Renaissance courts of the Church and the states were eclipsed, but not necessarily the lavish lifestyle of its princes. Ironically the new bureaucratic way of doing things lived side by side with the resurrection of witch crazes that spread across much of Europe. Historian H. R. Trevor-Roper found that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this craze was so extensive that “the Dark Age was more civilized.” The older demonology of the medieval church began to accelerate, taking over many of the concerns that embraced paganism in the early centuries, such as witches sabbath, collective orgies, communal rites of worshiping the devil, magic potions, and the black arts. Even St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas had given some credence to this bag of superstition, and Catholics and Protestants alike shared preoccupations with the devil and witchcraft.23 As expected, the popes called in the inquisitors; and they came. Even though the old canons of the Catholic Church denied the reality of witches and forbade the persecution of people so accused, pressure built and the common sense of the papacy receded. One reason for the persecution of the witches was free-floating wrath being directed at yet another outside group. The original site of the witch craze was in the Alps and the Pyrenees, and usually such hysteria was associated later with the highlands in general. TrevorRoper dryly commented that the thin air of mountains tends to breed hallucinations and exaggerated physical phenomena such as electric storms and avalanches. Sometimes alleged witches were persecuted because they were of different races, and other times they were seen as being linked to religious heresies.

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Thus the entrance of the Dominican inquisitors. But such witch hunting was not just a Catholic phenomenon. In the seventeenth century, Protestants in New England were swept up in a series of witch trials of their own, proving that ignorance pushed beyond sectarian Christian boundaries. Mercifully, the witchcraft craze ended in Europe in the late sixteenth century, but once again it added to the negative stereotypes of organized religion as akin to ignorant superstition. 24

The Blossoming of the French Nation The rise of France as the premier nation in Europe followed a long and difficult series of civil wars and great unrest, often because of religious differences. These upheavals were followed by a major push for centralization that eventually led to the very long and eventful reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Ironically this growth of secular power and prestige also went hand in hand with a great spiritual awakening that was as profound as the Spanish revival movements of the previous century. This expansiveness of the human personality thus overflowed conventional channels and led to new forms of organization, beliefs, ambitions, aspirations, and individual dreams. It is not that the temporal overwhelmed the spiritual or the spiritual subdued the secular—it just seems that at times the collective energies of a people can swell beyond the normal or historical boundaries that they have experienced in the past. The seventeenth century saw a great decline in the ability of the Papal States to influence European diplomacy, and also in France a genuine growth of religious piety called “the great age of saints.” But that religious reaffirmation did not alter the harsh power realities that curtailed papal influence in that nation. The continuing prominence of Gallicanism in the French church and the exhausting wars of religion postponed the acceptance of the Council of Trent’s decrees. Indeed the Tridentine policies were not accepted by the French crown until the advent of the revolution. As in many Catholic European nations, the king and his ministers retained considerable power over the Church because of their appointment of bishops and control of the Catholic hierarchy. In the local towns an enormous divide separated the bishop from the parish priest. Economic differences based on class deepened that division, and the poverty of the lower clergy led to considerable problems within the Church. Henry IV remarked about the monks of Saint-Denis, “Our souls will be a long time in purgatory, if they depend on these gentlemen to get them out.” Lax discipline underscored the abuses of the monasteries, but with strong royal opposition, the Protestant Reformation did not take hold there.25 The seventeenth century also witnessed in France a major increase in the number of religious orders dedicated to the rejuvenated faith. The most important of the religious associations was the Jesuits, whose influence over the nation’s education system was profound. A major challenge to that aggressive society were the Jansenists, a puritanical heresy particularly viable in Gallic soil.

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Although Catholicism is usually seen as a papal-driven, unified statement of Christian dogma, in fact historically it has embraced a wide variety of theological traditions, particularly before the Council of Trent began its systematic codifications. Catholicism has included a mystical tradition featuring such figures as St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and Thomas Merton, whose sensibilities approach those of the Eastern mystics, especially Buddhists. The influential Church theologian, Origen, who earlier stepped over the line of orthodoxy, believed in a Hindu type of reincarnation and transfiguration of the soul. Aquinas gave the Church a highly stylized form of theology heavily indebted to Aristotle and to Aristotle’s Muslim interpreters. And as has been seen with Luther, the works of St. Augustine can be interpreted to contain support for a pessimistic predestination. Indeed if Augustine had not achieved his preeminence in the Church so early—the fourth and fifth centuries—it is possible that he would have been branded a heretic, at least by contemporary standards. It is little wonder that the Augustinian tradition prevailed in many universities, especially at Louvain where a priest named Cornelius Otto Jansen was educated. He later became the bishop of Ypres. He too fell under Augustine’s spell as he wrote a major work on grace and interpreted St. Augustine at his most extreme predestination tone, which denigrated free will. In 1843 Pope Urban VIII condemned Jansen’s work. But Jansenist support continued. Eventually the heresy was censured by the French regime and its five core propositions were condemned again by Innocent X in 1653. A pamphlet war ensued, and in what became known as his Provincial Letters, Blaise Pascal supported the Jansenist position and attacked the moral sensibilities of the Jesuits. In 1650, Alexander VII reaffirmed that condemnation. Louis XIV, who was fearful of any internal divisions, also moved hastily to condemn Jansenist sentiment, especially those followers centered in the Port Royal des Champs area near Paris. Still Jansenism persisted on through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and there was even evidence of it in the twentieth century. Despite repeated condemnations by various popes, its excessive regime and moral elitism appealed to the Gallic temperament. Jansenists stressed the love of religious culture, the study of the Scriptures, a powerful and meaningful sense of mystery, a devotion to liturgy, and a darker view of the corruptibility of human nature. Its Calvinist overtones attracted and held segments of French Catholics for decades. Although Jansenism received a great deal of attention at the time, its harsh intellectualism repelled many Frenchmen. More profound was the spiritual reformation of traditional Catholicism, which led to the astonishing work of St. Vincent de Paul, St. Francis de Sales, Pierre Cardinal de Bérulle, and Mme. Acarie, among others. Mme. Acarie created a virtual religious salon and was also a great supporter of the Carmelite order; Francis de Sales, originally a privileged student from the Savoy region, abandoned the study of the law and entered into the service of the Church. He went into Switzerland to convert the Calvinists there and also founded the Order of the Visitation nuns. 26 One of the major figures of the reinvigorated Catholic Church was St. Vin-

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cent de Paul, a tireless reformer and a saintly fellow who possessed a sense of humor. He was born in the small village of Pouy and left the peasant life by entering the Catholic Church. Ordained a priest, he eventually went to Rome and had the good fortune to met Paul V and later Henry IV of France. He was involved somewhat in diplomacy, law, and other rather worldly pursuits, rare for a cleric. And then he underwent a profound philosophical change and intensified his spirituality. Vincent de Paul became a major figure pressuring for the Council of Trent’s reforms in the usually guarded French church. In 1618 he met Francis de Sales, then the bishop of Geneva, who had authored the influential Introduction to the Devout Life, which emphasized humility, serenity, and joy in God. Vincent epitomized those very virtues and added to them a real organizational sense. He became best known for his creation of parish missions as he moved from one village to another. At first the Curia rejected recognizing his society as a congregation, but in 1633 Pope Urban VIII approved the work of the mission. The mission movement preached the gospel and attracted men from all classes since it spoke in simple language the truths of the faith. Being a true son of reform, Vincent emphasized the need to upgrade the training of clergy as well. He bluntly insisted, “Laziness is the vice of the clergy,” and “The priests, living as most of them do today, are the greatest enemies of the Church of God.” “The depravity of the priestly state is the principal cause of the Church’s downfall,” he concluded. But it is for his charity that Vincent became immortalized. He protected orphans, supported hospitals, organized relief agencies, and was remarkably adept in soliciting money from the rich. Vincent on one occasion informed Anne of Austria, queen of France: “The queen has no need of jewelry!” He founded a female religious order dedicated to the poor, and he told the Sisters of Charity, “Visit the poor instead of praying. In this way you are leaving God for God.” His efforts won the support of Louis XIII and Richelieu and later Jules Cardinal Marazin, and he moved for a time in the highest court circles without losing his celebrated humility. Vincent de Paul represented a peak in spiritual commitment, but he was not the only one in France of the seventeenth century. That period experienced an enormous outpouring of spiritual sentiment. As with the Council of Trent, an increasing emphasis was placed upon the reform of the priesthood. As in Italy, so in France, observers noted the abuses, scandals, and general low-level of literacy and dedication among the clergy. The same reform efforts were focused on the monasteries and convents. Confraternities devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to the Blessed Sacrament, and to the Sacred Heart all sprang up, and retreats, religious processions, and the cult of saints underscored the new religiosity.27

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The Late Century Papacy In Rome, the popes were busy restoring and beautifying the Eternal City and finishing up the work of Bernini with its triumph of the Baroque style. Architectural excellence and sheer size represented the views of a restored papacy, and the popes of the mid-seventeenth century tended to become increasingly preoccupied with political causes and competing with other princely sovereigns. 28 As has been seen, Urban VIII became involved in the Thirty Years’ War and so antagonized the imperial forces that they nearly invaded Rome. He had difficulties dealing with Venice and Portugal, and got involved in a family quarrel with the Farnese about the Duchy of Castro. His successor, Innocent X (1644–55) opposed the Peace of Westphalia in a futile attempt to stop the forces of toleration. And his successor, Fabio Chigi or Alexander VII (1655–1667) was equally inept. As a cardinal, Chigi was a respected diplomat and scholar. As pope he tried to mobilize the Christian states against the Turks, but was opposed by the French under Louis XIV and Cardinal Mazarin. He ended up secluding himself, writing Latin verses, and fostering the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Unfortunately these three popes went back to the practices and abuses characterized by nepotism. They were indeed still involved in some attempts to implement the reforms of the Council of Trent, but their major focus was often quite different from Church reform. These popes did try to deal with the Jansenist heresy, which at one time inflamed France, and they were fairly successful in discrediting the heresy.29 The popes faced an increasing change in Europe with the rise of the spirit of nationalism and also the absolutist ambitions of Christian princes. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, Louis XIV formed an alliance with the Muslim Turks. As has been seen, this growth of religious sentiment in Catholic countries, especially France, and the attempted aggrandizement of the papacy were masked by the awful events of the Thirty Years’ War, which was a war that began for religious reasons and became a political conflagration. Central to that latter struggle was the Machiavellian foreign policies of Cardinal Richelieu—a churchman only by title, who furthered the objectives of the French kings. His work was passed on to his disciple, the Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin. The foreign policy of the popes of this period labored under the reality that many of the major competing European powers were Catholic: Habsburg, France, and Spain, and the popes at times tried to steer independent and neutral courses. First, Spain at that time dominated Europe, holding Milan and Naples in its control. Urban VIII tried to steer his foreign policy through those shoals. He fortified the Castel Sant’Angelo and Civitavecchia and established an arms factory. He remained leery of Spanish control, and refused to condemn Richelieu’s policies despite enormous pressures to do so, although at times he opposed the cardinal’s dallying with Protestant princes and the Turks. Consequently the pope ended up being suspected by both sides. 30 The Treaties of Westphalia finally curtailed the long conflicts and were

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signed on October 24, 1648, with France and Sweden the major victors. Germany became heavily divided—a disintegration fed in part by the need for guarantees for religious toleration based on the religion of the princes, not the preferences of the people. It was not a philosophical statement as much as an admission of fatigue after the disastrous wars. Religious properties went to the religious bodies that were holding them as of 1624—a verdict that worked many hardships on Catholics. Another consequence was the end of the Catholic Counter Reformation, with the repeated victories of Protestant king Gustavus Adolphus. The Catholic missionary forays in Germany were now concluded. The Church suffered another loss when the Dutch successfully revolted against the king of Spain. In Britain, Charles I’s marriage to Catholic princess Henrietta Maria of France led to a return to Catholicism by the royal court and to some dreams of a return to the allegiances of the old faith. But that was not to be. Charles gave the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, support in his policy to create an Anglican High Church alternative to Roman Catholicism. Later the civil war and the victory of the Puritans led to a dictatorship of the most rigid kind, and Oliver Cromwell’s ascendancy ended any thoughts of a return of Catholicism to that island. Charles I had tried to give Ireland some guarantees of freedom of worship in 1646 in order to gain support against Cromwell, but the Puritan Lord Protector prevailed. Catholic adherents of the monarch were slaughtered, and in 1652 the property of Irish Catholics was confiscated and given to Protestant soldiers. The Church remained strong, orthodox, and uncompromising in the Habsburg Empire and in Spain. Protestants were persecuted in the empire, and Catholicism was declared the official religion and then protected in the constitution of 1627. In Spain the Inquisition continued along its determined way. That same spirit began to permeate Belgium and southern Italy. In Holland and Britain, the Protestants showed that they could persecute just as well, as did the Calvinists in Geneva. In Scotland under John Knox, and in Denmark and Sweden, the Protestants prevailed.31 In France the foreign policy of Richelieu kept that nation often on the side of the Protestant powers, but it still remained in confession a Catholic country. The Edict of Nantes in 1598 had been a declaration of religious toleration. Pope Clement VIII, seeing its text, objected: “It crucifies me,” and he proclaimed, “Freedom of conscience is the worse thing in the world.” But he may have privately accepted it as the price he was willing to pay to get France to stop Spanish hegemony in Italy. Throughout Europe then the rise of the nation-state led to a growth of absolutism, especially with the once-universal Catholic Church eliminated as a restraining factor. The France of Louis XIV is often cited as a prime example of absolutism, but that phenomenon was present throughout much of western Europe. Even the so-called Catholic kings showed their disdain toward the once powerful Holy See. Philip II brazenly sent his infantry into Rome. In France, Gallicanism reasserted itself as another attempt to curtail the Roman Church and its influence. The monarchs now were claiming the divine right of kings as the

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basis for this new aggrandized rule. Ideology was matching necessity as sheer political power crossed the continent.32

The Papal Condition As Urban VIII’s pontificate moved toward a conclusion in 1644, he struggled to extract himself from his family-inspired feud with the Farnese, which drained the papal treasury for his war. He even ordered the bronze girders of the Pantheon melted down to make guns. The Romans sarcastically concluded that “what the barbarians did not do, the Barbarini [his family] did.” 33 His successor, Innocent X, Giovanni Battista Pamfili, had been a judge in the Roman rota (marriage court), and later a diplomat. He was less pro-French than his predecessor and quickly dismissed the Barbarini family from their positions of power and privilege. He even ordered a special commission to investigate them, but Cardinal Mazarin, then the French minister, stepped in to protect the family and to get a papal pardon for them. He took care of his allies. Where Urban was surrounded by hungry nephews, Innocent’s powerful widowed sister-in-law, Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, was a major figure in his court and was called the “la papessa” by the Romans. Her influence was marked and malevolent. Innocent had let it be known that he too opposed the Peace of Westphalia, and he publicly denounced its terms on August 20, 1650. On another matter, he was a major supporter of the missionary movement, even though he refused to make allowances for Chinese rituals in place of the Roman rite. Innocent also actively opposed and eventually condemned the Jansenist heresy. When he died, his sister-in-law characteristically refused to pay for the funeral expenses, and his body actually stayed for several days in the sacristy of the Quirinal palace. His successor, Alexander VII, had been involved in the negotiations of the Peace of Westphalia, which he had denounced for its alleged anti-Catholic provisions. He reversed, however, Clement XI’s decision and allowed the Jesuits to use Chinese rites. He initially banned his relatives from Rome, but quickly recalled them and proved to be as generous a patron as other popes had been. Alexander also ran into French opposition, and King Louis XIV on one occasion actually withdrew his ambassador from Rome. Finally the pope capitulated. For all his experience in foreign affairs, he was unable to conclude successful alliances, and ran into opposition because of the Spanish king’s desire to name new bishops. The pope too condemned Jansenism once again and reaffirmed a generally rigid religious, ethical, and moral code. His legacy included the famed Bernini columns that surround St. Peter’s Square, and he was buried in St. Peter’s in a magnificent tomb designed by Bernini. The major pope of the seventeenth century, however, was Innocent XI (1678–1689)—Benedetto Odescalchi—who had been a quiet figure in the Curia and who suffered from poor health. Over the years, he had established a reputa-

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tion for helping the destitute in his diocese of Novara and serving as a model of Christian care. After a two-month deadlock, the cardinals again moved toward a compromise candidate. Odescalchi had already been rejected in the 1670 conclave by the French. He was a surprise choice and he indicated that he would accept the position only if the cardinals supported his intention to implement fully the reforms of the Council of Trent. He had led an ascetic life and desired to impose his personal severity on the entire Church, as well as on the robust city of Rome. His opponents said he was a Jansenist in spirit—not for his theology but because of the puritanical lifestyle. The new pope pushed for greater economy, more evangelicalism, stricter monastic life, the frequent reception of Communion, and an end to nepotism. He disliked the Jesuits, banned political carnivals, and condemned laxity of theological thinking. Once again, the political conflicts of the papacy replayed themselves. In dealing with Louis XIV, Innocent faced a more belligerent monarch who called together an assembly of French clergy to attack the papacy. The king pushed for the four Gallican articles of March 19, 1682, which resurrected the claim that a general Council is superior to the pope, reaffirmed the older restrictions on Rome in dealing with the French church, and asserted the authority of the monarch over the pope in temporal matters.34 The pope rejected the articles and refused to concur in the appointment of any bishops who would adhere to those articles. The pope even disassociated himself from Louis’s attacks on the Huguenots after he had revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The pope refused to receive the new French ambassador to Rome, and he later rejected the king’s nominee for archbishop of Cologne. By January 1688, there were thirty-five vacant dioceses in France, and the pope actually excommunicated in secret the king and his ministers. Louis moved his troops into the papal territories of Avignon and Venaissin, and imprisoned the papal nuncio. Cooler heads eventually prevailed and both backed down. It was an incredible confrontation nonetheless, reminiscent of the struggles in the Middle Ages. Innocent also pushed for still another holy war against the Turks and advocated an alliance that led to Jan Sobieski’s deliverance of Vienna from Muslim control in 1683, and the eventual liberation of Hungary and of Belgrade, then occupied by the Turks. The pope’s austere ways were followed by another swing in the pendulum with the election of Alexander VIII (1689–1691), Pietro Vito Ottoboni, who was also a one-time Curial official, an inquisitor in Italy, and the bishop of Brescia. Alexander preferred a life of luxury, revived nepotism, and furthered the causes of his nephews as cardinals and as his secretary of state. He too disliked the Jesuits, and was able to persuade Louis XIV to withdraw from papal territories, for which he made some concessions on appointments, although he refused to ratify any bishop who supported the Gallican articles. Louis, under Alexander’s successor Innocent XII, would promise to end the requirement that bishops had to concur in the Gallican articles. That pope, Antonio Pignatelli (1691–1700), was a reformist figure, committed to the Council of

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Trent agenda. He had been the archbishop of Naples, and was the compromise choice after a five-month deadlock in a conclave characterized by divisions even in the French and imperial camps. The pope issued a decree, Romanum decet pontificem (1692), which prohibited future popes from granting estates, offices, or revenues to their relatives. To deal with a longstanding criticism, he did broker a compromise with Louis and toned down the animosities with France— which in turn increased the suspicions of the emperor, Leopold I! In this way the seventeenth century ended.

The Most Christian King For over half a century, the Holy See had to deal with the constant ambitions of the Sun King, Louis XIV, whose admirers called him the most Christian king. 35 Louis XIV (1638–1715) represents the high point of Bourbon rule and was one of the foremost examples of royal autocracy in the West. He became king at the tender age of five and died just before his seventy-seventh birthday. During that incredibly long reign, Louis was heralded as the “Sun King”—the central constellation in the European political sky. He was frequently portrayed as the ultimate Catholic monarch, but in fact his personal piety often had no influence on his sexual liaisons, his brutal military campaigns, or his interference with the affairs of the Catholic Church. At an early age his major advisor was Jules Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian diplomat who was a disciple of Cardinal Richelieu and some say, in a different vein, a disciple of Machiavelli. Young Louis was a handsome prince, a fine horseman, a graceful dancer and fencer, and a rather poor student. He inherited from his mother, Queen Anne of Austria, a firm grounding in Catholic tradition and values, although he was, especially in his early and middle years, a man given more to the pleasures of the flesh, especially those so easily available to a monarch in his own court. Almost immediately, in coming of age the king curtailed the power of the nobility and placed his government in the hands of people with few connections or independent power bases. He was not particularly interested in learning or education, but was devoted to the military life. In his education of the prince, Mazarin emphasized a foreign policy of nuance and balance, rather than the bold strokes or great adventures so characteristic of the young. Louis lived a life almost totally public, and his reign was a continuing pageantry of poses, symbols, and studied actions. He recognized the need to separate himself not only from the masses, but also from his own court followers. The king was the representative of a special authority, the heir to the divine right to rule given by God himself. Although it was a time of royal absolutism, the king recognized that he had to live within the context of certain expectations and traditions, especially under the eye of a judging God. Louis watched as Mazarin had the French regime make an alliance with the

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regicide Cromwell in England and with the difficult Dutch to check aggressive Catholic Spain. Later Louis would follow suit by aligning himself with the Muslim Turks. As he matured, Louis became a man of great poise and selfconfidence. If any person seemed born to rule, it was the Sun King of France. He was married in 1660 to Marie-Thérèse of Austria, “The Infanta,” who was the daughter of Philip IV of Spain. Mazarin’s plan was to reach some accommodation with the Spanish regime, and perhaps some day to make Louis also the king of Spain. Upon the cardinal’s death, the young king never let another advisor achieve such prominence. He also moved to centralize the government under his personal leadership so that he was able in his own words “to bring them under my authority.” He almost immediately crossed swords with the papacy. When papal troops in Rome clashed with those of the French ambassador, Pope Alexander VII refused to apologize, and the young king then sent troops into Rome and called on all of Catholic Europe to support him against such outrages. The pope eventually apologized and acceded to Louis’s demands that a pyramid be erected in Rome as a monument to his capitulation! In 1666, Louis decided to exert some pressure on the international stage by declaring war on England in order to protect, he said, his family’s rights in Spain. He became involved in a costly conflict over the Spanish Netherlands, and that brutal struggle in the Netherlands very nearly led to his defeat. Louis the warrior now had to become Louis the diplomat. He negotiated the Treaty of Nijmegen which gave him only some modest gains, but which also quickly established the young king as a force to be reckoned with in Europe. In 1669, Louis began the development of the magnificent Versailles palace and gardens, which remains in many ways the most beautiful monument to his long reign. It also added to the pageantry and splendor of the Sun King, and he used special events to underscore that image. During Holy Week, Louis reinstituted the royal tradition of the king touching the sick in expectation of healing them, and sometimes hundreds of them were so honored. To buttress his power as the sole authority in France, Louis rescinded the Edict of Nantes which had promised toleration for the Huguenots, and actually pushed for them to convert back to Catholicism. It was probably more for political than religious reasons that he established such controls over the Huguenots. In fact, in his dealings with the Roman Catholic Church, Louis frequently challenged Pope Innocent XII on ecclesiastical policies. He reaffirmed the Gallican articles meant to control the Holy See’s reach into the French church, denied the infallibility of the pope, refused to accept the Council of Trent’s reforming decrees, and insisted on the supremacy of ecumenical Councils over the popes. The king and his ministers did end up curtailing the Jansenists and encouraged the Holy See to condemn them. Innocent was also angered that the king had refused to join the anti-Turkish alliance, and for saying that the days of holy wars were over. In reality, Louis used his contacts with the Turks as a way of checking other hostile European powers. As has been seen, in 1682 the pope and the king nearly came to a

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schism over the appointment of bishops and the rights of the Gallican church vis-à-vis the Holy See. As the years passed by, Louis became more involved in war and diplomatic intrigue. The War of Spanish Succession, in which he defended the rights of his grandson to assume the Spanish throne, led to major disruptions and disasters all across France. On his deathbed, the seventy-seven-year-old Sun King confided to his five-year-old great-grandson and heir to the throne that he should remember his duty to God and remain at peace with his neighbors. “I loved war too much,” Louis concluded of his long reign. In general, he showed how the “most Christian of monarchs” could not only ignore the pope’s demands, but actually work against the papacy and the interests of the Catholic Church.

The Counter-Reformation Papacy in Retrospect The Council of Trent did not implement itself. A series of committed popes, dedicated bishops and religious superiors took the lead in seeking to overcome the torpor of the Renaissance papacy and Roman Church. But their more aggressive style was not just an excess of reform; it was a direct confrontation with the Protestants—who were also violent in those sectarian controversies. The papal state became an early prototype of the contemporary sectarian state, and the papacy became an absolute monarchy resting on a mystical base. Rome’s traditional response to problems was centralization, politicalization, and hierarchy. The critical philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, characterized the papacy in his book, The Leviathan, thus: “The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.” The Council of Trent codified many understandings into dogmas, clarified confusions, and provided for the beginnings of a stream of catechisms that would influence Catholic education over the centuries. Defensiveness also led to increasing rigidity. The Church, which had so tolerated the endless disputes of the schoolmen in the Middle Ages, now became the animator of the new, harsher Inquisitions. In neighborhood churches and religious orders, people of faith turned to piety and good works without worrying about Luther’s views of faith versus works, or Calvin’s gloomy vision of predestination. They rebuilt the Catholic Church from the bottom up and preserved enclaves of piety and orthodoxy. Their explosions of saints, for example, dotted the landscape of France, Italy, and Spain. Religious orders went to the New World, and converted the natives as well as gave aid and comfort to the conquistadors and the exploiters. The popes generally advocated the propagation of the faith, almost as if to make up for the loss of northern Europe to the Protestant sects. In Europe, the Church, especially with the Jesuits, emerged as a vigorous force in trying to reconvert the Protestants. They focused on princes, helping to win them back to the old faith and, with them, their subjects. Remarkable is the extent to which the Roman

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Catholic Church by persuasion, force, or habit was able to roll back the tides of Lutheranism in some areas. But the mixture of religion and political pressures led to the long explosions that marked the Thirty Years’ War. The toll on human life and the economy was vast; it led to the dismemberment of Germany that lasted until the nineteenth century. That instability laid the groundwork for authoritarian Prussian control, and one can argue, for even the uglier forms of totalitarianism in the twentieth century. The Protestant Reformation resulted in the rupture of the unity of Christendom. The religious wars signaled the end of the Counter Reformation and any hopes of restoring a single, Christian community. In its place was the dynamic world of nationalism and autocratic monarchs. The vicar of Christ, heading the Papal States, was no match for this, and at best the popes tried to balance the ambitions of their own Catholic monarchs. The popes were caught living in a temporal world of Protestant princes, opposed to their influence and dogmas, and Catholic princes often trying to assert their supremacy over the international church in their own lands. In the seventeenth century the popes really had few allies when they faced conflicts and controversies. The leadership of these popes revolved around several poles—they sought to propagate the faith and to reform the Church internally. Some ignored the restrictions of the Council of Trent, others still wallowed in nepotism and papal favors, while others lived and practiced the austere life. Their colleges of cardinals reflected the influences of the nations they came from, often in spite of the interests of the Church and papal policies. At this time, the hierarchy was usually appointed by the secular authorities or elected locally. Only in recent times has the papacy been acknowledged as the appropriate authority for appointing bishops across the world. Ironically the secularization of the West led to governments that separated church and state, and that ended much of the authority of lay leaders over ecclesiastical appointments. When the Holy See approached the leaders of the new United States about how it should relate to them about ecclesiastical appointments, they were informed that there was no such practice in this new nation. It was the Catholic Church that in the end would benefit most from the wall of separation between church and state. The popes in the seventeenth century to a man wanted to restore the papacy to its previous power and glory. Their excursions in the reformation of Roman life, and the erection of a new St. Peter’s and a hundred other churches across the city, were meant to be visible testimonies to their new grandeur and ambitions. Architecture was meant to underscore power; impressions are all. The Catholic Church and its pontiffs had faced awesome heresies, ferocious wars, endless diplomatic intrigues in that very century. Soon there was to come a very different challenge—one much more difficult to combat, to confront, and to defeat. And it came under a charming name—the Enlightenment.

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Notes 1. W. J. Stankiewicz, Politics & Religion in Seventeenth Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, “The Counter Reformation,” in his Lectures on Modern History (London: Macmillan, 1955). 2. Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy, 1555– 1593 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1977), ix–62; Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1995), 221; Louis Israel Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925); Edward A. Synan, The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages (New York: Macmillan, 1965), chap. 6 on Innocent III; Pinchas E. Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews (New York: Hawthorn, 1967), 48; Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750 (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1998), 220. 3. Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History (Orlando, Fla.: Morningstar and Lark, 1995), chap. 6; Richard S. Westfall, Essays on the Trial of Galileo (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 25–27 on the different types of inquisition. 4. Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia, Pa.: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1964). 5. Ellen Knickmeyer, “Executed Italian ‘Heretic’ Honored,” AP Online, February 17, 2000. http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/docu Al&_md5= 09ale736d556562bd230f10d183de4. 6. Roth, Jews in the Renaissance, 256; Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997); Henry C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols. (1906–07, reprint; New York: AMS Press, 1966); Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), 306 on Torquemada. 7. Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 36; Richard McBrien, The Lives of the Popes (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 299; T. Adolphus Trollope, Paul the Pope and Paul the Friar: A Story of an Interdict (London: Chapman and Hall, 1861); Pastor, History of the Popes, vols. 25–26. 8. Stow, Catholic Thought, ix–62. 9. Stow, Catholic Thought, ix–62; Leone Modena, The Autobiography of a Seventeenth Century Venetian Rabbi, Leon Modena’s Life of Judah, ed. Mark R. Cohen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Brian Pullan, The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550–1670 (Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1983); Kenneth R. Stow, Taxation, Community and State: The Jews and the Fiscal Foundations of the Early Modern Papal State (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1982); Charles Trinkais, In Our Image and Likeness, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), vol. 2, 578–600.

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10. Stow, Catholic Thought, 1–6. 11. Stow, Catholic Thought, 63–65. 12. Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). 13. Ludwig von Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 17 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1939), passim. 14. Richard L. Goodbar, ed., The Edict of Nantes: Five Essays and a New Translation (Bloomington, Ill.: National Huguenot Society, 1998); Stankiewicz, Politics & Religion, 7–19; Noel B. Gerson, The Edict of Nantes (New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1969); James Westfall Thompson, “Some Economic Factors: The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” American Historical Review 14, no. 1 (Oct. 1908): 38–50. 15. Martin Philippson, The Religious Wars (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Co., 1905); C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years’ War, 2 vols. (1938; reprint, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1969); Georges Pagès, The Thirty Years War 1618–1648 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Anton Gindely, History of the Thirty Years’ War, 2 vols. (1885; reprint, Freeport, Ill.: Books on Libraries, 1972); C. R. L. Fletcher, Gustavus Adolphus and the Thirty Years’ War (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963); Geoffrey Parker, The Thirty Years’ War (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984); John Mitchell, The Life of Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland (1837; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1968). 16. David Buisseret, The Wars of Religion (New York: Paul Hamlyn, 1969), 7; Leopoldina Olivia Keppel, Trent: Before and After (1534–1600) (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1932); Stankiewicz, Politics & Religion, 19; Johnson, History of Christianity, 326. 17. Richard S. Westfall, “The Trial of Galileo: Bellarmino, Galileo and the Clash of Two Worlds,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 20 (1989): 1 –23; Richard J. Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991); J. L. Heilbron, The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1999), 16. 18. James J. Langford, Galileo, Science and the Church (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 113; Santilliana, The Crimes of Galileo, 136, 156, 160; Karl von Gebler, Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (1879; reprint, Merrick, N.Y.: Richwood Publishing Co., 1977). 19. Heibron, Sun in the Church, 20. 20. Olaf Pedersen, “Galileo and the Council of Trent: The Galileo Affair Revisited,” Journal of History of Astronomy 14 (1983): 1 –29; Langford, Galileo, Science and the Church, passim. 21. Maurice A. Finocciero, ed., The Galileo Affair; A Documentary History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Pietro Redondi, Galileo Heretic = Galileo Eretico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Gebler, Galileo and the Roman Curia, passim; Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (New York: Walker & Co., 1999). 22. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Schribner, 1958).

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23. H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Reform, the Reformation and Social Change (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). 24. Laurie Winn Carlson, A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1999) argues that the symptoms attributed to the witches were really due to encephalitis lethargica. 25. Henri Daniel-Rops, The Church in the Seventeenth Century (New York: E. Dutton & Co., 1963), chap. 2; Henry Heller, Iron and Blood: Civil Wars in Sixteenth Century France (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991); Thomas Munck, Seventeenth Century Europe: State, Conflict, and the Social Order in Europe, 1598–1700 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). 26. Daniel-Rops, Seventeenth Century, chaps. 2, 6. 27. On St. Vincent, see Daniel-Rops, Seventeenth Century, chap. 1; Louis Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the Formation of Modern Catholicism, c.1500–c.1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 28. W. Chandler Kirvin, Powers Matchless: The Pontificate of Urban VIII, the Baldachin, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini (New York: Peter Land, 1997); Judith A. Hook, “Urban VIII: The Paradox of a Spiritual Monarchy,” in A. G. Dickens, ed., The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty, 1400–1800 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 213–31; Laurie Nussdorfer, Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); William Nassau Weech, Urban VIII: Being the Lothian Prize for 1903 (London: Archibald Constable, 1905). 29. F. R. Hoare, The Papacy and the Modern State: An Essay on the Political History of the Catholic Church (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1940), chap. 20. 30. Daniel-Rops, Seventeenth Century, 147–48; Paul Kléber Monod, The Power of Kings, Monarchy and Religion in Europe, 1589–1715 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 31. Daniel-Rops, Seventeenth Century, 160–64. 32. Michael Wolfe, “The Edict of Nantes: French Origins and European Impacts,” in L. Goodbar, ed., The Edict of Nantes, 11–18; Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); H. Hauser, “The French Reformation and the French People in the Sixteenth Century,” The American Historical Review 4, no. 2 (January 1899): 217– 27; J. H. Shennan, Liberty and Order in Early Modern Europe: The Subject and the State, 1650–1800 (New York: Longman, 1986), chap. 2; William Miller, Medieval Rome, from Hildebrand to Clement VIII, 1073–1600 (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1902), chaps. 12, 13. 33. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 304; Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 27–28. 34. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 305–11; Carl Nils Daniel de Bildt, The Conclave of Clement X (1670) (London: British Academy, 1903). 35. John B. Wolf, Louis XIV (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968); Gustave Masson, Mazarin (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New

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York: E. & J. B. Young and Co., 1886); Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe: Cardinal Mazarin and the Congress of Westphalia, 1643–1648 (Selingrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1999); Nannerl O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); David Maland, Culture and Society in Seventeenth-Century France (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970); Louis O’Brien, “Innocent XI and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes” (Ph.D. diss., University of California Berkeley, 1930) argues that the repeal was linked to Louis’s desire to be elevated to the status of Constantine and Charlemagne, protector of the faith.

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The Enlightenment The Roman Catholic Church and its pontiffs in the sixteenth century had faced the enormous challenges of heresy, schism, and apostasy. Those dissensions were the products of a profound, internal division that split Christianity asunder and ended a community of faith that was so appealing for so long to so many. The internal reforms of the hierarchy, the structured changes of the Council of Trent, and the re-emergence of piety in the Latin countries, all were aimed at overcoming some of those divisions by reasserting the self-confidence of the Roman Church. History often records evidence of the laxity of the Renaissance papacy and the flaccidness of much of the Church itself in that period. That backsliding and the assurances the hierarchy inherited from Catholicism’s long and distinguished traditions in the Middle Ages led in an odd way to some real toleration in many quarters. But the sharp edges of the Counter Reformation made Catholicism more unified, more coherent, and more aggressive in its dealings. The very vigor so often treasured in the post-Tridentine papacy and the reforming Church led to greater intolerance, more sectarian violence, and a militancy that moved far away from the simple love expressed in the Gospels.1 By the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the intellectual circles of western Europe had departed from the Reformation and Counter Reformation and were being deeply influenced by the climate of opinion called the Enlightenment. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant called that period an awakening, a maturation of the sensibilities of thinking people. Its motto should be Sapere aude, “Dare to know.”2 Unlike the Renaissance that gave posterity quite a few monuments that have lasted beyond its day, the Enlightenment instead changed the very way intellectuals thought about humanity and society, and had a powerful influence on the succeeding nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Only with the bloodbaths of the modern world wars and the atrocities of various holocausts have we abandoned the enthusiasms of the Enlightenment. Our modern shadows have been cast too far and are too dark for us to hold onto the optimism of the Age of Reason. And ironically it has been because of those times of troubles that Roman Catholicism and evangelical Christianity have received new leases on popular loyalties. 209

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The Apostles of Reason The Enlightenment meant many things to different nations and traditions, but it did seem to share several characteristics.3 It was an intellectual movement that started in England and then burst forward in France and beyond, and which emphasized the importance of reason, natural law, scientific discovery, and optimism.4 It was in part a reaction to the baroque, the orthodox, and the Counter Reformation. People looked forward to the future, although they made much of their respect for classical Greece and the Renaissance. There was also a belief in the overall uniformity of human nature. Even skeptic David Hume argued, “Mankind are so much the same in all places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange.”5 In place of faith and religious tradition, the Enlightenment leaders or philosophés, to use the French nomenclature, substituted the use of human reason and the truths of scientific discovery. There was little use for Christianity, for revelation, for miracle stories, or for the fine architectonic philosophy of Aquinas and the scholastics; in their place they substituted a naive faith in the authority of nature and reason.6 The Bible, the very center of Protestant life, was simply a collection of folk stories that added little to human knowledge. Science would free mankind from the superstitions of the Middle Ages and the baneful influence of the priests and ministers. The new discoveries in the physical world and the popularity of the new geography upset older views of time and place, as Copernicus and Galileo relegated the very earth to the role of a satellite, rather than the center of God’s created universe. In that spirit, Johannes Kepler used mathematics to formulate laws that sought to explain the universe. In England, Sir Francis Bacon laid out the principles of empirical science, and William Harvey applied modern science to the study of anatomy in detailed ways that even Leonardo da Vinci in the Renaissance could not have imagined. The scientific method was then very dependent upon the assumptions and advances of mathematics—a language of precision. Here the climate of opinion was deeply indebted to Rene Descartes, a philosopher trained by the Jesuits in France. He believed that the truth of mathematics depended on the existence of God—a truth that explained the perfection of nature. Yet in reaffirming the theistic, he led supporters to a belief in the primacy of the self—thus his famous declaration, “I think, therefore I am.” The French philosopher felt that God was the source of all truth, and that what we clearly perceive in life must be true. His thought was deductive rather than empirical, and he placed great emphasis on reason rather than on experimentation.7 He also held that man had innate ideas and could easily ascertain the truth of philosophical principles. Descartes may not have desired it, but his psychology nearly led to solipsism, that is, the belief that only one’s own perceptions exist, and also to a non-personal God who came to resemble the deist view of an

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almighty clockmaker who established the universe and then withdrew, leaving it ticking. Descartes’s mechanistic view of the universe, however, was soon to be superseded by a more compelling one. The most important thinker of the time was Isaac Newton, who in the late seventeenth century published his great work, Principia, which laid out a comprehensive system explaining the motion and movements of bodies in the universe. It is odd, or at least ironic, that sitting at this apex of modern scientific thought was a man who all his adult life dabbled in the occult and alchemy.8 But for his contemporaries he decoded the mysteries of the universe. Essential to the Enlightenment was the new view of nature being promulgated. Historically, Christianity had established a fairly close relationship of nature with man, symbolized by the joint creation of the two by God, by man’s lordship over all creatures as defined in Genesis, and by St. Francis of Assisi’s insistence that the animal kingdom was also a manifestation of God’s love. Now, though, nature was to be divided up into animal and plant groupings, and methodically examined to ascertain the underlying laws, which explained how nature worked. English philosopher David Hume tellingly argued, though, that Newton, by abandoning the medieval views of nature, restored her ultimate secrets to obscurity. Despite new advances in inquiry and observation, an observer could not know the essence of things and the first causes that animate them. Behind Newton’s laws was a Supreme Being who worked through regular patterns of behavior that would probably be discovered, but that assumption was never totally certain.9 From Newton’s omniscience came the view that the divine order was benevolent, or in the words of philosopher Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, the world we see is the best that could have been created. Thus the saccharine optimism that was associated with the early philosophés and satirized so effectively by Voltaire in his novella, Candide. That static cosmology gave aid and comfort to theists, many Catholic, for in his own way the greatest scientist of the age was reaffirming a major role for God. But still it was a God so far removed from the lives of everyday people that He might not even have been there at all, for one surely does not pray to a prime mover. 10 If God’s commands were so distant, how did humankind know what was moral and what was evil? For the problem with skepticism is that it is based on a sort of gentleman’s agreement that we will never let its consequences touch society’s laws and order. As time passed, and philosophers were celebrating the triumph of reason by discerning the laws of the Newtonian universe, they also came to insist that scholarly scrutiny would discover the relationship of human codes of conduct, especially as one came to know more about exotic cultures and civilizations, which had very different views of right and wrong. Others were to turn the spotlight of scholarship on the sacred texts of the Bible, and treat them as just another subject open to comparative analyses, linguistic interpretation, and sharp textual criticisms.

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Some philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes argued, however, that what is good is simply what we desire, and what is evil is what we hate. Thus there is no common rule of good and evil. Others argued there was a great chain of being in the universe that bound all creatures to a divinely planned hierarchy, and that the highest value was universal harmony. Several philosophers, having lost any spiritual basis for making moral judgments, felt that it was simple utilitarianism—a calculus of pain and pleasure—that identified moral responsibilities. Adam Smith, the famed economist, pressed the view that ethical behavior was the product of other sentiments, modulated by social concerns. Most of those “laws” revolved around the physical and psychological needs of man, rather than the agreements of unchanging societies. The ten commandments were simply cultural imperatives.11 Powerfully aligned to that argument were the conclusions of the English philosopher, John Locke, best known to Americans for his political works, but important at that time for his writings in the area of epistemology. In 1690, Locke published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which sought to explain how we come to know what we know. Man is born with no innate ideas, he said, but his mind is like a blank piece of paper to be impressed by the world of sensations. There are thus no innate ideas of morality or religion, but they differ depending on the culture in which one is born and reared. Man is a part of nature. And Locke came to focus on the importance of education in understanding and molding the needs of children. Thus man’s happiness or misery is of his own making, he argued. David Hume in his Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding went even further than Locke. In 1748 he argued that the very concept of causality itself rests upon a mere historical observation. It is a probable rule or association, but not a certainty. Thus the most important and basic law of logic is summarily dismissed as actually being conditional, and with it much of Western philosophy goes down the drain.12

The Secular State If humankind lived in such a state of pleasant uncertainties, and simple reason was informed only by science, what impact did it all have on the understandings that people retained about government? Both Catholicism and most Protestant religions emphasized the importance of close ties to civil authorities. They wished the state to defend their interests, control their populations, and protect their churches and possessions. But legions of people and princes were weary of aggressive clergymen and of religious wars. Skepticism soon led to a rough precursor of toleration. Henry IV of France had struck one of the first blows for opportunistic toleration with his Edict of Nantes, later repealed by Louis XIV. One major Catholic thinker, the Jesuit Francisco Suárez, insisted that sovereignty came from the

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community and not from the king, and he even supported the right of resistance. In England, the Puritans, in a less theoretical assault, undercut the royal traditions, and later Parliament curtailed the power of the British monarch. Out of the English Civil War came John Locke’s famous Two Treatises of Civil Government that attacked the prevalent notion of divine right of kings, and substituted in its place the idea of a popular compact that would guarantee protections for life, liberty, and property. The people were the judge of the conduct of princes and legislators, he said. Later the theory of popular sovereignty, which went along with the events of the English civil war, would have a great influence on American colonists, especially the Founding Fathers in their own revolution and their creation of the first new nation. In Europe, though, the traditions of natural law and natural rights were clearly limited, although older versions of natural law had been accepted by Christian philosophers after they had been originated by the Stoics. Nonetheless there was increased opposition to the way such a tradition was being defined. In France, there was hostility by Catholic thinkers to using natural law in politics at all. In Calvinist countries there was real opposition to its libertarian consequences. In severely divided Germany, there was a demand for stronger expressions of absolute sovereignty to control the forces of division and chaos. And across the continent there was real concern about new princes and more powerful states that really supported the growth of absolutism in their countries. Locke’s views of a liberal and limited government had to wait until the eighteenth century to be realized. The new European states that grew up were characterized by larger populations, greater bureaucracies with competent civil servants, the rise of professional law courts, more social continuity, and a reliance on more taxes. One sees also the rise of so-called benevolent despots, that is, autocratic leaders who supported Enlightenment values up to a certain point. They reformed their courts and prisons, emphasized education and learning, and pushed for religious toleration. As will be seen, their ranks included such diverse monarchs as Frederick, Catherine, and Peter, all called the Great, and Joseph II of the Habsburg Empire.13 The followers of the Enlightenment held to a simple notion of progress— that the conditions of human life were getting better and better. 14 They opposed what they saw as the superstitions of the past and the tendency of some to engage in skepticism rather than emphasize the role of reason. The philosophés defined their role as presenting to a larger and larger public the very ideals of the Enlightenment.15 And as the reading public expanded, there was more of a demand for their works, which were often characterized by sharp wit and stinging sarcasm. The most important of these men of letters was a writer named Voltaire. Voltaire, the pen name of François-Marie Arouet, was a well-regarded author of tragedies, epigrams, and poems who could be sarcastic and witty, and was a master of both prose and verse. He often ended up in trouble with the authorities at different times in his life because of his feuds and also because of his principled defense of liberty. He was at one time a personal friend of Frederick

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the Great, actually lived in Potsdam with him for two years, and quarreled and formed a friendship with Czarina Catherine of Russia. He had been imprisoned for nearly a year in the Bastille for a disagreement with the regent and later with a nobleman. His academic study of the reign of Louis XIV was well-regarded, and he became a court historian to Louis XV. Throughout his life Voltaire was a constant opponent of bigotry and intolerance, and his slogan was Ecraséz l’infâme! (Crush the infamous one!). He frequently attacked the Catholic Church, although he retained a love of his Jesuit teachers and asked at the end of his life to be buried in sacred ground and pleaded for forgiveness for his criticisms of the Church. Dying at the ripe old age of eighty-four in 1778, he was the best known man of letters since Erasmus.16 The main center of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century was Paris, and one of the most important events there was the publication by Denis Diderot of his famous Encyclopédie (1751–1772), which summarized scientific, technical, and historical knowledge up to that point. One of his major contributors was the famous Baron Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755) whose The Spirit of Laws argued that governments differed based on climate and circumstances, rather than simply on their historical development. He also was one of the first authors to popularize the importance of separation of powers, and checks and balances in governments; he admired the English constitution, using it as a model which he in fact misunderstood. A third major figure of the period was the important, but neurotic, JeanJacques Rousseau. Rousseau argued that man was born in a state of nature that was benevolent, and that it was civilization that was the source of his woes. He stressed the importance of spontaneity and feeling over convention and custom. His Social Contract sought to explain the process of how separate individual wills must be subsumed into a “general will” for the good of society. His influence spread even more with his works on education which made him a cult figure and popularized his emphasis on respect, compassion, and sensibility. It was Rousseau who became the link between the ideals of the Enlightenment and the later enthusiasm of Romanticism that so changed the attitudes of many European intellectuals.

The Assault on the Churches The Enlightenment, especially in France, was a full-scale assault on religion and on the established churches with their developed theological systems. Those Christian churches were more equipped to deal with the great religious disputes of the past than with the eighteenth-century intellectual elite world that was unfolding. There were at the time few publicly declared atheists, but most Enlightenment figures paid some homage to what they called natural religion. And so their attacks on organized Christianity were often more subtle than was realized. Under that rubric of natural religion, there were certain religious ideas that were

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supposedly innate in every person concerning the existence of God, the mysteries of the universe, and moral duties. The Jesuit Abbè Camier even went so far as to conclude in 1769, “Natural law has binding force independent of the existence of God.”17 Others claimed, however, that Christianity in particular had to go back to its primitive roots, abandon any interest in liturgical ceremonies, and free men from the stranglehold of priests. Scientist Joseph Priestley wrote in 1782 that Christianity had to be stripped of its major dogmas, such as the Trinity, original sin, atonement, and predestination. In addition to the study of Christianity, there was a growing interest in the religious development of non-European peoples as well, which led to a certain cultural relativism.18 Across Europe other more radical associations were arising, the best known being the Freemasons who were originally founded in 1717 in England and whose beliefs spread across the continent and into North America. Despite the condemnations of the society by the papacy in 1738 and 1751, freemasonry grew, even in Catholic Europe, and attracted many intellectuals. Its doctrines were somewhat vague, but freemasonry appealed to followers on the basis of a sense of human brotherhood that extended across national borders, and the need for all people to have a genuine regard for peace. 19 As the Enlightenment sensibility increased, a spirit of religious toleration began to take hold in Europe, affecting even the treatment of the Jews. In bitterly divided France, the Catholic bishops supported expressions of toleration, including fewer restrictions on the Huguenots. Still with all these developments, for most people natural religion and deism were rather thin gruel for their emotional needs. In England a new and fervent Methodism grew out of the established Anglican Church, as it responded to the spiritual hunger of many people. In Germany, pietism was increasing, and in Bavaria, a mystical form of freemasonry called Illuminism began to sweep through that area. As for the Catholic Church, it continued to deal with both internal dissensions and the Catholic secular powers that gave it so many problems. It had confronted Jansenism and its initial appeal to the French and even to some Italian clergy, as well as to many people in the Habsburg Empire. In the last country, the devout Catholic Empress Maria Theresa, however, began a concerted effort, which was aided by her son Joseph, to curtail the powers of the papacy in their own country. Also, hostility toward the Jesuits was intensified in the 1760s and led finally to the suppression of the Society of Jesus by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. As will be seen, the papacy in the 1700s saw its influence considerably reduced, and the Papal States were invaded and plundered, as Clement XII lost papal suzerainty over Parma and Piacenza. Traditional resentments in Italy, such as in Venice, came to the forefront once again, and no one could disguise its anti-papal slogans. Over and over again, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the papacy made serious concessions to the Catholic European princes, but to no avail, especially in the areas of appointments to Church offices. Appeals to

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Rome, publications of papal bulls, and the reassertion of traditional privileges of the Church were all seriously curtailed in one Catholic country after another. 20 In the end, the Enlightenment period showed the increasing weakness of the Catholic Church and the marked irrelevance of the eighteenth century papacy. In France, as has been seen, Louis XIV was more concerned with establishing a centralized regime than helping the Church. He stressed the Gallican traditions, asked the pope to condemn the Jansenists, and insisted on the “droit de regale,” or the royal right to the revenues of vacant sees. Still the intensely spiritual and pastoral character of the Catholic clergy and religious became more prominent in that nation. In England the Puritan revolution was spent by 1660 and a Stuart king returned to power, as did the exiled Anglican establishment. The older forms of worship were restored, with a new Anglican prayer book coming into use. Parliament passed an Act of Uniformity for the suppression of religious differences, but it was aimed mostly at the Puritans. In 1672, King Charles II issued a Declaration of Indulgence that promised Protestants at least some freedom of worship and lessened reprisals against Catholicism. A century later there arose also in England the movement of evangelicalism led by John Wesley and George Whitefield, which stressed their new emphasis on mental prayer and reflection. In Germany, the peace of Westphalia had ended the terrible Thirty Years’ War and eventually in the state of Prussia, King Frederick William I restricted the freedoms of clergy and strengthened the power of the state in the name of peace and unity. Catholics still made missionary efforts in Germany to convert Protestant princes, but the efficacy of such efforts lagged. There also grew up a sort of pietistic strain in German life that reintroduced the spirit of personal devotion. In Russia, the Orthodox Church became increasingly rigid in its manifestations of orthodoxy, especially in its allegiance to a very set liturgy. Not since John of Damascus (c. 750) had articles been added to the dogmas of the Eastern Orthodox faith. Peter the Great, in many ways an admirer of the West, broke with the Old Believers and limited the power of Church leaders. The Orthodox leaders liked to call Moscow the “Third Rome”—named after Rome on the Tiber and the other “Rome” on the Bosporus (Constantinople). They identified their faith with a rather rarified ritual and liturgy, and believed that the least deviation brought the gravest consequences. The Russians were Christians—but the Christianity of the east, not of the west. Its Church was linked to Constantinople—not Rome. Often the poor and long-suffering faithful seemed to adopt a critical dissociation from earthly reality. Later the Russian Orthodox faithful moved almost as a group toward mysticism. While the West wallowed in the age of rationalism, irrational sectarian movements swept over the Russian peasantry. People accepted the rigidities of one’s faith and the sufferings of life in silence. The church ended up docilely embracing the supervision of the state, whether under the czars or later under the Communists.21 After considerable delay, the Protestant impulse was also exported to the New World, once the sole province of Catholic religious orders. And in the

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American colonies the multiplicity of sects led to a pragmatic toleration, which later became a philosophical position and one of the most beneficial legacies of the Enlightenment.

The Unenlightened Church The core values of the Enlightenment then were antithetical to those of the Christian churches—Roman and Protestant—in so many ways. Indeed the new ideology of the European elites had little use for revelation, clergy, tradition, liturgy, religious hierarchy, and at times even God Himself. Some philosophers were more orthodox in their thinking, usually reflecting the residues of their Christian upbringing. Others were agnostics, deists, or even atheists before that last term was respectable. Why did not the church, especially the disciplined Catholic Church, make some overtures to this ideology? After all, that Church had intellectually matched and eventually bested the primitive pagan cults of the Roman empire, the diverse millennial and eschatological religions of the post-Jesus era, the multiple heresies of the first three centuries, and the heady challenge of Plato, Aristotle and their influential followers. The remarkable flexibility of early Christianity led to its eventual triumph, its extensive ability to marry a strict dogma with strange customs and traditions. Schisms, heresies, apostasies often were branches shooting off the orthodox tree. All Christians still spoke the same language, debated in the same vocabulary on issues of long-standing importance or division.22 The Enlightenment was an entirely different worldview, and it captured the imagination of much of the European elite over the coming centuries. The language of the Enlightenment was not that of theology, but of the new sciences. Its hero was Newton. Its martyr was Galileo. The Catholic Church focused its energies on the Counter Reformation with its long, drawn-out, continuous struggles and papally funded campaigns to reestablish the old faith in northern Europe and guarantee the allegiances of subjects. The papacy and many of the religious orders began major efforts to convert the New World, almost as if to make up for their losses to the Protestant Reformation. For a long time, the Catholic Church was alone—working the missionary fields. But the Church had no Aquinas who could confront the Enlightenment, as St. Thomas did with the Aristotelians, and integrate the new faith with new ideas. The Counter Reformation was more aggressive, more narrow, more inflexible than the Church of the Middle Ages. It also did not produce theologians of that high caliber and subtlety, who could be up to the challenge.

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The Unenlightened Popes What of the unenlightened popes? They were generally diplomats and/or career churchmen who were well-versed in the scholastic tradition and often supportive of the classical values of the Renaissance. Some appreciated science, but they were far away from understanding its new methodologies. They used their high position to reinforce the intolerances of the Inquisition and crushed internal heresies, such as Jansenism, fairly effectively. Deep down to a man they did not accept the naive prevailing notions of progress and, above all, they kept the faith. They had been taught to appreciate reason and natural law, but they insisted that only faith would provide men with certainty. In their dealings with monarchs, they tried to promote the Church and protect its interests. They did not celebrate enlightened despots; they sought out steady allies and were often disappointed by Catholic kings, who curtailed papal influence in their nations. The worst insult of the Enlightenment came from the philosophés, who treated the Church as rather irrelevant in the eighteenth century world of ideas. The Catholic Church was a foil, an easy target to ridicule with its Inquisition, its Index of Forbidden Books, its respect for miracles and folk traditions. The Church went from being the great civilizing agent of western civilization to another stage in the progress from primitive to truly enlightened. The Catholic Church never successfully joined the battle with the Enlightenment and the apostles of reason. The Enlightenment became linked with Romanticism, first through Rousseau and then the early idealistic sentiments of the French Revolution. But considering the abuses of the Revolution and of Napoleon, and the grim realities of the genocidal wars of the twentieth century, the enthusiasms of the Enlightenment seem a bit immature and misguided. Thus what made the Church relevant again was the state of the world, and as well as its own resources to challenge and subdue the thinking of the Enlightenment philosophés and their camp followers. The faithful came to call it the moving power of the Holy Spirit. The Enlightenment eventually centered in Paris, and so did the source of many difficulties for the papacy of that era. The end of the wars of religion and the Treaty of Westphalia meant a diminution in the influence of Rome, especially in a geopolitical sense. The papacy lost considerable influence in its ability to be a part of the international scene. It participated less and less in the peace negotiations of those times. In the area of restraining the Turks the papacy was acknowledged as the leader. The papacy was remarkably late, though, in recognizing the importance of the Enlightenment movement, and weak efforts to create a Catholic Enlightenment or Counter Enlightenment had little support, especially in Italy and the Papal States. Only in the missionary areas was the popular Catholic imagination captured and exploited. Papal elections became increasingly contests between France and the empire, and vetoes were frequently made or at least threatened at the conclaves. As

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has been seen, strong-willed candidates were eliminated. With the election of Alexander VII (1655–1667), the diplomat Fabio Chigi, it would have been expected that the Church had acquired an experienced statesman. The French disliked the new pontiff, and conflict centered on the issues of the appointments of bishops in newly acquired French areas that were not covered by the Concordat of 1516, and the pope’s genuine desire to promote peace between Spain and France. Those nations ended up even excluding the pope from discussions of the final peace treaty that he himself had so ardently proposed. The death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661 actually increased tensions with the papacy as the twenty-two-year-old Louis XIV pushed for an even greater expression of Gallicanism in the running of the Catholic Church in his country. As noted, a nasty dispute in Rome involving the French ambassador and papal forces from Corsica led to the occupation of Avignon and to the French considering actions against the Papal States. Alexander accepted a humiliating settlement and erected ignominiously a pyramid to mark the conclusion of that dispute. For four years that structure served as a reminder of the weakness of the papacy. Alexander also ended up giving in on bishop appointments in his dealings with the king. One of the reasons for Alexander’s compliance was that he was especially fearful of a Turkish invasion and felt the need for Louis’s support. To the king’s delight, the pope condemned Jansenism. He also offered spiritual support to Queen Christina of Sweden, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, who through personal study converted to Catholicism.23 After his death, the cardinals chose a diplomat who seemed to be more acceptable to both Spain and France—Giulio Rospigliosi or Clement IX (1667– 1669), a man who had been papal nuncio to Madrid, the cardinal secretary of state, and a respected dramatist. He too dealt with the Jansenist heresy, trying however to reach some peaceful accommodation with them which became known as “the Clementine peace.” And as pope, he continued the papacy’s commitment to stop the Turks. His successor, Clement X, who emerged out of a long and difficult four month conclave, was the elderly Emilio Cardinal Altieri (1670–1676). His pontificate was heavily preoccupied with halting the Turks, which his ally King Jan Sobieski of Poland accomplished several times. The pope supported, misguidedly it turns out, the attempt of Louis XIV to take over Holland. Clement hoped that the king would reestablish the Catholic religion there, but that was not Louis’s true intent. The French monarch retained a virtual veto over the election of the next pope as Louis XIV finally concurred in the choice of Benedetto Odescalchi, who took the name of Innocent XI (1676–1689). He was a man known for his personal piety and charity. As noted, before he would accept the papacy, he insisted that all cardinals sign the fourteen articles of reform then being discussed, which were consonant with the decrees of the Council of Trent. At times he was a rigid, pedantic leader and often naive in his relationships with people on the international scene. He was involved in the efforts against the

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Turks. And he too ended up with problems dealing with the French king. The pope challenged the traditional right of the monarch to make appointments in certain vacant dioceses and to receive the revenues generated from such bishoprics. The pope counseled the king that for the sake of his very soul he should not follow the bad advice of his court, but interestingly the pope also refused to give blanket approval to Louis’s attacks on the Huguenots. Innocent tried to abridge the French demands for immunities in the Holy See region from police supervision and custom duties, once again not endearing himself to the monarch. Also there was a dispute over the appointment of a coadjutor-archbishop of Cologne, where the pope rejected Louis’s nominee. The pope established a record as a firm opponent of Gallicanism and thus was seen by some as actually a Jansenist in his sympathies.24 If it is possible for a pope to be too strict, then Innocent XI fit that bill. But his successor, the Venetian Pietro Ottoboni, who took the name Alexander VIII (1689–1691), was an energetic eighty-year-old clergyman with a greater sense of personal ease. He moved to improve relations with France, decrease Vatican monies going to Leopold I to fight the Turkish wars, and adopt a more moderate position in dealing with Germany. But he was an old man, and soon the cardinals had to meet again. With a sense of repetition, the conclave of 1691 chose Antonio Pignatelli, a seventy-five-year-old cardinal from southern Italy, who had been papal nuncio in Poland and Vienna. In gratitude to his predecessor who had made him a cardinal, he chose the name Innocent XII (1691–1700). He led a fairly simple life, opposed nepotism vigorously, and ran a thrifty court. He reached some sort of a compromise with Louis XIV on the appointment of new bishops, and he also pushed for a resolution of disputes among the Catholic powers. The Peace of Rijswijk, which was signed during his reign in 1697, protected Catholic interests by restoring conditions that had existed before the War of the Grand Alliance and returning the Palatinate to the Holy Roman Empire. Thus the close of the seventeenth century saw a collection of popes who were limited men, but not corrupt or particularly venal—men preoccupied with balancing power in Europe on an international stage, in which each had a small role to play except regarding the continuing battle against the Turks. Still it was as if they had never heard of the Enlightenment or saw its challenges.

Notes 1. Hanns Gross, Rome in the Age of Enlightenment: The Post Tridentine Syndrome and the Ancien Regime (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 2. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York: Knopf, 1966), vols. 1, 3. 3. Ulrich Im Hof, The Enlightenment (Oxford: Blackwell Books, 1977);

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Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951). 4. Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (New York: Yale University Press, 1968). 5. Hof, The Enlightenment, 8; Raymond D. Rockwood, ed., Carl Becker’s Heavenly City Revisited (New York: Archon Books, 1968); Adam Potkay, The Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000); Henry Vyverberg, Human Nature, Cultural Diversity and the French Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 6. Frank E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959). Alfred Cobban, In Search of Humanity: The Role of the Enlightenment in Modern History (New York: George Braziller, 1960), 41–45. 7. Henry Guerlac, “When the Statue Stood: Divergent Loyalties to Newton in the Eighteenth Century,” in Earl R. Wasserman, ed. Aspects of the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 312–34. 8. Norman Hampson, A Cultural History of the Enlightenment (New York: Pantheon Books, 1968), 75–77. 9. Franco Venturi, Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Henry E. Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment; His Philosophy of Religion and Its Relation to Eighteenth-Century Thought (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966). 10. Hampson, A Cultural History, 77–87. 11. Hampson, A Cultural History, 120. 12. Leonard Krieger, Kings and Philosophers, 1678–1789 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970); John C. Gagliardo, Enlightened Despotism (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967). 13. Leslie G. Crocker, Nature and Culture: Ethical Thought in the French Enlightenment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1963). 14. Harry C. Payne, The Philosophes and the People (New York: Yale University Press, 1976). 15. Peter Gay, The Party of Humanity; Essays in the French Enlightenment (New York: Knopf, 1964), pt. 1. 16. M. S. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 1713–1783 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1961), 37. 17. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 317–18. 18. Hof, Enlightenment, 258. 19. Gerald R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648–1789 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdman Publishing Co., 1960). 20. James H. Billington, The Icon and Axe: An Interpretative History of Russian Culture (New York: Knopf, 1966); Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980); Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, 2d ed. (New York: Penguin, 1995), 221–22. 21. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971).

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22. Wolfgang Müller, The Church in the Age of Absolutism and Enlightenment (New York: Crossroad, 1981), chap. 7, which is vol. 6 of Hubert Jedin and John Dolan, eds., History of the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1980– 1982). 23. Müller, The Church, chap. 8. 24. Müller, The Church, chap. 9.

Chapter 15

The Church Confronts the Leviathan Obviously the Catholic Church received little support from the new intellectual elites who populated the European Enlightenment. One would have thought that a Church increasingly absolutist and autocratic would at least find allies in the newly developing nation-states, but in fact the political power of the Church was becoming weaker, while that of the states in western Europe was increasing in terms of centralization and overall bureaucratic direction.

The Enlightened Despots The situation turned even more complicated when some of the major monarchies became so-called “enlightened despots.” The original models were Louis XIV in France and Peter the Great in Russia. In the former, it has been seen how that long-reigning king extended his sway over the whole nation, humbling other sources of power, waging war, and suing for peace, often at his own initiative. Across the continent Peter assumed the throne and began a radical campaign to modernize Mother Russia, ignoring the orthodox clergy, and insisting on forcing his nation to emulate the more developed European states with their new commercial economies. Czar Peter praised Galileo and extended some gestures of toleration to Catholics, including allowing them to build a few churches in his nation. He also curtailed the Orthodox clergy in Russia, although in Poland he supported them occasionally for political purposes. At times he advocated a vague amalgamation of all Christian churches with German Protestants and French Catholics. Peter believed that the Orthodox church should be totally subordinate to the state—that is, to him—and he recruited state bureaucrats to supervise monasteries, severely restricted the admission of candidates to those monasteries, confiscated some of their estates, melted down church bells for cannons, and substituted synods under state control for the independent patriarchate. 1 Overall, the new enlightened monarchs were supportive of building their nations’ public works, especially roads, and of reform of the legal structures. Overall they promoted increased social integration and the curtailment of the powers of nobles and clergy alike. They rarely spoke in the language of the divine right of kings, but emphasized instead their pragmatic usefulness to the 223

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nation, and its economic and social development. Frederick the Great in Prussia, for example, called himself unpretentiously “the first servant of the state.” 2 Enlightened despots like Peter the Great or Frederick disliked the heavy hand of custom and tradition, and battled the residue of rights and privileges, often inherited from the Middle Ages, that surrounded and protected the Church, nobility, towns, guilds, and representative institutions. They prized action and results, not deliberations and deadlock. The very nature of the European states changed as well. They became impersonal, powerful, bureaucratic organizations—leviathans to use Thomas Hobbes’s famous expression. Only a powerful state, he argued, could protect man from the natural state of life—which was nasty, short, and brutish. As happened in the twentieth century, one of the great impetuses for centralization was the dynamic of war-making. And in the eighteenth century, the outbreak of conflicts dating from 1740 to 1748 and from 1756 to 1763 led to a demand for more taxes, less local autonomy, and a more augmented nation-state system. Ironically as the years passed, a less successful example of enlightened despotism was France itself, where Louis XV succeeded his grandfather, the Sun King, and so often seemed rather lackadaisical in his control over that nation. He is supposed to have predicted once “après moi le deluge,” that is, “after me the flood.” The basic problem he faced initially was that the new and expensive state, which he inherited, lacked a broad-based system of revenue collection. Its expenditures rested on the selling of offices, a general land tax, and gifts of voluntary taxes from the Catholic Church, which owned 10 to 15 percent of the land in that nation. Faced with the pressing demands of war, Louis tried to institute new taxes meant to be levied on everyone, and which consequently caused increasing animosity throughout his kingdom. After the Seven Years’ War, Louis tried to increase taxes once again, and he moved to destroy the power and privileges of the parlements (local assemblies) which were controlled by the aristocracy. In 1774, his grandson Louis XVI succeeded him and revived the parlements, intending to pacify them by his concessions. Instead of earning their gratitude, he created within the nation a countervailing power that would lead to the French Revolution.3 In the Habsburg Empire, the sovereign Maria Theresa, a pious Roman Catholic, also started the process of extensive centralization. She and her able ministers sought to break the power of the regional diets and replace them with a trained bureaucracy. Her counselors also created a version of a free trade zone that embraced Bohemia, Moravia, and the Austrian duchies. Despite those reforms, the major social fact of her reign was the continuing prevalence of serfdom in the empire. Maria Theresa attacked landed servitude for both humanitarian reasons and also to cripple the powers of the aristocracy that opposed her. Her son would follow up with a major crusade against serfdom—aimed at totally ending such bondage.

Royal Reforms

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For forty years Maria Theresa reigned over a loose empire, often compromising and tempering her reforming ways to what the elites would tolerate. But her son, Joseph II, was more adventuresome and saw himself as the epitome of the Enlightenment spirit, and he went after the old order, root and branch. He ended serfdom totally, promoted equity in taxes, reformed the penal code, and supported freedom of the press and religion. Remarkably for that time, he extended his protection to the Jews and even granted some of them titles of nobility. The emperor moved to control the appointment of bishops and suppressed many monasteries, seeing them as draining off resources, and took their wealth and built secular hospitals with the proceeds.4 In his dealings with the Catholic Church, Joseph emulated the French Gallican movement and insisted on national independence for his nation’s Catholic prelates against the influence of Rome. That movement was called Febronianism, and Joseph artfully embraced it. Febronianism was a philosophy in which a clear distinction was made between the spiritual power of the pope and the prerogatives of the Roman papal court. A professor named Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, who was involved in ecclesiastical affairs, wrote a volume in 1763 on the powers of the Roman pontiff. That book did not reveal the publisher or the place of printing on its title page, and the author was listed as “Justinus Febronius.” The volume essentially advocated a sort of Gallicanism transplanted in German soil. It supported the local episcopate and asserted the rights of the state against the international papacy. The debate as to whether the bishops received their authority directly from God or through the pope had been a long-standing dispute in the Catholic Church and was sidestepped by the Council of Trent. This volume argued that the bishops had a right to selfgovernment as the true heirs of the apostles. The book ended up on the Index of Forbidden Books, but Rome sought to keep the whole controversy quiet by not publicizing the dispute. That general Febronianist orientation fit in nicely with the AustroHungarian emperor’s inclinations, and his reforms of the Church became known as Josephinism. As noted, he insisted on controlling the publication of all papal bulls and decrees in his land, supported the powers of the bishops, and in 1781 enacted an edict of toleration. He followed those steps with the confiscation of many monasteries and convents that he claimed served no useful purpose—that is, were not involved in education, nursing, or fostering study. By 1786, 783 out of the 2163 institutions for monks and nuns were dissolved. To deal with these problems, Pope Pius VI later went to Vienna to intervene with the emperor but, while he was well-received, Joseph’s reforms continued. However, the emperor became fearful of the rise of Prussian power and decided that he did not want to antagonize the Holy See in what could be a difficult political situation, and in which he might need its support.5 Joseph also continued to downgrade regional diets and supported a common language, German, for the whole empire. The emperor was aided in his policies by an effective and professional bureaucracy, a pliant clergy, and a secret police

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with spies and informants. Then at the age of forty-nine, he died amid his plans for revolutionary reforms, leaving brewing animosities among various ethnic and national groups. He was succeeded by his brother Leopold, a very able grand duke of Tuscany, who publicly supported Joseph’s policies, but who quieted down the outrages as best he could. He also avoided at first getting involved in France’s troubles, including the problems of his sister, Queen Marie Antoinette. While the French and Austro-Hungarian monarchs were Catholic, the enlightened despotism in Germany and especially Russia was rather different in tone. Frederick the Great governed Prussia for forty-six years. He worked on restoring agriculture and industry, reforming the army, and occupying Silesia and a part of Poland. He was a bright, intellectual, and literary figure who was friendly with Voltaire. Over the years, Frederick promoted a strong, professional civil service and undertook a major overhaul of the legal system. He governed a rather docile Lutheran empire, although the monarch himself supported religious freedom. He promoted broad-based elementary education and welcomed immigration into his realm. Still his state was highly stratified with a large serf class that Frederick left in bondage, except on the lands that he personally controlled. He had immense confidence in himself and characterized his army as an institution where “no [one] reasons, everyone executes.” He once whimsically remarked that if Newton “had to consult with Descartes, he never would have discovered the law of universal gravitation.” He ruled for a nearly a half century and chose no successor. His much praised army was crushed under Napoleon’s quick onslaughts—a general commentary on the fragility of that one enlightened despot’s system.6 To the east was the sleeping giant of Byzantine Russia which was little influenced by Western thought and culture at that time. It was Czar Peter the Great who finally opened that empire up to new ideas and new industries. Eventually the Russian upper classes even came to adopt the mannerisms of one of the European courts—the French—and that language became the real tongue of the Russian aristocracy. Peter died in 1725, leaving no successors since he had killed his only son, Alexis. After a series of desultory leaders, his daughter Elizabeth took over, seeking to restore his policies. She was followed by a nephew, who was probably assassinated by a group supporting his young wife, a German noblewoman called Catherine. A lady of great ambition with an endless history of lovers, she ruled from 1762 to 1796 and became known as Catherine the Great—another enlightened despot, who corresponded regularly with Voltaire and Diderot. During her reign, Catherine pushed for legal reform, restrictions on torture, the establishment of religious toleration, and a restructuring of the bureaucracy. Serfdom continued, and in 1773 an uprising started in the Urals, which focused in part on opposing the system. That rebellion swept across Russia, causing great fear among the ruling classes. Meanwhile Catherine pushed for an expansionist foreign policy against Poland and the Ottoman Empire, and advocated a

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treaty with Joseph II of Austria-Hungary. Her image remained one of enlightenment, and she instructed her grandson, Czar Alexander I, who finally ended serfdom. Catherine rather remarkably respected the Jesuits and refused to expel them from her vast land after Pope Clement XIV suppressed that religious society. Frederick the Great, citing his commitments not to disturb past Roman Catholic religious practices in Poland, also sheltered the Jesuits from the Catholic Church’s own repressions. He gleefully compared the actions of a heretic prince to the so-called loyal Catholic monarchs of his time. Thus the strange complexities of enlightened despotism as it moved east.7 Overall the new monarchs were people dedicated to the service of powerful states, and in the process they pushed for internal reforms, new definitions of justice, an end to traditional privileges often rooted in feudalism, and the truncation of the powers of the nobility. But reaction set in as these brilliant reigns passed on, and the nobility and then the Church came back into power. The progressive monarchies of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries became period pieces lost in the fires of revolution and the later dynamics of conservative restoration. In the world of the Enlightenment and the new aggressive monarchs and despots, there was little sympathy for the needs of the Church. The Roman Catholic Church was seen as simply an ally of the reactionary order, and when a spirit of reform and then revolution swept across Europe once again, the ecclesiastical class was put on the defensive. Papal diplomacy emphasized a balance of power among Catholic powers and a vague profession of Christian solidarity against the Turks and against the heretical Protestants. But that was not enough to protect the Church and its interests.

The War against the Jesuits One attempt to bridge the gap between the new ruling elites and the Church had been the powerful Jesuit society, which ironically often trained the very figures of the Enlightenment that sought to cripple the Catholic Church. As that religious society became more visible and even wealthier, it became a target for Catholic monarchs and their ministers who resented the influence of some of the Church’s best teachers and apostles. The attacks on the Jesuits were part of a more far-reaching campaign to create the leviathans, and to curtail other sources of power beyond that of the throne. In France under Louis XIV, the king with all his pretensions still remained a Catholic educated by the Jesuits. He insisted that all confessors in his court be from that society, and often French sees were filled by Jesuit-nominated people. The Jesuits in turn became the major contenders against the Jansenist heresy, which the Crown also condemned for its own purposes. Some Jesuits even went so far as to support the king’s vigorous reassertion of Gallicanism, despite the society’s special loyalties to the papacy. Usually, though, the society supported

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the ultramontanism of the papal court. Even Voltaire courted the powerful Jesuits, especially when he wanted to be admitted to the prestigious French Academy. On one occasion he reaffirmed his love of the Jesuits, and rather remarkably he even pledged his submission to the Church: “If at any time, a single page has been printed in my name which could offend even one minister of the Church, I am willing to tear it in pieces in his presence. I wish to live peaceably, and to die in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, without having one thought that would offend anyone whatever.”8 Hypocrisy should be made of sterner stuff. Faced with these sorts of tributes to their power, the Jesuits moved confidently to crush finally the Jansenists. They even pushed Church authorities for a statement that priests in Paris had to refuse the sacraments to the dying, if they could not prove that they had submitted to the papal bull, Unigenitus, which condemned the heresy. Enormous controversy resulted from that overreaching step, and it led to a strong anti-Church and anti-papal feeling throughout large segments of French opinion. One contemporary, René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy d’Argenson, concluded, “You cannot blame the English philosophy, which in Paris has been accepted only by some hundred philosophers, for the harm which has been done to religion in France. It is due to hatred of the priests . . . and all this arises from the Bull Unigenitus and the disgrace of Parliament.”9 The stark flash point against the Jesuits came not in France but surprisingly in Portugal. At first, the society was thoroughly involved in the business of the court of the royal family, and Portuguese ministers of state were often chosen based on the recommendations of Jesuit advisors. One of these individuals was the Marquis of Pombal. The Jesuits, for a variety of reasons later opposed his reform plans, which brought forth considerable hostility since the society held sway over large tracts of Latin American land, especially in Paraguay. Pombal charged that the Jesuits had established a powerful empire there, aimed at dominating the world and resting on Indian slave labor. Pope Benedict XIV (Prospero Lambertini), fearing some of those criticisms in Portugal to be true, decided to investigate the actions of the society that had caused so much controversy. But he died before that review could be completed. On September 3, 1758, an attempted assassination of King Joseph in Portugal led to the accusations (probably baseless) by Pombal of Jesuit involvement in the treachery. Ten Jesuits were arrested and found guilty. The Portugal bishops sided with the government and condemned the Jesuits, and a year later the government ordered the Jesuits out of the country. In France the Jesuits were involved in a highly publicized lawsuit over a trading post on the island of Martinique. The grand chambre ordered the Jesuits to pay both the settlement and interest costs, much to the delight of the public. The society unwisely appealed the verdict. During the lawsuit the parlement decided to examine the statutes of the group, and consequently offensive Jesuit writings were ordered burned. Rome tried to support the Jesuits, but popular sentiment in France continued to grow against it. Observing the scene, Voltaire concluded that it was really the papal bull censuring the Jansenists that was the

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basis for many of the problems that the Jesuits faced.10 In 1764, the local parlement in Paris decided that the Jesuits had to swear that they would not obey their society’s constitutions, and that their members in France would break off any connections with their leaders. Pressured by public opinion, Louis XV in 1764 issued a decree abolishing the society in France. The pope, Clement XIII (Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico), supported the Jesuits at first, but criticism broke out even in Italy when he formally promulgated a new constitution for them. In Spain in January 1762, King Carlos II cut back the privileges of the religious society—a portent of things to come. The pope supported the society, but his issuing of that new constitution led to a severe reaction, not just against the Jesuits but against the papacy as well. In April 1767, in response to Jesuit criticisms of the king’s ministers, the society was abolished in that most Catholic of countries—Spain. The papal court was completely surprised by the turn of events. Now there was a concerted movement among Catholic monarchs to force the pope to totally abolish the society. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily), the Jesuits were herded to the borders of the Papal States and expelled. When Clement XIII died, the Catholic princes sought some guarantee at the conclave that a new pope would extinguish the Jesuits. The final choice, Clement XIV (Giovanni Ganganelli), had held differing views of the society at different times, but he procrastinated before he responded to the demands, not willing to seem pressured by the European monarchs. Privately he explained his delay by claiming he feared that he would be poisoned by the Jesuits in retaliation. On July 21, 1773, the pope in his bull, Dominus ac Redemptor, suppressed the Society of Jesus. Such a step at dissolution was not unheard of. In the past, other popes had dissolved various religious orders, including the Reformed Conventual Brethren, and the orders of St. Andrew and St. Barnabas, among others. As noted, Frederick II and Catherine the Great, both non-Catholic monarchs, refused to allow the pope’s bull of suppression to be promulgated in their realms. Frederick cited the treaty of September 18, 1773, with its guarantee to leave the Roman Catholic Church in a status quo situation in Polish territory as his reason. And Catherine, recognizing the society’s usefulness in achieving her political objectives, simply ignored the pope’s admonitions. Thus the Jesuits did better among two nonCatholic enlightened despots, then they did with the pontiffs they had served so faithfully. Clement was supposed to have immediately regretted his decision and to have cried out that he would end up in hell because of it. The practical consequence was that across Europe even Catholic monarchs were emboldened to attack the Catholic Church and its most important religious group, which had been in many ways the vanguard of the Counter Reformation. To many Clement’s capitulation just showed the general weakness of the Catholic Church in the Western world. To others it was a sign of his acceptance of the values of the Enlightenment. The philosopher Denis Diderot remarked, “I do not know what is to become of the poor Church of Jesus Christ or of the prophecy that the gates

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of hell shall not prevail against it.” One bishop is supposed to have added, “Religion cannot have fifty years to live.”11

The Papacy in Decline This period is frequently seen as a time of the papacy in decline. Who were those popes and where had they come from? The first major pope of the eighteenth century was Giovanni Francesco Albani (1700-1721), a powerful cardinal, who was eventually elected pope by a unanimous vote. He actually waited several days after the election before accepting, and consulted with several theologians during his deliberations. He took the name Clement XI after the saint of the day he was elected (November 23). He had been ordained a priest late in life, in September 1700. At the age of fifty-one, he was one of the youngest modern prelates to be so chosen. The new pope had been a governor in various regions of the Papal States, had drafted Innocent XII’s bull outlawing papal nepotism, and had a distinguished career in the Curia. Still he apparently had reservations about his own qualifications to assume the office, and for over twenty years he would try to provide leadership in times that did not favor the papacy or his objectives. In the beginning of his reign, he was forced to deal with the deteriorating diplomatic situation in Europe. His predecessor, Innocent XII, had already thrown the Holy See’s support to the French on the issue of the Spanish succession. The king of Spain (Charles II) was without issue and had named an heir who died before he did. That heir was the Bavarian electoral prince, Joseph Ferdinand, the grandson of Charles II’s sister, who was also the wife of Emperor Leopold I of Austria. The Spanish king wanted a successor from the Austrian dynasty, but the Spanish Council of State insisted on someone from the French royal family instead. Innocent supported the latter choice, and then soon he and the Spanish king died. Most of Europe and the Holy See ended up supporting Philip V from the French dynasty as king of Spain, but the emperor supported the elector of Brandenburg, and he was able to get the concurrence of England and Holland for his arbitrary decision. Both countries were fearful of French ambitions in general, which explains their unlikely choice. The new pope continued to support the French claimant and also endeavored to keep Italy out of any war that might result because of the succession issue, but that was not to be. The resulting conflict spilled over into the Papal States. The French argued that the emperor’s alliance with Protestant powers threatened the Roman church. When Leopold died and his son Joseph I succeeded him, the situation worsened. The emperor’s troops routed the French armies out of northern Italy, and imperial forces occupied some of the legations. In May 1707 the pope was forced to allow the imperial armies to pass on toward Naples, and Parma and Piacenza were taxed by imperial agents. The pope responded

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helplessly with a bull of excommunication, but it had no effect. The Austrian authorities ended up freezing all Church revenues in 1718 in Lombardy and in Naples, and invaded Comacchio, a salt-producing area near Ravenna. The pope sought to raise up an army with French help, but the imperial forces swept to impressive victories over their enemies. In January 1709, Clement was forced to accept Austrian terms, which were unfavorable to the papacy and included the disarmament of papal troops, the recognition of Charles III as king of Spain, the acceptance of the emperor having precedence over the king of France, and a peaceful solution of territorial issues involving Parma, Piacenza, and Comacchio. The result, of course, was a hostile reaction from Philip V, the French designee to the Spanish throne. The king closed the papal nunciate in Madrid, and the pope further alienated the monarch by refusing to accept his nominees for the positions of bishop and did not permit any canonical installations. The emperor died in April 1711, a few days after the French dauphin passed away. The controversy over the Spanish succession was now cast in a very different light. Because the emperor left only daughters, Charles was considered the likely choice to succeed him on the powerful Austro-Hungarian throne. Philip’s position in Spain thus was strengthened since the English would definitely oppose any union of Spain and Austria under one monarch again. At the peace conference held in Utrecht in January 1712, the Holy See tried to protect its interests, but was not successful. France recognized the Protestant succession line in England and ended its advocacy of the Stuart pretender, James III, who had been strongly supported by the popes. Sicily was given to the Duke of Savoy without any consultation with the pope. Later the European powers agreed to an acceptance of the terms of the Peace of Westphalia, the recognition of the Protestant states in Hanover and of the Prussian royal title, and also a ceding of some Catholic territories to Protestant princes. All of those decisions were taken against the interests of the Holy See, despite the protests of the pope and his agents. Elsewhere the Turks renewed their assaults on western Europe, and in the summer of 1715 their fleet was successful against the forces of Venice. Clement, like his predecessors, sought to rally the Christian kings, and their forces were successful at Peterwardein and at Corfu. The Spanish fleet, which was largely financed by the pope, joined in the battle. But soon the Spanish were attacking the papal territories and moving to the island of Sardinia, which in turn encouraged an alliance of France, England, Holland, and the emperor against Spain. The results were that the rights of the Holy See were ignored as the European monarchs were upset at Spanish treachery and the foolishness of the Holy See in accepting Spanish guarantees at face value. Faced with those reverses, the pontificate of Clement XI is usually seen as a time of timidity and indecisiveness, but actually the pope had few assets that could contribute to any great success. The papacy lacked dependable Catholic allies, had modest armed forces, could not defend its own feudal and historically aligned territories, and faced increasingly independent and belligerent monarchs.

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In 1710, Clement contracted a serious illness that took away much of his youthful vigor. In terms of internal matters in the Church, Clement responded to King Louis XIV’s fears of Jansenism by condemning in 1705 the general philosophy of that group as had his predecessor, Innocent X. His bull Unigenitus Dei Filius in 1713 enumerated 101 alleged Jansenist propositions that were in theological error. The Jansenists replied by calling for a general Council to defend their harsh views of Augustinian Catholicism, but the pope refused and finally excommunicated them in 1718. Clement also supported the missionary advances of the Church into northern Germany, India, China, and the Philippines. But he unfortunately overruled Alexander VII’s approval of Chinese rites in 1656, and Clement sided with the Dominicans against the Jesuits on the issue. In 1704 and then in 1715, Clement ended the use of such Chinese rites and dealt a major blow to missionary efforts in that populous land. Not until 1939 under Pius XII would that order be revoked, and by then it was too late for effective missionary efforts. Thus at the end of a long pontificate lasting twenty-one years, Clement XI was able to point to few successes during his reign. He had sought to protect papal interests abroad and to influence the determinations being made by European monarchs; but unlike many of his predecessors, he lacked the type of political support and military assets that had been so important to the Holy See’s successes in the past. He proved that, even with youthful vigor and some diplomatic experience, it is not possible to make things happen without some sort of leverage in either the short or the long run. Thus the pontificate of Clement XI is seen as further evidence of the decline of the once powerful papal state. 12 Clement’s long reign was followed by a short one that seemed at times to recapitulate what had gone before. The next pope, Innocent XIII, was born Michelangelo dei Conti. He came from one of the most famous families in Rome, and one of his forebears was the powerful medieval pope, Innocent III (1198– 1216). Conti had served in three governorships in the Papal States and had been nuncio to Switzerland and then to Portugal. In the papal conclave of 1721, the emperor ordered his delegate, Michael Friedrich Cardinal von Althan, to veto the election of favored candidate, Fabrizio Cardinal Paolucci, the current secretary of state. Conti was then unanimously elected and chose his papal name in honor of his distinguished relative. Innocent XIII reaffirmed Clement’s condemnation of the Jansenists, and even asked the French king to punish the bishops of his nation who had asked the pope to consider withdrawing Clement’s bull. From his experiences in Portugal the new pope disliked the Jesuit order, and considered suppressing them because of their alleged disobedience in not stopping immediately the use of Chinese rites in that land. He prohibited the society from accepting novices until they could prove that they were indeed complying. The pope attempted to reach some accommodation with Emperor Charles VI by investing him with the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, which Clement had refused. The pope also sought the approval of the French regent by appointing

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his minister as a cardinal. Still Charles insisted on claiming authority over the Church in Sicily and gave Spanish prince Don Carlos the papal fiefs of Parma and Piacenza. Innocent ruled from 1721 to 1724 and faced many of the same difficulties that Clement had, thus showing that vigor and experience made little difference in the person of a pope. There were certain harsh political realities that anyone who was pope had to endure.13 The next conclave began on March 20, 1724 and led to the election of a very reluctant candidate, the Dominican friar (Pietro Francesco) Cardinal Vincenzo Maria Orsini. He was the eldest son of the duke of Gravina and was appointed a cardinal at the age of twenty-three. He had been bishop of Manfredonia, Cesena, and then Benevento, where his pastoral efforts and ascetic lifestyle won acclaim. Orsini had first refused to accept the papacy until ordered by the Dominican master of the Order to obey the will of God with which he humbly complied. He took the name Benedict in honor of the Dominican Benedict XI and named himself Benedict XIII (1724–1730), after he was advised that an anti-pope had taken that number previously. He refused to move into the ornate rooms of the Vatican and mainly focused again on pastoral matters. For some reason, Benedict retained the archdiocese of Benevento as his own after his election as bishop of Rome—an unfortunate reminder of the pluralism of offices condemned by the Council of Trent. The pope was scrupulous in his duties of consecrating churches, visiting the sick, and administrating the sacraments. He banned the lottery in the Papal States and presided over a provincial synod in the Lateran in 1725, where he reinstated the bull against Jansenism. Since he was a Dominican, there was some hope that he would restrain the crusade against the Society of Jesus by being more permissive toward the French dissidents, but he did not do so. The pope’s greatest problem came from his decision to bring in Niccolò Coscia as his chancellor and secretary in Benevento. Benedict made Coscia a cardinal in 1725, and Coscia opened up the Vatican to friends and cronies from Benevento, sold vacant positions, and let the papacy be accused again of charges of corruption and mismanagement. Foreign princes paid him handsomely for his services and influence with the too-trusting naive pope. Benedict even stirred resentments by his extension of the Feast of Saint Gregory VII to the calendar of the whole church. That designation resurrected memories of that powerful pope’s great battle against Emperor Henry IV, and in France, Naples, Belgium, and Vienna strong opposition to such a designation emerged. Benedict XIII was woefully deficient in the political skills so necessary to be an effective leader of a multinational association. He was also a poor judge of character and people, and surrounded himself with incompetent and even corrupt associates. On the difficult issue of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction claimed by the rulers of Spain, he made a decision favorable to the imperial government, undermining Pope Clement XI’s previous policies. On the issue of the bishoprics in Sardinia, he ended up supporting the privileges of the House of Savoy. In

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return, officials of the Holy See who supported that monarch’s policies were well rewarded. The king shrewdly appointed Dominicans to various sees in order to guarantee further Benedict’s continuing support and gratitude. This policy of flaccid accommodation was proposed by canonist Prospero Lambertini, who was appointed cardinal and later elected pope in his own right. The pope could be pastoral at times, but that was simply not enough in that era. For the wolf was at the door, and the shepherd was helpless by reason of his own innocence. 14 The string of ineffectual popes continued with the ascension of the Florentine Lorenzo Corsini (1730–1740), Clement XII, at the age of seventy-eight. He was blind after the second year of his pontificate and came to rely heavily on his cardinal nephew Neri Corsini. The elder Corsini was supported initially by the French. He had established himself as a major cultural figure in the Roman Curia over the years. To the delight of much of Rome, the powerful Cardinal Coscia quickly left the Holy See almost immediately after his patron’s death and before a new pope was chosen. The new pope then ordered Coscia and his followers arrested and tried, and Coscia was eventually sentenced to ten years imprisonment at the Castel Sant’Angelo. The new pope also ordered that the concordat with Piedmont be renegotiated, and he fended off pressure from the major Catholic powers by naming only Italian cardinals in his first consistory. Later in his term, however, the aging pope became more conciliatory toward the great powers that had so bedeviled him and his predecessors. In 1738 he condemned the Freemasons. whose influence had spread throughout all of Europe, including into Italy. But he found the Catholic powers as uncooperative and unreliable as had his predecessors. The Emperor Charles VI gained control of those much-disputed papal fiefs of Parma and Piacenza, and the Spanish armies overran the Papal States. In 1736 Naples and Spain severed relations with the Holy See, while the pope was left to acknowledge Don Carlos of Spain as the king of the Two Sicilies. In Catholic Poland the pope entangled himself in another succession crisis. Endless jockeying took place, and the tense relationships among Spain, France, the empire, and the Piedmont rulers, all involved possession of different parts of Italy. The pope was consulted little about these claims and ended up making major concessions to Spain. Thus his decade-long papacy showed again the weakness of papal diplomacy in the eighteenth century. Ironically the major contribution that Clement made was the construction of the beautiful Trevi Fountain and an enhanced Vatican Library. He was in many ways a true son of Florence who helped to beautify Rome, but did not protect the Church itself well.15 His successor, Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini (1740–1758), the archbishop of Bologna, was an able churchman who was an expert on the canonization process. His major work in that area remained for a long time a classic, with its sensitive and demanding criteria for looking at the veracity of miracles and the process of sainthood. He was considered even by critics of the Church to be an enlightened and modern cleric, who was praised by Voltaire, who, as noted previously, dedicated one of his dramas on the prophet Mohammed to the pontiff.

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Taking the name Benedict XIV, the new pope was considered an erudite, witty, and gentle person, but he was often too easily given to accommodation and was a poor judge of character at times. At the conclave that elected him, he is supposed to have remarked in passing, “Do you wish to have a saint? Take Gotti. A politician? Take Aldobrandini; but if you wish a good man, take me!” One might argue that he was simply naive, or that he realized the papacy just did not have the resources and strength necessary to play the diplomatic and territorial games much any more. He reached agreements with Naples and Piedmont to settle outstanding problems, often on their terms. And he agreed to a concordat with Spain in 1753 that made huge concessions on the part of the Holy See. He gave up numerous papal offices in that nation and was left with only fifty-two benefices to fill as compared to the nearly twelve thousand that the king had acquired. Even with all of his accommodations, he still ran into difficulties in choosing whom to support as a successor for Charles VI in 1740. The pope tried to maintain some neutrality, but France formed an alliance with Prussia against Austria. The Spanish and Austrian troops marched once again through the Papal States, leading to battles even near Rome. One result was the loss of revenues in the Papal States for a period of time. In 1740, Benedict also issued what has been termed the first encyclical, Ubi primum—the character of bishops—and he tried to establish fairer procedures for authors being considered for condemnation on the Index of Forbidden Books. In the past he had not expressed much of an interest in the Jansenist heresy, seeing it as a phantom of the Jesuits. In dealing with non-Catholic powers, he also sought to make concessions in order to protect Catholic minorities in their own countries. The major historian of the papacy, Ludwig von Pastor, concluded that he yielded as far as possible on matters which did not affect dogma.16 But with all his skill and learning, Benedict reminds one of the basic parameters of leadership of the time—the papacy had lost much of its leverage and power because of the weakness of its armies, the fickleness of its Catholic allies, and the illusions of its diplomacy. Benedict XIV disliked the Jesuits, but it fell to his successors to take the final steps toward dissolution of that once proud order. The attack on the Jesuits was partially due to their material ventures and their influence in royal courts. But most of the original impetus came from opponents of the papacy and the attempts of the society to mobilize for the Counter Reformation, their missionary efforts in the New World, and repeated opposition of European intellectuals during the Enlightenment. A weakened papacy would soon sacrifice the loyal Jesuits to the forces of Catholic absolutism. Those monarchs could not tolerate any sources of strength but their own. The Jesuits sought to reach some accommodation with the French bishops and the French Crown but to no avail. On December 1, 1764, the Society of Jesus was officially abolished in France. The Spanish regime followed suit in 1767. The society was soon also expelled from parts of Naples, Parma, Piacenza, and Malta. Catholic monarchs pushed for a total abolition of the society by the pope, but Clement XIII refused to concur.

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But Clement XIV (1769-1774) proved more malleable. He was a Franciscan and had been a college rector in Rome. Clement was seen by some as a friend of the Jesuits and an admirer of the work of Saint Ignatius Loyola, but he proved to be their undoing. When Maria Theresa of the Austro-Hungarian empire expressed her neutrality on the issue, the pope signed the bull of suppression in 1773. The pope was praised in some quarters by the rationalists as having taken an enlightened step. Actually some of the more harsh instances of treatment of the society took place in the Papal States. The Church thus lost some of its most obedient troops and some of its best educators. In return Clement was promised that the Catholic powers would restore the lost territories of the Papal States. The papacy had reached a new nadir in the modern period. 17 The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the papacy devoted extensively to the pursuit of diplomatic advantage and balance among the great Catholic states. Once these monarchs had been content with practicing the faith; now they represented more of a problem for the Holy See. The popes coming after the Counter Reformation did not lack skill or dedication, they were simply set in a context that exposed their weaknesses. Many of them were Curia careerists, who had been satellites in the courts of their predecessors. When they came to assume the papacy themselves, they really had few choices and few new ideas. The age of the Enlightenment had hurt the Church severely among the intellectuals, and the new monarchs were nationbuilders and absolutists, often not really devoted and certainly not obedient sons and daughters of the Church. By the end of the eighteenth century the papacy was to be racked by physical threats, kidnapping, and finally a melancholy sort of triumph. Left with little to exploit, the Holy See pledged its efforts to the Old Order just when the latter was ready to face its last terrible accounting.

Notes 1. James H. Billington, The Icon and Axe: An Interpretative History of Russian Culture (New York: Knopf, 1966), 184–85. 2. R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, The History of the Modern World, 8th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 326. 3. William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), chap. 1. 4. John G. Gagliardo, Enlightened Despotism (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967). 5. Frederik Nielsen, The History of the Papacy in XIXth Century (New York: D. Dutton, 1906), vol. 1, 113–24. 6. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy, 335–36. 7. Henri Troyat, Catherine the Great (New York: Meredian, 1994). 8. Neilsen, The History of the Papacy, 27–28.

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9. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy, 31. 10. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy, 45; Jean Lacouture, Jesuits: A Multibiography (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1995). 11. Neilsen, The History of the Papacy, 55. 12. Wolfgang Müller et al., The Church in the Age of Absolutism and Enlightenment (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 120–34; Christopher M. S. Johns, Papal Art and Cultural Politics: Rome in the Age of Clement XI (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), intro. 13. Müller, Age of Absolutism, 129–34. 14. Müller, Age of Absolutism, 513; Richard McBrien, Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 319. 15. Müller, Age of Absolutism, 63–65. 16. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 27, 437; Renée Haynes, Philosopher King: The Humanist Pope Benedict XIV (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1970); Philip J. Scarcella, “Pope Benedict XIV Concerning Saints’ Causes” (J. C. L. thesis, Columbia University of America, 1987); William F. King, Benedict XIV and the Orientals (Roma: Scuola Tipografia Pio X, 1940). 17. Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).

Chapter 16

The Church and the Ancien Regime It is usually thought that revolution and upheaval are the products of states that are poor and in decline, but the overthrow of the old or “ancien” regime took place most prominently in France—at that time the most populous, most powerful, and probably the single most respected nation in Europe. 1 The educated and the aristocrats in the West spoke French more frequently than any other foreign language, and that nation’s influence in the Enlightenment was obvious. In addition, monarchical France had been in many ways the midwife of the first great anti-imperialist nation—the United States of America. And yet this paramount country would emerge from the past with the most harrowing modern revolution of that era, followed by the Napoleonic reaction, both of which had an enormous impact on Europe. The Catholic Church and the papacy were to enter a new period of persecution, so severe that at times honest commentators would speak of the death of the papacy as a coming historical occurrence.

After the Sun King When, by the grace of God, the most Christian king of France and Navarre assumed the throne in 1775, he swore to protect the peace of the realm, prize justice, condemn heresy, and uphold the Church and its prerogatives. As a part of the revered traditions of his office, he accepted the scepter of Charlemagne and was anointed with the holy oil of King Clovis; he then went on to touch 2,400 victims of scrofula, supposedly being able to cure them of that terrible disease. Thus the beginnings of the reign of King Louis XVI. 2 But underneath the pomp and ceremony, France remained a troubled land. Most people, about 80 percent, made their living in the rural areas where productivity was low, technology was rare, and plots were divided up among progeny. As noted, the Church owned between 5 and 10 percent of the land, making it the most extensive landowner in a nation that did not have many large estates compared to other European regimes. About three-quarters of the rented land was leased to peasants in sharecropping arrangements. At times, there spread across the nation a constant fear of famine. The records of the time show an easily justifiable preoccupation with grain failures, and the price of wheat 239

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under shortages or panic situations often climbed frighteningly high. In the early to mid-eighteenth century, French agriculture seemed to be in fairly good shape in terms of prices and productivity. But then major changes began to occur in the late 1700s that led to real shortages and great discontent. The poor and the destitute constituted a major segment of the French people, probably embracing one-third of the population, and, as signs of the times, begging in the cities increased markedly as did prostitution. In the more placid villages, the major figure of respect was the curé, the parish priest cited so often in French literature and lore. But as times worsened, even local priests also became more dissatisfied with the aristocratic leadership of the Church. Overall, the nation historically was divided into three estates or orders: the first estate embracing the clergy; the second the nobility; and the third everyone else. Not since 1614 had the Estates General come together to represent the whole kingdom.3 It has been argued that the influence and overreaching power of the Roman Catholic Church was one of the major causes of the French Revolution. The Church levied a tithe on all agricultural products, similar to what the Anglican Church did in England, thus impacting on many Frenchmen. The highest offices of the Church were given to the monarch to fill, and were often a part of his collection of royal patronage. Still by 1789, it is doubtful that there were more than one hundred thousand Catholic clergy left in the entire nation. The Enlightenment had taken a toll, especially in the appeal of the monastic orders. The causes of the Revolution, though, were far more potent and broad-based than the classstructured Catholic Church with its patronage opportunities. The monarchy, by being an agent of social change and constantly in need of money to fight its wars, impacted on the historic privileges the nobility had enjoyed often since feudal times. The old regime was also unable to keep up with the demands for new ranks and privileges for the ambitious. Inevitably the aristocracy was uncertain what its role was in this modern society. Thus it experienced considerable status anxiety. The second estate, about four hundred thousand people made up the nobility—a number that had grown substantially since Louis XIV. The aristocracy, even with its dependence on the king, had consistently opposed through various avenues new taxes and thus limited the powers of the monarch. The nobles, for example, were exempt from paying the taille, the direct tax, a fact which added to their reputation for arrogance and self-serving. The new economy furthered the growth of a large bourgeoisie, who were often involved in foreign trade and in the practice of law, and who exhibited a great propensity to read serious works, including some of the new Enlightenment philosophers. The bourgeoisie owned less than a fifth of the land, and were often hindered by older restrictions that characterized the traditional system. Property—land usually—was associated with certain fees, communal rights, and Church ties that restricted its uses. One of the effects of the Revolution was to end those restrictions as a new definition of property emerged that was much more modern and capitalist.4

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Because France had progressed and developed a firmer national consciousness than most countries, its problems generally became widespread and were more likely to arouse intense agitation, propaganda, and eventually direct action. The Revolution in a sense inherited that heightened consciousness and added to it a more vigorous definition of citizenship and participation. 5 For all of the Enlightenment’s skepticism and intellectual ferment, the triggering cause of the Revolution was the collapse of the financial structure of the old regime. France was a rich nation with a government that could not support itself. More critically, the burdens of war started to unravel the already threadbare system. French kings had fought the British, especially in the Seven Years’ War, where the prize was the destiny of North America. Then in February 1778, the French court of Louis XVI decided to support the American colonists in their conflict against the British Crown and ministry. With critical French assistance, the Americans unexpectedly won, and forced the British to admit defeat and retire to the frontiers. The cost of those adventures, some one billion livres, proved to be enormous for the French monarchy. In 1788 a quarter of its annual expenditures went to the maintenance of its armed forces, and about half to the payment of previous debts. The French had a total debt of four billion livres, and while such expenditures were not out of line with what other European powers were contracting, France did not have the financial structure to support those new obligations.6 Both Louis XIV and Louis XVI and their able ministers realized that it was necessary to tax the privileged classes, but their efforts were generally unsuccessful. Then in 1786, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, the new finance minister, made a proposal that linked tax reform with some acknowledgment of the need for representative institutions. He proposed to scrap the taille for a general tax on all landowners, curtail indirect taxes, end internal tariffs, and confiscate some of the Church properties, while creating a provincial assembly in which all estates would be represented. In order to overcome opposition, he convened an “assembly of notables” which was supposed to be more receptive to the wishes of the Crown. Instead they asked for greater control over the government and more information on its expenditures. After much controversy, the king dismissed Calonne and appointed the archbishop of Toulouse in his place. Still the tax proposal was rejected, and the powerful regional parlement of Paris insisted that the Estates General alone had the authority to authorize new taxes. Louis XVI refused, assuming quite correctly that the Estates General would be controlled by the very nobility who had shown little interest in supporting his tax plans. He then tried to break the powers of the parlements by putting in their place a series of law courts more expanded in size and more restricted in scope that would not claim any authority over implementing decrees. But massive reaction among the legal establishment and the upper clergy forced the king on July 5, 1788, to agree to call the Estates General into session, scheduled for the following May.

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The Spirit of Dissent Throughout all of this, the Catholic Church was remarkably quiescent, except for a few churchmen from the nobility who had supported their class. The major issue in calling the Estates General together was now how it should be organized and how it should vote—as separate orders or as one assembly. The influential parlement of Paris supported the former method since it gave more power to the nobility, and it represented the way it was done way back in 1614. The nobility thus wanted it both ways; they wished to restrict the monarchy and also to run the Estates General. Their program was by today’s standards, and even by the yardstick of the U.S. Constitution written the year before, rather modest. It insisted on constitutional government, freedom of speech, and the curtailment of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Government was invested in a tripartite Estates General that was to commence in 1789. The third estate, which covered all economic categories from the bourgeoisie to workers to lawyers to artisans was to be ruled in the end by the combined powers of the nobles and the higher clergy. However in January 1789, Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyés wrote an influential pamphlet titled, “What is the Third Estate?” in which he argued that the third estate was all, that it was the really important part of society that represented the entire nation. The interests of the third estate were now splitting off from the nobility and helping to radicalize the bourgeoisie. When the Estates General met at Versailles in May 1789, the controversy continued until some of the priests crossed over and joined the third estate, thus breaking ranks and solidarity with the first estate. They met on a tennis court and swore an oath on June 20, 1789, that stipulated that their new combined National Assembly was not to be dissolved until it had drafted a constitution. After much procrastination, the king allowed the Assembly to continue as a legitimate deliberative body. In the past, kings usually had supported the rising bourgeoisie as a way to control the power of the nobility and thus fracture the remaining forces of feudalism. From past experience, Louis XVI knew all too well that he could not count on the French aristocracy to support him on such a divisive issue. Still the king sided with the nobility, but again he was unable to move deliberately in dealing with the complicated situation before him.7 Grievances soon multiplied, and they were aggravated by worsening social conditions in a variety of regions of France. Riots and disturbances rocked the nation, and the nobility and others found that the inability of the central regime to curtail such activities added to a sense of impotence about Bourbon rule. Fearful of troops being mobilized near Versailles, Parisians armed themselves, and on July 14 random crowds attacked a jail called the Bastille as they looked for additional arms to pursue their struggles. A major battle ensued at the prison, and the capture of the Bastille became a symbol of the new spirit of defiance. The king was confused once again, and finally recognized a new citizens

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committee as the municipal government of the city. The Marquis de Lafayette, who had left America a war hero and a true son of its revolution, was asked now to command the guard in Paris. In the process he created a new insignia that added the colors of Paris (red and blue) to the white of the house of Bourbon— thus the French tricolor flag of the Revolution was born. In the rural areas, the so-called panic or Great Fear in late July 1789 led to assaults on the manorial system. The National Assembly, made up of the third estate and its allies, responded by ending many of the residues of serfdom and landed privileges, including tithes and personal tax privileges, while at the same time guaranteeing the property rights of peasants to their land. On August 26, 1789, the Assembly issued the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” that promised to recognize the natural right to life, property, security, and resistance to oppression. Freedom of thought and freedom of religion were to be protected, and equality before the law was guaranteed. The “rights of man” was an expression that had been used throughout the Enlightenment and by the Americans in their own revolution, and was meant actually to secure the rights of all people, not just males.8 As expected, the revolutionary consensus broke down at times, and there rose up left-wing patriotic clubs called Jacobins, ironically named after a Dominican monastery in Paris. From late 1789 to late 1791, the new Assembly was elected under the constitutional monarch, and then in October 1791 a succeeding assembly issued a series of laws designed to abolish the remnants of the old order, including titles, preferential government organizations, claims to property, older forms of taxation, and the like. Special privileges and indeed any manifestations of inequality were especially subject to scrutiny—and eventually the institutional Church of course would be affected. In December 1789, the old provinces were abolished and eighty-three departments were created in their place, local officials were popularly elected, and more established towns were totally reorganized. The executive branch, including the historic powers of the king, was weakened. On June 20, 1791 the king and queen abruptly attempted to flee and consequently repudiated the revolution. Five days later, the monarch was forced to return and suffered a considerable loss of popular prestige. Meanwhile the Assembly continued its work and began to confiscate Church lands, giving bonds as compensation. It also moved to abolish guilds, opening up the trades to all, and supported the ability of wage earners to negotiate their own salaries. Most critically, however, the Assembly began a major attack on the Catholic Church in a way that would aggravate the already inflammatory situation. On March 10 and April 13, 1791, the pope finally condemned the Civil Constitution.

The Assault on the Church When the Americans completed their revolution, they simply enacted a state-

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ment on freedom of belief that mandated the end of any established national state religion at the federal level and also which guaranteed freedom of religious choice. The provision centered in the Bill of Rights, adopted right after the implementation of the new constitution, provided that Congress shall establish no religion nor prohibit the free exercise thereof. This separation of church and state, as it later became known, thus provided for government restraint. In several states, however, there remained established state-funded denominations that continued for nearly a half century. In some ways the American founding fathers were much more the sons of the Enlightenment than the radicals who gained control during the French upheavals. One of the major turning points of the French Revolution was the wholesale attack on the Roman Catholic Church. As has been seen, other regimes, supposedly piously Catholic, such as Spain or Austria, had forced the papacy to accept severe restrictions on religious appointments, especially bishops, and in clergy communicating with Rome. But in France the revolutionaries went not just after the aristocratic hierarchy, but threatened the local parish priests as well, and in the process alienated large segments of provincial and rural opinion, especially in the western part of that nation. As has been seen, the Revolution began with the critical support of the lower Catholic clergy. It was during the debates of June 1789 that several parish priests initially abandoned the first estate and crossed over to the third estate to create a joint assembly. Some one hundred priests ended up making that critical decision. In August, the new National Assembly moved to end the feudal system and the tapestry of rights that the Gallican church enjoyed. It abolished tithes, fees, and annates (the Peter’s Pence collection that went to the pope). However, it provided for a new subsidy for priests, the relief of the poor, and the maintenance of religious and philanthropic buildings. The Assembly asked for the Church’s and God’s blessing on the Revolution. A few weeks later, in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the Assembly provided that no one was to “be molested for his opinions, including his religious views.” Although the state took possession of the Church’s property, it promised to provide for compensation and a minimum of 1,200 francs a year “besides house and garden” for the lower clergy and a higher rate for the hierarchy. For over onethird of the parish priests, this modest salary represented a raise in income. 9 As the revolution moved on, the Assembly refused on April 12, 1790, to accept a resolution making Catholicism the religion of the nation, and it was not voted upon. Meanwhile the usually cautious pope condemned privately the Declaration of Rights and urged the king to reject it. He charged that it denigrated the principles of authority and of the divine origin of law. He specifically argued against the notion that no one should be molested on account of his opinion, was appalled that Catholicism was not declared dominant in the kingdom, and vigorously opposed the idea that voting should be opened to non-Catholics. France was “seduced by the image of an empty liberty,” the pope concluded, and was enticed by a view put forth by an assembly of warring philosophers. He was also

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rather displeased with the annexation movement in Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin—historically papal possessions. On September 14, 1791, the king capitulated by approving the constitution, and two papal territories became part of France. As the pope was making his position publicly known, the new assembly was proposing, without the pope’s concurrence, a major law for the reform of the Church. The reformers talked of religious freedom rather than simple toleration, but as the months passed they substituted their own view of orthodoxy— one in which the church and state were not separate, but in which the former was subordinate to the latter. As noted, the Assembly had passed the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy” which provided for the election of clergy to bishoprics and parishes. In one sense that provision was somewhat a return to the old Pragmatic Sanction that preceded the current concordat with the Holy See. But later it went further and mandated that bishops were to be chosen by the electors of departments—the same people who nominated the members of the departmental assemblies. Parish priests were to be nominated by the electors of the district who also nominated the members of the district assembly. Thus even non-Catholics could vote if they attended the Mass just before the election! The 139 dioceses of the old regime were reorganized into 83, one for each of the new departments in France, and the number of parishes were diminished. Clergymen were hired and paid by the state, including superior clergy. The pope did not have to approve such selections as he had in the past. The new constitution simply acknowledged him as “the visible head of the Universal church.” Priests left the clergy in droves—a loss of an estimated twenty thousand. Still others were killed in the violence, and about four thousand married for a variety of reasons.10

The Radical Shift In the fifteen months between the king’s approval of the initial draft of the new constitution and the final draft, major changes took place in the dynamics of the Revolution. Led by the agitation of the Jacobins, those without property demanded the vote and also some amelioration of their economic and social problems. They also furthered the rumor that Queen Marie Antoinette was in communication with her brother Leopold II, the Holy Roman emperor, who was rather sympathetic to the emigrés leaving France. Both Leopold and Frederick William II of Prussia jointly threatened to take up arms against the Revolution. Because of his increasing opposition, the king was briefly suspended from his rule by the Assembly, but later restored because of the fears of rising disorder and foreign intervention. With a new constitution in place, the Assembly ended, and its role was taken by a new body with 750 members on October 1, 1791. That body was divided into the moderate Feuillants, who supported a con-

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stitutional monarchy, the republican Girondists, the more radical Jacobins, the Cordeliers (representing Paris working-class elements), and a large number of unaffiliated delegates. The republican groups overall supported severe penalties for the clergy who refused to swear the oath of allegiance. Angry mobs stormed through the streets of Paris, and uprisings began against the king and his family living at the Tuileries Palace, upheavals which in turn resulted in the killing of his Swiss guard and forcing him to seek asylum in the assembly hall. He soon was arrested, and the mob took control of the Council of Paris as well. That government on August 11, 1792, was headed by a radical lawyer named Georges Jacques Danton. The Assembly, controlled by the Montagnards, approved universal male suffrage, and in early September began the execution of over one thousand royalists and royalist sympathizers. The radicals in the newly elected national convention proclaimed the First Republic, formally ending the monarchy, and promised French assistance to the oppressed masses of Europe. In a sharply divided vote, the convention approved the execution of Louis XVI 387 to 334, a step that shocked the crowned heads of Europe. Having attacked the pillars of the Church, the Revolution now was guilty of regicide. In September 1792, the French regime gave way to a more radical constitution. In later 1792 and early 1793, France declared war on the Austro-Hungarian regime, Belgium, Holland, Britain, and Spain. That decision to go to war was a major mistake, which was easily verified as the Austrian armies swiftly moved to victory in the Netherlands, and then began an invasion of France. Sardinia and Prussia joined the Austrians, and the French were caught up in a national panic as they began to mobilize the country. A group from the city of Marseilles came into Paris singing a patriotic song which soon became the national anthem. The Girondist element began to lose support in the national convention, and with major military reversals, it came under intense criticism. As conscription demands for the army increased, civil war broke out in various provinces, stirred up in part by nobility and the clergy. On April 6, 1793, the convention established the Committee on Public Safety which gained ascendancy and began what history has called the Reign of Terror. On July 13, the radical Jean Paul Marat was murdered by an aristocrat, Charlotte Corday, and the Jacobins benefited from the resulting sympathy. On July 27, their leader Maximilian Robespierre was added to the committee leadership. From April 1793 to July 1794, the Reign of Terror held sway over much of France. 11 While France was being attacked by foreign armies and plagued by severe internal divisions, the committee moved brutally to suppress all counter revolutionary activities. Thousands of royalists, priests loyal to Rome, and Girondists were tried before revolutionary courts and sent to the guillotine. It has been estimated that seventeen thousand people were executed with more than forty thousand victims killed overall. Numerically most were peasants who had opposed different aspects of the policies of the government, but it was the Church that was disproportionately attacked.12

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The Church’s Responses The influences of religion were muted in part by the popularity of a brand of revolutionary patriotism that celebrated the new state, and was supposedly dedicated to liberty, equality, and fraternity. As early as July 10, 1790, the pope warned the king that the monarch was leading the nation into “a cruel religious war.” The bishops had expressed their concerns about the Civil Constitution, but the pope did not quickly condemn the state, despite his initial opposition. He did oppose, however, the oath of allegiance, and on May 31, 1791, the papal nuncio was called back from France. More than a half to three-fifths of the priests ended up swearing the oath to the new order, but often that step reflected more the attitudes of a particular priest’s parishioners toward the Revolution in general. Thus the taking of the oath became a kind of barometer measuring the larger changes that were taking place, which showed strong opposition emerging in provincial areas, especially in western France. Clergymen who did not take the oath, so-called non-jurors, were branded as enemies of the state and disturbers of the public order. Churches were closed to them and to their congregations, and non-jurors were often forced into exile. Thus the Revolution moved from an advocacy of religious toleration to support for broad religious liberty, to a secular state that would soon use the trappings of religion in the service of the idols of the Revolution. 13 In November 1792 a motion was made to abolish the budget supporting public worship, but the convention refused to go along. Danton insisted that the Revolution “had never intended to deprive the citizens of the ministrations of religion, which the civil constitution of the clergy had given them.”14 Meanwhile many of the priests and bishops who swore the oath to the state proclaimed their affection for the pope and dismissed any idea of a religious schism. Elsewhere some of non-jurors were too vocal in their anti-government activity and their support for the foes of the Revolution, which became especially apparent in the insurrection of the Vendée. On March 13, 1793, the convention approved the death penalty for priests involved in the disturbances and demanded that those who had not yet taken the oath be exiled to French Guyana. With such turmoil, increasing scrutiny fell on the clergy who were a part of the constitutional church, that is, those who had taken the oath. The attack then moved on to a more general target, Catholicism itself, as the Revolution became more radical and violent. In October 1793, the Julian calendar was replaced with a republican calendar, and a committee of public safety under Robespierre’s leadership pushed to establish “a republic of virtue” dedicated to Rousseau’s ideas of humanitarianism, idealism, and patriotism. In Paris and elsewhere, Catholic churches were closed, and a new religion, the cult of reason, was instituted. Meanwhile the armies of France were more successful, and the committee crushed internal dissent. Robespierre persecuted Danton and his followers, who were beheaded on

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April 6, 1794. But general dissatisfaction against the Reign of Terror led to Robespierre and his allies being seized on July 27, and they too were beheaded. The Thermidor reaction had set in. The Revolution which had eaten its own children was now to be settled down. The Jacobin clubs were closed, the revolutionary courts abolished, and a more conservative view seemed to prevail. In 1795, the anti-French foreign alliance partially collapsed, and a peace treaty was signed in April. Spain and Prussia and some of the other Germanic states ended their hostilities with revolutionary France, but Great Britain, Sardinia, and Austria continued to fight on.15 It is frequently debated how really religious the French people were, even at the end of the ancien regime. Church attendance rates, indices of orthodoxy, the pull of the Catholic Church on the hearts of the people, are all difficult to gauge and appreciate. “The eldest daughter of the Church,” as the popes liked to refer to France, had vast pockets of skepticism, indifference, and even hostility in its patterns of allegiance to the Catholic faith. As has been seen, there was an enormous increase in piety in certain segments of French life in the previous century and in the genuine affection that real people had for their curés. Still, though, the question remains. With all of the corrosiveness of the Enlightenment, one would have thought that French of all classes would have rebelled against any expression of religious superstitions as its detractors like to call expressions of the faith. But there must have been a very powerful Catholic sentiment, for even the most committed revolutionary such as Robespierre insisted on the importance of religion. And even when they wished to destroy Catholicism, root and branch, they put in its place a mere caricature of the ancient faith, one that emphasized Reason, complete with its own altars, feast days, calendars, and rituals. If the French people had no allegiance to the old faith, why was it necessary to substitute a new one? Why not just simply leave their non-sentiments alone? In the Revolution’s changes of the calendar, for example, Sundays as unique days of faith were abolished in place of a ten day calendar, new festivals were created, and the names of saints were replaced by other designations. National festivals were to take the place of religious ones. In the future, no ecclesiastic or nun could be appointed a teacher in the nation’s schools. The committee recognized the establishment of “one universal religion which has neither secrets nor mysteries, whose dogma is equality, whose orators are the laws, whose pontiffs are the magistrates, which asks no incense from the great human family to burn save before the altar of our country, our mother, and our deity.” The great Cathedral of Notre Dame, for example, became “the temple of reason,” and republican pageantry took the place of Catholic religious observance. The worship of something called Reason became the new faith, and lovely, young, serious maidens posed before statues of the goddess of Reason where they had once saluted the Virgin Mary. The government at first said little publicly. Robespierre instead spoke out against the abolition of Christianity, saying that atheism was “aristocratic,” and that he who “wishes to prevent the saying of a Mass is a greater fanatic than he who says it.” He denounced cow-

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ards who spread the falsehood since that it would split the Revolution from religious people. He agreed with Danton that there should be “no more antireligious masquerades before the Convention.” He insisted that the French people were not “a nation of idolaters or madmen.”16 On May 7, 1794, a decree was passed that established the worship of the supreme being which acknowledged a god, the immortality of the soul, the duties of man, and the need to do good in life. The temples of reason were now to have signs that acknowledged the existence of the supreme being and the immortality of the soul. To show his true sentiments, Robespierre himself on one occasion set fire to a statue of Atheism. On September 10, 1794, salaries of the clergy were terminated, and elementary education was secularized. Since Christianity could not be destroyed by persecution, it was now felt that it could be ended by education, patriotism, persuasion, and demonstrations of that new religion of Reason. But with those changes, Catholicism began to reappear as clergy of both types came forward as its advocates, and people in certain areas of France rose up and demanded that their churches be reopened. The constitutional bishops appealed to other bishops for fraternal support and stressed the traditions of the apostolic succession. They even called for a national Council of reconciliation to meet on May 1, 179, to discuss outstanding issues. Thus while the revolutionary state pushed for a formal separation from any church, Catholicism as a way of life began to be restored. The question was how to reconcile the persistent old faith with the volatile new regime. As peace came to the nation once again, the national convention proposed another constitution that created an executive directorate and a bicameral legislature made up of a council of ancients with 250 members and a Council of Five Hundred. The franchise was limited to taxpayers with one year residence—a retreat from the Jacobin equalitarian ideals. It also abolished forever, it thought, the monarchy. On October 5, 1795, an uprising took place, led by Parisian royalists who opposed the continuation of the new order. But that uprising was crushed by a new figure moving to center stage—General Napoleon Bonaparte. His observations about the power of the Catholic Church were very different from what had gone before, even though he himself was a true son of the French Revolution.

A Man of Destiny Although he is historically associated with France, Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, on the island of Corsica. His family was originally from the Lombardy area of Italy and eventually settled in Genoa, which controlled Corsica at that time. On May 15, 1767, France, however, purchased the island from Genoa. Napoleon’s father was a royal assessor on the island and was more committed to the current French administration than to Corsican patriot-

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ism. As a scholarship student, Napoleon went to Minimas, the royal military school, and acquired a reputation for having a chip on his shoulder and a strong hatred of French domination. At age fifteen, he entered the École Militaire where he was selected to be an artilleryman. He continued to support Corsican independence against what he called “French chains.” In 1789 his career was interrupted by the beginnings of the French Revolution, which the young officer saw as an opportunity for advancement. Napoleon concluded, “Revolutions are ideal times for soldiers with a bit of wit and the courage to act.” Chased out of Corsica by his enemies, the ambitious young military man pledged his destiny to the new French government.17 In Paris, he became aligned with Paul François de Barras, a revolutionary leader who was a member of the new five-man ruling directory, and Napoleon soon became fascinated with Barras’s mistress, Josephine de Beauharnais. Napoleon was sent to defend the city of Toulon where his strategic gifts and bravery were soon recognized. He acquired a hero’s status in a revolution that had few heroes and too many martyrs and demagogues. At the age of twenty-five, the celebrity was shipped out to put the French army in Rome in fighting shape. While Napoleon was seeking to complete a treaty with the Republic of Genoa as instructed, more conservative forces triumphed in Paris, and the Thermidor reaction set in. Because of his public ties to Barras and Augustin Robespierre, Napoleon was arrested in Nice and incarcerated. He was later released and returned to Parisian society and nightlife. It was at this time that he began his relationship with Josephine, a widow born in Martinique and a great admirer of the French Revolution. Soon he was sent back to the fighting forces, and Napoleon planned a major campaign that included a full-scale invasion of Italy which was approved by the French war minister Lazare Carnot in early 1796. Meanwhile Josephine agreed to a civil wedding with Bonaparte—cynically insisting that it was really a joke despite Napoleon’s deep love for her. France was still facing its enemies in the First Coalition which included at the time the emperor of Austria, the king of Sardinia, and the king of Great Britain. The Habsburgs dominated northern Italy, the Spanish Bourbons southern Italy, and the pope controlled the middle states of the peninsula. The French prepared to crush the Austrians, seize Vienna, and use the poorly organized forces of Napoleon in northern Italy. In Piedmont, the new major general set about his mission and confidently cried out, “Soldiers! You are hungry and naked, I will lead you into the most fertile places on earth. Rich provinces, wealthy towns, all will be yours for the taking. There you will find honor, glory and riches.” To the people of the Piedmont, he promised to break their chains and to respect their property, religion, and customs. In Milan he was welcomed as a liberator from Austrian rule, but his army, much to his consternation, swept through the area, looting, raping, and murdering the inhabitants, and giving its commander a reputation for terrorism. 18 He was also told by the French regime to attack the pope and the Papal

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States. Under enormous pressure, Pius VI finally requested an armistice and agreed to pay a huge indemnity. While these triumphs were occurring, Napoleon’s new wife was involved in a love affair with a lieutenant—an early betrayal that would come back to haunt her and her husband of only four months. 19 In his military campaigns, Napoleon had swept through Milan, Turin, Verona, Genoa, Pavia, Bologna, Mantua, and Rome. He was now a major figure on the European stage. In his orders, Napoleon was directed by his superiors to defeat the Austrians and the Piedmontese in his conquest of northern Italy. He was told to seize the Duchy of Milan; whatever he did with Piedmont was up to him. He was then to negotiate a peace treaty and allow one of France’s huge and expensive armies to be reduced. At the time, he had some 41,570 men under his command, but the army was still rather poorly outfitted. After he entered Milan successfully, he received a letter from the Directory that he had to relinquish the sole command of the army of the Alps by sharing it with another general, and was to undertake a campaign against the Papal States and Tuscany, both of which were supporters of Austria. He appealed successfully the selection of another commander; but he was to soon learn about the fickle nature of French political control. Quickly he marched across the Po River and took Florence and the trading city of Leghorn. He later shipped forty million francs to the Directory back in Paris, while the members at the same time ordered a spy to watch over the young commander. Still angry at the Holy See’s Austrian sympathies, the Directory ordered Napoleon to move to capture the city of Rome. Napoleon obediently swept through the Papal States, and rumors spread throughout the city that the commander would depose Pius VI. Napoleon actually proceeded very cautiously, fearing that with the papacy upended, Naples would soon control central Italy, and Naples was governed by Marie Antoinette’s sister. After some reflection, Napoleon decided to close the pope’s ports to all hostile navies, take three of the Papal States under his control, and demand thirty million francs in gold. He insisted to the pope, “My ambition is to be called the saviour not the destroyer of the Holy See.” But to the French Directors he criticized the pope as “an old fox,” and insisted that a Rome stripped of several of its major Papal States and thirty million francs in gold could no longer exist. “The old machine will fall to pieces,” which is exactly what the Directory wanted to hear.20 Thus in thirteen months, Napoleon had by disciplined audacity completed his Italian campaign, and now moved toward Vienna. He opposed looting and often protected the sacred vessels of the Church, and approvingly recorded that his troops “moved as rapidly as my thoughts.” He urged priests to stay out of politics and to conduct themselves according to the Gospels, and he also opposed Jewish ghettos and hostilities toward Muslims. Napoleon treated Italian scholars with special care, commissioned portraits and statues, and waived taxes on the birthplace of Virgil. Napoleon shipped back works of art to France, choosing on one occasion a Caravaggio over common booty. Napoleon insisted on realizing one hundred paintings, statues, and vases from the pope as part of

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the peace, and personally chose which ones would be sent to France. Despite resistance from some of the Directors, Napoleon insisted on making northern Italy a republic like her sister France. He finally was given permission to establish what became known as the Cisalpine Republic, and its constitution was based on the French one in use at the time. On returning home to Paris, he was ordered to begin the invasion of England. Napoleon, however, thought such a move was impossible and proposed instead the conquest of Egypt. He recruited not just armed forces, but also a collection of scholars, scientists, and artists to go with him to learn and to teach. On one occasion he confronted his staff officers, some of whom were atheists, and pointed to the bright stars of Mediterranean, saying, “Then who made those?”21 In Egypt, Napoleon moved from Alexandria to the great pyramids where before a battle against the Mamelukes, he shouted, “Soldiers, from the highest of these pyramids forty centuries look down upon you.” He blatantly appealed to the people there by praising Islam and saying that the French forces were true Muslims, and that these Frenchmen had destroyed their common enemies, the pope and the Knights of Malta. Napoleon discussed theology with the muftis and praised the prophet Mohammed. He ordered the muftis to take an oath of allegiance to his government since they were, after all, all true Muslims, but the religious leaders shrewdly insisted upon circumcision and the banning of wine before that occurred. Napoleon soon dropped the idea. The Muslims, however, did respect his sense of justice and order, or so they said. It was at that time that the commander heard more about the alleged affair of his wife and became deeply disturbed by such treachery. Napoleon, who had conquered all, observed that he was “weary of human nature. I need to be alone and isolated. Great deeds leave me cold. All feeling is dried up. Fame is insipid.” While he waited for Talleyrand to negotiate a treaty with the sultan which would cover Egypt, he grew bored and invaded Syria, increasingly facing the peculiar illnesses of the area.22 Meanwhile France was opposed by a coalition of five great powers: England, Turkey, Naples, Austria, and Russia. Reading the results in a newspaper, Napoleon observed, “Poor France! What have they done, the rogues?” Checked in the Middle East, Napoleon made his way without his army back to France. He left his forces there to fight the Turks and to cope with the English navy without him. On October 16, 1799, a fortunate Napoleon arrived home in Paris after a difficult voyage, ready to divorce his faithless wife, and to engage in republican politics. His long-time patron Barras was living a dissolute life and of little help to Napoleon, whom he had supported. Seven-eighths of Paris’s artisans were unemployed, civil servants were often unpaid, and the roads were not safe to travel. Within this context, Napoleon decided to enter politics, concluding, “I acted not from a love of power, but because I felt I was better educated, more perceptive—plus clairvoyant—and better qualified than anyone else.”23 Napoleon’s plan was to be elected to the Directory, but he ran into unexpected opposition from Barras. Little did he know that Barras was in secret ne-

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gotiations with the royalists to bring back Louis XVIII for which he was to be paid the sum of twelve million francs. The military man was only thirty years old, and the constitution set a limit of age forty to be a director. The constitution thus needed to be changed. Napoleon received support from Abbé Sieyés who hatched a plot to overthrow the current regime and create a new one. Addressing the elders of the republic who were dressed in their red togas and scarlet toques, Napoleon swore to protect the fatherland and save liberty and equality. But instead of supporting him, they attacked their new hero. He quickly left the chamber and was defended by his brother Lucien, who was heading up the Committee of Five Hundred of the French legislature. Napoleon hated to resort to force on this issue, but in the end he appealed to the army, citing their previous battles and successes together. Soon that evening, the Directory was ended and a new temporary commission was appointed which included Napoleon, Sieyés, and Pierre-Roger Ducos. Finally they agreed on a government of three consuls, with the first consul making decisions, and second and third in a consultative role. They were to be elected to a ten-year term, and Napoleon was to be the first consul. The legislature embraced three assemblies meant to draft the laws, to discuss them, and to accept or reject them. A new constitution was published on December 24, 1799, and later approved overwhelmingly by some three million to one thousand votes. Napoleon soon stood alone.

The Long Sad Reign The first pope that Napoleon had any major contact with was Pius VI (Giovanni Angelo Braschi). Braschi was born of noble lineage in a relatively modest family and went on as a layman to serve in different posts in the Holy See, including private secretary to Benedict XIV. He was not ordained a priest until the age of forty-one in 1758, and in fact previously was engaged to be married. Braschi was put in charge of finances for the Papal States, and later was named a cardinal priest by Clement XIV. After a long deadlocked conclave, he was elected to succeed Clement. Braschi was considered by some to be pro-Jesuit, and by others to be anti-Jesuit, an ambiguity which may in the long run have helped his election. Privately he was probably disposed favorably toward the Jesuits. In fact, he tried to free their general from Castel Sant’Angelo, but did not remove the suppression orders. It was not the Protestant or heretical monarchs that plagued him most during his reign, but the traditional Catholic states, most importantly the Holy Roman Empire and France. He tried to stop Emperor Joseph’s brand of Febronianism, which aimed at curtailing papal supremacy in the Church. In a dramatic move, the pope decided to go to Vienna to negotiate directly with Emperor Joseph II. He left Rome in February 1782, and nearly a month later arrived

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in Vienna. The pope was received with respect by Emperor Joseph, but rudely by Joseph’s minister, Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz. Pius received a vague commitment that Joseph’s reforms of the Church would not violate traditional Catholic dogma or impinge on the dignity of the papacy. The emperor accompanied the pope on his return journey as far as the monastery at Mariabrunn, and then suppressed the monastery a few hours after Pius was on the road home. His intentions were crystal clear. Joseph II continued his campaign of Church reform and even tried to fill the vacant see of Milan. The pope protested and probably threatened the emperor with excommunication. On December 23, 1783, the emperor returned the courtesy of the pope’s visit, and informed officials of his intention to separate actually the German Catholic Church from Rome. The pope, however, was able to divert that disastrous step and granted the emperor the right to nominate bishops for Milan and Mantua, an agreement that was finalized in a concordat dated January 20, 1784. The attempt to introduce Febronianism was emulated by Joseph’s brother, the Grand Duke Leopold II in Tuscany and Bishop Scipione de’Ricci of Pistoia. In Pistoia a synod was held in 1786 where the doctrines of Jansenius and Quesnel were supported, and the supremacy of the pope was condemned. Pius in turn censured the synod’s work, but the major ecclesiastical electors of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne along with the bishop of Salzburg all attempted to curtail the pope’s authority by calling for a congress at Ems. In Spain, Sardinia, and Venice, the governments followed Joseph’s lead in attempting to curtail Rome’s authority. The most difficult problem the pope faced was the hostility of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and its monarch Ferdinand IV, who refused to allow papal briefs to be introduced into his realm and did battle over allowing the pope to nominate bishops for vacant sees. For over eight hundred years, the papacy had exercised some sort of suzerainty over that kingdom, and now it was being checked from being able to fill the sixty-two vacant appointments to the various sees in the realm. Finally in 1791, an uneasy compromise was reached. 24 The pope, who himself loved pomp and ceremony, had to lead a fight for austerity in finances, but he did continue to extend St. Peter’s, complete the Musee Pio-Clementino, and attempt to drain the swamps in the region. All of his difficulties, though, were to pale in comparison beside the enormous problems he would face with the advent of the French Revolution. During his long reign, Pius appeared at times vacillating and singularly unsuccessful in the difficult barracuda waters of European diplomacy. But when his papacy finished, he became to many decent people a long-suffering martyr of the Church—one whose very sufferings were supposed to mark the end of the papacy. But they did not, for Pius planned carefully for his own miserable death and also for the election of a successor. As has been seen, the pope at first said little during the beginnings of the French Revolution, although he surely opposed its philosophy and its excesses.

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He even refused to comment publicly when, in 1790, the new government reorganized the French Church and promulgated its civil constitution of the clergy. But in the very next year he strongly criticized the new oath of loyalty and castigated the civil constitution as well as the older Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789. He suspended all clergy who took the oath, and diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See were ended. The revolutionary government in turn took over the traditional papal areas of Avignon and Venaissin. Increasingly the pope supported the enemies of the Revolution, and even sided with the First Coalition against the new French government. Napoleon and his crusade took the city of Milan in 1796, and the French government demanded that the pope withdraw his previous condemnations. He refused, and the new warrior-general went into the Papal States, defeating easily the pope’s weak defensive forces. In summary, Napoleon, in the treaty of Tolentino (1797), compelled the pope to recognize the surrender of Avignon, Venaissin, Ferrara, Bologna, and the Romagna, and the Holy See had to pay a huge indemnity and give up valuable manuscripts and works of art. After the French general Mathurin-Léonard Duphot was murdered in Rome on December 27, 1797, while he was attempting to spread the revolutionary gospel, the French captured Rome and in February 1798 declared it a republic. The pope refused to concur. On Bonaparte’s orders, he was seized, and forcibly taken out of the city and brought to Siena and then to Florence. He grew increasingly ill as he was forced to travel in the rain and snow over primitive roads to a variety of Italian cities, then across the Alps, and finally into Valence, France. 25 He prepared for his death, and more importantly for the election of his successor. On August 29, 1799, Pius VI died at the age of eighty-one. His remains were buried in a local cemetery. Only when Napoleon was firmly in power in Paris, and anxious for a reconciliation with the Catholic Church, did he allow the late pope’s remains to return to Rome. But the end of the papacy did not occur as had been predicted. In fact, it would outlast not only the French Revolution but also Napoleon.

Notes 1. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Garden City: Doubleday, 1955); Norman Ravitch, The Catholic Church and the French Nation, 1589-1989 (London: Routledge, 1990); Peter Robert Campbell, The Ancien Regime in France (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). 2. William O. Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 1; also his “The Parlements of France and the Breakdown of the Old Regime, 1770–1788,” French Historical Studies, 6, no. 4 (1970): 415–58; George V. Taylor, “Noncapitalist Wealth and the Origin of the French Revolution,” American Historical Review 72, no. 2 (Jan. 1967): 469–96.

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3. Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); Keith Michael Baker, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of a Modern Political Culture, 2 vols. (New York: Pergamon Press, 1987); Colin Lucas, “Nobles, Bourgeois and the Origins of the French Revolution,” Past and Present 60 (1973): 84–126. 4. François Furet, The French Revolution, 1770–1814 (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), chap. 1; Albert Soboul, The Parisian Sans-Colottes and the French Revolution 1793–4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964); Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 5. R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 364–65. 6. John Francis Bosher, French Finances, 1770–1795: From Business to Bureaucracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); E. E. Hales, Pio Nono, A Study in Politics and Religion in the Nineteenth Century (New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1954), xi. 7. Furet, French Revolution, chap. 2; Morris Slavin, The Making of an Insurrection: Parisian Sections and the Gironde (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church (London: S. P. C. K. for the Church Historical Society, 1969). 8. Robert R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800, 2 vol. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959–64); Alfred Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). 9. Timothy Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture in Eighteenth Century France: The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Furet, French Revolution, chap. 2. 10. Doyle, Oxford History, 60–62. 11. George F. E. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); Alison Patrick, The Men of the French First Republic: Political Alignments in the National Convention of 1792 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1972). 12. Robert R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled: The Committee of Public Safety during the Terror (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941). 13. F. A. Aulard, Christianity and the French Revolution (New York: Howard Fertig, 1966), 72; Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation (1935; reprint, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1966). 14. Aulard, Christianity, 95–97. 15. J. M. Thompson, Robespierre, 2 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1935); David Jordan, The Revolutionary Career of Maximillien Robespierre (New York: Free Press, 1985), chaps. 10–12; C. C. Brinton, The Jacobins: An Essay in the New History (New York: Russell & Russell, 1961); Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), chap. 6.

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16. Aulard, Christianity, 104–14. 17. Alan Schom, Napoleon Bonaparte (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), 4–12. 18. Schom, Napoleon, 123–47; Robert B. Asprey, The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 19. E. E. Y. Hales, Revolution and Papacy, 1769–1846 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960), chaps. 2–4; Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, The Modern Regime (1890; reprint, New York: Peter Smith, 1931), vol. 2, chap. 1, book 15. 20. Vincent Cronin, Napoleon Bonaparte: An Intimate Biography (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1972), 126; Georges Lefebvre, Napoleon, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). 21. Cronin, Napoleon, 128–47. 22. Cronin, Napoleon, 147–59. 23. Cronin, Napoleon, 167. 24. Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952–1953), vol. 39 and 40. 25. Hales, Revolution and Papacy, chaps. 2–4.

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The Emperor’s Attacks on the Papacy Although he was not a practicing Catholic, except when he found it nominally advantageous to be so, Napoleon respected the temporal power of the papacy. Years later in bitter exile on the island of St. Helena, he remarked, “I should have had the pope close by my side, then I would have been master of religion, as surely as if I had been her sole lord. The pope would have done everything I wanted and I would have suffered no opposition from the faithful.” 1 Even though he treated the remains of Pius VI with some calculated respect, he prized himself as a sort of Voltarian figure with regard to belief and unbelief. He observed once that if he governed the Jews, he would rebuild the temple of Solomon. In Egypt, Napoleon, however, praised Allah and Mohammed. He opposed the Catholics’ strength in that area, and criticized the Crusades. Napoleon also cited his opposition to the Knights of Malta and the friendship of the French government with the sultan of Turkey. And yet speaking in Milan, he told Catholic priests there that as a “philosopher” he recognized that reason was not a sufficient moral guide, that only Catholicism “with its infallibility, confronts man with his beginning and his end.” He was probably a deist, an admirer of the philosophés, and a person who believed in destiny—his destiny. Still Napoleon refused to accept atheism and agnosticism as legitimate philosophical positions, and he opposed the anti-clericalism of a revolution that he had protected on so many fronts. He regarded sectarian division as self-defeating, calling it at one point “worse than a crime. It was a mistake.” While wags insisted that Pius VI would be the last pope, Napoleon was a better judge of power and history. 2

The Fortunes of Pius VII Into this most difficult of situations emerged a Benedictine monk born of noble parents, the bishop of Imola, Luigi Barnabá Chiaramonti (1800–1823). The cardinals met in Venice, a city under the emperor’s control, because Rome was occupied by the hostile French. After months of stalemate, Chiaramonti prevailed, much to Emperor Francis II’s disgust.3 Immediately Pope Pius VII insisted on restoring the Holy See to Rome and made the eventful decision to name Ercole Consalvi as his secretary of state. By 259

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the time he arrived in Rome, Napoleon’s forces had beaten the Austrian troops in the battle of Marengo in northwestern Italy on June 14, 1800. Soon Austria and Naples withdrew their forces from papal territories. In his own diocese, Bishop Chiaramonti had tried to reach out to the French forces by accepting parts of the revolutionary ideology. He indicated that the gospels of Jesus were compatible with democracy, and that liberty increased personal responsibility and did not lessen the need for God’s grace to guide people’s judgments. As for his secretary of state, Consalvi was born in Rome to a noble family and educated at a seminary founded in Frascati by the Cardinal Duke of York, the Stuart pretender to the British throne. Consalvi was a layman working for the papacy when the revolution occurred in Rome, and the French invaded Italy in 1798. He was jailed, escaped and joined Pius VI in exile. Pius VII named him a cardinal in 1800 and his secretary of state. He was to become one of the ablest diplomats of his generation—a generation of fine and skillful diplomats. Respecting the political power of the Church in Italy, Napoleon was wondering aloud how to restore the Church in France, and how to reestablish ties with the papacy. In a hurry as usual, Napoleon pushed for papal representation so as to finalize a concordat with the Holy See. Consalvi was sent to Paris, and there met with Talleyrand, Napoleon’s brother Joseph, and Napoleon himself. After much acrimony, both sides agreed on a document on July 16, 1801, and Consalvi quickly returned to Rome for the Sacred College to review the work before ratification. The government’s draft protected the Catholic religion in France, but retained the right to regulate it. France was divided into fifty dioceses and ten archdioceses, and all existing bishops, both the constitutional and papal, had to resign and be reappointed. Bishops in turn nominated priests, but they had to be approved by the government. Bishops were nominated by the first consul and then canonically installed by the pope. The Church recognized the loss of its properties in France that were taken during the revolution, and the government promised in turn that all ministers of all faiths would be salaried. Catholicism was simply characterized as “the religion of the majority of French citizens”—a statistical fact, but it was not declared the “state” religion. The French government attached seventy-seven clauses or the Organic Articles to the concordat that dealt with “policing” the Church and that contained many provisions that Consalvi had already rejected. The articles of the Organic Articles were divided into four titles. The first required that all Roman Church acts, decrees, and briefs, all synodal decrees, and even those of ecumenical councils, had to be submitted to the placet or approval of the state. The government had to approve the holding of national, metropolitan, and diocesan synods, and papal nuncios, legates, and vicars apostolic had to get the authorization of the government to exercise their functions on French soil, or anywhere else in dealing with the French church. Appeals of the decisions of the clerical administration would go to the Council of State. Title two dealt with the clergy, and ended exceptions from episcopal jurisdictions. It allowed bishops with government authorization to set up seminaries

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and cathedral chapters, but prohibited other ecclesiastical establishments. A bishop could not leave his diocese without the First Consul’s permission, and seminary professors were required to consent to the Gallican decree of the French clergy formulated in 1682. Under that understanding, the Gallican, or French, church was in communion with the Church in Rome, but was opposed to control over its operations and rituals. Title three mandated a single catechism and single liturgy, regulated preaching, the ringing of church bells, and the introduction of new religious feasts. Nuptial blessings could not be given to couples unless they had been previously married in a civil ceremony. Priests at Masses had to pray for the prosperity of the Republic and its consuls. Title four dealt with the size and number of dioceses, reimbursement for clergy, religious foundations, and church properties. Although the papacy vigorously protested those unilateral regulations, they remained in effect until 1905, when the concordat was terminated at the initiative of the French government. Ironically one of the long-term consequences was that Gallicanism suffered a major setback, and the pope, vis-á-vis the French church hierarchy, became more powerful. Bonaparte had eliminated the relatively autonomous church that grew up in France in previous days. He also continued to oppose orders of monks, but approved various congregations of religious women. Signed on July 16, 1801, the agreement reinstituted Catholicism in France. But disappointing to the pope and Consalvi, Bonaparte did not return to the pope the papal territories that the Holy See had been hoping for. Instead he united them with Milan to create a new republic. Consequently in 1803 Consalvi worked out a concordat with that republic so as to protect the interests of the Church, but once again the French administration undercut the agreed upon principles. Internally the Church Curia was split, with some cardinals opposing any more dealings with the “Satan of France” who had even countenanced divorce in his own homeland, and who would now probably bring it into Italy. They opposed any further attempts by their own pope and his secretary of state to reach any accommodation with Napoleon.4 In the summer of 1804, news arrived in Rome that Napoleon had been declared emperor, and that he wished the pope would come to France to crown him. Thus the son of the revolution, the revolution that had put the last Bourbon king to death now was to become a hereditary monarch. The pope’s advisors were clearly divided on how to respond. But Consalvi once again added his influential voice to support the visit, and so the pope prepared to go. Consalvi rejected any notion that papal cooperation should be linked to a return of the Papal States in French possession, for such an agreement would involve selling Church favors. But he surely remembered how the king of the French, Pepin, had given Ravenna to the pope in the eighth century as a gift after his own coronation. Through Joseph Cardinal Fesch, Napoleon’s ambassador to Rome, the French regime signaled that Napoleon would be amenable to settling some of the outstanding disputed points that were covered in the Organic Articles, as well as the objectionable French administrative decrees in Milan, the

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appointment of bishops, and the question of what to do with schismatic constitutional bishops. Napoleon was to be made emperor by the grace of God and the will of the people, according to the French Senate, which surely meant more to the pope than it did to either the Senate or Napoleon. Ironically Napoleon, the skeptic, believed that such a ceremony was necessary to put him on a par with the great monarchs of Europe, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. All across the French countryside, and even in France itself, the pope in his travels was well-received to the surprise of many who thought that the people, in accepting the revolution, had dumped the faith of Rome. In Paris, in the cathedral of Notre Dame on December 2, 1804, the pope prepared for the service that was a hybrid of the ancient Roman rite, the ancient Gallican rite, and a new rite drawn up by Napoleon’s aides. The pope was to bless the crown, but not to place it personally on the emperor’s head, and the emperor and empress were not to take Communion.5 However, the pope did insist that the royal couple had to be married first in the Church—a turn of events probably instigated by Josephine. And, Cardinal Fesch secretly married them the day before the coronation was to take place. The pope stayed in Paris for a while after the ceremonies and was continually well-received by the people. Still, though, he gained no real concessions in terms of restoring the Papal States. To add to Pius’s problems, the French authorities still pushed to reorganize the Church in Milan in 1805. Rome opposed the institutionalization of the French civil code with its secular overtones and its allowance of divorce. To the Holy See, Napoleon was unnecessarily reluctant to reach any sort of accommodation, while the emperor saw the disputes over the Organic Laws and the Milan decrees as simply matters “of vanity and form by the pope and his misguided advisors.”6 Napoleon was engaged then in a fierce struggle with Protestant Great Britain, but the pope refused to support him, and even allowed British ships to dock in the papal ports. On land, the French emperor seemed invincible as he swept to victories at Ulm and later Austerlitz, but on the sea Admiral Nelson defeated the Franco-Spanish navy at Trafalgar. Why wouldn’t the Catholic pope support him, Napoleon asked? He was after all the descendant of Charlemagne who once controlled both France and Lombardy. The pope then chose to raise the stakes at the wrong time. He requested that Napoleon leave Ancona, help pay for the expenses of the French occupation that the Holy See was incurring, and negotiate on the issue of the Papal Legations. But the emperor had taken Venice and was now moving toward controlling Naples, driving out the Bourbons there who had been allies with the Third Coalition against him. Clearly he wanted to control all of Italy, and he insisted that the pope obey his demands if he were to remain independent. Napoleon warned, “The condition must be that your Holiness has the same respect for me in the temporal sphere that I have for him in the spiritual, and that he abandon useless intrigues with the heretical enemies of the Church and with powers which can

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do him no good. . . . Most Holy Father, I know your Holiness means well, but he is surrounded by men who do not.” By such men, he meant the papal secretary of state, Consalvi.7 But the pope insisted on neutrality, citing the number of loyal Catholics living in other lands whose monarchs opposed France. To pacify Napoleon, Consalvi, though, ended up offering his resignation. But Napoleon insisted on closing the pope’s ports and expelling unfriendly nationals living in Rome. He seemed indomitable in 1806. In response, the pope insisted that while he was treated very badly by Napoleon, he still was “greatly attached to him and to the French nation.” The papacy intended to be free of foreign wars, and the pope now considered excommunicating Napoleon. A nominal Catholic monarch with millions of Catholic subjects, especially in his armed forces did not need that problem. Indeed he concluded at one point that his associates should treat the pope as if he “had an army of 200,000 men.” Still Napoleon moved into the eastern provinces of the Papal States in 1807 and 1808, and the pope’s response was: “You may tell them at Paris that they may hack me in pieces, that they may skin me alive, but always I shall say NO to any suggestion that I should adhere to a system of confederation.”8 Still the pope feared that continued French rule over Rome and Italy would surely endanger Catholicism and the interests of the Church. By spring 1809, Napoleon controlled all of Italy except for Rome and the area surrounding the city. His relatives were scattered in high places all over the peninsula. Gradually the French moved to control the city militarily, but the pope remained extremely powerful. Without Consalvi, the pope even became his own secretary of state. Napoleon finally announced that Rome was “a free imperial city,” and that the pope would be granted an income of two million francs to cover his expenses as head of the Church. After some hesitation, the pope excommunicated Napoleon. Caught off-guard by the action, the emperor denounced the pope as a dangerous madman and ordered the arrest of his advisors. Napoleon did not order the abduction of the pope from Rome, but in the city of Rome French officials understood differently and proceeded with Pius’s arrest. With some timidity, the French forces did battle outside the Quirinal Palace, and finally confronted a calm pope who simply observed that the orders would not bring “divine blessings upon you.” Thus he was to begin to suffer the abuses and illnesses that had been visited on his predecessor.9 Napoleon himself was startled that the pope was arrested without his direct order. Along the way to Nice, demonstrations for the pope grew louder, as he finally ended up in the small town of Savona. Despite constant surveillance, the pope became stronger physically, but Napoleon remained supreme. Soon he divorced Josephine who was unable to give him an heir, and he married the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria. Napoleon made sure that he was granted a degree of nullification of his hasty marriage to Josephine by compliant French churchmen, but most cardinals staying in Paris refused to attend the wedding

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ceremony at which Napoleon was present, but his bride was not. An angry Napoleon saw this absence as a denial of the legitimacy of his royal dynasty. Consequently the cardinals were stripped of their ceremonial vestments and later labeled derisively “black” cardinals. Without his advisors, the pope refused to carry on the normal business of the Church, and most importantly bishoprics were left vacant, especially in France. The pope did conclude that if he could return to Rome and communicate with his Church, he would not insist upon continuing to be the ruler of the Papal States. Meanwhile, he was being cast as a martyr throughout many of the anti-Napoleonic circles in Europe. Napoleon tightened the noose even more by refusing to allow the pope to give his blessings from a simple balcony in Savona, or even controlling his own menu. Yet the pope would not succumb. In 1811, Napoleon decided to call an international council of French and Italian bishops to be held in Paris in order to deal with the pope’s refusal to invest bishops. Like any long-term captives, detention took a toll on Pius’s mental capabilities. Also his physical health began to deteriorate, and he probably suffered a nervous breakdown. Under those conditions, Pius agreed to sign a document that would invest the bishops already nominated by Napoleon, and would in the future allow the metropolitans to invest any who might still await investiture six months after they had been nominated. This concession was supposed to lead to a general settlement of the outstanding issues and free the pope. But the next day, Pius changed his attitude, saying that he had been out of his mind to agree to those terms. They were only general principles anyhow, Pius noted. Napoleon’s response was: “So much for papal infallibility.”10 In June 1811, Napoleon’s rump council of bishops met in Paris, and the emperor indicated that he had Pius’s agreement to a settlement. However, many of the French bishops appeared reserved and skeptical at first. To add to that impasse, instead of announcing a settlement, Napoleon unwisely continued to attack the pope as having shown “nothing but indifference for the true interests of religion.” He argued to the bishops that just as their predecessors had repelled the overreaching ambitions of Popes Gregory VII and Boniface VIII, so they should indicate to Pius VII that he did not have their support to commit these “abuses of the spiritual power,” he insisted. But Napoleon’s efforts came to naught, and he angrily ended the very Council that he himself had established. He insisted, however, on imprisoning the leading bishops who had opposed him. Then he called the council back into session, demanding again that the bishops support his policies. Still the council insisted that the pope had first to approve of their steps. Finally Napoleon sent another delegation to meet with the pope in September 1811, hoping to reach a settlement. This time, Pius responded with a written brief to the bishops in which he remarkably agreed to the metropolitans being allowed to invest bishops if the pope failed to do so after six months of their nomination. It seemed to all but Napoleon that a major breakthrough had occurred. He insisted now that he was offended that the pope had referred to Rome as “mother and mistress of the

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Church” and had not indicated that his concession applied to the bishoprics of the Papal States.11 Napoleon saw a weakness and an opportunity, and so characteristically he pushed harder. Then he lost the settlement and later in the process lost important Catholic support; eventually he lost a throne and an empire. The French emperor angrily moved to end the concordat that he had insisted on previously and suspended the powers of the papacy throughout his realm. While he was busy trying to find ways to make Pius’s stay even more uncomfortable, Napoleon committed the major mistake of his career—he decided to invade czarist Russia. Also fearing that the British might dramatically land and rescue Pius, he ordered the pope moved to Fontainebleau. By then the pope was rather ill and the journey became agonizing for him. Constantly in pain, he finally refused to continue. But Napoleon insisted, and a resigned Pius asked only God’s pardon for the emperor. Meanwhile while Pius was recovering from his various illnesses, the Russian continent began absorbing Napoleon and his forces, as they sank into serious trouble, especially due to inclement weather, and the fact that Catholic Poles refused to join Napoleon’s forces. Even the Russian Orthodox priests tauntingly referred to Napoleon as “the excommunicate,” and the French troops as “heretics.” While they hated Rome, they hated Napoleon even more. In December Napoleon left Russia in defeat, and he realized he had to neutralize Catholic opposition in Europe, and so he went himself to Fontainebleau. First he wrote courteously to Pius expressing concerns over rumors of his illnesses! Then he extended his wishes that Pius would have “the glory of reestablishing the government of the Church.” Later, he went to meet for six days with the man he had tried to destroy, and at times ended up even abusing the pontiff physically. At other times, Napoleon employed flattery and the gentle arts of persuasion. The papacy should be moved to Paris, he argued, and Catholic sovereigns, including Napoleon, should be able to appoint two-thirds of the cardinals from their nation. Pius’s advisors were condemned, and Napoleon left the pope exhausted and emaciated. The pope finally signed an agreement with the emperor, but later was upset when it was made public. Pius wrote to Napoleon denouncing his deceptions, but admitting his own faults. 12 The emperor, however, had even greater problems, as Austria under Chancellor Metternich put together an alliance with Russia, Prussia, and England against the French empire and its satellites. At the Battle of Nations, the once invincible general lost the campaign and moved back across the Rhine. In Spain, French troops were ignominiously defeated. In December 1813, the invasion of France began. Even Murat, the king of Naples appointed by Napoleon, turned against him and joined Metternich, and the French forces were soon driven from the city of Rome by the Neapolitan forces. Now Napoleon thought the pope must return to Rome to stabilize the situation. After his withdrawal from Russia, Napoleon’s enemies had to decide how to deal with a crippled, but still powerful French regime. Czar Alexander simply wanted to dethrone him and conclude a peace treaty that would satisfy the czar’s

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animosities over the destruction of Moscow. The French throne was to be given to a former French marshal and the then prince of Sweden, Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte. Metternich, on the other hand, wanted to keep Napoleon or his young son on the throne, but constrict the borders of France. The Prussian leaders were divided as to how to deal with the issue. And the British government took a hard line, but maintained that the French had to leave Belgium. They insisted that Napoleon must be relieved of his throne and favored restoration of the weakened Bourbon clan. In November 1813, Metternich approached Napoleon with a proposal that would allow him to remain as emperor, but would push France’s borders back to the Rhine. Napoleon rejected any such settlement and continued to fight on, but opposition grew both in his army and in the French nation. The allies supported a return of the Bourbons. The moderate Louis XVIII, the new king, would accept a constitution that embraced parliamentary government, the Napoleonic code of law, the previous settlement with the Church, and the end of remnants of feudalism that had characterized that nation before the Revolution. Pius decided not to negotiate at all with Napoleon. Fearing the advance of the allies across the Rhine, the emperor ordered the pope out of Fontainebleau and on to Savona. Soon Czar Nicholas and King Frederick William of Prussia entered Paris in triumph, and even Napoleon’s loyal troop commanders began surrendering all over France. The pope was again moved, but finally near Parma he fell into Austrian hands. The pope was now a free man. On May 24, 1814, to the sounds of extraordinary excitement and joy, Pius VII, Vicar of Christ, bishop of Rome, Patriarch of the West, returned to the Eternal City. The pope arrived at the Quirinal Palace and observed that it had been kept up well by the French. He sarcastically remarked that perhaps some of the statues of the goddesses that were not too indecent could be transformed into Madonnas.

The Liberties of Europe Throughout Europe the conservative forces, including some from separate territories that no longer existed in the Holy Roman Empire, tried to piece together the past and met in September 1814 at the Congress of Vienna to restore the “liberties of Europe.” There the Austrians were claiming the Legations of Bologna, Ravenna, and Ferrara, while Murat was pushing for concessions to pay for his treachery against Napoleon. But the allies wanted instead to restore Bourbon King Ferdinand of Naples, rather than put up with Napoleon’s ally and turncoat. Then in February 1815, Napoleon emerged from Elba and began his hundred days’ campaign through France. He was again defeated, this time at Waterloo, and sentenced to far-off St. Helena. The conservative statesmen seeking to restore order in central Italy finally agreed with Cardinal Consalvi, who was at the Congress of Vienna, that the Papal States, including the Legations should be

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restored to the pope. The pontiff clearly had won the admiration of the political conservatives because of his heroic resistance. Pius repeatedly tried to intervene to help Napoleon’s family and pleaded for the emperor. He would cite concerns about Napoleon’s health, and at one point he called him Christian and heroic in signing the concordat, which Napoleon ironically tore up. The pope asked that the suffering Napoleon not become “a cause for remorse.” As for the deposed emperor in exile, he concluded of his attempt to control the pope, “If I had succeeded in this, what a lever to world power it would have been! I would have had the spiritual world in my hands as well as the political . . . . The control of the spiritual power was the object of all my thoughts and desires. Without it, one cannot rule.” 13 The anti-Napoleonic coalition dictated the peace and helped to impose a new Bourbon king, Louis XVIII, on the French throne. Following the peace treaty, the four great powers, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain, met in the Congress of Vienna to create a new international system that would guarantee for future generations a peace that would enshrine the values of the older conservatives. Talleyrand, sly fox that he was, represented the new royal government, but France was not considered at first a true party to be reckoned with. The four major allies soon split into two factions, Great Britain and Russia versus Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The French thus became increasingly a part of any new discussion of a balance of power in the proposed international system.14 Also at the Congress was the astute and capable papal secretary of state, Ercole Consalvi. He came to Vienna with no real assets, but left with a very accomplished list of concessions that favored the Holy See. Part of the change in attitudes was due to the high regard the anti-Napoleonic group had for a pope who had been a principled martyr to the French emperor’s whims. Pius drew their respect and their admiration. In addition, the British and the Austrians did not want to see the final destruction of the Papal States, for it would mean a unified government across the entire Italian peninsula. In these situations, Consalvi was very adept at seeking and getting the support of Protestant England. The participants in the Congress of Vienna included some of the most fabled diplomats of that century: Castlereagh of Great Britain, Metternich of the Habsburg Empire, Nesselrode representing czarist Russia, Hardenberg of Prussia, and the ever-present Talleyrand. It was said that Consalvi, an observer, was in many ways the most accomplished representative at the Congress. Consalvi’s critical task was to seek the restoration of the Papal States and its possessions. But the Treaty of Paris had actually codified Louis XVIII’s possession of Avignon and left the Vatican art treasures in the Louvre in order to show public support for the restoration of the Bourbons in France. Consalvi insisted that Clement V had paid cash for Avignon in 1309 and Comtat Venaissin which had belonged to the papacy since 1228. But his arguments did not prevail. Consalvi followed the group to London and was also prepared to negotiate the status of Catholics in both Britain and Ireland. In his dealings, he occupied

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himself with reorganizing the Church in France and reinstituting the provisions of the concordat signed by Napoleon. But back in Rome he had problems with the conservative zelanti in the Curia and with some of the Irish leaders. Daniel O’Connell, for example, attacked the “secular cardinal” who had bartered the Catholic religion to the British, he claimed. Consalvi had numerous problems with Talleyrand as well, and astutely used Metternich to check the duplicitous Frenchman. For his own purposes Metternich had decided that Murat should be removed as King of Naples, which the Holy See approved. When Napoleon escaped from the island of Elba and marched on Paris once again, Consalvi reaped the benefits of his audacity. Conservative attitudes toward France grew increasingly rigid, and there was suddenly serious talk of restoring the looted art treasures after all. As for Murat, who at times supported Napoleon’s exotic ventures, he marched on Rome in support and forced the pope to retreat to Genoa. When Napoleon was defeated once again, Consalvi’s hand was strengthened. The new proposed agreement restored the Marches, Camerino, Benevento, and Pontecorvo, and the Legations of Bologna, Ravenna, and Ferrara to the Holy See. The pope also had to allow Austrian troops the right of passage from Naples through the Papal States. Consalvi agreed that Talleyrand should get some compensation for his loss since he was nominally the prince of Benevento, and Consalvi wisely ignored pressing the papal claims to Parma and Piacenza. The diplomat also committed the papacy to fighting the evils of slavery—an important cause then in British politics. Consalvi refused finally to sign the final treaty because of the loss of Avignon; he would also have increasing problems back in Rome with Curial conservatives. When he reached Rome in June 1815 after five years absence, he was wellreceived at first, and the pope put him in charge of administering the Papal States. Consalvi quickly moved to abolish torture and end the Jewish ghetto restrictions, weaken the Inquisition, keep the Jesuits in check, and try to get more civilian representations for the new governments of the Papal States. Weary from his troubles, Pius became more preoccupied with spiritual matters, leaving temporal ones to Consalvi. The secretary of state ended civil disturbances, and took steps that could be brutally effective at times. He also tried to re-establish the financial base of the weakened Papal States. Later Pius devoted himself with some gusto to the physical improvement of Rome, thus increasing both the city’s prestige and that of his beloved papacy. One major contribution he made was the current Piazza del’Popolo and the adjoining public park. Still Pius insisted on opposing both Consalvi and Metternich, and approved re-establishing repressive controls on the Jews; in 1814 he resurrected the Index of Forbidden Books and the Inquisition. He even supported the baptism of Jewish children done by Christians against their parents’ will and/or knowledge. During Pius’s last years, Consalvi insisted that the Holy See keep its commitments to the concordat system begun under Napoleon. In the summer of 1823, Pius died, and Consalvi became less of a major figure in the Holy See. The novelist Stendahl

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called him “the greatest statesman in Europe, because [he was] the only honest one.”15

The Reactionary Popes Just as the major political powers in Europe sought to restore the old order and give aid and comfort to the privileged classes, so too the forces of reaction in the Church took over greater control of the papacy. Pius had delegated to Consalvi considerable powers, especially in the later years of his reign, to negotiate with Napoleon, then with his enemies, and finally to change the Papal States into more modern organizations. In part Consalvi recognized the need to accentuate lay control there and adopt more up-to-date methods of operations in the Papal States in order to solidify European enlightened government support. But the cardinal had to fight the conservative zelanti in the Curia, and at last he lost his patron. Pius VII had continued to work to alleviate Napoleon’s sufferings while he was in exile at St. Helena, and the pope prayed for the emperor’s soul. In the following decades the papacy would represent the most reactionary of sentiments, at times almost to the point of ridiculousness. Pius VII’s successor was Annibale della Genga who became Leo XII (1823–1829). Leo had been an ambassador to Lucerne, titular archbishop of Tyre, and nuncio to Cologne and Bavaria. He himself had been under house arrest during Pius VII’s imprisonment, at an abbey where the cardinal taught peasants to sing plain chants. Della Genga was not a favorite of Consalvi, and was criticized for his inability to negotiate the return of Avignon to papal control after the demise of Napoleon. But Pius appointed him cardinal, and he was later made vicar of Rome. At the conclave in 1823, the Austrians used their veto to prevent Antonio Gabriele Cardinal Severoli, the conservative leader of the zelanti, from being confirmed. Severoli’s votes were quickly transferred to della Ganga, who at first refused, citing health problems. His reign began immediately, though, with a series of steps that reassured the zelanti and troubled the progressive elements both in the Church and in the secular world. He confined the Jews to the city’s ghetto, reinstituted forced sermons to them, supported the Index of Forbidden Books, increased scrutiny of theology professors, restored the feudal aristocracy, ended growing lay participation in the Papal States, advocated press censorship and capital punishment, and supported secret societies that hunted suspected heretics. He also banned alcohol, nude statues, and the waltz. Leo’s policies not only created disturbances in the Papal States, which were used to a more relaxed administration under Consalvi, but troubled European leaders as well, who thought that stability in that region required more toleration and moderation. The Papal States in many ways were rather well run, but they became known now as backward entities governed by reactionary clerics.

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The pope turned his scrutiny to purging the Curia of its inefficiencies and attacked the forces of “indifferentism” and Protestantism. The pope did turn to Consalvi at times for advice and made him the prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Leo also returned to the aggressive use of concordats to support the interests of the Church, and the Holy See pushed for the emancipation of Catholics in the British Isles, which finally succeeded in 1829. 16 Leo’s reactionary papacy was followed by the more moderate one-year reign of Pius VIII (1829–1830). Francesco Saverio Castiglioni had been bishop of Cesena, had been imprisoned from 1808 to 1814 for refusing to swear allegiance to the Napoleonic regime in Italy, and later was called to Rome. Although he had a reputation for being a moderate, his first and only encyclical, Traditi humiliati nostrae, attacked Protestant biblical societies, indifferentism, deviation from Catholic dogma on marriage, and the existence of secret societies for the woes of the world. He later cited Freemasonry especially for the declining moral standards of the young, and he insisted that the Jews stay in the ghettoes. However, he did reject some of Leo XII’s repressive policies in the Papal States, and eased up on restrictions concerning mixed marriages in Prussia. The pope opposed emancipation in Belgium, Ireland, and Poland in 1830 and had serious reservations about recognizing the regime of Louis-Philippe in France, who had deposed King Charles X in the July revolution. He also approved the decisions of the First Council of Baltimore in 1829, which represented a major maturation in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States of America.17 In November 1830, Pius VIII died and was followed by Gregory XVI (Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari), a monk of the rigorous Benedictine community called the Camaldolese. His papacy from 1832 to 1846 represents one of the low points in the reactionary papacy of the nineteenth century. Cappellari (or Dom Mauro) had been a teacher of theology and philosophy and was later named abbot of the monastery of San Gregorio on the Coelian hill in Rome, and promoted to procurator general of his order. Leo XII made him a cardinal and later prefect of the Congregation of Propagation of the Faith. He was involved in papal diplomacy, arranging concordats with Belgium and the Ottoman Empire. When the Spanish government vetoed the choice of Cardinal Giustiniani as pope, the conclave turned to Cappellari. The Papal States were in open rebellion, and the Austrians sent in troops twice to quell the opposition. On May 21, the great powers—Austria, Russia, France, Prussia, and England—met in Rome and issued a joint memorandum, insisting on major reforms in order to maintain tranquility in the Papal States. Reforms included changes in the judiciary, the reformulations of representation, lay participation in government, and some oversight of finances. The pope agreed to make some changes, but refused to allow popular elections of the Councils and the establishment of the Council of State with lay people on it. It was not exactly a reform agenda that prevailed. When the Austrians had to march into the Papal States a second time, the French intervened also and seized Ancona, leaving it only in 1838 when the Austrians finally departed from the Papal States. The pope continued his record

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as an opponent of reform by condemning the views of the French priest Félicité Robert de Lamennais and the “L’Avenir” movement. In his encyclical, Mirari vos, he denounced concepts of freedom of conscience, freedom of the press and separation of church and state, and in general condemned a host of new social dogmas thus disassociating the papacy from modern, liberal and progressive views. In 1844 he attacked anti-Catholic freethinkers. And he continued to oppose “shameless science,” secular rule, and democracy in general. Meanwhile in Spain the regent queen, Maria Cristina, began an anti-clerical campaign against religious orders and the clergy in general, and drove the bishops from their sees. The Church was put in control of the Jansenists. In Poland the Catholics allied with Rome were persecuted and 160 priests were deported to Siberia. In France the Catholic revival was proving to be more successful than most anticipated, and in response attacks began on the Jesuits once again. This time, though, the Holy See did not bend, but the general of the society did diminish the presence of the order in that country. The pope refused to support an end to anti-Semitism, saying the times were not opportune, and despite pressure from Metternich and the Rothschild family, he insisted that the “sacred canons” mandated prohibitions on the Jews. At the end of his reign, Gregory was faced with more upheavals in Romagna and Umbria and in Rimini, The Papal States seemed once again in revolt. Although he was by training an intellectual, his regime was known for its antipathy to new ideas, and he added to that reputation by even denouncing railroads as “roads of hell.”18 Such gratuitous observations seem a bit humorous today, but they reflect where the papacy was in mid-century. Those problems were compounded by the compelling events taking place in the external secular world and where they were leading. In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, one of the great quantum leaps of humankind took place—the beginning of industrialization. Replacing sweat and intense human labor, machines now began to transform the nature of work, time, and supervision. Industrialization also changed the nature of communities, the methods of communication and distribution, and the very worth of individuals in society. Economic exploitation affected the cycles of childhood, broke down some gender barriers, and also undergirded the establishment of urban areas as we know them today. The Catholic Church, embedded in medieval notions of value and work, could not deal with those dangers in a compelling way. Not until the next Leo, Leo XIII, would an accomplished papal statement come which dealt with the problems of industrialization, capitalism, and its reaction—socialism and communism. Intellectual changes that took place at this time were also profound—the rise of “isms,” of new ideologies. The most important was nationalism—the powerful feeling of cohesion to nation-states. There was also liberalism with its emphasis on rational public action, individual expression, and civil liberties. Capitalism and its allied philosophy, laissez-faire, formulated the protection of the private control of the means of production and distribution. Socialism, and its vigorous ally communism, emphasized instead public control over production

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and distribution, and it proposed a utopia of harmony and beneficial cooperation. Conservatism, best epitomized by Edmund Burke’s critique of the radical French Revolution, emphasized tradition, custom, and precedent. All of these isms were attempts to explain or transform the public order, and none of them made much reference to religious vocabularies of the past. Increasingly Christianity was becoming irrelevant in these public debates. It was industrialization and its abuses that led to reiterations of the social gospel, in some nations it became the only real alternative to radical socialism; in other states, religion, including Catholicism, became linked up with the powerful impulses of nationalism. Overall, the roots of Catholicism in that era were conservative, antidemocratic, internationalistic, and traditional, but the death of Gregory led the conclave to elect a progressive, Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti. Metternich glumly responded that he had planned for every alternative but a liberal pope, and a liberal pope is what Pius IX was supposed to be. Even the pope’s cat was a liberal, Metternich sarcastically remarked! But soon the pope would be driven out of Rome, his minister murdered, and the Papal States left in upheaval. The Catholic Church and the papacy had survived the French Revolution and even Napoleon’s evil designs. Now was it to be threatened even more by lasting social and economic forces?

Notes 1. For a discussion of his attitudes toward religion see Vincent Cronin, Napoleon Bonaparte: An Intimate Biography (New York: William Morrow, 1972), chap. 14; also George Rudé, Revolutionary Europe 1783–1815 (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). 2. E. E. Y. Hales, The Emperor and the Pope: The Story of Napoleon and Pius VIII (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 19. 3. Richard McBrien, Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1997), 331. 4. Frank J. Coppa, ed., Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1999); on the Organic Articles, see John McManners, Church and State in France (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 4; Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), vol. 10, 754. 5. Hales, Emperor and Pope, 69; Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, The Modern Regime (1890; reprint, New York: Peter Smith, 1931), vol. 1, chap. 1. 6. Hales, Emperor and Pope, 85. 7. Hales, Emperor and Pope, 95–96; E. E. Y. Hales, Revolution and Papacy, 1769–1846 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960), chap. 12; John Martin Robertson, Cardinal Consalvi 1757–1824 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987). 8. Hales, Emperor and Pope, 99–104. 9. Hales, Emperor and Pope, 114–20.

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10. Hales, Revolution and Papacy, 12–14; Cronin, Napoleon, 222. 11. Hales, Emperor and Pope, 161–73. 12. Hales, Emperor and Pope, 179–85. 13. Hales, Emperor and Pope, 207; Frederich Nippold, The Papacy in the 19th Century (New York: G. P Putnam’s Sons, 1900), 23–28; Robertson, Cardinal Conslavi, passim. 14. Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Meternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–1822 (New York: Grossett & Dunlop, 1964); Harry Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Union, 1812–1822 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946). 15. Robertson, Consalvi, 101–17; Nippold, The Papacy in the 19th Century, passim; David I. Kertzer, The Popes Against the Jews (New York: Knopf, 2001), 33–47. 16. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 333–35; Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), vol. 9; Kertzer, Popes Against Jews, 67–103. 17. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 335–36; Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 12; Kertzer, Popes Against Jews, 71–82. 18. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 336–39; Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7; Norman Ravitch, The Catholic Church and the French Nation, 1589–1989 (London: Routledge, 1996), chap. 3; J. B. Bury, History of the Papcy in the 19th Century: Liberty and Authority in the Roman Catholic Church (New York: Schocken, 1964).

Chapter 18

Pius IX: The First Modern Pope The Catholic faithful like to believe that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit guides the secret deliberations of the conclave that elects a pope. Skeptics brush away that reassurance as romantic nonsense. But in the conclave of 1846, it must have seemed rather remarkable that a College of Cardinals, appointed mainly by rigidly conservative popes, would reject the reactionary candidates and choose one of its more liberal members to succeed to the chair of Saint Peter. The recently deceased pontiff, Gregory XVI, had reigned for about sixteen years (1831– 1846). The Italian historian Adolfo Omodeo wrote, “reactionary, stubborn, and inert, opposed to every sort of innovation, even to the building of railroads, Gregory XVI died after sixteen years of bad government, leaving a difficult heritage to his successor.”1 In his time, Gregory XVI had established himself as a close political ally of the brilliant diplomat Klems von Metternich, Chancellor of the Habsburg Empire. Metternich sought to establish a conservative balance of power in Europe, restore the stability of the old order, and chase away the nightmares of the Napoleonic reign. In the process, he guaranteed the continuation of the temporal rule of the popes over the Papal States, which after 1815 included the Patrimony of Saint Peter’s (most especially Rome and its environs), the Marches, the Umbria Region, and Romagna (or the Legations). Historically, the Catholic Church in the eighth century had taken over control of the central part of Italy after the Byzantine rulers left the West, and the popes were compelled to look to the French princes for protection against the invading Lombards in the North. At the height of its temporal power in the thirteenth century, the papacy controlled most of the peninsula, including at times even Naples and Sicily. And later in the sixteenth century, the papacy was occupied by warriors, diplomats, and builders who helped restore Rome and further extended the papal sway. But as the glory increased, so did the taxes and the administrative problems, and by the time of Gregory XVI, the Papal States were seen as clerical monopolies riddled with corruption, nepotism, and unenlightened leadership. Gregory, in turn, proved to be a faithful ally of Metternich and consequently denounced any evidence of democracy in France, Germany, and Italy. But as he left to meet his Maker for whom he so labored, his position was 275

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taken by a man with a different background, one who was thought to have a very different orientation toward the world.

The “Liberal” Pope Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti came from a mildly liberal home with parents from the lower nobility, who were termed “enlightened” within the context of those times. As a boy, he had suffered an epileptic seizure, but later seemed cured. After being educated by the Jesuits, Mastai-Ferretti was ordained and became deeply involved in pastoral activities, and worked for an orphanage. He then went to Latin America as an auditor, and became personally committed to missionary work. After he returned to Rome, he headed up a hospice, later was chosen Archbishop of Spoleto, and finally was appointed to the more important bishopric in the diocese of Imola. One critical historian, E. L. Woodward, bitterly concluded that while at Imola he lived an easy, pleasant life and gained a reputation as an eloquent, emotional preacher after the fashion of the sugar-sweet practices of modern Italian devotion. The doctrinal liberalism of his neighbor, Count Pasolini, suited the bishop’s sentimental, shallow nature, while the spectacle of the misgovernment of the Papal States confirmed his political views. His liberalism had no real aim, no intellectual foundation; it was as much a reaction of the senses as his later conservatism. His weak goodness of heart was joined to a curious vanity, a vanity which always claimed for itself a knowledge of a higher kind that was open to his fellows; as pope he ‘felt’ his own infallibility. He was never cynical because he never saw the consequences of his acts, just as he never seemed to regret his friends or servants after they were dead. He was always greedy for adulation; his emotional nature needed excitement, and this excitement was gained most easily under the stimulus of applause from the crowd.2 At first, the opinion of the time was much more positive from those who knew him best. Later during his reign as pope, it would change drastically. At the diocesan level, he proved overall to be a well regarded Church leader, and in 1840 was named a cardinal, although the pope himself probably talked to him about his criticisms of the administration of the Papal States. He was elected at a two-day conclave in 1846, in part because he was seen as a moderate progressive, especially when compared to the leading alternative, powerful reactionary cardinal, Luigi Lambruschini. Metternich lamented, “We have foreseen everything except a liberal pope.” The Master of Balliol in Oxford, however, called him “a capital fellow,” while more conservative Englishmen called him “a radical pope,” and “a pontifical Robespierre.”3

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Taking the name of Pius IX (Pio Nono, as he was called), the new pope seemed at first to live up to his liberal reputation. He signed an amnesty decree that released a thousand captives held in the Papal States, and allowed hundreds of exiles to return home. The decree was placarded on the walls of Rome on July 17, and it marked a new beginning. Metternich observed in disgust that such an amnesty was a change of principles, and he counseled, “God never grants amnesty, God pardons.”4 Previously, the Papal States had been run by an oftentimes harsh group of ecclesiastics and their sympathizers. More importantly, those areas were seen as battlegrounds in the political hostilities between France and Austria, which had dated back to the medieval rivalry of the Habsburgs and the Valois in Italy.5 Now, the creation and the maintenance of the Papal States became a European issue, and it invited outside intervention. Some leaders of the revolutionary movements had designs on creating a unified Italy, and those attentions were accentuated by the beginning of a fervent nationalist consciousness called the Italian “Risorgimento,” under the dedicated and fiery leadership of Giuseppe Mazzini, which sought to bring all of the peninsula under one government. Pius IX had not learned a basic fact of political life—that liberalization generates greater discontent than it pacifies. It makes the unhappy more disenchanted, it recharges their negative enthusiasms, and reinforces their agitations. Moderate reform is more often killed by the extremes of liberalism than by the lumbering weight of conservative or reactionary sentiment. That is why the ways of reform are perilous and the careers of reformers short. But Pius IX surely saw that the reactions to the legacy of Gregory XVI had not made matters better—if anything, that form of repression had run its course. And so, Pio Nono began his turn at moderate change . . . at first. He appointed Tommas Pasquale Cardinal Gizzi as secretary of state, and followed up with a commission on railroads— striking a very different pose from Gregory. The pope received plans for establishing gas lighting in the streets, creating a gas distillery, and supporting an agricultural institute. He enjoyed promoting scientific congresses in the Papal States, and was genuinely interested in school and prison reforms. By the end of the year, he had introduced tariff reform and established commercial ties with other Italian states, excused Jews from the onerous obligation of having to listen to weekly Christian sermons, reformed the criminal code and its courts, and supported the idea of guaranteeing the writ of habeas corpus. He even accepted a new law relaxing press censorship. It was an extraordinary performance by a pope. Conservative Catholics, especially those in the Roman Curia, believed that the pope’s spiritual power and autonomy were absolutely dependent on temporal control over a nation-state. Thus, the Papal States took on an importance that is now difficult for us to comprehend. The Papal States were in part a consequence of the long history of disunion that characterized Italy for centuries. That peninsula was a collection of independent republics, duchies and kingdoms that had resisted the centralizing monarchies that unified such disparate nations as Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Habsburg Empire, Sweden, and Czarist

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Russia, among others. Only Germany was as fragmented as Italy. The major components of what was Italy in 1846 were Piedmont with Sardinia and Savoy; Lombardo and Venetia; Parma; Tuscany; Modena; Lucca; San Marino; the Kingdom of the two Sicilies (the Naples region and Sicily); and in the geographic middle, the Papal States.6 Clearly, the new pope was a decent and amiable man, one who seemed to be a liberal at heart—but so did his predecessor, Gregory, who initially had come into office as a tolerant scholar and monk. The nature of the Papal States, however, required that the popes and their diplomats protect their temporal possessions, which were seen as essential to the integrity of the Church. The sovereignty over the Papal States was an outgrowth of the pope’s spiritual primacy, even though he was also concerned with the policies of governments all over the world, especially in the areas of education, marriage regulations, and compulsory military service.

The Perils of Reform Ironically, the papacy and its enemies shared the same view about the necessary ties between politics and religion. Nearly a half century after the French Revolution, the Italian nationalist, Giuseppe Mazzini, would still view politics as a continuance of religious concerns. And Napoleon III, Camillo Cavour, and Otto von Bismarck may all have talked about the separation of church and state, but in fact they meant the subordination of the former to the latter. They even continued to flirt with control over clerical appointments and church pronouncements, closing convents, or even launching in 1871 a major attack upon the Catholic Church in Germany called the Kulturkampf. Thus, it is not that the popes had an obsolete view of the desirability of the union of church and state, which was a mistaken retread of the glory of the past. The pontiffs understood all too well that many of the major secular states and their leaders also preferred dominance in the relationship, and they could not agree to that. In those battles to preserve the assets of the Church, the papacy was rather flexible in furthering its objectives. As Pio Nono said, he was indifferent to “the forms of government.” At times the papacy supported conservatives, but in France for example, the Holy See embraced the so-called Ultramontanists, who were anti-Gallican. The Ultramontanists (believing that the power of the papacy extended beyond the mountains past Northern Europe to Rome, thus the name) were generally liberal and opposed the Gallican, or nationalist, French church leaders who in turn supported the conservative authorities.7 Support for the Papal States was a part of a larger strategy which had religious as well as political implications. Criticisms of papal administration, however, had intensified over the years, even from the new pope, Pius IX, when he was bishop. Between the death of Pius VII in 1823 and the election of Pius IX in 1846, there were three other pontiffs: all of those men were preoccupied with the

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problems of papal restoration and the increasing difficulties in administering the Papal States. As noted, in 1831 the great powers of Europe formally asked the papacy to begin to liberalize some of its restraints in the States.8 In choosing the role he was to play, Pius IX was influenced, it was said, by the tome of Abbe Vincenzo Gioberti titled Primacy or Il primate morale e civile degli Italiani. That priest from Turin saw the papacy as the center of what would be a new unified Italy, which would govern with the rulers of the Piedmontese monarchy. Under the presidency of the pope, the new state would embrace a federation of “consultative monarchies.” In the end, the Risorgimento moved to accept that king, but abandoned the papacy as the nationalists embraced the revolutionary calls for unification, pushed by Mazzini, Cavour, and Giuseppe Garibaldi—the agitator, the diplomat, and the general, who finally created the new state.9 As noted, in the beginning, the pope was viewed as a liberal. In April, one witness saw a colorful procession with the approving citizens in Rome chanting viva pio, just one expression of his great popular support. The conservative statesmen were clearly uncomfortable with him, especially in Austria—a nation that had proven such a loyal son in protecting the papacy and its temporal claims over the years. One of the major reforms announced in the Papal States was the introduction of some laymen into positions of authority. Obviously, the clergy were by their very nature and training more literate, and more worldly than many of the laypeople, but there was increasingly a sentiment—especially among the Roman populace—that their problems would be dealt with more effectively if the role of the churchmen was limited. In June 1847, the pope in response formed a Council of Ministers, but made no mention of a lay ministers of state, which some had hoped for. However, in April 1847, he had invited lay representatives from the provinces to meet with him and to discuss the formation of a Consultative Assembly at Rome. The announcement was greeted with great enthusiasm in the streets of the city. Much later, on October 14, the pope finally announced the formation of a council of twenty-four individuals to be elected indirectly. Although it was as the name implies only consultative, the Assembly could bring matters to the attention of the Council of Ministers. In addition, the prohibitions on a free press were lessened, and a municipal government for Rome was established. The new Council of Ministers would have only one guaranteed position for a cleric—the cardinal secretary of state who would be responsible for foreign affairs. For all the other positions, lay people would be eligible to be ministers.10 The progress seemed remarkable, but what the populace did not realize was that in Pio Nono’s view, these were the limits of his reform agenda. And he was clear on that point. He insisted on retaining the final power in his hands, and on being the real head of the Papal States that he had inherited. Like many modern secular statesmen, he came to realize that the least traveled road is often the middle one—especially in explosive Italy in the late 1840s where the political universe was divided into two groups: committed reactionaries and revolution-

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ary liberals. Crowds that were marching and singing the pope’s praises initially were also demonstrating against the Bourbons, or the Austrians, or whomever. Some of those individuals simply wished to participate in the great liberal reforms that were sweeping across the English-speaking world, some were still at heart liberal followers of the first Napoleon; others like the Italian Carbonari or the Mazzinians, wished for genuine revolution and forcible union of the Italian states. The conservative prime minister Metternich continued to worry about the state of affairs in Italy, and on July 17, 1847, his forces moved into Romagna, Italy, without notifying his ally. The pope regarded that offensive as an insult and a hostile act directed both at him and at Italians in general. Then, rather remarkably, Pius appealed directly to the peoples of Europe against the outrage. When the Austrians would not yield, he threatened to break off diplomatic relations with them, to excommunicate Catholic Austrians, and to appeal to Italians to expel the invaders! Suddenly it was the pope—the “Patriot Pope”—who was being hailed throughout the peninsula. Mazzini, who was anti-clerical and anti-papacy, wrote from England an obsequious open letter to Pius. “There is no man I will say in Italy, but in Europe, more powerful than you. You have, therefore, Most Blessed Father, immense duties: God measures them in accordance with the means which he gives to his creatures . . . humanity cannot live without heaven. The social idea is none other than a consequence of the religious idea. We shall, therefore, have sooner or later, religion in heaven.” He then argued that the pope must believe in the nationalist cause and unify Italy in order to “achieve great, holy, and enduring things.” Later, when the pope did not obey his prescriptions, he would unleash his effective, vitriolic rhetoric on the pontiff. In the end Mazzini would be hailed as a liberator of Italy, while Pius would become a prisoner in the Vatican.11 But for a time, Pio Nono seemed to encourage many in the Italian nationalist movement. On December 16, 1847, the Austrians left, and the pope emerged in triumph. Metternich, observing the situation, wrote to his ambassador in Paris, “Each day the pope shows himself more lacking in any practical sense. Born and brought up in a liberal family, he has been formed in a bad school; a good priest, he has never turned his mind toward matters of government. Warm of heart and weak of intellect, he has allowed himself to be taken and ensnared, since assuming the tiara, in a net from which he no longer knows how to disengage himself, and if matters follow their natural course, he will be driven out of Rome.” As harsh as it seems, he was correct in his prophecy. Later Metternich was to say, “A liberal pope is not a possibility. A Gregory VII could become the master of the world, a Pius IX cannot become that. He can destroy, but he cannot build. What the pope has already destroyed by his liberalism is his own temporal power; what he is unable to destroy is his spiritual power; it is that power which will cancel the harm done by his worthless counselors. But to what dangerous conflicts have not these men exposed the man and the cause they wanted

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to serve.” Later, Metternich was to say in a similar vein that the realities in 1848 had lifted the many veils that people had hidden behind, and of Italy, “The veil is liberalism; it will disappear in Italy, as in every other country, before radicalism and action.”12 To Metternich and his fellow believers, political revolution would lead to social revolution which in turn would result in immense catastrophe for all involved. The pope came to accept the view that he could play a prominent role in a modest federation that could lead to a united Italy. In August 1847, he actually proposed a customs union similar to that in the German states. Major opposition to those initiations, however, came from King Charles Albert of Piedmont, who decided to wage a war against the Austrians, and thus unite at least northern Italy under his aegis. In early January 1848, revolution broke out in Sicily, and soon Naples followed suit, and the pope was being cited as a supporter of liberation. In February, he issued a statement proclaiming the papacy as a rock of stability during those tempestuous times, and the next month he came forth with a constitution for Rome. The document established what was in effect a limited monarchy under the pope, and protected the rights of the Church and its officials.13 In March, Metternich was toppled from power in Vienna, and later the population of Milan rose up and drove the Austrians out of their city. King Charles Albert declared war on March 24, and the papal army moved toward the northern frontier to defend the state against any Austrian counter invasion. Pio Nono, however, stopped any aid to the Piedmontese and insisted that his forces would not be involved in belligerent actions against the Austrians—a defensive policy traditionally held by many of his predecessors. He was the ecclesiastical head of a Church that embraced a variety of nationalities, and it was the position of the papacy that force could be used only for self-protection. Although he had been proclaimed a blossoming revolutionary, Pio Nono was quick to distance himself from the radical ideas of Mazzini’s adherents. He formally criticized the extremists in 1848, and dismissed any allegiance to what was becoming the Risorgimento. Consequently, he was seen not as a breath of fresh air, but as another reactionary pope. Now he had alienated the traditional protector of the papacy—Austria—and also disillusioned the liberals by refusing to go to war. Meanwhile, Charles Albert suffered defeat, and the dream of Piedmontese domination vanished, at least for the moment. To many it seemed that only the Mazzini radicals could deliver on the struggle for Italian unification. After several false starts, the pope chose Count Pellegrino Rossi as premier for his new government—a one-time radical who was determined, however, to protect the Papal States. He believed in the pope’s vision of a federal league with the pontiff as president. That policy ran headlong into the ambitions of the “Young Italy” partisans and Mazzini’s revolutionary objectives. As for the pope, only a year after his much celebrated ascendancy, he was himself disillusioned and also disillusioning to the nationalist elements who saw him at first as a beacon of secular reform, and also as an ally in their anti-Austrian foreign policy.

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As Rossi sought to wind his way through the thickets of ambition, nationalism, and personal hatreds, he approached the Chamber in Rome on November 15. Like Julius Caesar, he had been warned to stay away from the legislative body that day, and as he walked up the steps to the council chamber, he was murdered by Luigi Brunetti, the son of a Mazzini adherent. The rabble began to mingle with the carabinieri which led some to conclude that the beginnings of this revolt were carefully planned. Even the noble Garibaldi praised the act of treachery, comparing it to the assassination of Caesar by Marcus Brutus. 14 In the cause of revolution all can be forgiven. The radicals subsequently sought to call a gigantic demonstration the next morning, and then to demand that the Council declare war and establish also the separation of spiritual and temporal authority in the Papal States. But the pope stood in the way and instead quickly called the Chamber and the high Council together and named a new prime minister. Soon the crowd forced the Swiss guards to disband and installed the Civic Guard in the Quirinal. The pope became a prisoner of the radical elements in his own Papal States. The Bavarian ambassador, Charles Spaur, prepared to spirit Pio Nono away to Gaeta where a Spanish ship would take him to the Balearic Isles. Dressed in the garb of a simple priest and carrying the Sacred Host, the pope escaped through a secret passageway to a waiting carriage that traveled past the Lateran gate to a modest hotel in Gaeta, and then to a royal palace. There he remained, waiting for support from the Catholic monarchs and the Catholic populations in Europe.

The End of the Papal States Meanwhile in Rome, the nationalists voted to establish a republic and end the temporal power of the pope. On February 12, Mazzini, who was actually born in Genoa, was made a Roman citizen and his motto, “For the name of God and the people,” was promulgated. For a brief time, this revolutionary became one of the triumvirate chosen to rule the new state. Supporting the republic was the general of the armies, Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of the last of Europe’s truly romantic figures, who arrived mounted on a white horse and dressed in a tattered red shirt, the symbol of his fighting men. From November 24, 1848, when the pope took refuge in Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples, until April 12, 1850, when a French expeditionary force and European diplomacy prevailed against the revolution, the republic floundered. On February 18, 1849, the pope appealed directly to the Catholic regimes for assistance. The Spanish were ready, but Piedmont and Austria were opposed to Spanish intervention. Naples was also prepared to assist, as was Austria, but on its own terms. France, however under the duplicitous leadership of Bonaparte’s nephew, Louis Napoleon (later Napoleon III), was not initially supportive. The Catholic regimes were more concerned about each other having an advantage in

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Italian affairs than in restoring the pope to his temporal authority. As noted, Charles Albert had abruptly sent his Piedmontese army into battle against the Austrians, but on March 23 his forces were decisively defeated at Novara. Eventually he would abdicate in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel, who ironically would become an ally of the pope initially, and then the first king of a unified and secular Italy. But the consequence of Austria’s victory was that France now feared the former’s strength in Italy; thus the French government on April 20 dispatched a force of nine thousand men aimed at restoring the pope to power. The French troops, led by General Nicolas Oudinot, marched toward Civitavecchia and did battle with Garibaldi’s legions, and later prevailed when they introduced more forces into combat after a series of deadlocks. The republic however continued, and soon outrages were reported against the clergy, along with sacrilegious treatment of Catholic rites and rituals. It seemed to some as if it were the French Revolution all over again. Even the British Queen Victoria sent the pope a note of sympathy, and the English, who loved Garibaldi and allowed Mazzini sanctuary in their land, now praised the so-called liberal pope. But the telling issue was the genuine sympathy of the French Catholics, many of them leftists, who pressed for a restoration of the Papal States. Consequently, the French moved to occupy Rome, staying until 1870. In the process of exile, restoration, and beyond, the pope seemed to turn more to the Jesuits as the years passed. He manifested his allegiances by beatifying the Jesuit Peter Claver on July 16, 1850; John deBritto on May 18, 1852; Andrew Bobola on July 5, 1853; and Peter Canisius on August 2, 1864.15 By April 1850, the Italian Republic was routed, and the pope was restored to his see in Rome, and also to his throne as the virtual monarch of the troubled Papal States. The pope returned as he left—through the Lateran Gate at 4:00 P.M. on April 12, 1850. His main advisor was a cardinal who had stood by him through his turmoil—the shrewd and calculating Neapolitan peasant-layman Giacomo Antonelli, who became his trusted secretary of state. Eight months had elapsed between the collapse of Mazzini’s republic and the pope’s triumphal return, and in the interval the state was run by three cardinals and the French army. After some difficult decisions were made and some punishments meted out, the pope came in and carried out modest reforms. He created a Council of State, pushed for elected provincial and municipal councils, introduced more laymen into the administration, and allowed only a small army to be maintained. Eventually the pope’s ministers cut the public debt, pushed for railroad connections in the Italian peninsula, and held down taxes. 16 Still, some of the causes of the turmoil remained. In the late 1840s and beyond, Italy and other parts of Europe faced grain shortages and hunger, price gouging, hoarding and speculation. In addition, the pope’s difficulties were compounded by the beginning of a more aggressive administration in the Piedmont kingdom, with its new master, Camillo Cavour. Through guile and duplicity Cavour would establish himself as a totally unscrupulous and extremely able diplomat who struggled to force another war in

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Europe so as to consolidate the hold of Victor Emmanuel’s House of Savoy over all of northern Italy. Remarkably though, by 1860, he came to see that Garibaldi controlled southern Italy, and that the general could be persuaded to relinquish his dictatorial title and pledge his fealty to Victor Emmanuel as king. Thus, the stage was set for the control of virtually all of Italy, except for Venice and Rome. Soon the Papal States, with the exception of the Eternal City, fell to the Risorgimento. And by 1860, the pope was once again a prisoner in the Vatican—a king without a kingdom, a religious leader who insisted on calling down God’s intercession on temporal politics. But that was all ahead of the pope as he returned to power in 1850, with a more guarded attitude toward liberalism, and what he saw as its inevitable allies—secularism and anarchy.17 During his extraordinarily and eventful long reign, Pio Nono laid the groundwork for the modern papacy. His initial embrace of liberalism, his exile and triumphal return, his long battle against the forces of the Italian Risorgimento are all dramatic historical events, especially when played against the contrasting and colorful backgrounds of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour, Napoleon III, Victor Emmanuel, and other nineteenth-century historical giants. But Pio Nono was pope, and it is in his critically important ecclesiastical changes that his leadership is so apparent. His critics later said that Pio Nono learned his lesson and turned bitterly reactionary, both in politics and in his expressions of theology. But in fact, neither was true. As has been seen, the pope never posed as a friend of secular liberalism; as a reformer in temporal matters, he would only go so far, which is where he went during his first year in office. And this pope was a genuine Italian nationalist who shared many of the resentments about foreign occupation, especially against the Austrians. Years later, he was to remark admiringly that he and Garibaldi were the only two people who had not gotten anything out of the Risorgimento. Unfortunately, Pius IX continued some of the repressive policies of his predecessors who re-took the Papal States after Napoleon’s liberation. He even on one public occasion called the Jews “dogs.” In 1858, the pope sided with the forces of the anti-Semitic Italian Inquisition, and refused to return Edgardo Mortara of Bologna who had been allegedly baptized as an infant in secret by his family’s servant and was considered a Christian. Despite pleadings from family and Jewish leaders across the world, the stubborn pontiff supported the child being raised a Catholic and later becoming a priest. 18 Still, it must be admitted that he returned from exile far less likely to dally with the agendas of reform—progressive or moderate—than he was in the early months of his pontificate. His enemies, and later most historians, would see his condemnations of modern ideas and his support of the doctrine of papal infallibility as examples of a severe turn to the forces of reactionary politics. But to a large extent, those orientations were a long time in the making, both for this pope and for the Catholic Church. Like him or spurn him, Pio Nono was the father of the modern papacy, and not since the Council of Trent (1545–1563) had the Church appeared more at peril, and yet also more influential. Even after his restoration and with all the spiritual reserves of authority he embraced, the pope’s major undoing became the nearly irresistible urge of many

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in the educated populace for Italian unification. As noted, in this great battle he came into direct conflict with the designs and diplomatic skill of the Piedmontese prime minister, Camillo Cavour. Cavour was born of Swiss, French, and Italian background, raised in an aristocratic family, and made wealthy by inheritance and his wise management of the family estates. At the age of thirty-eight, he became a political figure, and within five years he was named prime minister of the Piedmont-Sardinia kingdom called the House of Savoy. His overall objective was to extend Piedmont’s control over most of northern and central Italy, and in fits and starts he used the strengths and the weaknesses of his state to encourage, instigate, and scheme for a major European war to destroy the Austrian empire. He would both meet clandestinely with Garibaldi and publicly attack Mazzini’s radicalism in order to encourage Napoleon III to support the Piedmont cause as the more moderate and dependable way to guarantee France’s influence in Italy. As a young man, Cavour had indulged occasionally in revolutionary European rhetoric, but his real heroes were conservative English statesmen such as Robert Peel and especially William Pitt the Younger. He attacked the Church relentlessly, and was excommunicated by the pope, but made sure that when he faced death he would have a sympathetic priest there to give him the last rites of the Church. Over the years, Cavour argued that the Church controlled too much of the property and riches of the kingdom. There were ten thousand priests in Piedmont and almost as many monks and friars, one for every two hundred people. In Sardinia the ratio was 1:127. There were ten thousand religious foundations, and the state contributed an additional one million lire a year for clerical incomes. Cavour’s response was to end the subsidies, abolish any monastic orders not devoted to education or charity, end mendicant orders that begged for their upkeep, and foster other anti-clerical measures.19 Key to his policy on unification was the need to court the fickle Napoleon III, the only hope Cavour had to break both Austrian and papal control over the upper part of the peninsula. He even convinced Victor Emmanuel to give his fifteen-year-old innocent daughter, Clotilde, to a profligate nephew of Emperor Napoleon. When an associate demanded to know how he could justify sending her to such a voluptuary, Cavour simply observed, “Oh, what scoundrels we would be, if we did for ourselves what we do in the name of Italy.” Still the king, Victor Emmanuel, retained a personal affection and regard for the pope, and his family respected the Holy Father and the tenets of the faith. But it was Cavour who would set the tone of the House of Savoy and its foreign policies from 1852 to his death in 1861. One of Pio Nono’s major biographers, E. E. Y. Hales, concluded that the pope’s hostility toward the onslaughts of the Piedmont regime and the broader Risorgimento laid the groundwork for his hostility toward what was defined as “progress,” and resulted in his controversial encyclical, the Syllabus of Errors. Hales further argued that Pius’s reign was a study of the relations of politics and religion and that, “The defeat of Mazzini’s Roman Republic in 1849 was a check to the political aspiration of Mazzini and

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Garibaldi, but it was also a (temporary) victory for the papacy over Mazzini’s religion of the people. Cavour’s victory in closing the Piedmontese monasteries was the prelude to his assuming political sovereignty over the Papal States. Napoleon’s planned withdrawal from defending Rome in 1864 provided the occasion for the issue of the notorious religious-political document—the Syllabus of Errors. The errors of that Syllabus were largely Cavour’s, Mazzini’s, and Napoleon’s errors.”20 Cavour’s policies would result in both the end of the Papal States and belligerent attacks upon the prerogatives of the Church. It is easy to sympathize with his slogan of “a free church and a free state,” but the premier more often advocated a campaign of anti-clericalism, ad hominem attacks on the religious orders, and a genuine denigration of the spiritual worth of the ecclesiastical way of life. The pope saw the Papal States as a part of the heritage that he was sworn to uphold, and he was committed to protecting Church property. To him, it was “the robe of Jesus Christ,” a part of the Passion of the Lord that he was pledged to guarantee. He wrote Napoleon that he must defend “My sacred character, and the consideration which I owe to the dignity and to the rights of this Holy See, which are not the rights of a dynasty, but rather the rights of all Catholics.” 21 By 1860, Austria had lost its ability to influence greatly the situation in Italy, especially in the middle section of the peninsula, and Napoleon was not willing to challenge Piedmont and protect the Papal States any longer. In addition, the major Catholic powers, as well as Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Bavaria, were reluctant to get involved. Protestant England summed up the new policy best—non-interventionism should prevail in Italy. Still, the pope and his major advisors sought at first to place their wary confidence in Napoleon rather than create a large standing army of their own. But by 1860 they entertained the notion of a volunteer army of Catholics from all over Europe to protect the Papal States. In the south, Garibaldi had moved from Sicily across the straits toward Naples and was bringing his forces north, while the papacy faced an aggressive anti-clericalism coming down from Piedmont and elsewhere. Cavour insisted that he and the Piedmont regime were the real bulwarks against revolution—against Mazzini’s radicalism—while in fact he was in contact with Garibaldi and with Mazzini partisans. Napoleon counseled both restraint publicly on the part of the Piedmont regime, while letting them know clandestinely that he would allow the dismantling of the Papal States. 22 Cavour in turn had promised Napoleon Nice and Savoy in return for his cooperation. The French emperor was growing unsympathetic toward the Church, fearing the strength of strong Catholic groups waiting for a Bourbon restoration in his own land. Napoleon genuinely believed that Cavour was a check upon Mazzinism as the premier had claimed. Thus the emperor would defend the pope’s claims only around Rome as the old Carolingian kings had once defended the popes in their time, but he was not willing to intervene beyond that limited scope. Both Napoleon and Cavour were counting on the death of the aging pope to ease the situation. Indeed, on Holy Thursday in the Sistine Chapel, the pope had

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collapsed and remained unconscious for several minutes. But he was to outlive by years Cavour who contracted an intestinal infection on May 29, 1861, and died several weeks later. The prime minister was received into the Church, although his confessor was later berated for giving Cavour the last rites without him having exhibited much repentance for all the troubles he had caused the pope and the Church. In a characteristic display of generosity, the pope remarked, “May God be merciful with the soul of this unhappy man.” And he then said Mass for his powerful foe. Later, in a rare moment of candor the pope seemed to observe admiringly, “Ah, how he loved his country, that Cavour, that Cavour. That man was truly Italian. God will assuredly have pardoned him as we pardon him.” 23 Later, in the same spirit, the pope near his own end, graciously sent his confessor to minister to the dying Victor Emmanuel, who had so betrayed him and the cause. The pope had to face the duplicity of Napoleon III who publicly had pledged his support of papal claims—to a large extent because of the power and influence of French Catholics who respected the pontiff and were concerned about his safety and welfare in the midst of the turbulence of the Risorgimento. Events were in the saddle, and outdistanced even Cavour’s genius or Napoleon’s duplicity. Garibaldi, the dictator now of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, gave over control of that region to Victor Emmanuel, and Italy was coming into unification in a way few had thought possible. By January 1861, the whole peninsula, except for Venetia and the Patrimony of St. Peter, were a part of this new domain. Without Cavour, the king, however, lost a valuable ally in working with the uncertain Napoleon III. Indeed the latter wearily remarked, “Italy, with her unlimited pretensions, has ended by tiring even her friends.” 24 Napoleon decided to maintain the pope in Rome so as to satisfy Catholic concerns both at home and abroad and to continue some French influence in that region, especially after Garibaldi began his celebrated march to Rome in August 1862. Through his advisors, the pope insisted that the Papal States had to be fully restored, but that bargaining position was gone forever. Pio Nono had come to recognize that he could not put his faith in the French or the emperor, but only in God. As for the lame suggestion that the emperor wanted him to reach some agreement with the new Italian government, the pope responded that he did not need foreigners to intervene on that score, “When all is said and done, we are Italian!”25 Indeed, the pope exhibited throughout much of his adult life many of the attitudes that Italians of his class and era had concerning Italy and the pernicious influence of foreign elements. Still the papacy with its weak-standing army was dependent on foreigners— on France, Austria, Spain, and Bavaria—over the decades. The temporal state required the pope and his agents to treat, bargain, and cajole other states to protect the papal territories. Those territories were central in the battle over a unified state. The pope insisted that the Papal States must be maintained for the good of the spiritual mission of the Church, but for the Italian nationalists the maintenance of a separate state in the central region would destroy the dream of

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one Italy. And the romantic vision of a pope heading a united Italian confederacy was an early casualty of intrigue, of anti-clericalism, and of the pope’s own reservations. Looking at the loss of the Papal States territories, it is easy to judge that somehow Pius IX made grave judgments that led to disaster. But if one examines his real options, that judgment is somewhat flawed. He could have pursued the reactionary policies of Gregory XVI, made minor adjustments in the administration of his regions, and hugged closer Metternich’s Austria. But Gregory had done just that, and there is little dispute that that path, though well-worn, had not solved any of the papacy’s problems. Besides, Metternich himself would be cast out of power in 1848, despite his preeminence in the world that followed the Congress of Vienna. The pope could have embraced the Risorgimento more vigorously, but could he really have become any ally with such a violent, secular, anti-clerical movement and still claim spiritual leadership? He could have tried the diplomatic approach, but no diplomats were more subtle and able at playing the European court games than the Vatican secretaries of state in this period—and still they could not accomplish their one major objective, which was to hold their wavering ally, Napoleon III, as guarantor of the Papal States. The only option for the pope was to create a large powerful army, and then he would have had to become a very different sort of religious leader—a Julius II, a priest warrior during the Renaissance. Consequently, he would have lost some of the valuable support of the Catholic princes and also had to raise taxes in a territory already honeycombed with agitators and traitors, thus accelerating the level of complaints that were already high for a variety of reasons. It just may be that in life one can fail just because the circumstances and odds are overwhelming.

Attacking the Errors of the World By December 1864, the pope decided to turn his focus on the whole catalog of the world’s problems, some of which he had experienced in the most personal and intense ways. In that mood, if not in that spirit, he issued a statement of a syllabus of modern errors of thought and opinion and an encyclical Quanta Cura, which were sweeping and harsh denunciations of the times. The Syllabus and the accompanying statements cast the pope, the papacy, and the Roman Catholic Church in the popular eye as totally reactionary institutions, opposed to reason, freedom, and progress across the world. The pope’s statements became grave embarrassments to the Church, especially in democratic states, and set the tone for the Curia and for the promoters of orthodoxy that lasted until Vatican II and in part throughout the twentieth century. In one sad sense, the Syllabus did what Napoleon I and Cavour were never able to do—it helped to severely undermine the intellectual credibility of the Church. Pius’s secretary of state, Cardinal Antonelli, sent the document out with an

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introduction that “the bishops may have before their eyes all the errors and pernicious doctrines which he has reprobated and condemned.” 26 Apologists then and now have said it was a technical theological document, but it was also a catalogue of eighty propositions that attacked such assorted errors as: pantheism, naturalism, moderate rationalism, indifferentism, latitudinarianism, socialism, communism, secret societies, Bible societies, and liberal societies. It dealt with the rights of the Church, the limits on civil society, natural and Christian ethics, matrimony, the pontiffs “civil princedom,” and the relationship of certain errors to contemporary liberalism. In a much quoted sentence, it attacked the view that “the Roman Pontiff can and should reconcile and harmonize himself with progress, with liberalism, and with recent civilization.” It has been said the Syllabus was a specific attack on the Piedmont regime’s definition of progress and civilization, but to many it was an assault upon the nineteenth century’s liberal tradition. As noted earlier, the biographer Hales saw the specifics of the Syllabus coming from the Italian situation with its Mazzini and Cavour, with its new nationalist, atheist and pantheistic propaganda; thus, “progress, liberalism, and recent civilization,” really meant the closing of monasteries and convents in Italy and the imposition of secular education in the new state. Perhaps, but it also reached beyond those experiences to call into question the Church’s position on the democratic American state, the toleration practiced in Great Britain, and the acceptance by many French of the revolutionary changes of 1789. What the Syllabus called the “pest of indifferentism” was actually called elsewhere religious toleration and personal respect; what the Syllabus denounced as “the corruption of manners and morals,” others saw as freedom of speech, press and assembly.27 Almost immediately, progressive clerics sought to explain away what the pope had said, and the bishop of Orleans, Monsignor Felix Dupanloup, in fact wrote a widely circulated pamphlet (which had the approval of the pope) that sought to tone down the encyclical by explaining away what the effects of the tenets would be in the real world. But clearly to liberal Catholics, especially those living in pluralistic societies, it became a terrible burden. It gave credence to the view that the pope believed that there was no salvation outside the Church, and that errors should not be allowed to be spread among Catholic peoples. For the pope, it was perhaps a revenge for the ill treatment he had received after being forced into exile, after the violent death of his prime minister, after the duplicity of Napoleon III and Cavour, after the aggressiveness of the Italian nationalist movement, and after the overall betrayals of the world. But for the Church in Europe, it gave its enemies more ammunition in their anti-clerical crusades. Pio Nono seemed even more extreme than his predecessors, more prone to a siege mentality, and to a defensiveness that moved beyond the logical safeguards to simple intransigence. Added to that impression was the very real fact that his problems increased as Rome was occupied, and as the pope declared himself to be a virtual prisoner in the Vatican, the anti-clerical campaign intensified during Victor Emmanuel’s reign, and as Bismarck in the German Reich

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began in his Kulturkampf —the blunt and vicious attack on Catholicism.28 When the increasing assault against the papacy accelerated, Pio Nono turned to a bold reassertion of papal authority within the Church where he could count on his authority to prevail. On a personal level, the clergy and some of the faithful celebrated with enthusiasm his anniversaries as priest (1869), pope (1871 and 1876), and bishop (1873). Despite the intrusion of secular events, Pius IX was characterized as the “pope of prayer,” as a patriarch who encouraged audiences to meet with him, who favored extensive missionary work in Africa, Asia, and America, and who restored the Catholic hierarchies in Protestant England and Holland. Like many modern popes, he developed a strong attachment to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and was instrumental in furthering what some critics called the cult of the virgin. Of all the mainstream Christian religions, Catholicism has been more committed to such a veneration of Jesus’ mother than any of the others. Some have charted the Church’s devotion to a conscious or subconscious affection for the earth mother or old pagan fertility goddesses. Mary is the linear descendant of those female guideposts in that simplistic anthropology. Others can argue that a church run by celibate men seems fascinated by female beauty and virtue, by their charms, and by the need of all men to replace mother with another woman. It is love and passion by another name. Perhaps there are such manifestations in the cult of the virgin, but it is more likely that orthodox Christianity remains bewildered and fascinated by its central theological tenet—that God could become man to save humankind. And so the vessel of this remarkable occurrence is even more revered than one’s mother. For centuries the exact relationship of Mary to God and to the common man had been debated, discussed, theorized and proclaimed. By the reign of Pio Nono, there was some demand, which he eagerly recognized, to define the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. As all knew, the pope had a special high regard for the Mother of God, and on June 1, 1848, he appointed a commission of twenty theologians to deal with the issue. The final dogmatic statement was that the Virgin Mary, at the moment of her conception, was exempted from original sin. The Bible really did not deal with the issue except in the Angel Gabriel’s salute, “Hail Mary, full of grace.” But the Church fathers had speculated that God could not have been conceived and carried in a mortal body with such a taint—as all of us have. In the Church Council of Ephesus in 431, the participants recognized her special sanctity, and later councils had acknowledged a concept of Immaculate Conception. In any case, the pope asked for comments on the draft concerning the dogma, and ninetenths of those responding were supporters with only several opposing any such definition. Pio Nono released the proclamation and ordered a column erected at the Piazza de Spagna that celebrated the Virgin’s appearance to Catherine Labouré at Paris. Most importantly, in 1857 the pope issued the proclamation on his own authority, not jointly with the bishops. In 1950, Pius XII would in a similar way proclaim the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, body and soul, into heaven.29

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Even with his secular troubles, his contemporaries again and again commented on his winning personality, kind wit, and patience during his troubles. Most significantly, he decided in 1867 to call a general council of the Church for the end of 1869 to deal with the climate of adversity that the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church found itself in. It was expected by some that the council would be focused on reasserting the temporal power of the papacy, and that it would make the Syllabus of Errors church doctrine. In fact, the council and its document Dei filius emphasized doctrines of accepted faith concerning God and revelation and did not deal with some of the major parts of the Syllabus of Errors, such as political liberty and freedom of expression. But its most important claim to history is that Vatican I is best known as the council that affirmed the dogma of papal infallibility.

Establishing Infallibility The history of that dogma is a complicated one. Some historians (including several Catholic ones) have argued that some of the early popes promulgated what were later and are still regarded as heretical positions. How then can there be papal infallibility as a guarantee of the purity of the faith deposited in Rome by St. Peter himself? Others maintain that only a church council or the congregation of bishops can have the final say on what constitutes articles of faith. Still others hold that the Church itself is not spared the opportunity to be in error even on basic dogmas, but that the ecclesia (the Church) is infused with the spirit of the Holy Spirit which in turn guarantees that overall the Church persists in the truth of Jesus Christ. What Pius IX and his ardent followers wanted was a very strong definition that when the pope speaks “ex cathedra” on matters of faith and morals he is infallible, that he is unable to be in error. There is no requirement that he has to speak in accord with a council or with the bishops, but rather that he is granted this very specific divine guarantee. Although papal infallibility has had some articulate critics during and after the council, most notably Lord Acton in England, and some clergymen in Germany and especially in France, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of the hierarchy supported the assertion. Even if one admits that the pope had appointed a good many of these men to their bishoprics, and that there was enormous social pressure to move along with the authority in the Church, papal infallibility was a tacit assumption on the part of very many clergy in very many ways. It has been charged that Vatican I was in a sense hoodwinked by the Jesuits or the Roman Curia, and that the pope was even not above campaigning before some groups such as the American clergy in Rome. Actually, some of the Curialists such as the Secretary of State Antonelli were concerned about the summoning of a council in the first place. They feared it would bring to Rome dissident German and French theologians who would challenge Rome’s authori-

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ty, and there was also a worry that Napoleon III would be displeased by any such council. He was, after all, the protector of what was left of the pope’s temporal realm. Indeed, Garibaldi had not given up on his final quest of that region, and his forces were crying, “Rome or death” on their marches. By late 1866, the last of the French troops had left the city, although Garibaldi, who had continued his invasions in October, suffered a major defeat at Mentana in November 1867 when French troops were reintroduced.30 Added to the triumph of the papal cause was the public image of the pope himself. He was not a great Vatican diplomat or fine intellect or distinguished theologian as some of his fellow popes were and have most recently been, but he seemed to be a man of deep sensitivity, genuine spirituality, and usually personal kindness. His critics have charged that he was mean-spirited, prone to shade the truth, subject to mental lapses, and manipulative of bishops. In that view, the council was a choreographed dance that was not free to discuss dogma. Pius’s reign of thirty-one years was the longest in modern history, and in his appointments he had reached out to create a large number of non-Italian cardinals, thus underscoring the Church’s claim to universality. Still, some of the Church fathers felt that it was inopportune to define papal infallibility at that time. Napoleon actually sent a very blunt warning that the Council should not dare make the Syllabus of Errors Church council dogma—probably a position due to the urging of some of the French hierarchy. As for the pope, he faced the beginning of the council philosophically observing, “The Council always passes through three phases. First, there is that of the devil; then comes that of men, finally that of God.” After the defeat of Garibaldi in 1867, the Italian government was reluctant to antagonize Napoleon, and there was a lessening of pressure on the papal government in Rome. Thus, in December 1869, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Pio Nono finally opened the Vatican Council with about seven hundred bishops from all over the world in attendance. Critics of the Council claimed that deliberations were crudely stacked and influenced by the pope. Pius IX’s attempt to find suitable lodgings and provide some subsistence for bishops from poor dioceses or with little means was cast as another way to gain supporters.31 Some have asserted that the pope named the presidents of the special congregations or commissions, and in the general congregations the right to speak could be denied. In the public sessions, discussions were to be excluded and members could only placet or nonplacet. The rule of unanimity that had previously prevailed where dogma was concerned was not honored, and a simple majority was all that was required. The acoustics were poor, so people could not hear each other, and the propositions were distributed singularly and in piecemeal fashion so that participants could not see the full range of what was being discussed and in what context. Very quickly a proposition on papal infallibility was presented and advanced. The pope’s position on the issue was clear to the bishops, and he promised them in turn more control over the lower clergy. When there was a reference to the ancient tradition of the Church, Pio Nono was supposed to have an-

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swered imperiously, “I am the tradition.” The debate on infallibility lasted from June 15 to July 4, and it was maintained that speakers in opposition were interrupted and subjected to expressions of displeasure. However, of the 635 bishops who voted on the issue, only two voted no. Thus, papal infallibility was officially recognized.32 It is true that the pope abandoned his earlier public position of neutrality on the subject and made it clear that he believed in the dogma, and also that he was frustrated with the attempts of some members of the liberal minority to use their governments to influence the deliberations of the council. Pius also privately sought to manipulate opinion through the press and other media outlets. He charged that that the minority did not believe that the “Council is governed by the Holy Spirit.” And as the argument on infallibility progressed, the majority was indeed getting more and more impatient. Still it is obvious that the proposition had the overwhelming support of the bishops, even without the pope’s views being expressed so firmly. In the general congregation, there was indeed endless debate with endless repetitions on the issue, but as with most deliberative bodies, few votes were changed by speeches.33 After the voting a great storm swept across the region, and darkness enveloped the Basilica. The pope stood by a large candle, proceeded through the ceremony, and then blessed those before him. Most importantly, on July 15, Napoleon III declared war on Germany, and the Franco-Prussian conflict began—a precursor, and some believe a contributing cause to the more awesome conflagrations in the twentieth century. Preoccupied with this struggle, Napoleon moved his remaining troops out of Rome for the last time and gave up any semblance of protecting the papacy once and for all. On September 20, the forces of Victor Emmanuel entered Rome, and the Council was adjourned sine die. Victor Emmanuel who had made mendacity into a regal style wrote the pope as a son, a Catholic, and an Italian, he said, to announce that he felt responsible for keeping law and order on the Italian peninsula. Pio Nono called his new masters “white sepulchers and vipers” and ordered only token resistance to the king’s forces. He insisted that a white flag fly high from the cupola of St. Peter’s, and then almost whimsically the aged pope began to compose a riddle on the verb “tremare”—to tremble. Later the annexation of the Patrimony of St. Peter’s to the kingdom was approved on October 2, by a vote of 133,681 to 1,507. The pope then withdrew into the Vatican and became by his own will a prisoner. In November 1870, the government issued a “Law of Guarantees,” as the unilateral agreement was called, which would regulate the rights of the papacy until the Lateran Treaty under Mussolini. The Law recognized the pope’s sovereignty, held him immune from arrest, and protected him under the treason laws. The pope could establish diplomatic relations with other governments, could keep his personal guard, and was given exclusive use, but not ownership of the Vatican, the Lateran, and Castle Gandolfo. The papacy was also to receive an annual sum of 3,225,000 lire for the lost territories, but Pio Nono ignored the law and waived aside the subsidy. Still, when the pope criticized Bismarck for his campaign against the Catholic Church in Germany, the

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chancellor sought to apply pressure on the Italian government to curb the pontiff. That government refused to act, thus upholding its guarantees to the papacy. As has been seen, Bismarck’s Kulturkampf began as an attack upon the religious orders in 1871 and sought to subject the training of priests to the directives of the state. Later, as opposition mounted to the chancellor’s heavy-handed policies, he backed down, starting in 1879. The key to Bismarck was his cold calculation of strength and his ability to know when to compromise. Still, his actions encouraged anti-clerical campaigns in other German states, Austria, Switzerland, and even Italy. Despite the guarantees to the pope, the government in Italy later pushed for a “Clerical Abuses Bill,” which would subject clergy to special penalties for criticizing the state. The ministry insisted also on interfering in the rights of bishops; thus, the rhetoric of a free church and a free state was stripped bare.34

Matters Spiritual Still the pope continued on—preaching and living a life of prayer and devotion. He urged greater dedication to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the special recognition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On February 7, 1876, he died, and the papal chamberlain who would be his successor tapped him on the forehead with a silver hammer three times. Appropriately enough, the chamberlain called him by his baptismal name. The lengthy reign of Pius IX was over. Three years later his coffin was carried to his final resting place at San Lorenzo Fuori le Mure. Even at night, a crowd surrounded the coffin and chants and jeers were heard, and then mud was thrown at the remains of the longest reigning pope in history. The papacy of Pius IX has been seen by its friends and by its critics as the beginning of the modern papacy. Clearly, the Ultramontanist position with its cult of papal personality, its strong Roman Curial bureaucracy, and its monopoly over dogmatic teachings had arrived. The pope was now even outside the traditional constraints of the councils of bishops and even the ecumenical Council with his assertion of authority and control. Pio Nono had been a participant and a victim in the great movements of revolution and nationalism. Even his staunchest supporters had to recognize that he left papal relationships with most of the great states in shambles, and that his insistence on proclaiming the doctrine of infallibility and non-cooperation with many secular states left Catholics isolated and vulnerable to their enemies. He had commanded an army, supervised sophisticated and often cynical diplomats, and enacted a program of moderate reform. But the Papal States were central to the unification of Italy, both in terms of location and history. And so the temporal power of the pope fell as did the collections of duchies and small kingdoms that once marked medieval Italy and later Germany. Those two states both became like the rest of Europe—unified regimes. In one sense the loss of the Papal States was as logical as the loss of the power of the Duke of York or the

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barons of France. It just happened in the 1860s and the 1870s, not earlier, as in Britain under the Tudors, the French under the Bourbons, and the Spanish under Ferdinand and Isabella. But he left a legacy in a spiritual sense also for the modern papacy. The pope, through incredible courage and Herculean effort, refused to be consumed by those monumental temporal events. He encouraged religious devotions, endorsed Scholasticism, and advocated papal infallibility as a guard against impurities creeping into the faith. In the end he was neither a typical reactionary pope, nor a successful liberal reformer. He was essentially a pastor in thought and practice—blessed with wit, perception, and at times a generous spirit. It was his unfortunate destiny to be alive during unfavorable and yet momentous political and social events.

Notes 1. Karl Otmar von Aretin, The Papacy and the Modern World (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970), 78–79; E. E. Y. Hales, Revolution and Papacy, 1769–1846 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1960); John Martin Robinson, Introduction to Cardinal Conslavi, 1737–1824 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987). 2. The long criticism is in E. L. Woodward, “The Diplomacy of the Vatican under Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII,” Journal of the British Institute of International Affairs 3 (May 1924): 121. 3. J. Derek Holmes, The Triumph of the Holy See: A Short History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century (Shepherdstown, W. Va.: Patmos Press, 1978), 101–2. One profile of Metternich is in E. L. Woodward, Three Studies in European Conservatism (London: Constable & Co., 1929) pt. 1. 4. E. L. Woodward, “The Diplomacy,” 121; E. E. Y. Hales, Pio Nono: A Study in European Politics and Religion in the Nineteenth Century (New York: J. Kenedy, 1954), 27. 5. G. F. H. & J. Berkeley, Italy in the Making (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 3:3. 6. Berkeley, Italy in the Making, 3:3. 7. Friedrich Nippold, The Papacy in the 19th Century (New York: G.Putnam’s Sons, 1900), 23–28; J. B. Bury, History of the Papacy in the 19th Century; Liberty and Authority in the Roman Catholic Church, aug. ed. (New York: Schocken, 1964); Martin, Cardinal Conslavi, passim. 8. Nippold, The Papacy, 53–55; Bury, History of the Papacy. 9. Hales, Pio Nono, 60–63. 10. Hales, Pio Nono, 60–63 11. Denis Mack Smith, Mazzini (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). 12. Hales, Pio Nono, 67–68. 13. Hales, Pio Nono, 71.

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14. Hales, Pio Nono, 90. 15. Nippold, Papacy, 102. 16. Denis Mack Smith, Cavour (New York: Knopf, 1985); William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Times of Cavour, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1911). 17. Hales, Pio Nono, 121. 18. Hales, Pio Nono, 158–62; David I. Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (New York: Vintage, 1997). 19. Smith, Cavour, 78–79. The background on the marriage is in Smith, Cavour, 142–43, and Thayer, Cavour, 1:531–32. 20. Hales, Pio Nono, 178, xii. 21. Hales, Pio Nono, 199–202. 22. Hales, Pio Nono, 206–11. 23. Hales, Pio Nono, 227. 24. Hales, Pio Nono, 244. 25. Hales, Pio Nono, 252. 26. Hales, Pio Nono, 256–58. 27. Hales, Pio Nono, 261. 28. Emil Ludwig, Bismarck, the Story of a Fighter (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1927), 412–22; Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), chap. 7. 29. Hales, Pio Nono, 137–48; Kelly, Oxford Dictionary, 310. 30. Hales, Pio Nono, 278; forty-five French bishops were absent when the vote on papal infallibility came up: see McManners, Church and State in France, 1. 31. Hales, Pio Nono, 290–95; Nippold, Papacy, 155; August Bernard Hasler, How the Pope Became Infallible (New York: Doubleday, 1981); David I. Kertzer, Prisoner of the Vatican: The Popes’ Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004). 32. Nippold, Papacy, 159–61; Johann Joseph Ignor von Döllinger, Letters from Rome on the Council by Quirinus, 2 vols. (New York: DaCapo Press, 1973); Wilfred Ward, The Life and the Times of Cardinal Wiseman, 2 vols. (New York: Longmans Green and Co., 1900), chap. 30; Noel Blakiston, ed., The Roman Question: Extracts from the Dispatches of Odo Russell from Rome, 1858–1870 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1962). 33. Hales, Pio Nono, 299–306; Edward Cuthbert Butler, The Vatican Council, 1869–1870, Based on Bishop Ullathorne’s Letters (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1962). 34. Hales, Pio Nono, 320–21, and Pflanze, Bismarck, chap. 7.

Chapter 19

Leo XIII: The Soul of the Industrial State In September, 1877, Joachim Cardinal Pecci, Bishop of Perugia, was named by the Vatican to be the camerlengo (papal chamberlain) in the household of the aging Pius IX. When the pontiff died, Pecci, according to the rite of the Roman Catholic Church, tapped Pius’s forehead thrice with a silver hammer and said his name each time, proclaiming, “The pope is really dead.” He then took the Fisherman’s Ring off Pius’s finger and had it smashed, a symbol of the end of his authority. In the interim between the death of a pope and the selection of a new one, the papal chamberlain controls the temporal power of the papacy— whatever is left of it. The Sacred College of Cardinals represents the spiritual power of the Church. Two days after Pius’s temporary interment and three days before the conclave would begin to choose a successor, important political happenings were occurring. Henry Cardinal Manning of England, and Alessandro Cardinal Franchi, Pius IX’s prefect for the Propagation of the Faith, met with some other cardinals to discuss the critical question of choosing a new pope who could reconcile the Church and the Italian government on the so-called “Roman Question.” Apparently, they decided on the aged Pecci as their choice. Pecci had been a cardinal since 1853, but he had never been a part of the inner circle because of his early disagreements with the policies of Pius’s Cardinal Secretary of State, Giacomo Antonelli. Now nearly sixty-eight, it was expected that his papacy would be a short, transitional one. Instead, it lasted more than twenty-five years, and has been judged to be one of the most significant reigns in the long history of the Church. On the third ballot Pecci was elected and chose the name Leo. 1

The Cardinal of Arts and Letters Joachim (or Gioacchino) Vincenzo Pecci was born March 2, 1810, not far from Rome in the mountainous village of Carpineto in the then Papal States. His father and mother both came from illustrious families, although they were not wealthy. He was the sixth of seven children and studied at the Jesuit College in Viterbo and at the Roman College. He was interested in the sciences, theology 297

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and law, received doctorates in both civil and canon law, and was later recognized by Gregory XVI for his courage during a cholera epidemic in 1837. He was named governor of Benevento in 1838 where he vigorously sought to control banditry in the region and to curtail the excesses of liberalism—two favorite causes of Gregory, who prized order and theological stability. He was later transferred to Perugia in 1841 and proved to be a good administrator with a concern for economic improvements and who established a savings bank for farmers. In 1843, at the age of thirty-three he was sent to Belgium as papal nuncio and made archbishop of Damietta. But unfamiliar with the subtle arts of diplomacy, and not knowing French, he seemed to some ill-prepared. His letters to his family show that he was less concerned with serving the Church and its spiritual mission than in bringing more distinction to the Pecci family. He wrote to his brother that he would “rise in the hierarchical branches of the prelacy, and thus ensure the just respect which our family enjoys in the land.” He scrupulously sent every certificate of appointment and every other document that singled him out to the family archives. And after he was made an archbishop, he had a life-sized portrait of himself commissioned and sent home to be hung between the two portraits of his parents in their salon.2 It is interesting to record some of the observations made about him at different stages in his long career. In Brussels, the Austrian Ambassador Count Dietrichstein said Pecci was “the best of good fellows, but young, passive, without initiative, without authority and altogether lacking in that adaptability which was necessary to keep the affairs of his office in order.” Later, the wife of Italian Premier Urbano Rattazzi said of Archbishop Pecci, “I have seen few such expressive heads as his, on which firmness, resolution, and strength are so clearly stamped. He inspires alike fear, esteem, and sympathy; but fear is the predominant feeling. One would like to love him, but one is afraid to. One thing is certain—he is no ordinary person. His voice is sonorous and full. He has not the princely bearing of Pius IX, but he is equally imposing. His demeanor is majestic and full of dignity; the chief impression one gets is that of asceticism and sternness, but this is softened by a certain benevolence, especially when he unbends to children. In a word, Cardinal Pecci of Perugia is a grand and impressive figure, and . . . he may one day be our pope.” The biographer Rene Fülöp-Miller observed, “He was a slight, nervous figure with long, slender hands, that infinitely clever head crowned with locks, the white locks, the dark piercing eyes, the massive nose, and a broad, strong-willed mouth.” Prince Bernhard von Bülow gave another vivid picture of the man, this time shortly before Leo’s death, “Everything about him had a spiritual aspect. He was very amiable, but in accordance with Italian gentilezza without too much emphasis on officiousness. His poise was perfect, particularly in the sense that no impression from without could shake his equilibrium, let alone endanger it. He had wonderfully fine eyes in which there shone the unassailable faith of the earthly representative of Christ . . . he appeared to have transcended matter and, so to speak, to have reabsorbed it into himself.”3

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In Belgium, Pecci for the first time experienced the merciless ravishing of the new industrial society and the wreckage of workers and their families. With no protection from the state or unions, men, women and children labored long hours, often endured hunger, and lived in hovels. Gone was the placidness and fresh air of peasant life; gone were the communities that nourished rich and poor alike. At first, Pecci got along well with King Leopold and even received the Grand Cordon of St. Leopold. He met Queen Victoria in London and King Louis Philippe in Paris, thus being exposed to two important monarchs and two great capital cities. But in a critical dispute, he supported the Belgian bishops and Catholic politicians who opposed Prime Minister Jean Baptiste Nothomb’s proposal to have the government name members of “University Juries.” The king ordered the nuncio recalled by the Vatican because of his interference in local political matters. The Church had done fairly well under the liberal administration in Belgium, and the Vatican did not wish to get involved so directly in an academic controversy. In a sharp personal rebuff, Pecci was sent back home to Perugia where he was to be banished in a sense for the next thirty years. His high-level career in the Curia bureaucracy was over, and it surely must have taken a toll on the bright and ambitious cleric. There in Perugia he stayed and ran a well-organized and caring diocese. In 1853, Pius IX rewarded his quiet successes with a cardinal’s hat.4 Unlike the pope and much of his inner circle, Pecci was above all an intellectual—a man who loved and lived for ideas. What had set him off from the dozens of pastorally oriented clergy in the Italian peninsula was his deep commitment to learning, his fearless respect for intellectual curiosity, and his deep regard for the medieval theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. Together with his Jesuit brother, Joseph, he opened the Academy of St. Thomas and promulgated what would become the ascendancy of Neo-Scholasticism. Added to his interest, Pecci was a fine classicist himself, possessing a beautiful Latin style. At the local diocesan seminary, he reversed the prohibition against reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, a classic he admired and knew somewhat by heart. In addition to his initiatives in seminary and university training, he founded evening schools for the sons of working men and opened institutes that advanced money on corn.5 The bishop and then cardinal of Perugia stayed away from Curial politics and achieved a record as a social liberal who supported the conservative Pius IX. Blocked by the powerful Antonelli, Pecci remained an illustrious provincial leader, but not a major figure in the papal court hierarchy. Later when he was pope, Leo observed that to talk of Antonelli still distressed him too much. He concluded, “I think if it had not been for him, the Pope today would not find himself in such a difficult position.”6 At the Vatican Council, he was an adherent of Pio Nono’s views, but he left no real contribution to that short and turbulent time. Across the continent, the Church was swept up in the tides of anticlericalism, especially the Kulturkampf in Germany, tense relationships with the state in France, and the unsettled Roman Question, which led to the self-

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imposed captivity of the papacy. In addition to those political and ecclesiastical disputes, the rise of industrial capitalism was bringing forth a new ideological movement—socialism in all of its varieties. Then as if touched by the hand of destiny, the obscure cardinal of Perugia seemed to come out of his library and published a series of well-regarded pastoral letters on the Church and modern society. Unlike Pius IX, Pecci fought the ideas of nationalism and socialism, not just with authority, but with other ideas. In a famed Lenten message in 1877, he reminded his adherents that the Church and civilization were not enemies, but in fact were allies. It was the Church that had for so many centuries held back the forces of barbarism and darkness. He maintained that the Church wished that mankind should have a better material life on earth, and he went on to quote not the Bible or St. Augustine, but the French philosopher Baron de Montesquieu that the “Christian religion, which seems to have no other end but to secure our happiness in a future life, also ensures our felicity on earth.”7 Pecci placed the Church on the side of decent working conditions, beneficial science, and true progress, but he still argued that the basic question before mankind was not politics or economics, but the relationship of men to nature, knowledge, and the Church itself. The Cardinal thus turned the Syllabus of Errors upside down and made it not a defensive doctrine, but a powerful critique of man’s inhumanity to man. Something very different was going on in these responses, and Pecci soon acquired fame and prominence. In November 1876, he was called to Rome after Antonelli’s death, and in September of the following year named the new papal chamberlain, taking up residence in the historic Falconieri palace. The Pecci family had acquired a contemporary luster to its old, but worn nobility. Six months later, on February 28, 1878, he became pope.8 Thin and aesthetic-looking, the sixty-eight-year-old cardinal complained at his election that he was a feeble, old man, who could not handle the burdens of the papacy. He was to live twenty-five more years, burying his friends and foes alike—proving that in life only God can set the measure of things, and that on a baser level longevity is the best revenge! Despite his initial inclination, he did not give his first blessing from the outside gallery of St. Peter’s that overlooks the Piazza—thus honoring the Curia’s insistence that the pope must remain a prisoner in the Vatican. On March 28, Leo XIII professed his faith and took an oath to observe the Apostolic Constitutions, which included protecting the Church’s lost territories.

Diplomatic Overtures The Roman Question and the establishment of an Italian state would bedevil Leo throughout his papacy. Although he would depart at times from the traditional wisdom on many issues, he backed away from repudiating Pius IX’s legacy on

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the need for a separate state. Still, many Italian political leaders and even some Freemasons applauded at first his elevation as pope.9 Although Pecci’s only foreign diplomatic assignment had ended in less than success, it was diplomacy that would lead to some of the major achievements of his papacy. Immediately after his coronation, he instructed the Deputy Secretary of State, Msgr. Vincenzo Vannutelli, to send out letters to the sovereigns and heads of states. The letters were remarkable for their general reconciling tone. To the emperors of Germany and Russia, he underscored the importance of liberty of conscience for their Catholic subjects and also reassured them of his coreligionists submission to imperial authority and of their “scrupulous obedience.” He wrote to each that while there was no official diplomatic relations between the Holy See and their nation, “We appeal to the magnanimity of your heart to ensure that peace and tranquility of conscience may be granted anew to so large a portion of your subjects.” Later in his encyclical on civil sovereignty, the pope said, “The Church of Christ cannot be either suspect to princes or disliked by peoples.” To the president of the United States, Queen Victoria, the kings of Holland, Sweden and Norway, and the emperor of Austria, he thanked them for what each had done to benefit their Catholic citizens or subjects. On the issue of Switzerland, he acknowledged the estranged relations over the last two years and urged that “suitable and effective remedies would be found for those evils without delay.” There was some complaint from the Curia that the pope had not consulted with its members on those overtures, but he simply moved along. It was time to reach out to the international order and to increase Catholic influence in those circles, he seemed to indicate. Even Pius IX had recognized the changing realities. Before his death, he observed, “Everything around me has changed: my system and my policy have had their day, but I am too old to revise my orientation. That will be the work of my successor.”10 Later, critics were to say Leo was autocratic, despotic, greedy for power, but to the larger world, the aged pontiff seemed to be pushing early in tentative, but distinct ways toward some reconciliation with the contemporary world. He would later be called the pope of the working class, but he loved to grant his benedictions from the regal gestatorial chair above the crowds of nobles and commoners alike. He enjoyed the liturgical pomp, but lived a personal life of frugality. Leo read extensively, approved of the introduction of modern electricity and communications, was usually affable, but did not have the easy humor of his predecessor. He was the first pontiff to be recorded on cinema, and the first to allow electricity into St. Peter’s Basilica. He had a deputy in the Secretary of State’s office prepare daily digests of newspaper articles across the globe, and was well-read in the sciences as well as in theology and literature. Shrewdly he once concluded, “I want to see the church so far forward that my successor will not be able to turn back.” And he observed, “It is for me to sow, for others to reap.”11 At first, Leo seemed to strike several different poses though. He reaffirmed Pius’s insistence that the spiritual power of the Church required a temporal state,

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condemned “enemies of the public order,” and opposed Catholic associations participating in national elections in Italy. On the other hand, he reissued his earlier letter on the compatibility of the Church and modern civilization, and mixed easily with intellectuals. The pope expressed an interest in anthropology and archaeology—tossing aside the fears of some that science of all sorts was a synonym for atheism. This new pope, an old man, was harder to categorize than his predecessors. He seemed committed to his papal prerogatives and to his predecessors’ policies; yet he enjoyed ideas and was deeply concerned about the savagings by the new industrial order.

Kulturkampf Immediately Leo sought to face the difficulties called the Kulturkampf. As has been seen, the Church had conflicts in Prussia with its chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, which then had spread to other German states, Austria, and Switzerland. Rudolf Virchow, a Prussian atheist and scientist, in the Prussian Landtag had called the disputes the Kulturkampf—or a struggle between different cultural value systems. Thus the Kulturkampf ‘s original points of contention had been over religious mixed marriages, increasing intolerance of Protestant rulers, growing Catholic demands for civil liberties, and a fear of papal power, especially after the Vatican Council’s declaration of infallibility. In addition, since the Revolution of 1848, German liberals had become more hostile towards Catholicism, and they had advocated even then eliminating all religious influences from public and private life. To add to suspicions, Catholics favored the inclusion of Catholic Austria in the new Germany—a proposal Bismarck opposed, since it would threaten Prussian ambitions to becoming the leading state in the new Reich. In 1870, Catholics also took the initiative in forming the Center political party which became one of the major sources of opposition to the chancellor in Germany. Bismarck, an astute and crafty politician, genuinely disliked Catholicism and also misunderstood its traditions and sources of power. He grew increasingly belligerent as Catholics tended to favor a more federal union, not a Prussianrun Reich, and when Catholic clergy in Silesia supported the use of Polish in religiously run schools, Bismarck argued that the Center party with its advocacy of papal sovereignty in Italy was really a state within a state, more concerned with fostering Catholicism’s power than with loyalty to the empire he was building. On July 8, 1871, the government ominously abolished the Catholic Bureau in the Prussian Ministry of Education and Public Worship. The Kulturkampf had begun.12 The chancellor then ordered all normal schools and school inspections in the Alsace-Lorraine region removed from the control of the Catholic clergy where it had been housed previously. He also pushed for the Pulpit Law, enacted on November 28, 1871, which provided for severe penalties for those who used

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the pulpit to criticize the state. Tensions increased when Pius IX refused to accept Gustav Cardinal Hohenlohe as his nation’s first ambassador to the Vatican, in part because the cardinal had opposed the Council’s declaration on infallibility. Bismarck then publicly attacked the Church and proclaimed defiantly, “We shall not go to Canossa”—a reference to the humiliation of German Emperor Henry IV, who waited in the snow before Pope Gregory VII’s door for forgiveness in the year 1077. First the Prussian Minister of Education and Public Worship, Adalbert Falk, prepared a law for the Prussian Landtag to subject all schools to state inspection. Then in June, religious orders were prohibited from participating in public education in Prussia. The German Reichstag ordered all Jesuits dismissed from the empire within six months, and in December 1872, Bismarck severed diplomatic relations with the Vatican after the pope protested his government’s actions. In 1873, four other religious orders were also expelled. Then in the same year the Prussia Landtag passed the so-called “May Laws” that placed seminary training under the auspices of the state and required students for the priesthood to go to a German university for three years and to submit to examinations in literature, history and philosophy. The state also established restrictions on the Church’s powers of excommunication and discipline and made episcopal decisions subject to an appeal before a civil tribunal. The reaction was swift and strong among Catholics as they became more of a unified force after several influential bishops were arrested. In 1874, bishops and priests who opposed the laws were subject to exile, and nine out of twelve bishoprics in Prussia were vacant. Later in February 1875, Pius IX was to declare the May Laws null and void. In July 1874, a Catholic had attempted to assassinate Bismarck, and the chancellor used that attack to add fuel to his fires. In February 1875, civil marriage was made obligatory in Prussia, and soon other German states followed that lead. In April, the state suspended financial grants to dioceses where the laws were not being obeyed, and in June, all church property was confiscated. Later a determined Pope Leo was to observe of the chancellor, “I shall have to continue to battle foot-to-foot against the man of iron.” Elsewhere in Germany, other states emulated Prussia’s policies. Baden had actually preceded Prussia in enacting restraints on the Church in 1860, controlling clerical appointments, and aiding those “Old Catholics” who had opposed the Vatican Council. In Austria, the government, using the papal infallibility decree as a pretext, broke the Concordat of 1855. In 1874, the parliament restricted the rights of religious orders, curtailed Church control over its own finances, and sought to interfere with ecclesiastical appointments. Even in usually mild Switzerland, the monasteries had been closed earlier, and bishops who supported the Vatican Council were harassed. Religious orders were expelled in 1874, the papal nuncio was asked to leave, and diplomatic relations were severed until 1884. Civil marriage was required, and schools became interdenominational. This was the situation that Leo faced in the rest of the Germanspeaking world as he assumed the chair of St. Peter. 13 In Italy, Leo continued his predecessor’s policy of Catholic non-

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involvement in Italian government and political life, the so-called edict of non expedit—it is not expedient to participate. Leo was wise enough, however, to admit that such a declaration would eliminate the moderating influence of Catholic laymen and parish priests in the civic life of the new state, and consequently increase the power of radicals, anti-clericals, socialists and Freemasons, but still he would not change.

Continuing Disputes When in April 1880, the Chamber of Deputies in Italy was dissolved, prominent Catholics begged the pope to reconsider. He then convened a committee of cardinals to examine the issue, but they urged a continuation of the ban. The prospect for liberalization of the ban suffered another setback when in July 1881 a crowd attacked the casket containing the remains of Pius IX as it was being transferred to his final resting place. Horror was expressed by those outside the faith, and even by opponents of the Vatican. Deeply upset, Leo began to consider removing the papacy from Rome altogether. Later, in 1886, loyal Catholics again pushed to end the ban. This time even the Italian government quietly asked the papacy to lift the prohibition, citing its own fear that a more radical and anti-clerical element would end up controlling the Chamber of Deputies to the disadvantage of both the Church and the state. But again the Holy See reiterated that prohibition and actually even tightened it. Leo concluded almost with a tone of resignation, “As long as I live, the non expedit will be maintained; my successor will see what is best to do afterwards.” By 1900, the complete bankruptcy of the policy was obvious to all, yet the pope let it continue.14 In his diplomatic efforts, Leo XIII struggled to use the diplomatic leverage of the Vatican to persuade Italy to restore some of the Church’s temporal power. The pope and his Secretary of State tried for a decade to have Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire convince Italy to make some accommodation on the issue. France was now run by republicans who would not lend their services to protecting the Church. As Leo moved toward bettering relations with Bismarck, he tried to get him to pursue that policy toward Italy as well. Relations with the German Reich did improve, even to the extent that Bismarck urged that the pope serve as an international mediator in the dispute between Germany and Spain over possession of the Caroline Islands in the Pacific. He also quietly asked the Vatican to persuade the Catholic Center party to support a military appropriations bill—which it did. Later Leo offered to make Bismarck a Knight of the Order of Christ and gave him the insignia of that order. But on the divisive Roman Question, the “Iron Chancellor” did not wish to interfere in Italian policies, especially after 1882 when that nation became a German and Austro-Hungarian ally. Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph also welcomed some bettering of ties between Germany and the papacy, but he too did

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not choose to provide any help on the Italian problem. While Leo remained optimistic, his new Secretary of State, Mariano Cardinal Rampolla, saw no real use in further cultivating the Reich and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and turned his attentions back to France. As anti-clericalism and Freemasonry increased their hold on Italians, Leo faced even greater opposition in Rome and was looking for allies. The new Italian prime minister, Francesco Crispi, had made a career out of fiery, anti-clerical rhetoric, and let it be known that if Leo left Rome as a protest, he would not be allowed to return. He even encouraged the unveiling of a statue of Giordano Bruno in the Campo di Fiori on June 9, 1889. Bruno was a philosopher who was burned by the Church on that very spot as a heretic in 1600, and now he became a hero to Italian anti-clerical elements. Leo in turn often expressed his fears of the Freemasons and tried unsuccessfully to foster counter revolutionary activity. 15 The pope did decide to stay in Rome, but the Vatican’s foreign policy turned toward its traditional protector, France, which by now, though, was unsupportive of the papacy. Years later, a rapprochement was begun with Italy under Pope Benedict XV, and a settlement on the Roman Question was reached under Pius XI, when the dictator Benito Mussolini agreed to the Lateran Accords of 1929.

The English Church Leo had easier times with the English-speaking world. In 1850, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was re-established in England, and the first archbishop of Westminster was named, Nicholas Wiseman (later a cardinal). He was followed by Henry Edward Manning who was instrumental in Leo’s election, and who blazed the path for greater concern for the worker in the Church. Almost immediately after his coronation, the pope honored former Anglican clergyman and Catholic philosopher John Henry Newman with a cardinal’s hat, re-established the Scottish hierarchy, and urged Irish Catholics to curtail their opposition to Her Majesty’s government. As nuncio to Belgium, he had once dined with Queen Victoria and had met the prince consort, Lord Palmerston, and foreign minister Lord Aberdeen, and he retained a respect for British achievements. 16 On December 9, 1886, Leo conferred honors on fifty English martyrs who had been murdered for their faith under the regimes of Henry VIII and his daughter, Elizabeth I. Two of the most famous of those figures were Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, and Bishop John Fisher of Rochester, both symbols of Catholic courage and resilience, who were eventually canonized by Pius XI in 1935. Later, the pope was to name the ancient British ecclesiastical historian Venerable Bede (673?-735) as a doctor of the universal church, and on April 2, 1895, the intellectual pope also approved Catholics attending the universities at Oxford and Cambridge.17 With the renaissance of the church in England, Leo had to face two very

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difficult problems: the relations of the clergy with their hierarchy and the validity of Anglican orders in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church. The absence of a hierarchy for so long resulted in an uncertain relationship between the lower orders of the clergy, who were used to doing things their own way, and their newly consecrated bishops. Added to that ambiguity were the conflicts between the hierarchy and the Jesuits in England. Under pressure from that hierarchy, especially Cardinal Manning, Leo agreed to deal with the basic issues under contention. One of the principals in the dispute, Bishop Herbert Vaughan of Salford, argued that the Jesuits “attach great importance to this case because it will regulate America. And it is better to settle the case with the English Bishops than with the American Bishops, who are Irish and more violent.”18 Although Leo was under considerable pressure from a variety of quarters, he kept his own counsel and moved at his own pace. In the end, he sided with the hierarchy—as one would have expected—and enforced the authority of the Church over its own. It was after all a matter of discipline. The second issue was the controversy over whether Rome would accept the validity of Anglican clerical orders, that is, after all the centuries of divisions, was there still a clear line of succession from the Apostles down to the present? Could the Roman Catholic Church recognize as valid an Anglican priesthood similar to its own? As so often happens, the episode began with a chance meeting in 1889, this time between Abbé Fernand Portal and Lord Halifax. Halifax argued that his views and those of many other Anglicans were theologically close to the Roman Church, and that many wished for a reunion of the two. Halifax, like Cardinal Newman, had been deeply influenced by the Anglican High Church spirit in the Oxford Movement, which emphasized ties to traditional Catholicism despite problems with a strong papacy. The Abbé spread his views about the congeniality of both churches in a well-received pamphlet published under a pseudonym, and argued that Anglican orders “may be regarded as valid.” In 1894, the Abbé Portal went to England and saw for himself the elements of at least the High Church that incorporated the vestiges of the Roman ways: vestments, Stations of the Cross, solemn Masses, Holy Souls chapels, Catholic literature, the Lady altars and the like. He then met the Secretary of State, Cardinal Rampolla, and later the pope himself. One report of the meeting claimed that the pope was enthusiastic, and foresaw the beginning of a reunion after centuries of estrangement. Recognizing the incredible opportunity for him and the Church, he surely saw it as a fitting capstone to his career—”You know I am 85 years old,” he kept on adding, recognizing how little time he thought he had left. He even considered writing directly to the archbishops of Canterbury and York on the possibilities of such a reunion. The Catholic hierarchy in England obviously was dismayed, and its representatives hurried to Rome to meet with the pope and the Secretary of State to talk about the “wild ideas in Rome.” The pope then ordered a scholarly examination of the validity of Anglican Orders, and the archives included background material on Pope Paul IV’s bull,

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Praeclara Charissimi. Issued on June 20, 1555, the bull dismissed the validity of those orders and was cited in the current dispute. Leo again temporized and held his own counsel while the arguments were being made. Obviously, the issue of a possible reunion meant more than dealing with the problem of Anglican orders. The real roadblock was and remains the right of the pope to teach and govern the Church—the assertion of papal supremacy worldwide. A commission of six theologians was established to examine the question, and clearly Leo was excited and preoccupied with the possibilities. His own Secretary of State supported the Anglican claims, and Leo was aligned with him. But the pope finally received the argument against the claims, and on September 13, he issued his own bull, Apostolicae Curae, which concluded that the orders were null and void because of defects in form and intention. Among other issues, serious questions were raised about whether the Church of England itself had recognized the apostolic succession of the priesthood and the sanctity of the sacraments. Leo the scholar recognized the force of tradition, and Leo the pope kept the faith. But he still was human, and he was a proud Pecci. Leo probably deeply desired to be remembered in history as the pope who brought back the Anglican Church—or at least the High Church element—into the fold of Christ. In their own way, in their own times, old popes, like young men, can feel the tides of excitement, the sense of wild achievement, the flush of possible triumph that adds pinnacles of emotion above the flatness of life and duty. But in the end, duty and orthodoxy prevailed.19

On the Matter of France In France, Leo seemed to face complex problems that rivaled those he had with Germany. There the turmoil continued as the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) led to the destruction of the Second Empire and the ascendancy of the German Reich under Prussian aegis. As Napoleon III’s armies went down to defeat, a self-appointed committee of Republicans established a Government of National Defense that sought to keep up the fight. But Paris fell and a new Assembly was necessary in order to meet and come to terms with the victorious Germans. A plebiscite to elect the Assembly led to a majority of Monarchists and not Bonapartists being elected. But Paris was taken over by a proletariat group with some republican bourgeoisie that created the Commune of Paris—a government separate from the rest of the nation. After a bitter battle and a repressive aftermath, the Commune was defeated by the armies supported by the new Assembly. Later, other uprisings took place in Marseilles and Lyons under the auspices of French anarchists opposed to the centralization of power in France, but to no avail. Now the world was to hear the name of the greatest socialist theorist and apologist, Karl Marx, who praised what he called the civil war in France. During all of this turmoil, the French Church continued to favor the restoration of the monarchy, but those who wished to reinstitute the royal line were

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divided in their allegiances. The Bonapartists were discredited by the war, but the Assembly still had factions divided between the Legitimatists who wanted the Bourbons restored, and the Orleanists favoring the descendant of Louis Philippe. Compromise was ruled out when the Bourbon heir, the Count of Chambord, stubbornly refused to accede to power unless the state used his white flag, instead of the tricolor which commanded the allegiance of many Frenchmen. The Monarchists’ cause seemed to lose some of its luster as those disputes dragged on.20 The clergy’s views ran counter to the Republican positions on education, marriage and religious orders, even though they received financial support from the state. Leo at first tried to avoid taking sides, hoping that the French would somehow help him recover Rome, just as twice in his lifetime popes had had their temporal power restored to them after European upheavals. Somehow the legacy of Pius IX still governed the Church. But by 1875, it was clear that popular sentiment in France had shifted to the Republicans, and Leo continued to contemplate the problem during the early years of his pontificate and beyond. Added to those dynamics, the pope named a new Secretary of State, Lorenzo Cardinal Nina, following Cardinal Franchi’s death five months after Leo’s ascension. Nina had been the nuncio in Paris and understood the liability of continuing intransigence and following the Ultramontanist sentiment. The influential cardinal archbishop of Algiers, Charles Lavigerie, also warned Leo XIII of the consequences of Frenchmen continuing to support the lost monarchical cause. On October 22, 1880, the pope wrote to the archbishop of Paris and reminded Catholics that the Church rejected no specific form of government per se, that citizens should obey those who govern, and that order is the foundation of public security.21 In late August 1883, the Count of Chambord, or “King Henri V,” as his followers wistfully called him, died. Who then was the legitimate heir to the throne for the Royalists, which included a good part of the Catholic clergy? Leo responded with a letter to the hierarchy of France in which he tactfully recalled the glory of their nation’s church, and then rejected the desire of some to change the form of the established government in their divided nation. The pope in turn criticized the attacks on the Church, especially in the area of education, and the institution of civil marriage and military service for the clergy. The message to the Catholic hierarchy and to the populace was clear—they were not to be fellow travelers anymore in the monarchial cause. In his encyclical, Immortale dei, the pope also laid out general principles on the Church/state issue. The Church, he maintained, lived in the world, but was not of it, and it could endure in a variety of nations with very different forms of government. He opposed popular revolution and treason against legitimate authority. Quoting the famous words attributed to Jesus, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” he authoritatively supported such a policy of accommodation. Leo, however, opposed those who thought that liberty could survive without being allied with virtue and truth. But still, he separated himself from the view that any person should be forced to embrace Catholicism, quoting

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St. Augustine who insisted, “Man cannot believe otherwise than of his own will.” But the anti-Republican sentiment continued its aggressive campaigns in French life, and Leo clearly feared the consequences for Catholics and his Church. On November 12, 1890, Cardinal Lavigerie gave a luncheon for the staff of the French Mediterranean Squadron and other distinguished guests. At the toast, a calculating cardinal saluted the legitimate authorities in France and urged national unity. He then had the White Fathers’ band play the national anthem, the “Marseillaise.” The pope who probably had encouraged the general overture remained quiet as the monarchist Catholics reacted bitterly. Tensions increased, and even after a decade of effort, Leo still was not successful in normalizing the relationships between the aggrieved church and the difficult French state. The Vatican continued to apply pressure on the French clergy to reach some accommodations with the Republic, and the French cardinals reaffirmed that the nation “has need of governmental stability and religious liberty.” On February 16, 1892, the pope in a letter to the French people proclaimed that Catholics were to support the Republic. Privately, Leo assumed that Catholic political strength would prevail and that consequently the Constitution would be changed. He noted that the French could later establish a monarchy and revealed, “I am a Monarchist myself.” There was strong rightist opposition, but the pope’s authority ended for some at least the legitimacy of fighting the fruits of the revolution. Leo insisted that French Catholics faced the inevitable triumph of the events of 1789, although many refused to comply. By then, the great ideological challenge to Catholicism was not coming from the remnants of the revolution, but from secular socialism which was growing in the fertile fields of discontent in France. Meanwhile, the Holy See refused to get involved in the Dreyfus Affair, despite appeals from the international Jewish community. 22 While the pope made considerable progress in opening up avenues of dialogue and accommodation with Germany and France, he continued to be wedded to the policies of Pius IX with regard to the Italian situation. Although he seemed at times to grope for some new ways of dealing with the so-called “Roman Question,” Leo was, on that issue, too much of a traditional cleric at heart and too much of a traditional pope in practice to accept closure on that controversial issue. In that rigidity, he was surely influenced by the long, nasty, and threatening influence of anti-clericalism that engulfed so many of the members of the Italian ruling class. They were still the heirs of Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi, who defined the nationalist struggle, somewhat correctly, as opposition to the temporal and religious power of the Roman Catholic Church. Only when that generation of revolutionaries passed away, and conservative Italians began to fear the advent of socialism did the quarrel begin to become more mute during the reign of Pius X. This anti-clericalism during this time was also fueled by the forces of Freemasonry—an international brotherhood that was bound together by secret rights, rituals, and its own hierarchy. It is in fact hard to overestimate the genuine fear

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and dislike that the normally open-minded Leo XIII had for that order. In part he was correct—it was an element of an international vanguard aimed at destroying the influence of the Church and the papacy, and it had many adherents in Italy, a romantic land given to extremes of sentiment. In his first allocution or formal address delivered on March 28, 1878, Leo had already dealt with the Roman Question. He supported, as all expected, the righteousness of Pius IX’s position, but did so in remarkably mild terms. “The papacy and the church needed its temporal state in order to exercise its special mission,” he argued. A month later, he reiterated that view and explained that a temporal government was necessary for “the security and well being of the entire human family is also in jeopardy.” He pressed the Church’s claims, and yet seemed to try to strike some sort of an accommodation. 23 A year later, after his election, he explained that the Holy See needed only as much territory as would make it completely free. The new pope indicated that he was willing to renounce the former States of the Church and would accept something that approximated the “Leonine City” or the papal enclaves in the heart of Rome, with maybe a passage to the sea. Actually the Church generally enjoyed the complete use of those areas and edifices already, but what was being asked for was the juridical separation of the “Leonine City” from the Kingdom of Italy. Even Pius IX had come to accept that formulation toward the end of his life. Unfortunately for the Church, that modest solution came to fruition only some fifty-one years later. There were other diplomatic endeavors in which Leo was involved: he urged the abolition of the African slave trade; restrained the king of Portugal’s right to control the Goa area of India; established or re-established the hierarchies in India (1886), North Africa (1884), and Japan (1891); and reorganized the missions in China. In addition, he had some hopes of reunion with the Oriental and Slavic churches and recalled the famous historic apostolic missions of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. The Eucharistic Congress in Jerusalem in 1893 and his apostolic letter on November 30, 1894, were meant to encourage a reunion with the east which did not materialize. He did, though, reach some accommodations on Church/state relations with Belgium in 1884 and Russia in 1894. And although Leo was seen as a political pope, he established 248 sees, 48 vicariates or prefectures, and 2 patriarchates, and he devoted eleven of his encyclicals to the Blessed Virgin Mary, urged a respect for the rosary, established a feast of the Holy Family, and consecrated the human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus during his jubilee in 1900.24

Leo and Americanism For the other great English-speaking nation, the United States of America, Leo had a real fondness for the confusing pluralistic democracy which had recently gone through its own terrible Civil War. He regarded it as one of the most prom-

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ising missionary lands, a huge country with enormous possibilities and one that permitted full civil liberty. The growth of Catholicism, however, in the United States was due less to conversions of Protestants or nonbelievers than to the massive migrations of Irish, German, and later the Italian and Slavic peoples. The hierarchy was basically the Irish-born or first generation Irish-American, and there was little in the way of ecclesiastical laws, especially as the new Church reached out into the hinterlands. In 1878 there was still no official representative of the pope in the United States, and the American government had no official minister accredited to the Holy See. Some American bishops had been especially vocal about the inopportuneness of the infallibility declaration at the Vatican Council, although, in the end, they fell into line. Still, the Curia had several concerns about the American church, especially on the need for Catholic education for the children of immigrants and the organization of proper discipline between the bishops and the far-flung clergy.25 From the founding of the United States in 1789 to 1878, the number of Catholics had gone from thirty thousand to nearly six million. The number of bishops had climbed from one, John Carroll of Baltimore, to one cardinal, twelve archbishops, fifty-one bishops, and over five thousand priests organized into sixty-three dioceses or vicariates. The Catholic population included not just the immigrant masses coming after the Civil War and the old Anglo-Americans in the seaboard states, but also Spanish, Indian, and French missions dating back often to the sixteenth century.26 In 1875, the Curia moved to impose traditional canon law on the American Church. Some of the bishops in the western states also had advocated a Plenary Council in the United States to discuss the problems that they were facing, and in 1884 one was held. The year before, the pope and the Curia sought to impose a series of broad-based rules covering seminaries, cathedral chapels, irrevocable pastorships, ecclesiastical garb, participation of Catholics in non-Catholic organizations, Catholic education, the care of immigrants, and Negro and Indian missions among other items. Several of these proposals were opposed by the Americans, and there were some compromises. After the plenary Council, however, canon law was effectively imposed on the American Church, and later a resident delegate was sent to the United States. The Vatican, though, retained some real reservations about the American Church, which were fueled in part by internal squabbling among the American clergy over issues of foreign language churches and the so-called heresy, “Americanism.” Unlike many Europeans, the American prelates were resounding patriots who celebrated the constitutional separation of church and state. They regarded such a development not as a pragmatic necessity as in Europe, but as a matter of principle that resulted in pluralism, toleration, and the sectarian peace imposed by the Constitution. While Pius IX and Leo were fighting their wearisome battles against nineteenth-century liberalism, nationalism, and anti-clericalism, the American Catholics were exempt from much of that particular bitterness. Like the early Catholic Church, the Americans recognized that there was a

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difference between society and the state. In Europe, the two had become thoroughly fused from the Middle Ages on into the nineteenth century, and Leo accepted the separation of church and state really to protect the Catholic faith from its enemies. If he had his choice, he probably would liked to have seen church and state joined if his Church could prevail. It is not that he was an intolerant man; he believed that freedom had to be grounded in a protection for truth and morality which was the very essence of the Church’s code of conduct. The new European philosophies came to celebrate instead the triumph of sentiment, of man freed from law or constraint. Their definition of heroism was grounded in individualism, which was personal and specific to time and place. Leo lived in history, in an ancient network of natural laws and natural rights that were meant to both protect and to civilize people. And central to the advance of civilization was the influence of the Catholic Church.27 The Americans had their own problems with anti-Catholicism, which was linked in part to anti-foreign nativism and usually anti-Irish feelings. But the wars of religious ideology, the Inquisitions committed by both Catholics and Protestants on each other and on themselves, the personal attacks on the papacy with its exiles, its humiliations, its reactions were residues of a past that did not wash up on their shores. It is not that Americans lived in a pristine, utopic state. It was that Europe was a long way away both geographically and intellectually. Besides, most American Catholics outside of the clergy could care less about theology, papal pronouncements, and Curia politics.28 The non-Irish parishes and congregations resented the power, influence and arrogance of their counterparts in the Church. Opposition built up especially in the Midwest among the Germans, and in 1886 a petition went to Rome from a group of German priests asking for redress. In 1891, a German merchant, Peter Paul Cahensly, and others renewed that petition for foreign representation in the American hierarchy and for special protection of foreign language immigrants. The American Catholic establishment, led by Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul and James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, vigorously protested in part because of their preference for the assimilation of Catholics so as to underscore their allegiances to the new nationality being created. The pope ended up supporting his hierarchy.29 Still Ireland in particular had been criticized for his support of a proposed law in neighboring Wisconsin requiring the use of English in all public schools and for his ingenious proposal where schools supported by the state of Minnesota could have instruction done by Catholic teachers. In one sense, he was evading the Church’s requirement that a separate (and expensive) Catholic parochial school system be set up. Later, he had to defend himself both against Protestants in the United States who saw his proposal as another nefarious Catholic attempt to break down the wall of separation of church and state, and also from traditional Catholics who accused him of abandoning the Vatican’s directives.30 In 1891, Ireland went to Rome, this time to defend himself. Before in 1886, he traveled to the Vatican to push for the establishment of the Catholic University of America, a proposal that the new senior prelate, Cardinal Gibbons, had

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reservations about at first. The pope, though, loved learning and quickly agreed to the new institution. Leo had apparently asked Ireland, who spoke fluent French, to visit Paris and urge the Catholics to support his controversial encyclical of February 1892 calling on French Catholics’ to cooperate with the Third Republic. Ireland agreed, and was well received there, although resistance continued. Later Leo sent Vatican-held documents on the explorer Christopher Columbus for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and he authorized Francesco Satolli, the archbishop of Lepanto, to be his representative to the Fair. Satolli soon was named by the pope as the apostolic delegate to the United States—to the reservations of some Catholic prelates. He was to be the major source of information for Leo on that very confusing and yet bustling continent, and he generally supported the progressive hierarchy. But all was not well for the progressives. There was a World Parliament of Religions in the Exposition which treated each faith in an ecumenical and equal way. Gibbons, Ireland, and other clergy participated in this friendly celebration, and consequently left themselves open to bitter, conservative criticism for not recognizing the special validity of Catholicism. In another altercation, they had stopped Leo from attacking the Knights of Labor in America, as he had done at the instigation of the Canadian hierarchy in their country. In that maneuver, Gibbons enlisted the powerful support of Cardinal Manning in England, who convinced the pope that the labor organization was not an anti-Catholic secret society. Later, Gibbons was not as successful when the Holy Office insisted on banning Catholic membership in the Odd Fellows, the Sons of Temperance, and the Knights of Pythias—generally benign secret organizations that probably reminded the Vatican of the hated Freemasons. In September 1895, Leo in his encyclical Longinqua Oceani praised American Catholics and admitted that their progress was due to the toleration embedded in the federal constitution and in the laws. Still he argued that separation was not the ideal formulation for the relationship of church and state everywhere. He also criticized divorce and civil disobedience in his letter and proscribed membership in societies dedicated to violence. In response to the critics of the Parliament of Religions, the pope mandated that Catholics had to hold their own congresses or meetings apart from others. The second rebuke came on the issue of Americanism. In 1891, a complimentary biography by Walter Elliott of Isaac Hecker, a convert to Catholicism and founder of the Paulist Fathers, was published. The volume was translated into French where it became a major literary event. Hecker was portrayed as a role model for priests, as a man who sought to reconcile the Church and democracy. The French Catholic conservatives, however, bitterly attacked the volume, and the controversy went to the Vatican. Gibbons again asked for a delay before any condemnation of what was being called “Americanism.” And Ireland again went to Rome, but arrived too late to stop the pope’s letter.31 On January 22, 1899, in a papal letter to Cardinal Gibbons, entitled Testem Benevolentiae Leo criticized certain doctrines that had arisen on the occasion of

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the Hecker biography. Very gingerly the pope made it clear that he was not talking about those “characteristic qualities which reflect honor on the people of America.” Instead, he was referring to the view that the Church should modify her doctrines to suit modern civilization so as to attract those outside the faith. He went on to enumerate some specific errors: “that the Holy Spirit bestows more charisma in the present day than in earlier ages; that direct inspiration obviates the need for spiritual direction; that natural virtues are preferable to supernatural, because the former prepare the Christian better for action in the world; that, therefore, active virtues are preferred to passive ones like humility, meekness, and obedience; that the vows taken by members of religious orders inhibit liberty and are out of step with the imperatives of the present order; and that new methods, more in harmony with contemporary reality, should be employed to convert non-Catholic Christians.”32 As has been seen, this very flexibility has characterized the great successes of the early Church. Ireland simply indicated that he did not hold such views; Cardinal Gibbons also agreed that no educated American Catholic had such opinions, and other American Catholics blithely referred to it as a “phantom heresy.” Clearly, Gibbons and other progressives were trying to sidestep the controversy, but the pope’s admonition gave considerable strength to the conservative wing of the Catholic Church. Later, Leo was supposed to have insisted that the letter was meant to stop the controversy in Europe, and that Americans need not worry. But he was being disingenuous if he had said that, for the letter was sent to Gibbons for a real purpose. It is doubtful if many of the faithful from the United States even knew of the controversy, but it surely led to a very cautious and timid hierarchy for generations to come. Later Catholic clergy avoided theology and church history—except in the most celebratory modes. And as for their hierarchy, those men became preoccupied with building parishes, cathedrals, churches, schools, and colleges, but rarely would they be what Leo had been as a bishop—a man of ideas. After the appointment of William O’Connell as bishop of Portland, the pontiff told him that a bishop cannot afford to be a “near mystic,” but had to be a “man of action.”33 Indeed, Leo XIII was one of the few popes who could easily be called both an intellectual and a man of action. He not only read and respected the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, but in his Aeterni Patris, he proclaimed Aquinas’ theological system in effect the Church’s official philosophy. To many it was an aged pope simply returning to the medievalism of the past. Indeed Leo added to that impression by building a splendid mausoleum in St. John Lateran in 1891 for the remains of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), the epitome of powerful popes in the early Middle Ages. But in fact, Leo was a broader scholar than that. In 1893, he urged Catholic experts to come to the defense of the Scriptures by studying Oriental languages and the techniques of biblical criticism. Against the opposition of the Curia, he opened up the secret archives of the Vatican to the year 1831 and commented, “We have nothing to fear from the publication of the documents.” He showed a deep interest in the Vatican Library and in the Vatican Observatory, established

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a school of paleography and comparative history, funded or assisted in the establishment of national colleges in Rome, and pushed for a seminary in Ceylon for the training of priests. He encouraged, subsidized, and approved a variety of intellectual ventures, saying at one point, “Every newly discovered truth may serve to further the knowledge or the praise of God.” He established the Thomist Academy in Rome and at his own expense gave it three hundred thousand lire for an edition of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas; arranged for another one hundred and fifty thousand lire to go to the University of Louvain to help fund a chair focusing on scholastic philosophy and its relationship to the natural sciences, and he helped set up academic chairs at the Universities of Fribourg and Lille, and in Washington. In his advanced years, Leo returned to an early love—he supported a public subscription for a statue of Dante in Ravenna and advocated a special chair in Dante studies at the Roman Institute. Yet at the end of his pontificate, his attitudes seemed to harden as he curtailed scholarship on the Scriptures (1893), set standards for censorship (1897), created another Index of Forbidden Books (1900), and agreed to set up a permanent Biblical Commission (1902). 34

From Justice to the Social Gospel If the above were a summary of his papacy, he would be seen as a pope who concentrated much of his considerable efforts on diplomatic maneuvers to protect the Church and educational endeavors to enhance her teaching mission. He would be a substantial figure in the papacy, one who tried skillfully to repair some of the damage caused or at least manifested during Pius IX’s long reign. But in fact these activities are overshadowed by the most famous encyclical ever issued by a modern pontiff—Rerum Novarum, the papal letter on the condition of labor. The Industrial Revolution had started in the textile mills of Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century and moved onto the European continent and into the United States, especially after the Civil War. Great fortunes were made by the industrial leaders who created this new world. The very landscape changed, and so did the patterns of immigration as families left their farms and rural estates and went into the burgeoning cities. Railroads became increasingly important as arteries that moved material and production, not just in Europe, but in the United States. In the United States, for example, the number of rail miles jumped from seventy thousand in 1873 to one hundred and ninty-three thousand by 1900. Added to that was the rapid growth in population. In Europe, the figures went from 140 million in 1740 to 188 million in 1800 to 266 million in 1850 and then increased by another 130 million by the turn of the century. The reach of education and the sharp decline of illiteracy also followed in most of the northern and western European countries. And so, concomitantly did the rise of newspapers and journals of opinion and the presence of broad-based demo-

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cratic enfranchisement for many adult males. The conditions of poverty grew more burdensome, however, and in the cities more visible. Factories and slums lived side by side, and men and their families worked twelve to fifteen hours a day for low wages. It was said that a whole generation of urban children rarely saw the sun rise or set. The Catholic Church began to become more critical of the new industrial state and more sensitive to the so-called social question. In the past, the Church of Rome, of course, had been committed in many ways to a more regulated guild-oriented commercialism, one ready to accept constraints on the use of property, on the exploitation of people, and on the need for religious holidays, vacations, and regulated workdays. In part, the medieval roots of the Roman Church allowed it to realize that capitalism was not the only economic order in the history of mankind—a balanced view not as prominent in some Protestant countries. The major secular response to the social question came with the rapid growth of Socialist or Worker parties, many of them committed to the doctrines of Karl Marx. Socialist parties grew up in Germany by 1875, in Austria and Switzerland by 1888, in Sweden and Holland by 1889, and in Italy, Poland, and Finland by 1892. The Church then not only had to wage war against nationalism and the anti-clerical impulse, but also against disciplined Socialist parties and a compelling ideology that addressed the great social issue arising in the West. By 1880, the working class in France—the eldest daughter of Catholicism, as it was called—was lost to the Church. In England, however, Cardinal Manning who had been converted from the safe haven of Anglicanism and become a Catholic and later a prelate, brought his adopted Church into the battle for better working conditions. In December 1872 he appeared at a rally to support the cause of farmers. He urged Prime Minister William Gladstone to advocate legislation to end early childhood labor and regulate housing conditions. In 1874, he delivered an electrifying address on “the rights and dignity of labour” in which he supported the right of unions to organize and demanded legislation to regulate hours and control child labor. Serving on a royal commission on housing, he pushed for community-oriented town planning. In 1889, Manning supported the use of arbitration in the London dock strikes, and he was to be a major inspiration for Leo’s encyclical.35 Rerum Novarum had two purposes: to thwart the advances of socialism and to lay out a social policy on the abuses directed against workers under the new industrial order. Thus, by the end of the mid and late nineteenth century, the greatest ideological challenge to Catholicism was coming from a counter ideology, not nationalism or Freemasonry, or a variety of hybrids of romantic individualism but the attractive philosophies of socialist theorists, reformers, and utopians. There were many variations in the age-old beliefs in economic equality and common ownership. But none exercised greater attraction than Marxism, which maintained that in the dialectic or movement of history there would be an inexorable triumph of the tough disciplined dictatorship of the proletariate. Karl Marx’s ideology would meld or mix the humanitarian and utopian

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dreams of equality and brotherhood, the acceptance of conflict, turmoil, and violence for the greater socialist good, and the alliance of idealism and the power impulse that so fascinates elites and intellectuals. Much of nineteenth century socialism was aligned to the Romanticism of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the cult of violence, the celebration of naked reason, and the promulgation of atheism—a brew that was bound to capture the condemnation of Roman pontiffs. 36 But to Leo, it was more than another heresy—it was a new coalition that would be distinctly anti-Catholic. Soon conservative politicians and the upper classes were made to understand the powerful appeal of socialism and the organizational strength of Marxist cadres and agitators. The pope’s encyclical started off with a deeply moving analysis of the vast expansion of industry and science and the enormous fortunes of the few who cared little about the utter poverty of the masses and the prevailing moral degeneracy that resulted from such power and abuse. Gone were the ancient workingmen’s guilds that had been in operation up to the last century, and since then no other protective organization had taken their place. “Working men have been surrendered, isolated, and helpless [left to] the hard heartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition,” the pope declared. A small number of very rich have “been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.” The encyclical read as if it were written by Rousseau or Marx. 37 Then Leo proceeded to make five basic points: first, he attacked socialism for its refusal to recognize the right of people to own private property, which promoted man’s sense of intelligence and independence and protected his family. Second, the pope outlined the important role of the Church in social affairs, noting its indispensable presence in a well-ordered society. Third, Leo talked of the importance of charity and justice to alleviate grinding poverty. Fourth, the pope departed from the fashionable argument for a laissez-faire state and presented a positive view that stressed not just the government’s role in promoting public safety, but also the need to regulate conditions of work, the guarantee of a just wage, and the encouragement of a wide distribution of private property. Then lastly, he emphasized the importance of voluntary organizations like trade unions and Catholic social action groups. To us, those ideas are rather modest and dated, the language a bit archaic, but in 1891 it was an extraordinary document to come from the Vatican. Leo and other high-ranking clergy in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland had explored for some time a recognition of the problems of labor and farmers. But this encyclical became a rallying cry for what was to be called “Social Catholicism.” After Leo’s death, it was heralded as papal approval for the development of Christian Democratic parties in Europe—movements that checked socialist and communist governments, even though Leo was not generally sympathetic to political parties.38 Leo thus had transformed the Church in many ways that his colleagues had never imagined. He was seen at times as imperious and to some a bit too intellectual, but he had lived a long time and had seen much foolishness and turmoil.

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He mixed very conservative theology at times with canny diplomacy and a strange curiosity toward new ideas. Whereas his predecessor fought the enemies of the Church with his willpower and courage, Leo tried to avoid confrontation with states and regimes. Sometimes against the admonitions of the Curia, he insisted on recognizing the realities of those states, and did so occasionally with calculated abandon. Above all, he sent his orthodoxy into battle against the ideas of secular ideologues, and in the great social challenges of his time he was not found wanting. In other pronouncements, Leo vigorously denounced the remnants of slavery, pressed for peaceful solutions of international disputes, and embraced in tentative ways the avant-garde views of a social gospel. In the first cause he sought to make the historic Archepiscopal See in Carthage a center for the antislavery campaign. Still, he was a prisoner in the Vatican as was his predecessor. Leo would walk the Vatican gardens, sit and read under the old oaks, and occasionally welcome pilgrimages of working men. Concerning the developments of biblical scholarship at the end of his life he once wistfully remarked, “I would like to have ten years to resolve this question in harmony with the words of the church and the exigencies of science.”39 On July 3, 1903, at the age of ninty-three, he became very ill, and as he approached death, he asked about the page proofs of one of his Latin poems. He then recalled his own role as papal chamberlain and warned that he should not be tapped too hard on the forehead for he might wake up! Later two figures were carved on either side of his tomb, one a mourning woman representing the Church, and the other a tradesman with his tools and characteristic dress, marking the passing of a prelate called the pope of the working man. In his quarter century reign, Leo remained true to many of the dogmatic statements and public pronouncements of his immediate predecessor. One of his biographers has argued that as a cardinal in Perugia, he had actually encouraged Pio Nono to issue the Syllabus, push the Vatican Council to advance the infallibility decree, and promulgate the dogma on the Immaculate Conception. Thus, by all predictions, Leo should have been a keeper of Pio Nono’s flame.40 But from the very first, Leo XIII charted a different path in two significant areas—the relationship with sovereigns and states and the perils of industrial capitalism. On the first issue, he simply abandoned Pius’s orientations and diplomatic style—seeking to make the Church more protected from the adversities of the world by somewhat making peace with it, except on the Italian or Roman question. As has been seen, before Leo, the Church was constantly on the defensive, especially among the educated elites and their ruling classes. After Leo, the Church seemed to become intellectually respectable once again. Shorn of its temporal possessions, the Vatican and the pope were able to assume more of an intellectual and moral force than in generations before. After their first dismay over the labor encyclical, conservatives praised Leo as a major impediment in the way of secular socialism sweeping across Western Europe. There is some truth to the observation that the Catholic Church became

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a great fortress against Marxism, in the same way that the United States of America became the foot soldiers stopping the advance of Communism—the most virulent form of Marxist ideology. But Leo and his advisors saw the labor encyclical as a genuine response to the evils of industrialization and the dehumanization of workers and their families. It is something quite remarkable to witness an eighty-one-year-old, sheltered, religious prelate electrifying the Western world with a denunciation of exploitation and a call for justice and comity. No encyclical in modern times has had such a positive impact on people, and none has so added to the intellectual and teaching powers of the Roman Church. Leo had his pastoral side, his personal commitment to piety and the religious customs of folk Catholicism. But at the core, he was a man who recognized the play of the intellect, although he occasionally embraced forms of censorship and doctrinal admonitions. But in his long papacy, there was a remarkable confidence that the Church had the ability and resilience to face the advances of science and the critiques of philosophy, and still prevail in fair debate and discussion. Leo at age sixty-eight seemed to have learned the limits of authority and the need to persuade, cajole, and encourage the recalcitrants, the skeptics, and the unscrupulous. Some observers of his time said that as the pontiff aged, he began to look more and more like the French atheist and philosopher Voltaire. But appearances are deceiving. Leo drew strength from his beliefs, hope from his faith, and a sense of irony earned from the lessons that life on earth is but a trial and not the totality of human fate.

Notes 1. Joseph E. Keller, The Life and Acts of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1879); Eduardo Soderini, The Pontificate of Leo XIII (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1934), vol. 1, chap. 1–3; William J. Kiefer, Leo XIII: A Light from Heaven (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1961); Justin McCarthy, Pope Leo XIII (New York: Frederick Warne & Co., 1896). Hartwell dela Garde Grissell, Sede Vacante: Being a Diary Written during the Conclave of 1903 . . . (London: James Parker and Co., 1903), 2, argues incorrectly that there is no ceremony of striking the dead pope’s forehead. 2. Rene Fülöp-Miller, Leo XIII and Our Times (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937), 53–54. 3. Those observations are in Fülöp-Miller, Leo XIII, 56–60. 4. “Leo XIII,” Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 8: 647–49. 5. Soderini, Leo XIII, 1:71–72. 6. Soderini, Leo XIII, 1:81. 7. Lillian Parker Wallace, Leo XIII and the Rise of Socialism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1966), 80.

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8. Wallace, Leo XIII, 74. 9 Wallace, Leo XIII, 87; Eduardo Soderini, Leo XIII, Italy and France (London: Burns, Oates and Washburne, 1935), pt. 1. 10. Soderini, The Pontificate of Leo XIII, 108–9, 151; on Pius IX, see: Fülöp-Miller, Leo XIII, 82. 11. Soderini, The Pontificate of Leo XIII, 113–20; Edward T. Gargan, ed., Leo XIII and the Modern World (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961), frontpiece. 12. Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), passim; Lillian Parker Wallace, The Papacy and European Diplomacy, 1869–1878 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), chaps. 6–7. 13. H. W. L. Freudenthal, “Kulturkampf,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, 8: 167–69; Wallace, Leo XIII and the Rise of Socialism, 131. 14. Soderini, Leo XIII, Italy and France, pt. 1; S. William Halperin, “Leo XIII and the Roman Question,” in Gargin, ed., Leo XIII and the Modern World, 101–26; Humphrey Johnson, The Papacy and the Kingdom of Italy (London: Sheed and Ward, 1926), chap. 3; and S. William Halperin, “Italian AntiClericalism 1871–1914,” Journal of Modern History 19 (March–December 1947): 18–34. 15. Bismarck’s award is discussed in Wallace, Leo XIII and the Rise of Socialism, 134; Halperin, “Leo XIII and the Roman Question,” 117; Francesco Crispi, The Memoirs of Francesco Crispi (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912), vol. 2, 393–94; Arturo Carlo Jemolo, Church and State in Italy 1850– 1950 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1960), chap. 3; S. William Halperin, The Separation of Church and State in Italian Thought from Cavour to Mussolini (New York: Octagon Books, 1965); and Wallace, Leo XIII and the Rise of Socialism, 17. Between 1881 and 1891, Leo contacted the governments of Austria and Spain at least five times about leaving Rome. See Philip Hughes, Pope Pius the Eleventh (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1937), 56. 16. Eric McDermott, “Leo XIII and England,” in Leo XIII and the Modern World, 127–58. 17. McDermott, “Leo XIII and England,” 131. 18. McDermott, “Leo XIII and England,” 136. 19. McDermott, “Leo XIII and England,” passim, and John Jay Hughes, Absolutely Null and Utterly Void (Washington: Corpus Book, 1968). 20. Wallace, Leo XII and the Rise of Socialism, 66–67, 103. 21. Wallace, Leo XII and the Rise of Socialism, 286; Soderini, Leo XII, Italy and France, pt. 2. 22. Wallace, Leo XIII and the Rise of Socialism, 291–300; Soderini, Leo XIII, Italy and France, pt. 2; John McManners, Church and State in France, 1870–1914 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). 23. Halperin, “Leo XIII and the Roman Question,” 108–9; John J. Robinson, Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry (New York: M. Evans and Co., 1989). 24. J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (New York: Oxford

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University Press, 1986), 311–13; The Civitas Leonina refers to the area surrounded by a strong wall in the neighborhood of the Vatican and St. Peter’s as far as the Castel Sant’Angelo, on the right side of the Tiber. Toward the middle of the ninth century Leo IV had enclosed that area, and it was a separate administrative unit until Sixtus V incorporated the district at the end of the sixteenth century as the fourteenth “rione,” called Borgo. See: Daniel A. Binchy, Church and State in Fascist Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), 256 and E. R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969), 8–9. 25. Thomas C. McAvoy, “Leo XIII and America,” in Leo XIII and the Modern World, 157–80. 26. McAvoy, “Leo XIII and America,” 163. Robinson, Born in Blood argues that the Masons are the heirs of the Knights Templar in Britain who fled arrest and torture mandated by Pope Clement V and the King. They became a secret society of mutual protection that attracted great revolutionaries such as George Washington, Sam Houston, Giuseppi Garibaldi, and Simon Bolivar. See especially on Leo, 307–11 and 345–59. This book has been called to my attention by Michael Nugent of the IBEW, Washington, D.C. 27. Especially informative on Leo’s thoughts in this area are articles by John Courtney Murray, S.J., “Leo XIII on Church and State: The General Structure of the Controversy,” Theological Studies 14 (1953): 1–30; “Leo XIII: Two Concepts of Government,” Theological Studies 14 (1953): 551–67; and “Leo XIII: Two Concepts of Government, II. Government and the Order of Culture,” Theological Studies 15 (1954): 1–33. 28. Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study in the Origins of American Nativism (New York: McMillan, 1938); J. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1985). 29. Thomas T. McAvoy, The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895–1900 (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1957); Henry J. Browne, The Catholic Church and the Knights of Labor (New York: Arno Books, 1976). 30. Marvin R. O’Connell, John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988), chaps. 13–16. 31. O’Connell, John Ireland, chap. 13-16; McAvoy, “Leo XIII and America,” passim; John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1952), vol. 2, chap. 16 is on “Americanism”; James Gibbons, A Retrospective of Fifty Years (New York: Arno Press, 1972). 32. Quote is from O’Connell, John Ireland, 462–63; John C. Fenton, “The Teachings of the Testem Benevolentiae,” American Ecclesiastical Review 129 (1953): 124–33. The full text is an appendix in McAvoy, The Great Crisis. 33. McAvoy, “Leo XIII and America,” 176. On one of the consequences of the development of the Catholic Church in the United States, see: Thomas F. O’Dea, American Catholic Dilemma (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958); and Gerald Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1985), 190–94; James M. O’Toole, Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O’Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston,

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1859–1944 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 104. 34. Raymond H. Schmandt, “The Life and Work of Leo XIII,” in Edward T. Gargain, ed., Leo XIII and the Modern World, 15–50; Soderini, Pontificate of Leo XIII, 130–33. 35. Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church, rev. ed. (New York: Image Books, 1990), 300–301. 36. Wallace, Leo XIII and the Rise of Socialism, chaps. 7, 10. 37. The Papal Encyclicals 1878–1903, comp. Claudia Carlen Ihm (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath Publishing Co., 1981), 241–61. A more convenient edition is Etienne Gilson, ed., The Church Speaks to the Modern World (New York: Image Books, 1954), chap. 8. 38. Leo had problems with party rivalries see Michael Fogarty, Christian Democracy in Western Europe, 1820–1953 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1957), 10. In France the encyclical intensified the Catholic factionalism see Parker Thomas Moon, The Labor Problem and the Social Catholic Movement in France: A Study in the History of Social Politics (New York: MacMillan Co. 1921) 172–93; the American experience is explored in Aaron I. Abell, “The Reception of Leo XIII’s Labor Encyclical in America,” Review of Politics 7, no. 4 (October 1945): 464–95. 39. Wallace, Leo XIII and the Rise of Socialism, 40; Soderini, The Pontificate of Leo XIII, 139. 40. Schmandt, “The Life and Work of Leo XIII,” 19; a more critical judgment of Leo than mine is in E. L. Woodward, “Diplomacy of the Vatican under Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII,” Journal of British Institute of International Affairs, 3, no. 3 (May 1924): 113–38.

Chapter 20

Pius X: Moods of Piety and Repression On a hot July 25 evening in 1903, the fragile remains of Leo XIII were placed in a triple coffin, the first of cedar with the official seals of the Roman Catholic Church, the second coffin of lead, and the third of wood. At the feet of the corpse were placed three small bags, one with twenty-five gold medals, twentyfive silver, and twenty-five bronze, corresponding to his years as pope. One of the observers of that scene, the Patriarch of Venice, Guiseppe Cardinal Sarto, noticed how the sanpietrini gave the last coffin a final kick to shove it into the tomb. He ironically concluded, “That’s how the popes finish.”1 However, unlike the ignominious sight that disgraced the movement of Pius IX’s final remains, Leo was honored by political heads and kings who came to respect the range of his intellect and the popular base of his moral authority. He had been very successful in his initial objectives, which were to open up the Church and make it more of a force in modern life. Leo’s diplomacy had achieved major successes, but his critics argued that toward the end of his reign, he still had neglected to modernize the Curia and its departments, and that his style of administration seemed to focus more on his personal glory than on the Church itself. In the last years of his pontificate there was to be a need for greater attention to the pastoral aspects of the office, but by then Leo was too far advanced in age to change. In 1894, the devout Catholic, Contardo Ferrini, observed that Leo had improved the Church’s position beyond all expectations, “But at the death of Leo XIII, the Church may have need of a supreme head who will more conspicuously lead it back to the evangelical virtues of the days of the apostles, to goodness, charity, poverty in spirit, meekness; and in this sense a most fitting choice might be Sarto, who has in the highest degree the reputation of such virtue.”2

A Life of Piety At the conclave held a decade later, the same sort of judgment would be made— after several confusing days, the cardinals would indeed choose the cardinal of Venice, Giuseppe Sarto, in an attempt to emphasize the papacy’s spiritual orien323

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tation. Leo was the diplomat and the intellectual; Sarto was the parish priest and the humble man of deep piety. His election was clearly meant to restore the Church to its basic roots—the care of souls, even though at the time of his election he was one of the least visible members of the College of Cardinals. Leo had appointed him first cardinal, and then three days later Patriarch of Venice—a sign to the people of that city that he was rewarding the man before he was recognizing the see. Apparently, the perceptive Leo saw Sarto as his possible successor and had the highest regard for him, calling him the jewel of the Curia. However, he did once summon him to Rome to question why the Patriarch of Venice had encouraged Catholics to participate in elections there in league with moderate liberals. The Cardinal informed the Pope that the liberals were in fact men who believed in the sacraments and in the faith, to which Leo observed, “Then they should be called Catholics,” which pretty much settled the dispute in the days of the non expedit (it is not expedient).3 Of all the recent popes, none has acquired such a reputation for personal piety and religious devotion as Pius X. Indeed, no pope since Pius V (1566–1572) had been canonized a saint—a person whose fate in heaven is sealed and who is worthy of veneration. And no modern pope before him, for as long as people could remember, came from such a poor and humble background. He was born on June 2, 1835, in a small village called Riese to a local village official—a sort of process server and messenger—and a seamstress twenty years younger. As a boy, Guiseppe Sarto would walk to school barefoot in order to save his shoes for when he really needed them. The family lived on a tiny plot of land and had little in the way of luxuries. The then patriarch of Venice, Jacopo Cardinal Monico, who himself came from a blacksmith’s family in Riese, named Sarto as a scholarship student at the seminary in Padua.4 Upon graduation, Sarto was ordained a priest and sent to Tombolo, a rough town known for its cattle dealers and brokers. There the gentle and humble priest began to become popular for his charity and his simple but compelling sermons. Later he was transferred to Salzano where he was at first not well received by the people who were used to clergy from better backgrounds and breeding. But soon he became successful, concentrating especially on the need for greater catechetical instruction and proper liturgies. His charity, especially in the cholera epidemic of 1873, won the hearts of his parishioners, and already people were calling attention to his saintly virtues. In 1875, Sarto became the diocesan chancellor and the spiritual director of the Treviso seminary. He quickly established himself as a strict but kind disciplinarian, and a proud exponent of the glories of the priesthood. His activities apparently came to the attention of Leo, who was a keen judge of character and also of the ambitions buried in the hearts of men. Sarto consequently was named the Bishop of Mantua, the Renaissance state of the Gonzagas. There he came face to face with the aggressiveness of liberalism and the Freemasons. The diocese he inherited was desperately short of vocations to the priesthood, and he began a concerted campaign aimed at young men, which proved to be highly successful. But Sarto remained, though, a parish priest at heart—

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teaching children the faith, visiting the sick and dying, and hearing confessions. For the first time in over two centuries, a diocesan Synod was held aimed at revitalizing the Church in his region, focusing on the sacraments, the liturgy, the rights of the Church, the First Communion of children, and relations with the Jews, who were numerous in Mantua. In his time in the diocese, one can see some precursors of the policies that would define his papacy—early Communion for children, attacks against science and the concepts of progress that aimed at updating the faith, a strong assertion of the rights of the papacy, and a respect for the Gregorian chant and appropriate liturgical music. He also challenged so-called “Modern Christianity”—later to be called “Modernism,” which he saw as a formidable collection of heresies. In place of an excessive reliance on intellectual pride, he fell back on traditional piety and recommended meditation on the mysteries of the rosary. However, on one occasion he maintained, “Religion has no fear of science. Christianity does not tremble before discussion, but before ignorance.” On another occasion he refused to follow the tradition of allowing a procession to go to his cathedral and the local synagogue on the marking of King Umberto’s birthday. Sarto’s objection was not that it honored the monarch, but that it created a public scandal by putting the church and a Jewish temple of worship on an equal plane.5 Throughout all these years Leo watched carefully the cleric’s successes, and on June 12, 1893, he named him a cardinal, then patriarch of the powerful see at Venice. However, the Italian government argued that it had a right to approve the appointment because Pius IV (1559–1565) had given that concession to Austria. Indeed he had, but since 1866 Venice had been spared Austrian rule and was now a part of the kingdom of Italy. The claim was no more than harassment of the Church, and after sixteen months the government finally acceded on September 1894, after the Vatican named an Italian to a post previously held by a Frenchman in the Apostolic Prefecture of Erythrae.6 From 1894 to 1903, the Patriarch promoted his major objectives: organized religious instruction, appropriate liturgy, increased emphasis on vocations, an upgrading of seminary education. He insisted on living simply, remembering his roots. He walked the streets in a black cassock greeting all, and reminding people that he should not be called “Your Eminence,” since he came from such a poor family in Riese. Even to the worldly and skeptical, it was clearly not a sham—for he was what he seemed—a saintly and humble man in a position of high authority. After he became pope, he was advised by patricians in Rome that he should make his peasant sisters papal countesses. He dismissed the pretensions and remarked, “I have made them the sisters of the pope—what more can I do for them?” Observing Sarto, the French Minister of Education Caumie concluded, “He is a man of magnetic personality and splendid appearance, with an open face from which decision and firmness shine forth, but on the other hand, the mildness of his eyes tempers all severity. Every manifestation of dignity is contrary to his nature, but there is nothing vile in him; his manners are perfect; they are

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the manners of one who is completely master of himself.” 7 At the conclave, the cardinals at first leaned toward Leo’s very capable Secretary of State as a successor, Mariano Cardinal Rampolla. But then in a surprise move, the Bishop of Krakow, Jan Kozielko Cardinal Puzyna, reported that the emperor of Austria wished to exercise his right of veto against Rampolla, who had headed up Leo’s very pro-French foreign policy. Actually there is some evidence that the Italian government asked Austria to exercise that veto on its behalf.8 Historically, the veto was claimed by certain Catholic states to guarantee that no person could be elected pope who might be unacceptable to their interests. The right was maintained by the Emperor of Austria and by the Kings of France and Spain as successors of Charlemagne who in turn as Emperor of the West, had inherited the right that belonged to the Byzantine emperors as representatives of the Roman people. In fact, Austria had used the veto against Antonio Gabriele Cardinal Severoli at the conclave that named Leo XII (1823), and Spain against Giacomo Cardinal Giustiniani during the conclave that chose Gregory XVI (1831). Also it has been alleged that Baron de Chateaubriand was said to have formulated a veto against Cardinal Albani without awaiting instructions from Paris at the conclave of Pius VIII (1829), and that the conclave of Pius IX would have been deprived of his services if Gaetano Cardinal Gaisruck had not arrived too late to exercise Emperor Frederick’s veto.9 The aged dean of the sacred college, Luigi Oreglia di Santo Cardinal Stefano, immediately declared the intervention invalid, and Cardinal Rampolla protested vigorously, but after several more ballots, the tides changed. Sarto emerged as the leading candidate, and then to the surprise of his fellow cardinals, he seemed genuinely unwilling to accept the office. It is not unusual for pope-designate to declare first his unworthiness, but then he acknowledges God’s will and moves on. But Sarto truly wished to decline until the leaders of the conclave bluntly warned him of the consequences of disobedience to God’s will and the consequences of refusing the Church. Finally he accepted and announced his choice of a name—Pius—out of respect for those recent popes who had gone before him with that name. On August 29, the pope arrived for his coronation in St. Peter’s Square, not as Leo did in the Sistine Chapel. Over forty thousand people crowded into the square and sang the hymn, “Behold a great priest,” and cries of “Long live Pope Pius X” were heard in a variety of languages. The pope signaled for silence but the cheering continued, and handkerchiefs waved in the breeze from all over the Basilica and the square. After acknowledging the pope, the master of ceremonies lit a small ball of hemp on top of a candlestick. Thus passes the glory of the world and all things temporal, Pius was reminded. The Mass began, and the Epistle and the Gospels were chanted in both Latin and Greek; the choir sang Perosi’s “Benedictus” at the Consecration. At the end of the Mass, Cardinal Rampolla, the Archpriest of the Basilica, and two canons gave the pope the traditional offerings of twenty-five lire and said, “Holy Father, the chapter and canons of this Basilica offer the usual stipend for a Mass well-sung.”

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His contemporaries already were calling him saintly. A French observer, Amelia Olivier, said of him that while he lacked the majestic appearance of Leo XIII, he had an irresistible kindness and pleasantness of manner. His answers were short and decisive, and he seemed calm and courageous, slow to condemn, but inflexible once he made up his mind. “He will prove himself a hero and a saint,” Olivier concluded.10 In recent times there has been a strange and discernible pattern of papal behavior and conclave elections that swing almost as a pendulum from side to side. The Church, with all of its tradition, its constancy, and its institutional stubbornness, seems nonetheless to recalibrate itself with very different pontificates that revolve around the polar stars of popes who are inflexible, legalistic, pious and inner-directed, and those that are more subtle, innovative, and outer-directed. Leo followed Pius IX whose established reign ended up with a hostile defensiveness toward the world, a firm policy of infallibility, and a highly centralized papal court. Leo sought to establish alliances with states and sovereigns, to recognize the aspirations of working men and women, and to encourage the Church to be a movement for social betterment. He said that he wished to so reform the Church that it would not return to what it had been before him. Yet he was to become the patron of a man who would succeed him and swing back in so many ways to Pius IX’s attitudes and orientations. Some observers even said that Pius IX and Pius X looked alike, although the latter was more handsome and fairer. Still, the similarities are apparent, especially in their deeds and in their attitudes toward dogma and dissent. Pius X’s successors would in turn be more attuned to the skills of diplomacy and outreach. They would be international leaders and not just men of recognized saintly piety. Admirers of Pius XII also liked to emphasize his spirituality, but it never crested the way Sarto’s did in the popular imagination so quickly. And then once again the Church seemed to be guided away from the aridness of the final years of Pius XII and moved into the short but eventful reign of John XXIII—a pope pledged to open up the windows to let the light and fresh air in. Still once more, the Church resorted to its same cycle with the election of another pastoral, pietistic pope, one given to powerful denunciations of doctrinal deviation and moral corruption—Karol Wojtyla, or John Paul II, soon to be called a saint. It may be that the papacy lends itself to such oscillations and historic swings, because the terms are undefined and so long compared to secular positions that it is inevitable that the seed time and flowering will be followed by decay and atrophy. Thus, it is not the leadership, but the final death rattle of an indefinite term in office against which one’s survivors are rebelling or repudiating. In any case, it is clear that not all the Church’s hierarchy was pleased with Leo’s dallying with European powers, especially with his inconclusive diplomacy toward France. And at the end of his papacy, with or without his final informed consent, there was coming from the Curia an offensive ready to be unleashed against “Modernism,” which Pius was to call a collection of heresies.

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Almost as soon as he was crowned, Pius X embraced the cause—this was to be his Syllabus of Errors. It would have profound repercussions not so much in the outside world but on the internal morale and comity of the Catholic Church. The pope’s aggressive leadership gave rise to a series of wild, reckless attacks on distinguished churchmen—both in the hierarchy and the lower clergy. It was thus another broadside aimed not so much at liberalism or the children of the Enlightenment as at the reformers in his own Church who sought to expand the fold and to reconcile the worlds of science and faith, a step that Catholic thinkers from Aquinas to Leo had welcomed.11 And there was a second affinity that marks Pius X and some men of faith, a sort of anti-intellectualism that juxtaposes fallible reason and childlike faith. No church has produced more great giants of Western thought than Roman Catholicism, but there is always an anxiety that God-given reason must be viewed suspiciously. Since the major modern celebrators of that reason were men and women who fell in with the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and anti-clerical Liberalism, one could see how from the Holy See’s perspective such a method of knowledge was a twisting road fraught with dangers. But Leo entered on that path with a sense of security—“If only I had ten more years,” the old man once concluded, “to reconcile science and the Scriptures!”12 Pius’s tilting was more than just away from that confidence; it was toward catechism, communion, and doctrinal purity. Still, no matter how well the young are educated and inculcated, no matter how real their faith and devotion are, they and their elders cannot be sealed off from the world of indifference and temptation. Not all people are as pious as Pius, or as saintly in their ways. For in the end, the young need inoculation and not armor to combat the diseases of the mind and soul. But for this new pope, the moods of piety and repression were not contradictions in his personality or in that of his Church, but one integrated response against a world that they did not fully comprehend or at least could not abide.

The Modernist Crusade Pio Nono had his liberals, Leo his Freemasons, and now Pius X would focus on the Modernists. The roots of that last intellectual movement are rather confusing. Some scholars say it started with a critique of Neo-Scholasticism and the inadequacy of Aquinas’ teachings in dealing with contemporary scholarship on the Scriptures and Church history. There was talk of how doctrines developed and the faith unfolded, and that religion was not a fixed set of dogmas, but a personal sentiment that must be lived or experienced. The notion of evolution or development was also linked up intellectually with the powerful biological theories of Charles Darwin that led some to argue that man’s destiny unfolded in the fabric of the physical universe. In addition, the Church was divided, especially in France and Germany, between conservative elements and those who urged a

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more aggressive agenda of social action, and also viewed the Church as a cultural rather than a religious force.13 Actually, Modernism began in Western Europe as an attempt to rejuvenate the embattled Church. It was a reformation led by friends. One such liberal French priest, Alfred Loisy, advocated a well-known interpretation of the Gospels that presented Christ not as savior, but as a preacher who predicted the literal end of the world. He never conceived that the Church would come into being to preach his words later. In England, a Jesuit, George Tyrrell, in a similar vein attacked papal infallibility and minimized the role of Church dogma while laying out a complicated theory about the relationship of revelation and secondary dogmas. In Italy the Modernist movement was embraced in a novel, Il Santo (written in 1905 by Antonio Fogazzaro) which advocated a return of the Church to evangelical simplicity and the end of legalism and authoritarianism. 14 There was also the development of Christian democratic movements, some of which sought to be independent of the Church and clerical control. And in Germany there was a greater emphasis on intellectual freedom coupled with an attack upon Scholasticism and papal power which seemed to remind some Catholics of Luther’s earlier attacks on the Church. Leo had serious reservations about these intellectual movements, but he decided not to take any specific action. His successor, however, immediately moved to place some of the Modernist major works on the Index of Forbidden Books, insisted that Catholic Action be subordinated to Church officials, and had some Modernist clergy dismissed. On July 3, 1907, he issued his own syllabus of errors called Lamentabili Sane—meaning “with truly lamentable results” that the age had pursued novelties and rejected the faith. A list of sixty-five beliefs were proscribed and condemned, including higher criticism of the Bible, the denial of divine authorship of the Old and New Testaments, skepticism about the divinity of Christ and His true ministry, the downgrading of the importance of the sacraments, an abandonment of the special teaching authority of the Church, and an advocacy of readjusting basic Christian doctrines in order to accommodate notions of scientific progress. The objective of these erroneous efforts was to turn Catholicism into liberal Protestantism, the Holy See claimed, which was somewhat true.15 On September 8, the pope issued an encyclical on the doctrines of the Modernists titled Pascendi dominci gregis. Pius argued that Modernism was “the synthesis of all heresies” and that its philosophical roots were agnosticism or the belief the human reason could not deal with questions beyond the world of phenomenon. He asserted boldly, “the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ has in these last days increased exceedingly, who are striving, by acts, entirely new and full of subtlety, to destroy the vital energies of the Church, and if they can, to overthrow Christ’s kingdom itself.” He lamented that this heresy and its “partisans of error” were to be found not just among the laity but among the very ranks of the priesthood. The Modernists had many manifestations the pope argued—philosopher, believer, theologian, historian, critic, apologist, and reformer. Thus the spread of these doctrines was found among biblical scholars,

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church reformers, classroom teachers, and even those who nominally acknowledge the teaching authority or the magisterium of the Church. Then in a rare step for a papal encyclical, the pope offered very specific prescriptions to do battle against this heresy, which included the study of Thomist or Scholastic philosophy; tighter restrictions on choosing the directors and professors of seminaries in Catholic universities and candidates for the priesthood; greater episcopal vigilance over publications and stronger censorship over books and newspapers; a general ban on secular priests editing newspapers or periodicals; and a severe limitation on congresses of priests’ meetings. Concluding, the pope then asked for diocesan watch committees, or what he called “the Council of Vigilance,” to expose any signs of Modernism in publications and teaching and to “combat novelties of words.”16 Several years later, on September 1, 1910, the pope continued his crusade by requiring that all clergy take an oath against the Modernist heresy and reaffirm their belief that God can be known by natural reason, that miracles and the prophesies are reliable signs of revelations, that the Church was founded by Christ himself, and that there is a certain deposit of faith that is emitted not from the subconscious but from a real ascent of the will to seek truth. The second part of the oath required submission to the statement of errors, the Lamentabili, and to the encyclical Pascendi. Although there was some opposition, especially in Germany and France, only about forty priests refused to take the oath. 17 Papal apologists liked to celebrate how the aggressive action of Pius X, so different from the hesitations of his predecessor, Leo XIII, ripped up this synthesis of heresies root and branch, but in fact Modernism was never that significant a force except among some visible authors and theologians, and they were few and far between—only known today as a result of the pope’s condemnation. The long-lasting consequence of the denunciations was that it created a period of genuine repression in the Church, which led to witch hunts and finger pointing even among orthodox and traditional Catholic clergy and hierarchy. For example, in 1911 the bishop of Pisa, Pietro Cardinal Maffi, wrote to the Holy See complaining that he, himself, had been accused, attacked, and publicly insulted by several priests using the Modernist crusade as a rationale. Later in 1915 the primate of Belgium, Desire Cardinal Mercier, who had been suspected of Modernist tendencies, wrote publicly that these insidious personal controversies led to attacks on the authority of the bishop by “impetuous spirits.” Such persecutions resulted in general mistrust and a paralysis of the will, he warned.18 Not only was there a vigorous Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office (the old Inquisition), but a new Consistatorial Congregation and later a “thought police” headed by Msgr. Umberto Benigni called Sodalitium Pianum (the Fellowship of St. Pius V), which was under the control of the Cardinal Secretary of State with the approval of the pope himself. Investigations were initiated in a variety of locales under the euphemism of “apostolic visitations.” In Italy when the pope decided to make a visitation to every diocese, his activities led to anxiety in some quarters. Indeed, Benigni’s group employed spies to seek out possible culprits spreading unorthodox views. In fact when Pius X’s canonization

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case came up in 1949, serious reservations were raised about his role in allowing those abuses to haunt the Church and intimidate the hierarchy. However, Pius XII pushed for a speedy beatification and canonization of his beloved predecessor and the objections were disposed of.19 When Pius X’s successor was chosen, apparently several cardinals took him aside and told him that the Modernist crusade and its repressive techniques must end, which they did. Indeed the new pope—Benedict XV—had himself been under suspicion for alleged doctrinal deviation! It is one thing to condemn Protestants or isolate a liberal Jesuit or a Dominican theologian, it is another to destroy the morale of the Church hierarchy. Later, another young clergyman— Angelo Roncalli—was also accused of Modernist tendencies, and had to fight to protect his orthodox reputation. He was to become John XXIII and was to be accused of having opened the Church up once again to the Modernist heresy in his instigating of Vatican II.20 It is difficult—at times incongruous—to link up the Pius of such antiintellectual repression with the genuinely humble parish priest who exuded a sense of serene spirituality. But in fact the pope was as intensely devoted to doctrinal purity as he was to personal piety. For him they went hand-in-hand—one believed fervently in dogma and served to keep them uncontaminated. It was certainly different from the more tolerant and aristocratic Leo. Privately, though, Pius was even more unyielding. He called the Modernists “miserable wretches,” who were more deadly than Luther in their pernicious effects. “Kindness is for fools,” he counseled, and then said that they should be “beaten with fists. In a duel, you don’t count or measure the blows, you strike as you can. War is not made with charity: it is a struggle, a duel. If Our Lord were not terrible, He would not have given an example in this too. See how he treated the Philistines, the sowers of error, the wolves in sheep’s clothing, the traders: He scourged them with whips!”21

The Pastoral Pope Overall, Pius was a genuine, amiable, down-to-earth priest who talked to everyone, and who, unlike Leo, had the common touch and sense of humor. He wore a modest wristwatch, while Leo wore none and kept the conventional etiquette. Pius allowed people to eat with him—another change from the practice maintained since Urban VIII (1623–1644), that the pope had to dine alone, and he insisted that Catholics sit down often in his own chair, unlike Leo, who had Catholic lay people kneel in his presence. No one was allowed to kiss Pius’s slipper, and he disliked being transported in the sedia gestatoria, saying it made him dizzy. And he returned to his old habits: every Sunday afternoon in the courtyard of Saint Damascus, he explained the catechism; and he once again led a reform of church music, placing emphasis on the Gregorian chants and polyphonic music thus laying aside the sounds of operatic and individual performers

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who seemed to be turning churches into common music halls. 22 As before, he focused on reform of the seminaries and on the training of the young. He celebrated the virtues of the priesthood, established the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and instigated a major effort to codify canon law—a monumental task completed just after his death. Pius made headway in restructuring the Curia (the first major change since Sixtus V in 1587) and helped ban begging priests (called scagnoizzi) from Rome, seeing them as unsightly and a scandal in his very diocese. Most far reaching was his controversial decision to allow very young children—those just above the age of reason—to receive Communion and his encouragement to all to receive frequently the Eucharist. Pius was in part furthering personal piety by these actions, but also by allowing children to receive the sacrament, he was in fact answering directly another French heresy—Jansenism. That movement emphasized the gloomy dogmas that man was so sinful that he could never be sure of the state of his soul and thus should be wary of taking Communion. Pius saw the Eucharist not as a guaranteed reward to the saved, but as a powerful aid on the road to salvation. 23 These pastoral concerns had all been anticipated by his previous experiences at the parish and diocesan levels. Unlike many popes, his formative years in the clergy were not spent in universities or in the diplomatic corps, but in ministering to the lives of people and their families. Thus, as the Modernists and even some of the clergy were downplaying the importance of the sacraments and traditional rites and rituals, Pius was expanding the range and scope of such activities and sentiments.

Pius X’s Foreign Policy In moving outside the Church, Pius sought ways to both balance the Church’s strict demands for controls over its adherents and also to relax a bit Leo’s admonitions about nonparticipation in Italian politics. On June 11, 1905, Pius published a statement on Catholic Action—calling for less timidity and more social activity to support God, the Church, and people. He told the faithful to “prepare themselves prudently and seriously for political life in case they should be called to it.” In his own experience in Venice he had encouraged an alliance of Catholics with moderate liberals to oust the anti-clerical regime there, and he was never very preoccupied with the Papal States and temporal power. He seemed at first willing to encourage Catholics to form a unified group for social reforms in Italy. The pope tried to prohibit Catholic popular action groups from embracing too closely an agenda of partisanship as occurred in Germany, fearing the counter ascendancy of anti-clerical political movements. Pius did support political participation in achieving some reforms, but again he feared losing control, especially among his own clergy who might become involved in those activities. And in his mind, the enemy was in his own household, as he linked some of them with Modernism. The Vatican was especially

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troubled with the French Christian Democracy movement, which started out trying to follow Leo’s call for ralliement—or cooperation with the secular government. Pius agreed, and he ended up condemning the work of loyal Catholic Marc Sangnier and the Sillon group, which rushed to welcome non-Catholics and which formed alliances that the Vatican found troubling. 24 Leo’s policies toward France had been carefully crafted by him and by Secretary of State Mariano Cardinal Rampolla—an astute Sicilian who favored a tilting away from Austria—one of the traditional protectors of the papacy. Those policies ended up costing Rampolla the papacy at the conclave. But after Pius assumed that office, anti-clerical sentiment in France increased under the ministry of former priest Emile Combes who sought to prohibit teaching by religious communities and who interfered in episcopal nominations. After the conclave, the new pope appointed as secretary of state the thirty-eight-year-old Rafael Merry del Val, the son of a Spanish marquis and an English mother, who was educated in Belgium and England, and who was also familiar with Germany, Austria, and Canada. Although able and astute, Merry del Val was roundly criticized for his interference in French affairs. When the president of France visited the rulers of Italy, former Secretary of State Rampolla wrote a dissenting letter to the Catholic governments, and it ended up being printed in a French socialist journal, L’Humanite. Intense criticism was directed at the Holy See, and the French government then had an excuse for breaking off diplomatic relations, which it did on July 30, 1904. A year later, the disagreement led to a unilateral annulment of the Concordat of 1806 and the transfer of the Church’s possessions to lay associations called Associations Cultuelles. Pius was to have even less success with France than did Leo, and he left the Church there under siege and vulnerable. Pius’s policies toward France have to be seen in the long, historical context of a century and a quarter of turmoil and ideological warfare. 25 To re-iterate: the Catholic Church went from being a pillar of the Ancien Regime as late as 1789 to a target of persecution by the French radicals to being a partner in an uneasy detente with Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon at first signed a concordat with the Church, insisted that the pope be at his coronation in 1804, and five years later kidnapped and imprisoned Pius VII. During the Bourbon restoration (1814– 1830), Catholicism was declared “the religion of the state,” Sunday was restored as a day of rest, divorce was struck out of the Civil Code, religious education was approved by the state, and criticism of religion by the press was curtailed. By 1830, the Bourbon line was ended, and Louis Philippe was chosen monarch. Increasing anti-clericalism was apparent as more attacks against some churches and clergymen, especially the Jesuits, took place. These activities were marked by the appearance of the beginnings of liberal Catholicism in that nation. The Revolution of 1848 marked increasing anti-Church agitation in France and in much of Western Europe. Louis Napoleon was elected president and then conducted a plebiscite which named him emperor. He moved from being protector of the papacy to co-conspirator against the temporal powers of the pope. Leo XIII began and ended his reign trying to reach a reconciliation with the French

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state and his own Catholics, but his attempts were only partially successful. In addition, in 1899, an army officer who had been convicted of treason five years earlier and then deported to Devil’s Island was pardoned. Alfred Dreyfus was a Jew and a republican, while the true culprit turned out to be an aristocrat, a Catholic, and a Royalist. The controversy thus revolved around those polar ideological opposites, and by 1905 the Republicans used that injustice to push for a separation of church and state, thus finally ending Napoleon’s concordat. Despite Merry del Val’s antagonistic attitude toward the French regime, Pius started off in the spirit of some conciliation saying, “I have to follow the lines of conduct of my predecessors.” But after the Holy See’s criticisms of the French president’s visit and cancellation of a meeting with the French foreign minister, Theophile Delcasse, and Merry del Val, the situation deteriorated. These indiscretions gave the government the opportunity to end the concordat that Republicans had talked about doing, but never seemed to get around to. Pushed hard by the new and strong working-class Socialist party, a law was passed that confiscated church property and abolished the budget des cultes or compensation for the appropriation of ecclesiastical lands during the Revolution of 1789. Consequently, Associations Cultuelles—religious associations—were founded and put in charge of church buildings, and for a limited time presbyters and seminaries. Over a four-year period, the state would phase out its contributions to paying the salaries of clergy, although it did guarantee existing pensions. However, bishops were allowed to correspond freely with Rome and to adjust diocesan and parish boundaries as they saw fit, and religious insignias were allowed. But even the ringing of church bells, which some found both offensive and annoying, was to be regulated by local mayors. 26 On February 11, 1906, against the advice of a majority of the French hierarchy, Pius X condemned this act, known as the “Law of Separation,” saying in part that it refused to acknowledge the hierarchical nature of the Church and the need for Catholics “to follow the lead given to it.” Some saw the pope’s actions as a traditional assertion of papal authority, but it was probably also motivated by a fear of allowing the French hierarchy some say in major policy questions— a concern about reestablishing the spirit of the Gallican Church. Also, the pope again could show as in the Modernist dispute that the papacy could be counted on as being a bulwark against such hostile innovations. In late May, the French bishops met and sought to reach some accommodation with their government, but in August the Holy See opposed compromise saying it violated the sacred rights of the Church. The Church followed its pope; one prelate glumly concluded, “They wanted an infallible Pope: they have got one.”27 Although traditional Catholics praised the pope’s heroic intransigence, the Church in France was not in good shape, having experienced a notable decline from 1901 to 1907. One commentator at the time, Jean de Bonnefon, observed, “The urban masses are becoming atheists, the royal masses pagan.” In Limoges, for example, the number of births without baptism rose from 8 percent to 25 percent in that period; lay funerals from 6.85 percent to 22.9 percent, civil marriages from 18.5 percent to 48.5 percent. By August 1910, the pope had con-

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demned the independence of Marc Sangnier’s “Le Sillon” movement, charging that its democratic ways would lead to an end of Church discipline and to a new religion of humanity. It is only with the beginning of World War I and the strong support of the French war effort by its Catholic clergy that much of the anticlerical spirit was diminished in that nation.28 Elsewhere, papal diplomacy faced similar problems. In Germany there was some criticism of the pope’s encyclical Editae Saepe issued on May 26, 1910, which was dedicated to St. Charles Borromeo, but which was critical of the Protestant Reformation. In praising the Polish people, Pius incurred the wrath of the Russian czarist government, which was used to controlling its neighboring state, and the pope’s legate to Ireland was attacked in London for his sympathies to those Catholic people under English domination. In Spain the Church was facing both an anti-clerical crusade of the government and the hostilities of the Catalan Nationalists; in neighboring Portugal the republican government pushed for separation of church and state that resulted in violent religious persecution. In 1911, Portuguese mobs raided convents, priests were molested, Church property was confiscated, and bishops were driven from their dioceses. The prime minister concluded, “Religious sentiment is a lie and every kind of church a farce.” In another unfortunate flap, the pope refused a papal audience to former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt because he was scheduled to speak at the Methodist Church in Rome, carrying the Holy See’s policies to a ridiculous extreme. On another occasion, the pope was to declare exuberantly to James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, “I love these Americans. They are the blooming youth of Catholicism.” In his dealings with Latin America, Pius criticized anti-religious legislation in Ecuador, expressed concerns over the maintenance of ecclesiastical laws in Bolivia, and had his agent serve as mediator in a dispute involving Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. On June 7, 1912, the pope spoke out to Latin American bishops on the degrading plight of Indians in South America. In Mexico, there was persecution of priests and religious, a rupture of diplomatic relations with Spain, and anti-clerical and anti-religious riots, with churches being destroyed and priests killed.29 But all of these occurrences paled in comparison to the rising war clouds moving over Europe in 1914. Pius had predicted just such a conflagration years before, and lamented, “In ancient times, the pope with a word might have stopped the slaughter, but now I am powerless.” On August 2, 1914, he pleaded in vain for peace and compromise. On one occasion he even refused to bless German army units, but extended his personal regards to the individuals in front of him who were pledged to the faith and were coincidentally serving in uniform. Several weeks later, weary and depressed, he died from bronchial flu. The inscription on his tomb called him “poor and humble at heart.” 30

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Creating a Saint There is a tendency among certain types of Italian males to be quiet, diffident, and almost passive in the way they deal with the turmoils of the world. That presentation is at variation with the general stereotype of loud, boisterous, and gesticulating men who stand in piazzas drinking wine and commenting on the attributes of women. But this more mild, contained, and rather placid style is apparent, and it leads those individuals at times to be unwilling victims of the aggressive world and its ministers of ambition. It seems that in his early career, Guiseppe Sarto was just such a person—a priest uninterested in advancement and committed to Catholicism in its most pastoral and pietistic expressions. He was not the resolute martyr as Pius IX, or the wily, intellectual diplomat as Leo XIII. Yet he was promoted by Leo and by others, and was recognized early on for his saintly demeanor. Usually the word “saint” is used in such a slack and easy way to define individuals who seem to be committed to religion and its salutary virtues, but in Sarto’s case many contemporaries felt that they were in the presence of a special person with deep reservoirs of spirituality, more than even would have been normally expected of a clergyman or a man of God. When he became pope he surprised even his secretary of state with his tough determination to protect the faith. Merry del Val wrote how Pius at times seemed tolerant and diffident as a person, and then almost as if changing his cassock to papal white, he still would steel himself up and remark that he had to act like a pope and make the decision for the good of the Church.31 It is from such determination that the Canon Law Code was reformed, the Gregorian chant officially reblessed, the question of Communion for the young finally resolved, and compromise with the French government refused. And it is from such determination and rigid sense of stewardship that the pope lent his good offices, not just to a broad condemnation of Modernism, but also to the patterns of officially sanctioned abuses that resulted. And yet much of that is now forgotten, for the image of Pius X is clearly set with his canonization as a true saint of the Church—a very rare honor for a pontiff in modern times. For while they all serve their church conscientiously, popes are too much in the world to be regarded often as saintly. Some have said that such a designation was encouraged by Pius XII because he desired to further the cult of the papacy and Romanism to his own advantage. 32 Perhaps there is some truth in that criticism, but the movement to canonize Giuseppe Sarto began almost immediately after his death, and in Italy there is still today a very strong following for him. This study examines the varied styles of leadership that the papacy has embraced. Bureaucratic, political, legalistic, intellectual—we all understand those variations on a theme. But the idea that leadership can be grounded in saintliness seems to belong at best to the Middle Ages with its superstitions, its relics, its cults of enthusiasm. In fact, with Pius X, his ability to govern and prevail was linked up in some cases with the view of some that he was indeed a saint—a

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person whose behavior was not only good, but went beyond normal human expectations. And although it may be unacceptable to the modern skeptical mind, Pius was linked up in his lifetime and certainly afterwards with alleged miracles. Some were more modest expressions of piety, as when on the day of his coronation he went to see a very sick Spanish cardinal, Herreroy Espinosa, archbishop of Valencia, who after the visit seemed to walk away from the door of death and then went back home again! Later the Vatican began to get special requests for assistance from people with incurable diseases and disabilities who asked for the pope’s prayerful intercession. The afflicted would come hoping to see him at audiences or to touch his presence—shades of Jesus in the marketplace. From those cities and backwaters would come stories or tales of cures and relief in some ways not common when one talked of other popes.33 Modern Christians feel inspired with the altruistic teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, but some are clearly uncomfortable if not scornful of miracles. But the Jesus of the Scriptures was a miracle man—his detractors even called him a magician. He cured the sick, comforted the afflicted, and even most extraordinarily on one occasion in the name of the Father raised up Lazarus who had gone on the other side of death. The miracle stories are not just inserted for narrative color, they are an integral part of the definition of Christ and Christianity. 34 Today, though, miracles are often reduced to explanations involving illusion, psychosomatic confusion, or just cures that can be explained by mathematical probabilities. But there remains in fundamentalist Protestantism and in strands of pietistic Catholicism, a very strong tradition of believing in miracles, prophecies and holy people. Before the formal Church acknowledged Fatima and Lourdes and the stigmata of Padre Pio, those occurrences held the allegiances of many practitioners of the folk religion living in the byways of Catholicism. They belonged to the people before they were acknowledged by the hierarchy. The respectable bureaucratic Church is always concerned about a scandal, especially among its own devotees. It is hard to control the excesses of passionate devotion. But after Pius’s death, rumors and then witness testimony began to tell the story of the faithful who claimed cures as miraculous happenings. The Church finally recognized some of those assertions in its cumbersome process of making a saint, and Pius XII canonized Sarto on May 29, 1954. Whether one believes in miracles and direct supernatural intervention in personal lives or not, and whether one attributes such to Giuseppe Sarto or not, there is no question that we are talking about a very different dimension of leadership. It is so rare and striking that it links up in the modern eye the ecclesiastical and the bureaucratic office to something over the line of regular human expectations. And by doing so it adds to the prestige of the office and the legacy on which the papacy draws. It is one thing to have a saintly pope in the year 1500, and another at the dawn of our century—in the lifetimes of our grandparents, with people who until recently still remembered this man walking on earth. Thus it was that the simple parish priest became a saint in the Church of his baptism, in the faith of

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his youth, and in the theology of his priesthood.

Notes 1. Carlo Falconi, The Popes in the Twentieth Century, from Pius X to John XXIII (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), 2; they also misplaced Leo’s ring at first, see Hartwell dela Garde Grissell, Sede Vacante: Being a Diary Written during the Conclave of 1903 . . . (London: James Parker and Co., 1903), 2. 2. Falconi, Popes of the Twentieth Century, 7; Emil Schmitz, Life of Pius X (New York: American Catholic Publication Society, 1907); Frances A. Forbes, Life of Pius X (London: R. & T. Washbourne, 1919). 3. Girolamo Dal-Gal, Pius X, The Life-Story of the Beatus: The New Italian Life of Pius X (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1954), 120. 4. Igino Giordani, Pius X, A Country Priest (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1954); René Bazin, Pius X (London: Sands & Company, 1928); an interesting pictorial biography is Leonard Von Matt and Nello Vian, St. Pius X (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1955), 5. 5. Dal-Gal, Pius X, chaps. 2, 3; Andrew W. Canepa, “Pius X and the Jews: A Reappraisal,” Church History 61, no. 3 (September 1992): 362–72. 6. Francis X. Seppelt and Klemens Löffler, A Short History of the Popes (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1932), 498. 7. Dal-Gal, Pius X, 128–29; on his sisters: Katherine Burton, The Great Mantle: The Life of Giuseppe Melchiore Sarto, Pope Pius X (New York: Longmans, Green & Company, 1950), 167. 8. Seppelt and Löffler, A Short History, 498. 9. Eduardo Soderini, The Pontificate of Leo XIII (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1934), 1:91. 10. Pierluigi L. Occelli, St. Pius X (London: St. Paul Publications, 1954), 140–42; Burton, The Great Mantle, 152. 11. Burton, The Great Mantle, 158, chap. 13; Giordani, Pius X, chap. 21; Bazin, Pius X, 302–40; Falconi, The Popes, 58–72. 12. See previous chapter on Leo’s remarks on reconciling science and the Scriptures. 13. New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), 9:991– 95. 14. Antonio Fogazzaro, The Saint (New York: G. Putnam’s, 1906). 15. Michael Davies, Partisans of Error (Long Prairie, Minn.: Neumann Press, 1983), 94–101, contains the syllabus Lamentabili Sane. 16. The Papal Encyclicals, 1903–1939, comp. Claudia Carlen (Raleigh, N.C.: Pierian Press, 1981), 71–97. 17. Catholic Encyclopedia, 9:995. 18. Falconi, Popes of the Twentieth Century, 37–38; a more supportive

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view of the Modernist handling is in Auguste Pierre Laveille, A Life of Cardinal Mercier (New York: The Century Co., 1928), chap. 7. 19. Falconi, Popes of the Twentieth Century, 43. 20. Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII, Shepherd of the Modern World (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1985), chap. 4; on Vatican II, see, Davies, Partisans of Error, passim. 21. Falconi, Popes of the Twentieth Century, 54. 22. Burton, The Great Mantle, 158. 23. I am indebted to Dr. James Brennan for this insight. Also see Burton, Great Mantle, 180–81. 24. Burton, Great Mantle, 179; Catholic Encyclopedia, 12:1051–52, 11:410; Michael Fogarty, Christian Democracy in Western Europe, 1820–1953 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1957). 25. André Jardin and André-Gean Tudesq, Restoration and Reaction, 1815–1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Maurice Agulhon, The Republican Experiment, 1848–1852 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Alain Lessis, The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 1852–1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Jean-Marie Mayeur and Madeleine Reberioux, The Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War, 1871– 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Ross William Collins, Catholicism and the Second French Republic, 1848–1852 (New York: Octagon Books, 1980); John McManners, Church and State in France, 1870–1914 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); Maurice J. M. Larkin, “The Church and French Concordat, 1891 to 1902,” English Historical Review 81, no. 321 (October 1966): 717–739. 26. McManners, Church and State, 138; Joseph N. Moody, “The Dechristianization of the French Working Class,” The Review of Politics 20, no. 1 (January 1958): 46–69. 27. McManners, Church and State, 165. 28. McManners, Church and State, 169. 29. Catholic Encyclopedia, 11:411; Burton, Great Mantle, 205, 157. 30. Forbes, The Life of Pius, 173; Burton, Great Mantle, 216–17. 31. Burton, Great Mantle, 164; Rafael Merry del Val, Memories of Pius X (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1951), 63; F. A. Forbes, Rafael, Cardinal Merry del Val (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1932); Marie C. Buehrle, Rafael, Cardinal Merry del Val (Houston: Cumen Christi Press, 1980). 32. Falconi, Popes of the Twentieth Century, 289; Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why (London: Chatto & Winders, 1991). 33. Occelli, St. Pius X, chap. 14; Dal-Gal, Pius X, chap. 10; Rafael Merry del Val, Memories of Pius X: A Symposium on the Life and Work of Pius X (Washington, D.C.: Fraternity of Christian Doctrine, 1946), chaps. 13, 14. 34. John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: Harpers/Collins, 1991); Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978); John Meier, A Marginal

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Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1994).

Chapter 21

Benedict XV and the Mad Dogs of War As the young and the romantic celebrated the beginnings of war, the old man in St. Peter’s pleaded for peace. But peace would not come. The conflict started in the miscalculation of diplomats, the timetables of military strategists, the purveying of nationalistic hatreds. In the end, in the trenches of France, on the frozen tundra of Russia, and in a million hearts that lost the dreams of a single young man, the lessons of war were soon learned. When the war was relegated to the annals of history, it left four major empires destroyed and set in place the beginnings of the terrible totalitarian states that led to a second, and even more destructive war. If Pius X approaching death saw the vast array of consequences that would visit the earth, it is little wonder that he seemed to grieve so heavily. When the conclave met to choose his successor, the cardinals wanted a man who would combine personal piety with strong diplomatic experience. Some seemed to accept intuitively that his pontificate would be defined by the Church’s reactions to the war that was just beginning. Still others realized that the preoccupations of Pius X with internal Church matters may not have served the faithful in this period of strife. They were correct. After that conflict was done, a disillusioned John Maynard Keynes was to conclude, “Never in the lifetime of man now living has the universal element in the soul of man burned so dimly.” As has been noted before, the formal “veto” of certain Catholic states over candidates for the papacy was ended by Pius X right after his election, but the French ambassadors in London and in Madrid were still instructed by their government to use their influence in this conclave to form a united bloc of English, French, Belgium, and Spanish cardinals so as to get a candidate who would be sympathetic to the Entente. The favorite of France was Domenico Cardinal Ferrata, a former papal nuncio to that nation who was seen as friendly to its interests. The issue of Modernism also played a role in the conclave as the zealots supported the young and brilliant Domenico Cardinal Serafini, a Benedictine monk, assessor to the Holy Office, and former Apostolic Delegate to Mexico. Opponents of the continuing Modernist crusade rallied around Pietro Cardinal Maffi, the popular and patriotic archbishop of Pisa. Later, the supporters of both 341

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Maffi and Ferrata were to throw their support to a compromise candidate. Thus in one sense, the division seemed to be between the followers of Leo and the adherents of Pius X. But when all was said and done, the cardinals again chose one of their own—a conservative Italian, a reliable product of the Curia, a protégé of Secretary of State Rampolla, and the Archbishop of Genoa, Giacomo Della Chiesa, or “James of the Church” as it could be translated. 1

The Making of a Diplomat A small, quiet person, he walked with a slight limp, spoke in a high-pitched voice, and seemed an unlikely successor to the strong-willed Pio Nono, the regal Leo, and the forceful saint, Pius X. As a youth Giacomo had heeded his father’s advice and gone to a public institution, graduating with a doctorate of civil law from the University of Genoa, and he was associated with the Catholic Action movement. Having completed those studies, he was then free to follow the religious vocation that he felt in his heart and become a seminarian in Rome. After ordination and further study, he received a doctorate in sacred theology from Capranica College and another doctorate in canon law from the Gregorian University. Della Chiesa boarded at the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici—a special training school for the diplomatic corps of the Church, which included such distinguished alumni as the legendary Ercole Consalvi, Leo XIII, Rampolla, Merry del Val, and later Pius XII. There he was called to the attention of the rising Monsignor Rampolla who had been in turn promoted by Leo XIII to become his nuncio in the difficult arena of Spain. Rampolla was permitted to bring a personal secretary with him, and he took the well-recommended student, Della Chiesa. It was Rampolla’s responsibility as papal nuncio to unite the Spanish Catholics and implement Leo’s encyclical Quam Multa addressed to the nation’s hierarchy. Rampolla was to prove rather adept diplomatically and rather charming personally. When a cholera epidemic swept through the nation in 1885, he and his secretary tended to the sick and dying. In the best charitable traditions of Christianity, they organized the relief effort, cleaned soiled beds, prepared food and medicine, and seemed heroic and immune to the disease’s ravishes. On March 14, 1887, Monsignor Rampolla was made a cardinal, and two months later he was chosen by Leo XIII to succeed Louis Cardinal Iacobini as secretary of state. Rampolla promptly recalled Della Chiesa to Rome to become his minutante (personal assistant) and later made him undersecretary in the Secretariat of State where he remained for some fourteen years. His contemporaries generally found him to be an unprepossessing and courteous colleague with a lively sense of humor, an incredible capacity for work, and a marvelous memory. One Italian observer paid him in 1887 the highest compliment: Monsignor [later Cardinal]

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Agliardi observed he was “a new Consalvi.” The quiet undersecretary lived in Rome with his parents in rooms in the Arcione, and later the Palazzo Brascha. 2 During that period, his career would parallel the handsome and brilliant Rafael Merry del Val who would become for a time a sort of rival. Indeed Merry del Val was everything Della Chiesa was not, he was impressive, witty, engaging, and carried himself with a domineering presence that both inspired and pleased. Della Chiesa on the other hand was diffident, slight, and so small that he was nicknamed by some Il piccoletto—the dwarf. He said of himself, “I am but an ugly gargoyle on the beauties of Rome.”3 When Leo died, Rampolla was cast out of power, and it was Merry del Val who assumed ascendancy as the thirty-eight-year-old secretary of state under the new Pius X. Rampolla’s protégé had lost his patron, and it seemed that he was no longer the charmed staff person advancing in the Curia. Still for four difficult years, he remained in the Secretariat of State, while loyally visiting his old friend who was tucked away in the ecclesiastical corners of the sacred city. Under Rampolla’s guidance, he had been promoted in 1901 to the office of deputy secretary of state and given the title Secretary of the Cypher. There he acquired a profound understanding of Church diplomacy, the subtle workings of the Curia, and the intricacies of dogma and canon law, and in the process took the measure of the personalities who had moved past his desk, and who would later become important during his reign. Pope Leo, a shrewd judge of character, had actually considered him for the archbishopric of Florence in 1902, but apparently Leo informed him that Rampolla objected, fearing he would lose his most valued aide. Later, when Della Chiesa’s mother complained to the cardinal secretary of state that her son deserved a higher position in the Church hierarchy, Rampolla countered, “Have patience, Lady Marchioness, your son will make a few steps forward, but they will be great ones.”4 When Pius became pope, he replaced Rampolla as was the custom, but by 1907, he decided to advance Rampolla’s protégé to archbishop of Bologna, although he did not name him a cardinal as many expected. Apparently, a wary Merry del Val had stopped Pius from making Della Chiesa the papal nuncio to Spain, seeking to end Rampolla’s influence and diplomatic legacy there permanently. On the other hand, the pope claimed that God had inspired him to send Della Chiesa to Bologna rather than Madrid, and so it was done. It was only in May 1914 that Della Chiesa was named to the College of Cardinals, and that honor lasted for only three months, since he was soon elected pope in his own right. Della Chiesa knew well the men with whom he was dealing. He had, for example, close contact with Pius X, and early in his reign in 1903 had observed sardonically, “The new Pontiff is a sweet delicacy. If it were possible to sin by an excess of charity and amiability, then I think the new pope would be guilty of that fault.”5 As for Della Chiesa himself, the observations of his contemporaries were often diverse. In 1913, one person wrote, “He has a high, pale forehead, crowned by the blackest hair; his eyes are black, vivid and penetrating; he has a

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large mouth with thin, drawn lips, but full of expression. He reminded me of Leopardi, and, in fact, his face and figure belong undoubtedly to the same type as those of the great poet.”6 With his fastidiousness, his deep ties to his widowed mother, his tendency at times to be prissy and even surly, Della Chiesa seemed to be forbidding to some, even though he lacked the pretentiousness so often apparent in Roman clergy, especially those on the rise. Above all, he was in demeanor and bearing a natural aristocrat. Although Della Chiesa was strongly in accord with Pius’s attacks on the Modernist heresy—indeed was called the pope’s right hand in the cause—he appears to have disagreed with the controversial methods of Monsignor Benigni’s Sodalitium Pianum. Although it was not generally known, apparently that group was investigating him at that time as well, probably because of his seeming approval of quasi-secular Catholic journalism. Those “integral” or pure Catholics, as they like to call themselves, were obsessed with any signs of doctrinal deviation from their traditional views, and even casual friends of their critics were suspect. Cardinal Rampolla, then in retirement and living at the Palazzino di Santa Maria behind St. Peter’s, denounced what he called the “sad impression that they made with their excessive zealism.” Later his protégé, early in his pontificate, would criticize those who would split the Church into groups because of their mistaken zeal. 7 Della Chiesa safely tended to his archdiocese from 1908 to 1912, and did not visit Rome at all. In 1913, he led a major Italian pilgrimage to Lourdes; in December of that year he received news of the death of his great patron, Rampolla. The gossip was that the pope and Cardinal Merry del Val had removed Della Chiesa from power in Rome in order to guarantee a clear break with the progressive policies of Leo and his last secretary of state. Now that challenge and that presence were gone. By not granting a cardinal’s hat to a see that had traditionally been headed by one, the message was clear about the reservations that some in the Vatican, including the pope, apparently had about its current incumbent. Even the Bolognese were dismayed, and one group finally went to see the pope, and bluntly declared that if Della Chiesa was not worthy to be a cardinal, then he was not worthy to continue to be archbishop of Bologna, and should either receive the honor or be transferred. 8 Even saints can be petty at times and not above politics in their dealings with mere mortals it seems. After Rampolla’s death, the archbishop of Bologna received the honor. The major and unintended consequence, of course, was that Pius had cleared the path for the emergence of a successor who would look back with favor on the progressive policies of Leo and on his diplomacy. At the conclave, the cardinals listened intently to the opening sermon of Monsignor Aurelio Galli who warned that the Church in the midst of war must choose a man of superior intelligence, savoir-faire, and genuine holiness, and one who was especially imbued with Christian charity. Then in secret the cardinals voted; it has been speculated that Della Chiesa received only the minimal two-thirds vote necessary to be elected. Apparently, there was even a challenge, based on the rumor that he had voted for himself—which was not permitted—an accusation

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which proved to be groundless. Impassively, he accepted the office and then to the surprise of his fellow cardinals, chose Benedict as his new name in honor of both the great monastic saint and Church reformer, and also out of respect to the last bishop of Bologna to succeed to the papacy, the cultured Prospero Lambertini (1740-1758), Benedict XIV. It was said that in greeting one particular individual at the ceremony, the new pope quipped, “And We assure you the Holy Father is not a Modernist.” Within earshot of Cardinal Merry del Val, the pope was also supposed to have remarked, “The stone which the builders rejected is made the headstone in the corner.” The cardinal diplomatically responded, “It is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” It was a tactful rejoinder, but Merry del Val’s days were numbered, and he was given forty-eight hours to vacate the secretary of state’s apartments. Thus, Benedict XV, the Church bureaucrat and the Curial spectator, inherited the manifold duties and the lengthy title of his office: Vicar of Christ, Bishop of Rome, Successor of St. Peter, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Province of Rome, and Supreme Steward of the Temporal Possessions of the Holy Roman Church.9 In his first actions as pope, he seemed to be a traditional figure returning back to the clerical court he knew so well. Indeed, Benedict moved easily and comfortably through the familiar Vatican corridors where he was no stranger. He restored the custom that the pope would eat alone, permitted the faithful to kiss his slipper, and was crowned not in St. Peter’s Square, but as Leo had been in the Sistine Chapel. He replaced Merry del Val as secretary of state, choosing Cardinal Ferrata who soon died of an appendicitis, and then appointed Pietro Cardinal Gasparri—the son of a sheep raiser from the Umbria region. Gasparri was also a Rampolla protégé, and a talented person who seemed a bit disorganized as he surrounded himself with parrots who shrieked in his office while he did the Church’s business.10 Without having close ties to his extended family that Pius had, Benedict withdrew into himself more—even avoiding the members of the Apostolic College. He made no special provision for his sister to visit him, although he did travel through the Vatican Gardens with his partially paralyzed brother. He rarely held public audiences, in part because of the restrictions on foreign travel for the faithful during the war, and he was punctual and businesslike in his dealings with subordinates. Appropriately, the new pope seemed to have a fetish for watches and for avoiding lost time.11 The great and consuming issue before Benedict was the immensely gruesome and costly war. Soon, Europeans were to know that what some had mistakenly predicted would be a pleasant little engagement was reaching into still another year of terrible battles and untold tragedies. Later, the pope was rightly to condemn the war as simply “useless slaughter,”12 and the “surrender of civilized Europe.” In late 1914, the pope issued his first encyclical, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum which was roundly criticized as a disjointed and saccharine exposition on the importance of love and charity in the midst of the

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horrors of mechanized warfare. But if one reads the papal letter, it is difficult to comprehend the vehemence of the criticism. There is no question that Benedict incorporated into Ad Beatissimi some brief observations, especially at the end, on Modernism, the need for an independent papacy, the role of bishops, and the desirability of unity among Catholics. It is clear that his lamentations over the war set the real tone of the letter and indeed for most of his pontificate. It has been speculated that Benedict had in general an instinctive repulsion toward violence, which may have been connected with his physically weak condition, and that the repeated slaughters of the war moved him even more than most observers of the human condition. He eloquently denounced the ruin, slaughter, and bloodshed, the increase in the number of widows and orphans, the disruption of economic life, and the general misery of the poor. “All are in distress,” he judged. It is true that Benedict did not give a sophisticated summary of the causes of the war, for he was not a historian, but a moral critic. Still, he focused on the absence of mutual love among mankind, the disrespect for authority, the injustice in relationships between economic classes, and the inordinate striving for material goods. Later chroniclers of the conflict would cite the importance of imperialism, nationalist envy, the overconfidence of the military, and a score of other “causes,” which surely supplemented Benedict’s initial diagnosis.13

The Causes of the Great War Indeed several generations of historians and countless other citizens across the globe have struggled then and now with the question of what caused the First World War. It is as if they sensed that it was too gruesome and far reaching to have come about by accident or as a consequence of the murder of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife on June 28, 1914. Authorities on the war still disagree, but in general there are probably four underlying causes that can be identified. The most important was the development of a web of entangling alliances in the period following the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. As a result of that war, Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine, and Otto von Bismarck, the Reich chancellor, created a series of alliances in order to isolate France and prevent retaliation from that humiliating loss. A second destabilizing factor was the rapid growth of huge national armies and armaments. The success of the Prussian armies made a profound impression throughout Europe, and those developments led to an increase in standing military forces. A third factor that led to the outbreak of war was the rapid rise of imperialism as a way of thinking and as a way of life. The great powers coveted colonies for their cheap raw materials and markets for manufactured goods over which they could have a monopoly. And fourth, added to these dynamics was the spread of nationalism

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among various groups, especially in the Balkans. In December 1912, a secret memo of the German general staff predicted that in the coming war with France, it “would be necessary to violate the neutrality of Belgium.” By early 1914, the Russians were meeting secretly to plan for action in the straits near Constantinople, and laid out plans for a military offensive in the West. In general, the European chiefs of staff expected a short war, one that would favor the first nation to strike. Their model was the German wars of unification; a more appropriate lesson would have been the long bloody civil war of attrition in the United States. Grant and Sherman would have been better reference points for the military strategists of this time than the European generals Karl von Clausewitz or Helmuth von Moltke. When Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian or Habsburg throne, went to the capital of Bosnia, he was aware of the threat of assassination in that region. At the alleged instigation of the head of the intelligence division of the Serbian chief of staff, three Bosnian men volunteered to kill the archduke. To the Habsburgs, the assassinations of the archduke and his wife lent themselves to a reckoning with Serbia and, with the support of Germany, they prepared for a localized war. The Austro-Hungarian regime issued a series of ultimata, nearly all of which the Serbians surprisingly agreed to. But the Austrians wanted war and severed diplomatic relations with Serbia as a prelude to military engagement. Concerned about these happenings and preoccupied with the fate of Constantinople and the Bosporus Straits, Russia supported the Serbians. As tensions increased, the British foreign minister, Sir Edward Grey, proposed a peace conference and a mediation of the dispute. To avoid any such mediation, the Austrians declared war on Serbia on July 28 and bombarded Belgrade the next day. Meanwhile, the Russian military had also been preparing for war, and on July 29, it mobilized against the Austrians. Soon France followed Russia and the war began. Germany’s success in the war depended on rapid action, while Russia, because of her vast areas and poor transportation, needed more time for mobilization. Now the system of entangling alliances fueled the fires of war. Great Britain insisted that the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg must be respected, but the Germans needed to defeat France quickly, and the corridor through those small countries was the fastest way to accomplish that objective. This “brutal” invasion of Belgium was used by some British leaders who wanted war to defend their empire’s interests. British public opinion was treated to detailed statements on “the rape of Belgium” by the Huns. In fact, British foreign policy had been historically committed to protecting the narrow seas across from the channel and to stopping any one nation from gaining hegemony on the continent. Partially for those reasons, the British had gone to war in the past, against Louis XIV and Napoleon I, and would go to war again. The Germans protested that “necessity knows no law,” and expressed shock that Great Britain would go to war over “a scrap of paper”—its treaty obligations with Belgium. But by August, even Japan and Turkey were in the conflict, and it had indeed become a worldwide conflagration. In his own way, British Foreign

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Minister Grey correctly summarized what was happening when he grimly prophesied, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetimes.” Europe had known war before, but never with the mechanized barbarity that this total war brought. The casualties were so high that their count even today numbs the mind. The official statements indicated that Russian casualties reached 1.7 million men—the true total, though, is probably double that; Germany lost 1.8 million, surely another underestimation; France, 1.3 million; the United Kingdom, 744,702 and the British Empire, 202,000; the AustroHungarian Empire, 1.2 million; Italy, 460,000; Turkey, 325,000 plus many more unaccounted for; and for the late-arriving United States, the count was 115,660 casualties. Probably not since the Black Plague of the Middle Ages, which killed one out of every three people, had death visited so many households in Europe. Even more stark were the casualties of the major battles of the war. A few will suffice to give a frightening sense of the carnage. On the eastern front in September 1914, the Austrian chief of staff Conrad von Hotzendorf lost 350,000 of the 900,000 men in his army near the Galicia region. At Tannenberg, the German generals Paul von Hindenberg and Erich Ludendorff in August 1914 defeated Aleksandr Samsonov’s Russian armies and took 120,000 prisoners and decimated that fighting force. In September, they defeated the Russian First Army, inflicting 125,000 casualties alone in the battle of Masurian Lakes. In the west, the first battle of Ypres resulted in the loss of 58,000 British officers and enlisted men—the virtual destruction of its regular volunteer army and led to conscription to fill the new ranks. On the German side, the battle would be called by some “the slaughter of the children,” a lament over the demise of so many young men of promise. In May 1915, at the battle of Ambers Ridge, the French suffered 100,000 casualties and the British lost 27,000 with the military results negligible. In ten days in September, the French lost another 145,000 men, achieving no military objectives at all. By March 1916, the Germans suffered the loss of 81,000 and the French 89,000 at the battle of Verdun. After ten months, the total on both sides reached an incredible 700,000 killed and wounded. After four months at the battle of the Somme even more carnage resulted—415,000 British Empire casualties, 195,000 French casualties, and German losses at least equal to the total of the allied nations they opposed. In the Balkans, the Serbian army, with thousands of old men, women, and children following, retreated through the mountain snows. Only one quarter of the 400,000 people survived the march. After eighteen months of war, Serbia had lost over one-sixth of its total population. In June 1916, the Russian general Aleksey Brusilov attacked the Austrians in Galicia, taking 400,000 prisoners. Later in his last desperate offenses, Ludendorff’s plans for victory cost the Germans over 350,000 men. And on it continued—staggering casualties for literally yards of disputed territory, incalculable civilian losses, new weapons of frightening efficiency, and the early introduction of gas warfare. 14 Following on the heels of the terrible war was a frightening influenza epidemic that in 1918 killed more people than the armed conflict itself. It has been estimated that the

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influenza took more lives than any epidemic since the Black Plague that decimated Europe. Thus, it was in this frightening context that Benedict would live and react during nearly all of his papacy. Initially, the British and the French press especially criticized his first encyclical. One author, Robert Dell, characterized it thus, “It is really difficult to believe that this was actually written in the year 1914; it sounds like the utterance of an elderly gentlewoman of about the year 1830.”15 There also was the assumption that because the pope did not condemn the Central Powers by name, he was in effect showing his sympathy for Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The pope simply responded, “The Holy See has not been, nor wishes to be, neutral in the European War. It has, in turn, the right and duty to be impartial.” Privately, he observed, “My appeals not only have gone unheeded, but have been scandalously msinterpreted.” 16 He regarded the attacks on him so early in his pontificate as a concerted campaign to prevent him from speaking out, and Benedict insisted, “They want to silence me, but they shall not succeed in sealing my lips; nobody shall prevent me from calling to my own children, peace, peace, peace.” In fact, there is some substantiation for Benedict’s speculation. The Italian government, especially Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino, had insisted that the Treaty of London, which was signed on April 26, 1915, contain a clause, number 15, that would require that members of the Entente bar the pope from participating in the crafting of a final peace treaty. That agreement only became public at the end of 1917 when the renegade Bolshevik government in Russia published it. Resorting to its anticlerical tradition, the Italian government had forced the article on the reluctant British and French governments who were anxious to have another ally at any cost.17

The Wages of Neutrality During the war, Benedict would be accused of both remaining silent and of favoring one side or the other—usually of tilting toward the Central Powers, who were supposed to be closer in attitude to the historic authoritarianism of the papacy. In an interview with La Liberte, on June 22, 1915, the reporter Louis Latapi gave the distorted impression that Benedict was indeed an authoritarian prince with an aristocratic demeanor who seemed somewhat flippant about the German invasion of Belgium. Benedict was also supposed to have criticized the Italian government for its censorship of mail that was going to the Vatican, which in turn brought forth the predictable anti-clerical Italian barrage and hindered the pope’s ability to deal with the Roman Question. His secretary of state, Cardinal Gasparri, had to return from vacation quickly and conducted a press conference to control the damage, but the critics of the Vatican’s diplomacy continued their work. Actually, Gasparri, in the name of the pope, had condemned the violation of Belgium neutrality on July 6,

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1915, a public criticism that other neutral nations including the United States, had not levied. When questioned about whether he was taking sides, he remarked quite correctly that even the German Chancellor admitted the invasion was contrary to international law.18 In May 1915, three weeks after the torpedoing of the Luisitana, Benedict deplored “methods of attack both by land and sea, contrary to the laws of humanity and international law,” but he refused to condemn German submarine warfare specifically.19 Benedict insisted in that year that the pontiff “must embrace all the combatants in one sentiment of charity,” and yet he censured without modification “every injustice by whatever side it may have been committed.”20 By May, Italy had joined the Entente against the pope’s entreaties, and German and Austrian nationals were told to leave that nation. 21 For the Vatican and its basically Italian Curia, the war took on a new urgency and reality. On January 10 of the same year the pope asked for a day of peace, and he even composed his own prayer to be said until the war was over. In Italy some people denounced the peace prayer, and a Socialist journalist by the name of Benito Mussolini criticized the invocation when it was circulated among the fighting men.22 In France, the police actually seized newspapers that published the prayer and then released them the next day. Events were not going well for the Western powers, and the war leaders were not able to either bring victory or to stop the fighting. Benedict’s appeals thus were a problem for them, for his repeated insistence on peace was seen as a hindrance to waging total war and promoting high morale for the cause. Indeed he even refused to let chaplains appear in military uniform in St. Peter’s, citing again the need to be impartial. To add to the pope’s difficulties in trying to stay impartial, he was presented with evidence of treason against the Italian state by one of his own high-ranking officials. In August 1916, the warship Leonardo da Vinci was blown up off the harbor of Taranto. The papal chamberlain and keeper of the wardrobe, Monsignor Rudolf Gerlach, was heard to say that that was the price Italy paid for her treachery toward Germany. What was suspect was that Gerlach made this observation several hours before the news had reached Rome about the explosion! Gerlach had previously received permission from the pope to stay in the Vatican even after the Italian government had expelled all German and Austrian nationals, and he apparently led a life of luxury, including buying an expensive Lancia automobile. The pope at first defended his chamberlain, but it was soon clear that Gerlach had indeed received money from agents of the Central Powers and had been subsidizing pro-German newspapers. Benedict had no option but to confront him with the charges and then dismiss him. The Vatican simply recorded of Gerlach, “He did not respond as he should have done,” and the monsignor was led by Italian officials to the Italian-Swiss border at Lugano. Quixotically, Benedict observed, “He was always so jolly and seemed so frank and loyal.” Later Gerlach was tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison at hard labor. But by then he was gone. The whole episode reflected poorly on the

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pope’s judgment, and surely did not help in his desire to settle the vexatious Roman Question.23 One of the most sensitive issues during the war was the relationship between the Holy See and Italy as the latter moved toward entering the fighting in August 1914. At first, Italy had stayed neutral in the conflict, since Germany and Austria entered the war without consulting her as was required by the pact of the Triple Alliance, which all three states had signed. But some of the Italian leaders feared that their nation might be punished if her previous allies were victorious and she had deserted them, while others expressed concern that Italy might miss out on the fruits of victory if she ignored the entreaties of the Western allies. Businessmen in the banking community generally favored neutrality, as did the Socialists and some of the clerically oriented Italian Catholics. But the strong Nationalist element saw the war as the final chapter in the Risorgimento, and pushed for an adjustment of Italy’s northeast boundaries with Austria. In fact Benedict had privately encouraged Emperor Charles of Austria to discuss the question of Trieste with Italy. At first Charles agreed, but after the Austrian and German victories in the Julian Alps, he refused to make any concessions. Still others, including the Freemasons, viewed the Western nations as advocates of democracy and liberty, and the Central Powers as oppressors and autocrats. To them, the war was another chapter in trying to establish a society “without altars and without thrones.”24 The Law of Guarantees mandated Vatican independence, but it never really dealt with the complexities of Italy going to war and the Vatican remaining neutral. What was the status of diplomats accredited to the Vatican by the Central Powers, for example? Italy decided that while it would guarantee diplomatic immunity for such ministers, the Vatican had to censor their correspondence. When the pope refused, the diplomats voluntarily retired to Lugano making the question moot. Later, the Lateran Treaty of 1929 allowed such representatives to stay on Italian soil, even if Italy had severed relations with their nations during war. There were discussions that the pope should remove himself from Italy during the conflict, and the Spanish government offered the Escorial several times as a papal residence, but Benedict XV, remembering the tribulations of some of his predecessors in exile, refused. As might be expected, there were some real tensions during the war years between the Vatican and Italy, such as when the Italian government seized the residence of the Austrian ambassador to the Vatican in late August 1916, after an air raid on the Palazzo Venezia. But generally the two sides were remarkably circumspect and correct. And while the pope remained impartial as he so often said, Benedict and most of the Curia were still men of Italy in their sympathies. When there was some newspaper speculation that the Vatican expected to recover its Temporal States if Germany won the war, the Holy See was clear and to the point. Cardinal Gasparri indicated that the Holy Father regretted Italy’s intervention in the war and had hoped for some Austrian concessions on the disputed border

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territories. However, with regard to the Roman Question, the pope did not desire to seek its solution through foreign intervention and arms. He expected that that controversy would be dealt with fairly by Italians as a sentiment of justice advanced. It was a fine and somewhat patriotic response. 25 During the war and after it, the pope’s record was continually denigrated by the accusatory question—why did Benedict remain silent? It would be asked later in a more inflammatory way of Pius XII’s performance during World War II. In Britain a pamphlet was published titled The Silence of Benedict X, containing a sweeping indictment of organized Christianity for its impotence and timidity, and especially focused on what it called the most organized and universal organization, the Roman Catholic Church. The pamphlet claimed the pope “wields the greatest power in the world, for how do the greatest empires compare with the Roman domination over the hearts and minds of 240 millions of the human race?” The author concluded that Benedict could be “a trumpet call of hope and inspiration to the hearts of millions,” but instead, he had exhibited a sphinx-like quiet because of fear or reasons of Vatican policy, thus exhibiting both silence and moral cowardice.26 The indictment focused on several general charges: 1) the pope had not spoken out to stop the war; 2) during the war he and his church had done nothing; 3) he had not protested against the violation of the moral law; 4) he had taken up an attitude of neutrality which was cowardly and indefensible; and 5) by his silence, he had compromised not only his own church, but Christianity in general. These charges were not unique to this one pamphlet. In fact, they were the general stuff that was repeated again and again in some of the anti-clerical and even the mainstream presses. From a historical perspective it is remarkable to realize the number of adherents who held those views, and to re-read the intense censure that was directed at Benedict. Obviously, the pope should not have been immune from legitimate criticism, but the grounds of that criticism were generally baseless, which was obvious even at that time. Looking back, it seems as if some of the frustrations and anger over the bloodletting settled on the fragile pope—as if even non-Catholics seemed to feel betrayed by his inability to bring an end to this war. Ironically, some of the anti-clerical elements and their allies who worked so energetically to cripple and destroy the papacy complained that the Holy Father lacked the moral power and authority to end the carnage. As Pius X observed early in the war, the days when the pope could force a truce or a settlement were long since over. Later, when even the French hierarchy raised the issue of the pope’s alleged pro-German sympathies, the cardinal secretary of state again responded. Gasparri laid out Benedict’s views: Belgian independence, maintenance of the Austro-Hungary empire; establishment of Poland within limits; guarantee of the traditional integrity of France and her role as a first-class power; and a settlement of the Balkan question which would exclude Russia from Constantinople and the Straits—a provision meant to protect Catholic interests in the Middle East. Those policy objectives were remarkably close to Britain’s public statements.27

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At this point in time, the pope did not put forth a peace proposal publicly, but was waiting for President Woodrow Wilson to take the lead. The Vatican instructed Cardinal Gibbons to present to the president and to Secretary of State Robert Lansing the Vatican’s views, but the American government did not feel that it could pursue an offer of mediation since the belligerents had not really requested such a step. Thus, Benedict in this period concentrated on quiet, but rather effective humanitarian efforts. The pope in fact became a remarkable model of appropriate behavior in his salutary efforts at humanitarianism, which exceeded even those of the Red Cross and neutral states such as Spain, and initially the United States. Benedict had learned the lessons of diplomacy well in the school of Leo and Rampolla, and he was not lacking in subtlety, in tact, or in understanding the true nature of the international conflict. Indeed, out of his pontificate came the great Church diplomats who would end up as his successors—Pius XI, Pius XII, and indirectly John XXIII, and Paul VI. They were men who were either schooled by him or by his associates and who helped shape the twentieth century world and the Church in which they lived. In December 1916, the kaiser and the leaders of the other Central Powers, which included Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Turkey, suggested to the Entente, which then included Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy, that peace negotiations should begin. The Vatican did not comment on the proposal despite the pope’s often repeated desire for an end to hostilities. Only later did it come to light that British leaders indicated to the pope that any intervention on his part would be poorly received by both their nation and France, and so Benedict did not abandon his posture of impartiality. In Britain, David Lloyd George summarily dismissed the Central Powers proposal and committed himself to total victory; across the Channel, the French leader Aristide Briand simply called the proposal a “trap.”28 And so the war continued. During all of this, the pope did not remain idle. Benedict decided to reach into the ranks of the Curia and appoint the young Eugenio Pacelli as his Nuncio to Bavaria, so that he could have a listening post there and in the kaiser’s court. Pacelli was quickly consecrated archbishop and then sent to Bavaria, and on May 26, 1917, he presented his credentials to King Ludwig III. Later he visited the chancellor of the German Reich, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, and discussed four points as a basis for a possible settlement: the general limitations on armaments; establishment of international courts to handle disputes; restoration of the independence of Belgium; and the settlement of territorial disputes such as the Alsace-Lorraine by the agreement of those concerned. The chancellor maintained that Germany was willing to restore Belgium if that nation did not fall under British and French domination, and indicated that he was willing to reconsider a readjustment of Germany’s western frontier. On July 19, the Reichstag overwhelmingly passed a resolution embracing moderate peace terms introduced by Deputy Matthias Erzberger of the Catholic Centre Party. The German Socialists were also moving toward supporting a Swedish proposal for an international Socialist conference in Stockholm aimed at

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achieving a peace “without annexation, and without indemnities.” Some Catholics proposed that the pope issue a peace proposal to upstage the Socialist plans before the Stockholm meeting. In the meantime, Pacelli had also met with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who, among other matters, insisted that the pope should have used his papal infallibility to denounce the Entente!29 Unfortunately, for the peace efforts, in August 1916 the kaiser appointed Paul von Hindenberg as field marshal, and Eric von Ludendorff as quartermaster, which consequently made the military increasingly autonomous from the civilian government. When Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg pushed for a conciliatory peace plan, they insisted that he be removed, and he was replaced with Georg Michaelis on July 14. Michaelis at first seemed to support the Vatican’s overtures, but quietly and effectively with the support of the new military leadership, he strangled them in the cradle. Not knowing Michaelis’s true intention, Benedict was encouraged by the German response, and he contacted the British minister to the Holy See, Count John De Salis, asking him to present his peace proposal to His Majesty’s government, France, Italy, and the United States. The papal note of August 1, 1917, began by reiterating his general policy of absolute impartiality, respect for people regardless of their backgrounds, and a firm commitment to end the war. Benedict then laid before the powers a very specific peace proposal revolving around the following principles: 1) the substitution of “the moral force of right” for the law of material force; 2) a simultaneous and reciprocal decrease of armaments; 3) international arbitration as a substitute for armed force; 4) true liberty and community of the sea; 5) reciprocal renunciation of war indemnities; 6) evacuation and restoration of all occupied territories; and 7) an examination “in a conciliatory spirit” of rival territorial claims. The British reply formulated by its minister of foreign affairs, Anthony James Balfour, refused to accept or reject the note, but indicated that Germany had never pledged that it would restore Belgium independence. Meanwhile, there was some argument between Britain and France as to how to respond jointly to the pope’s overture. Their dilemma was solved when on August 27, 1917, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, writing for President Woodrow Wilson, chastised the pope, concluding that in their judgment the war was a crusade to free peoples by stopping the vast military establishment that sought to dominate the world. Wilson thus refused to endorse the papal note. To add to the pope’s problems, the kaiser, under prodding from his new chancellor and his military, began to insist on the importance of having some presence on the coast of Flanders after all. The chancellor wrote to the pope that his government would support every effort to bring about peace if it were consistent with the interests of the German people; Ludendorf later complained that in his judgment the pope’s plan was too favorable to the Entente. As for the Entente, France insisted that it really did not wish to pursue such peace efforts. Radical French Socialist Deputy and later Premier Georges Clemenceau termed it a “German Peace Plan.” Italy chose not to respond, although the Socialists favored the pope’s plan, while the Nationalists and the Liberals generally did

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not. Emperor Charles of Austria-Hungary supported the proposal, as did Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and the Sultan of Turkey, Mohammed V, expressed his approval of “the lofty thoughts of His Holiness.”30 As the deliberations continued, Chancellor Michaelis refused to provide a conclusive answer on the critical Belgium question, thus giving the Entente both a reason and an excuse not to pursue the pope’s note seriously. A bitterly disappointed Benedict watched as his plan unraveled, and as he was once again subject to suspicious attacks from both sides. Later, on January 8, 1918, Woodrow Wilson presented to Congress his Fourteen Points, which contained propositions similar to parts of Benedict’s proposals. But his address was meant to be a clarion call for victory and a blueprint for the expected peace, not an armistice and an early end to the bloodshed that the pope had insisted on. Unlike his recent predecessors, Benedict, a seasoned diplomat, chose to abandon the defensive postures of the past and to get the Vatican directly involved in the most difficult arena of international politics—the attempt to end the war and guarantee peace. There have been different explanations offered for his failure. It was said that Michaelis was influenced by his ties to the antiCatholic German Evangelical Alliance, which in general opposed working with the papacy. The secret Treaty of London, which prohibited the pope’s participation, clearly presented another obstacle for the Vatican’s attempt at peacemaking. When it became public, the British government tried to explain away the provisions by citing the Italian government’s insistence on having such a veto. In Rome, Baron Sonnino, attempting to cover up his role in the prohibition, actually charged that the Bolsheviks had forged the text. 31 Those factors severely limited Benedict’s ability to command a sympathetic audience, but they did not sidetrack an ongoing process. The war continued because neither side could imagine that it would not win. When czarist Russia collapsed in February/March 1917, it seemed that a war nearly totally waged on the Western front would spell victory for Germany and her allies. When the United States entered on behalf of the Entente on April 16, 1917, that influx of supplies and fresh troops would eventually lend credence to the view that victory would belong to the other alliance. Thus it appears that both sides fought on and on for their own honor, selfinterest, patriotism, and folly. And following that intransigence, the upheavals in Russia and the United States’ new military presence in Western Europe changed previous calculations of the war. People knew suffering at home, but not the true condition of their armies out of sight. When Germany surrendered, a substantial portion of both the armed forces and the populace felt betrayed by its civilian leadership, charging that it had stabbed the military in the back. They thought all was going well on the war fronts at least, despite their personal calamities. Sadly, the pope addressed his cardinals on Christmas Eve 1917, and lamented, “We do not deny that when we saw the effects of once flourishing nations given over to the paroxysm of mutual destruction, and feared the hourly near-approach of the suicide of civilized Europe . . . . We sadly asked: When and how will this savage tragedy ever end?”32

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While it is always dangerous to play the speculative game of “what if” history, one can still wonder what would have occurred if the pope’s peace plan had been accepted. We do know that the war brought not only incredible destruction, but it ended four stabilizing empires: Austria-Hungary, czarist Russia, the Ottoman empire, and the Second German Reich. In its place came fragmented nation-states, Communism, and eventually Nazism and Fascism. If the belligerents had reached an armistice when Benedict proposed it, the United States would not have deployed troops in Europe and would not have emerged as a world power that soon, for the forces of isolationism were strong and traditional in that nation. France would have not been given the whole of the Alsace-Lorraine region and may not have so strongly antagonized the German people such that a Hitler could rise to power. An independent Belgium would have been restored, and Italy would have claimed only those modest gains and territories where populations truly desired its rule. Poland would have been smaller, and perhaps less desirable as a target to both Russia and Germany. And perhaps the moderate provisional government in Russia would have staved off the Bolshevik coup d’état. Wilson in fact had warned Benedict that the pope’s initial proposal would lead Russia to intrigue and counter-revolution. He was wrong. The crushing burdens of war led to Communism and to its later tragedies. The Austro-Hungarian Empire might have been realigned eventually and remained a much-needed mild authoritarianism in a region that seems sadly to need such a form of government to avert age-old nationalistic hatreds and genocide. And perhaps the peace plan would have allowed the Ottomans to maintain some organized control over most of its areas, with the exception of Armenia.33 This is all speculation, of course, but it is a speculation informed by the judgment that the world the war conceived and helped to deliver could not be any worse than what resulted. Opponents of the German Reich at the time argued that a negotiated settlement would allow the autocratic Wilhemite regime to continue—that it would not have learned any lesson from its aggressions. So it was taught that lesson, and the consequences were a worse regime with even a more disastrous war and a long protracted non-peace lasting until our time. One may not learn from history, but its muse is surely a terrible and harsh witness to human follies.

The Humanitarian Agenda In the end, the pope could not bring peace. Instead Benedict had turned to important and good works during the war. He had facilitated the exchange of prisoners, helped more than fifty thousand of the sick and wounded to get to Switzerland, repatriated those captured soldiers with tuberculosis, and proposed Sunday as a day of rest for prisoners. He intervened to see that the dead at the

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Dardanelles were cared for, photographed, and identified. His private donations were truly remarkable, as he gave away a considerable amount of the liquid assets of the Vatican and steered contributions in the direction of genuine need. 34 The pope was instrumental in getting over $250,000 to Belgium to assist in the relief efforts, and he sent the archbishop of Paris 40,000 lire, 10,000 lire to Luxemburg, 10,000 lire to Eastern Prussia, 25,000 lire to German captives in Russia, 10,000 lire to Poland, and then 145,000 lire to the same cause under various guises; 10,000 lire to the Lithuanians; 10,000 to the Ruthenians; the same sum to the Serbs; and 10,000 crowns to the Montenegrins. Benedict also authorized vast amounts of clothing, food, and books to concentration camp prisoners, and he earmarked another 140,000 lire for the war orphans of Italy. He gave other smaller sums to Italian captives at Sennelager, who had sent him a postcard appeal, and money to refugees and orphans affected by attacks on Italy. On occasions, the pope directly solicited more donations for specific causes, and even clemency for particular individuals as well. 35 Then reaching back into the vocabulary of the Middle Ages, he tried to resurrect the Treuga Dei or the prohibition of hostilities on certain days. He pushed for a Christmas truce in 1914, but France’s general staff refused, saying the Germans could not be trusted to observe it. Another complexity in that disintegrating world was that Russia and Serbia, under the Julian calendar, did not observe the same day for Christmas as did the Western powers. There was still some criticism that the pope should have issued a statement blaming the war on one side or the other. Yet, as noted, he was the only head of state who had protested the violation of Belgian neutrality by Germany. Even Woodrow Wilson at that time stayed silent, as did Switzerland.36 In addition, Benedict fostered the “Save the Children Fund” to alleviate the sufferings of the youngest and most vulnerable, and the Vatican also established an “Office of Prisoners”—volunteers who took care of thousands of letters of inquiry and appeals. Eventually hundreds of thousands of such questions about prisoners were processed and researched, and repatriation was facilitated, although the office was eventually closed after critics persisted in calling it a facade for espionage.37 These actions were not one-time occurrences, but long-standing, systematic humanitarian efforts undertaken by one man in a tiny “city-state.” These efforts and other direct gifts to beleaguered peoples, children, and cultural institutions, including the Louvain University Library, reached striking totals. Benedict’s successor, Pius XI, was startled to read the summary of figures showing how depleted the Vatican treasury was that he inherited; there was only 10,000 pounds left. The Vatican had to actually borrow money to bury Benedict and undertake the conclave in 1920.38 At the end of the war, the pontiff had moved from being an easy target of anti-Catholic and anti-clerical abuse as a German or as a French sympathizer, or as a temporizer who feared making a moral choice in the war. He became instead “the pope of peace”—a voice of reason in the midst of incredible carnage. In the process of seeking that peace, he extended the Holy See’s sway

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diplomatically as no pope, including Leo XIII, had done in recent memory. In January 1919, the pope and President Woodrow Wilson met at the Vatican. Wilson had abruptly turned down Benedict’s original peace proposal, and in his personal life was never an admirer of things Catholic. However, Cardinal Gibbons had previously told the president of the pope’s high regard for him which surely helped set the right tone. After his conversations, as the pontiff solemnly blessed Wilson’s efforts, the president seemed genuinely touched by his kindness. Barred from being a part of the peace conference himself, Benedict seemed to put some confidence in this former professor who was the moralistic son of a Presbyterian minister. The pope asked for the president’s assistance in protecting the Church’s missionary efforts in German-controlled colonies, and Wilson agreed to be of assistance. The pope later sent Monsignor Bonaventura Cerretti to Paris to watch over Vatican interests at the peace conference, protect the missionaries’ freedom of action, and the right of the Church to hold private property in those lands. The pope later sent a letter of thanks to Wilson and also asked the president to speak out against any proposed trial of the kaiser and his military chieftains. Using research from a legal expert at the University of Bologna, the pope argued against war crimes trials. Wilson wrote back concurring, and Italy and then Japan and the United States dropped their support for any such efforts. To those who criticized Benedict’s alleged pro-German leanings, the pope quietly reminded them that Kaiser Wilhelm II had never been a friend of the Church; later, General von Ludendorff, who had benefitted from the pope’s direct intercession on the war trial issue, attacked the pontiff after his death for his alleged sympathies toward France. Gratitude is rarely a virtue for serious men of affairs. At the peace conference, Wilson again presented his Fourteen Points, which incorporated themes similar to the pope’s peace note, and Benedict was on record favoring the idea of a league of nations and international arbitration, although he had serious reservations about what he saw as a harsh peace treaty and the role the new league would play in enforcing it. 39

Postwar Diplomacy There were, of course, other events happening besides the Great War during Benedict’s pontificate. Although he was a protégé of Leo XIII and his Secretary of State Rampolla, Benedict did not return to their rigidity on the Roman Question. Like Benedict, Pius X seemed to be unwilling to resume the bitterness of a new debate on the temporal power of the papacy. Quietly, he began to lay the groundwork for a solution with Italy that his successor finalized. In January 1919, Benedict allowed the Sicilian priest Luigi Sturzo to organize a political party—Partito Popolare Italiano—although Benedict himself insisted on staying out of partisan politics. The People’s Party, as it was termed, would support religious, civic, and social liberty, labor legislation, educational changes,

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agrarian reform, and even women’s suffrage. In November of that year, the party won over 100 seats in the Italian Parliament. Thus, the non expedit was quietly abandoned.40 In addition, Benedict directed that his secretary of state, Cardinal Gasparri, meet with Benito Mussolini, the one-time Socialist editor and new leader of the Fascist party. The first steps toward a settlement on the Roman Question were being taken. Deep in his heart, Benedict was an Italian patriot, truly distressed by the havoc and wreckage that the war brought to his homeland, and he actually wept when Italy was defeated at the Battle of Caporetto in December 1917, and three hundred thousand of its troops captured. Reports were transmitted that the retreating Italians had cried out, “Long live peace, long live the pope, long live Giolitti” [an anti-war politician]. And some of the Italian military staff were supposed to have proposed that the pope should be hanged for his pacifist sentiments.41 For the first time a pope referred respectfully in his correspondence to “the King of Italy,” then Victor Emmanuel III. In the past, the Vatican had refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the House of Savoy and also refused to see Catholic princes who had visited the king of Italy, or receive any head of state who visited the king of Italy first. The situation was an embarrassment to all involved, as was obvious in the episode involving Merry del Val’s response toward the president of France during Pius X’s reign. Benedict simply dropped the whole policy, citing “the changing conditions of the times and the dangerous trend of events.” In fact, Cardinal Merry del Val wrote a protest criticizing the way Cardinal Gasparri was working so closely with the Italian government. 42 Benedict also moved toward repairing ties with the French government, saying to his secretary of state, “If France gives me only her little finger, I will hold out both my arms.” In that spirit, the pope decided to canonize that nation’s legendary heroine, Joan of Arc, and expressions of admiration were made between the Vatican and the French hierarchy. In 1919, the French government proposed a resumption of diplomatic relations with the Holy See—a major accomplishment for the pope.43 In dealing with Catholic Poland, the pope recognized the newly found independence of that state, which had freed it from the crushing sway of czarist Russia and the threats of German and Austrian interference. He accepted a surprise nomination from his secretary of state for the apostolic visitor position there—Monsignor Achille Ratti, a fine scholar and well-known Vatican librarian. Benedict’s odd choice proved to be remarkably astute. As papal nuncio, Ratti was generally well-regarded and hardworking. He also used his post to establish some tentative contacts with Bolshevik Russia, and to gave the Vatican a better understanding of that new harsh regime. However, when Ratti wrote a letter in German and Polish asking both nations to understand each other’s point of view and to remember that they were Catholics first, he was bitterly denounced by both Germans and Poles and his recall was pressed. Benedict, the subject of much bitter abuse himself, initially rejected the demand. But Ratti was also involved in some very difficult

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territorial questions while serving on the Inter-Allied Commissions for the plebiscite areas in Upper Silesia, and his position as papal nuncio became untenable. He was eventually transferred and then consecrated cardinal archbishop of Milan; four months later he became Pius XI, Benedict’s successor.44 Although Benedict had stressed his impartiality during the war, he clearly favored the Polish forces over the Bolshevik Russians who were moving west and threatening not only Poland, but Germany and the rest of Western Europe. On August 15, 1920, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski stopped the Soviets at the gates of Warsaw. Not since 1683 when the Polish King Jan III Sobieski destroyed the Turkish armies of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa in the battle of Vienna had that nation played such a role in history. The pope clearly celebrated the victory in a most substantial way. On May 18, Pilsudski was received in triumph in Warsaw, and on the very same day in the much smaller town of Wadowice, a baby was born named Karol Jozef Wojtyla, who would become the first non-Italian pope in nearly a half a millennium, John Paul II.45 Benedict, the trained civil and canon lawyer, was also able to celebrate the completion of the codification of the Canon Law and to acknowledge graciously Pius X’s initiative. He also encouraged interest in the Scriptures and in the widespread dissemination of the Gospels, underscoring once again his intense commitment to missionary efforts and to closer relationships with Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It was also during his pontificate that the apparitions at Fatima began. On May 13, 1917, three children in Portugal claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in what would turn out to be one of the most persistent and powerful expressions of the folk religion tradition of modern Catholicism. As for the pope, he referred to Mary, in his letter Inter Sodalicia, as “the coredemptrix,” and he also paid homage to Thérese of Lisieux, the so-called “Little Flower,” another popular religious figure of the time. On April 24, 1920, a reasonably healthy pope called for his old rival Cardinal Merry del Val, the Archpresbyter of St. Peter’s, to accompany him while he visited the crypt of the tomb of Pius X. There, near that spot, he indicated he wished to be buried; a little over a year later, he predicted a new conclave soon.46 In January 1922, Benedict apparently caught cold, and he died of complications at the relatively young age of sixty-eight. In his time, Benedict proved himself to be an expert diplomat, one who carefully advanced the interests of the Church, and encouraged monumental humanitarian gestures during the war. At times he was criticized for not clearly denouncing the war guilt of the one side or the other. But it must be remembered that the final burden of such guilt was not as clear as it seems today. First, we tend now to link the blame of causing World War I with German responsibility for World War II, which is obvious, seeing it thus as a historical continuum. And then too, it was only in the 1950s that the Italian historian Luigi Albertini presented a definitive analysis that clearly established the heavy weight of German and Austrian responsibility in creating the conditions that led to World War I. Neither side was exemplary, of course, but it is now clearer to us than to

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Benedict and his counterparts that the military staffs and the diplomats of the Reich and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were the major architects of the First World War. In his attempt to broker a peace, Benedict maintained an impartial position, and was denounced by both sides for his alleged sympathies to the other. It was said he tilted toward France, was anti-Italy, was pro-German, that he leaned toward his native Italy, or was ready to welcome a German victory so as to restore the Papal States and stop Orthodox Russia. Many times, his detractors cited the same incidents and examples to support their very divergent cases. Actually, his peace plan was scuttled by a West that wished victory, by an antiCatholic German chancellor, and by an Italian government still feeding off anticlerical feasts. Still, his humanitarian record was simply unparalleled by anyone of his era, including the Red Cross, neutral Spain and Switzerland, and even the fine U.S. relief administrator, Herbert Hoover. The intensity of criticism directed at Benedict was in part a legacy of the anti-clericalism that plagued his predecessors. But the widespread denunciations of the pope also came from a sense of futility and despair—that somehow Benedict should have been able to stop the carnage and the killings, and restore civility to the European community. The successors of the very forces that had cut the papacy down in the previous century, weakened its sway and range, now seemed at times to denounce the very successes that they had celebrated. In life it often seems that we come to regret the very world that we ourselves labor to create. The war was a terrible conflagration, and it seems historically to overshadow Benedict and his pontificate. Indeed, except for John Paul I who was in office for only thirty-three days before he died, no pope in that century has vanished so quickly into obscurity. Just before his death, there was a fine statue done in 1919 by the Italian sculptor Enrico Quattrini that memorializes the pope in his tiara and cope, standing in front of his throne and reaching out as if trying to help those in desperate need. In his left hand is a document, a list of names, and on his face are the etched marks of a tired man motivated by human sympathy. The statue was not erected in the native Italy he so loved, or by the efforts of Catholics he labored for, or at the instigation of the Church he so protected all his adult life. Instead, it lies in Muslim Turkey meant to remember one man’s charity, and at its base is the inscription: “To the Great Pope of the World’s Tragic Hour BENEDICT XV Benefactor of the People Without Discrimination of Nationality or Religion A Token of Gratitude From the Orient.”47

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Notes 1. On Pius X’s preoccupation with internal affairs, see Carlo Falconi, The Popes in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little Brown, 1967), 91. Also of interest is Humphrey Johnson, Vatican Diplomacy in the World War (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933), 8–10. My note on the origins of the family name is from William Barry, “Benedict XV: Pontiff of Peace,” Dublin Review 170 (April– June, 1922), 162. The French press at first celebrated Cardinal Della Chiesa’s alleged Francophile tendencies. 2. Henry E. G. Rope, Benedict XV, The Pope of Peace (London: John Gifford, 1941), Book 1. The Consalvi quote is on page 33; J. Van den Heuvel, The Statesmanship of Benedict XV (New York: Benziger Bros., 1923), 16–17. 3. Walter H. Peters, Life of Benedict XV (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1959), 32–35. 4. Rope, Benedict XV, 30. 5. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 39. 6. Rope, Benedict, XV, 43. 7. Barry, “Benedict XV,” 164; Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 45–48; Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, 100 on quasi-secular Catholic journalism. 8. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 68; William Henry O’Connell, Recollections of Seventy Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), 341–42. 9. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 75–83; William Teeling, Pope Pius XI and World Affairs (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1937), 93. Published also under the title: The Pope in Politics (London: Lovat Dickson, 1937). 10. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 90–92. 11. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 101. 12. Arturo Carlo Jemolo, Church and State in Italy, 1850–1950 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1960), 103. 13. The Papal Encyclicals, 1903–1939, comp. Claudia Carlen (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath Publishing Co., 1981), 3:143–51. Also of use is Gabriel Martyn, ed., His Holiness Pope Benedict XV on the Great War (London: Burns & Oates, 1916); and Falconi, Popes of the Twentieth Century, 115. 14. The origins and extent of World War I is taken in abbreviated form from my book, The Ferocious Engine of Democracy (Lanham, Md: Madison Books, 1995), 2:64–68. The sources are: A. J. Taylor, Illustrated History of the First World War (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1964); Keith Robbins, The First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Winston S. Churchill, The Unknown War: The Eastern Front (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931); George F. Kennan, The Fateful Alliance (New York: Pantheon, 1984); Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1975); Denna F. Fleming, The Origins and Legacies of World War I (New York: Doubleday, 1968); Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967); Graydon A. Tunstall,

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Jr., Planning for War against Russia and Serbia: Austro-Hungarian and German Military Strategies, 1871–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); John M. Blum, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956); Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War (New York: MacMillan, 1930); and Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). 15. Robert Dell, “The Vatican and the War,” Fortnightly Review 103 (February 1915), 286–95. 16. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 113. 17. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 114; Denis Gwynn, The Vatican and the War in Europe (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, [1940]), chap. 2, 3, 4. 18. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 115; Henry L. Dubly, The Life of Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium (London: Sands & Co., 1928), pt. 2; Augusta Pierre Lavielle, A Life of Cardinal Mercier (New York: Century Co., 1928), chap. 7, 8, 9. 19. Van den Heuvel, The Statesmanship of Benedict XV, 33. 20. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 121. 21. Jemolo, Church and State in Italy, 163. 22. Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (New York: Knopf, 1982), chap. 3; Martin Clark, Modern Italy 1871–1982 (London: Longman, 1984), chap. 9. 23. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 127–38. 24. Johnson, Vatican Diplomacy, 18, 36; Clark, Modern Italy, 182. 25. Johnson, Vatican Diplomacy, 20–21. 26. Anthony Brennan, Pope Benedict XV and the War (Westminster, Md.: P.S. King & Son, 1917), 5–6; see also a summary of Friedrich Ritter von Lama’s work in Peace Action of Pope Benedict XV (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Association for International Peace, 1936), and Diplomaticus [pseud.], No Small Stir (London: Society of SS. Peter & Paul, 1917). 27. Johnson, Vatican Diplomacy, 20–21. For a different view see: Algeron Cecil, “Vatican Policy in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of British Institute of International Affairs 4 (January 1925), 1–29. 28. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 140–41. 29. Johnson, Vatican Diplomacy, 24–25; Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 143. 30. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 153–47. 31. Rope, Benedict XV, 135–44. 32. Rope, Benedict XV, 153. 33. The speculations are from Johnson, Vatican Diplomacy, chap. 6. 34. Donald A. MacLean, The Permanent Peace Program of Pope Benedict XV (New York: Catholic Association for International Peace, 1931), 5. 35. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 192–93. 36. Johnson, Vatican Diplomacy, 13–19. 37. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 182–85. 38. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 181; Daniel A. Binchy, Church and State in Fascist Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), 307. 39. Peers, Life of Benedict XV, 169–70, 177.

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40. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 193–94. 41. Clark, Modern Italy, 189; Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 195. 42. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 195–96. 43. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 197. On other initiatives toward a variety of ethnic and national groups, see Msgr. Batiffol, “Pope Benedict XV and the Restoration of Unity,” Constructive Quarterly 6 (1918), 209–25. 44. Philip Hughes, Pope Pius the Eleventh (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1937) chap. 3; “Pope Pius XI,” Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), 11:411–14. For a more critical view of Vatican diplomacy during this time, see Sergio I. Minerbi, The Vatican and Zionism: Conflict in the Holy Land, 1895–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 45. Tad Szulc, Pope John Paul II: The Biography (New York: Scribner, 1995), 13–14. 46. Peters, Life of Benedict XV, 228–29. 47. Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952–57).

Chapter 22

Pius XI and the New Men of Violence The postwar world was to see the remarkable rise and then the debilitating decline of political democracy. At first it seemed that in the West of the early 1920s, democracy was indeed advancing as much of the monarchical and aristocratic leadership of societies was discredited by the enormous carnage. Then came the totalitarian states, starting with Italy in 1922, and rising to their zenith in the 1930s, celebrating armed conflict once again. At first, the new states were adopting universal male suffrage. In some nations, women also began to vote, and the initiative, referendum and recall—instruments of direct popular control—gathered some support. Labor unions became stronger, and major social legislation in some nations established an eight-hour day for workers and guaranteed government-sponsored insurance programs. Only in Italy did democracy suffer an early setback after the war with the ascendancy of the Fascists.

The Postwar World In central and east central Europe, new nations were coming into being after the demise of the old orders and old elites. These states were born because of the disruptions of the war, and not as a result of long periods of orderly incubation and political ferment. Ethnic groups suddenly aspired to become new autonomous nations under Woodrow Wilson’s gospel of self-determination pronounced at Versailles. Most of these regions were agricultural, and the rural aristocracy with its nearly feudal lords had been the social and political backbone of the old regimes, especially in the Austro-Hungarian empire and in East Prussia. These new states sought to modernize themselves quickly by adopting the constitutional and democratic reforms of the West. And they focused their energies on the redistribution of land that ended up being divided, often creating sometimes less productive farms. Political parties based on the peasantry and smaller landowners in turn became the chief source of support for democratic institutions in the western states that bordered on Russia.1 In Germany there was, in R. R. Palmer’s words, “a revolution without revo365

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lutionaries,” which resulted in the abdication of the kaiser and the military high command. In their place came the Social Democrats—old leftists who were often moderate trade union officials and party managers, and not the fiery Bolshevik followers of Lenin. Essential to the stability of German politics was the Catholic Center Party. Although the Socialists were numerous, the Catholic party had strong appeal that cut across economic classes. During the Weimar years, three chancellors were Catholic, half of the cabinet members were Catholic, and the officials in the Reichskanzlei were Catholic, as were most of the Prussian judiciary. Palmer has said of the new Weimar Republic, “Never has there been a revolution so mild, so reasonable, so tolerant.”2 To add to the optimistic tone of the times, some foreign policy changes occurred as well. In 1922, Germany and Bolshevik Russia signed the Treaty of Rapallo, and peace seemed assured on the continent. By 1925, the European nations concluded a series of treaties at Locarno and pledged to each other their mutual goodwill, military guarantees, and general peace. In 1928, the United States took the initiative in the Kellogg-Briand Pact to outlaw war as an instrument of foreign policy. Peace and utopian aspirations were in the air. As a part of the war settlement, Germany was forced to pay reparations— which it called a dikat, a dictated peace, along with an admission of war guilt and a loss of some of its border regions. In 1923, when the reparations were not forthcoming, the French Army moved into the industrial Ruhr Valley of Germany, and even Pius XI criticized the precipitous action. Still it was not the political conflicts, but the economic depression that ripped some of these democratic governments apart at their very seams in the 1930s. As the European nations and the United States tried to refinance the German debt and change its methods of payment, the very stability of the economies changed. Even earlier the fragility of the young democracies began to become apparent. As Eric Hobsbawm noted, “By 1914, even the last two autocracies of Europe, Russia and Turkey, had made concessions in the direction of constitutional government, and Iran had even borrowed a constitution from Belgium.” But in the period of 1918 to 1920, “legislative assemblies were dissolved or became ineffective in two European states, in the 1920s in six, the 1930s in nine, while German occupation destroyed constitutional power in another five during World War II.” In this period the threat to liberal political institutions came from the right rather than from the left. Outside of Latin America, those rightist regimes shared some common characteristics: all were against social revolution, all were authoritarian and hostile to liberal political institutions, all favored the military and the police, and all were nationalistic. The Fascist right differed from the more traditional right, however, in its ability to mobilize effectively the masses, as it used political theater such as rallies, symbols, and rituals more powerfully. As Hobsbawm concluded, “The Fascists were the revolutionaries of counter-revolution.” They did not seek a return to traditional values, to the old order of King and Church, and they were not afraid to embrace savage rhetoric and do savage deeds. Often but not always, the backbone of Fascism was the middle and lower middle classes. In Italy, 13 per-

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cent of the movement was students. Some Fascists, such as the Romanian Iron Guard, drew their support from the poor peasantry; the Hungarian Arrow Cross, on the other hand, was mainly working class. In Germany, Adolf Hitler came to power, though, through the complicity of the traditional right and respectable business interests, as did Mussolini. In Spain, General Francisco Franco simply incorporated his Spanish Falange into a larger union of the right. And in neighboring Portugal, a right wing authoritarian regime under a former economics professor, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, was established in 1932 and lasted until 1973. The conservatives generally feared social revolution and the power of the working class and looked for some security against the changing tides. Thus in Italy and in Germany the ultra-right took control of the government not in a coup, but with the approval of the old regimes. Both movements spawned a supreme leader who soon fostered a dictatorship. It seemed in those days that liberalism, after its first bloom, had few friends or persistent advocates. In Latin America, the Fascists’ influence was eventually felt as well. The ascendancy of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán in Colombia and Getulio Vargas in Brazil underscored how right-wing states were being planted in the New World throughout the 1930s and early 1940s.3 In Hungary the Bolsheviks were successful for a time in establishing a Communist reign of terror under Béla Kun, which in turn was toppled after a civil war with pro-Habsburg forces. In Germany, the populace had to accept the abrupt end of the Kaiser’s regime and the beginning of a weak republic—an experiment that would give way in 1933 to the triumph of another new man of violence. In neighboring Austria, the empire was split asunder, and economic troubles overcame that nation. But there two skillful Catholic politicians— Monsignor Ignaz Seipel and Dr. Engelbert Dollfuss—dominated that nation’s politics. In 1934, Dollfuss was assassinated by the Austrian Nazis, but the Catholic-led coalitions held together until 1938 when Adolf Hitler seized his homeland under the banner of Anschluss. Elsewhere, the new Czechoslovak state, which was created by the Versailles Treaty, was in sentiment pro-French, and it incorporated some of the anticlerical attitudes of that nation. President Tomas Masaryk was quoted as having said in 1918, “We have got rid of Vienna [the Habsburg monarchy]. Now we will get rid of Rome!” He pushed through a Separation Law based on the French model and in 1915 reestablished the Czech National Church, founded in the fifteenth century by John Hus, a heretic burned by the Catholic Church. But as so often happens in politics, especially coalition politics, Marsaryk and his ally, Eduard Beneš, needed new allies and eventually turned to the Catholic or Christian Socialist Party. Responding to six years of attacks, the Vatican on March 6, 1926 issued a pastoral letter in Bratislava that banned the sacraments of baptism and marriage and the last burial rites to Communists, Socialists, Freemasons, and assorted liberals. Needing Catholic support, Beneš traveled to the Vatican and initiated talks

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about the need for a concordat. The Vatican’s response was measured and very restrained. But in February 1928, some three years after the commemorative celebrations for John Hus, the agreement was signed, and the Czech ambassador now expressed his government’s deep regard for the pope. Relations between the Holy See and the government remained peaceful until Hitler’s attempt to take over the Sudetenland to incorporate more German-speaking peoples into the Third Reich. The Church leaders, more than many political figures of the time, vigorously opposed that annexation. But the Western democracies did not rise to the challenge.4

Postwar Misery In 1920, local “soviets” seized several factories in Italy and inadvertently laid the groundwork for their antithesis—Mussolini’s Fascists. The new men of violence of the right and of the left were moving toward their common historic destiny and their bloody struggles. In Russia, the Bolshevik cadres both experienced and exploited the misery of their own people, while seeking to deal with the famine and also exporting revolution to the West. Sometimes it seemed as if Pope Benedict and the United States food administrator, Herbert Hoover, were more concerned about the starving masses there than their own new government. The south of Russia was hit by one of the worst famines in modern history, with hundreds of thousands starving to death. On August 5, 1921, a concerned Benedict wrote to his secretary of state that from the “Volga Basin to the Black Sea, tens of thousands of human beings destined to the cruelest death cry out for help.”5 In Poland the Bolsheviks began their major thrust into the West, and it was there that the Vatican had established a new listening post, headed by a former librarian and an unlikely candidate for danger and diplomacy, Monsignor Achille Ratti. His task was initially to help sort out the conditions of the Polish Church that had become confused after years of German, Russian, and Austrian interference. The boundaries of apostolic sees, the relationship between religious orders and the secular clergy, the conflicts between Polish and bordering Catholic hierarchies added to the sensitive nature of his mission. But most immediate and stark were the questions of famine, economic decay, and the threat of cholera and typhus emanating from Russia and elsewhere. 6 Added to the Vatican’s concerns was the precipitous decline in the stability of foreign Catholic missions—especially in German and French colonies. Benedict’s first postwar encyclical, Maximum Illud, issued on November 30, 1919, dealt with the need to recruit and train a native clergy as soon as possible for those lands. The end of Muslim rule in Palestine and Syria created other problems for the Roman Catholic Church as it sought to protect both the faithful there and the holy places of Jerusalem. Thus the Vatican recognized—in many cases even before the great pow-

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ers—the brave new world that was being created. In 1920, Ratti was called back to Rome to report on conditions in the region. The Polish government, now under the leadership of authoritarian Marshall Joséf Pilsudski, had asked that Ratti be named papal nuncio to Warsaw. The pope agreed. But back on the eastern front, Pilsudski began a major offensive and seized Vilna, which in turn led to a fierce Bolshevik counterattack that advanced within striking distance of Warsaw, some twelve miles away. Only Ratti and the American ambassador remained at their posts. As a French military contingent under General Maxime Weygard assumed responsibility for Warsaw’s defenses, the Russians fled, with the Polish armies following them and seizing land in the Ukraine and the White Russian regions. The Poles had saved the West.7 In Italy, Benedict watched as his fellow countrymen insisted on taking control of the border city of Fiume under the quixotic leadership of romantic poet, Gabriel d’Annunzio. The Italian government did nothing to stop the dramatic march, and thus lost control of its own foreign policy. The march on Fiume would be imitated by another march in late October 1922—that of Mussolini’s call to the Fascists to parade through Rome after he was offered the premiership by a cowed King Victor Emmanuel III. First farce and then tragedy occur in history’s cycle of repetitions. The war resulted in an estimated 8.5 million killed, 21 million wounded, and 7.5 million prisoners and missing. The aftermath of the war and the Bolshevik Revolution led to a million and a half refugees fleeing their homeland in Russia. In the Baltic states, Poland, Germany, the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, and China, refugees streamed in, all too often carrying cholera, typhoid and other communicable diseases. Overall, in the period from 1914 to 1922, it has been estimated that four or five million people became refugees. In Russia, land seizures by the Communists further disrupted the farms and worsened famine, thus causing millions more deaths. In Turkey, over 1.5 million Armenians were systematically destroyed in the first modern holocaust—a precursor of what the Nazis would bring.8 Witnessing these occurrences, Benedict XV pleaded for charity, relief efforts, and dedicated volunteers to save human lives, but often to no avail. The Holy See under Benedict and later under Pius XI would refuse to consider joining the League of Nations, in part because of the view that it was enforcing the controversial Treaty of Versailles. That view apparently altered some time after the Locaro Conference. And the Vatican began to see the League of Nations as a forum for international reconciliation. In the 1930s the Vatican viewed the League as full of Freemasons, and also as having usurped the papal prerogative as a mediator in international disputes. In Milan, the headquarters of the Fascist movement and a major industrial center of Italy, the archbishop, Andrea Cardinal Ferrari, died in 1921. Faced with the importance of that see and recognizing Ratti’s increasingly difficult position in Poland, Benedict transferred him back to Italy, and, consequently helped to create his successor. In June, Ratti was made a cardinal after he arrived home, and he saw a new Italy being created, one that he would both seek

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to make peace with and yet end up in fierce conflict. Appealing to the frightened middle class in Italy, Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, former school teacher, former Socialist newspaper editor, and genuine war hero, portrayed himself as the only viable and vigorous alternative to Communism and aggressive Socialism. Many members of the Italian clergy had a deep distrust of his Black Shirts, but those collections of thugs and brigands were in some parts of the Italian state the only “law and order” present. When a bomb exploded in Milan, the new Cardinal Ratti allowed the Black Shirts to guard the cathedral during a requiem Mass.9 On January 22, the fragile Benedict died. His papacy had led to a marked increase in diplomatic relationships with some important nations, including Britain, Holland, Germany, the new Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Poland. Portugal and France were also back in the fold, as were a variety of Latin American states. Benedict was a fitting heir to the Leo XIII—Rampolla style of diplomacy.

The Eclipse of a Scholar The biography of Achille Ratti, who was to take the name of Pius XI, is an inspiration to all those who love the academic life, and a warning to those who abandon it for the world of action. He was born on May 31, 1857, in a semiindustrial village called Desio, ten miles to the north of Milan near the foothills of the Alps. His father was the manager of a small silk mill and the brother of a well-known priest who furthered Achille’s vocation. The young man proved to be a rather serious student, a dedicated seminarian, and a devoted adherent of the established authoritarian traditions of the Church of the late nineteenth century. He received a doctorate in canon law at the Gregorian University, and a doctorate in theology at the Sapiential University. Then at the Academy of St. Thomas he received acclaim getting twenty-five marks out of twenty-five in examinations for the doctorate of philosophy, and consequently was presented to Leo XIII, who laid his hand for a long time on Ratti’s head, thus blessing unknowingly his distant successor.10 Appropriately, Ratti was assigned at first to teach courses in what was called then “sacred eloquence” and in dogmatic theology at the Senior Seminary in Milan. Based on his scholarly interests and successes, he was named one of the doctors of the famed Ambrosian Library in 1888. That fine facility was founded by Frederico Cardinal Borromeo, the cousin and successor of St. Charles to the see of Milan. For twenty-two years Ratti excelled in the rarified and dignified atmosphere of a great research library, a place that he charmingly called “the silent meeting-place of the learned Milanese . . . and a second native land to all seekers after truth.” In 1907, Ratti became the prefect of the library, and then in 1912 he was called to Rome to be vice prefect of the enormous Vatican Library. In 1914, he became the Prefect of that treasure house. 11

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In that period he was to become a well-known figure in the international scholarly world—visiting some of the other great European libraries and research centers. For recreation, Ratti—a vigorous and determined athlete— established a reputation as a fine Alpine mountain climber and was well-known for his ascent up the treacherous Monte Rosa. He was to say once that such activity was a healthy recreation that required hard work and constancy and helped to move the mind “upwards to think of God Himself, Nature, Nature’s Creator and Lord.”12 At times, it seemed he led a Walter Mitty existence—a quiet bookish person who scaled mountains and even volunteered for an excursion to the North Pole being planned by the Duke of Abruzzi. It was as if he lived in a mundane world, but dreamt of distant adventures . . . and those adventures would indeed find him.13 During his time at the Vatican Library, there was a passageway from its collections and treasures to the papal apartments, and he formed an attachment with the beleaguered Benedict. A cultivated and learned man himself, Benedict reached out for some companionship during the war, and also for historical background on the very difficult questions posed by the combatants’ claims that were arising as a result of that conflict. In addition, Ratti had done research on diocesan administration that would prove to be essential in his first diplomatic post.14 To the surprise and consternation of some, Benedict accepted the recommendation of his secretary of state that Ratti be sent to Poland to give the bishops there some advice on how to restore their Church’s operations after the end of czarist dictation. After some quick and learned study, the new apostolic visitor, as he was called, traveled to Poland. He immediately increased the number of bishoprics by ten, encouraged the revival of clerical studies, assisted in the formation of the Catholic University of Lublin, and dealt with the powerful controversies revolving around ethnic disputes and new national boundaries. He also established a reputation as a man of intense devotion, officiating at the festival of Corpus Christi in 1918, visiting the sanctuary of Our Lady of Czestochowa, and kneeling for two hours in the snow at the site of the Black Madonna of Vilno.15 To add to his responsibilities, Benedict had given him jurisdiction over the countries that escaped recently from czarist domination: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Georgia. Several months later, Ratti’s span of responsibility included Russia itself, and he wrote to Benedict asking for permission to actually go into the Bolshevik state, concluding, “I think that more than programs are needed to save this immense country. Catholic blood is necessary and that of Catholic priests.” The pope’s blunt response was, “Prepare yourself.” Later, while Ratti was waiting for a visa to go into the Soviet Union, the Vatican named him the papal nuncio to Poland. On July 3, 1919, Benedict gave him the titular archbishopric of Lepanto, and in the same year Ratti was named the Pontifical High Commissioner to the International Commissions on Upper Silesia which was to prove to be a major source of controversy. He soon found himself involved in disputes between Polish and German officials and clerics on the

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future of that region, and eventually three representatives of the Polish episcopate were sent to Rome to request his removal.16 With the support of the Vatican, he had encouraged charitable efforts to alleviate the harsh conditions in Poland and also in Hungary, and was preoccupied with the Church’s immense problems arising in Latvia, Finland, and Lithuania, and with internal disputes among the Uniate Ruthenians. Ratti was ultimately successful in putting together a concordat with the Polish state, and he established a reputation for courage when he stayed in Warsaw in the summer of 1920 as the Russians advanced, and then were forced to retreat. When in February 1921, Cardinal Ferrari, Archbishop of Milan, died of throat cancer, Ratti was named his successor in June, and then appointed a cardinal to that important see. After the installation ceremony, Benedict called three of the new cardinals together, including Ratti, and observed almost matter-of-factly, “Today I have given you the purple [vestments], but one of you will soon be white.” 17 Five months later it was so. At the conclave following Benedict’s death, the College of Cardinals divided at first into two blocs or factions—those favoring Merry del Val and also Pietro Cardinal La Fontaine of Venice, and those favoring Cardinal Gasparri and those allied somewhat with Cardinal Maffi. Neither side could get the two-thirds majority or thirty-six votes necessary to name the next pope. After a third day and then a fourth day of voting, Cardinal Ratti’s total began to climb until on the fourteenth ballot he received forty-two votes. Apparently Gasparri had quietly orchestrated a coalition for Ratti, whom many did not realize was somewhat of a protégé of his. It was Gasparri who had encouraged Benedict to name him to the Polish post and then to the see at Milan. Gasparri was renamed secretary of state when Pius XI was installed. One of Pius’s first major acts was to give his blessing from the outer balcony of St. Peter’s to the city of Rome and to the world. Not since Pio Nono and his self-inflicted exile had a pontiff made such a statement. Standing in the crowd in St. Peter’s, an observer remarked, “Look at this multitude of every nation; how is it that the politicians who govern the nations do not realize the immense value of this international force, this universal spiritual power?” The comments were made by Benito Mussolini.18 Observers of the time describe the new pope as a sixty-five year-old man, portly, of medium height who carried himself well. He had a broad chest, a bullet-shaped head, round shoulders, and projected a sense of vigor and power. The British Chargé d’Affaires at the Vatican, Ogilvy-Forbes, observed that he gave the impression of being a schoolmaster featured in Victorian stories. He was kindly and considerate, but still he was the headmaster who ruled over his charges. The American cardinals said he was “wonderfully balanced,” although he appeared at times a little cold and distant to some. He was a northern Italian, it was said—one whose emotions were restrained, controlled, and disciplined, a person who emphasized the importance of reason. The new pope spoke slowly, precisely, and with thought, as befitting his origins as a well-known scholar. Although he appeared to some as mild-mannered

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and diplomatic in his bearing, he was to show himself as being made of tougher fiber than one would expect considering his background and training. His critics were to say that he was given to unaccountable rages when crossed, and that he was stubborn, or as one of his biographers observed, Ratti was a man of “holy obstinacy.”19 The day after Pius’s elevation, Cardinal Vico remarked, “Do you see that . . . . That’s a pope to make men tremble.” Later Nazi leader Hermann Goering confessed on the meeting the pope, “For the first time in my life I believe I was afraid.” At first, Ratti was willing to make the difficult choices necessary to further the Church’s interests and placed the prestige of the papacy behind major diplomatic settlements with the most frightening states of that era. He was immediately unsuccessful in dealing with the Bolshevik regime. Then very quickly he found failure in negotiating with the Nazis, and in the long run he was mistaken in his confidence that he could continue to have amicable relationships with Mussolini and the Fascists.

The New Barbarians The papacy and its popes had grown up believing that they could deal with any modern regime just as their predecessors had for nearly two thousand years dealt with so many others. But the totalitarian states that were coming into view were different in many ways from even the harshest realities with which the earlier popes had had to deal. These new men of violence were to create a world of mass destruction and unheard of brutality. Probably it is not that they were any more barbaric than the worst of their kind in Western history; it was that they now had the tools of modern technology with which to perfect genocide and mass destruction. It was in such a world that the scholarly and diplomatic Achille Ratti moved. At first he tried all of the subtle and charmed arts of diplomacy that so characterized the best of Vatican and papal diplomacy. In the end he and his Church were reduced to angry expressions of betrayal and to concerted efforts to stop the totalitarian regimes from reaching into the families and the church life of traditional Roman Catholic peoples. In the final force of experience, the violence of the new barbarian states would be stopped, not by the reasoned entreaties of Popes Pius XI and XII, but by the courage and military might of the Western allies. It was said of the new pope that he stayed true all his life to his origins—a Lombard from the lower bourgeoisie class who combined shrewdness, tenacity, and complete freedom from sentimentality and impulsiveness. Unlike his aristocratic predecessors, Leo XIII and Benedict XV, he had little sympathy for the Catholic democratic movement, and he seemed to exhibit a strong authoritarian personality. Pius XI had a highly developed critical faculty, but he lacked both the political insight of those predecessors and their skepticism in dealing with world leaders to whom truth is useful only when falsehood is no longer an ally.

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When Pius XI realized he was being deceived or duped as with Mussolini, his reaction was highly critical, emotional and personal. He could be tough, courageous, obstinate, and irritable when contradicted.20 With all of his problems, Pius XI would gratefully write to the Hungarian faithful near the end of his life that he was still happy to be living in such stirring times. In periods of stress, he became calm and almost serene in his responses, and his encyclicals and speeches could be remarkably blunt to the chagrin of some of the more measured members of the Curia, including at times his last secretary of state, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli. Once in response to a speech by Mussolini, the pope simply observed, “When it is a question of saving souls or avoiding greater evils, We would find the courage to treat [trattore] with the devil in person.” His views were best summarized in his observation that “the Church belongs to all nations and is superior to all nations.” In 1929, he signed concordats with both Fascist Italy and with the Socialist government of Prussia. He maintained friendly relations with the secular governments of France and explained to his critics that he would indeed engage in politics in order to save souls and proclaim the glory of God. Still he opposed the Catholic Action movement being involved in party politics, a policy which hurt the Church in the long run as it tried to deal with the Nazis and the Italian Fascists. Yet, as will be seen, within two weeks’ time in 1937, he ended up condemning in his encyclicals both atheistic Communism in Divini Redemptoris and also Nazi Germany in Mit brennender Sorge.21 On one public occasion, Mussolini praised the pope saying, “We had the good fortune to be dealing with a truly Italian Pope”—at least that is what he proclaimed during the honeymoon period with the Vatican after the signing of the Lateran Treaty. It was said often that the pope and the Fascist dictator were somewhat alike—they were men of courage, action, and determination, men who exhibited a willingness to take chances, and who were intolerant of opposition, but they were very different in important ways that grew with their estrangement.

Il Duce and the Lateran Treaty It is difficult in this day and age to understand the popular hold that Benito Mussolini had—not just over the Italian people, but over the minds of many Western leaders, at least in public statements. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a shrewd and cynical judge of the strengths and weaknesses of men, publicly at least showed him deference for a time. British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain and even Winston Churchill praised him as well. Privately, however, Churchill ventured the view that Mussolini was a cruel swine, but he still was thankful for his powerful opposition to the Bolsheviks. The American ambassador to Italy from 1921 to 1924, Richard Washburn Child, encouraged Il Duce to write his autobiography and even provided a fore-

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word to it. The ambassador compared Mussolini to Theodore Roosevelt, and concluded that the Fascist leader was working on a program of “applied spirituality”! Lord Curzon, who had taken the measure of many men across the world, summarized it more accurately: he called Mussolini “that absurd man.” And Pope Benedict, who knew the young Mussolini, once characterized him as a blasphemer.22 Since his fate and that of Pius XI were so intertwined, it is best to know a bit more about the Italian dictator. Benito Mussolini was born soon after the death of Garibaldi in 1883 in the Romagna region to a blacksmith and a school mistress. His father was a bitter and almost savage man, Benito confided, who spawned a son who acquired a reputation for bad-temperedness and brutality of his own. He quickly proved to be a bright, but misanthropic fellow who taught school and then went to Switzerland where he barely squeaked out an existence; by 1903, he was expelled from that gentle country by that government. At first he was a Socialist journalist, but departed from that party’s views when he became an advocate of war both to purify the Italian soul and to lead it to more colonial exploits. He read Marxist analyses of class conflict, learned from Vilfredo Pareto about the power and limitation of elites, and inculcated in himself Friedrich Nietzsche’s gospel of the will to power and the imminent emergence of a new superman in history. Mussolini was an anti-cleric all his life, although he hid it well in his later years, and was praised even by Pius XI on February 13, 1929 as a man sent by Providence to deliver Italy from its woes. It was a terrible misjudgment on the pope’s part. Although Mussolini was not at first a nationalist, he became more of a patriot during World War I and more concerned both with Italy’s “civilizing mission” in Africa and her need to turn the Mediterranean into an Italian sea, “mare nostrum,” as in the days of Imperial Rome. He reached back into that past and sought to restore the old salute and the dreams of a once powerful people united through belief, work, and discipline. After the war, this new Fascist leader emphasized the importance of Italy obtaining more of those disputed lands on its northeast borders, and he enviously watched Gabriele D’Annunzio’s romantic march on Fiume. By 1919, Mussolini called his new movement “Fascist” after the expression for the bundling of twigs in Roman iconography, a sign of strength through unity. The early Fascists were violent, anti-clerical, and anti-monarchy. Mussolini, however, blithely explained, “We are libertarians above all.”23 At first, even he did not have total control over the Fascist groups. In some regions, these collections of former soldiers, thugs, and hoodlums were run by semi-independent chieftains or ras who were involved in protection rackets, impromptu beatings of Socialists, and some genuine social reform. Fascist historians said that Mussolini and his colleagues saved Italy from the left wing extremists who had encouraged strikes, work stoppages, and then violence in the Italian cities and towns. In 1921 alone, there were 1,134 strikes, with 723,862 strikers involved in the loss of 8,110,063 work days. 24 The police and local magistrates, both in urban and rural areas, often looked the other way as the Fascists

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restored law and order in their own manner. In 1921, Mussolini’s Fascists received only 7 percent of the total parliamentary seats. But in the short period from 1921 to 1922, Mussolini adopted two strategies—he posed as protector of the parliamentary system from the assaults of the left, and he also threatened a coup d’état against the government if it did not meet his demands.25 As the situation grew more tense in Italy, especially in Milan, the king in an about-face decided to reject his government’s advice and refused to call out the military to restore discipline. He then turned to Mussolini and named him prime minister of Italy at the young age of thirty-nine. It was only after that decision that the famed march on Rome began as thirty thousand jubilant Fascists poured into the city. Later the king, the prime minister, and his cabinet attended a solemn High Mass in the Basilica of St. Mary Queen of Angels to celebrate the change of power.26 Thus, as with Adolf Hitler in 1933, these new men of violence came to power peacefully—not in a democratic election, but with the connivance of the old elites. Soon the Fascists would control the legislative branch, and Benito Mussolini would become the dictator of what was supposed to be a new and invigorated state. It has been alleged that Pius XI was a willing dupe of the Fascist government—one whose sympathies were clearly in that right wing direction, and that only later in his reign did he realize the error of his ways. There is an element of truth in that criticism, but it is somewhat unbalanced historically. There is no question that Achille Ratti was an Italian nationalist, proud of the great history and culture of his people and wedded to many of the attitudes of nineteenth century clerical authoritarianism. Still, he was a more subtle and sophisticated man than would seem to be implied by many of his critics. Because his heart belonged to Italy and because he surely leaned in its favor in the previous war does not mean that he suspended his enormously honed critical faculties in her cause. It appears that early in his papacy and in the few months that he spent in Milan before it, Ratti exuded some of the genuine pride many Italians felt as they listened to Mussolini preach the secular gospel of Italian glory and reconstruction. As will be seen, Pius XI insisted not just on a treaty to create a tiny nation state, but also on a far-reaching concordat to protect the Church and guarantee its sway over important areas of Italian life. Any treaty requires some level of trust, and Pius seemed to have a guarded sense that Mussolini could be counted upon to honor those documents. This was a man we can work with, he concluded early on. However, the Duce reneged on the concordat, and almost immediately afterwards the pope was critical of that backsliding. The Roman Curia breeds a unique sort of diplomat, one raised in the traditions of European court etiquette, standard protocol, and generally codes of reciprocity.27 Mussolini, however, was a man of the street—some said a man of the gutter—and he wished to establish a form of corporativism that totally embraced all aspects of communal life, which united society and the state, and depreciated intermediary institutions between the individual and the government. We now call that approach totalitarianism and understand its full and terrifying implications. The key to its success, though, is the ability to mold the education of the

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young, an area the Church has historically protected from outside influence because it too understands what is at stake. The difficulty with striking a deal with Mussolini was that his regime was not simply a government, but an aggressive, incoherent philosophy: a mixture of pagan violence, ethnic chauvinism, and blurry-eyed Nietzschisms. The Church does better in dealing with politicians than with ideologues. And as the pope felt more betrayed, his remarks became more pointed. AntiVatican critics simply said at the time that it was two stubborn Italian males arguing with each other. Later though, Mussolini would be seen as the precursor, the inspirer, and finally the junior partner of Adolf Hitler. But in the 1920s, both the pope and Mussolini decided to make common cause to reach an agreement over the Roman Question. The Duce is recorded as having observed, “It is incredible that our Liberal Governments could have failed to see that the universality of the papacy, heir of the universality of the Roman Empire, represents the greatest glory of Italian history and tradition.”28 This was the same man who in 1908 referred to priests as “black microbes who are as fatal to mankind as tuberculosis germs.” This was the same man who in 1921 attacked “the rival Vaticans of Rome and Moscow with their charlatans who market miraculous drugs to give happiness to mankind. We do not believe in schemes, in saints, in apostles; we do not, above all, believe in happiness and salvation.”29 A year later, he argued in a different mood that “the Latin and Imperial tradition of Rome is to-day represented by Catholicism . . . the sole universal idea which exists to-day in Rome is that which radiates from the Vatican.”30 Mussolini, however, appreciated that an agreement with the Vatican would add to his prestige, both at home and abroad, especially after the success of the International Eucharistic Congress held in Chicago in June 1926, which underscored the hold that Catholicism still had on elements of the democratic west. 31 The Duce was willing to extend major concessions to reach such an understanding, an understanding which he promptly violated. Only then could he proceed to build his new Italian State—in order to credere, ubbedire, combattere— “believe, obey and fight.” Initially the Fascist government made some conciliatory moves. It gave to the Vatican library the splendid Chigi collection of books, dispatches, and manuscripts—surely a gift the former head librarian appreciated. Fabio Chigi was a papal diplomat who played a major role in the conferences at Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years’ War, and later he became Pope Alexander VII (16551667). In addition, the Vatican allowed the daughter of the House of Savoy to be married with religious pomp and ritual in an historic chapel. The government in turn restored the cross to the Roman Coliseum and ordered the crucifix to be returned to the walls of schools, universities, tribunals, hospitals, and other institutions where it had been banned after 1870. In addition, when a vocal group of anti-Catholic American Methodists tried to set up a university, a chapel, and a school near the Vatican, the Italian government stopped them after the Holy See protested. The Methodists were told they could

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either sell the land back or it would be appropriated for the erection of a memorial to Dante! To further his allegiances, the Duce also banned indecent films and bad plays and curtailed houses of prostitution.32 In addition, the Italian government took part in the celebrations at Assisi to commemorate the 700th anniversary of St. Francis’ death. Ironically, Mussolini was to call the gentle friar “the most saintly of Italians and the most Italian of saints.” And at that ceremony, the papal representative, Cardinal Merry del Val, characterized Mussolini as “the man who has raised Italy’s reputation in the world, and is visibly protected by God.” The last remark was a reference to the recent attempt by an unbalanced English spinster to assassinate the Duce. In 1925, the Fascists also moved to suppress the Freemasonry Order—to the delight of churchmen. Leo XIII would have clearly approved. And the regime was rather successful in crushing the activities of the Mafia in Sicily, a group that was revived partially by the American government as a third column against the Fascists in World War II.33 Essential to Mussolini’s early strategy was the need to destroy the Popular Party of Don Luigi Sturzo. Soon that reform expression of Catholic democracy would become a casualty in the pope’s willingness to end the anti-clericalism of the Italian government and to cooperate with the Duce. On June 9, 1923, under heavy Vatican pressure, Don Sturzo resigned his position as general secretary of the party and later went into exile. The pope insisted that the Church was not getting involved in partisan politics in Italy, but he clearly gave the back of his hand to the Partito Popolare.34 By 1926, Mussolini apparently decided to move on the Roman Question. After considerable negotiations, the two sides reached an agreement in early 1929 on the treaty, a financial note, and a concordat. Pius was reported to have hesitated before signing the document, and his secretary of state, Gasparri, is supposed to have watched several men fighting in the streets of Rome and sarcastically wondered what happened to their concordat. It was also claimed that the worried pope became almost hysterical with his reservations and decided it might be better to leave the signing of the treaty to his successor. But Gasparri insisted, “No, no, Your Holiness! Now or never.” And so, on February 11, 1929, Mussolini and Gasparri signed the treaty in the Council Hall near where Charlemagne had been received by Leo III. The Vatican had insisted that the agreement had to be ratified by the king and Parliament and not just the Fascist regime, in order to underscore its permanence. Privately, Gasparri predicted quite accurately that Fascism would last only twenty years.35 The treaty of 1929 established “lo Stato della Citta del Vaticano”—a tiny city-state of 109 acres. At first Pius XI wanted not only the old Leonine City, but a modest collection of Vatican buildings together with the Villa Doria Pamphili behind the Janiculum Hill. Mussolini countered that the government would lease the Villa to the Holy See for a nominal fee, an offer the pope rejected. Pius XI ended up accepting the Basilica and adjacent Vatican buildings as well as St. Peter’s Square. Also, specific buildings were regarded as papal properties: the Basilicas of the Lateran, Sta. Maria Maggiore, and St. Paul’s Outside

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the Walls, and the buildings attached to each of them; the Palace of San Callisto in Trastevere; the former convent buildings attached to the churches of the Twelve Apostles, Sant’Andrea della Valle, San Carlo ai Catinari, and the palace at Castle Gandolfo, together with the Villa Barberini. Several other buildings were given diplomatic immunities, and others were exempted from taxation or expropriation by the state.36 The final treaty consisted of a preamble and twenty seven articles that among other provisions recognized the independence and sovereignty of the Holy See, even in international relations; affirmed Catholicism as the sole religion of Italy; created a Vatican City as an independent state, and defined its territory; gave that city the right to issue coins and stamps and established transportation and telecommunication links to the outside world. Other provisions provided for unhampered diplomatic relations with other nations; protected the person of the pope against attacks and vituperation; recognized the desire of the Holy See to stay out of temporal disputes; and prohibited air flights over the city-state. The House of Savoy was recognized as the sovereign in the Kingdom of Italy. Financially, the Holy See accepted 750 million lire in cash and one billion lire in 5 percent negotiable government bonds. The concordat had a preamble and forty-five articles that regulated the status of religion and the Church in Italy. It granted the right of the Church to free public exercise of religion; assured the sacred character of Rome; guaranteed the right of the Vatican to communicate with Catholics across the world. The Holy See would select its own hierarchy after presenting names to the government for its review. Newly appointed bishops were to take a loyalty oath to the state, and Church authorities were to accord benefices, but Italian benefices had to go only to Italian citizens. The government gave up the right of placet and exequatur; the first was the right of civil powers to approve promulgations of ecclesiastical ordinances, and the latter was permission from secular authorities before papal pronouncements could be enforced. Priests and religious were exempt from military service and jury duty. Among other provisions, the state respected the importance of the sacrament of matrimony and supported religious instruction in public elementary and secondary schools by Church-appointed teachers. Clergy were not allowed, however, to engage in the activities of political parties. The sovereign pontiff was vested with “the plentitude of legislative, executive, and judicial power,” and the ordinary administration of the city-state was left to a governor, nominated by and responsible to the pope alone. On legislative matters, the pope was to be advised by a councilor of state who served at the will and pleasure of the pontiff. Thus, the treaty and the resulting concordat were documents jointly agreed to by the state and the Church, and not imposed by the authority of the government, such as the Law of Guarantees was after the Risorgimento. When the pope was told that his new papal city-state was tiny, he eloquently remarked, “When the territory includes Bernini’s colonnade and Michelangelo’s dome, as well as the treasures of science and art that are contained in the

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Vatican archives, libraries, and galleries; above all, when a territory houses and guards the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, then surely it is fair to claim that in the whole world there exists no territory greater or more glorious.” Mussolini said it more mundanely, “The Vatican is great on account of what it represents, and not on account of a square kilometer, more or less.” 37 And so on July 25, 1929, Pius XI left the Vatican and went beyond St. Peter’s Square into the Kingdom of Italy. The exile of Pio Nono was over. He also sent his first official message as Sovereign of the Vatican State to the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, graciously conveying “a great and fatherly Apostolic Benediction,” on him, the royal family, Italy, and the world. Even in the remote areas of Sicily and in the northern frontier regions word was carried of the ratification of the Lateran Treaty, and some of the faithful prayed for the pope who had, in his own phrase, “given back God to Italy and Italy to God.” 38 As for Pius XI, there were some rumors of discontent in the Sacred College of Cardinals with the treaty. But finally all were persuaded to sign the congratulatory address to the pontiff. The pope said he had consulted each cardinal, and all were favorable, but then he added that even if all had been opposed he would have acted as he did. Some Curial officials, most notably Monsignor Montini (later Pope Paul VI), expressed serious reservations about the viability of the agreement. On the other side, liberal anti-clerical critics in Parliament were also critical, and Mussolini had to defend his concessions as well. He argued in the debates that the Vatican was as far away from Italy as any other foreign state. He paid tribute to Pius XI saying, “We had the good fortune to be dealing with a truly Italian pope.” After some cheering, he added, “I do not think that he will be displeased that the Fascist Chamber should have given him this sincere tribute of applause.”39 Mussolini’s position finally prevailed in Parliament, but he still was accused of having abandoned the Risorgimento and its anti-clerical traditions by giving too much to the Vatican. He responded that the Church was not sovereign, but was subordinate to the laws of the state. Then in one of those strange references to his own unique interpretation of history, the Duce commented in passing that Christianity would probably have perished like other obscure Eastern sects if it had not become Catholic at Rome where it found a favorable environment in the “swarming ant-heap of Levantine humanity which savaged the subsoil of Rome and for which a discourse like the Sermon on the Mount opened up new horizons of revolt and emancipation.” Having made that observation, he then went on to observe, “We have not resurrected the Temporal Power of the popes. We have buried it.”40 He also argued that while the concordat recognized “the sacred character of Rome,” there was no provision for a return to a rite of sanctuary for those disobeying the laws of the state. Also, while Catholic religious instruction had been extended through secondary schools under this agreement, that requirement was rejected at the university level. Then in a rather eventful aside, Mussolini insisted, “Education belongs to us: these children must, of course, be educated in our religious faith, but they need to integrate this education. We need to give the

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youth the sense of virility, of power, of conquest.” Amid all of those observations, though, the Duce remained quite complimentary toward the pope. Pius XI, however, was later to respond, “The state is not there in order to absorb, swallow up or annihilate the individual and the family: that would be contrary to reason and nature alike.” Thus, the background of a major point of contention was being set in place.41 Mussolini thought of himself as a philosopher, historian, novelist, man of letters, as well as a person of vitality and power. In seeking to explain Fascism, one observer has said that it was a movement of action, not words with no real official doctrine. Actually it did have strands of thought and often bizarre ideology that its adherents referred to. While not maintaining a coherent doctrine, Mussolini had a lively appreciation for ideas. He identified with the work of the neo-Hegelian Actual Idealist philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, who was named the first Fascist minister of education. Among other tenets, Gentile’s philosophy held that the Kingdom of God is created by the human spirit in its own thought. Truth is the process of thought that is imminent in the human spirit, not pre-existing or objective. Thus organized religion is founded on myths, but contains elements of truth. Fortunately, some can kick away the props and attain the contemplation of Actual Idealism. By 1932, the Holy Office placed his confusing works on its Index of Forbidden Books. Gentile sought to introduce a complicated system of religious inculcation in the primary schools, but insisted no such instruction take place even at the secondary level. He observed in the Italian Encyclopedia, “Fascism respects the God of ascetics, saints, and heroes, and also God as he is perceived and worshiped by the ingenuous and primitive heart of the people.” As if almost to echo him, Mussolini explained, “The state, as conceived and realized by Fascism, is a spiritual and ethical unit for the organization of the nation, an organization which in its origins and growth is a manifestation of the spirit . . . transcending the individual’s brief spell of life, the state stands for the immanent conscience of the nation.”42 Emulating his former pupil, Hitler, Mussolini later would try to introduce elements of ethnic purity into a land refreshingly free of such nonsense—into a people who prized themselves on their toleration and cosmopolitanism, rather than on exclusivity and bigotry. Later in his reign, in his encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, published in 1937, Pius XI challenged the Nazi ideology and embraced a sentiment that surely applied to both Fascists and Bolsheviks: “Whoever detaches the race or the nation, or the State, or the form of the State, or the Government from the temporal scale and rises then to be the supreme model, deifying them with idolatrous worship, falsifies the divinely instituted order of things.”43

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The Fascist Onslaught It was on that issue that the Catholic Church with its universal constituency and its long history would come into quick conflict with the new paganism. In addition, with the terrible experience of the last war, it was the papacy that pleaded for peace and reconciliation at the time. The Fascists refused to accept that prescription; as Mussolini wrote, “War alone keeps up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it.” Peace destroys the fundamental virtues of man; education for war is what is the objective of Fascist control of the schools. Opposing that train of thought, the pope spoke repeatedly of the homicidal and suicidal aspects of war, and he warned in August 1938 of the consequences of exaggerated nationalism—the true curse of that time.44 The Church had long recognized the critical importance of educating children. And now so did the advocates of Fascism. To some extent the battle between Mussolini and Pius XI revolved around two issues: who would control the education of the young, and how independent would Catholic social action movements continue to be? In terms of the first, the Fascists acknowledged the importance of training the young in “the religion of their fathers,” as they put it—a nod to Catholicism. The Church was invited to be a collaborator in building the new Fascist “school of heroes.” To further its objectives, though, the government took particular aim at destroying the Catholic Boy Scouts. Going back to 1868, the Church had fostered the “Gioventu Cattolica Italiani”—a collection of guilds and organizations for children of all ages. In 1915, the Church, imitating Lord Baden-Powell’s movement in Britain, began its own Catholic Boy Scouts. The Fascists years later, and by then in power, insisted that the youth group was affiliated with the opposition Catholic Popular Party. 45 In its place, the Fascists created their own youth movement complete with paramilitary drills, marches, and hierarchy. In 1926, a bill was introduced into the Italian Parliament recognizing “the Institute of National Balilla for the assistance and physical and moral education of youth.” These young warriors ended up threatening the more pacific Catholic groups and youngsters, just as their elders had unleashed intimidation and violence against the Socialists years before. The movement adopted symbols and rituals of the Church for its new political religion, and in 1925, the Holy Office felt compelled to condemn its Fascist catechism “as a blasphemous parody of the Catholic catechism.” The Balilla Creed ended with the statement, “I believe in the genius of Mussolini, in our Holy Father Fascism, in the Communion of its martyrs, in the conversion of Italians, and in the resurrection of the Empire”—a crude imitation of the revered Nicene Creed. It was shades of the French Revolution and its cultic religions all over again. The pope protested the violence unleashed against the Italian youth groups and encouraged news of those assaults be spread outside of Europe since the press was censored in the Italian state. Finally Pius XI was forced to compro-

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mise, and on January 22, 1927, he formally ended all branches of the scouts that were going to be dissolved by government decree anyhow. He did not wish to make difficulties for the Italian government, he noted. Candidly the pope reflected, “When the fate of Our dear Catholic scouts was being decided, We had to make sacrifices in order to avoid still greater evils, but We have placed on record all the grief We felt at being compelled to do so.”46 The second target of attack was Catholic Action—a cause dear to the heart of Pius XI, who meant it to be an apostolate of the laity focusing on social activities that recognized the principles of Catholic thinking of the period. This pope did not see it as affiliated at all with the Popular Party about which he himself had real reservations about. Catholic Action then was supposed to be “outside and above politics,” in the language of the Vatican. For the Fascists, such a group, however, violated the corporate unity of the state-society and thus posed a threat. When the Fascists objected to the organization as a national body, the Vatican agreed to decentralize it on a diocesan basis. When the Fascists objected to its partial autonomy, the Church put it under the strict control of the local bishops. Still, there was some overlap in membership between Catholic Action and Don Luigi Sturzo’s party—as one would expect in a land that was becoming increasingly devoid of Catholic-oriented public activities. Even after the dissolution of the People’s Party, Fascist attacks continued on the Catholic Action movement since they could tolerate no alternatives to themselves. 47 In 1931, two years after the concordat was ratified, the Fascists lodged a major attack on Catholic Action. The pope claimed that the real objective was to solidify the Fascists’ control over the youth of the Italian nation. Quietly, Mussolini masterminded the challenges, but publicly he stayed away from the issue. The Duce was supposed to be full of rage at the pontiff, but still he decided to remain above the fray, leaving others to do his dirty work for him. Pius XI came under increasing condemnation by party functionaries, and he bluntly observed, “Fascism declared itself to be Catholic. Well, there is one way, and only one way to be Catholics, Catholics in fact and not merely a name, true Catholics and not sham Catholics . . . and that is to obey the Church and its head.” But that could not be in the new totalitarian Italy.48 Violence against Catholic Action groups continued, and at one rally Fascists shouted, “Death to the traitor Ratti,” and on another occasion they set fire to the bishop’s palace in Verona. Attacks on the clergy and on the pontiff escalated, but this time Pius XI proved tough and uncompromising. Mussolini’s response was to call upon Fascists to defend his revolution against any person and at any cost.49 The disputes continued, and on June 29, 1931, the pope issued an encyclical called Non Abbiamo Bisogno, “We do not need this,” which was sent to the outside world through American Monsignor Francis Spellman, who flew to Paris with the papal letter. This was a different sort of encyclical from a very different pope. Pius XI countered in detail the Fascists’ attacks on Catholic Action and on the Vatican. The aggression was seen as an attempt to turn the people to a pagan

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worship of the state, and to a “species of religion which rebels against the character of the highest religious authorities.” Then the letter announced, “We do not fear, for the fear of God casts out the fear of man.” The statement concluded with a call to prayer and a reference to the Vicar of the Redeemer. 50 The Fascist press in response attacked the Vatican, Don Sturzo then in exile, and the Jesuits, of course, for having a hand in the writing of the encyclical. Then quietly the rhetoric on both sides cooled down publicly as a result of some understandings. The final settlement made Catholic Action a diocesan affair under the bishops who alone chose leaders who would not be involved in political parties inimical to the regime; the professional associations of Catholic Action would engage in only spiritual and religious functions; the youth associations would refrain from athletics and sporting events. Thus, by 1931, Catholic Action was finally neutralized and rendered impotent. But still it was an outpost away from the embrace of the totalitarian state. During and even after his reign, the pope was also criticized for having been too supportive of the Fascist government’s imperialistic conquests. He was accused of not protesting against the maltreatment of Catholic minorities under Italian rule. In 1928, he responded to one allegation of supposed inactivity toward the Austrians by having the Archbishop of Vienna declare the Vatican’s sympathy for the German population of South Tyrol. “Tell your Catholic flock,” he said to Gustav Cardinal Piffl “the pope has done what he could, but that he is not free.”51 The Italian clergy too often proved to be camp followers for the government’s actions abroad, and the Vatican said little. Also when Italy seized Ethiopia (Abyssinia)—the pope’s sympathies clearly were with Italy to such an extent that those leanings hurt the Church’s image and missionary efforts in African nations. Pius actually lent credence to the Fascist claim that its aggression was “defensive” after all. Yet, the pope himself had misgivings about the war, and feared that if Italy lost in Ethiopia then the Coptic Christians might be able to curtail the Church’s efforts at proselytizing.52 It has not been the usual policy of the Vatican especially in modern times to support or condemn one side or the other during war. And it is difficult to sustain the objection that the Fascists were encouraged by such papal neutrality. They could not have cared less. Actually, the Vatican issued no statement on the hostilities, and when the Italians celebrated their victory by lighting up Rome, the Vatican remained tellingly dark. Still the French press attacked the pope for behaving as Pontius Pilate on the issue, and L’Humanite insisted that the Vatican was secretly lending the Italian state money for arms in the war. It was also charged by some that the Lateran Treaty was agreed upon by the government in exchange for future Vatican support of the invasion.53 On December 16, 1935, the pope specifically indicated that he would say nothing on the invasion. He quietly encouraged a peaceful settlement and may have asked Latin American nations to vote for a lifting of League of Nations’ economic sanctions against Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia. Still it was clear that some members of the Italian hierarchy such as Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster

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of Milan had directly encouraged the Fascist cause. The prelate insisted that religious establishments had to hand over silver and gold objects to be melted down in support of the war effort.54 It was not unusual for members of Catholic hierarchy to support their nation’s interest as was obvious in World War I. The difficulty was that the pope is the Primate of Italy, and thus has a special role in the Italian church. Lastly, the completion of the Lateran Treaty gave credence to the view that the pope and Fascism were close allies. As for the Duce, Mussolini was to observe smugly to the Germans, “Why they [the Church hierarchy] even declared the Abyssinian war a Holy War!”55 On May 12, 1936, in his address to the promoters of the World Exhibition of the Catholic Press, Pius XI indeed seemed to support the Italian government’s policy in Ethiopia with his reference to “the triumphant joy of the great and good people.” Although his remarks were immediately followed by a reference to the need for peace, the Fascist press played up the former statement, and there was a report that Mussolini even wanted the pope to crown Victor Emmanuel emperor of Abyssinia.56 On his part, Mussolini did not heed the words of the Risorgimento figure, Francesco Crispi, that “Rome cannot have two kings.” For a while Rome indeed had two kings and a dictator too. But by 1945, the last king of the House of Savoy, Umberto II, would be deposed as a republic was established. However, his prime minister and Il Duce ended up hung dead by his heels and spat upon along with his last mistress in the public square of Milan. Only the pope, then Pius XII, remained. Italy became a republic, but the Lateran Treaty continued. Because of the concordat, there was later some talk of the possibility of a Italian government having a veto over future papal elections, as had happened in the past with some of the older Catholic states. But Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, was in fact not seen as a pro-Italian candidate, but as pro-French, and his successor popes were not dictated by anyone. By 1978, a non-Italian was elected for the first time in nearly 500 years, thus ending the popular view that the pope had to be from Italy in order to have close relations with that state. The treaty had specifically mandated that the Vatican state would remain outside of international congresses, except those devoted to peace—thus the pope did not seek any international recognition for the agreement as some had suggested. The Vatican would be neutral, above secular disputes, although it was still available for international arbitration and would continue to concern itself with matters that impinged on religious and moral questions. Pius, however, chose to continue to stay out of the League of Nations, even though some had proposed entering at the time. The Fascist regime also agreed to a financial settlement to pay for the lands and structures seized by the first Italian government. The Law of Guarantees had originally granted 3,325,000 lire to the Holy See, which Pio Nono promptly rejected. His secretary of state said that the pope did not “accept alms from such hands” and would rather “beg his bread from door-to-door.” The Holy See thus became very dependent on the gifts of the faithful, especially—to the chagrin of

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some Italian Curia officials—on the largess of the Americans.57 It has been estimated that the U.S. at that time provided more money for the upkeep of the Holy See and for Peter’s Pence than all the other nations put together or so, and about half of the funds for the foreign missions. As has been seen, Benedict nearly bankrupted the Vatican with his vast humanitarian efforts during the war. As noted, the new treaty gave the Vatican a cash payment of 750 million lire and consolidated stock worth nominally one billion lire. The Vatican could only withdraw the cash in graduated amounts from the Bank of Italy, and it agreed to limitations on stock sales as well in order to guard the financial markets. The Vatican subsequently put the 750 million lire in Italian government stock and in French and Hungarian railroads.58 Thus the payments for the confiscations by the Risorgimento leaders and its heirs were finally completed. Pius XI, the librarian turned diplomat, had done what Pius X could never have done, what Leo was too timid to do, and what Benedict laid the tentative groundwork for, as he achieved a final settlement with the Italian state. And the pope did so, not with the sons of the Revolution or the Liberals, but with a right wing regime, the dictatorship of the Fascist party. Perhaps only Mussolini could have given so much, as he recognized the claims for territorial and diplomatic independence, for a fiscal settlement, and for a guarantee that Catholicism would be the official religion of the nation. In so doing, Pius XI had to make common cause with the man whose destiny was ultimately linked up with violence, racism and war. Mussolini started out being the role model for Hitler—if one can use that expression as it relates to dictators creating totalitarian states rather than children occupied by innocent play and growing up to be healthy adults. Hitler was also a man of bluster and of extremes, and Mussolini had already been established for over a decade when Hitler came to power. But the Fuhrer had more military and economic might in Germany than Mussolini had in Italy, and thus became more of an international threat. At first the West cheered when Mussolini stopped the Germans from imposing their rule on Austria in 1935, but he was to become soon the Third Reich’s ally after Hitler supported his march into Ethiopia, and the democracies vainly protested. In the Spanish Civil War, Mussolini aided General Francisco Franco’s forces, and he supported the Munich settlement and attempted to establish a friendly regime in Albania. Then in 1939, the year Pius XI died, the Italian Duce and his people became allies in the war against the West. By then the ailing pope and the world saw a different Mussolini, and it was the latter day dictator that is most remembered today. Some Italians, even Italian-Americans, recalled that the Duce gave them moments of pride and confidence; others see his early years as a sham prelude to the real play. In life, it is the third act that so often counts. Pius XI was not totally preoccupied only with Italy; he addressed other diplomatic challenges as well. As noted, earlier in his diplomatic career he became the Vatican’s outpost to ascertain some understanding of the Bolshevik regime in the new Soviet Union. At his coronation, only Italy and the Soviet Union were not represented. Pius tried to enter into some negotiations with the latter

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government to help alleviate the prosecutions of some of the Christian people there, and to assist as his predecessor had, with famine relief. 59 Despite some tentative overtures on the part of the Vatican, both sides understood the nature of each other’s belief system. Various popes, including Pius XI, have expressed disdain for Marxism. On May 15, 1931, the pontiff marked the fortieth anniversary of Leo’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum, with his own Quadragesimo Anno, which outlined nonsocialist alternatives to achieving social and economic justice under capitalism. In more contemporary words than Leo’s, Pius observed that, “In our days, not only is wealth concentrated, but a man’s power and economic domination are concentrated in the hands of the few, and those few are frequently not owners, but only the trustees and directors of invested funds, who administer them at their own pleasure. This power becomes particularly irresistible when administered by those who, because they hold and control money, are able to govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the life-blood to the economic body, and grasping, as it were, in their hands the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will.” 60 This pope was to condemn Marxism for reasons that had been frequently repeated: its materialism leads to attempts to end religion; its insistence on class warfare destroys sound harmony; its denial of private property infringes on human rights. The Communist ideologues were more than equal in their denunciations, especially in the ABC of Communism, written by Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii A. Preobrazhensky, which became a Russian classic and primer for the Soviet movement. In it, the authors observed that “the Soviet power must exert the most fervent propaganda against religion . . . all religions are the same poison, intoxicating and deadening the mind, the conscience; a fight to the death must be declared against them . . . our task is not to reform, but to destroy all kinds of religion, all kinds of morality.” The Commissar of Public Education in Moscow, Anatoly Lunacharsky, in a similar vein, concluded, “We hate Christianity and Christians. Even the best of them must be looked upon as our worst enemies. They preach the love of our neighbours and mercy, which is contrary to our principles. Christian love is an obstacle to the development of the Revolution. Down with the love of our neighbours; what we want is hatred. We must learn how to hate, and it is only then we shall conquer the world.” On April 8, 1928, the official Soviet newspaper, Pravda, declared that the great task of the day was to fight against religion, and in 1929 a constitutional amendment passed that forbade “religious propaganda.” The first Christian church to feel the wrath of the Soviets was the Russian Orthodox. As early as 1920, six bishops and 6,775 priests in that church were put to death, some being buried alive and thrown into quicklime. Others ended up in concentration camps, the beginning of the gulag system. Lenin personally insisted on checking the death lists of Orthodox clergy daily. The Communists went after the wealth and religious treasures of the Orthodox church so as to appeal to the poorer classes and attacked the prelates personally. Cardinal Gasparri, on behalf of the Vat-

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ican, offered to pay cash for the religious vessels, but the Communist attacks were simply ploys to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church and not meant to aid the poor or to assist in famine relief. At first the Roman Catholic Church was left alone. In 1923, the attacks began. In a juvenile gesture, a figure of Pius XI was set up in a park in Moscow so people could toss objects at it. More seriously, on March 2, 1923, all Catholic clergy of Petrograd were forced to appear in Moscow and were tried because they taught catechism to children. By March 30, Edmund Aloysius Walsh, who had headed up the Vatican relief efforts in that nation, claimed that 50 percent of the Catholic clergy of Russia had disappeared since the Revolution. In 1927 Pacelli had some serious discussions in Berlin with the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin, about normalizing relations, but when Stalin took control of the Soviet state, any progress was reversed. Ominously, a five-year plan written by a committee headed by Joseph Stalin declared that in 1934-1935, “Atheistic cells must work with greater energy” to destroy all ministers of religion.61 By March 1937, Pius XI in his encyclical, Divini Redemptoris, directly criticized Communism and recommended instead a society founded on social justice, Christian love, and a respect for the proper contributions of hierarchical order. Unfortunately, he also used the expression “corporative system” which looked as if he were favoring Fascism over the Communist alternative. From the beginning, this pope entertained no real illusions about Bolshevism and the feelings of the Marxist cadres toward religion.62 His successors would follow in that spirit until the Communist system finally collapsed of its own weight, and also because of the accumulated grievances of ethnicity and long-lasting religious impulses. When the Marxist kingdom passed from the earth, even the once moribund Russian Orthodox Church experienced a resurgence in that troubled land.

The Nazi Onslaught Pius had dallied with the Fascists and condemned the Communists; he also had to deal with the Nazis who came to power in early 1933. By then, Eugenio Pacelli was his secretary of state, having been appointed when Pius retired his aging friend Gasparri in 1930. Pacelli had been the papal nuncio in Bavaria and then Berlin, and was the author of various concordats with several individual states there, although he could never reach an agreement with the whole Reich. Tensions, though, were increasing on a series of fronts. For a variety of reasons, some Catholic bishops refused Christian burial to Nazis killed in fighting and brawls; to the Nazis, this was another verification that the Catholic Church was committed to one party, the Center political organization, which was even headed by a priest. Meanwhile, in Germany, the adherents of a variety of Catholic youth, women and labor groups grew enormously, becoming especially strong in Düssel-

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dorf, Cologne, and Berlin. Some Catholic bishops resented such movements, and said little at first when the Nazis challenged those groups. When Hitler came to power, he quickly recognized the benefits to be gained by reaching some agreement with the Roman Catholic Church, just as Mussolini had. Although both dictators were baptized in that religious faith, it was obvious that neither retained any allegiances to it or was in the least influenced by its controlling morality. Both were more advocates of Nietzsche and his superman mentality than they were fond admirers of the faith of Augustine, Aquinas, or Francis of Assisi.63 Hitler quickly made the first move by encouraging a concordat and sending Franz von Papen to Rome. Both Pacelli and Pius XI had serious reservations about any formal compact with the Third Reich, but they ended up reaching such an agreement, probably because Hitler threatened to close the Catholic schools and harass the Church’s youth movements unless an understanding was finalized.64 In Germany, even before Hitler’s ascendancy as chancellor on January 30, 1933, Catholic bishops had warned about the dangers of Nazism. In February 1931, the Bavarian bishops maintained that “National Socialist Christianity is not the Christianity of Christ.” Later, some bishops in Trier and Ermland, among others, openly supported the Center Party in order to stop the Nazis at the electoral polls. By February, the Nazi party had won 322 seats and parliamentary government was being overtaken as it had been in Italy. The new chancellor, Adolf Hitler, reached out to the Church hierarchy by calling the religious creeds, “the most important factors in the preservation of our national welfare.” He proceeded to praise the Holy See and advocate closer ties. Privately, Hitler pledged that he would not make Bismarck’s mistake and challenge the Catholic Church directly. Instead, he would move to curtail the Center Party and show Catholics that they were in better hands with the Nazis. Although he was born and nominally raised a Catholic, Hitler claimed that the Catholic Church was initially a Jewish affair that was smuggled into Europe, and which succeeded only because its organization was Aryan. Jesus of Nazareth, in his view, was also an Aryan! Although Hitler respected the power of the Church, he despised the priests, whom he saw as hypocrites interested only in power, and lamented that he had to support the pro-Catholic Franco army in Spain because of the dangers of Bolshevism. He actually liked the Republic’s assault on the Catholic clergy before the Civil War began.65 Hitler, who like Mussolini saw himself as a philosopher and a man of letters, publicly claimed that he regarded Christianity as a national asset and as a bulwark for national regeneration. The concordat, completed after only eight days of negotiations, was signed on July 20, 1933. On paper, it protected freedom of action and association for Catholic organizations, freedom of religious teaching in schools, and freedom of access of bishops to their faithful and to the pope. The concordat also left the nomination of bishops entirely in the hands of the pope. The Vatican in turn agreed to forbid all clergy from actively support-

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ing or being members of any political party. Cardinal Pacelli let the Nazis know that the Vatican viewed with indifference the demise of the Catholic parties in the Reich.66 By that time, the Center Party and the Bayrische Volkspartei, which was a complementary organization in Bavaria, had been dissolved, and the German Reich took another step on the road toward totalitarianism. Later, von Papen was to suggest that the signing of the concordat implied the approval of the Holy See for the National Socialist form of government and its peculiar doctrines. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, quickly contradicted his conclusions. Hitler was said to have boasted, “I shall be one of the few men in history to have deceived the Vatican.” Apparently, the Church and the Reich had secretly agreed that they would join together to oppose Soviet Russia and also outlined the duties of conscripted priests. This was at a time when the Treaty of Versailles prohibited conscription in Germany. Also, the Vatican attempted to protect baptized Jews from the German government, but the Nazis refused to put that pledge into the treaty, giving only their verbal promise on the issue. 67 The wary Vatican tried for genuine normalization of relations with the Reich; the Nazis on the other hand saw its own efforts only as another propaganda tool to bind the Catholics to the regime and to undercut the powerful forces of Catholic dissent in its land. Eugenio Pacelli, later Pius XII, defensively argued in 1945 that the agreement was “the attempt to save the Concordats with certain German states by means of territorial and substantive enlargements as Germany moved into a quite uncertain future.”68 Almost immediately, the Nazi Reich violated the provisions, and between 1933 and 1936, some thirty-six notes of protest were directed to the government by Pope Pius XI, and many were simply not answered. As early as September 1934, the pope was clearly fed up with the long list of complaints from Catholics about violations of the concordat after only three months. He was prepared to openly criticize the Reich, but Cardinal Pacelli urged a more moderate approach. The Nazis, however, attacked priests in 1934, calling them “black moles” and charging that the pope’s grandmother was a Dutch Jewess—the ultimate insult in their vocabulary. By 1936, the pope insisted that he no longer regarded the Nazis as a shield against Bolshevism and bluntly told one German diplomat, “If you want a Kulturkampf again, you can have it.” Pacelli apparently tried to mollify the pope, but Pius was firm in his animosities. When the Cardinal Primate of Austria, Theodor Innitzer, supported the Anschluss or forcible union of Austria and Germany, and even saluted Hitler, the Vatican disassociated itself from him. The cardinal was summoned to Rome where the pope himself called him “very simple-minded.”69 Late at night on March 20, 1937, across Germany priests received an encyclical directly from the pope that was to be read at Mass the next morning. The letter, which was inspired by a group of German bishops, condemned the violations of law and the unchristian teachings of the Nazi Reich. One of the chief critics of the Reich, Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, had already irritated the

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Nazis by his criticisms of the government from the pulpit and had received support earlier from the Vatican which obliquely reminded Catholics of St. Ambrose, who stood up to the civil authorities of his time. 70 By 1937, the pope was ready to outline the suffering condition of the Church and denounced the Nazi ideology point by point. The pope observed, “Only superficial minds can . . . make the mad attempt to confine within the boundaries of a single people, within the narrow bloodstream of a single race, God the Creator of the world, the King, and the Lawgiver of all peoples before whose greatness all people are as a drop in a bucket.” 71 He continued, “Every attempt to dislodge moral teaching and moral conduct from the rock of faith, and to build them on the shifting sands of human regulations, sooner or later leads the individual and the community to moral destruction.” Bluntly Pius insisted, “The number of such fools, who today attempt to separate morality and religion, is legion.” Concluding, the pope prayed for the persecutors and the oppressors of the Church. The Nazis responded by a series of “immorality” trials against Catholic clergy, as Hitler promised a propaganda campaign that would leave the Church reeling.72 It is easy to say in Pius’s defense that a realistic pope saw the Nazi regime coming to power and hoped to protect his Church by virtue of a treaty or concordat. Indeed that is so, but it has also been said that Pius XI actively turned the German clergy, and by implication the German Catholic community, away from opposition to Hitler’s party. The Germany hierarchy, as has been noted, opposed the Nazis in the early elections and supported the Center Party. Yet several weeks later, the hierarchy and the party dropped its opposition—due probably to the direct intercession of Pius XI. Cardinal Faulhaber recorded on March 24, 1933 that there was a greater “toleration” of the Nazi government in the Vatican, and that the Holy Father saw Hitler as a voice against Bolshevism. Two years later, on August 20, 1935, the German bishops wrote Hitler, “In the face of this proclamation of the pope’s influence, millions of men abroad, both Catholics and non-Catholics, have overcome their initial mistrust and accorded credit to your government.”73 The Vatican probably concluded that it was futile to let the Catholic Church in Germany be left standing alone in opposition to Nazism. Thus, the pope had come to recognize very quickly the limits of Vatican diplomacy and the perils of concordat policy. By seeking to reach some settlements with these new states, some have argued he often placed the Church in greater peril and seemed to give his concurrence to having Catholics let down their guard. The Church had dealt with barbarians before, but these totalitarian states were a new breed.

Vatican Diplomacy Elsewhere In another instance, in dealing with Spain, the pope was at least more publicly circumspect. After the end of World War I, the usual isolation of Spain began to

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break down, and there was increasing criticism of government corruption and military misadventures. Captain General Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja of Catalonia put his province under martial law and demanded that the Spanish king dismiss the ministers responsible for the military disasters in Morocco. Instead, the monarch, Alfonso XIII, asked the general to form a government; he did, but insisted that he rule by military decree. Respecting the power of the Roman Catholic Church, he set up an audience for the royal family with Pius XI. The king and queen genuflected thrice to the pope and kissed his foot and hand in obedience. Alfonso read a speech with historical references that spoke of Spain’s support of the faith against Islam and the heretics. He then offered to lead another crusade if Pius would be another Urban II. Primo de Rivera governed for six years until 1930, and proved to be a mild ruler. Given to a life of pleasure, he is reported to have observed, “Had I known in my youth that I would one day have to govern this country, I would have spent more time studying, and less time fornicating.” Finally, he resigned, left for Paris and died in a nightclub there. Under pressure from Socialists and Liberals, the king abdicated, and on April 14, 1931 Spain had a republic. The new government began attacks on the Church, the clergy, and its traditional ways of life. The Vatican tried at first to temper its reactions to those abuses. In May 1933, Pius issued an encyclical, Dilectissima Nobis, which condemned the vandalism against the Church, but avoided attacking the Republic. Soon a Catholic party, headed by a young lawyer, José María Gil Robles, was formed and became rather successful. Finally, Gil Robles was named prime minister. But by 1936, the peculiarities of the electoral system left the legislative branch, called the Cortes, in the hands of the left wing, instead of the right which had received more votes. The setting for a civil war was being laid. A popular front government of Socialists, republicans, Communists, and anarco-syndicals took over. The prisons were opened enabling so-called political prisoners to leave, and rumors and tales of arson and destruction of Church property and murder of clergy were rampant. After a series of political murders, a number of Spanish regiments in Morocco mutinied on July 17, 1936; a career military officer, General Francisco Franco, masterminded the situation, and by July 19 military garrisons all over Spain supported him and the Falangists. Despite the usual view that the Church was supportive of the neo-Fascist Franco, the Vatican had previously reached an accommodation with the Republican government. Three times during the civil war, Franco tried unsuccessfully to get the Vatican’s recognition. Still as the left stepped up its attacks on the Church, the Vatican ultimately turned to the right for protection. Church buildings, especially in Barcelona, were burned, and an estimated 7,937 clergy were killed as the brutality on each side continued. Franco’s forces engaged in their own retribution as an estimated forty thousand people were executed in the struggle. After Franco’s forces won, the Church faced another Fascist regime with skepticism and with some hostility. As in Italy, the government sought to absorb all educational, social, and reli-

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gious organizations into its now state-run apparatus.74 The Vatican was not, as some critics charged, led by men who regardless of fact empathized with the authoritarian regimes. In fact, while Pius XI did not have a great regard for democracy, he actually was quite willing to make common cause with the left wing Republic of France, thus continuing to pursue Leo’s policy of ralliement. In the process, Pius also had to discipline strongly some of his own hierarchy as he tried to reach a compromise with the government, and on one occasion in 1925, he actually forced the bishops to retreat from a statement attacking that government. Many of the episcopate had been appointed by Pius X and their views reflected his extremism. Pius XI, however, took on the anti-republican and intregalist Action Francaise headed up by Charles Maurras. That name was used to describe a political association and also a journal which sought to re-establish the monarchy in France. Although its main directors were actually atheists, its intellectual influence was great among conservative Catholics, especially some of the clergy in France and later the youth in Belgium. The Curia had pushed for a condemnation, but Pius X (who once said of Maurras, “I bless his work”) suspended publication of the decree, as did Benedict, who was preoccupied with the war. Pius XI, after receiving new complaints informally condemned the Action Française through Pierre-Paulin Cardinal Andrieu of Bordeaux. When some of the Curia staff members claimed that they could not find the initial decree, the pope indicated that he would fire those responsible for its loss. Miraculously it reappeared in time for his signature.75 The Action Française responded with a vicious series of attacks on the pope and resurrected the old anti-clerical themes, so familiar to European journalists. The Vatican had previously forbidden priests to give the sacraments to the Action’s adherents, and it required that those of them at death’s door had to recant before they received the last rites and forgiveness. When Louis Cardinal Abillot was indiscreet enough to write a letter of regret to the Action Française, the pope summoned him to Rome, removed him from the Sacred College of Cardinals, and he ended his days in a Jesuit Order House. Later, the Action Française’s directors sought to make amends with the new Pope Pius XII and recanted what the Church regarded as their erroneous teachings. As for Maurras, after his long history of belligerent polemics and later support for the Nazis, on his deathbed he requested to be reconciled with the Church. The importance of Pius XI’s action was that he showed very clearly that the Vatican was willing to negotiate with Republican, left wing, or Socialist governments in order to protect the Church and the faithful. And like Leo XIII, he in fact would take positive steps to remove the Catholic Church once and for all from the ranks of those who romantically or obstinately clung to the remnants of the ancién regime in France. Actually the Church had made some major strides in that nation. Throughout the war, her clergy received renown for their courage and faithfulness to French troops and to the laity. Some 32,700 clergy were mobilized for active service, 4,618 were killed, and 9,378 received the Croix de Guerre, 1,533 the

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Medailles Militaries, and 895 the Legion of Honor. In 1921, the French government resumed diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and by 1937, the French Ambassador to the Holy See, Francoise Charles-Roux, matter-of-factly indicated that relations were excellent, and that “the Church in France has the respect of the nation and the public authorities.”76 Across the channel in neighboring England, the Holy See allowed some discussions to continue between Desire Felicien Cardinal Mercier and important Anglicans, including Lord Halifax, on the possible reunion between that Church and Rome—a perennial topic of interest over the years. The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, however, was rather apprehensive, probably reflecting the true feelings of the majority of his fellow churchmen. After Cardinal Mercier died, some of the impetus for such discussions was lost. The pope, though courteous to the idea and to the principals involved, was himself increasingly leery, and he ended up criticizing a world Conference on Faith and Order which was a Protestant group at Lausanne, which met in August 1927. He emphasized that the Church must insist on the primacy of the Roman pontiff and the unerring deposit of faith that it had. After that message, delivered in his encyclical Mortalium Animos, talks with the Anglicans were broken off. In 1930 with the close of the Anglican Conference at Lambeth, the pope departed again from that other church’s prescriptions and reaffirmed Catholic dogma in his encyclical, Casti Connubi, which condemned birth control and sexual relations outside of regularized marriage. By then, Vatican support for Mussolini’s incursion into Ethiopia also alienated some English as well, as did Franco’s cause in the civil war in Spain.77 In the Western Hemisphere, the pope’s main problem was Mexico. In that nation, the attacks on the Church went far beyond the usual anti-clericalism. As late as 1870, the church had owned about a quarter of the land of Mexico, and its clergy even charged a fee for dispensing the sacrament of marriage. By 1917, a democratic-based party pushed through a Law of Separation similar to France’s, and the Jesuits and Spanish priests were expelled. Churches were confiscated by the state, and other religious institutions were sequestered. Religious activities and processions outside the churches were prohibited. But until 1926, the law was generally disregarded. Then Plutarco Elias Calles came to power. What his ethnic or religious origins were remain unclear, but Calles was at one time a schoolteacher and then a bartender. In 1910, he became a police inspector and later a colonel in the army. In 1926, the Mexican government under Calles systematically attacked Catholic schools, orphanages, and even drove the Sisters of Charity out of a hospital in Durango. In response, the Church in Mexico began a three-day period of “mourning for the death of liberty in Mexico.” The Vatican’s response was that the Church would comply with the law by refusing to officiate at liturgical ceremonies, and thus imposing an “interdict” on the nation. That harsh decision was reminiscent of the medieval Church and its battles with recalcitrant monarchs. Now it was being applied in a very different situation. The churches were in the words of one observer “open, but priestless.” Catholics were also urged to undertake what amounted to an economic boycott

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similar to Gandhi’s techniques in India. In his 1926 encyclical, Iniquis Affictisque, Pius XI denounced the continued attacks on the Church in Mexico. He bluntly declared, “The Mexican Government has reduced ministers of religion to the level of outlaws and criminals, and made the preaching of religion a crime.” Later, even George Bernard Shaw urged the American press to publicize the pope’s concerns, but there was little exposure of the stories. In some Latin American nations there was some support for the pope’s letter, but the European states stayed out of the dispute, in part to protect their nationals’ interest in Mexico. However, in the United States, the administration had serious reservations about Calles’ regime in general. President Herbert Hoover sent his ambassador, Dwight Morrow, to encourage a moderation of that regime’s attacks on the Church or face economic sanctions. The United States was somewhat successful, and Church property was supposed to be protected, bishops were to be restored, and the churches opened up once again. Still, the Church suffered great losses, in part due to the poor caliber of its clergy and the lack of recognition on the part of the Vatican of what was exactly happening.78 In picking up Benedict’s concerns, Pius also became a pope of the foreign missions. He too pushed for a native clergy, and in 1925 sponsored a wellreceived “Missions Exhibition” at the Vatican. Overcoming considerable opposition, he consecrated the first six Chinese bishops at St. Peter’s in 1926, and the first Japanese bishop in 1927. He supported other episcopal consecrations in India, Southeast Asia, and China in 1933, and pushed for closer ties to the Eastern churches. In very many ways, he was indeed a fitting heir to the legacy of Benedict XV.79

Opposing the Tyrants As he aged, the once fine athlete began to feel the ravages of time, especially from arteriolosclerosis and heart disease. He reached a point where life became painful, and in stoic reserve he offered up those pains to the world’s suffering people. Pius XI had called back to Rome another Benedict protégé, Eugenio Pacelli, and named him a cardinal in December 1929, and then Secretary of State in February 1930. Almost as if seeking to choose his successor, Pius XI encouraged Pacelli to visit the Eucharistic Congresses in Buenos Aires and later in Budapest, and religious pilgrimages across the world. In the autumn of 1936, Pacelli traveled to the United States at Pius’s encouragement and met President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Pius XI was to say of the Americans, “All my life I have entertained the greatest admiration for this young and vigorous people.” The Curia, however, had opposed at one time the Catholic bishops’ desire to create a National Catholic Welfare Conference, and actually told Pius that his predecessor was ready to sign a decree dissolving it. That claim was false, but Pius respectfully followed what he thought was his

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predecessor’s wishes. Later, after American prelates protested, the pope looked at the issue more carefully, and in a rare reconsideration countermanded his own order. After Pius died, the New York Times reported that he had personally approved of Bishop Michael Gallagher’s rebuke of the radio broadcasting priest, Father Charles Coughlin of Detroit. In his broadcasts, Coughlin had excoriated President Roosevelt as a liar and a person who betrayed America to Jews and foreigners. The pope was also reported to have agreed with the vigorous attacks on Nazism by George Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago.80 In his last years, Pius XI began to be seen as a major critic of totalitarian governments, of racist politics, and of those who celebrate war and military might. Just before the beginning of a second and more terrible world war, he died on February 10, 1939, and was buried under St. Peter’s. The leadership style of Achille Ratti becomes even more of an enigma as the years of his reign recede. He was by nature an unostentatious, simple, sober man, who seemed to treasure the world of libraries and the life of the mind, and yet also secretly yearned for some adventure in life. Unlike some of his fellow popes, he was not by training or temperament a diplomat, and yet it was diplomacy that marked his reign. He had a penchant for the neat treaty and the ironclad concordat as instruments to make secular governments obey, but it was his unfortunate destiny to live in an era when some of the states that he confronted were a new breed of polity, one of authoritarianism, of totalitarian reach, and of incredible addiction to violence and mass destruction. Diplomacy was new to him, and so it seemed to fascinate him, even though Pius was tough enough to realize that treaties are only observed when it is in all parties’ interest to do so. In the secular world, diplomacy and military action are not opposite approaches to power politics, they are part of a continuum of persuasion and force. For the Vatican, such a continuum is, of course, truncated. As Stalin once observed, the pope has no military divisions. So there is an excessive reliance on suasion, world appeals, and written encyclicals to the world—which is often deaf, as it was deaf in the 1930s to its own self-interests, and later to its own sense of decency. The Curia style of politics is subtle, patient and convoluted—as befits the historic past in which it was founded and flowered. But in the twentieth century, the pope was to try more pointed pronouncements and blunt speaking. Some of his own Curia colleagues were surprised and often dismayed as he openly confronted the totalitarian regimes when they attacked the Church and the larger cause of humankind. In his dealings with the Curia and the national hierarchies, he brooked little opposition; once when a cardinal said that he thought it was his duty to offer advice, the pope snapped, “Yes, when you’re asked for it.” He led by the force of his stoic personality and by his personal integrity. Church historian and an ambassador to the Vatican, Ludwig von Pastor observed once of Pius XI, “He almost always went against the advice given him.”81 Gone was the whimsy of Leo, the devotion of Pius X, or the broad humanitarian reach of Benedict.

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Achille Ratti had all his life a firm sense of himself, an unending view of his time and place, and an interior reserve that was little understood. He clearly overestimated the fruits of diplomacy, especially in dealing with Mussolini. Once in despair he faulted himself for having signed agreements with “people without faith and without God.” Yet, with all the criticisms of those overtures, Pius XI still gave the Church a treaty that outlived its architects. The Duce did fool him a bit, as he did others; they miscalculated his energy for achievement, his personality for true character. Mussolini was a Potemkin village sort of leader—a false front hiding the rotten timbers of his life. In his reign then, the pope explored the farthest reaches of diplomacy— giving him a record of solid achievements and a series of lessons in failure. His successor would know even more intensely the problems of playing international politics in a world where force was the only answer to these new men of violence. Most fittingly Pius’s last words were, “Let there be peace.” As for Mussolini, his observation on learning of the pope’s death was simply, “Thank God the stubborn old man has gone.”82

Notes 1. Robert R. Palmer, A History of the Modern World (New York: Knopf, 1956), 757; Elizabeth Wiskemann, Europe of the Dictators, 1919–1945 (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), chaps. 1–3. 2. Palmer, History of the Modern World, 760; Anthony Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of Dictators, 1922–1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974), 162; Joseph Held, ed., The Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). 3. Erick Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes; A History of the World 1914– 1991 (New York: Pantheon, 1994), 122–35. 4. Rhodes, Vatican, 90–95. 5. Dimitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press, 1995); Rhodes, Vatican, 133. 6. [William Cecil James Wicklow] Lord Clonmore, Pope Pius XI and World Peace (New York: E. Dutton & Co., 1938), 62. 7. Tad Szulc, Pope John Paul II: The Biography (New York: Scribner, 1995), 133–14. Different views of who stayed in Warsaw have been given. The Italian and Danish ambassadors may have stayed also; for the larger number of ambassadors, see William Teeling, Pope Pius XI and World Affairs (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1937), 72. 8. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, 50, 87. In London, when he visited, Ratti saw the tradition of keeping to the left of the road, which started with Pope Boniface VIII in 1300, to cope with the traffic during the papal jubilee in Rome; from Teeling, World Affairs, 59.

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9. Denis Gwynn, The Vatican and the War in Europe (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, [1940]), 89. On the League of Nations see Peter Hebblethwaite, Paul VI: The First Modern Pope (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 124. 10. Wicklow, World Peace, 32–45. 11. Rene Fontenelle, His Holiness Pope Pius XI (London: Metheun, 1938); Philip Hughes, Pope Pius the Eleventh (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1937), 19; Achille Ratti, Essays in History (Freeport, N.Y.: Books in Libraries, 1967). 12. Hughes, Pope Pius XI, 67; Carlo Falconi, The Popes in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 171. 13. Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, 159; Hughes, Pope Pius XI, chap. 11. 14. Rhodes, Vatican, 19; Hughes, Pope Pius XI, chap. 1. 15. Fontenelle, His Holiness, 25. 16. Fontenelle, His Holiness, 21; Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, 178. 17. Fontenelle, His Holiness, 29–31; Paul I. Murray, (New York: Warner Books, 1983), 153, claims that the conclave picked Camillo Cardinal Laurenti who supposedly turned down the papacy in 1922. 18. Teeling, World Affairs, 17; Fontenelle, His Holiness, 37–38; Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, 153–54. 19. Rhodes, Vatican, 19; Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, 216–17; Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 118. 20. Robert Sencourt, Genius of the Vatican (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935); Daniel A. Binchy, Church and State in Fascist Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 73, 82. 21. Binchy, Church and State, 82–86; Rhodes, Vatican, 162; Hughes, Pius XI, 173. 22. Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970), originally published in 1928. 23. Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (New York: Knopf, 1982), 15, 35; also of interest are Christopher Hibbert, Benito Mussolini: The Rise and Fall of Il Duce (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962); S. William Halperin, The Separation of Church and State in Italian Thought from Cavour to Mussolini (New York: Octagon Books, 1971), chap. 5; George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar: The Untold Story of Mussolini and Fascism (New York: Harper & Bros., 1935); Herbert Finer, Mussolini’s Italy (New York: Archon Books, 1964), pt. 2. The most definitive account is R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy (New York: Penguin Press, 2006). 24. Wicklow, World Peace, 78; on the various sources of support for Fascism, see Donald H. Bell, Sesto San Giovanni: Workers, Culture and Politics in an Italian Town, 1880–1922 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986). The conditions of Italy are also outlined in Martin Clark, Modern Italy 1871– 1982 (New York: Longman, 1988), chap. 10. 25. Smith, Mussolini, 42–56.

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26. Sencourt, Genius of the Vatican, 208. 27. Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), chap. 2 and 5. 28. Binchy, Church and State, 100. 29. Binchy, Church and State, 106. 30. Gwynn, The Vatican and War in Europe, 98. 31. Teeling, World Affairs, 129. 32. Binchy, Church and State, 139; Teeling, World Affairs, 236. 33. Binchy, Church and State, 140; Rhodes, Vatican, 28; Hughes, Pius XI, 198, on the Mafia and Freemasons; Alexander Stille, Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (New York: Pantheon, 1995); and Murray, La Popessa, 187–89 which claim that the Vatican may have worked with the White House to get sanctuary in Italy for Mafia crime boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano. 34. Binchy, Church and State, 158; Rhodes, Vatican, 46; Luigi Sturzo, Church and State (London: The Centenary Press, 1939), chap. 14–15; John F. Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism 1929–32 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Avro Manhattan, The Vatican in World Politics (New York: Gaer Associates, 1949). 35. Binchy, Church and State, 174; Rhodes, Vatican, 40. 36. Binchy, Church and State, 258–61; John W. Wheeler-Bennett, ed., Documents on International Affairs, 1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), 216–41, for texts of the treaty, financial convention, and concordat. See also Arnold J. Toynbee, comp., Survey of International Affairs, 1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), pt. 5; Mario Falco, The Legal Position of the Holy See Before and After the Lateran Agreements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935); Benedict Williamson, The Treaty of Lateran (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1929). 37. Binchy, Church and State, 220–26; and Gwynn, The Vatican and War, 120. 38. Binchy, Church and State, 270–71, 195. 39. Binchy, Church and State, 186. 40. Binchy, Church and State, 205–6; Smith, Mussolini, 162. 41. Binchy, Church and State, 207–10. 42. Binchy, Church and State, 323–33; Giovanni Gentile, The Reform of Education (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922); Giovanni Gentile, Theory of Mind As Pure Act (New York: MacMillan and Co., 1922); Giovanni Gentile, Genesis and Structure of Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1960); Merritt Moore Thompson, The Educational Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1934); Roger Holmes, The Idealism of Giovanni Gentile (New York: MacMillan, 1937); Henry Stilton Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1960); Lorenzo Minio-Palvello, Education in Fascist Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946); William A. Smith, Giovanni Gentile on the Existence of God (Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1970).

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43. The Papal Encyclicals, 1903–1939, comp. Claudia Carlen (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath Publishing Co., 1981), 525–36. 44. Binchy, Church and State, 341. 45. Binchy, Church and State, 408–09; Tracy H. Koon, Believe, Obey, Fight: Political Socialization of Youth in Fascist Italy, 1922–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985) on the political socialization of youth in fascist Italy. 46. Binchy, Church and State, 409–13. 47. Binchy, Church and State, 490–96. 48. Binchy, Church and State, 514. 49. Binchy, Church and State, 517–22. 50. Papal Encyclicals, 445–58. 51. Binchy, Church and State, 545. 52. Rhodes, Vatican, 70; Teeling, World Affairs, 139. 53. Francis A. Ridley, The Papacy and Fascism: The Crisis of the Twentieth Century (London: M. Secker Warburg ltd., 1937), pt. 3, and Geoffrey T. Garratt, Mussolini’s Roman Empire (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938), 15. 54. Binchy, Church and State, 64–72; Rhodes, Vatican, 76. 55. Rhodes, Vatican, 77. 56. Binchy, Church and State, 649–50. On Mussolini and Islam, see Teeling, World Affairs, 143. 57. Teeling, World Affairs, 158; Binchy, Church and State, 295–308. 58. George Seldes, The Vatican: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (New York: Harper & Bros., 1934), 307. 59. Wicklow, World Peace, 108. 60. Papal Encyclicals, 415–44. 61. Wicklow, World Peace, 114–22. 62. Papal Encyclicals, 537–54. 63. Wicklow, World Peace, 217–18; Stewart A. Stehlin, Weimar and the Vatican 1919–1933: German-Vatican Diplomatic Relations in the Interwar Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), chap. 7. 64. Rhodes, Vatican, 175. 65. Rhodes, Vatican, 169; Teeling, World Affairs, 116; Gwynn, The Vatican and War, chap. 8. 66. Rhodes, Vatican, 175. 67. William Teeling, Crisis for Christianity (London: Religious Books Club, 1939), 100–107; Rhodes, Vatican, 179–80. 68. New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 11:414. 69. Rhodes, Vatican, 183–200; 150–51. 70. Wicklow, World Affairs, 176. 71. Hughes, Pope Pius XI, 301–2. 72. Rhodes, Vatican, 207–8. 73. Falconi, The Popes in the Twentieth Century, 194. 74. Rhodes, Vatican, 114–30; Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography (New York: BasicBooks, 1994); Michael Curtis, Three Against the Third Republic:

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Sorel, Barres, and Maurias (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959). 75. Rhodes, Vatican, 105; Hughes, Pope Pius XI, 290. The poet T. S. Eliot was an admirer of Maurras and defended him after the pope’s condemnation. But after Maurras’ support of Vichy France, he concluded that the pope’s views were sounder than he thought originally; in Louis Menard, “Eliot and the Jews,” New York Review of Books, June 6, 1996, 43, 39. 76. Wicklow, World Affairs, 180–210. On Pius’ comment on Maurras, see Rhodes, Vatican, 106. 77. Wicklow, World Affairs, 231–34; Papal Encyclicals, 391–414. 78. Wicklow, World Affairs, 280–86; Rhodes, Vatican, 98–102. 79. Hughes, Pope Pius XI, chap. 7; Benedict Williamson, The Story of Pope Pius XI (New York: J. Kennedy & Sons, 1931), chap. 9. 80. Rhodes, Vatican, 161; Teeling, World Affairs, 157–61; New York Times, February 10, 1939, 1+; Gerald Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazer, 1985), 43+ indicates that Bishop Gallagher supported Coughlin, denies that the Vatican had spoken to him directly, and observes that Coughlin continued his attacks until the Justice Department stopped some of his activities. It is clear that the Apostolic Delegate and several of the hierarchy used this conflict against the radio priest. 81. Rhodes, Vatican, 71; Hansjakob Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican, 1917–1979 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981), 67. 82. His criticisms of the concordats are in John McKnight, The Papacy: A New Appraisal (New York: Rinehart and Co., 1952), 257; Rhodes, Vatican, 20.

Chapter 23

Pius XII and the Spiritual Twilight of the West That stubborn old man in the Vatican accomplished one other feat denied to most human beings—he reached beyond the grave and named his own successor. The week before his painful death, he confided that he had sent his secretary of state, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, abroad so often in order to prepare him for the papacy, “He will make a fine Pope,” he concluded. Pius XI had even said once that if he were sure that Pacelli would be elected, he would resign the papacy, a rare sort of praise.1

The Black Nobility Indeed, for generations, the Pacelli family had been associated with the papacy. Eugenio’s great-grandfather had been minister of finance under Gregory XVI. His grandfather, Marcantonio, was undersecretary in the Ministry of the Interior under Pius IX, and followed him into exile in Gaeta in 1848. Later he was also instrumental in the founding of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. Eugenio’s father was the dean of the Consistorial College of lawyers, which prepared cases for beatification, among other matters, and was president of a Catholic Action group that promoted the teaching of Christian doctrine. His brother Francesco had helped to negotiate the Concordat of 1929. Both of his sisters had married Vatican officials—one the director of the Catholic hospital Bambino Gesú in Rome, and the other an administrator of the Holy See and a papal gentleman-in-waiting.2 At the early age of six, Eugenio, like so many Catholic boys across the globe, created an altar in his bedroom and practiced being a priest. He was a serious, somewhat detached person who exuded a sense of piety. Later one observer claimed he gave off “the odour of sanctity.” And another, Henri Bordeaux, said he “has the sublime greatness of a mortified almost translucent body, which seems destined to serve only as a cover for a soul.” Although in later 403

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years and in official photographs he seemed ascetic, regal, and aloof, in fact, he impressed his contemporaries as a steadfast, friendly, and charming person. Kaiser Wilhelm wrote, “Pacelli is a likeable, distinguished man, of high intelligence, and exquisite manners, the perfect pattern of an eminent prelate of the Catholic Church.” As a young man, he wanted to be a simple parish priest, but on February 14, 1901, he was sent to the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, the Vatican foreign office, and matured under the eagle eye of the shrewd Monsignor Gasparri. In 1908, he was offered a faculty position in canon law at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C., an appointment he turned down in obedience to Pius X’s wishes.3 In 1911, the youthful Pacelli was named undersecretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs by Pius X, and in 1914, he became the secretary under then-Cardinal Gasparri. More importantly, he was later transferred to Germany where he presented Benedict’s unsuccessful peace plan. He was papal nuncio to Bavaria from 1917 to 1920, and then nuncio to Germany through 1929. During some of that time, he worked with Achille Ratti, who had been sent by the Holy See to Poland. In one of the most dramatic episodes of his diplomatic career, his residence in Munich was invaded in 1919 by Communists during the “Spartacist” uprisings. Facing a determined and unyielding cleric, they withdrew, and Pacelli established a reputation for personal courage and sangfroid. That experience, however, left on him an indelible imprint about the brutal nature of Communist thuggery.4

A Pope in Training By 1930, Ratti, then Pius XI, had decided to retire Gasparri, and he summoned Pacelli to Rome to become eventually secretary of state. There is evidence that on some occasions Pacelli was much more prone to quiet diplomacy and to accommodation with the totalitarian states than was Pius XI. As has been noted, as he grew older, Ratti became more vocal as his concordats were abrogated by the Fascists and the Nazis. As for the Bolsheviks, he never misjudged their intentions, unlike many leaders in the West. It was clear overall that he and he alone set the tone of his own reign, and that he was deep down a courageous and principled man. Ratti’s critics said that his denunciations of the totalitarian states were based on their challenges to the institutional Catholic Church, and that he never clearly defended individual rights and civil liberties. There is some truth in that observation; he was in fact above all else the pope of the Roman Church, and not the defender of liberal or even humanitarian traditions. Still, in the last years of his reign, he was clearly a foe of the Nazi regime, as well as of Mussolini. Facing serious health problems, Pius XI encouraged his secretary of state to go to the International Eucharistic Conference in Buenos Aires in 1934, to Uru-

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guay, and to Brazil. In 1936, Pacelli traveled across the United States, visiting 12 of the 16 church provinces, and later met President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at his ancestral estate in Hyde Park. It was said of the meeting that ironically “Roosevelt spoke as a pope, Pacelli as a politician and diplomat.” It would prove to be an acquaintanceship of immense importance during the next war. In the U.S., Pacelli appeared before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., explaining the Vatican’s policies. He also represented the pope at the coronation of George VI in 1937, gave a major address at the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest in 1938, and socialized easily with French liberal politicians of the Third Republic. Blessed with a photographic memory and possessing a real gift for speaking foreign languages, he was frequently called upon as an orator to address a variety of audiences. Trained primarily as a diplomat, Pacelli retained a confidence in the techniques of discussion, nuance, subtlety, and written agreements of understanding. It was the way of Curia international politics since the Renaissance, and he was clearly formed by those traditions and experiences. During his time as papal nuncio in Germany, he had devoted much of his intensive effort to the signing of several concordats with various German states, since the political climate would not permit a national agreement until Hitler’s centralized regime emerged. Some of his contemporaries were critical of his performance, however. In 1937, the Spanish ambassador said he was “no real counterweight to Pius XI, because he was completely devoid of will and character. He hasn’t even got a particularly good mind.” The British chargé d´affaires, Hugh Montgomery, said he was “a good man, a pious man, not devoid of intelligence, but essentially there to obey.” Pacelli’s close associate, Domenico Tardini, put it more guardedly: “By nature gentle and almost shy, he was not born with the temperament of a fighter. That is what distinguished him from his great predecessor.”5 Pacelli was later to be called pro-Nazi because of his refusal to name Hitler’s regime directly in his criticisms after he became pope. Pacelli did indeed respect Germany and German culture, but he was clearly aware of the hostile nature of the Nazi government. In 1945, he defended the concordat he signed with Hitler when he was secretary of state, but he once admitted that no signature of the German government was worth the paper it was written on. And when the Germans remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, Pacelli remarked to the French ambassador, “If you had entered with 200,000 troops, you would have done an immense service to the world.”6 After Pius XI’s death, Pacelli, his secretary of state and by then also his papal chamberlain, pronounced him “truly dead.” He apparently did not tap his predecessor’s forehead with the traditional silver hammer. Experience has it that conclaves do not turn to the secretary of state to be the successor to the dead incumbent. In addition, Pacelli faced strong opposition in some quarters. The Italian government let it be known through one of its Fascist news organs that the world needed “a new man” as pope, and not one associated with any “political factor.” Generally though, the Italian press was favorable to the Roman born prelate.

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The Germans, as usual, less subtle than the Italians, actually issued a warning against the election of Pacelli. The Nazi press criticized the idea of “a political Pope,” and angrily predicted that the policy of Cardinal Pacelli will lead to “a crusade against the totalitarian States.” The Western democracies and their media were overall more complimentary of the cardinal secretary of state, although the former Weimar Chancellor, Dr. Heinrich Brüning, reportedly concluded that, “There was much naivety in Pacelli’s makeup, particularly in that he believes in temporizing with the present regimes in Germany and in Italy.” And others concluded, “Cardinal Pacelli is a man of peace, and the world needs a pope of war.”7 When the College of Cardinals convened, the members seemed to have reached a very clear consensus on Pacelli, whose strength was especially pronounced among the non-Italian members. On the first ballot, Cardinal Pacelli received thirty-five of the sixty-two ballots—seven short of election; the second ballot gave him 40 votes, and then on the first afternoon ballot he received every vote except his own. Jean Cardinal Verdier summarized the deliberations simply, “the Sacred College could not fail to choose Pacelli for the Papacy.”8 Pacelli was elected on his sixty-third birthday. He was the first papal secretary of state to be chosen pope since 1667, and the first pope of Roman birth since 1721. Before his coronation, Pius XII, as he called himself, appointed Luigi Maglione, the papal nuncio in Paris, as secretary of state. When he died in 1944, Pacelli became in fact his own Secretary of State, assisted by Monsignor Tardini, who was head of the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, and more eventfully Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, head of the Congregation of Ordinary Affairs. Years later, Montini, ambushed in a Vatican power play, would be exiled and sent to the Archbishopric of Milan, then resurrected politically by his friend John XXIII, and finally elected himself as Paul VI. It would be shades of Benedict XV all over again. 9

Reaching for Peace Immediately after his coronation, Pius XII moved on the diplomatic offensive to settle some of the tensions with the Nazi regime. Citing as precedent Leo XIII’s early overtures to Bismarck to end the Kulturkampf, he proposed to write a personal letter to Hitler on the occasion of Pius’s ascendancy to the throne of St. Peter. On April 21, 1939, the pope sent an emissary to Mussolini asking for a five-power conference which would include Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland, and which was meant to prevent the outbreak of another war. Bolshevik Russia was not included in the Vatican’s proposal. Mussolini seemed positive at first, but Britain and France, remembering the Munich betrayal, were very wary; and the Germans were firmly negative. Pius sent his nuncio to Berlin to see German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribben-

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trop, who was warned that a conflict would likely bring the United States in on the side of the democracies. The Nazis, though, made it clear that they were ready for war. So was Mussolini; when he was advised that Russia might join the British and French, the Duce responded, “What Russia does makes no difference.” He was proven to be very very wrong. Then the Germans and the Russians signed a nonaggression pact in late August 1939. The way to war was clear. The French ambassador to the Vatican urged the pope to condemn the Germans as they continued their aggressive designs. Instead Pius made a general, but still eloquent appeal. “Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war,” he argued in vain. Quietly, the pope, though, urged the Poles to appease the Nazis on the Danzig and corridor issues, hoping to avert the imminent conflict.10 On September 1, 1939, the Reich armies invaded Poland; soon its Russian Bolshevik ally attacked from its west, and free Poland was dismantled. Immediately the French and the British governments moved to Poland’s ill-fated defense. Mussolini succinctly commented that Poland had been “liquidated.” World War II had begun. The pope’s initial response was to emulate the behavior of his predecessor, Benedict XV, as he pledged to maintain absolute neutrality. But this war was more stark, more mad, more obviously a battle of good and evil. Still, the pope could not avoid the obvious, and on October 27, 1939, he issued an encyclical Summi Pontificatus, which praised the Polish people and their dedication to the Catholic faith. It was clearly an anti-Nazi letter, and Vatican Radio followed up by broadcasting a personal testimony of one victim that outlined the horrors of that invasion to the world, thus angering even further the Reich leaders. The Nazis then moved to seize the Catholic Church’s property in various areas in Poland in violation of the concordat that Pacelli had struck. 11 Unknown at the time and rather remarkable considering his diplomatic inclinations, Pius was involved in conversations concerning a possible coup against Hitler. In January 1940, the pope received a representative from some German generals who indicated they were going to topple the Fuhrer. They wanted to inform the Western allies so as to prevent military action in the West before their coup took place. Pius dutifully informed the British ambassador to the Vatican, Francis D’Arcy Osborne, but the British government was skeptical. In April 1940, President Roosevelt sent his personal representative, former U.S. Steel executive Myron Taylor, who like FDR was a nominal Episcopalian, to the Vatican with a special message. Such a step was a personal victory for Pacelli and for his close friend, American prelate Francis Spellman. The wealthy Taylor owned a villa in Florence and was close to Pacelli, who had stayed at his New York home in 1936. The charming FDR referred to the pope, whom he had met only once, as his “good old friend,” and had Taylor use the pope as a conduit to Mussolini to try to discourage the latter’s participation in the conflict. Taylor even asked the pope to threaten the Duce with excommunication if he went to war on the side of Hitler! In May 1940, Hitler overran the Low Countries. The pope sent his personal

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blessings to the people of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, but the French government demanded that he directly condemn the Nazis, and not simply send an expression of sympathy for the victims. Privately the pope responded, “We would like to utter words of fire against such actions; and the only thing restraining Us from speaking is the fear of making the plight of the victims worse.” Even then, the Italian government threatened the pope because of those telegrams of sympathy. Mussolini called the papacy a cancer, and he threatened to blow up the pope and the monarchy as well. Pius pointedly responded, “We were not intimidated by pistols pointed at Us once, we will be even less frightened next time”—a reference to the Communists’ Spartacist incident in 1919. Then he concluded, “The pope cannot on certain occasions remain silent.” 12 While he denounced the heinous acts of aggression, Pius did not use the undiplomatic word “invasion” in characterizing the violations of the Low Countries. Looking at the military situation, the pope surely must have resigned himself to the eventuality that he would be facing a Nazi-controlled world, one that would hold vast areas of Catholic Europe in its grip. The anti-Nazi tone of the L’Osservatore Romano quieted down, although the Vatican Radio, run by the more aggressive Jesuits, continued its attacks on the German government. Again and again the pope appealed to Mussolini to remain neutral, but the Duce refused to even read Pius’s letters. On June 10, 1940, Mussolini led a very reluctant Italy into war against France and Great Britain. Roosevelt condemned the action, saying of the Duce that the hand that held the dagger stuck it in the back of its neighbor, France. It was a masterful use of ethnic stereotyping by a master orator.13 While many of the Italian clergy patriotically rallied around the Italian armies, the Vatican stayed quiet. Thirty Italian bishops sent a telegram to the Duce praising his actions, but the pope was still urging Britain and Germany to enter into peace negotiations. French Cardinal Eugene Tisserant sadly observed, “I fear that history will tomorrow have to reproach the Holy See with having pursued a policy of convenience to its own exclusive benefit—and little more. And this is a terribly sad thing, especially for one who has lived under Pius XI.” Even Pacelli’s close friend, Archbishop Francis Spellman of New York, wrote to Secretary of State Cardinal Maglione that the prestige of the pope had sharply declined due to his unclear pronouncements and the pro-Axis sentiments of many Italian bishops. Spellman claimed that American Catholics no longer had confidence in the pope’s impartiality because he seemed to have sympathy for Mussolini’s imperial designs. Fortunately for Spellman, Maglione did not show the offensive letter to Pius.14 Having been unable to stop the war, Pius XII emulated not his immediate predecessor, but Benedict XV, and sought to work to alleviate the problems of the suffering, the prisoners of war, and incarcerated civilians. By then, the Nazi assault was moving toward its high water point, and the Western democracies seemed impotent and close to collapse. To add to the pope’s problems, the Ger-

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mans had a new ally—the atheistic Marxist regime in Russia, which the papacy had historically feared even more than the lunacies of the Right. Then on June 22, 1941, Hitler, in one of the most consequential miscalculations in the history of warfare, turned his armies east and attacked the Soviet Union. Stalin had been warned before the attack, but refused to believe it. As the Nazi armies crossed the borders, he vanished from public view. It was as if he had a nervous breakdown and could not function. Soon, though, he regained his composure and the Red armies faced the Nazi onslaught. Churchill publicly supported his old Bolshevik enemies, saying he would ally Britain with the devil to stop the Nazis. He did, and so eventually did the Americans. It was the valor of the Red armies more than any other single factor that destroyed Hitler’s war machine forever.15

The American Connection With the United States still not in the war, FDR made a controversial decision— to extend Lend-Lease aid to the Soviets, and he asked the Catholic Church to support his decisions, and thus limit the political fallout at home. Roosevelt wrote directly to Pius, “I believe, however, that this Russian dictatorship is less dangerous to the safety of other nations than is the German form of dictatorship. The only weapon which the Russian dictatorship uses outside of its own borders is communist propaganda, which I, of course, recognize has in the past been utilized for the purpose of breaking down the form of government in other countries, religious beliefs, et cetera . . . . I believe that the survival of Russia is less dangerous to religion, to the church as such, and to humanity in general than would be the survival of the German form of dictatorship.” 16 To pacify the pontiff, the American administration indicated that it would use its new association with the Russian leaders to assist in guaranteeing freedom of religion in the Soviet Union. The Vatican knew, as did the United States, that the Bolsheviks had already invaded eastern Poland, Finland, Bessarabia and Bukovina and had also absorbed the states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, so FDR’s sanguine observations may have lacked some persuasiveness. Pius had few illusions that freedom of religion or an end to obnoxious anti-religious propaganda would come about through American intervention. Still he was willing to acknowledge a distinction between the Soviet regime which the Vatican condemned and the Russian people, for whom he expressed his personal regard. As for Lend-Lease, the Vatican decided that was a military question, and the Holy See stayed away from the issue. Roosevelt got what he needed, and the American hierarchy was notified by the pope’s agents that it was not to criticize the United States’ efforts to be an arsenal for the new Allied forces. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, FDR candidly laid before Pius the American war objectives. The Allies would defeat the Germans first and then turn to the Japanese. The president also insisted that the United States did not

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seek any territorial aggrandizement. A few months after that attack in March 1942, the Vatican agreed to a Japanese government request for diplomatic relations, a move that clearly annoyed the president, who criticized the poor timing and the domestic backlash that would eventually result. A very sensitive American hierarchy tried to both support the pope, and yet mute the obvious American reaction inflamed right after the attack in Hawaii. The progress of the war in North Africa in late 1942 made it apparent that the Allies were on the offensive. Meanwhile the heroic defense of Stalingrad from August 19, , to January 30, 1943, spelled out to astute observers that the Soviets would not surrender and retreat from the fields of battle as the czarist forces had in World War I. Even Hitler had to acknowledge what was obvious to others, that his futile campaign for control of that city was a major turning point. With the British under Churchill promising no truce, the United States newly entering the conflict, and the Russians standing firm, the Vatican as well as others could see a new war emerging.17 Despite those changes, Pius was concerned with FDR’s unexpected announcement made with Churchill at Casablanca that the Allies would accept nothing but “unconditional surrender.” To the pope, that statement would embolden the Axis powers and frighten their populace to fight on to the death. To Roosevelt, it was a message that the United Nations, as they were to be called, regarded their opponents as a contagious disease to be permanently eradicated. The war against the Nazis and their collaborators became now a moral crusade, and it was Roosevelt and Churchill more than the pope who gave the war its true moral dimension as a battle of good against evil. As the Allies moved across North Africa, it soon became apparent that they would begin an assault on Italy. It was also obvious that Rome would become a theater of the war sooner or later. The pope, both as bishop of Rome and as a Roman by birth, was deeply disturbed. He used his considerable influence with Roosevelt to protect the city, and pushed the American Catholic hierarchy to employ also their good offices to guarantee that Rome would be treated as an open city. Roosevelt, with a considerable number of Catholics in Congress and in the Democratic party, gave general guarantees to protect Rome, especially the Vatican and its domains. But he reminded the pope that the Fascists were still operating in a city that had real military importance for a variety of reasons, including being a railroad nexus. Still FDR was clearly sympathetic to Pius’s pleas. Churchill and the British, recalling probably the destruction of their own London and its beloved Parliament, were less willing to give guarantees, although the prime minister did promise to exercise all possible care. British Ambassador Osborne, however, took the occasion to remind the Vatican that it made no protests when religious buildings at Canterbury, Coventry, and St. Paul’s in London were hit by the Germans.18 In late November 1942, the pope grew increasingly concerned when

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Churchill told the House of Commons that the Allies would vigorously attack Italy from bases in North Africa. In December, the Vatican urged the Italian ambassador to have his government remove all military commands from the city. The king had favored that step before, and Mussolini agreed in principle to the proposal, saying that he had no intention of hiding “beneath the umbrella of Catholicism.” On December 16, the Duce had the Vatican informed that he would agree to removing both German and Italian commands from the city, and that he himself would leave.19 But when the British and the Americans disagreed on the conditions of an open city, Mussolini stalled. Then when the Allied invasion in Africa bogged down, the Duce no longer seemed interested. In May 1943, as the Allies centered their advances on North Africa, the pope addressed a personal plea to Roosevelt asking that the “treasured shrines of religion and art” be spared from ruin.20 As noted, on June 26, Roosevelt promised to refrain from bombing civilian sites, but he warned that the Axis might bomb the Vatican in order to charge the Allies with such outrages. On July 10, the Allied forces landed at Sicily, and later Rome was bombed for the first time. The war was moving closer. Although the bombing was aimed at the marshalling yards of San Lorenzo and Tiburtine, some of the bombs did fall on civilian areas, including a hospital, religious buildings, and the largest cemetery in Rome. For two hours, a distraught Pius watched as the city of his birth was being attacked. Without any escort, the pope raced to the site of the disaster with Monsignor Montini carrying two million lire for immediate assistance. In the stricken area the pontiff walked through the rubble and the dead, hearing the cries of the injured. There he observed the destruction of the sixth century Basilica of San Lorenzo, one of the most revered of Catholic churches. Its roof had fallen in, damaging the vestibule and destroying the facade. Near it bombs had ripped through a local cemetery, Campo Verano. There the graves of his own family were torn apart, and the tombs of the Pacellis were demolished. Pius stood alone and wept over the site, and then prayed near the Basilica. By then a crowd had come to see the pontiff—the bishop of Rome—and he comforted those while Montini distributed alms. Five years later, the pope was to remark, “Up to the last day of Our life, We will still remember this sorrowful meeting.”21 After Mussolini was finally removed from power on July 25, 1943, the Vatican quickly asked the new government under Marshall Pietro Badoglio to declare Rome an open city. The British, however, planned more attacks on the city, but General Dwight Eisenhower limited such possible sites to airfields around Rome. Then on August 13, the Allies hit Rome again, seeking to destroy Fascist morale, and bombs fell, this time near the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the great church of the early popes. Again Pius appeared to comfort the injured, giving the last rites, praying for the dead and dispensing alms. As he moved through the site and its victims, his pressed white cassock became stained with blood.

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As the Allied forces and the new Italian government tried to reach terms of an armistice, the Vatican pushed again for guarantees on the safety of Rome. On September 3 in Palermo, Sicily, an agreement was secretly signed, and General Eisenhower moved to parachute the 82nd Airborne into Rome to protect it from the Nazis as the Allies invaded Salerno. The paratroopers, with the help from the Italian troops, would seize the airports and hold off the Nazi forces until the Allied armies advanced into Rome.

Defender of Rome Uncertain of exactly what was happening, the Vatican on September 10, 1943 ominously sealed the entrance of Porta Santa Anna, and closed the huge doors of St. Peter’s at noon—in part to protect the Jewish refugees inside the city-state. Meanwhile, the Nazis returned to Rome and took control. Two days later, the doors of St. Peter’s were reopened, and the Vatican was now surrounded by Nazis, with the pope becoming a virtual prisoner. By then the pontiff seemed to stand alone protected by only the token forces of the Swiss, Noble, and Palatine guards, who were now armed, though, with rifles and machine guns. Meanwhile, the Italian underground, unable to count on a quick Allied victory, took to guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and even assassination to harass the Nazis and the Fascists. Faced with the possibilities of considerable attacks on Jews and others, Pius had opened up Rome’s churches, religious institutions, and the Vatican itself as asylums. Phony Vatican ration tickets, identity cards, and even papal certificates flooded the city and were oddly respected by the German forces, as the Vatican looked the other way at the numerous forgeries. In addition, the pope refused to acknowledge Mussolini’s new “Italian Social Republic” (the Republic of Salò)—a puppet regime in Northern Italy supported only by Hitler’s whim and forces. The Duce was at first furious with Pius, but later he quietly sent his mistress, Clara Petacci, to the Vatican to see if the pope would act as an intermediary with the advancing Allied armies. Pius, disgusted with Mussolini, reluctantly forwarded his request for sanctuary to General Eisenhower, who curtly rejected it. Later, on April 28, 1945, Mussolini and his mistress were killed by Italian anti-Fascists. On April 29, 1945, Hitler committed suicide. Pius went to his chapel and prayed for the repose of both of their souls. With the Nazis in control of the city, they began a major assault on the Jews of Rome. On September 27, 1943, the chief rabbi of the city was informed that he had to deliver one million lire along with one hundred pounds of gold, or the Nazis would begin attacks upon the Jewish community. The Jews were unable to raise that ransom, and the chief rabbi appealed directly to the pope. In less than a day, the Vatican treasurer was under orders to come up with the gold; probably the Church officials melted down their religious vessels to deliver the

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ransom. Later, the Gestapo attacked the Jews again, and the Fascists ordered that Jews be rounded up in every province and sent to concentration camps. Pius vigorously protested privately to the German ambassador, and eventually three weeks later, some of those victims were returned. Throughout the city, priests and nuns and members of religious orders smuggled Jews to places of sanctuary in churches, monasteries, and other institutions. It has been estimated that over five thousand Jews were granted asylum. But of the twelve thousand members of the Jewish community there, less than half would survive, and Pius would be severely criticized for not doing more.22 The Vatican newspaper called the persecutions “unreasonable, unchristian, and inhuman.” When the Holy See recognized the Badoglio regime as a legitimate government of Italy, Mussolini was inflamed. Ironically, the Fascists were actually now being restrained by the Nazis from attacking Church property and personnel. On November 5, 1943, the Vatican was hit by four fragmentation bombs, reportedly from a German designed plane under the command of Fascist anti-clerics. The Fascists, in violation of the Lateran Treaty, also surrounded a block of pontifical buildings invading the Lombard College, the Russicum, and the Jesuit Oriental Institute. Those buildings had provided asylum to the Italian resistance leaders and to beleaguered Jews. Later, in February 1944, the Fascists attacked the famed Abbey of St. Paul’s which under the Lateran Treaty was acknowledged to be an extraterritorial property in possession of the Holy See. In February, the Allies hit Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence. Also, on March 1, a German-designed plane bombed several more buildings, including one near the papal apartments. Rumors also circulated that the Nazis were trying to persuade the pope to leave the Vatican and take asylum in some area they controlled, probably Liechtenstein. The pope promptly rejected all such suggestions. However, he did call the cardinals together, and on February 9, 1944, told them that each was free to choose to leave the city. He, however, would never yield. The cardinals all pledged to stay. Later the Allies launched a devastating and unnecessary attack that destroyed the historic abbey of Monte Cassino, home of the great Benedictine monastic tradition. The pope in sorrow, refused to criticize the advancing Allied armies, although he was privately dismissive of Roosevelt and his supposed guarantees.23 Throughout March, attacks on Rome continued, but at the end of the month, the Nazis declared Rome an open city. As the war in southern Italy continued, Rome still seemed in serious jeopardy. On May 12, Pius publicly prayed to the Mother of God to protect the center of the Catholic world. By June, the Allied armies had reached Tivoli and the Alban Hills, and then on June 4, the Nazis withdrew. The Allies moved quietly into the city. The next day enormous crowds gathered to pay homage to Pius who diplomatically praised both sides for sparing Rome. As for his own role, he simply said that he too had shared the sufferings and hardships of his fellow Romans. After the war, on June 27, 1948, a plaque was erected at the Basilica of San Lorenzo to the pope, calling him

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Defensor Civitatis—the Defender of the City.24 The persistence and activities of Pius XII in saving Rome from greater calamity were genuine acts of heroism. And his leadership in protecting the Jews of the city of Rome were his finest hours. He was the pope he dreamt himself to be, and that the world demanded. But that record was to be clouded and compromised by a series of attacks against him and the Church for its alleged silence during the war, especially for his reticence in speaking out against the Nazis by name and his refusal to bear moral witness to the genocide against the Jews and others.

The Silences of Pius Such a discussion on those issues must recognize that foremost Pius XII was by training and by temperament a diplomat. His major role model for being the pope during a terrible war came from watching the activities of his patron, Benedict XV. As has been seen, Benedict emphasized the Holy See’s impartiality and focused his efforts on humanitarianism and charitable activities; he strongly tried to stop Italy from entering the war; and he did not denounce the combatants by name. Pius XII was to follow those precedents generally. Benedict was also the target of vociferous energetic criticisms, but nothing compared to Pius—for World War II was more clearly a battle of good and evil, if one can call Stalin an ally of good. And just as Benedict was supposed to be sympathetic to the Central Powers because of their autocratic regimes, Pius was supposed to be an admirer of things German, which it was charged affected his judgment. As stated previously, right after the invasion of Poland in his encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, Pius did denounce the war and the concept of the totalitarian state. While some may have thought that reference was not pointed enough, the Nazis stopped publication of the letter in Germany, saying its effect on public opinion would be damaging to Germany. When the Poles remained unsatisfied with the encyclical, the pope had Vatican Radio report on the brutalization and terror in that land. In a meeting on January 1, 1940, the German ambassador to the Vatican protested about those criticisms, and Monsignor Montini, representing the pope, at first equivocated, and then countered with a litany of German attacks against the Church in Poland by the occupying Nazis. 25 It is a matter of record that some Vatican officials seemed to welcome the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, maybe hoping that each of the Church’s opponents would exhaust or even annihilate one another. One Curial official, Archbishop Celso Constantini, blessed the Italian soldiers about to do battle with the Soviets as forces who “at this decisive hour, defend our ideals of Freedom against the red Barbarism.” After the German invasion in June 1941, Stalin indicated that he wished to “collaborate with the pope against the coercion and persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany.” He insisted that he was really “a

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champion of Freedom, of Conscience, and Religion.” And in fact, the Soviet government did loosen some of the restrictions on religious communities and their lands. But the Vatican knew better. When the pontiff was reminded of Stalin’s sarcastic comment—“How many divisions does the pope have?” Pius responded, “Tell my son Joseph he will meet my divisions in Heaven.” 26 The pope ended up agreeing with Roosevelt that Hitler’s regime was the more dangerous of the two, and must be defeated militarily, even if it involved cooperating with the Soviets. Pius was still the realistic diplomat. The Germans in turn speculated that Pius’s pro-Allied attitudes were really due to the fact that the Vatican was now financially supported mainly by American Catholics, and they even argued that he was sent special funds from President Roosevelt.27 In January 1942, at the Rio de Janeiro Conference, the Vatican encouraged the South American nations not to break off relations with the Axis powers as the United States had demanded.28 And the Vatican in that same year was also still sending birthday greetings to Hitler, giving Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop presents, and receiving high-ranking Nazi dignitaries. But by 1943, unconditional surrender was proclaimed, and it was clear that there would be no negotiated peace for either the Vatican or anyone else to broker. Facing new realities on the battlefield in late 1942, the Nazi leadership began to back off from its persecutions of the Church in Germany. Earlier in April, in Ankara, Turkey, German Ambassador von Papen had approached papal nuncio Archbishop Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) about re-exploring the pope’s five-point peace plan. In his Christmas address in 1942, the pope referred to the deaths and the “progressive extinction” of hundreds of thousands of people because of their race or nation, a clear allusion to the Jews. The Allies claimed that the pope should have named Germany specifically, while the Germans criticized the pope for his injustice to their people and for becoming “the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.” Ribbentrop passed on a warning on January 24, 1943, that if the Vatican renounced its traditional neutrality, the pope was to be reminded that “Germany does not lack physical means of retaliation.” Pius’s response was calm and to the point: in the struggle between the Church and the state, it was the state that would be defeated. The German ambassador, Diego von Bergen, concluded, “Pacelli is no more sensible to threats than we are.”29 In July 1943, in his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, Pius denounced the “legalized murder” of the deformed, the insane, and the incurable as being acts against natural and divine law. Later, when he was told that the Germans could very well win the war and that he ought to trim his policies accordingly, Pius responded, “If the Germans win, it will mean the greatest period of persecution that Christians have ever known.”30 What exactly the Holy See knew about the war and its brutalities is unclear. The papal nuncio in Berlin transmitted messages between the Vatican and the German episcopate in the regions of the old Reich and in Austria, but communications in Poland and other occupied regions were not as reliable or frequent, and thus the Holy See was often uninformed about the full horrors of the war.

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Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha of Cracow, however, wrote the pope and described in gruesome detail the extent of Nazi terror in their concentration camps. Sapieha, whose archdiocese included Auschwitz, sent news to the Vatican in February 1942 indicating that those camps denied all human rights to inmates and were run in his words by those “who have no feelings of humanity.” He warned against the publication of that information since it would give rise to further persecutions. Sapieha did not, though, specifically cite the sufferings of the Jews in his region of which he obviously was aware. The Vatican later explained that the documents sent by the Polish bishops were not published because the Holy See feared that the Catholic faithful would “become the victims of even worse persecution.”31 In the same vein, Monsignor Domenico Tardini had explained previously to concerned individuals that a public condemnation of the German government would increase the persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland, and that it would prevent the Vatican from communicating with the Polish episcopate and thus impeding its charitable work. The pope in a speech broadcast in Polish on June 2, 1943, praised the saints and heroes of that Catholic land and lamented the harsh treatment of the people there. The Polish leadership and hierarchy thus received the speech that they had so ardently desired. Later, some historians were to allege that the German bishops blindly supported their nation’s war effort, and that any Catholic who rejected military service during the war could count on little support from the clergy. Undoubtedly, the German hierarchy, like most of the other nations’ bishops, supported its country as in World War I. And indeed there were some Nazi-sympathizing clergy such as Bishop Franz Josef Rarkowski, who characterized Hitler as “the shining example of a true warrior, the first and most valiant soldier of the Greater German Reich.” Yet, as before the war, the majority of the Roman Catholic hierarchy were anti-Nazi, although many applauded the bravery of the soldiers of the Fatherland in its war against its enemies.32 In addition, some of the Catholic hierarchy did specifically attack Nazisponsored measures, such as euthanasia of the infirm and the mentally defective. Bishop Clemens von Galen of Münster, a persistent critic of the Third Reich, also vigorously denounced the concentration camps and the Gestapo. Hitler refused to respond to him fearing that he might antagonize the Catholic population in his Reich and also in his armies. Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi theorist, did write that after the war Bishop von Galen would be shot for his transgressions. As early as July 6, 1942, the German episcopate had signed and published a pastoral letter which was read throughout the Reich, protesting the Nazi attacks on churches, schools, monasteries, and convents, and it criticized by name Rosenberg’s book, the Myth of the Twentieth Century, which was labeled antiChristian. Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich warned that the bishops’ letter was an example of “what a bitter and irresponsible enemy we have in the Catholic Church.” Despite those occurrences, some modern day historians have contin-

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ued to argue that the German clergy, like the pope, did not do enough because they were cowards and because they supported Hitler’s war against Communist Russia. They were bold enough in protecting the Church’s interests, it is claimed, but they said little about the extermination of the Jews. Unlike in France, Belgium, Holland, Italy and elsewhere, the German clergy made little effort to hide Jews in Church buildings, and to give them overall critical aid and comfort.33 What is not emphasized is that the strength of the Nazi war machine and the extension of its killing apparatus was not as firmly entrenched in the occupied regions of the democratic West as in Poland, the captured eastern states and, of course, Germany itself. And some of these Eastern European regions had no historic experience with the liberating force of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic emancipation of the Jews; instead they had exhibited persistent and popular manifestations of anti-Semitism over the years.34 As has been seen, the Church and the Nazi regime reached some accommodation in some places. The Fuhrer, remembering Bismarck’s problems, chose not to unleash a full-scale attack on the Catholic Church, either inside or outside of Germany, fearing the allegiances of its faithful. The Church did oppose the Reich and many of its measures nearly everywhere, but its leaders often did not directly attack the Nazis by name for fear of making matters worse. Perhaps they should have. Still accommodation is not collaboration, especially in a world of incredible brutality and terror. The charges leveled against Pius XII for his silence are varied and have been given extensive publicity, not just by historians but in the popular media. The playwright Rolf Hochhuth, in his drama The Representative (or The Deputy), dramatized those criticisms and argued that Pius was not only silent when he should have borne witness, but also that he was a coward and a man driven by the base motive of protecting primarily the Church’s economic interests.35 Those who knew Pius took immediate umbrage when that play was presented, for that figure was not the man they recognized. Defenders of the dead pontiff, including prominent Jewish leaders, rejected the dramatic caricature out of hand. And those familiar with the historical record have a difficult time sustaining the notion that Pacelli the man was ever cowardly, even under the most frightening of circumstances. He was especially at that time a mild, easytempered, sensitive person, more given to diplomacy than events often warranted, and clearly not as confrontational as his predecessor. But in defense of the Church and tenets of basic decency, he was unwavering in his personal integrity. However, the indictment against Pius is more complex than the simplistic critiques. The charges are these: 1) Pius XII never issued a direct condemnation of the unspeakable acts of war and violence carried out by the Germans and their accomplices; 2) his silences cannot be attributed to a lack of knowledge about the facts of what was going on; and 3) he chose to continue to remain silent even when he himself knew that he should take a stand, and after victims and governments pleaded with him to speak out. By virtue of his very office and because of the moral role he assumed, the pope was required to bear witness to the

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truth, to give heart to the opponents of the Nazis, and to expose, regardless of the cost to his Church and to others, the gruesome record of genocide and countless other brutalities that the Nazis were implicated in.36 In reviewing those assertions, one can admit concerning the pope’s alleged silence, that it appears that initially he did emulate Benedict XV’s impartiality during the First World War, which was the historic policy of the modern papacy during armed conflicts. But also, from the beginning, Pius departed from that policy, tone, and inaction. He immediately sympathized with the Polish nation after the invasion, and there was even an earlier rumor in August that the pope was flying to Berlin to face down Hitler and insist that he avert going to war. Pius then became associated with those opposing the Nazi invasion of the Low Countries, even while he was silent about the Reich’s aggression against Denmark and Norway, and said nothing about the Russian seizure of the Baltic States, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. In June 1940, the Vatican was also silent after Italian attacks on Greece in October 1940, and after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. As has been seen, the pope did lend his support to the German generals’ plot to depose Hitler—not exactly a neutral or weak-kneed action. As the war progressed, there is no question that the pope focused his energies on protecting Rome, probably in part because of his enormous influence and leverage there. That effort does not mean that Pius neglected the conditions of the war elsewhere. It has also been alleged that the pope did not delineate for individuals the right or the duty to condemn unlawful wars, and thus gave no solace to men wishing to avoid the draft. The implication seems to be that the Nazis and Fascists would have respected conscientious objectors, as in the democratic West. His non-response is seen as being in contrast to Pius XI, who during the Spanish Civil War, instructed the faithful that any oath required by the Republican government that violated the interests and teachings of the Church was null and void. At Christmas time 1944, Pius XII proclaimed that there was indeed a duty to oppose aggressive war as a solution to international disagreements, but then it was charged that his concern was too late to have any effect. Also in 1944, the pope specifically referred to the horrors of the Dachau camp, but as they related to atrocities against Catholic clergy.37 Pius is also taken to task for not denouncing the disruption of Jewish communities that were reported as early as 1941, or the religious slaughter of Orthodox Christian Serbs in Croatia. It is also further charged that only later in 1945 did he speak out, and then it was to justify his own silence. One defense of Pius is that he did not know until after the war the full extent of the Nazi crimes. As early as May 12, 1942, however, Pius was informed about a system of mass extermination of Jews from Germany, Poland, and the Ukraine. One observer said that the pope “wept like a child at the news.” When, the Vatican informed Archbishop Sapieha in Krakow of those findings, Sapieha tossed the message into a stove saying, “If I give publicity to this and it is found in my

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house, the head of every Pole would not be enough for the reprisals the Gauleiter [Governor General of Occupied Poland], Hans Frank would order. . . . It is not just the Jews . . . , They are killing us all.” It was probably this gruesome information that led to Pius XII’s serious admonitions at Christmas 1942. The absence of Vatican representatives in German-occupied countries and the forced isolation of the papal nuncio in Berlin did curtail somewhat the communications from those areas to the Holy See. Only at the end of the war did the world know of the total estimate of six million Jews and countless others who perished in these campaigns of genocide. Initially, when some of this information was relayed to the Vatican from Polish and German clergy, the Holy See and other governments argued it was extremely difficult to verify those atrocities.38 While the pope did not know the specific details of the Holocaust, he surely was aware, however, that a Nazi-organized system of concentration camps was occurring where Jews and others were being systematically slaughtered. President Roosevelt, in a letter to the pope on October 22, 1941, referred to the massacre of the Jews behind the German front in Russia as “surpassing everything known since the most brutal and historic epochs in mankind.” In fact, in 1942 the Vatican formally intervened in Slovakia to protect Jews destined for deportation and death in Poland. Thus, the generalizations that the Vatican was unaware of the workings of Nazi genocide and also that the pope was uncaring are both proven to be incorrect in this case and also in Romania.39 In the latter nation, the Holy See and its nuncio in Bucharest insisted that the government of Marshall Alexander Averescu curtail its harassment of Jews. In January 1942, Jewish groups in Cernauti (in Ukraine) sent a direct appeal in Latin to the pope asking him to assist them from being deported across the Dniester and Bug Rivers. In October, the Jewish leaders in Switzerland asked for the pope’s intervention on behalf of Romanian Jews, and a similar request came from Jews of the Banat region. In February 1944, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli recorded that the grand rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, profusely thanked the Holy Father and the Vatican for their charity, but the rabbi also expressed his own concern for another fifty-five thousand Jews beyond the Dniester River in the dismal Transnistria region, then under Romanian occupation. The rabbi insisted to Roncalli, “The people of Israel will never forget the help brought to its unfortunate brothers and sisters by the Holy See and its highest representatives at this the saddest moment of our history.” Some historians have not only criticized Pius’s alleged silence, but the general refusal of many Western leaders to care for Jewish refugees, to protest genocide, and to bomb the concentration camps. For them, there were few heroes in the circles of the influential. It is clear that the pope as well as other leaders in the West were knowledgeable about unspeakable acts and mass atrocities that were being perpetrated.40 As for Pius XII, the question continues to be: why he did not specifically denounced the Nazis by name? Pius’s defenders have noted, almost with relief, that some victims of the Nazi terror asked him not to speak out since it would

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only make matters worse. There is limited but clear verification for that observation. The Archbishop of Krakow, the German bishops at Fulda in 1943, and several Jewish groups all urged silence. But one historian, Carlo Falconi, has observed that the decision on whether the pope should speak out “should not have been left to the weak and the most timorous.” 41 That is a rather easy position to take twenty years after the war and sitting comfortably in one’s study. Still Falconi is correct in at least one regard: the pope was overwhelmed with appeals from the Allied powers, Jewish groups, and national émigrés to break his supposed silence. In addition, some members of the Sacred College of Cardinals urged Pius to address the question of individual conscience and the war. As has been seen, Eugene Cardinal Tisserant also insisted that Pius XI would have been more aggressive and not so accommodating. Actually that characterization is incorrect. Even when Pius XI criticized the Nazi philosophy, he did so from the perspective of the harassments being directed at the Catholic faithful, and did not directly address the early German assaults on law and on society aimed especially at the Jews. After non-Aryans were banned from public office and the legal profession in 1933, after the Nuremberg laws were passed in 1935, and after more attacks on the Jews in 1938, Pius XI was silent in each instance. As for the Vatican’s monumental efforts to alleviate suffering, the arguments of his critics are that Pius XII was expected to do more than perform humanitarian works and seek to ameliorate the problems of the persecuted behind the scenes. Falconi dissents again: “The challenge was not only one of speaking out so as to fulfill a duty toward his office, but of speaking out as a duty to Christianity and mankind. His refusal to speak out played into the hands of evil as this grew bolder and fiercer and became more provocative. Silence amounted to complicity with iniquity.” As for Pius’s far-reaching humanitarian efforts, they are also dismissed. “The Church is not the International Red Cross.” The Church is meant to testify to the message of the Gospels and to guide the consciences of the faithful. Throughout the war and after, the Vatican engaged in extensive humanitarian campaigns. The Holy See operated a far-flung information bureau that helped find the whereabouts of thousands of prisoners of war. And especially in the post-war years from 1945 to 1948, the Vatican supplied hundreds of convoys that sent food, medicine and clothing into war-ravaged Europe. The Pontifical Relief Commission ended up spending billions of lire in its efforts.42 Years later, Pius’s close aide and then-Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, soon to be elected pope himself, revealed that Pius felt that a direct condemnation of the Nazis would have been both useless and harmful. Indeed, the pope made the same argument citing his experience in 1943, when the Vatican’s publication of various documents led to difficulties with the Nazis. Later he observed to the cardinals that every statement he made had to be seriously weighed so as not to make the situation of the victims more grievous and insupportable.

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Still it has been maintained that the pope seemed to confine his concerns to Catholic victims, and did not extend them enough to Protestants, Orthodox Christians, or Jews. It is a matter of record that Catholic bishops, on their own and probably with Vatican approval, often openly criticized the Nazis and Nazi collaborators, and did speak out against the deportation of Jewish communities, but many times they too were referring to Jewish Catholics. As for the Nazi leaders themselves, they generally avoided attacking the Catholic hierarchy publicly, although there was apparently some discussion of actually kidnapping the recalcitrant pope. After Hitler suggested imprisoning him in the Wartburg in Upper Saxony, calmer minds prevailed. Pius must have contemplated that he might be deported to a concentration camp or denied his liberty. There was a rumor that he had given to the Patriarch and Archbishop of Lisbon, Manuel Gonçalves Cardinal Cerejeria, precise directions and authority in case he had to assume control of the Church if the pope were seized by the Reich’s forces. The exiled primate of Gniezno and Poznan, August Cardinal Hlond, also reminded the pontiff of religious prophecies from the saintly Don Bosco (1815– 1888) and others that had predicted another papal exile. Perhaps this was to be the time, he seemed to imply. Legend has it that when someone mentioned that he might indeed be arrested, Pius replied, “They will not take the Pope, only Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli.” Another story is that once when he was to hold an audience with numerous German armed forces in attendance, the pope decided to express publicly and unequivocally his strong condemnations of the violations of human liberties under Nazism. Then the diplomat came out, and he tossed the speech aside saying, “My duty is to simplify things, not to complicate them.” 43

Bearing Witness to the Holocaust It is clear that Pius himself agonized over his own silence. During the war, the thin pope reduced his food intake, his weight dropping to a dangerous 125 pounds, and he refused to heat his private apartment in the winter almost as penance and mortification. At times, the pope pushed the L’Osservatore Romano and the more aggressive Vatican Radio to criticize the Germans—to say what he wanted to say but felt he could not. Oddly, when Pius did speak out and called Catholics “the spiritual heirs of the Jews,” his address was not even reported by the L’Osservatore Romano. Thus, Pius the diplomat failed Pius the pastor, his critics charged. The Church and the world needed a clear voice, a steady moral compass, and the pope was not it. Even the non-Catholic clergy—led by the Anglicans—asked him early in the war to head up a religious league to condemn the conflict. He refused, lamely citing the Vatican’s prohibitions against interfaith activity. Was it that the pope was too diffident, too given to diplomatic gestures, too much of a Germanophile? Was it that the Church was and remains too anti-

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Semitic to appreciate the true horrors of the Jewish people? Why did he not speak out over the transfer of countless Jews in Rome itself? Still there are other views. Pinchas E. Lapide, the Israeli Consul in Italy, concluded authoritatively, “The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all the other churches, religious institutions, and rescue organizations put together. Its record stands in startling contrast to the achievements of the International Red Cross and the Western democracies . . . the Holy See, the Nuncios, and the entire Catholic Church saved some four hundred thousand Jews from certain death.” On another occasion, he said Pius was directly responsible for saving some 860,000 Jews. As noted, some fifty-five thousand Jews were finally permitted to leave Romania, in part due to the Vatican’s pressure after it received an appeal from Grand Rabbi Herzog. When Pope John XXIII was profusely praised for his services in rescuing the Jews when he was Apostolic Delegate in Turkey, he went out of his way to say that he acted on “precise orders of Pius XII.” Lapide reported how Pius in fact directly intervened with the Italian government in one instance he knew of to halt the transport of 500 Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia to Poland and Germany, and sure Nazi extermination. The pope fed them, clothed them, and even set up a school for their children. The Jews later wrote a letter of thanks for “your lively and fatherly interest in our physical, spiritual and moral well-being.” In other instances, the pope intervened to give some Polish Jews Vatican credentials before they were shipped to the United States. In addition, Church officials ran a virtual “underground railroad” from Assisi through Florence to the port city of Genoa for Jews disguised as Catholic pilgrims. It appears that also at least fifteen thousand Jews were housed at one time or another at Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence. In addition, throughout Italy, the Italian army virtually ignored Mussolini’s order to participate in the genocidal campaigns instigated by the Third Reich. The Italians not only protected the Jews of their own nation, but foreign Jews as well, and 85 percent of that nation’s Jewish population survived the war. Hannah Arendt has explained their protective reaction: it was “in Italy the outcome of the almost automatic general humanity of an old and civilized people.” At a Jewish concentration camp in Ferramonti, Calabria, for example, the barracks were even divided into kosher and non-kosher areas, male prisoners were addressed as signors, and Jewish doctors were allowed to provide care for needy villagers surrounding the camp. The commandant in 1943 sought permission to release his prisoners before the Germans could move in and destroy them. Still some eight thousand Jews did perish, and some Italian police helped to send Jews to camps at Fossoli di Carpi (near Modena) and Bolzano, among others, that transported prisoners to Auschwitz and Birkenau. In 1944, the American Jewish Welfare Board cited Pius and the Church’s “Christian love” in incurring risks to save the Italian Jews.

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In his private messages, the pope did indeed speak out against the atrocities. In April 1943, he bluntly told the Slovak government that the Holy See assumed that it would never forcibly remove the Jewish race from its nation, and that if it did, the Vatican would deplore those moves publicly. In June 1944, the pope directly called upon Admiral Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya to prevent attacks on the Hungarian Jews, which he did.44 Pius did consider excommunicating those involved in genocide, but he concluded it would not only fail to help the Jews, but might even worsen their situation. No doubt he realized, he said, such a step would gain him the respect and praise of the civilized world, but what of the consequences for what he called “the poor Jews.” Thus, the silence of Pius XII was really the moral dilemma of one man acting morally in an immoral world. And yet, it must have still bothered him very deeply. A few weeks before his death in 1958, Pius gave a speech on Benedict XIV, Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini, the scholarly diplomat of the eighteenth century. Examining his record, Pius argued that his predecessor was “too conciliatory and docile . . . in the face of the vehement and excessive claims of the secular courts.” He concluded, if “his compliance toward the King of Prussia can be explained by the higher aim of not wishing to worsen the situation of the Catholics in that State,” the concessions accepted in his Concordats with the courts of SardiniaPiedmont, Naples, and Spain “seem really extraordinary and outside all tradition.”45 Perhaps he had decided to turn to history for some interesting precedents, or perhaps his own record still troubled him so. At times, diplomacy is really not the highest moral ground from which to look out on. The final estimates are that over 60 million people lost their lives because of World War II—25 million in the U.S.S.R. and 15 million in China alone. The end of the war did not spell just the triumph of the democratic West; it brought forth as the Vatican feared a resurgence of the world stature and might of the Soviet Union. Decimated economically by the Nazi onslaught and by its own counterattacks, the Russians became nonetheless a military superpower. The price of their participation in the war was control of the Eastern European bloc, meant by the Soviets as a buffer and as a collection of forced allies for the Bolshevik state. Some angry Europeans and Americans later claimed that Roosevelt in particular had “sold out” Poland and Eastern Europe to Stalin. In fact, it was the Russian armies that won and kept control of those regions.

Waging the Cold War For Pius, it was what he feared all along. Consequently, the pope would join with the West in an anti-Soviet alliance, throwing his guarded support to the United States and also interjecting himself into partisan politics, especially to stave off Communist election victories in Italy. Pius was to become a Cold Warrior. Amid all those difficulties, he also had to deal with the accusations of close ties between the resurgent Mafia and the Catholic Church in Sicily. To his hor-

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ror, he found evidence of friendships between the Archbishop of Palermo, Ernesto Cardinal Ruffini, and Mafia dons, and also of the corruption by some elements of the Franciscan Order on the island. After the war, the pontiff became more of a dedicated teacher who spoke, wrote, and encouraged study on a variety of subjects, many of them involving contemporary ethical questions. He did not give vague homilies, but delivered carefully researched papers and crafted speeches on an incredible range of topics. It was almost as if he transformed himself from the sensitive novice pontiff of the terrible war into a more hardened and jaded leader, and in the process fought that transformation by returning to theology, Mariology, and moral pronouncements. As the years passed, Pacelli became more isolated, more regal; in the process his government became highly personalized, traditional and centralized. It was said that he and five hand-picked Italian cardinals—the so-called “Vatican Pentagon”—ran the Roman Catholic Church in those postwar years. Even his devoted housekeeper, Sister Pasqualina, worried that Pius “just didn’t seem to care as much as he should about his holy image in the eyes of his subordinates.” When critics complained of Pius’s haughty ways, a powerful Curial official, Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, counseled patience: “We are old soldiers . . . . We must serve the Church blindly.” And then he would smile and remark, “Popes pass, but the Curia lives on.” To counteract those impressions of aloofness and disregard, his staff and associates pictured him as really a religious mystic, a saintly presence given to apparitions and visions. And as they did, Pius became still more remote, rigid and increasingly divorced from the currents of change around him. By the time his successors reacted, those currents became a tidal wave which the popes following him have tried with only limited success to navigate. First, though, one must view the papacy in the context of the Cold War era. It is a hackneyed observation that Catholicism and Communism share some attributes, especially in their pervasive ideologies, their appeal to true believers, and the tendency to see things in extreme rather than in moderating hues. The Church also had sufficient evidence after World War II of the persecutions that Christians were facing in Communist countries. Since Pius IX in 1846, the Church had indeed historically opposed the materialistic atheism of Communism, its disdain for religion in general, and its advocacy of abolishing private property, including ecclesiastical possessions. In 1947, the early Cold War period, Pius XII wondered almost wistfully why the Communist propagandists hated him so. He should have known the answer. He directly intervened in the Italian elections in 1948 to prevent a Communist victory, resurrected Catholic Action, gave his blessing to Catholic or Christian democratic parties, and directly excommunicated Communists. 46 He proved to be a most formidable foe of the Marxist states, and the United States tried to exploit those feelings. In 1947, President Harry S Truman advo-

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cated unsuccessfully for a united Christian front to affirm “those religious and moral principles on which we all agree.” Behind the Iron Curtain, Communists on the defensive linked the Church with capitalist imperialists, and with the semi-feudal social and political structures still prevalent in parts of Eastern Europe. It was also charged that officials in the Catholic Church had hidden or helped former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.47 The Vatican was not paranoid in its judgments of what was going on in those unstable regions. In small Albania, the Catholic Church’s organization was destroyed and the clergy virtually wiped out. By 1944, only three priests and one elderly bishop were alive and free. In Yugoslavia, the Communist regime of Marshall Josip Tito struck with a vengeance citing both the Vatican’s alleged indifference to Fascism there and the Church’s ties to Germanic upper classes. By 1949, the Vatican estimated that four hundred Yugoslav clerics had been killed; 300 imprisoned; one-quarter of the churches closed; and most parochial schools and other Catholic activities suspended. Tito had Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb, the Catholic prelate in that nation, put on trial. He was charged with collaborating with the Ustasha regime there and with the Germans and the Italians during the war. Stepinac had in fact rather belatedly criticized the government in 1943 for the slaughter of Orthodox Christian Serbs who had refused to convert to Catholicism. Finally he was sentenced to sixteen years in prison, and then released in 1951. Pius made him a cardinal in 1952. Gradually though, Yugoslavia needed the West’s support for its heretical political split from Russia, and Tito eased up on the persecutions. In Romania, the government turned to a more legalistic basis for persecution as it outlawed church services and hounded the clergy. In neighboring Bulgaria the Church was, however, generally left alone. In Hungary, churchman József Mindszenty was tried in 1948, and was charged with treason, black market activity, and support for the restoration of the Habsburg monarchy. After his incarceration, the physically weakened prelate “confessed” and was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason. During the Hungarian uprising in 1956, he ended up seeking asylum in the U.S. Embassy. Still the regime did not close parochial schools or churches, and in 1950 an independent group of Hungarian bishops negotiated an agreement with the state on their own. The government later continued its anti-clerical campaign and suspended four religious orders.48 In Czechoslovakia, the government faced extensive Catholic peasant resistance when it began its campaign of attacks. In Poland, the Church proved to be too strong for even the most determined Communist regime, and in divided Eastern Germany, the complicated military situation led to a muting of any extensive anti-clerical campaign. The Vatican was to call the Church behind the Iron Curtain “The Church of Silence,” and its designation added to the tensions of the Cold War. Now with the war over, Pius XII began to reach out and more closely associate the Church with liberal democracy and representative institutions. Also, the pope had formed warm ties with FDR and his representatives; later President Truman sought to continue that association on a more formal basis, although he

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faced problems with the U.S. Congress on the issue. After intense opposition from Protestant leaders, the president withdrew the nomination of General Mark Clark to be permanent ambassador to the Vatican.49 As noted, in his Christmas message of 1947, the pope had warned against a Communist victory in the upcoming election in Italy and denounced those parties that denied God and the importance of liberty. Even with his enormous efforts, eight million Catholics still voted for the Communist-led coalition. Those denunciations probably did not affect Italian elections at all levels as much as hoped; in the municipal and regional elections in 1951, for example, the Communists actually improved their electoral count a bit from 1948. Pius though was undeterred. Six times in five years the pope expressly ordered that Catholics who were supporting the Communists be excommunicated. He excommunicated those involved in the trials of Stepinac, Mindszenty, and Joseph Groesz. He excommunicated those involved in the banishment from Prague of Archbishop Josef Beran and those who organized a separate Czech Catholic Action group, thus confusing the faithful. He also excommunicated those Catholics anywhere who were willfully active in the Communist ranks. The pope was called by assorted critics unchristian, a tool of imperialism, an ardent enemy of the USSR, a provocateur, and a peddler of hate.50 Pius was the first person ever to assume the papacy who had visited the United States. He appeared at press conferences, transversed the continent, and spoke directly to the president of the United States right after the latter’s landslide re-election in 1936. When church prelate Francis Spellman attacked the president’s wife, Eleanor, Pacelli (then pope) directed that the attacks cease. In general, the Church in America was headed at that time by obedient men who were more builders than intellectuals, and by 1950, the church had grown to 27 million members, with thousands of churches and schools. The old immigrant church had become stable, wealthier, and more self-confident. Observers noted that Pius seemed to relax more with American pilgrims than other groups at the Vatican, and he seemed to understand the importance of this new boisterous world power.51 In 1946, Pius called his first consistory and named thirty-two new cardinals, four of whom were from the United States, including John Glennon of St. Louis (who died in Ireland on the way home), Samuel Strich of Chicago; Edward Mooney of Detroit; and most importantly, Francis Spellman of New York. Spellman, who was a close associate of Pacelli’s, and who helped finance the Vatican during the war and in the immediate postwar years, had even been offered the secretary of state position by Pius, although Spellman seemed to express no real enthusiasm. The pope also named Americans to important diplomatic positions in the Curia and encouraged Americans to head up Catholic orders, including the Capuchins, the Vincentians, the Marianists, the Sisters of Notre Dame, the Congregation of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and two branches of the Franciscans and the Carmelite Fathers.52

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Like most Europeans, the Curia and the pope had real reservations about the sudden assumption to great power status of those political parvenus, the Americans. The war ended with that nation and its president, Harry S Truman, unleashing a wave of incredible destruction, opening up the atomic age. Catholic theologians traditionally had made a distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable wars based on several criteria, including the important requirement that the belligerents differentiate between combatants and noncombatants. The use of nuclear weapons did not permit that, as it reigned terror on adults and children, women and children alike, first in Hiroshima and then in Nagasaki. But certainly that age-old distinction between combatants and noncombatants had been badly breached before, in the terrible fire bombings stretching from London to Dresden to Tokyo. The constraints of rational theology and its practitioners such as Pius XII could not keep up with the new brutalities of mechanized and aerial warfare. After the war, the anti-Nazi alliance quickly disintegrated as the Cold War pitted the Soviet Union and its allies against the democratic West led by the United States of America, thus changing the geopolitical realities. And the Vatican became for the Communists a fifth column behind the Iron Curtain and a staunch foe outside of those regions. Protestant America thus ended up becoming the new Austro-Hungarian empire—a shield behind which the Holy See and its causes could seek protection. In the United States, the Catholic hierarchy led by Spellman became the most vociferous constituency in the anti-Communist crusade during the Cold War and the McCarthy period. In fact, Senator Joe McCarthy was a Catholic and had been inspired in his first reckless antiCommunist charges by a priest who saw that as a popular and viable issue. 53 Truman’s major initiatives—NATO, the Marshall Plan, Point Four, aid to Greece—were all aimed at curtailing the Soviet Union’s reach in Europe. The pope, the Italian clergy, and Italian American relatives all worked to try to prevent Italy from going Communist in the free elections in the late 1940s. Pius had not struggled to preserve Rome and to ameliorate the war conditions of his own land only to see it fall now to the new barbarians, the cousins of the Bolsheviks. Gone was the compromising Pius XI who undercut the Christian-oriented Popular Party, gone was the subtle diplomacy of Benedict XV on matters political, gone were the smug equivocations of Leo XIII about democratic institutions. Pius XII saw the new political and social realities, and he responded very decisively and fairly quickly. The Holy See continued to be an American ally in the Cold War throughout Pius’s reign. Spellman, though, fell somewhat out of favor after he misappropriated a gift from the Eisenhower administration when he was attempting to curtail the activities of the charismatic television preacher, Monsignor Fulton Sheen. Sheen in New York was the chief fundraiser for the missionaries and found that his superior Spellman had billed the organization for powdered milk that was being given free by the United States government. Pius was forced into the conflict and found out that his old friend Spellman had lied to him about the nature of the transaction, and for a long time his influence was diminished. Such

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is the way that reputations are made and broken in the closed world of Vatican politics.54

The Regal Ascendancy In that period of the late 1940s and 1950s, Pius XII also reasserted his own lifetime reverence for the Blessed Virgin Mary by proclaiming the doctrine of Mary’s Assumption into heaven body and soul. His proclamation was based on the foundations of papal infallibility—the first time such a claim had been made since Pius IX. Thus Pius XII, freed from the constraints imposed during the war, moved to extend his teaching sway over a huge number of areas. And rather than simply resort to short statements of religious blessings for this group or that, he spent hours and days actually researching professional, scientific, occupational, and athletic sources so that he could talk to these people in ways that reflected their own special interests. One of his associates, Cardinal Tardini, has observed that he once visited the pope in 1958 only to find him sitting behind a collection of books dealing with the natural gas industry. Pius noted that he was to address a group from that area, and that he was researching the subject! The observation could be seen as humorous, but in fact, the story testifies to a rare public and religious leader who resorted not to the usual banalities, but who chose to speak with some authority on the interrelationships of industry and ethics in particular economic areas. Pius did the same when talking with athletes, citing the benefits and salutary aspects of exercise on the spiritual life. He conversed with newly married couples with ease, celebrated patron saint days with well-grounded biographical data, and reached out to present the Church to the world in rather informed directions. In some ways the very traditional pontificate of Pius XII helped lay the groundwork for the more open approach characterized and popularized by John XXIII. Some of his other encyclicals and speeches pointed the way for new directions that eventually found their culmination in the ecumenical Council, Vatican II. Using some of the older theological formulations, Pius began to make some tentative steps toward new definitions of the role of the Church, the liturgy, and the importance of Biblical studies.55 In 1943, in the midst of the painful calamities of war, he issued a letter called Mystici Corporis Christi—the Mystical Body of Christ, based in part on St. Paul’s teachings. It was a very different organizational model of the Church. That long encyclical argued that the Church is the embodiment of the Mystical Body of Christ, with Our Lord as Founder, Head, and Savior. Christ rules his Church through his vicar, the pope. This union is vastly superior to any physical or moral body, as we are joined to God by faith, hope and charity. The pope then concluded by condemning false mysticism, quietism, and the downgrading of

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Christ. While it surely did not help lay the groundwork for ecumenical ties to other churches, it did reaffirm the faith during the worst years of the war. In a more contemporary view, in another letter, Mediator Dei, Pius issued a plea for more active participation in the sacred liturgy of the Church. The pope even called for the use of vernacular languages instead of Latin on some occasions and pushed aside reverence for things simply because they had “the aroma of antiquity.”56 Again, in the midst of war on September 30, 1943, Pius issued an important new charter called Divino Afflante Spiritu. With a sense of confidence, he urged Catholic scholars to use the findings of recent archaeological excavations in order to understand the contexts in which the Sacred Scriptures were written and first interpreted. Pius encouraged the scholars to return to the original texts, informed by a knowledge of biblical and other oriental languages and by textual criticism. He concluded that the real meaning of a biblical passage cannot always be determined by the rules of grammar and theology, and that it can be legitimately enriched by understanding history, archaeology, and other sciences. Pius also had a great interest in the Eastern churches, and he encouraged their different liturgies, even in St. Peter’s Basilica. And on March 12, 1946, in a ceremony marking the anniversary of his coronation, he called on Armenian Cardinal Pietro Agagianian to celebrate a pontifical Mass in the Armenian rite in the Sistine Chapel.57 Several times Pius also reached out to the Chinese Catholic Church, praising its ancestral customs and also beatifying in 1946 twenty-nine Chinese martyrs. In the same year, he named Thomas Tien Ken-iin a cardinal. Able to communicate by radio, the pope conveyed his greetings to fourteen Eucharistic Congresses, two national conventions, and six Marian Congresses in the period from May 1939 to September 1947. He also proclaimed 1950 a Holy Year and granted indulgences to Catholic pilgrims who came to Rome, a splendid boon to the economy of his native city as well as a sign of substantial religious piety. During those years, Pius continued his interest in history and archaeology and declared to the École Francaise in 1948 that he enjoyed those scientific discoveries. He concluded confidently that the Church had nothing to gain by spreading false legends and nothing to lose by finding out what really happened in the past. Back in 1935, Pius XI had named Pacelli the chancellor of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, and his fascination remained unabated. In his pronouncements, Pius seemed to be especially drawn to those two important lay professions: law and medicine. As for the former field, he had been trained in both canon and civil law, had been offered a position on the faculty at the Catholic University of America in Canon Law, which he declined, but he was previously a professor of public law at the Collegio Dei Nobili Ecclesiastici. Both he and his family had a special regard for the legal profession. His most interesting public statements are in the very complex areas of biomedical ethics. He reminded physicians of the importance of life and also the need to recognize that beyond that life is immortality. But he was also rather

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sophisticated and sensitive in dealing with issues such as euthanasia, the technological aspects of prolonging life, and the very difficult issue of when life ends, or should end. For anyone who has faced that last issue, Pius offers both guidance and solace on the questions of what are the proper limits of treatment. His teaching emphasis was best expressed in October 1947 when he told the International Radio Conference, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Marconi’s discoveries, “How great is man that he is able to conquer and dominate the forces of nature. But that same human mind should understand that man himself did not make what he discovered.”58 But science had its limits. On February 21, 1943, the pope talked knowledgeably about the possibilities of this new discovery of atomic energy. Two years later, the United States dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The pope then had to express his grave concern that that source of energy should be used only for peaceful purposes. After the war, Pius became directly involved in international affairs and political affairs. In 1948 he supported the idea of uniting Europe into a federation—probably seeing it as a restraint on nationalism and war, and he urged that the new Europe should be based once again on the Christian religion and the values of Christian civilization. As noted, the pope in 1945 had urged a resurrection of Catholic Action in Italy, and then several years later he insisted that citizens had a duty to vote, that those who did not sinned grievously, and that while a person should vote his conscience, one should not support those who did not respect the rights of God, of souls, and of the welfare of all. 59 The postwar world brought with it increasing wealth and luxury in the West, and consequently income flooded the Vatican investment portfolio. Back in 1942, Pius XII had founded a bank called the “Institute for the Works of Religion.” Staffed by a small group of trained men, the bank moved Vatican assets quietly and quickly across national boundaries, looking for the highest rate of return and the most secure investment opportunities, including U.S. war plants. The rapid increase in land prices and speculation in construction hit Rome, and the Vatican took its liquid cash and invested in both Italy and abroad. Soon the Vatican would find itself having to deal with financial speculation schemes, mismanagement of its resources, and allegations of corruption. When Tardini and some members of the Sacred College of Cardinals, including Tisserant, asked for a complete financial statement, their request was refused by the pope.60 The Vatican and the Curia proved to be less adventuresome in nontemporal areas. As has been seen, the pontiff tried to emphasize a positive view of the Church, especially in Mystici Corporis Christi and in his Biblical studies charter, Divino Afflante Spiritu, which seemed to welcome the new scholarship. He also revised age-old regulations on fasting to encourage easier reception of the Eucharist, permitted evening Masses, and inaugurated a new Holy Week liturgy. But in 1950, Pius seemed to draw back, and in the encyclical, Humani Generis,

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he retreated from such innovations. And more consequentially, the Curia focused its attentive criticisms on theologians and scholars who were asking for a return to scriptural, patristic, and traditional sources instead of following the rigidities of contemporary Thomism and pat formula scholarship. Only with Vatican II would many of these scholars re-emerge as respected figures in their own Church. The pope followed up his restrictive encyclical with a proclamation on the dogma of the Assumption on November 1, 1950, issuing in the eyes of some a backhanded rebuke to those who emphasized the importance of having a historical base for dogmatic expressions. That was followed by the Marian Year in 1954, an occurrence meant to underscore the importance of the Blessed Virgin in the life of the Church. As the years passed by, the pope became more rigid and personal in his governing of the Church. For some reason, he disliked having to make appointments and promotions, and thus held only two consistories for the creation of new cardinals in nineteen years—in 1946 and in 1953. Tardini said that Pius simply avoided meeting with high-ranking ecclesiastical dignitaries because he was afraid to say no to their ill-conceived requests. Pius did increase the international representation in the Sacred College so as to emphasize the Church’s universality. But as befitting a man born and bred in the Curial world, he made no real attempt to either promote collegiality or to challenge the restrictive behavior of that small group. In 1954, the pope became seriously ill, suffered a bout of uncontrollable hiccups, and experienced serious malnutrition, but eventually rallied and recovered. After his recovery, Pius concentrated power more in the Secretariat of State, created a titular theologian, and a jurist who reported to him. He controlled the powers of the bishops, and thus allowed the rise of stronger Curial departments at their expense. As he once said in 1944, he wanted not collaborators but executives to do his will. At the same time he showed less and less interest in what the departments were doing. The consequence of those decisions and neglect was to increase frustrations among the bishops and the lower clergy—ingredients that probably led to some of the divisiveness of Vatican II. He required senior Vatican officials to address him on their knees, including reporters of L’Osservatore Romano, and insisted that prelates walk backwards when they were leaving his presence. Except for his nephews, Pius saw his family now only once a year on Christmas afternoon. 61 To promote his views of a powerful papacy, Pius moved to aggrandize, if not sanctify, the leadership post that he held. He led the way to renew efforts to discover St. Peter’s tomb beneath the Vatican Basilica, and he was the first pontiff in recent times to invoke infallibility. Pius pushed incessantly for canonizing his predecessors: he beatified Pius X in 1951 and canonized him in 1954; he beatified Innocent XI in 1956; resurrected the cause of Blessed Innocent V in 1943 and of Gregory X in 1944; and lastly, initiated the cause of Pius IX in 1954. The papacy took on a new vigorous impression in order to upgrade the office, and in the process Pius XII himself.

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During his illness in 1954, his housekeeper and guardian, Sister Pasqualina, contacted Cardinal Spellman to come to Rome immediately and prevent Pius from publicizing his alleged vision of Christ during his illness. They feared that he would embarrass himself, but Pius had already celebrated his good fortune publicly. Vatican friends and even Vatican Radio talked openly of his apparitions and signs. Pius thus became more of a mystic and less of an administrator of his church. Around him was a plethora of advisors who created a comforting household. Central was a Bavarian nun, Sister Pasqualina Lenhart, who first met Pacelli when he was nuncio in Munich at the age of 42, and she was 24. For the next forty years, he was her whole world. On household matters, Pius was obedient to the quiet younger woman who in turn dedicated her life to his comfort and ease. She became known to her foes as “Virgo Potens”—the powerful virgin, an important advisor to the leader of the Church.62 As his last years passed, Pius continued his speeches and discussions in a variety of languages and on a variety of topics—politics, medicine, sports, marriage, footwear, communications, mineral extraction, surgery, cinema, animal slaughter, tourism, and a host of other areas. Sometimes, even the Curia was startled at his observations, as when in 1951 he talked on the limitations of births, periodic continence, sterilization, and artificial insemination. 63 Frail, but committed to his duties, the pope had received injections of “living cell” therapy from a Swiss gerontologist, Dr. Paul Niehans, who made it from finely ground tissue from freshly slaughtered lambs. Those treatments were supposed to have contributed to his ability to carry on, although some did raise questions about the ethical implications of such treatments. On October 3, 1958, however, the Vatican reported that the pope had a serious illness, and eight days later he died, to the surprise of many informed observers. The newspapers had previously started printing stories of Vatican scandals, some involving Pius’s own nephews, and they were soon declared personae non gratae by Curia figures. Sister Pasqualina, who had been so rude to even powerful cardinals, was given twenty-four hours to vacate her apartment. The shadow government—the pope’s last court—was coming to an abrupt end. The media would intrude even in death, with its television cameras entering into his sick room, and as his personal physician (really an eye doctor), Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisì, speculated about the details of his patient’s demise. One cardinal, the Patriarch of Venice, noted in his diary in a matter-of-fact way and without recourse to emotion the final reputed hours of Pius XII. He also related that there had been a new method of embalming employed by the papal physician that left the pope’s body in such a sorry state that bystanders could hear loud popping sounds from inside the casket as the remains of Pius decomposed before his final interment, and turned the pontiff’s skin green.64 For generations the Pacelli family had dedicated itself to the papacy—the papacy in triumph and in exile and distress. Their gentle sensitive son assumed that high position in the most terrible of circumstances, and he moved from one

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leadership style to another—the consummate diplomat, the careful pontiff, the preaching theologian. In each, he served the Church in ways that were oftentimes innovative and dedicated. But he sought to place around him, as he admitted, not colleagues, but people to execute his will. The Church he loved seemed to be regal, settled, and serene, but underneath his throne there were currents of criticism and dissent that were seeking expression. That phenomenon is not new in the history of the papacy. What was new, though, was that the agent of change, the water carrier of reform, would be a successor pope—another diplomat not favored by the Curia, an old man meant to be a transitional figure between the rigidities of Pius XII and another generation of safe men waiting for their place in the Vatican sun. But Pius’s successor would change the very landscape in a relatively short period of time, and in the process the world of Eugenio Pacelli suddenly became very dated and very remote.

Notes 1. Anthony Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922– 1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974), 221; Carlo Falconi, The Popes of the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1967), 235; Domenico Tardini, Memories of Pius XII (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1961), 109. 2. John McKnight, The Papacy: A New Appraisal (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1952), 218. 3. McKnight, The Papacy, 220–21, 230; Thomas B. Morgan, The Listening Post; Eighteen Years on Vatican Hill (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1944), chap. 13 records that Pacelli was first an aide to Merry del Val and accompanied him to London to pay the Vatican’s respects after the death of Queen Victoria. 4. Rhodes, The Vatican, 221. 5. Rhodes, The Vatican, 222–23; McKnight, The Papacy, 257, 291; Tardini, Memories, 73. 6. Rhodes, The Vatican, 223; also of use: The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich: Facts and Documents (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1940), for the earlier record of violations of the Concordat. 7. Rhodes, The Vatican, 224–26; Tardini, Memories, 39. 8. Oscar Halecki and James F. Murray, Jr., Pius XII: Eugenio Pacelli, Pope of Peace (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1954), 93; Edward L. Heston, The Holy See at Work (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1950), 270– 184; Paul I. Murphy, La Popessa (New York: Warner Books, 1983), 153 claims that before the final vote Pacelli refused to accept his election by the conclave. There is some speculation that the volume is partially fiction. 9. Peter Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, the First Modern Pope (New York:

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Paulist Press, 1993), chap. 16. 10. Rhodes, Vatican, 230–32; Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop (New York: Crown Publishers, 1992), on the pope and Secretary of State Cardinal Maglione, 275. 11. The Papal Encyclicals 1939–1958, comp. Claudia Carlen (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath Publishing Co., 1981), 5–22. 12. Rhodes, Vatican, 242–46; Jan Olav Smit, Angelic Shepherd: The Life of Pope Pius (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1951), 221. 13. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1970), 411; and Michael P. Riccards, The Ferocious Engine of Democracy: The American Presidency, 1789–1989, vol. 2 (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1995), chap. 4. 14. Rhodes, Vatican, 249; I prefer the translation in Falconi, Popes of the Twentieth Century, 261; Murphy, La Popesa, 196. 15. Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), chap. 12; Walter Laqueur, Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990), chap. 11; Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 16. Wartime Correspondence between President Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII, ed. Myron C. Taylor (New York: DeCapo Press, 1975), 61–62; John S. Conway, “Myron C. Taylor’s Mission to the Vatican, 1940–1950,” Church History, 44 (March 1975), 85–99. 17. Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chap. 8. 18. Halecki, Pius XII, 178; Rhodes, Vatican, 275. 19. Halecki, Pius XII, 179; Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (New York: Knopf, 1982), chap. 16; Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism,” New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995, 2+. 20. Halecki, Pius XII, 181. 21. Halecki, Pius XII, 184. 22. Halecki, Pius XII, 194; Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival (London: Peter Halban, 1987), 130, argues that the pope still did not properly denounce the deportation of Roman Jews; also see, Murphy, La Popesa, 226. Journalist Nicola Grazioli in 1995 maintained that in the closing months of the war the Vatican drafted a plan to expand its territory to include a stretch of land reaching to the sea. Pius XII and his close aides in 1944 envisioned enlarging the city-state to take in a corridor to the Tyrrhenian Sea about twelve miles to the southwest. The pope is reported to have sought that strip as a way of getting compensation for the battle of Portia Pia in 1820 when the Vatican ended up losing most of its territory. Supposedly an influential cleric stopped the plan. 23. Halecki, Piux XIII, 195–201; Elizabeth Wiskermann, Europe of the

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Dictators, 1919–1945 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), chap. 15; James Hennessey, “American Jesuit in Wartime Rome,” Mid-America (July 1974), 32–58. 24. McKnight, The Papacy, 237. 25. Rhodes, Vatican, 239. 26. Rhodes, Vatican, 258–62; McKnight, The Papacy, 235. 27. Rhodes, Vatican, 264. 28. Saul Friedlander, Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation (New York: Knopf, 1966), 262–65; Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964); Avro Manhattan, The Vatican in World Politics (New York: Gaer Associates, 1949), chap. 9–11. 29. Rhodes, Vatican, 273–74. 30. Papal Encyclicals 1939–1958, 37–64. 31. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 74–78, 165–69. 32. Gordon Zahn, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962); Levy, Catholic Church and the Third Reich, passim; Rhodes, Vatican, 290–94. 33. Rhodes, Vatican, 296–97; Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1972). 34. Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens not Darken? The “Final Solution” in History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988); Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933–1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975); Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1986); Paul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, rev. ed., 3 vols. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985); Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981); Verne W. Newton, ed., FDR and the Holocaust (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Frederick B. Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940–1944 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1972); J. H. Crehan, “The Papacy and the Polish Holocaust,” The Month (November 1967), 253–59. Dr. James F. Brennan has called my attention to the tolerant attitude of Poles, especially some of their kings, toward Jews going back to the Spanish Inquisition. 35. Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy (New York: Grove Press, 1964). 36. Carlo Falconi, The Silence of Pius XII (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970), passim; Tardini, Memories, passim. On Montini’s exile, I have benefited from an anonymous source. 37. Guido Gonello, The Papacy and World Peace: A Study of the Christmas Messages of Pope Pius XII (London: Hollis and Carter, 1945). 38. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 169. 39. Falconi, Silence, 47–59. 40. Falconi, Silence, 59–61; Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII, Shepherd of the Modern World (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1985), 192–93. 41. Falconi, Silence, 86–88 42. Falconi, Silence, 72; Slav, Angelic Shepherd, chap. 12–13. 43. Falconi, Silence, 86–88.

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44. Rhodes, Vatican, 339–47; Alexander Ramati, While the Pope Kept Silent: Assisi and the Nazi Occupation (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978); Jonathan Steinberg, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941–1943 (New York: Rutledge, 1990), pt. 1, phase 1. 45. Falconi, Silence, 15; L’Osservatore Romano, April 9, 1959. 46. McKnight, The Papacy, 298; Michael Fogarty, Christian Democracy in Western Europe, 1820–1953 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1957), chap. 23; on Sicily, Murphy, La Popessa, 233–36, and on his subordinates, 247–51. 47. McKnight, The Papacy, 304–6. 48. McKnight, The Papacy, 359, 310–11; Stella Alexander, The Triple Myth: A Life of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). 49. McKnight, The Papacy, 312. 50. McKnight, The Papacy, 316; Arturo Carlo Jemolo, Church and State in Italy, 1850–1950 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1960), chap. 7. 51. McKnight, The Papacy, 340. 52. John Cooney, The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman (New York: Times Books, 1984), passim; Gerald Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazer, 1985). 53. On aerial bombing, see: Richard Rhodes, “The General and World War III,” The New Yorker 71 (June 19, 1995), 47–59; on McCarthy: Thomas C. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy; A Biography (New York: Stein and Day, 1982), and David M. Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: Free Press, 1983). 54. Cooney, American Pope, 255–56; Murphy, La Popessa, 290–92. 55. Falconi, The Popes of the Twentieth Century, 297–98. 56. Smit, Angelic Shepherd, 165–69. Pius considered for a while calling Hitler “a killer of mankind,” and denouncing specifically the concentration camps. Then he expressed doubts about FDR’s veracity on these issues, due to Roosevelt’s supposed prior knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In addition, Pius also apparently considered, and then rejected excommunicating Hitler, who in the early part of his life was a Catholic. See Murphy, La Popessa, 211. 57. Smit, Angelic Shepherd, 175–177. 58. Smit, Angelic Shepherd, 264–65. 59. Smit, Angelic Shepherd, 272–73. 60. Falconi, The Popes of the Twentieth Century, 280. 61. Murphy, La Popessa, 292–93; Malachi Martin, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1981), 261–66; Tardini, Memories, 76, 83. 62. Murphy, La Popessa, passim; Tardini, Memories, 175.

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63. Falconi, The Popes of the Twentieth Century, 300. 64. Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII, 270–71.

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John XXIII and the Promise of Aggiornamento After Pius died, it was said that his influence would last for over a century. In fact, it ran its course in two years. The austere, intellectual, regal Pacelli would be replaced by a homely, overweight, seventy-six-year-old, nondescript cardinal who caught the international public imagination and left his positive impression on the Church in a very short period of time. Few popes in the twentieth century have proven to be so popular so quickly. The other popes in this study, including the crafty Leo XIII, have been dedicated and committed men who were insistent on keeping society somewhat at arm’s length away from the Catholic Church. They were in one sense traitors to the world—to its values, its élan, its sense of secular progress. That distance is the strength of the Roman Catholic Church, and is its profound weakness. Pope John was an exception to that approach, for he embraced with love and vitality the world and its diverse peoples. With that receptivity, he created enormous enthusiasm and goodwill, and also unwittingly undercut in some ways the traditions and authority of the Church for which he lived his life.

The Apostle of Good Will As the cardinals arrived for the conclave, they were faced with an embarrassing spectacle. As noted, the new embalming techniques done by the pontifical physician, Dr. Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisì, on Pius’s body were deficient. The odor of his remains and the eerie popping sounds from his casket conveyed a sense of immediate decomposition and decay that nauseated the papal guards near it. Some bitter critics said it was a fitting metaphor for the last years of a declining pontificate.1 The very organization of the Roman Curia had been neglected in many ways. There was no cardinal chamberlain, and there had been no secretary of state since 1944; the number of cardinals was at a low point of fifty-five, and nearly half of the Cardinals (nineteen members) were seventy-eight years of age or over. Pius was both an authoritarian and a mystic, a centralizer and a person 439

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who cut himself off from the congregational chieftains in Rome who populated the Curia. Because of the advanced age of the College of Cardinals, the conclave faced a real problem with succession. There was a strong minority movement that advocated reforming the Church; some of those changes in liturgy and biblical scholarship had been initiated by Pius himself.2 In fact, it was speculated that Pacelli avoided dealing with the Curia because even he found it too conservative! The hero of some of the progressives was Giovanni Battista Montini, the archbishop of Milan, but he was deliberately not made a cardinal by Pius, and the tradition of choosing from those ranks was too powerful to be ignored by the conclave.3 The Pacelli wing of the College of Cardinals through various appointments and interlocking relationships controlled the major departments, congregations, and agencies of the Roman Curia. They had no intention of losing those positions of privilege and power, which they identified with the traditions of Catholicism that had hardened since the Council of Trent that ended four centuries before. They too wished reform, but the reform they desired was more power to curtail the experiments, the dissenting views, and the unorthodox opinions of the national episcopates and their theologians, especially in the non-Latin countries of continental Europe. Their major candidate at first was Giuseppi Siri, the cardinal from Genoa, who at fifty-two was deemed by some much too young for the papacy. Thus there was a generational problem—the younger candidates did not have large followings or much experience, and so behind closed doors the conclave turned to a man some viewed as a transitional figure—Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the Patriarch Cardinal of Venice. Roncalli was an amiable, seemingly simple, pious churchman—one who had performed well in diplomatic positions and who conveyed a sincere impression of good humor and general toleration. He reminded people of a benevolent uncle, an easygoing duffer, the classic European country priest. Smarter than he seemed, Roncalli confidentially told one French colleague that he would be chosen pope if the conclave were looking for a man with “common sense.”4 When his diary, The Journey of a Soul, was published after his pontificate, it was criticized for its lack of critical introspection, its seemingly naive expressions of faith, and its remarkable confidence in the strange ways of God. All his life Roncalli placed his career and his good fortune in the hands of the Almighty. He said he wished to be above all a good and obedient priest. He wrote in his diary, “I intend to use joviality, pleasantness and happiness with all persons, but to act in seriousness and modesty, especially with those who have mistreated me.” It seems difficult to understand such a man, but it was such people who had built and maintained the Catholic Church through heresies, revolutions, plagues, and its own insolence.5 Angelo Roncalli was born on November 25, 1881 in a small village near Bergamo, to a humble and religious family. After his election to the Chair of St. Peter, it was remarkable to reporters that his relatives were still tilling the fields

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as they had done for generations.6 What else should they do, this was their living. There were thirteen children from the Roncalli marriage, and they lived the life of simple sharecroppers with half of their produce going to pay their landlords. Angelo once quipped, “There are three ways of ruining yourself—women, gambling, and agriculture. My father chose the dullest.” 7 His was really an extended family that at times expanded to thirty people. The family was poor, hardworking, and indemonstrable emotionally, and Roncalli was to say that his elders were “a bit surly but truly good and worthy folk.”8 Later as pope, he would somewhat defensively explain to his family why he did not grant them titles, saying he did not wish to lift them out of their “respected and contented poverty.” On another occasion, he observed that he owed his priestly vocation to his family “which was not as poor as some like to make out, but was above all rich in heavenly gifts.” In his youth, Angelo was especially close to his pious great uncle, Zaverio, and at the age of ten he entered the neighboring junior seminary. It seemed that he never desired to be anything but a priest.9 Six months after his ordination in 1904, Roncalli became the secretary to Monsignor Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, the canon of St. Peter’s and an ally of Mariano Cardinal Rampolla, the secretary of state of Leo XIII. Years later, Roncalli as pope, recalled that his patron was “my spiritual father . . . the Pole Star of my priesthood.” Radini-Tedeschi who became bishop of Bergamo, called then “the most Catholic of cities,” proved to be a powerful church reformer in that small ecclesiastical universe, and a strong supporter of laboring people and unions.10 In 1905 Roncalli also became acquainted with Carlo Andrea Cardinal Ferrari, the powerful archbishop of Milan who was deeply distrusted by Pius X. Soon Roncalli developed an interest in one of Ferrari’s predecessors, the Council of Trent reformer Saint Charles Borromeo, who had also been a cardinal of Milan in the sixteenth century.11 Historian Hannah Arendt argued that many of his contemporaries thought Roncalli a bit “stupid, not simple, but simple-minded.” But in fact he wedded his own commitment to obedience with the pride of a self-made man and the selfconfidence of a person who is content to do God’s will here on earth.12 Like many leaders, he had a clear sense of himself, a good sense of timing, and an almost innate feel for the right gesture or the inspiring phrase. Despite the fact that Roncalli was a cautious and pious priest, he nearly got caught up in the web of Modernist denunciations so approved of by Pius X. Such accusations could have ruined a career of much promise, and Roncalli quickly scurried away from powerful forces that dealt in guilt by association. Some have concluded in retrospect that Roncalli was easily cowed by that near mishap, but such is the problem of living in a closed ecclesiastical society. It is probably for this reason that John XXIII was remarkably permissive in dealing with unorthodox and dissident theologians during his term as pope. Years later as pope, he asked to see the Curia file on himself, and to his chagrin he saw a reference to his alleged Modernist associations. In the file, he angrily penned, “I, John XXIII, Pope, declare that I was never a Modernist.” 13

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On the surface he would seem to have had much in common with Pius X— being poor, humble, devout, and later fascinated by the appeal of Venice. But Roncalli retained a critical eye toward his sainted predecessor even during his own papacy. He judged Pius X “certainly holy, but not fully perfect in that he let himself be overwhelmed by anxiety and showed himself so anguished.” Probably that is as close as one pontiff comes to criticizing another one in modern times. His friend Cardinal Ferrari was even more blunt concerning Pius’s excesses. “He will have to give an account before God of the way he let his bishops down when they were attacked.” As has been seen, Benedict XV, himself under scrutiny earlier during the Modernist hysteria, ended the attacks by simply observing, “There is no need to add epithets to the profession of Catholicism. It is enough to say, ‘Christian is my name, and Catholic is my family name.’”14 In 1911, Roncalli quietly became a member of the diocesan congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart, making him a diocesan religious committed to perpetual vows of obedience, and promising to live in deep commitment to the ways of the Holy Spirit. When the war came to Italy in 1915, Don Roncalli was called up for active military service and became a hospital orderly stationed in Bergamo, and later a chaplain. In 1918 he was employed as a warden of a student hostel. In all these jobs he performed credibly, but they were not exactly stepping-stones to higher glory. In 1920, he was called to Rome to be the National Director for the Propagation of the Faith as part of Benedict’s continuing preoccupation with the fate of the missions. How a little known provincial priest was chosen for the position is unclear. Some say it was due to Benedict’s friendship with Radini-Tedeschi; others say it was Roncalli’s organizing efforts at the Italian Eucharistic Congress in Bergamo. When he met with the pope, Benedict simply told him, “You will be God’s traveler.” From that position he came to know both Italy and also the intricacies of the imposing Roman Curia better. His viewpoints broadened, and in 1921 he was named a monsignor; the revenues of his agency more than doubled in two years, and Roncalli became a recognized figure in ecclesiastical circles. He met for the first time another accomplished Curialist bureaucrat—Giovanni Battista Montini, whom he later raised to the cardinalate and who became his successor, Paul VI.

Ambassador to the East On February 17, 1925, Roncalli was summoned to see the secretary of state, Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, who informed him that he was the new apostolic visitor to Bulgaria, the first one in over five hundred years. After his term in “purgatory,” as the reassignment was called, he was promised a post in more hospitable Argentina which then had a large Italian Catholic population. Roncalli protested that he knew nothing about Bulgaria, but Pius XI had already for some reason

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concluded that Roncalli had been chosen by Providence for the position. 15 Remembering his own years in Poland, the pope insisted that Roncalli needed a more prestigious title than he had had when he was apostolic visitor, and so Pius XI made him an archbishop in the bargain. The pope also gave Roncalli a copy of Scintillae Ignatiana—a collection of maxims of St. Ignatius Loyola, meant to tide him over like the good soldier that both Roncalli and the author were in the service of the papacy.16 Bulgaria was a confusing country for the Vatican. It had over sixty thousand Catholics of various rites who survived in a hostile Orthodox religious environment. In 1924, Bulgaria had experienced some two hundred political assassinations, and the government of King Boris III responded with many arrests and widespread executions.17 It was in such a world that the mild mannered diplomat found himself. Roncalli’s new flock embraced about forty-eight thousand Latin rite Catholics living mainly in urban areas and fourteen thousand in the Uniate Slavic rite, mainly in the rural areas. By cart, horseback, and mule, the new apostolic visitor with his interpreter crisscrossed Bulgaria. Soon the stranger was being called, “Diadu,” or “the good father.” He modestly assumed that their praise was due to their love for the pope rather than the esteem they felt for him. More importantly during this time, he came to understand the practical importance of getting along with other religious denominations—an early lesson in what would be called later ecumenism. And he encouraged that prayers be said in Bulgarian, rather than in the French taught by the missionaries from that nation.18 Roncalli’s stay was supposed to be a short one, he was told. Instead, he was assigned for ten years to the diplomatic backwaters of Bulgaria. At times he worried about his lackluster dead-end career, but once again he trusted in God’s ways. He noted in his diary that many of his trials were not caused by the Bulgarians, but by the Roman Curia to whom he reported. He lamented over the petty meanness of the Vatican, saying “everybody is busy talking and maneuvering for a career.” Part of his problem was that he had to deal with three different Vatican departments, often having three diverse views of how matters should be handled—the Secretariat of State, Propaganda Fide, and the Oriental Congregation.19 Even the pope who appointed him was quick to criticize. He was markedly unhappy when his representative allowed the Bulgarian Orthodox patriarch, Stefan Gheorghiev, to send his secretary to reciprocate a visit from Roncalli. The pope found that demeaning to the prestige of the Holy See; Roncalli blandly responded that it was not so intended, the patriarch was a very busy man. Pius XI simply stared at his delegate and inscrutably pronounced, “One sows and the other reaps.” Later when Roncalli wrote a critical letter to the Curia, the pontiff also read it and characterized it “Behold the wrath of the lamb.” 20 Unfortunately for Roncalli, King Boris III of Bulgaria, originally from the House of Bourbon-Parma, was raised a Catholic, but had to convert to Orthodox Christianity in order to assume the throne of that nation. When he decided to marry, he chose to ask for the hand of King Victor Emmanuel III’s daughter,

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Princess Giovanna. A dispensation was granted by the Vatican, and the marriage was performed according to the Catholic rite at Assisi on October 25, 1930. The royal couple had agreed that their children would be raised as Roman Catholic. Then a week later, on October 31, the couple was married again, this time according to the Orthodox rite in the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Sofia. Pius XI was furious and publicly denounced the royal couple on Christmas Eve, and Roncalli consequently took some of the blame both from the pope and from the king for the dispute. The archbishop was subsequently banned for a year from the Bulgarian court. And when he visited Rome right after the Orthodox baptism of the couple’s son, Prince Simeon, the pope acted in a rather boorish manner. He kept Roncalli kneeling before him for forty-five minutes as a penance. Years later, he extended his regrets to Roncalli—saying he apologized as Achille Ratti, but not as Pius XI, calmly adding “I give you my hand in friendship.” Roncalli later said only his pride was hurt, and he graciously dedicated one of his volumes on Borromeo to that pontiff. The usual view in the Curia at that time was that Roncalli was in general a naive diplomat, one given to such foolish hoodwinkings by smarter men, but Roncalli was rather clear as to what the limitations were that he faced. In an Orthodox country where the Catholic Church was simply tolerated, he felt it was better to exhibit what he called “unbroken and non-judgmental silence.”21 At times even the ebullient Roncalli grew weary and depressed. In 1929, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination, he had an intense sense of being forgotten and frustrated over the lack of progress in his career. 22 The years passed by—ten in all—and then in late 1934, the Vatican informed Roncalli that he had been transferred to be Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece. Istanbul was, of course, the major city in Turkey, and it was the descendant of the great capital called until 1930 Constantinople—the famed center of eastern Christianity. Roncalli arrived and soon visited the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit; there in its courtyard was a statue dedicated to Benedict XV, the Pope of Peace who was called “the protector of the East.”23 The dictator of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, or Ataturk, as he preferred, was waging a vigorous and often aggressive campaign to modernize his state, ruthlessly suppressing national customs and traditional Islam. He went on to ban the old Arabic alphabet and non-Western dress, including clerical garb. So Nuncio Roncalli wore a business suit and a bowler hat, looking like a hefty Italian banker, it was said! Philosophically he was to observe “It will become apparent that clothes do not make the monk.”24 On the ecclesiastical front, as early as 1936 Roncalli had tried to introduce some words of Turkish into the liturgy, a step that won the praise even of Ataturk. He was, however, soon denounced to Rome; in frustration, Roncalli called some of the reactions of his superiors “my only real cross.” On top of his immediate difficulties was the Italian invasion of Ethiopia which added to tensions with the Turkish regime due in part to the fact that Roncalli was still an Italian citizen. He had also been given the responsibility by the Vatican for its

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relations with Greece, since the government there wanted no special Vatican representative named. He proceeded very cautiously there too, and in a surprising and warm gesture he visited some of the one thousand-year-old Greek Orthodox monasteries at Mount Athos that were still operating on that peninsula. Then in 1939, Pius XI died, and the next war soon came. With Italy in the conflict, Roncalli’s position became even more difficult, especially in Greece which had strong ties with Britain.25 The German ambassador to Turkey during this period was Franz von Pappen, who originally had been a supporter of Hitler, arguing that he could be controlled by the right sort of conservative influences. Now as the war began, von Papen insisted to Roncalli that the conflict would be over by November 1940, and that Catholicism could end up being “the formative principle” of the new German social order. Roncalli was unimpressed, and sharply demanded on one occasion, “And what shall I tell the Holy Father about the thousands of Jews who had died in Germany and Poland at the hands of your countrymen?” 26 Roncalli dutifully reported von Papen’s offer to the Vatican without any endorsement on his part, but Monsignor Tardini at the Secretariat of State’s office bluntly concluded of the archbishop, “This fellow has understood nothing.” He among others felt Roncalli was simply naive and gullible, and two decades later, even as Pope John’s secretary of state, he exhibited at times the same disdain for Roncalli’s capabilities.27 Caught up in the vortex of war, occupying a diplomatic post in a sensitive city with fairly open borders, Angelo Roncalli became a source of invaluable information for the Vatican and also a strong ally in the underground to save the Jews on the run. As has been noted, Pius XII was buffeted by immense forces on the question of how far to go in attacking the Nazi and Fascist tyrannies. Roncalli was a witness and a participant in a small but meaningful way in that struggle. Later when he became John XXIII and quickly an international folk hero, there was much praise for his work in Turkey in helping an estimated twenty-four thousand Jews. Some even contrasted his caring attitude with the alleged silence and indifference of Pius XII, but as Roncalli himself acknowledged freely, he acted under specific instructions of the pope. Through his activities and the assistance of King Boris, thousands of Jews from Slovakia who had been sent to Hungary and then Bulgaria, and who were destined for concentration camps, received transit visas for Palestine. Roncalli signed the visas and von Papen, representing a very different and more humane strain of German life than Hitler, was credited with overlooking the archbishop’s activities. Later Roncalli would testify in writing to von Papen’s complicity—a letter that probably saved him from the death penalty at the Nuremberg trials. 28 Roncalli listened to the Grand Rabbi of Jerusalem plead for fifty-five thousand Jews in the Transnistrian region, but by June 1944, he was reporting the arrival of only 730 passengers from that area. Legend has it that Roncalli issued thousands of fraudulent Catholic baptismal certificates to Jews. In fact, the true story is that he forwarded to Vatican diplomats in Hungary and Romania “Immigration Certificates” issued by the Palestine Jewish agency. At times though,

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both the Vatican and Roncalli insensitively expressed concern that the Holy Land was being flooded with Jewish immigrants, as if they had so many other offers of asylum from which to choose.29 Then in December 1944, Roncalli was shocked to receive a telegram from Monsignor Tardini informing him that he had been appointed papal nuncio to France. French General Charles de Gaulle had insisted to the pope that the current nuncio, Monsignor Valerio Valeri, had been pro-Vichy and had to go. Pius refused at first, but he recognized that Valeri’s position was untenable under the new regime after the liberation of France. Some critics of Roncalli claimed that Pius sent him to Paris as a calculated rebuke to the haughty general—the implication being that Roncalli was a naive bumpkin. In fact, Pius clearly wanted Roncalli in that position, overruled Tardini’s objections, and informed his nuncio that he was the pope’s choice for that position. “It was I, Monsignor, who thought of you myself, and I made the decision—no one else.” Now at sixtythree, Angelo Roncalli held the Vatican’s most prestigious diplomatic position. He humbly responded that “where horses are lacking, the donkeys trod along,” a supposed reference to himself as a second-level diplomat.30 While in Paris, he sensitively dealt with the government’s demands that thirty allegedly pro-Vichy bishops be dismissed, getting that number reduced to three; dealt gingerly with the left-wing priest-worker movement that put clergy into the factories mainly in suburban Paris to continue their pastoral work; and advised the Vatican on nominations for bishops and three cardinal positions. Roncalli was criticized then and later for not having the sparkling wit and conversational veneer that is so appreciated in French intellectual life. Jesuit Robert Rouquette judged that Roncalli made a poor impression in Paris and was written off by many as a “clown.” But Jacques Dumaine reported that Roncalli “is more artful than subtle, he has had much experience and radiates a lively bonhomie.” And the anti-cleric and former premier of France, Edouard Herriot remarked, “If all the priests were like Roncalli, we would have no trouble with the church.” 31 When confronted with Vatican charges against the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin for his philosophy mixing Christology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology, Roncalli pushed them aside. He simply asked, “This Teilhard fellow . . . why can’t he be content with the catechism and the social doctrine of the Church, instead of bringing up all these problems?” Roncalli was never a great admirer of theological distinctions and complicated theories, which ironically may explain his toleration for avant-garde theologians during his brief term in office as pope. He was to conclude, “In France ideas are born with wings. Without a touch of holy madness, the church cannot grow.” 32 Roncalli was by temperament a man interested in faith rather than theological constructs. He believed that the purpose of the Church was to help men and women reach salvation. Roncalli, the diplomat, still respected the pastoral life, the simple habits of clergy who minister to the souls and sensitivities of real people living in a world still in the aftershock of the last terrible war. Later, Maurice Cardinal Feltin offered a character sketch of him at that time. He found the nuncio always friendly, understanding and adept at smoothing out problems;

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but he was decisive, firm and strong in his actions. He thought Roncalli to be “subtle, perspicuous, and far-sighted” and a person who could slip through “the grasp of those who sought to exploit him.”33 While the Curia moved on implementing the conservative strictures in Pius’s encyclical Humani Generis, some French theologians as well as others were put under the new microscope and denied teaching faculties. Roncalli basically stayed away from the controversy, and later he was to resurrect some of these discredited scholars who would play major roles in Vatican II. In 1951, he was appointed by Pius XII the official Vatican observer to UNESCO, a very different approach than the pope’s predecessors had used, usually ignoring international organizations. Then on November 14, 1952, Roncalli was asked if he would consider taking the prestigious see in Venice. He was seventy-one years of age. This would be his last post, he concluded philosophically. He had lived by the admonition of St. Martin who said that he “neither feared to die, nor refused to live.” Finally, Angelo Roncalli would return to the pastoral life and would be able to undertake diocesan reforms similar to what his patron, Radini-Tedeschi, had done in Bergamo a generation ago, or those the great saint, Charles Borremeo, had concluded four centuries before in Milan. Venice is not just a city; it is a dream, a fantasy of art and architecture. And it was on such a decorative stage that the aging diplomat arrived from Paris. Roncalli was in many ways a traditionalist, and he loved ritual and ceremony. He came to Venice on March 15, 1953, in a procession of colorful gondolas, saying that he wished to humbly introduce himself. He recalled his family, quoted Petrarch, and praised Marco Polo, the great explorer of the Far East. And in characteristic rhetoric, Roncalli went on, “I commend to your kindness someone who simply wants to be your brother.”34 He had been previously named a cardinal in January 1953 at Pius XII’s second and last consistory. Twenty-four new men were selected in all, fourteen of them non-Italian. The internationalization of the College of Cardinals was truly beginning. The pope also named Alojzije Stepinac of Yugoslavia, Stefan Wyszynski of Gniezno-Warsaw, Poland, and also a brilliant young prelate, Giuseppe Siri, the archbishop of Genoa since 1946. Some said that Pius saw the last as the heir apparent, although the pope never seemed to concur publicly. In March 1954, the pope nearly died, and Roncalli wrote that while he owed much to Pius, he hoped that he would not die at that time since it would interrupt his pastoral plan to visit his parishes and the proposed diocesan synod. Also, rather surprisingly, he opposed adding another feast, Regalitate Mariae, the Queenship of Mary, to the Church calendar. He saw it as counterproductive to ecumenical efforts—a rare objection from a high-ranking clergyman in those days.35 Pius miraculously recovered, and later after a crude power play, he either personally instigated or simply allowed his Curia inner circle to transfer Monsignor Montini to Milan. He was not to be given a cardinal’s hat either. Roncalli was dumbfounded at the harsh treatment of his friend. It has been argued that Montini was too liberal, too powerful, too close to the papal throne. Seeing their

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opportunity, the conservatives finally eliminated his influence and stopped him from being Pius’s successor by denying him the red hat. Ironically, the conservative “Pentagon” leaders laid the groundwork for a greater revolutionary— the amiable and aging patriarch of Venice. It has been argued by several close associates of Pius that he himself made the decision to transfer Montini to Milan without a red hat. The pope had lost confidence in his closest associate because of his involvement with leftist leaning youth movements, and because Montini regarded Fascism, not Communism, as the greater threat to the Church. Also, Pius felt that his successor had to be a more decisive leader than Montini would be, realizing that the latter could be elected later—which is what happened. In his diocese Roncalli focused on what he called spiritual renewal and the “perennial youthfulness of Christian and religious life.” On the one hand, he was impressed by the liturgical reforms of the archbishop of Bologna, the liberal Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro. And at the other end of the spectrum, he invited conservative Cardinal Siri to talk to a Catholic Action group. In 1956, the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office (the old “Inquisition”) demanded that he respond to complaints concerning the pronouncements of the local Christian Democrat newspaper which advocated an “opening to the left” politically. Roncalli disliked engaging in condemnations, but he felt compelled by the Vatican to criticize what he called an opening at “any price,” which was “a very grave doctrinal error and a flagrant violation of Catholic discipline.” Several years later he himself would be criticized for just such a gesture toward the USSR.36 At the time, Roncalli also expressed some interest in creating a commission to focus on the ecumenical movement—a precursor of what would become during his term as pope the powerful Secretariat for Christian Unity to be headed up by Pius’s former confessor, the Jesuit Augustin Bea. Back in Venice, Roncalli was preparing for a diocesan synod in November 1957. It was at this synod that he first used the term “aggiornamento,” meaning an updating or reform of the ways of the Church to fit in with modern society. At that session he denounced authoritarianism and paternalism—criticisms which were seen then as veiled references to Pius’s style of administration.37 Even the easygoing Roncalli had some problems with the laity of Venice— a rather conservative group even noticeably so in conservative Italy. His modest proposal to remove the iconostasis in St. Mark’s Cathedral, the marble Gothic screen, and wheel it away at Masstime so the faithful would see better, produced a firestorm of opposition, and he backed down. Roncalli was to remark on one occasion that, “We are not honored as museum keepers, but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life and to prepare a glorious future.” Later he recorded in his diary the major event of the day—Pius XII had died.

The Transitional Pope

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Roncalli’s reactions were rather restrained on learning of Pius’s death, especially for a pontiff that both rescued him from the backwaters of Vatican diplomacy and treated him with more respect than Pius XI. When the College of Cardinals met, it would contain only fifty-one voting members, and the average age was older than Roncalli, who was a month shy of seventy-seven. There was some speculation of reaching outside the ranks of the cardinals, especially to Archbishop Montini, but that was not possible in the eyes of most, although he may have received several votes on the first balloting. Thus, the conclave would be left with a very divided convention of those conservatives wishing to continue the theological policies of Pius XII; those wishing some modest changes, especially in administrative organization; those advocating major reforms; those craving some spiritual regeneration; and those who really were not sure what they wanted. In a universe of fifty-one people, such divisions make for a highly fractionalized group process in which consensus is difficult to reach. Of the fifty-one cardinals, seventeen were Italian, six French, three Spanish, and three were Brazilians among others. Of the seventeen Italians, eleven worked in the Vatican Curia, and six governed dioceses. Roncalli was one of the few patriarchs of the western Church, a mildly progressive figure who had extensive diplomatic experience. He had had his run-ins with the Pacelli bureaucracy, but his placid personality was such that he had not alienated many people over the years.38 There was surely a feeling that the Church needed a change in style and tone—a Good Shepherd, who would also support the prerogatives of the bishops and cardinals. The conservatives at first supported the young Cardinal Siri; the progressives, Lercaro of Bologna, who was called by an acquaintance, Luigi Santucci, “an after-school cardinal, a holiday-excursion cardinal”—that is, a not so serious fellow. There was much support for the cultured Armenian, Pietro Cardinal Agagianian, a Curialist “more Roman than the Romans,” it was said. One critic remarked that he was “more doctrinaire at sixty-three than Pius had been at eighty.” There was also some support for the seventy-nine year-old aristocratic Benedetto Aloisi Cardinal Masella, the moderate prefect of the Congregation of the Sacraments, and an experienced diplomat himself. The successful candidate would need two-thirds or thirty-five votes.39 Before the conclave, Roncalli was a frequent visitor to influential clergy in Rome, especially cardinals and prominent individuals who were well connected in Church politics. He was seen initially as a dark horse, one likely to emerge only in a long drawn-out conclave. But actually he entered with a strong core of supporters, mainly former French colleagues and non-Curial Italians who were loyal throughout the balloting. After four days of inconclusive voting, Roncalli finally prevailed, in part because of the concurrence of the leader of traditional Curia cardinals, Alfredo Ottaviani. Although the proceedings are secret, Roncalli himself said that he and Agagianian bobbed up and down in the balloting like peas in a boiling pot. He must have understood what was happening earlier than most of his colleagues. When he was elected, he pulled out a written

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statement for the secret conclave members and boldly announced, Vocabor Johannes, “I will be called John” to the surprise of the Cardinals and later the Vatican experts. Roncalli said that he took the name John because it was the name of his father, the name of the church he was baptized in, and it was the name of a variety of cathedrals throughout the world, most especially the Lateran Basilica, the pope’s own cathedral in Rome. The last legitimate pope to use the name was John XXII, who reigned from 1317 to 1334. There had been a later John XXIII, Baldassre Cossa, who was an anti-pope and who was alleged to have been a pirate who killed, cheated, and tried to perjure his way to the papacy. 40 Before that election, Roncalli was visited in his cell by Ottaviani and his conservative ally, Ernesto Cardinal Ruffini of Sicily, who talked of what “a beautiful thing” it would be to call a church council soon. They had in mind another Vatican I or Council of Trent to correct the errors of Church members and the sins of the world. Roncalli was to observe that “everybody was convinced that I would be a provisional and transitional pope,” “papa de passagio.” Mainly what was expected was that he would restore the papacy to a more normal state of affairs and end the neglect and decay of the later Pacelli years. Before the conclave, he had been asked by concerned conservatives if his friend Montini would be returned to Rome as secretary of state if he became pope. Roncalli shrewdly responded that since he was not going to be pope, the question was moot. He met several times with Monsignor Tardini, still the prosecretary of state and the man who had been over the years so critical of Roncalli for his alleged naiveté as a diplomat. To the surprise of many and the comfort of the conservatives, he later prevailed on a reluctant Tardini to take the secretary of state’s position, even though the latter protested that they had frequently disagreed in the past, that he was tired from previous years of service, and that he wished to focus on his orphanage project. John insisted and Tardini knelt down in obedience, later remarking on the strange turn of events, “Such is life.” The pope was not a man of the Curia, and what he knew he generally did not like. However, he made major overtures to the bureaucracy, and in the process he may have forfeited the chance to bring about the very changes he was later to embrace.41 Almost immediately, he called a consistory to name twenty-three new cardinals, thus exceeding the rule of Sixtus V (1585-1590) who set the limit at seventy. John named Montini and Tardini and also new cardinals from places like the Philippines, Japan, Mexico, and Africa that had never had cardinals before. Still a man of tradition in so many ways, he restored the fur bonnet used by the Renaissance popes in place of the white skull cap that kept slipping off his head. He even sat down and created a new coat of arms, but protested that the lion (meant to represent Venice) was too fierce, too Germanic-looking.42 At his coronation, he insisted on preaching a homily in a language, Italian, that many of his listeners could understand, and he told the Vatican newspaper to drop the august titles when they referred to the pope. When the mayor of Bergamo decided to name Roncalli’s brothers “Knights of the Italian Republic,”

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(Cavalieri della Repubblica Italiana) John demurred. After his coronation, they went back home to till the fields. He met easily with the press, simply calling himself a shepherd and never sought to emulate the ways or the intellectual sway of his predecessor. One priest, Antonio Samoré, said that while meeting Pius was like taking a stiff oral exam, meeting John was like talking to one’s grandfather. After that coronation, he received visits from various chiefs of state. To one, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker of Canada, the pontiff remarked, “Well, here I am at the end of the road and the top of the heap.”43 Very quickly he also assumed the duties of bishop of Rome, visiting its churches, the children’s hospital, Gésu Bambino, and even the Regina Coeli prison by the Tiber River. The children at the hospital, many of them suffering from polio, called out “Viene qui, viene qui, Papa” (“come here, come here, Pope”). And he waddled along, replying, “Quiet now, I’m coming. I’m coming to see you.” Among the midst of the worst elements of the city at the prison, John simply remarked that he was “Joseph, your brother.” As he reached the sealed off section of the prison, he asked that the gate be opened, “Do not bar me from them—they are the children of the Lord.” Inside he embraced a convicted murderer among other felons. Later on the Feast of the Epiphany, the pope sent the entire prison population a complete chicken dinner with wine. The press loved this new pope as it followed him around. But John had a more carefree sense of himself. Once he looked at his figure in a full length mirror and laughed, “O Lord, this man is going to be a disaster on television.” One of his more favorable biographers observed, “When Angelo Roncalli became John XIII, a new man seemed born in him; it was as if mediocrity had given birth to genius.”44 John is supposed to have said that he had “flung open the windows of the Vatican” to let in the air. Perhaps he never said that, but he surely acted as if he had. Roncalli was made pope in part because important elements of the conservative Curia thought he was reliable. They hoped they could use him to regenerate the institutional church by reasserting their authority and the Vatican’s magisterium. That is why they wanted the council. At first they were correct in their assessment.

The New Pentecost In January 1959, John XXIII claimed that he had been inspired by the Holy Spirit to call a church council. Actually, it had been suggested to him by various people, although he probably forgot the authors, and just incorporated the suggestions into his own. He had hesitantly proposed it to Secretary of State Tardini and was delighted when the conservative Curialist agreed. Five days later, on January 25, 1959, John announced the idea to the eighteen Curial cardinals at the Basilica of St. Paul Beyond the Walls in Rome. They sat quietly, almost

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stunned. Later Tardini asked John to go more slowly, and the Vatican newspaper even buried the dramatic story inside the pages of its daily edition. Finally, John XXIII allowed the Curial apparatus to set the council agenda by having the traditional commissions and agencies serve the needs of the council. Progressive critics would conclude that the results were highly predictable. The initial drafts on the basic questions before the council would contain the same defensive, traditional, triumphalist expressions of criticism of the world and stale reaffirmations of the righteousness of the Church. There were no surprises. Actually both Pius XI and Pius XII had considered the idea of calling a council together. Pius XI wished to emphasize the unity of the church after the horrors of the First World War, but he became preoccupied with resolving the “Roman Question.” As for his successor, Pius XII received from Ruffini and Ottaviani a memo in February 1948, advocating a council that would focus on traditional concerns: clarification of Church doctrine, the threat of Communism, the moral constraints on war, reform of canon law, ecclesiastical discipline, and a definition of the doctrine of Mary’s Assumption. Pius XII hesitated, though, in having the bishops leave their dioceses for so long a period of time, but he did set up five secret commissions to prepare for such a council if he decided to call it after all. John had the benefit of that material. Pius had decided that whatever the council could do, he could do better and faster, and so it never came about. He defined the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary himself and issued his encyclical Humani Generis that condemned various errors, heresies, and unorthodoxies. When John explored the idea of calling a council, Cardinal Spellman in New York concluded that the pope had “been pushed into it by people who misconstrued what he said.” Cardinal Lercaro of Bologna, supposedly a progressive, judged that the pope was either “rash and impulsive,” due to his inexperience and lack of culture, or that he was a man of “calculated audacity.” Even Cardinal Montini in Milan privately said that calling a council was a mistake, that at least three more years of preparation were needed, and that “this holy old boy doesn’t seem to realize what a hornet’s nest he is stirring up.” But Montini’s friend, Oratorian priest Giulio Bevilacqua, responded, “Let it be, the Holy Spirit is still awake in the Church.” 45 Thus it seems that neither the progressives nor the conservatives welcomed the idea of a Church council, especially of the sort that John called together. Later Sister Pasqualina, in a rare visit back to the Vatican, also warned the new pope that people looked to the Holy See for leadership, and that it could not and should not repudiate its authoritarian heritage. It would lead to “an ecclesiastical tragedy,” she judged. John good-naturedly blessed her, complimented her beauty, and remarked “let change take care of the future.” 46 They said it would take four years of preparation; the elderly pontiff gave the bureaucracy only two. While John was talking of opening up the windows of the church, the Curia was continuing its policies of blacklisting theologians and authors. Such discontinuities led to the quip in Rome, “Tardini reigns, Ottaviani governs, John blesses.” The pope at times seemed remarkably reticent, almost as if he expected the council to just happen. At one point he remarked, “I am only

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the pope around here.” And when he was asked how many people worked in the Vatican, he concluded—“about half!”47 The appointment of Domenico Tardini as secretary of state and then president of the Ante-Preparatory Commission was meant to calm the Curia and also to place some real management skill in charge. Tardini in turn wished to use the reliable experts (periti) from the Roman universities rather than import nonnative talent and alien ideas. Thus another safeguard for the Curia was in place, and John seemed either unaware or in agreement. Still, Tardini would make it clear that it was the pontiff who was insisting on changes not he. Privately he referred to John as “the one up there,” until the pope remarked to his surprise, “‘The one up there’ is the Lord God of all. I am only the one on the fourth floor.”48 When he was cardinal, Roncalli was supposed to have said to Pius XII, “Holy Father, you will leave a difficult heritage for any successor who tries to emulate you in your role as teacher and master of the Word.” Later, however, he remarked to Georges Cardinal Grente that one should simply do the opposite of one’s predecessors to make one’s mark. John was clearly aware of the Roman gossip, criticizing him as a man of limited abilities, especially in comparison to Pius. Again, Cardinal Spellman in New York was supposed to have said that John had the intelligence of “a simple banana man peddling his fruit.” But John was a wily old cleric who lived by the maxim that one should notice everything, turn a blind eye to much, and correct a few things. Earlier in his career, he had observed, “Well, priests have to give up so much, marriage, children—so many pleasures forbidden. They must be allowed the greatest clerical sport: criticism of superiors.”49 He decided early that the cardinals should give up the plurality of positions that some held which had created a sort of interlocking directorship of power and influence among the Curia officials. When some cardinals disagreed, a distraught Pope John reportedly said, “They have refused the Pope.” After that refusal, he ordered the changes made, and then wrote a public letter accepting their resignations with gratitude.50 When he made his announcement concerning the council, he also pledged to call a synod for the diocese of Rome and to order a thorough review of canon law. He called a synod for his own new diocese because he recognized, as did Pius in his last year, that the city of Rome and its environs had undergone enormous social and economic changes since the war. There were now over two million people with 190 parishes, and while Rome had over three thousand priests, most of them were not involved in pastoral work, but were employed by the Curia or were religious assigned to Roman universities.51 In 1959, John the bishop actually devoted more time to the synod than to preparing for the council. But the results were predictable and disappointing. The synod ended up insisting that Roman priests had to wear the cassock or black soutane at all times; be marked by tonsure or shaven crowns; avoid the opera and races; not use cars unless absolutely necessary; never be alone with a woman; deal only in the most careful ways with Communists, Freemasons, and

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heretics; and beware of faith healers and psychoanalysts. The synod was a bad dress rehearsal for a wide-open ecumenical council that the pope would advocate. John magnanimously praised the synod’s decrees for their “beauty and inner coherence, with occasional delicate touches that result in an unexpected psalmody, bringing clarity to the mind and savour to the heart.” Privately, however, he observed that “nothing is perfect in this world,” and that his successor could call a second synod. Still he observed, “It will always be the humble Pope John who celebrated the first.”52

Changing Foreign Policies While the pope was reviewing the work of the Synod and also preparing for his council, John was beginning to effect a major change in the Vatican’s policies toward Communism and the Holy See’s basic foreign policy assumptions as well. For the first two years of his pontificate he seemed, however, to adhere to the policies of Pius XI and Pius XII toward Communism. Then he began to make a clear and calculated attempt to disengage the Vatican from Italian domestic politics and from its historic pro-West Cold War allegiances. When the leader of the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro, tried to create a coalition government by forming an alliance with the Socialists (PSI), John proved sympathetic. This was the so-called “opening to the left” (aperture a sinistro) that the Curia had condemned under Pius and that Cardinal Roncalli was forced to censor while in Venice. John did not directly align himself with Moro at first, but on April 11, 1961, he received Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani and celebrated the 100th anniversary of Italian unification. He was sending the message that he and the Vatican would abstain from interfering in political issues. Then on April 2, 1962, the pope met with Moro and called him “an excellent Catholic, a statesman, a man of great social concern.”53 The pope aroused suspicions in other ways. In his early attempts to reach out to the Orthodox churches, he came into contact rather quickly with the Russian leadership. His overtures to the Orthodox Christian community and their hierarchies, asking them to come to the council, were complicated both because of their age-old animosities toward Rome and because of the influence of the USSR. John the diplomat was aware of the ancient jealousies between Athens and Constantinople, and between them and the patriarchate of Moscow, which was a department of the Soviet government. He issued a general invitation to his upcoming council and left it to the Orthodox Churches to decide how they would be represented, but he received no response. At first, Athens had balked at the idea, then Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople (Istanbul) informed Cardinal Bea that he could not attend the council, later the patriarch of Moscow would not agree to come either, probably because the initial invitation came

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through Constantinople. The pope then changed course and on September 27, 1962, sent Monsignor Johannes Willebrands to Moscow with an invitation; later the Kremlin agreed that two official Orthodox Church observers could go to the council. Then the other two Orthodox prelates protested about breaches of protocol and a divide and conquer approach being used by the Vatican. Years later Athenagoras finally met with Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem—the first such visit since the Schism in 1054.54 During this period the Soviet government and Premier Nikita Khrushchev had apparently decided to work with Pope John whom they saw as likely to abandon the staunch anti-Communist policies of Pius XII. As for John he stopped referring to “the Church of Silence” behind the Iron Curtain and also ceased characterizing many long-suffering mainland Catholic Church leaders in China as schismatics when he realized the difficult options facing them over the years. In its overtures, the Vatican diplomats quietly assured Communist leaders that the council would not be attacking Communism or embarrassing any observers from Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. John was personally delighted when Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski and sixteen other bishops from Poland, four from each Germany, three from Hungary, three from Czechoslovakia, and all of the Yugoslav bishops arrived to attend the council. However the bishops of Romania and Albania were absent, and most of the Catholic bishops of Communist China remained imprisoned.55 The pope also began secret negotiations to free church prelate Josef Slipyi, the Archbishop of Lvov from jail, using among others the services of American magazine editor, Norman Cousins. Later Franz Cardinal König of Vienna would be allowed to visit Cardinal Mindszenty who had been granted asylum and was still living in the U.S. embassy in Budapest. Eventually he would be allowed to emigrate to Rome. Pope John also took up the case of Archbishop Josef Beran of Prague, who had been under restrictions from 1947 to 1964, seeking to better his plight.56 The pontiff’s positive relations with the Russians began when they responded to his statement during the Berlin crisis of August-September 1961. The dangerous confrontation between the United States and the U.S.S.R. over the latter’s harassment of that divided city eventually led to the threat of military action by the nuclear powers and the building of the Berlin Wall. John appealed to all involved, including those who did not believe in God, or in His Christ as he put it, as he pleaded for peace. For some reason, Khrushchev was pleased with the tone of the message and praised the pope. The Soviets saw quite correctly a break with the policies of Pius XII. Later during the much more dangerous Cuban Missile Crisis, the pope with the prior approval of both sides appealed to the Americans and the Soviets to choose negotiation over war. His dramatic appeal was praised throughout the world, including by the Kremlin. Later Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Aleksei Adzhubei, the editor of Izvestia, visited the pope on March 7, 1963. The interview lasted only eighteen minutes

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and was a rather simple expression of hospitality on the part of the pope, but it was a major step in normalizing relations between Russia and the Holy See. The pontiff asked Adzhubei and his wife about their children and expressed delight that one was called Ivan or John. At one point, he poignantly observed, “You say you are atheists. But surely you will receive the blessing of an old man for your children.” They fell quiet and left deeply moved. John even began to study the Russian language in order, he said, to “show how much he loved that great people.”57 But John’s overtures brought increasing criticism in Italy where the pope had announced that he wished the clergy to stay out of partisan politics. When some of the hierarchy, including Cardinal Ottaviani, disagreed publicly, John uncharacteristically rebuked the dissidents and reminded them of their duty of obedience to the pope. The cardinal had openly criticized the left leanings of what he called “sacristy pinks.” When John near the end of his life issued his universal call for peace and brotherhood in his encyclical, Pacem in Terris, the last remnants of Pius’s foreign policy came tumbling down. President Kennedy, who was himself seemingly seeking to abandon some of the clichés of the Cold War, remarked, “This encyclical of Pope John makes me proud to be a Catholic.” Issued on April 11, 1963, the encyclical was addressed to “all men of good will,” and began with a ratification of the traditional Catholic view that through the use of natural reason all can understand the need for peace, liberty, and a moral order. John started off with a long history of the duty to respect the inalienable rights of people. Those rights include not just speech, religion, property, and association, but also the right to social services, medical care, employment, culture, education, and vocational training. He also emphasized the right to freedom of movement and expressed concern for the plight of displaced persons. John then talked of the match of duties and responsibilities with rights and liberties. He argued that men have a right to expect a political order characterized by truth, justice, charity, and enlightened cooperation. John reminded politicians that they must adapt the laws to the conditions of modern life. He noted three great changes that have marked the era: the progressive improvement of the economic and social conditions of working men; the increasing awareness by women of their natural dignity; and the political independence of nations once subject to foreign domination. He further expressed his disapproval of imperialism and foreign economic domination, asked for respect for minority rights, and strongly condemned the arms race. In a positive sense John urged assistance for underdeveloped nations, praised the United Nations and its agencies, and urged Catholics to cooperate with Christians “separated from the Apostolic See.” Laying aside some of the old prohibitions on such joint endeavors, John simply observed, “a man who has fallen into error does not cease to be a man.”58 That same month, April 1963, the Christian Democrats lost strength in the elections in Italy, and the pope was attacked for having made it fashionable to support socialism, to look the other way at Communism, and even to allow a

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visit of Khrushchev’s brother-in-law inside the Vatican gates. The Christian Democrats were probably hurt more by the downturn of the Italian economy, but to some it did not seem to matter.59 John had weakened the Church’s historic resolve against the left. Pope John’s image as a fair and compassionate world statesman was enhanced in other quarters, especially after his appeals for mutual restraint during the explosive Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. He had stressed over the years what he called convivienza—living together, and as a recognition of his efforts he was awarded the Balzan Peace Prize on May 1, 1963. On May 10 he visited the Quirinale, the palace of the Italian president, to view the giving of that award to other people as well. “Peace is a house, a house for everyone,” he explained.60

Mother and Teacher With regard to domestic social concerns, Pope John had earlier issued his controversial Mater et Magistra on July 15, 1961. That encyclical marked the seventieth anniversary of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and the thirtieth anniversary of Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno. One of the longest papal letters, some twentyfive thousand words in length, John’s encyclical affirmed the recent papal tradition of support for private enterprise and private property and presents a critique of Communism and socialism. But the state must act in a positive way to promote a healthy economy and widespread prosperity. In such activities, the principle of subsidiarity should be honored—that is those activities undertaken by the state should be restricted to those efforts , private groups or individuals cannot accomplish themselves. The letter introduced the concept of “socialization,” defined as the “growing interdependence of men in society giving rise to various patterns of group life and activity and in many instances to social institutions established on a juridical basis.” There are advantages in such an interdependence that promotes higher standards of living and the welfare state. There are disadvantages in that it makes it harder for individuals to exercise their freedoms, to work and think individually, and to enrich one’s personality. The letter moved on to emphasize a need for a true living wage for a worker and his family, a fairer redistribution of wealth, a more disinterested assistance to poorer nations, and a sense of the brotherhood of man. And as befits a true son of the soil, the pope spent some time talking about the problems of farmers. John criticized economic imperialism and strongly urged the laity to participate in an apostolate to the world for social justice. And lastly, he gingerly acknowledged some aspects of the population explosion, but denied it was a serious difficulty and put his faith in scientific and technological discoveries to find solutions. Some feared that his letter however was another opening to the left, especially with its concept of “socialization” which seemed too close to

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“socialism.” In the United States, many conservative American Catholics agreed with commentator William Buckley when he said, “mater si, magistra no.” By the end of 1961, John would be celebrating his eightieth birthday. He had observed earlier that when he was chosen in 1958, the idea was that he was a provisional and transitional pope. “Yet here I am, already in the eve of the fourth year of my pontificate, with an immense programme of work ahead of me to be carried out before the eyes of the whole world, which is watching and waiting.” To those who compared him unfavorably to Pius, he responded that everyday language was the language that Jesus used, and that “simplicity contains nothing that is contrary to prudence.” When he was approached by Cardinal Spellman about the possible canonization of Pius XII, he sidestepped the request. Still he took comfort from reading the lives of the powerful and rather unsimple predecessors: Leo the Great and Innocent III—men more attuned to Pius XII’s style of leadership than John’s!61 The conservative Cardinal Siri, holding dearly to Pius’s legacy, called Pope John’s pontificate “the greatest disaster in ecclesiastical history”—that is, the last five hundred years in his litany. Later at the beatification process of Pope John, he indicated however that he had been wrong. 62 Not all of Pacelli’s circle was as critical of John XXIII. The pope began to form a very close collaboration with the Jesuit Augustin Bea, a former confessor of Pius’s and the person who helped Pius write his liberal charter for advancing biblical studies, Divino Afflanate Spiritu (1943), and a man who would help provide strong direction for a very unclear council.

Beginning Vatican II As a preparation for the council, the Vatican had sent out questionnaires requesting topics for discussion, and over 76 percent of the prelates and Catholic institution leaders responded. Basically they revolved around minor reforms and a modest desire for more autonomy. The voti, as they would later be called, were extensive and would be published in fifteen huge volumes.63 Peter Hebblethwaite reported that John decided in the beginning that “the president of each subcommittee would be the prefect of the corresponding Roman Congregation, or the dicastery.” Thus the conservative Curia, with John’s approval, would provide tight direction for the council. Excluded were some of the major theologians of the time, men who would be important figures in Vatican II and much later. Those included Jesuits John Courtney Murray and John L. McKenzie from the United States; Karl and Hugo Rahner from Bavaria; Frenchmen Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou; and French Dominicans YvesMarie Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu.64 On June 5, 1960, Pope John noted in passing that the decision to use the Curia did not ignore the enlightened wisdom of churchmen from elsewhere, but his statement had little impact. He went on and insisted that the council had its own

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structures and organizations that would be different from the Roman Curia, but the meaning of that observation was unclear. What was apparent was that the excitement over the council was eliciting a great deal of public discussion, media coverage, and scholarly attention. One prominent liberal theologian, Hans Küng, openly insisted that the purpose of this council was “reform” in its broadest sense. His book, The Council, Reform, and Reunion, stirred a great deal of attention on both sides of the Atlantic with its positive discussion of the Protestant Reformation, the role of the Bible in worship, the development of a people’s liturgy, the use of the vernacular, the reform of the Curia, the divorce of the papacy from politics, and the end of the Index of Forbidden Books. Surprisingly, Küng portrayed the Council of Trent as a reforming council that ended the abuses of the Renaissance church and not as a defensive reaction to the Reformation. Roncalli had found some of the same evidence in his work on Saint Charles Borromeo, the great churchman of that council.65 In the midst of all this, the pope turned to his new friend, Cardinal Bea, to head up a special secretariat—one dedicated to Christian unity that would be the agency responsible for communicating in a positive way to non-Catholic Christians. Now with the appointment of Bea, John had reached into the closest circle of Pius’s admirers and found an old man who represented a very new way of looking at the world and thus at the agenda of the council. Some conservative Curia members recalled to each other that Bea had been the author of Pius’s liberal letter on biblical studies, and that he seemed back in 1949 to ignore the Holy Office warning against too extensive ecumenical contacts. They never forgot an infraction—real or even just reported. On December 2, 1960, the pope met Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. This was the first time that a pope and an archbishop from that see had spoken since the Reformation. Fisher was somewhat cool at first and sought to lecture John that the world would perhaps never see a “return to Rome,” or a reunion of Protestant and Catholic churches, especially on Catholic terms. John was hospitable as usual, saying later that they talked of St. Gregory the Great and St. Augustine’s mission to Canterbury. No photographs were taken and the public announcements were low key. Fisher left charmed by the pope, and later the archbishops of York and Canterbury appointed Canon Bernard Pawley as their personal representative to the Holy See. 66 Throughout all of this Pope John was becoming an increasingly popular personality internationally. Then in the summer of 1961, Secretary of State Tardini died, and the pontiff quickly named Amleto Cicognani, the former apostolic delegate to the United States and a more moderate personality to take Tardini’s place. Some historians of the papacy have seen this change as the beginning of Pope John’s liberation as a reformer and as a leader in the ecclesiastical changes that came out of the council that he himself had called. There is no question that Vatican II (1962-1965) had a profound impact on the Roman Catholic Church, far beyond what its church fathers originally imagined. What exactly John XXIII’s intentions were and what his view was of the first session, the only one that he lived through, is somewhat clouded historical-

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ly. As for the council, the preparatory work had moved in the Central Commission to Eugene Cardinal Tisserant after Tardini’s death. The Central Commission became not just a coordinating agency, but actually a watchdog that thought it could veto the work of the other commissions. In November 1961, archconservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani proclaimed that the council should author a new Profession of Faith, which would repeat the anti-Modernist oath of Pius X and also condemn again the errors listed in Humani Generis, reaffirm the doctrine of Mary’s virginity, reassert the primacy of the priesthood, and attack those who emphasized the sinfulness and guilt of the Catholic Church over the years. It was the same old conservative agenda, and immediately enormous resistance ensued. It appeared that the power of the Curia, even without John’s intervention, was beginning to wane. The pope praised the Central Commission several times for its work, and on February 22, 1962, he issued a letter Veterum Sapientia (“the wisdom of the ancients”). It was a rigid defense of the importance of Latin in the life of the Church. It was more conservative than even Pius’s pronouncements on the topic. One consequence that some foresaw was that a council held in Latin would favor the Curia, which dealt with that language every day in its work. That prediction did not hold true. When the Curia began a systematic attack on Bea and his Biblical Institute, the detached pope responded sharply and expressed support for the orthodoxy of the institute and ordered Cardinal Pizzardo, who led the assault, to send a letter of apology to Bea. The conservative dean of the cardinals, Eugène Tisserant of the Biblical Commission, was also involved, and the pope wrote to Secretary of State Cicognani, “The time has come to put a stop to this nonsense.” Either that commission would prove useful to the papacy or it would be abolished, he warned. Quite correctly, he began to conclude “reforms have to begin from above.”67 Then the pope ordered that the schemas be circulated to all the members of the council early so as to invite debate and discussion. Speaking for the pope, Cardinal Montini opposed the constant negative tone of the conservatives. A distraught John had already looked at some of the drafts of the schemas, and is supposed to have held up a ruler, and said, “Seven inches of condemnation and one of praise: is that the way to talk to the modern world?” The conservatives had their own reservations. Ottaviani, observing the general drift of events, glumly remarked, “I pray to God that I am to die before the end of the Council and that way I can die a Catholic.”68 Pope John talked of his contribution to the council as being his “personal suffering,” and seemed to have a premonition of his own death as he pushed for an earlier session than most thought possible. He rewrote his last will and testament, and calmly said that he awaited “the arrival of Sister Death.” He also drafted an edict concerning the period that the Chair of Saint Peter was vacant, restricted photos of the pontiff on his deathbed, and prohibited people from living in the papal apartments during that period. It was clear that the experiences

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of the previous pope were what he had in mind. He also rejected the request of Josef Cardinal Frings of Cologne and his colleague Julius Cardinal Döpfner of Munich that the council be postponed—time was of the essence.69 On September 11, 1962, John gave a speech in which he heralded the advent of the council a month away to help it gain some focus. He accepted the distinction between addressing the Church internally (ad intra), and the Church addressing the world (ad extra)—a view popularized by Léon-Joseph Cardinal Suenens of Belgium. Of the seventeen schemata being prepared, only two dealt with the outside world. John admonished that “we expect a contribution based on intelligence and experience that help to heal the scars of the two world wars that have so profoundly changed the face of all of our countries.” Like all mothers, he observed, Holy Mother Church detests war. The thoughts of Cardinal Suenens were obvious in John’s very different declaration. Two weeks later, `on September 23, he received confirmation that he had stomach cancer, the cause of death of two of his sisters. In the first two years of his papacy, before the passing of Secretary Tardini, Pope John’s views on major Church reform seemed contradictory. Partly it was the complexity of this allegedly simple man. It must be remembered that there were several sides to the aged cleric who assumed the papacy in 1958. First was the young pastorally oriented priest who had been accused of Modernism, and who later in fact embraced the need to relate the methods of presentation (but not, he said, the articles of faith) to the contemporary world. There was the easygoing diplomat who understood the non-Catholic world, especially that of the explosive Balkans and the Middle East more than most. Then there was the non-judgmental archbishop and later cardinal who seemed less worried about theological controversies and incipient heresies than losing the souls of simple people. Yet Roncalli was really not in his heart as progressive or as liberal as Montini, for example. In fact, Montini was very sympathetic to the more speculative theologians of the time such as Yves Congar, Henri-Marie de Lubac, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Hans Küng; to the worker-priest experiment in France; and to the pro-left wing of the Christian Democrats in Italy. Montini was a man of ideas, more than his friend Roncalli, and as such he was more influenced by the unorthodox winds of change. In some ways even Pius XII at times was more receptive to those movements than his own archbishop-diplomat successor. John XXIII actively introduced fewer reforms than Pius XII or even Pius X. On a personal level, he avoided using telephones and dismissed television, seeing it as promoting worldly values and saturated with effeminate programs. Overall he had little interest as Pacelli did in technology or advanced scholarship. And he issued one of the strongest reaffirmations of priestly celibacy of that time.70 Oddly, John praised the early drafts from the Curia, while he called for a positive aggiornamento—a true opening to the world. As noted, he is supposed to have said that he thought it was important that he open the windows in order

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to let the fresh air into the Church. Whether he said that or not, he exhibited a confusing behavior at times. Did he support the Curia, or was he supporting those who were asking for substantial change? In addition, he originally placed great emphasis on the ecumenical nature of the council, one that would boldly aim at the reunification of Christianity. But quickly it evolved into a Catholic council with non-Catholic observers, not nonCatholic participants.71 Some saw his behavior as a series of skillful Machiavellian responses: he kept the Curia on his side, but supported those who wished to undercut its very powers. The bishops, nearly all appointed by Pius XII and through the Curia process, were seen especially in the first session as docile and rather conservative. They were no more willing to recommend radical changes than the priests in the Roman Synod Council years before. The bishops were, however, displeased at times with the ways they had been treated over the years by the Vatican bureaucracy and by Pius, but they surely were not great reformers. There is a myth that Vatican II tapped into tremendous popular discontent among the laity who saw their Church as hopelessly out of date. There may have been some of that feeling among segments of the native populations or clergy in Third World countries, but actually there is little evidence that the council rested on such broad popular unhappiness. For example, it has been estimated that in 1956, only ten out of six hundred bishops in Latin America exhibited any strong social consciousness in an area of the world where one would have expected such a sense. By the time of the council, Latin America was a problem area for the Church and its bishops exhibited cohesiveness in their caucus’s influence.72 The discontent in the Church was expressed mostly by members of the hierarchy who were weary of the tight controls of the Curia, by uneasiness in the religious orders against the restrictions of their superiors, and by the continuing threat to speculative theologians, especially in the non-Latin European faculties and seminaries. The council was not a popular revolution, as much as a revolt at first of the “out” clergy against the insiders, mainly those in the Vatican hierarchy. Roncalli as pope was now the ultimate insider with recollections still of how he had been treated in the past. He was definitely not a man of vengeance, or a person preoccupied with paying back slights; but he still had an old man’s memory. His successor would be even more sensitive to those slights by the Curia that he had once so skillfully navigated and later been humbled by. Roncalli left the Curia alone; Montini as Paul VI would begin in a limited way to reform it. A second problem that the Catholic Church faced is typical to large and/or multicultural empires or realms. That is the relationship between the central city or capital and the provinces. That concern is especially important in a church that continues to characterize itself as the “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.” Here the word “Catholic” means universal—that is, an institution that transcends boundaries, tribes, and cultures. The Curia feared that changes in theological metaphors in liturgy and in patterns of authority would accentuate

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the powerful centripetal or decentralizing tendencies prevalent in the postwar world. Political colonization was already dying, and even Conservative British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan would later talk of those irreversible “winds of change” begun between the world wars.73 The previous pope had written a long lyrical encyclical on the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, with Jesus and his vicar on earth at the head. Now the Church would in Vatican II change the metaphor and speak of the nonhierarchical “People of God.” It is by our language that we define ourselves. In a world of decentralization and complexity, the “People of God” could quickly become a thousand peoples, and with the introduction of the vernacular in even the sacred canon of the Mass, the Catholic Church would speak in a thousand tongues. At the council, and often under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the meaning of that metaphor “People of God” would be deliberately downplayed. The progressives saw those changes as being responsive to the needs of the faithful. The conservatives saw the changes as leading to a new Tower of Babel. As for John, he issued a papal encyclical reaffirming the centrality of Latin in the life of the Church, although some said he did not mean to deny the use of the vernacular in Mass. Still his immediate successor would deal Latin the greatest blow imaginable by rendering it essentially obsolete in the sacred liturgy of the Church. Which was the real Pope John? When John spoke of his agenda for updating the Church, he enumerated three great projects: a synod for the Roman diocese, the council, and a reform of canon law. The synod was to be a sort of dress rehearsal for the larger and more complex council. As noted, the conservative clergy showed little desire or inclination to engage in major changes in that diocese, even at the instigation of the bishop of Rome himself. Institutions without the danger of peril hanging over them rarely reform themselves democratically. Even John’s pastoral intention to minister in a sensitive way to priests who had left the Church was generally ignored by the hierarchy. Although he was an admirer of reforming bishops, past and present, his experiences in the synods in Venice and in Rome should have taught him a lesson about the limits of rejuvenation from the bottom up. And as for the reform of canon law, that was only completed by John Paul II on January 25, 1983, twenty-two years to the day of John XXIII’s original announcement. On October 11, 1962, John XXIII called the twenty-first General or Ecumenical Council together, an occurrence that some would later say was the most significant religious event since the Protestant Reformation. There in St. Peter’s Basilica above the remains of the first pope, and surrounded by Bernini’s magnificent baldacchino, the council began. Over 2,600 bishops attended, a marked increase in the number of participants from Vatican I where only 737 were in attendance. The pope entered the Basilica of Saint Peter’s, abandoning the sedia gestatoria (the portable elevated chair), which he disliked, saying it made him seasick, and walked up the main aisle, looking to the right at the impressive statute of his first predecessor, Peter the Apostle. He had decided to use a less pretentious throne to sit on, and in his opening address John emphasized the pasto-

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ral role of the council. The Mass was said in Latin with some parts in Greek. The pope’s sermon which lasted for thirty-seven eventful minutes, struck a strong and reforming note. He called history “the great teacher of life,” and criticized the “prophets of doom [misfortune]” who “are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.” John then went on to say that the Church “brings herself up to date where required,” so as to spread her message to “all men throughout the world.” While the Church never departs from the patrimony of truth, she has to look to “new conditions and new forces of life introduced into the modern world, which have opened up new avenues to the Catholic apostolate.”74 He also pushed aside the notion that Vatican II should continue the judgmental and defensive tone of Vatican I. John argued that the fundamental doctrines of the Church were well known and that focusing on that approach was not necessary. He calmly observed “the substance of the ancient doctrine of the depositum fidei is one thing; the way in which it is expressed is another.” Pope John observed that the world expected a leap forward in doctrinal insight and the education of conscience, and concluded that “errors often vanish as swiftly as they arise, like mist before the sun.” He also observed “nowadays, the bride of Christ [the Church] prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching, rather than by condemnation.” The Church is thus the “loving Mother of all.” He then spoke of Christian unity, rather than of the need for outsiders to “turn to Rome.” During the Mass, the Sistine Choir sang Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, and the cardinals then paid their homage or obeisance to the pope. Canon law required that Pope John read out the oath of Pius IV from 1564 with its declaration that “I confess and hold the Catholic faith” and that “outside of which no one can be saved.” In 1887, Pius IX added a reference to “the primacy and infallible magisterium of the Roman Pontiff”—sentiments that did not exactly set the tone that Pope John had presented that day. Appropriately the council opened with the question: “Ecclesia, quid dicis de te ipsa”—“Church, what dost thou say for thyself?” After the first day of the council was over on October 11, 1962, John appeared before a crowd of five hundred thousand people, mainly Catholic youth who were carrying torches that evening. There he called out from his window, “Dear children, dear children I hear your voices . . . . My voice is an isolated one but it echoes the voice of the whole world . . . now go home and give your little children a kiss—tell them it is from Pope John.”75 In the days following, the pope then met with the diplomatic corps, the press, and with observer-delegates on the general themes of his council. His aides referred to “the brethren in Christ” or non-Catholic Christians. To the amazement of the council and others, the two delegates who had arrived from Moscow expressed their “unaffected friendship” for the pope. Then the council began. Despite the offer from Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston to pay for a simultaneous translation system, the Vatican refused, and so

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the proceedings of the entire council were conducted in Latin. In preparation for the council’s deliberations, a survey had been done of the Church’s leaders to ascertain the topics to be covered. Over 9,300 proposals had resulted, and they were submitted to the preparatory commissions appointed by the pope. In June 1960, over seventy documents or schema were produced. In the months that followed, the council’s major deliberations revolved around the liturgy, the sources of revelation, the importance and role of mass communications, Christian unity, and the nature of the Church itself.

The Curial Opposition One of the most dramatic events of the council came at the very beginning during the first organizational meeting. Powerful members of the Curia, led by Cardinal Ottaviani, called for the election of sixteen members to each of the ten conciliar commissions, with the pope appointing eight more members to each group. Then in a startling departure, Achille Cardinal Liénart of Lille proposed a delay, and argued that the Church fathers should meet in national and regional caucuses and agree on slates for each of those openings. Cardinal Frings of Cologne immediately seconded the resolution on behalf of other German-speaking cardinals. The applause was overwhelming, and after only fifteen minutes the first business session was adjourned by the president of the council, Cardinal Tisserant. When the Italian hierarchy felt slighted by the results of the voting, John helped to redress the balance of it, mainly by including members of the Curia from corresponding congregations on those commissions. Generally the pope stayed out of the council’s business. The first major debate was on the question of liturgy, and once again the overwhelming majority of the council participants rejected the Curia-prepared draft. Underlining that discussion, though, was the more contentious issue of the powers of the bishops to run their own dioceses and to be seen in a collegial way as the successors of the Apostles.76 Conservative Cardinal Ruffini argued that the draft or schema had to be judged by the precepts of the encyclical Mediator Dei which affirmed the supremacy of the papacy. The implication was to denigrate the national congresses or groups of bishops. Then there was a long discussion on the importance of Latin vis-á-vis the vernacular languages for use in the liturgy. Addressing the council, the Melkite Patriarch of Antioch, Maximos IV Saigh ignored the Latin tongue and spoke in French to the council members. He admonished them that in the Eastern Church every language is liturgical if one glorifies God. Cardinal Tisserant recalled for the council that Hebrew and Greek had been used by the original Christians, and that the Slavic languages and Chinese had already been recognized by the Congregation of Rites as permissible. But for many in the Western Church, Latin was still a powerful sign of unity. Cardinal Siri of Genoa reminded listeners of Pope John’s own encyclical, Veterum

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Sapientia, celebrating the use and study of Latin which had just been recently issued. Some native bishops cited the problems of dealing with endless tribal dialects, although in the end the African bishops overwhelmingly supported the use of the vernacular.77 In the debates Cardinal Spellman spoke out against the giving of Communion under both species, bread and wine, and against concelebration. And Cardinal Ruffini raised questions of hygiene for those drinking from the same cup or chalice. Even Pius XII, though, had approved concelebration, and the practice of receiving communion under both species was already used in the Oriental Rites, said Paul-Émile Cardinal Léger of Montreal. Ottaviani warned, “Are these fathers planning a revolution?” Too many changes would scandalize the faithful. Then he was cut off from going way over the time limit. Infuriated, he boycotted the council for the next two weeks. On November 1, the Feast of All Saints, Pope John preached in Latin and then moved into Italian to praise the Church and some of its traditional reformers. He said that there was “only one art, but a thousand forms.” With that upbeat observation, the council resumed its debates. The pope again generally stayed out of the discussions, but when the elderly Bishop Peter Cule of Yugoslavia pleaded for including St. Joseph in the Canon of the Mass, he was rudely cut off by Cardinal Ruffini. Then the pope unilaterally added such an insertion of St. Joseph’s name three days later, showing that the Canon, which had not changed since 610 A.D. was also alterable.78 The council moved on to a controversial discussion about the sources of revelation which began with a discussion of a schema prepared by Ottaviani’s preparatory theological commission. The issues were fundamentally dogmatic, and went to the heart of the alleged historic differences between conservatives and progressives and even between traditional Catholics and what they considered were the influences of the Protestant Reformation. On November 14, the debate on the revelation draft began. It came down to a simple question: How is the word of God delivered to mankind? Individuals may come to know that there is a God, that He has certain characteristics or attributes, and that by the use of right reason we can arrive at those natural truths. But the dogma is that God has intervened in human affairs and given to us greater knowledge to obtain a deeper, richer faith. The question is simple, the answer is complex and a source of great contention. Since the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church has taught that revelation comes from two sources: the Sacred Scriptures and the traditional testimony of the early Church. The Protestant Reformation was partly fought over the insistence of its leaders that the Bible and the Bible alone is the source of God’s revelation. Thus, it reduced the importance of the Church, the patristic fathers, the medieval theologians, and the magisterium of the pope and the bishops. Cardinal Ottaviani warned against any radical departures and asked for the protection of “safe doctrine.” It is best to accept the scheme prepared by his commission, he argued. But Cardinal Liénart insisted that there were not two sources of revelation, but only one, the word of God. Cardinal Siri brought forth the specter of a

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new expansion of the Modernist heresy if one did support the schema, but opposition to that document mounted. The cardinal from Vienna, Franz König, observed that the schema had nothing to do with the pope’s program at all. Cardinals Suenens, Bea, and Ritter of St. Louis added their agreement to that view. 79 After hours of confusing debate and a controversial parliamentary move by the conservatives, the pope personally intervened. He withdrew the schema from discussion and appointed a special balanced commission to be composed of members from the theological commission and the Secretariat for Christian Unity. Cardinals Bea and Ottaviani were to be co-presidents. In effect, he had thrown his support against the Curia and its drafts.80 At times, the question was raised who was actually running the council. Pope John’s answer was a nonreassuring, “no one.” Candidly the pope explained to a group of Pakistani bishops, “Nobody around here knows how to run an ecumenical council. After all none of us have ever been to one.” Actually the council was supposed to be managed by a council of presidents made up of eight cardinals, but in reality that group rarely met, and the Secretariat for Extraordinary Affairs had the responsibility for oversight, with the Secretary of State Cicognani, as president. More influential were Cardinal Montini and Cardinal Suenens who provided some of the intellectual focus for the council. On October 11, 1962, Montini proved to be remarkably prescient in his prediction of how the council would proceed. He laid out a plan that would eventually be followed: the council should focus on the nature of the Church itself; it should place great emphasis on the Church’s relationship to the outside world; the council should acknowledge papal infallibility and primacy, but go on to discuss collegiality and the important role of the bishops; it should also acknowledge the legitimate roles of the hierarchy, the clergy, and the people. Its attention should be directed in the second session to the mission of the Church. The third session should emphasize the relationship between the Church and the outside world: non-Catholic Christians, civil society, culture and the arts, the world of work, and relationships with the Church’s traditional enemies. Throughout it all, Pope John remained somewhat detached. On November 19, he told the French bishops that he was like the biblical patriarch Jacob, who was simply watched his sons quarreling. “Yes, there is an argument going on. That’s all right. It must happen. But it should be done in a brotherly spirit. It will all work out. I, I am optimistic.” To the conservatives who complained about the actions of the progressives, Pope John philosophically recalled that the disputes were even worse at the Council of Trent. His view of the acrimony was simply, “We are not friars singing in a choir.” When the controversies about the Roman rite and Latin ensued, the pope not too subtly expressed his admiration for the different Ambrosian rite used in Milan.81 The council then moved on to a discussion of the nature of the Church itself. On the fourth day of debate, December 4, Cardinal Suenens again argued for redrafting the schema by asking for a reconceptualization of the entire work of the council. He argued that more than seventy documents needed to be pulled together, apparently speaking with the encouragement of the pope. By the end of

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November, John was reportedly dying, and he was encouraging a speed-up in the work of those drafting the schemas between the sessions. The second session was scheduled on September 8, 1963, and a new coordinating commission was instructed to reduce the drafts to under twenty. The council also dealt with a statement on the role of the communications media and also the question of unity with the Eastern Orthodox churches. The first issue was one on which it was comparatively easy to reach consensus. There was much criticism, however, that the tone in the draft schema on the latter issue was once again that the Orthodox churches should simply “return to the true fold” of Christ, that is, the Roman Catholic Church. The patriarch of Antioch argued that the text before the council would insult the Orthodox churches, and also that one had to realize the unique history and differences of the Oriental Catholic churches vis-à-vis the Latin church. The patriarch vicar from Egypt, Monsignor Elias Zoghby, speaking in French, explained the differences between eastern and western Catholics. He noted not only differences in liturgy and emphases, but also differences in theology, but not necessarily dogma. He also cited the long history of autonomy and decentralization that characterized that branch of Catholicism. Archbishop Asrate Mariam Yemmeru of Abbas Abba, Ethiopia, reminded his listeners that their rite, said in Gheez or classical Ethiopian, dated back to the fourth century and included a continuing dialogue between the celebrant and the faithful. The schema ended up being combined with another decree on ecumenism prepared by Bea’s commission. In effect, the initial draft was defeated. Cardinal Ruffini had defended the schema in its entirety, but Cardinal König noted that there was no mention of freedom of conscience. Cardinal Ritter also re-emphasized the need for a clear statement on the relations of church and state and freedom of conscience as well. The most remarkable speech was made by Bishop Emile-Joseph de Smedt of Bruges who to rising applause, denounced the Catholic Church’s proclivities toward triumphalism, clericalism, and juridicism. He argued that the schema on the Church conveyed too much the impression of an institution arrayed in battle garb, one that was a pyramid with the people on the bottom, and characterized by an excessive legalistic attitude. 82 Meanwhile, L’Osservatore Romano noted increasing anti-conciliar activities, especially among right-wing groups in Italy and France. There were attacks on the so-called Modernist tendencies that Roncalli allegedly exhibited when he was a young priest, the supposed pro-Communist tilt of the Vatican’s foreign policy, and the constant assaults on the Curia government. At the council, the influential Cardinal Montini urged the fathers to state the mind and will of Christ by defending collegiality and by being more ecumenical. He also became increasingly critical of the Curia, from whence he himself came, and of the delay in the council’s work. Observers thought that he was speaking on behalf of the pontiff. Soon it would be Montini who would be setting the agenda and controlling the tempo of the council.

Good Pope John

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Since late September 1962, Pope John had been aware of his precarious physical condition. Resigned and trusting in God as always, the pontiff concluded, “At least I have launched the big ship—others will have to bring it to port.” On December 8, a recuperating Pope John seemed well enough as he ended the first session. When he was asked what he wished to do after the council ended, he wistfully replied, “Spend a day tilling the fields with my brothers.” Then for the next six months, he focused on foreign policy questions, especially the Vatican’s relations with the Communist bloc and his call for world peace, enumerated best in his encyclical Pacem in Terris. He realized that his life was ending, and he seemed to plead with himself that he wished to die as a priest and as a pope, setting once again an example of the redemptive value of suffering. The Vatican observer Malachi Martin stated that at the end of his life Pope John realized what a terrible mistake the council was and he regretted it. If that is so, that record has never been clearly established.83 Stomach cancer can be a painful end, and Pope John simply remarked, “The first duty of a pope is to pray and suffer.” He observed the irony of it all though: “Out there the world exalts me, while here the Lord rivets me to this bed.” Gustavo Cardinal Testa, an old friend of Roncalli’s, was consoled by the pope, “Dear Don Gustavo, we have to face things as they are. I have had a long life and served the Church and left some sort of mark on history. By God’s grace, I haven’t behaved badly.”84 On June 3, he died surrounded by his family and Vatican officials. And yes at his death, they tapped his brow to certify the end. There is no question that Pope John XXIII was one of the most popular popes in modern times, one respected and loved both outside as well as inside his church. He was to them the good Pope John, the symbol of decency and good humor. As he once said, “All the world is my family.” In his life, he was generally nonjudgmental, but not the simple fool of God that some people thought. His personal assistant, Monsignor Loris Capovilla, once observed, “Pope John was a father to everyone, but a friend to no one.” 85 But Pope John was also not the great manipulative leader, or the shrewd peasant visionary that some of his admirers seemed to herald after his death. As a good Catholic and as a good priest, he believed in the Church and in the moving directions of the Holy Spirit. The Council of Bishops was the successor to the Council of the Apostles, and he did not feel that he had to intervene daily in its deliberations. In some ways, he seemed to believe that the very idea of a council, its introduction and its opening, was his contribution. He was never a great theologian preoccupied by dogma. He knew what he believed in and was comfortable with it. Pope John thought, however, the Catholic Church had to moderniz in the ways it expressed its message. He said to one ambassador, “We must shake off the imperial dust that has accumulated on the throne of Peter since Constantine,” and he kept on referring to the need for a “new Pentecost.” 86 He was like most revolutionaries a traditionalist at heart. It was this pope also who so celebrated Latin, just before his successor nearly eviscerated it. It was this pope who was comfortable with the various drafts, until his council ripped

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them to pieces. Still he set the tone of openness, of aggiornamento that emboldened the bishops who, for reasons of pastoral concern and also probably plain old-fashioned revenge, tried to humble the once arrogant Roman Curia. As noted, Cardinal Siri of Genoa once called John’s papacy the most disastrous since the corrupt Renaissance popes five hundred years ago, although he later recanted. The post-Vatican II Church with its modern bishops and priests has come to accept the assumptions and the practices of the council. It is over, and one must live with its consequences, they seemed to be saying. The majority opinion, however, is positive toward the council and its legacy and its patron, John XXIII. The fussy, arrogant Curia was routed. Good for the Vatican fathers, the historians and newspaper reporters of the time seemed to say! But in reflection, some of what the traditionalists warned against came about. The Roman Catholic Church had been an authoritarian institution with a sense of unity, a well recognized ritual, and a clear line of boundaries. Its orthodoxy, especially since the Council of Trent, had been rigid, but effectively passed on to each generation, socializing people in the ways of Holy Mother Church. 87 Vatican II and the more radical forces that it unleashed caused considerable damage to that unity and continuity. Reforms of ongoing institutions are extremely difficult, and reformers inevitably have problems with providing balanced leadership that does not open the floodgates of extreme behavior. People do not revolt usually against conservative or even authoritarian governments as much as they do under the easy mantle of change. Thus reform is so dangerous to institutions and to leaders who believe that they can manage it. But John would not know of those problems. He lived and died an optimist, and never had to bear the consequences of the revolution that he began. Thus he will be forever, “Good Pope John.”

Notes 1. Paul Hoffman, O Vatican!: A Slightly Wicked View of the Holy See (New York: Congdon & Weed, 1984), 19–27; Carlo Falconi, The Popes of the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 304–7; Barrett McGurn, A Reporter Looks at the Vatican (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962). 2. Francis J. Weber, “Pope Pius XII and the Vatican Council,” American Benedictine Review 21, no. 3 (1970), 421–24; William A Purdy, The Church on the Move: The Characters and Policies of Pius XII and John XXIII (New York: John Day Co., 1966). 3. Peter Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, the First Modern Pope (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), chap. 18. 4. Vittorio Gorresio, The New Mission of Pope John XXIII (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1970), 51. Roncalli was actually baptized Giuseppe Angelo; see Alden Hatch, A Man Called John; The Life of Pope John XXIII (New York:

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Hawthorn Books, 1963), 25. The only other patriarchs in the West at that time were the bishop of Rome and the bishop of Lisbon. 5. Pope John XXIII, Journal of a Soul (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965); Louis Michaels, The Stories of Pope John: His Anecdotes and Legends (Springfield, Ill.: Templegate Publishers, 1964), 15. 6. Richard James Cushing, Call Me John (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1963), passim; Zsolt Aradi, Pope John XXIII, an Authoritative Biography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959). 7. Lawrence Elliott, I Will Be Called John: A Biography of Pope John XXIII (New York: E. Dutton, 1973), 15. 8. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 16; Meriol Trevor, Pope John (New York: Doubleday, 1967), chap. 1. 9. Cushing, Call Me John, 82; Zsolt Aradi, John XXIII, Pope of the Council (London: Burns & Oates, 1961), 4; Pope John XXIII, Pope John XXIII: Letters to His Family (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 4; Ernesto Balducci, John, “The Transitional Pope” (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965). 10. Hatch, A Man Called John, 47; Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 21; Giacomo Lercaro and Gabriele De Rosa, John XXIII: Simpleton or Saint? (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1965), pt. 2. 11. Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII, Shepherd of the Modern World (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985), 54. 12. Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1968), 68; E. E. Y. Hales, Pope John and His Revolution (London: Catholic Book Club, 1965), pt. 1; Giancarlo Zizola, The Utopia of Pope John XXIII (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1978). 13. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 92. 14. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 63–78. 15. Hatch, A Man Called John, 67; Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 83. 16. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 113–15. 17. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 96. 18. Cushing, Call Me John, 41. 19. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 121–29; Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 106. 20. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 101–3. 21. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 115; Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 138–40. 22. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 133–36; Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 104. 23. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 143; Leone Algisi, John the Twenty-third (London: Catholic Book Club, 1963), chap. 6. 24. Cushing, Call Me John, 43; Gorresio, New Mission, 72. 25. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 149–52. 26. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 156. 27. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 169. 28. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 188. 29. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 195. On the Jews and the Good Friday prayer, see Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 284. 30. Hatch, A Man Called John, 126; Pope John XXIII, Mission to France:

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1944–1953 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1966). 31. Cushing, Call Me John, 48; Paul Johnson, Pope John XXIII (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), passim; Hales, Pope John and the Revolution, 18 claims that the demand was for the removal of thirty-three bishops. 32. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 199; Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 218. 33. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 227; Algisi, John Twenty-third, chap. 8–10. 34. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 238; Algisi, John Twenty-third, chap. 11. 35. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 249. 36. Hatch, A Man Called John, 148. 37. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 265. 38. Bernard R. Bonnot, Pope John XXIII, An Astute, Pastoral Leader (Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House, 1979), 6. 39. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 243. 40. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 286. A very different and more positive view of Cossa is presented in Nicola Fusco, John Is His Name; A Survey of the Popes by That Name (New York: Society of St. Paul, 1959), 11. 41. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 291; Algisi, John Twenty-third, chap. 13. 42. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 293. 43. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 294–300; Michaels, Stories of Pope John, 61. 44. Cushing, Call Me John, 58; Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 272; Ernesto Balducci, John “the Transitional Pope” (New York: McGraw Hill, 1965), 24; Michaels, Stories of Pope John, 34. 45. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 310–24; Gorresio, The New Mission, chap. 10. 46. Paul I. Murphy, La Popessa (New York: Warner Books, 1983), 304. 47. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 326–30. 48. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 268. 49. Murphy, La Popessa, 229; Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 188. 50. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 339–40. 51. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 348. 52. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 350. 53. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 361–68; Hales, Pope John and His Revolution, pt. 4. 54. Johnson, Pope John, 178–79. 55. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 427–28; Gorresio, The New Mission, chap. 8. 56. Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 276. 57. Norman Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate: John F. Kennedy, Pope John, Nikita Khrushchev (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), passim; Roland Flamini, Pope, Premier, President: The Cold War Summit That Never Was (New York: MacMillan, 1980); Michael J. Cimerola, “The Vatican and the Soviet Union: The Impact of Pope John,” (M.A. Thesis, George Washington University, 1976). 58. Cushing, Call Me John, 65; The Papal Encyclical 1958–1961, comp.

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Claudia Carlen (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath Publishing Co., 1981), 107–29; The Encyclicals and Other Messages of John XXIII (Washington, D.C.: TPS Press, 1964). 59. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 229; Gorresio, The New Mission, 135. 60. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 230; Gorresio, The New Mission, chap. 7. 61. Donald R. Campion and Eugene K. Culhane, eds., Mater et Magistra (New York: The American Press, 1961); Peter Rega, John XXIII and the Unity of Man (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1966); John F. Cronin, The Social Teaching of Pope John XXIII (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1963); Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 389, 378; Hales, Pope John and His Revolution, pt. 2. 62. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 368. 63. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 270. 64. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 370–71. 65. Hans Küng, The Council, Reform and Reunion (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961) published originally as Konzil und Wiedervereingung. Also see his later The Council in Action (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963); and Robert B. Kaiser, Pope, Council, and World: The Story of Vatican II (London: Burns and Oates, 1963). 66. Gorresio, The New Mission, chap. 9, 383–84; Augustin Bea, The Unity of Christians (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963), chap. 5 and his Ecumenism in Focus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1969). 67. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 411–12. 68. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 414. 69. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 416. 70. Gorresio, The New Mission, 92–93. 71. Hales, Pope John and His Revolution, 97. 72. George Bull, Vatican Politics at the Second Vatican Council 1962 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), chap. 1–2; Melissa J. Wilde, Vatican II A Sociological Analysis of Religious Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 73. Harold Macmillan, Winds of Change, 1914–1939 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). 74. The following section on the first session of Vatican II relies heavily on Xavier Rynne, Letters from Vatican City: Vatican II, First Session, Background and Debates (New York: Farrar, Straus & Co., 1963). This section draws on 70– 71. Also: Hales, Pope John and His Revolution, pt. 3; Henri Fesquet, The Drama of Vatican II: The Ecumenical Council, June, 1962–December, 1965 (New York: Random House, 1967), 3–102; Bernard Häring, The Johannine Council, Witness to Destiny (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963); Carlo Falconi, Pope John and the Ecumenical Council: A Diary of the Second Vatican Council, September–December 1962 (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1964); Antoine Wenger, Vatican II: Volume I: The First Session (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1966). 75. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 435.

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76. Rynne, Letters, 87–97. 77. Rynne, Letters, 100–109. 78. Rynne, Letters, 114–29. On the Canon of the Mass, see Gorresio, The New Mission, 287. 79. Rynne, Letters, 141–42. 80. Bonnot, Pope John XXIII, 255. 81. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 450–52; Elliott, I Will Be Called John, 281; Hatch, A Man Named John, 247. 82. Rynne, Letters, 201–18. 83. Michaels, Stories of Pope John, 40; Richard McBrien, ed., The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 710. 84. Hebblethwaite, Pope John, 448. 85. Gorresio, The New Mission, 91; Howard Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 1995), chap. 9; Hales, Pope John and His Revolution, 126; Eugene C. Bianchi, John XXIII and American Protestants (Washington, D.C.: Corpus Books, 1968), chap. 6; a more human picture is presented in Curtis Bill Pepper, An Artist and the Pope (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1968); Loris Capovilla, The Heart and Mind of John XXIII : His Secretary’s Intimate Recollection (New York: Hawthorn, 1964); Michaels, The Stories of Pope John XXIII, passim. 86. Falconi, Popes from the Twentieth Century, 364. 87. Lercaro and De Rosa, John XXIII: Simpleton or Saint, pt. 1 deals with Roncalli in historical perspective. A critical judgment of the Council as a majestic gamble that failed is Malachi Martin, Three Popes and the Cardinal (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972).

Chapter 25

Paul VI: The Perils of Aggiornamento Even before the death of Pope John, the name of Giovanni Battista Montini was raised as a possible successor. The ailing pontiff philosophically said to his friends, “I am here to prepare the place for Montini.” At the end of his life, he observed, “Providence has most worthy priests all ready to take my place. The first of them is Montini.” The person he was so deferential toward became the first cardinal he created—the archbishop of the important industrial city of Milan, an experienced Curial bureaucrat, and a major figure in the Vatican for over three decades. As with any public figure, reservations had been raised over the years about Montini’s performance. Even John XXIII jokingly once referred to his longtime friend as the Hamlet-like bishop (“Amletico”), while Curia conservatives, it was said, had so feared him that they conspired to get his patron, Pius XII, to ship him off to Milan without the traditional recognition of a cardinal’s hat.1 As for Montini himself, he enjoyed the company of Pope John, but he deeply revered the regal and dignified Pius XII. As has been seen, Montini had serious concerns about calling a Church council in the first place, but he soon became an articulate defender of it, although Pope John may have told him to be more reserved in his comments so as to protect his future candidacy as pope. It was to fall to Montini to finish up the council, to direct it, to contain its consequences, and finally to celebrate its confusing legacy.2

The Supreme Curialist He was called “the but Pope”—a man of hesitations, of wavering, of ambiguity. Indeed his personality was rather different from his immediate predecessor. Their attitudes toward life and people are somewhat summarized in two striking anecdotes. Like the saints and hermits of old, Montini at times wore a hair shirt with metal points to mortify his flesh. Pope John, on the other hand, would phone the Vatican grocer telling him where to get the best parmesan cheese in 475

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Reggio Emilia or the finest cornmeal for polenta. The rather old-fashioned Roncalli was immediately celebrated as a reformer. The quiet, gentle, and slightly built Montini was in many ways a liberal intellectual who ended up satisfying neither the archconservatives nor the progressives, in part because he had components of both in his complex spiritual character.3 Giovanni Battista Montini was born on September 26, 1897, in the family villa at Concesio, a small suburb of Brescia in northern Italy. His father, Giorgio, was the managing editor of a militant Catholic daily, Il Cittadino di Brescia, and had interests in land, banking, and publishing enterprises. Giorgio was committed to spreading the tenets of Pope Leo XIII’s social encyclical Rerum Novarum and was involved in organizing Catholic congresses to deal with questions of justice and fairness. With Don Luigi Sturzo, he founded the Partito Populari Italiano (the Italian Popular Party), and he was named the president of the Catholic Electoral Union by Pope Benedict XV. Later Giorgio became one of the first Catholics allowed by the Holy See to run for public office when that pontiff loosened up the Church’s restrictions on Catholic participation in the political life of Italy. Giorgio was elected to Parliament three times, in 1919, 1922, and 1924, and became an articulate opponent of the new Fascist enthusiasms. As a member of the Aventine faction, he boycotted the Mussolini-controlled Chamber of Deputies after the murder of Fascist opponent Giacomo Matteotti. Giorgio Montini’s wife, Giudetta, also came from a wealthy family and during their marriage was involved in charitable causes and religious activities. Their second son, Giovanni, was educated at first by the Jesuits and later by the Fathers of the Oratory. In poor health, he was unable to join the military and for a while was not even permitted to enter the seminary. But in 1920 he was ordained a priest and went to Rome to study at the Gregorian University, Sapienza University of Rome, and the famed Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics. Montini spent several months in 1923 in Poland, but was severely affected by the cold weather and was reassigned to Rome. He was soon transferred to the Federation of Italian Catholic Students and was appointed their ecclesiastical assistant—a sort of chaplain. Soon he was coming into contact with men who would be a part of his life on into his papacy: most especially Giuseppe Pizzardo and Amleto Cicognani. Montini was quickly put on the firing line in the battle being waged against Catholic youth groups by the brutal Fascist organizations; in their cause he proved himself to be both discreet and courageous. 4 He was also increasingly involved with the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, and in 1937 he was named the substitute Secretary of State for Ordinary Affairs. His counterpart was the blunt talking Monsignor Dominico Tardini, who was the equivalent for Extraordinary Affairs and who became Pope John XXIII’s secretary of state. In 1944, Cardinal Maglione died and Pius refused to appoint a new secretary, thus running the powerful office himself with increasing responsibilities for both Montini and Tardini. The pontiff candidly remarked that he wanted not collaborators, but agents to carry out his policies. Montini was not only a personal assistant to the aloof pontiff, but he was al-

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so involved in high-level diplomacy and heroic efforts to assist prisoners of war, refugees, and missing persons. He supervised many of the Vatican’s far-flung relief efforts, was close to the emerging Christian Democrat party, and struck up a friendship with the genial Archbishop Angelo Roncalli. In 1951 he visited the United States, met General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Dr. Tom Dooley at a commencement ceremony at Notre Dame University, and became well-known among some segments of the hierarchy in that emerging superpower. 5 Then in 1954, after the pope was recovering from a nearly fatal illness, the conservative Vatican mandarins—Cardinals Pizzardo and Micara, and Monsignors Tardini, Ottaviani, and Ruffini—engineered Montini’s transfer to Milan. Just as the conservatives had a generation before forced Della Chiesa out of the Vatican to the see of Genoa, it was speculated that now other conservatives conspired to transfer Montini to Milan. And once again, the exiled victim was denied the cardinal’s hat. Exactly why Montini was forced out remains unclear. Some said that Pius himself had reservations about his political attitudes. One lame excuse was that he had not notified the pope of a resignation as promptly as he should have. More likely, the conservatives or the pope himself was unhappy with Montini’s support of the Christian Democrat prime minister Alcide de Gasperi and of Don Luigi Sturzo, who both wished to curtail the Vatican’s influence in Italian politics at that time.6 In any case, a shocked and deeply depressed Montini packed to leave the city, saying that he felt like an orphan. Before he departed, he asked Pius what he should do in Milan. The pontiff’s reply was simple, “Preserve the deposit [of the faith].” Pius, later recovering from a serious illness, finally decided to deliver by radio a lavish tribute praising Montini to the people of his new see. That appointment marked the first time in six hundred years that the archbishop of Milan had not been named a cardinal. It has been even speculated that Pacelli’s relations had Montini denied a red hat because of his knowledge of certain unpleasant facts that he discovered about their activities. In any case, Montini left hurt and despondent, and later observed, “Milan appeared to me like an immense hostile forest.” Roncalli, then a cardinal himself in Venice, tried to console his friend by observing that one could fall out of favor with the Curia and still see one’s career survive.7 For seven years Montini worked feverishly to reassert the Church’s influence in that industrial and largely Marxist city, saying Masses in factories and industrial plants, visiting as many as thirty churches in a day, and holding throughout the region conferences that addressed the relationships of the Catholic Church and the world’s problems. Pius XI once said that being archbishop of Milan was a tougher job than being pope, and Montini surely was as active as Ratti had been in that same see. There was some talk of Montini as a possible successor to Pius XII, and he was called by some at the conclave in 1958 “the great absent one.” But the custom of choosing from the College of Cardinals was too strong, as Roncalli himself quickly surmised; indeed the last person elected pope who was not a cardinal was Urban VI in 1378. The new Pope John, refusing to see himself as a transitional figure, took control easily, and then

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quickly named more cardinals than expected. On the top of his list was Montini, and so too were some of the conservatives who had so distrusted him in the past. At the first session of the council, Montini spoke only twice, but he published a series of newspaper columns for the Milanese faithful that strongly criticized the conservatives in the Curia. As has been seen, he and Belgian Cardinal Suenens provided some of the overall conceptual framework that turned a vague idea into an operational imperative. There is no question that Montini now seemed to accept John’s vision, and the ailing pontiff’s initial reservations about him vanished.8 Before his death, Pope John candidly observed, “I don’t have very long to live. I must therefore be very careful in everything I do to stop the next conclave being a conclave ‘against me,’ because then it might destroy the things that I have not been able to achieve.” When that conclave met to choose his successor, some eighty-one members were eligible to vote, with a much larger non-Curial and non-Italian group of cardinals than ever before. 9

Inheriting the Progressive Legacy Montini was the favorite of most of the progressives, and stayed in Milan until forty-eight hours before the conclave began. While he was discreet, major liberal cardinals led by Liénart, Frings, Suenens, König, Léger, and Alfrink had met and decided to support Montini, although other names were raised. The choice before the College of Cardinals was clear: would it choose to continue the council in the spirit of Pope John, or move to end it as quickly as possible? Before the cardinals were sequestered, the introductory homily was given by Monsignor Amleto Tondini, who rather inappropriately attacked the recently deceased Pope John. He criticized his simple optimism and the enthusiastic applause of the masses, and ripped into the Church’s traditional foes: scientism, materialism, and moral relativism. It would be better, he argued, if the council let questions “mature” for some time—the traditional Curia prescription for inaction.10 It was a clear challenge not only to the memory of Pope John, but also to the candidacy of Montini and his allies. The cardinal from Milan stayed stoically quiet, his eyes closed, and his lips pursed. It was the haunting voice of the worse sentiments of the Curia that he and others were hearing. The conservatives, led by Siri and Ottaviani, had decided on Ildebrando Cardinal Antoniutti, prefect of the Congregation of Religion as their candidate. The only way they could prevail and prevent Montini from getting the two-thirds majority necessary to be pope was to drag out the balloting and force a compromise candidate on a deadlocked conclave. Under the rules of the Church then in force there were three ways a pope could be chosen. He could be elected by the College of Cardinals; he could be selected by a small committee of cardinals chosen for that purpose, or a candi-

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date could be proclaimed by acclamation or “inspiration.” It was rumored that Cardinal Cushing was inspired to make such a motion, but to no avail and the voting proceeded. The last pope elected by acclamation was Gregory XV in 1621, and it seemed to many to be an unlikely precedent for more democratic times. On February 24, 1996, Pope John Paul II ended the election of the pope by any other method except election by the college. 11 At first, the conservatives’ strategy proved successful as Montini received only about thirty votes and Antoniutti around twenty. Lercaro, the real favorite of some of the progressives, also received around twenty votes. Another compromise candidate from the Curial ranks, Francesco Roberti, head of the Apostolic Signatura, was waiting in the wings and being mentioned as an alternative. Lercaro was more of a radical on liturgical reform and on the need to address the plight of the poor. To the conservative Curia, he was thus more to be feared than Montini, the Vatican bureaucrat that they knew and had worked with over the years. The second and third ballots were also inconclusive, and then in open violation of the conclave’s rules, Gustavo Cardinal Testa, an old friend of Pope John, blurted out loud for all to hear, that the politicking and maneuvering should stop for the good of the Church and that the front runner should be chosen. Although he himself had doubts about Montini’s fortitude, Testa probably helped to break the deadlock, and on the sixth ballot Montini was elected. Rumors soon circulated that he had promised to keep Amleto Cicognani as secretary of state so as to garner the votes of conservatives. That explicit deal probably never happened. Indeed it was the progressive leader Cardinal Suenens, who by persuading some Lercaro supporters to come around to Montini, had provided the support necessary to conclude the balloting. Testa was later to observe that “hair raising things” happened in the conclave, but said that he was not at liberty to disclose them without the approval of the pope.12 Montini, who over the years had more experience as a staff person than as a line administrator, had some serious reservations about his own candidacy. Years later after the election he was to say that he was chosen to be pope not because of his aptitude for the position, or because he could best govern the Church during a time of turmoil, but rather because he could suffer and thus make it clear that it was the Lord and no one else who guides and saves the Church. He once defensively remarked to Lercaro that the latter should have been elected pope, and as noted he meekly deferred to the conservatives by keeping Cicognani on as secretary of state, passing over Suenens at their insistence. To the surprise of all, however, he took the name Paul to symbolize that he was to be an apostle to the modern world. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, an English newspaper, The Tablet, printed his article at this time, written while he was still a cardinal, defending Pius XII of charges that he had been silent during the Holocaust. Montini was to be ever loyal to that memory, even repeating his defense in the heart of Jerusalem in front of Jewish audiences. Unlike his modern predecessors, Paul VI was highly conscious of the limits of papal authority and of the need to build a consensus for what turned out to be

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fairly radical changes recommended in a very short period of time by a council that was given to windy discourses, poorly written statements, and periodic bouts of disorganization. For his own purposes, Pope John had wanted the council to be called quickly, but his agenda was often unclear. In fact, he seemed content at times just to have had the distinction of calling a Church council together, and he initially accepted the conservative Curial drafts. In fact, of the thirty-six cardinals who could be classified as conservative in the council, twenty-one had been raised to that rank by Pope John. When it was suggested that the Church buy new audio equipment for the council, the pope insisted that it could be rented for the short duration that he expected it would take. Still his openness to the world and his generally nonjudgmental character led a very traditional pope into the ranks of the reformers. Indeed in many ways he created those very ranks. He became, in the words of the Italian journalist Carlo Falconi, the first “anti-pope.”13 The first session ended with some confusion and disappointment for both conservatives and progressives alike. Later at the papal conclave some twentytwo to twenty-five cardinals declined to vote for Montini, even when the outcome was clear. Mostly Italian and mainly in the service of the Curia, they were the permanent civil service that was in virtual opposition to the very council that Montini swore he would uphold. The second session would thus be even more difficult than the first. Paul immediately cleared the air, and boldly announced his commitment to the agenda of Pope John’s council. He was aware of his reputation for indecisiveness, but he forthrightly remarked in private that he was both more liberal than John was, which was true, that he knew exactly what he was doing, and that he was going to do it at his own pace. To the consternation of the progressives, Paul bent over backwards to accommodate the Curia and the conservatives, allowing them to recite over and over again their catalog of horrors at these new initiatives. In part he was patient in order to build a consensus and prevent a wholesale schism as had happened after many other church councils. But in part, he later on shared some of their reservations, especially with the periti (experts or theologians), who were embracing more radical proposals than Pope John or even the Fathers in the first session had imagined.14 Some innovations struck at the very core of the Church’s authority, while others challenged even the established dogmas of the Catholic Church. Paul was an apostle to the modern world, and he was a true progressive reformer, but he was also the guardian of the magisterium and the “deposit of the faith.” His most authoritative biographer, Peter Hebblethwaite, has called Paul “the first modern Pope,” characterizing him as a discerning person who sought to understand the signs of his times. He was knowledgeable not only about traditional theology and Thomism, but also about Fascism, Nazism, Communism, the Third World, feminism, ecology, and the disarmament and peace movements. It is hard to imagine it, but in his spare time he enjoyed listening to the rock musical, Jesus Christ Superstar.

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Paul insisted on encouraging dialogue—even with those inside and outside the Church who were his bitterest critics. When one dissident theologian, Karl Rahner, remarked sardonically that he had once been forbidden by the Holy Office to write about concelebration and now Paul himself was concelebrating the Mass, the pope simply smiled and enigmatically responded, “Yes there is a time for laughter and a time for weeping.” * During his tenure in office, he stubbornly protected priestly celibacy and yet opened the Church up more than ever to talented women in other ministries. His successor, Karol Wojtyla or John Paul II, whose career he helped to advance, reacted against both John’s and Paul’s legacies in 1985. The Extraordinary Synod in that year abandoned the language of “the People of God,” and resurrected the older pessimism of the times so familiar in the pre-Johnniane era.15 That was not to be Paul’s way.

The Second Session To the surprise of nearly every observer, the pontiff set the date for the second session of the Ecumenical Council early on September 29, 1963. In a sign of respect and collegiality toward the bishops, the pope allowed them to wear the mozzetta or the elbow length cape symbolic of their episcopal jurisdiction that is not worn outside the bishop’s own diocese. The bishop of Rome thus reached out to the other successors of the Apostles. Usually a diffident man, Paul was not above crowd-pleasing gestures. Before the session began, he gave the Roman Curia a half day off after his long address to them, and noted that he would grant them a pay raise because of the increased cost of living in that city. He praised the Curia, but acknowledged that since it had not been reorganized since 1908, it may “have grown ponderous with a venerable old age, shown by the disparity between its practices and the needs and usages of modern times.” He added that the Curia needed “to be simplified and decentralized, and to adapt itself to new functions,” and then he concluded his address with charming praise for “this old and ever new Roman Curia.”16 At the opening ceremony on September 29, the pope also abandoned the sedia gestatoria at the doors of the Basilica and walked up the aisle. There, dressed in a bishop’s mitre and not the elegant triple tiara, he greeted the crowds by waving rather than giving a formal blessing. In his address, Paul associated his reign with the council of his predecessor, and called John’s original summons a product of “divine inspiration.” Paul portrayed the council as the logical complement to Vatican I in the nineteenth century with its excessive attention to the primacy of the papacy. He identified four challenges that needed to be addressed in the coming session: the Church must formulate a new awareness of her own nature; the Fathers should *

There has been concelebration in the Latin rite routinely for priestly ordination.

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stress renewal and reform necessary to stripping away the defective aspect; there must be an emphasis on the unity of all Christians; and there should be a dialogue between the Church and the modern world. In a dramatic gesture in the opening meeting, he turned to the observers from the other Christian communities and offered an apology for anything the Catholic Church had done over the centuries to lead to separation. It was an extraordinary overture from the leader of a denomination that had once argued that it contained a monopoly of religious truth and that those outside of its fold could not achieve salvation. Then Paul concluded with a theme that would become increasingly important for the Church in the latter part of this century—he insisted that Catholics must aid “the poor, the oppressed, the suffering.”17 The pontiff had challenged the council Fathers to return to the most difficult task before them—one of self-definition, of reformulating the mission of the oldest institution in the Western world. Although the bishops believed as an article of faith that the council was directed by the Holy Ghost, they had to do its business through committee work. And many times the opaque fuzziness of committee drafts and the ad hominem debates seemed to tax even the legendary inspiration of the Spirit of the Trinity. Added to that normal human failing— committees—was the deliberate strategy of the conservatives to obstruct the workings of the council because of their minority status. It was clear by the second session that the conservative strength was weakening and that the progressives had overwhelming support, adding over 300 of the nearly 2,500 bishops to their ranks since the first session. The conservatives thus attempted to maintain control over the agenda of the council and its committees by appealing to the pontiff for more awareness of fair play and judicious reconsideration of council proposals. The assumption behind their strategy was that the Curia would outlive the council, indeed outlive another pope, and it would restore sanity to the Church if it did what it did best—delay. Most critical then were the deliberations on the nature of the Church, the schema titled De Ecclesia. Debate began to focus on two key issues: the collegiality of the bishops and the revival of the deaconate. On behalf of the Theological Commission, its president, the conservative Cardinal Ottaviani warned the council that the deposit of faith must not only be guarded, it must also be presented to all. But the methods of presentation were the issue. An initial show of support for the schema was overwhelmingly positive with 2,231 favorable votes of 2,301 votes possible. But that balloting was misleading. For what emerged was a long, tedious, and inconclusive debate that lasted for the first five weeks and did not seem headed to closure. In disgust, one American Cardinal, Richard Cushing of Boston, simply went home.18 Half of the session was over, and there still was not a full agreement on what the Church was in the eyes of its own Fathers. In addition, unlike the previous one, the session was totally open to the press. The world could see the disagreements within the Catholic Church. The world could also see that the stereotype of a monolithic hierarchy and docile clergy was false. The bishops were united in their faith, but they knew the Church and its mission through dif-

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ferent perceptions of their own cultures and their own life experiences. The Armenian Patriarch Ignace Pierre XVI Batanian wanted more of a discussion of the universal priesthood of the faithful, the authority of the hierarchy over the laity, and the need for greater spirituality. Archbishop Ermenegildo Florit of Florence criticized the excessive theological aspects of the document; African Cardinal Laurean Rugambwa wanted a longer discussion of evangelization and the importance of missions; the Exarch for the Ukrainians in Canada, Archbishop Maxim Hermaniuk, asked for a greater explanation of the collegiality of bishops. And on it went. The lay auditors, invited by the pope, added a note of gratitude, however, when they expressed their thanks for the invitation to be observers. Before and during the second session, Paul had begun a series of modulated speeches aimed at building specific support for his way of doing things. On September 12, he had addressed a formal letter to Cardinal Tisserant, Dean of the College of Cardinals, emphasizing the papal role as the apex of the Vatican hierarchy; on September 14, he addressed a letter and an exhortation to the bishops of the world that underscored his position as the head of the universal church; on September 21, he addressed the members of the Roman Curia, focusing on their dedication to the papacy and its policies; on September 22, he spoke to journalists laying out a public relations offensive and also stressing his affinity to them as the son of a journalist; on September 26, the pope spoke to an assembly of pilgrims, highlighting himself as the pastor of his flock; and on September 29, he addressed the Church Fathers as St. Peter’s successor, speaking to the successors of the other apostles.19 Although he emphasized that he wished to stay out of the day-to-day deliberations of the council, Paul would interject himself at times, using others often to carry his messages or concerns. Probably with the pope’s encouragement, in the debate on the nature of the Church, Cardinal Lercaro issued some guidelines on the definition of the Mystical Body of Christ, the importance of baptism in defining the membership of the Church, and the insistence that the Eucharist was not just a sign of unity but “a dynamic entity.” He then emphasized that the Church was “a new people, a new creation.” Lercaro urged that more views should be included in the draft dealing with the aspirations of “the men of our time.”20 Metaphors define reality, and the Fathers debated whether the Church could best be described as the Kingdom of God, or the Family of God, or the People of God. At stake too was the definition of collegiality. Did the bishops inherit that “right” by the nature of the apostolic succession from the twelve apostles of Jesus or were they granted those powers by the grace and pleasure of the monarch—the pope? Was the debate on collegiality to be cast as a matter of divine origin or as an organizational reorientation? The conservatives in the Curia clearly favored the latter view. But that position, as Paul knew, would virtually prohibit serious dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox prelates—a serious matter for a pope who was fascinated, as was John, with the notion of Christian reconciliation.

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The Fathers debated if the pope was infallible by himself, even if it meant being in opposition to the Church. Could the Church be infallible as a whole if it were in opposition to the Pope’s exercise of infallibility? Archbishop Lawrence Shehan of Baltimore tried to clarify the issue saying, “Such definition is never to be understood as against the consent of the Church. For since we believe the pope to be infallible through Divine assistance, by that very fact we believe that the assent of the Church will never be lacking to his definition, because it cannot happen that the body of the bishops will be separated from its head, and because the universal Church cannot fail.” However, progressive theologian Hans Küng, already under scrutiny from the Holy Office, went on to argue that there were historical instances of popes preaching heretical doctrines who were successfully opposed by the Church councils of their time.21 The council also engaged in a lively debate on the question of restoring the permanent deaconate and opening it up to married men. Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York criticized such a restoration as an unnecessary step, saying of its past history, “Let us not indulge in archaeology.” He was joined by Antonio Cardinal Bacci who warned that the proposal was dangerous and would lead to a decline in vocations to the priesthood. But the progressives led again by Cardinals Suenens and Döpfner defended the proposal as necessary in some parts of the world, and Döpfner, added probably ironically, that the council of Trent provided some support for a separate deaconate. As expected, such a discussion of a married deaconate led to the obvious question of relaxing the mandatory celibacy requirement for clergy in the Latin Church. The Vatican quickly issued a statement reaffirming the obligation of celibacy in the West, and noted that it was based on the Gospel and represented the total gift of the priest to Christ and to his Church. Some have made the assertion that Pope Paul himself may have recognized the need for married priests in certain missionary areas, but if so, he suppressed those sentiments at the time. His own mentor, Pius XII, had in fact proven to be more flexible than many previous pontiffs when he admitted married former Anglican priests into the priesthood of the Latin rite. There was some disjointed discussion of the role of the laity in the Church as well in the council’s long deliberations. In the past, it was sarcastically said that the functions of laymen were “to believe, to pray, to obey, and to pay.” In the deliberations, Cardinal Ottaviani rose to attack the periti or theological experts who in his opinion had led the bishops astray on the issue of a married deaconate. But progressive leader Cardinal Suenens went on to speak of the varied missions of the Church and its diverse charismas, and then urged that the number of lay auditors be increased, and that even women be invited into that group. “Unless I am mistaken women make up one half of the world’s population,” he blithely observed.22 Some right-wing papers immediately attacked the mere mention of women in the hierarchy in the Church. The crude Italian newspaper, Il Borghese, spoke of the resurrection of the apocryphal “Popess Joan” and of furtive Boccaccioesque encounters. The English paper, The Tablet, warned of the approach of

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“the paladin of ecclesiastical neo-feminism.” As the years passed, the Church hierarchy, especially in the Vatican, felt increasingly threatened by the demands by women for positions of high authority in the Church, especially ordination as priests. Later in November 1995, the Vatican claimed that the ban on women as priests reached the threshold of being an “infallible” statement.23 To resolve the impasse on the De Ecclesia schema, four questions were to be posed on October 16 to the council: the sacramentality of the episcopal order; its incorporation by rite in the college of bishops; the supreme power of the college in union with the pope; and the restoration of the deaconate for married men. Then the Church Fathers were abruptly informed that a vote on the issues had been delayed. Apparently the pope had intervened and even ordered printed statements containing those questions destroyed. On October 30, the propositions were put to the Church Fathers and were overwhelmingly approved. The pope at least publicly stayed out of the controversy. Bishop John J. Wright of Pittsburgh, a noted intellectual and progressive, called the votes “a turning point” in the history of Vatican II. However, the Theological Commission under Cardinal Ottaviani continued to delay implementing those understandings, and apparently Paul intervened to get more cooperation. The pope was facing two immediate problems of his own—the first being the increasing pressure he felt from those who claimed that Pope John’s foreign policy initiatives were hurting the Christian Democrat and anti-Communist forces in Italy, a matter of deep interest considering both Paul’s own sympathies and also the deteriorating political situation in that nation. Thus the pope suddenly seemed to be more receptive to the conservative concerns enumerated by Cardinal Siri, the head of the Italian Bishops Conference. The second problem was increasing dismay over the council’s delays on the drafts on ecumenism and on the Jews. Under Popes John and Paul, Cardinal Bea, as well as other high ranking Church leaders, had promised greater overtures to non-Catholics, and a strong statement against anti-Semitism, which many argued had been nurtured sometimes by the Church over the centuries. The schema on ecumenism, De Oecumenismo, had three chapters dealing with the principles of Catholic ecumenism, the practice of ecumenism, and relations with Christians separated from the Catholic Church, which included both the Eastern churches and those separated since the sixteenth century. To those chapters were added chapters four and five on religious liberty and on the role of the Jews in salvation-history. The Americans were especially supportive of those chapters and had received commitments from the council leadership that the full draft would definitely be voted on before the recess. However, the leaders then informed the major sponsors, through Cardinal Bea, that the draft would not be voted on due to the press of time. Once again, it appeared that the progressive majority was being thwarted by the conservatives, and with the tacit consent of the pope. Pope Paul, however, was secretly planning a trip to the Middle East, and was unwilling to push then and there for the draft on the Jews. He did not wish to alienate some of his Arab hosts, a consideration that the council members did

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not know about at the time. The Vatican was also under strenuous pressure from some Arab states, especially Nasser’s Egypt, and from Catholic prelates who had to return home to Arab states, to avoid issuing any statement that could be seen as being favorable to Israeli’s political interests. The postponement of chapters four and five caused great dismay among many Church Fathers and a bitter sense of letdown that focused on the Pope, and especially on his advisors. In late November, the pontiff was increasing the membership on the various commissions of the council and named mostly progressives to those openings. But those developments seemed to go unnoticed.24 On November 22, the world was shocked by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The pope expressed his deep condolences, and the Vatican diplomats shortly began to reassess the implications for American foreign policy, and the Holy See’s interests in aligning itself so closely with the United States in its definition of the Cold War. In its deliberations the council proposed what became a much criticized draft on the communications media, and then returned to issues dealing with Christian unity. On December 4, the session’s time had run out. The pope appeared to close the session and received very little enthusiastic applause from the bishops. He tried to recite the achievements of the council so far, and mentioned the ongoing reforms of canon law, another favorite project of his predecessor. The pope praised the laborious debates as true exercises in freedom of expression and approved the new liturgical constitution. He did not mention the question of what constituted collegiality and the role of the bishops. Clearly, though, there was a genuine sense of disappointment that marked the end of the session.

Apostle to the Holy Land And then the pope, with a sense of drama of which he was supposed to be devoid, electrified his fellow bishops with the announcement that he was visiting the Holy Land in January. Thus instead of talking about Christian unity and Jewish reconciliation, the Holy Father was to come with outstretched arms as a pilgrim, as Saint Paul, to the believers and nonbelievers alike. He would meet with Orthodox and other Eastern religious leaders, especially Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, and he was to walk in Jesus’ footsteps through the sacred city of Jerusalem and its Biblical environs, there talking to Jewish and Arab peoples alike. The sullen bishops perked up and began cheering, and then rhythmic clapping started to burst out of St. Peter’s Basilica, as they marked their approval of the pope’s startling announcement. In July 1963, the then-Cardinal Montini had submitted a report on the religious and social situation in Palestine, underscoring in the process that he had an early interest in that region. As pope he had also read with great attention a book called Jesus, the Church and the Poor by Paul Gauthier, a priest who ran a hous-

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ing project in Nazareth, Israel, which outlined the abuses visited on the unfortunate in that area, and who urged the pontiff to retrace the footsteps of Jesus on the Way of the Cross.25 When Paul VI left Rome to great cheers, he began on an exciting itinerary, one that indeed followed in the path of Christ and his Apostles. On that trip, he stood at the banks of the River Jordan where John the Baptist preached and had baptized the younger Jesus of Nazareth. He traveled the road from Jericho, walked to the Damascus Gate where he was greeted by enormous pressing crowds, and where a banner overhead read “Welcome to the Apostle of Peace.” At one point, Paul actually picked up a little handicapped boy to shield him from being trampled. He stopped at various Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, and later entered the Mount of Olives, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, and on Sunday went past Bethany to Israel, visiting Bethlehem, the summit where the Sermon on the Mount was delivered, Mount Tabor (the site of Christ’s Transfiguration), and Jesus’ favorite town, Capernaum. Always reaching for a meaningful historical gesture, Paul wore the Cross of Saint Gregory given by Queen Theodolinde to Pope Gregory in the year 603. Everywhere he went, the pontiff was greeted by enormous crowds. Security breakdowns were at time apparent, especially at the Damascus Gate, but Paul emerged from the pressing masses, smiling and deeply impressive to Catholics and the largely non-Catholic observers. The heir of Peter walked as the Apostles had walked, in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth. Paul saved some of his most important gestures for the meeting with Athenagoras, the Patriarch of Constantinople. For the first time since the schism of 1054, a patriarch and a pope met, and did so at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. They embraced, and Athenagoras remarked, “We should understand each other, we should make peace, we should show the world that we are once more brothers.” The pope offered him a chalice, but they did not concelebrate the Mass together, for they were still apart in many ways. However Paul observed optimistically, “A day will come when all Christians of the world will drink from the same chalice.” The next day the pope celebrated a Mass on the Feast of the Epiphany at the Altar of the Magi in Bethlehem. He spoke of the need for religious unity, and then traveled back to Jerusalem to meet with Athenagoras again. He accepted a pectoral chain from the patriarch symbolizing the apostolic succession, and asked that they read the Gospel of St. John, chapter 17, together. Later the pope met the Anglican archbishop of Jerusalem and several Lutheran representatives as well. But still, he candidly acknowledged that for some Christians the greatest obstacle to reunion was the papacy itself. At one point, Athenagoras asked Paul, “What do we do now?” And the pope noncommittally responded, “I don’t know. When I get back, I will consult the cardinals and see.” In a sermon, the pope recognized Abraham, the common patriarch of the three major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He met with Jewish leaders and took time out to once again defend Pius XII’s record,

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remaining always more loyal to him than Pius had been to his once-time aide. He gave King Hussein of Jordan a valuable eighteenth century clock and an electrocardiogram machine meant for a hospital in that nation, a nice mixture of heritage and technology, the old and the new. In return, the monarch presented the pontiff with a plaque made from the wood of olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane. Then he returned from Amman to Rome’s Ciampino Airport. The pope’s entourage went up the historic Appian Way where according to legend the fleeing St. Peter was supposed to have seen Jesus, and stopped and asked him, Quo vadis (Where are you going)? Jesus responded, “I am going to Rome to die in your place.” The apostle returned back to the city and to his fate as a martyr of the faith. Like the emperors of old, Paul VI knew the sounds of the elusive triumph as he approached the heart of the city. Now he, not John XXIII, was truly the pope of his Church in his own right. And at the same time as Paul was traveling through the shrines of Jerusalem and the triumphs in the Holy Land, his aides were laying the groundwork for another milestone visit—this one to the United Nations in New York City.

The Third Session But back in Rome, the intrigue and discontent among the council forces continued. Albert Cardinal Meyer of Chicago forcefully pleaded with the pope for the religious liberty draft, claiming it was “the number one and most important question in the whole schema on ecumenism.” Paul was noncommittal. Then he decided to name a committee headed by the progressive Cardinal Lercaro to supervise implementing liturgical reforms. But that announcement was followed by a statement that limited the right of the episcopal conferences to oversee their own liturgical translations; however, after protests mounted to that step, an amended version followed. Also Paul invited controversial Redemptorist priest Bernhard Häring to give the Lenten retreat, and the pope urged him to help the Curia open itself up to the spirit of the council. Häring had been silenced by that very group in the 1950s.26 On May 17, 1964, the pope announced a new secretariat to deal with “nonChristian religions,” but seesawed again by naming conservative Paolo Cardinal Marella as its president. At times he seemed consumed by the need to balance his gestures and nuances. In another development, Paul appeared to back away from Pope John’s more tolerant foreign policy, and he reiterated criticisms about atheist Communism and its oppressive ideological system. Whether he was concerned about the Italian political situation, or was just trying to appease the Curia conservatives, the cautionary note was what prevailed. As the third session of Vatican II was about to begin, Paul received a letter signed by a group of conservative cardinals, bishops, and religious superiors maintaining that the council’s discussions on collegiality were full of “novel”

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opinions and doctrines, that they were scripturally invalid and not grounded in the wisdom of previous councils, and that such views were coming from unreliable people with nondoctrinal biases. The Church was losing its hierarchical focus, the model that had been so secure and successful up to now. The pope, clearly upset, pondered their charges, while trying to remain true to the spirit of aggiornamento. At one point though, Paul remarked, “History is moving too quickly for us: the institutions don’t give enough time for theological reflection to mature: collegiality is an example.”27 On September 14, partly as a response to those warnings, he reasserted his support for a definition of Church power that involved the bishops, saying, “We are in duty bound to recognize the apostles as teachers, rulers and sanctifiers of the Christian people, ‘stewards of the mysteries of God’ (I Cor. 3:1), witnesses to the Gospel, ministers of the New Testament, and in some sense, the very reflection of the ‘glory of the Lord’ (II Cor. 3:6–18).” In the lonely hours of the night, he studied the historical treatments on the subject of collegiality from past Church authorities. Thus Paul seemed to accept the council, and yet insist that it had to be reined in. He warned against the wish to “hide, weaken, change, deny if need be those teachings of the Catholic Church which are not acceptable today by the separated brethren.”28 Meanwhile, the Curia in its day-to-day operations continued to restrict the application of the council’s decisions and the new spirit it embodied. It sought to curtail mixed marriages, delay any reform of the liturgy, slow up the establishment of an episcopal synod, tighten up on seminary training, and reaffirm the central philosophical importance of Thomism. Conservatives also intended to thwart any statement on religious liberty, curtail changes in the administration of the missions and religious orders, restrict overtures to the Eastern churches, and contain expressions of ecumenism. On September 14, 1964, the pope, dressed in red vestments, opened the council and concelebrated Mass with twenty other prelates similarly dressed—a sure sign of a collegial mood on his part. He emphasized the papacy as a form of service not domination, praised the prerogatives of bishops, and greeted warmly the Catholic lay auditors and non-Catholic observer delegates. The council then went back to the hotly debated and contentious topics that had marked the end of the second session: religious liberty, Judaism, ecumenism, and the nature of collegiality. The debate on the draft on religious liberty began on September 23 with a new and improved schema that stressed the dignity of man as the basis of toleration. But soon Cardinal Ruffini warned that the declaration should be titled “On Religious Toleration” not “Liberty,” for those in error had no rights. The Spanish cardinal, Fernando Quiroga y Palacious, added that the document seemed to favor liberalism and was more appropriate for Protestant countries than Catholics ones. The progressive spokesmen, including American Cardinals Cushing, Meyer, and Ritter supported the statement, and Cushing paraphrased Thomas Jefferson by asking for “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” The Ameri-

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cans had been ably assisted by the Jesuit John Courtney Murray, another theologian once under suspicion in Rome, and a person who ended up providing some of the framework for both the council’s departure on religious liberty and also earlier for the American Catholic position celebrating the separation of church and state during John F. Kennedy’s difficult campaign for the White House in 1960.29 Some of the Eastern European bloc prelates, suffering from the restraints imposed by the Marxist states they lived in, supported religious liberty for their own reasons. The council overwhelmingly supported the draft on religious liberty, and turned quickly to hear Cardinal Bea who was due to leave in order to return a sacred relic, the head of the apostle St. Andrew, to the Greek Orthodox Church. Five hundred years before the relic had been given for safekeeping to Pope Pius II by the last Byzantine prince who was fleeing the onslaughts of the Turks. At the council, Bea spoke eloquently on the declaration on the Jews; he emphasized that the document should have no implications for Arab-Vatican relations, and was meant to bring once and for all an end to the charge of deicide against the Jewish people. When the draft was postponed in the second session, Cardinal Bea had philosophically observed, “What is put off is not put away.” Now patiently and rationally he tried to counter the attempts to amend the text even further by not including the deicide exclaimer, and also by emphasizing the idea of encouraging the conversion of the Jews to the true faith, Catholicism. That was obviously not what Bea and his ecumenical secretariat members had in mind. In the debates Cardinal Ruffini rose again, this time to note that one cannot kill God so the deicide charge was simply incorrect. He also observed that the Church had saved many Jews from the Nazi onslaught, and that the Jews should rid the Talmud of anti-Christian remarks. He went on to argue that the Jews had in the past inspired the Masons in Europe to attack Catholic clergy. The draft went back to committee, and the council took up the schema on divine revelation that had been such a problem in the first session. And the council also continued its difficult debate on the question of collegiality. The conservatives launched a major offensive to bottle up both the religious liberty schema and the statement on the Jews. Somewhat disconcerted, seventeen leaders of the progressives directly wrote the pope, denouncing the violation of the rules of the council. Paul immediately insisted that the two documents would be placed under Bea’s secretariat, but he then appointed a balanced commission to seek improvements in the religious liberty draft. The declaration on the Jews would be gingerly voted on as an appendix to the De Ecclesia document. Also, when some talk arose in the council on the issue of birth control, the Church Fathers were reminded that the issue was not up for discussion, and that a special papal commission was looking at the controversial issue. The world had changed so much since the last Vatican Council under Pius IX. The forces of totalitarianism, technological progress, atomic war and nuclear energy, rampant tribalism and brutal nationalism, a pervasive and at times irresponsible mass media, and the incredible rapidity of change had boggled the

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modern mind. The Church Fathers sought somehow to deal with all of those phenomena, and yet retain what they liked to call the traditional deposit of faith. Here in this draft on the modern world all of those forces were somehow supposed to come together. The Church must recognize “the signs of the times” as it was phrased, but did that mean embracing those secular trends or accepting the assumptions of those times? The draft called for a dialogue with all men of good will, but what would such an exercise lead to—confusion, comity, enlightenment, heresy, unity? Through it all, Bishop Louis LaRavoire Morrow of India insisted, “Religion is not fear, but love.”30 The Church was called by its critics too hierarchical, too Western, too juridical, too repressive to free expression, too medieval, too wealthy, too clerical, too domineering. Before there was a dialogue with the world, there needed to be a dialogue within the Church itself. One of the changing signs, for example, was the role of women—what of the church’s prohibitions? On another controversial topic, Cardinal Suenens pleaded for broader understanding of the issues involved in birth control, exclaiming: let us avoid a new Galileo affair. One is enough for the Church, he proclaimed. Later he toned down his remarks. The Catholic Church also had to confront directly the increasing masses of the poor—especially in the so-called Third World nations. One religious superior, Father G. Mahon observed, “We cannot remain silent about social justice. The Church is not a mere spectator of the world’s miseries, it is not called upon to save disembodied souls, but men.” The council also discussed the nature of modern war and the problems of adapting the traditional “just war” theology to atomic warfare which made no distinction between combatants and civilians.31 Pope Paul decided to embrace another historic gesture when he appeared at one of the council’s working sessions and sat at the head of the council presidents’ table. This was the first time that a pope had appeared at a Church council since the Council of Trent. Cardinal Agagianian had informed Paul earlier that the draft on the missionaries was rather noncontroversial, and that he should lead that discussion if he wished to come. The pope dutifully praised the document, and then was embarrassed when it was subject to withering criticism. The Vatican had earlier announced that the pontiff was going to make another extraordinary pilgrimage, this time to India, and those plans were fulsomely praised by Agagianian at that meeting. But the pope finally left the gathering, a bit angered at the cardinal’s bad advice. Then on November 16, 1964, the Doctrinal Commission received an addendum or a note to chapter 3 of Lumen Gentium. This Nota Explicativa Praevia apparently came from the pope himself and was meant to explain that papal authority must be more specifically acknowledged in the draft. Some said that the note was still another concession to the conservatives, but it is probable that Paul himself had some reservations or second thoughts about the language that had been voted. The note concluded that the term “episcopal college” was not meant to be viewed as a body of equals, but “a stable body” of individuals; that bishops can exercise their powers only in authority with the hierarchical church; that the use of the word “college” here means with the pope and never without him; and

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that an episcopal college acts only sometimes in a collegial way. With those caveats Paul actually ended up winning over a substantial portion of the conservative minority who voted for the final draft, but in the process he alienated some important progressives with what some said was his ill-timed intervention. To add to his problems, the pope also decided to insist on amendments at the very end of the session on the document on ecumenism. Eight out of the nineteen amendments that the pope submitted were similar to those reservations that originally came from the conservative minority and had already been rejected by the secretariat. The progressives were dismayed at the last-minute delays, but many of the changes actually were minor linguistic equivocations. Then the council was informed by Cardinal Tisserant that the draft on religious liberty, which so many had expected would be voted on in the third session, would be carried over into the fourth. The American delegation was especially distraught, for it was their issue in the eyes of the media and many others. Their leaders appealed directly to the pope for a vote, but their appeal was in vain. The council again ended in a mood of sad resignation. Paul was portrayed by some as having betrayed the spirit of his predecessor and having given way to a small, recalcitrant minority. The pontiff added to the criticism by designating Mary the “Mother of the Church,” a title that was considered to be unappreciated by many Protestants seeking greater ecumenical ties. The attacks on the pope continued after the council. Paul privately tried to explain, “I am perhaps slow. But I know what I want . . . the declaration of religious liberties has been held over out of respect for the rights of the minority. That is the only motive: respect for them. I could not simply ignore them. But in substance, nothing has changed. Religious freedom remains intact.” Later, in speaking to an Anglican observer, Canon Bernard Pawley, the pope elaborated, “I think Anglicans often understand what is going on among us better than anyone else. They have a hierarchy. They believe in the Church. I have clear principles on which I act in times of difficulty. I must act in faith. I must show that I understand the aspirations of the two sides when they disagree, that I love them personally, that I respect their institutions and ways of thinking. As captain of the ship, I have to keep her on a steady course . . . so you bring all along with you. I am not going to act in a hurry. We have made great strides, but we have made them together. (He meant that the new documents, though not being rushed, had had an almost unanimous vote.) It is better for me to go ahead slowly and carry everyone with me, then to hurry along and cause dissension. Especially when I speak in public, I must show that I love all my sheep, like a good shepherd.”32 The pope was indeed sensitive about the pace of the council. The session that had shown such real progress was pictured in a darkened way by both Church progressives and their sympathetic media allies. And once again, Paul left the dissensions of the institutional church for the exotic pilgrim fields. He had been criticized as a Hamlet, an indecisive, frightened, confused purveyor of consensus politics, an unworthy successor to the daring good Pope John. But when he arrived in India, he was greeted by millions of non-Catholics, nonbe-

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lievers in his creed. When some Indians were asked why they came—they responded that they had heard that a holy man (Bura Guru) had come, and that their faiths revered such men. Thus it seemed that Hindus and Buddhists had a better understanding at times of the pope than some reforming and conservative Catholics halfway across the globe. The site for Pope Paul’s second great pilgrimage was the subcontinent of India, which at that time embraced over a half a billion people, of whom only 1.2 million were Catholic. Back in June 1963, the archbishop of Bombay, Valerian Cardinal Gracias, invited this pope as he had his predecessor to visit that nation. Later Paul accepted, but insisted that it be a spiritual pilgrimage, set in Gandhian simplicity, and open to people of all creeds and classes. There would be no Roman pomp and no Indian castes on this visit. On December 2, the pope arrived in Bombay and in the Indian tradition greeted his audience with closed palms, uttering Namaste (used for farewell and greetings). He thoughtfully knelt to give communion to orphans, one of whom told the gentle pontiff that he had no parents or any relatives at all. Paul saluted the great religious traditions of India and quoted the Upanishads, the sacred scriptures of Hinduism. “Truth alone triumphs, not falsehood. The divine path to liberation has been laid with truth.” To stress the very old Christian tradition in that nation, the pope said Mass in the Syro-Malankara Rite, as the sick and the lame surrounded the altar to receive Paul’s blessings. Later he spoke eloquently of the problems of poverty. The British newspaper, The Guardian, observed that Paul had received a greater reception than any previous visitor to India because he was a holy man in a nation that loved holy men. With his dignity, charm, and a sense of propriety, he added to the initial positive impression that he made at his arrival. Paul’s remarks in Bombay on the need to further disarmament and the use of those savings for social betterment were also well received. On January 20, 1965, he was formally invited to address the United Nations, where he would stress that same concern. 33 Still during the interregnum between the third and fourth sessions, Pope Paul was heavily criticized for his having allegedly abandoned the draft on religious liberty. As noted, Paul began to educate himself more extensively in the literature on that subject and even called in the American Jesuit John Courtney Murray. Consequently, the pope gave his consent to the same general document that the conservatives had opposed voting on in December. Paul knew that he needed a final statement on religious liberty before he made his appearance before the United Nations. Also, he instructed his associates that when difficult matters arose in the upcoming council session, he wanted to be informed early and not at the last moment. Then the liberal pope met again the conservative pope. This time it came when he greeted the Jesuits who were getting ready to elect a new superior general of their order. In his talk Paul emphasized the vow of obedience to the pope, and the need for the order to take the lead and challenge aggressively atheism. He had also created a Secretariat of Nonbelievers to study atheism and nonbelief, headed by Franz Cardinal König of Vienna, who insisted on not having to

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come to Rome full-time to lead the committee.

The Fourth Session Before the session began, the council was being attacked from the right again. Some 430 council Fathers had signed a petition to the pope asking for a strong condemnation of Communism, and Curia officials continued to insist that John XXIII’s embrace of the Russian leaders had cost the Italian Christian Democratic Party a million votes in the 1963 elections. On June 6, 1965, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre also criticized the Trojan horses of heresy that had invaded the citadel of the Church, but he praised the pope’s last-minute note meant to restrict the concept of collegiality. Meanwhile the Vatican quietly sent Cardinal König to visit Cardinal Mindszenty at the American embassy in Budapest. In 1964 the Holy See had reached an agreement with the Hungarian Ministry of Cults that allowed the pope, with government approval, to name bishops and to permit the Church to teach catechism to children under the age of eleven. Mindszenty was not a part of those negotiations. Clearly both the pope and the American government hoped that the cardinal would soon leave the embassy and end his exile, so that relations with the Hungarian government could become normalized once again.34 The pope prepared for the new session, desiring as he put it that it would end as it began—spontaneously. It had to be a session short on speeches and long on good committee work to finish up its business. The session began on September 14, 1965, when Pope Paul walked into St. Peter’s Basilica with a simple cope, a mitre, and a crozier. He came once again as the bishop of Rome, devoid of the more regal trappings of the historic papacy. Paul remained, though, a complicated figure to comprehend for those seeking easy answers. In January 1965, he had named twenty-seven new cardinals. They included Lawrence Shehan of Baltimore, John Heenan of Westminster, the Swiss theologian Charles Journet, and his elder friend and long-time mentor Giulio Bevilacqua. The pope had also convinced a reluctant Patriarch Maximos IV Saigh of Antioch to accept the honor. He celebrated Mass himself in the Italian language in various Roman parishes during Lent, striking a blow for the use of the vernacular in the liturgy. And on June 10, 1965, the Pope went out of his way to praise Galileo Galilei, the astronomer persecuted by the Catholic Church. But he also issued an encyclical, Mysterium Fidei, in which he took to task esoteric errors in Eucharist theology, apparently a swipe at certain Dutch, Belgian and French theologians who were changing the definition of transubstantiation, codified at the Council of Trent, by abandoning some of the philosophical categories of Aristotle. The pope had also previously criticized those who pushed for changes in mandatory celibacy, and who intended to make the Church more like the world, rather than vice versa. In addition, Paul dragged his heels on reforming the Curia, as he had indicated he would do in order to facili-

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tate the implementation of reforms in the post-concilar period. These were the uncertain beginnings of the council’s fourth session. The pope made known his intention to call a synod in the near future, and then to everyone’s surprise he did it the very next day. His promulgation established a synod of bishops on a permanent basis with most of the members elected by national or regional conferences of bishops, and with 15 percent of the members to be appointed by the pope. Paul thus had partially stolen the thunder of the progressives on one of the most sensitive issues before the council—collegiality. As the pope pressed on, the first item on the agenda was once again the text on religious liberty. The same issues of theological error, the privileged status of Catholicism in certain nations, the dignity of those in error were rehashed again and again. Conservative Archbishop Lefebvre attacked the draft as rooted in the objectionable secular philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. On September 20, the council leadership had actually rejected a proposal that the schema be presented to the full council for a preliminary vote. Apparently, the pope intervened this time, and the council Fathers were asked to indicate their disposition on the draft. By a vote of 1,997 to 224, they approved the document. Paul probably had grown weary of the debate, and he also knew that on October 4 he was due to address the United Nations, and he needed a strong statement on religious liberty. The issue had to be settled, and so he moved in the direction of a resolution.35 For one day, October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Paul would engage in a marathon performance in New York City and in the United Nations. It would be one of the high points of his tenure, and one of the most extraordinary moments in the history of the modern papacy. Pope Paul, the first pope to travel by airplane, also became the first sitting pope to visit the United States. Paul arrived in New York City and his caravan went through Harlem and Central Park to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Outside the cathedral, the massive crowds pushed forward to greet the pontiff—a tiny, faraway figure to most of us at that event. Inside a star-studded crowd, headed by the Kennedy family and most visibly the late president’s widow Jacqueline, joined with the frail Cardinal Spellman to welcome the pontiff. At the Waldorf Towers Hotel, Paul met with President Lyndon Johnson who was tormented by his own devils in his difficult war in Vietnam. For nearly an hour, they praised each other’s deeds despite their private differences and ended with a public expression of respect as Johnson walked the pontiff to his limousine on Park Avenue. The pope was the leader of a traditional church in the process of reform; the president was a genuine domestic progressive caught up in a web of war, violence, and deep discontent at home. At the United Nations, Paul the modern pope ended once and for all the tradition of isolation begun so ignominiously by Pius IX a century before. Paul the diplomat embraced the type of international organization about which Benedict XV, Pius XI and even Pius XII had reservations. The pope’s speech given in French startled the usual cynical and self-centered world of international diplomacy. He immediately identified himself with the young who sought a better

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world, and with “the poor, the disinherited, the suffering, of those who hunger and thirst for justice, for human dignity, for freedom, for progress.” He digressed into a discussion of the nature of the United Nations and nation-states, and also indicated that he supported peaceful negotiations of disputes, disarmament, aid to poorer nations and religious liberty. Paul slipped by the birth control controversy by supporting improving food production. But the pope’s most remembered remark was his plaintive, “Never again war! Never again war!” No phrase was to win him more applause; no phrase was to identify the United Nations’ aspiration of how it would like to see itself.36 He insisted on saying Mass in Yankee Stadium where he was greeted by enormous cheering and cries of Viva Papa!” Then he visited the Vatican exhibit at the World’s Fair, seeing again Michelangelo’s Pieta, the Christ figure dying in the arms of his mother Mary. Meanwhile, the council had begun to take up Schema 13, “The Church in the Modern World,” but this time the pope let it be known that he regarded the document as “the crown of the Council’s work.” Thus it was clear to all that it could not be withdrawn as some conservatives had advocated. In the debates some discussion of atheism ensued. The learned Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla, insisted that atheism was a very complex philosophical question and could not be taken up in the council without great difficulty. In a different tone, the new Superior General of the Jesuits, Father Pedro Arrupe, maintained that the Church had not aggressively spread the Gospel. He counseled that a more forceful plan of action be presented to the pope, one which involved the penetration of institutions and structures across the world. The heavy hand of Jesuit tradition was not in the mood of the council.37 On September 29, the council discussed marriage, and obviously the question of conjugal love came up. The discussions of reproductive obligations versus love and companionship as the objects of such a union were revisited. What was at stake in this discussion was the beginning of the divisive contraception debate. The schema did condemn abortion and infanticide, but did not address divorce or what some churchmen like to call “onanism,” or a sex act not open to the possibility of conception. The council would move along, approving by overwhelming majorities documents dealing with divine revelation, the apostolate of the laity, and the pastoral office of the bishops. By October 7, the Fathers took up the schema on missionary activity. Cardinal Suenens observed that the problem was not just that “the world does not seem prepared to listen to us, but the fact is we are not prepared to talk to it.” The Western nature of Christianity was again commented on. Bishop Donal Lamont of Rhodesia argued, “No land is so primitive as to be unfit for the Gospel, nor is any so civilized as not to need it.” But on October 12, the schema was accepted as the basis for a final text by a vote of 2,070 to 15. 38 On October 11, the pope, in response to encouragement from several prelates from Latin America, directly asked that the celibacy question be withdrawn. While not seeking to infringe on the right of the Fathers to debate what they wanted, he insisted that “it was not opportune to have a public discussion of this topic.” Paul went on to insist that he would uphold this “ancient, holy, and prov-

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idential law” to the best of his ability. Apparently some of the bishops wished to explore the creation of a married clergy to exist alongside of a celibate clergy in areas such as Latin America where a shortage of priests was so apparent. Actually, there had been some discussion of this dual clergy since the times of Pius X, with the idea of adopting the historic practice of the Eastern Churches aligned to Rome that had both celibate and married priests. But Vatican authorities were alleged to be rather concerned that such a step would lead to a discussion of the status of thousands of clergy living in concubinage in Italy and elsewhere. 39 The debate of the clergy then shifted to a treatment of their role in the modern world, the treatment of priests who had left the ministry, the possibility of reviving the priest-worker movement, the need for priestly obedience, and the plight of assistant pastors. That schema too was passed overwhelmingly. The council had already approved a restored version of the draft on the Jews in the previous session. Now in this session, the Fathers ended up deploring and condemning hatred of the Jews and displays of anti-Semitism. In April 1965, the pope unfortunately had casually remarked on Passion Sunday that the Jewish people had not only not recognized Jesus, but had opposed, slandered, and killed him—a remark that was embarrassingly counter to the new views of the council and the Church.40 During its deliberations, the council was deluged with a stream of quasireligious anti-Semitic literature as the discussion on the draft continued. One anonymous letter even threatened to blow up St. Peter’s if the draft was passed, and another pamphlet had called Cardinal Suenens an agent of B’nai B’rith. Finally the schema was approved, 1,763 to 250—not by as large a majority as some other schemas had been approved, but it was still an impressive consensus against the age-old traditions of religious prejudice and bigotry. In the Declaration on the Relations of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), the council affirmed that the Jews were not to be portrayed as a people rejected or accursed by God, for He “holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their fathers: God does not repent of gifts made or calls issued.” Later Pope John Paul II, who grew up as a boy not too far from the death camp of Auschwitz, reaffirmed that the Jews are “the people of God of the Old Covenant never revoked by God.”41 As the council moved toward a conclusion, the Fathers passed the major drafts that had been debated, and that in some cases had been postponed from one session to another. One area that did not command attention was the increasing dissatisfaction of women religious with their life, especially those in convents. Paul would hear about how rebellious those nuns had become, but there would be no real effort to deal with their concerns. A better fate awaited decrees on seminaries and on church education. The pope decided to get broader consensus on the important and disputed document on divine revelation. Language once again went back and forth as Paul genuinely sought to broker a compromise acceptable to a larger number of bishops. It was clear that all were looking for an end to the Second Vatican

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Council. This would not be Trent which lasted on and off for nearly two decades, from 1545 to 1563. Paul announced another balancing act: he would further the canonization process for both Pius XII and John XXIII. And he also celebrated the end of Vatican II by pledging to build another church in honor of Mary, proclaiming a special jubilee for six months after the end of the council, and presenting a statute to reform eventually the Holy Office. The schema on missionary activity and Schema 13 (“The Church in the Modern World”) were being given the finishing touches; speaking on the latter document was Archbishop Wojtyla who remarked that the draft had to be cast as pastoral in its approach. There was some dismay at last-minute intrusions by the pope in order to modify a document on marriage by making specific reference to the conservative views of his two predecessors, Pius XI and Pius XII. For the traditionalists, the idea was to re-elevate the importance of procreation above conjugal love as a way of supporting the ban on contraception. After progressive rumblings, some compromise language was added, meeting the scruples introduced into the pope’s mind by his more conservative advisors.42 There was again some debate on the morality of nuclear armaments and the concept of deterrence and on the long-awaited reform of the controversial Holy Office, which was renamed the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.” Individuals charged with violations of dogmatic orthodoxy were now going to be offered the opportunity to defend themselves. The Index of Forbidden Books would finally be abolished; over the years the list had embraced the titles of some of the most famous works in Western thought. By December 7 and 8, the council was winding down, with the pope celebrating its successes and remarking graciously to the observers, “We would like to have you with us always.” Each non-Catholic observer was given a special bronze clock with the emblems of the four evangelists and a monogram of Jesus on the top. Conservative bishops later protested that nonbelievers had been awarded special treatment—getting in a final swipe at the council. Paul was dismayed, but his associates had the pontiff deluged with telegrams from other bishops expressing their strong support. Later the pope concluded that the council had “dislodged us from the torpor of ordinary life.” Paul also took time to praise the periti who had been much criticized by conservatives for their alleged baneful influences over the bishops. And on December 7 the pontiff and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople removed the centuries-old mutual excommunication dating back to 1054 that had plagued relations between the two great denominations. In 1967, Pope Paul would travel to Constantinople on another dramatic gesture for Christian unity.

The Post-Concilar Church Now the Second Vatican Council was over, probably to the relief of the pope

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and most of the bishops. Before him was a very complex post-concilar period. Would the council’s directions be observed, implemented, or rolled back? Pope Paul, one of the more astute leaders of the Church when it came to organizational behavior, knew well the problems that were ahead. What remained were very basic questions: Was the Church modernized sufficiently to influence the contemporary world? Had it abandoned the deposit of faith to curry popular favor? Had it revised its policies and procedures to encourage dialogue internally, or was it still a closed, privileged monarchical system with just better public relations? Did the Church emerge stronger and more vibrant and thus a better guide to lead men and women to salvation which is its primary purpose? Almost immediately, Paul faced problems. Cardinal Siri had said the proclamations of the council are “not definitions; they will never bind us.” And on November 13, 1965, thirty-eight Polish bishops led by their primate, Cardinal Wyszynski, argued that would be difficult, if not impossible, for the council’s work to be implemented in their nation. Instead the pope must trust completely in their judgment, they argued. Paul responded without hesitation that he expected the work of the council would be put into effect “emphatically and willingly” in Poland as everywhere. What the position of the archbishop of Krakow was during this conference is unclear. Later though, in 1972, Wojtyla published a volume, Sources of Renewal, which gave publicity to the council’s texts, but stressed its continuities rather than its departures. On another dimension, the Polish hierarchy would also make major overtures for a reconciliation with the German bishops without consulting either its own government or the Vatican. In 1967 Pope Paul raised the young archbishop, Karol Wojtyla, to cardinal, probably to offset Wyszynski’s power somewhat. Later the new cardinal would be the major author of Pope Paul’s most controversial pronouncement, his reaffirmation opposing artificial contraception.43 In this period, immediately after the council’s close, Paul sought to use his good offices to encourage social and economic reform in the Third World, especially Catholic Latin America, to end the long war in Vietnam, and to further contacts with non-Catholic clergymen. On March 23, 1966, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, came to visit the pope. Paul called the meeting “a sign from God, since the People of God expressed the Spirit of God.” Questions of common worship and a joint commission of theologians were discussed, and Paul even offered to open up again the question of the validity of Anglican Orders, an issue put to rest by the negative decision of Pope Leo XIII in 1896. Later they were to pray together, exchange gifts, and pronounce the visit a success.44 Pope Paul’s public image was a varied one then. He was not seen as a warm, open, experimental person as Pope John was, even though in fact he had been surely more liberal and progressive over the years. On the other hand, he was younger and in better health, and thus able to become the first pope to travel across the globe and increase the visibility of his office and the good will of his Church.

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The Birth Control Controversy It was on the difficult issue of contraception that Paul encountered enormous opposition and seriously hurt his papacy, and some argue the Catholic Church as well. The traditional view is fairly clear: the Catholic Church has had a long history of opposition to contraception since the Roman era. Contraception in those days was often linked with infanticide, especially of females and the handicapped, and also with the ascetic anti-Christian sects that were opposed to reproduction.45 But in the 1960s, two major changes occurred that forced a reevaluation of the prohibition: the population explosion, especially in poorer nations in the world, and the development of chemical contraceptives—the so-called “pill.” The pill would make birth control rather reliable, free women from many unwanted pregnancies, and promote what some derogatorily called recreational sex. That last consequence was exactly what the conservative hierarchy feared, and it is what happened. In his encyclical Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI had attacked contraception and a host of other evils; Pius XII in his 1957 speech to Italian midwives also opposed contraception. But the latter argued that married couples could use the so-called “rhythm method” of birth control—that is, abstaining from sex during the very few days when female ovulation occurs. Since the calculation of those few days was and still is sometimes unreliable, the method was sarcastically referred to as “Vatican roulette.” Pope Paul had insisted that the council not deal with the controversy, and a commission of fifty-eight people, which included lay people, had been reorganized and was charged to review the prohibition in light of new technologies and techniques. The commission had heard testimony that the rhythm method was often emotionally dysfunctional, even for loving couples. 46 The Bible exhorted man and woman to increase and multiply, but in a charming metaphor it also encouraged couples to become “one flesh” in those moments of intimacy and ecstasy that sealed the marital bond and promoted companionship. By a vote of fifty-two to four, the overwhelming majority of the commission members supported some changes by allowing artificial contraception, and the commission report was sent to the pope and remained confidential for several years. Conservatives, led by Cardinal Ottaviani and Archbishop Pietro Parente at the Holy Office, insisted on the need to continue the prohibition, citing the seamless web of Church tradition on matters of faith and morals. Archbishop Wojtyla, also a member of the commission, dissented from the majority vote and insisted privately to the pope that the prohibition had to stand. The pope was truly divided on the issue. At first he seemed to lean toward the majority’s view, but under Ottaviani’s powerful influence and Wojtyla’s arguments, he ended up changing his mind. Wojtyla actually wrote most of the draft of the encyclical and remained for decades its main advocate. But for two years the pope put off making any final pronouncement.47

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The conservatives’ argument revolved around an ancient philosophical tradition stressing natural law as one of the moral bases for any society. This view, going back to the Greek Stoics, was accepted by the Roman philosophers, and was codified by the early and medieval Church theologians, including the influential St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. To interfere with nature’s possibilities—in this case human reproduction—is immoral, against nature, contra natura. Every sex act must be open to the potentiality of procreation; this view is the basis for banning contraception and also for the condemnation of homosexuality. Of course, humankind always interferes with nature in so many ways. For the Earth, according to the Bible, is there to serve mankind, and not vice versa. So too in physical relationships or biological developments, the process of nature is obviated, denied, and altered by mankind through medicine, human intervention, and public policy.48 But sexuality has always been the Church’s real obsession, and critics have charged that contraception seemed especially threatening to a hierarchy that has been pledged to personal chastity and has only a vague academic knowledge of sexual love and marital tensions. Although Catholicism is a religion with many traditions embraced in its two-thousand-year history, there is no question that there is a long history of anti-female biases among some, but not all, Church’s theologians. This viewpoint is especially ironic considering the central role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in that faith and also the respect shown to women such as St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa of Avila, who have been named doctors of the church. The anti-female tradition is long-standing. St. Jerome called women “the devil’s gateway . . . a scorpion’s dart . . . a dangerous species.” He insisted that even those married had to refrain from receiving the Eucharist after performing the “bestial” act. St. John Damascene referred to woman as “a sick she-ass, a hideous tapeworm . . . the advanced host of hell.” Tertullian, an influential church thinker in the third century, called a woman’s beauty “dangerous to those who look upon it.” St. Paul, who had in so many ways defined the vocabulary of the very early Church right after the death of Christ, concluded that man would do well not to touch a woman, but if one could not keep the gift of continence, let him marry; better to marry than to burn. His influence was especially apparent in the writings of the most important early Church father, St. Augustine, a man once given to the intense pleasures of the flesh himself that he enumerated in his own graphic Confessions. He recalled the “bestial movements” and the “violent acting of lust,” and insisted that in Eden husband and wife would not be bothered by the “seductive stimulus of passion.” Even the usually moderate and thoughtful St. Thomas Aquinas called woman “misbegotten and defective.” Still he admitted, she was valuable as a mother of children. Nonetheless, while St. Augustine and St. Clement of Alexandria wrote against contraception, many of the Church Fathers did not comment on the issue at all, even though contraception has been practiced in a variety of ways in Western Europe over the centuries. The first official condemnation of

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contraception by the Church came relatively late, from the Holy Office in 1851 and in 1853, although there were earlier expressions of disapproval. Later Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical on marriage did not directly treat the issue either. He insisted though that marriage had two purposes: procreation and individual happiness, and he refused to give one priority over the other. As noted, in his Casti Connubii, Pius XI forcefully prohibited contraception, attacking anything that deliberately frustrated the fruits of sexual consummation. Conservatives pointed to that encyclical and also to Pius XII’s pronouncements to Italian midwives in 1957 for support for their case. But in fact it was Pius XII who for the first time shifted the teachings of the Church somewhat. His approval of the rhythm method showed a thoughtful attempt to provide for some birth control techniques within the rigid formulations that he had inherited. Later, however, he condemned anovulant steroids as “sterilization,” and thus prohibited by Church teachings. Critics of the ban maintained that the approval of the rhythm method displayed a basic contradiction in Church teachings. Couples were having intercourse when they knew or assumed that nature’s bounty was not possible. Is not the intention to avoid conception rather close to using the method that was meant to guarantee contraception? The literature on the controversy is vast, expanding, and long-lasting. But the real outlines of the controversy were these: the commission report was finally leaked out to the press; Paul consequently signed a rather weak encyclical reaffirming the traditional prohibition; the reaction was overwhelmingly negative, especially in the industrialized nations; and in many cases members of the hierarchy and individual pastors and confessors, refused to give enthusiastic support to the papal pronouncement. In the United States nearly 90 percent of the Catholic laity disagreed with the encyclical.

The Uncertain Church Defensively, Paul insisted that in twenty years he would be seen as a prophet on the issue of contraception. He was wrong. Some time after the reactions set in, Paul addressed a group of pilgrims saying, “Look into my eyes and tell me if I look to you like a reactionary pope. The Pope is not a reactionary pope or a progressive pope. He is the Pope and that is all.”49 Public opinion polls have shown that in America and elsewhere the encyclical helped to undermine papal and Church authority, and led to some defections from the ranks of the faithful. Later studies show that Catholic sexual practices and beliefs were rather similar to other white adults in the United States. 50 Catholics were closer to their fellow Americans than to the Holy Father, and that was especially true of younger Catholics. In addition, the Catholic Church experienced a massive rupture of clerical resignations and a dearth of new vocations. The Jesuits, especially close to the papacy, were nearly decimated, losing some seven thousand members after the

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council, and the number of local priests and, more importantly, the parish nuns—the real stalwarts in schools and hospitals—were in marked decline. In the United States alone, about ten thousand priests left the active ministry between 1968 and 1978. From 1964 to 1984 the number of seminarians dropped from 47,500 to 12,000 and 241 seminaries were closed. And from 1966 to 1980, the number of women religious declined from 181,421 to 126,517, after a steady increase in the 1950s and early 1960s. How much of the loosening of Vatican II contributed to these happenings? How much had the general social upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s contributed to the fraying of another institution despite its own strengths? How much of the decline was due to the rigid reaffirmation of clerical celibacy and/or to the birth control controversy and Paul’s encyclical? To the Curia conservatives the answer was obvious—Pope John’s gamble was a disaster. Sister Pasqualina, who had told him that the Church was safe only as an authoritarian structure, was a prophet indeed. Others, however, were more disposed to the progressive point of view. The council came too late to protect fully the Church. The decline and the rot had set in earlier under Pius XII. The council had in fact mitigated some of the consequences that could have been worse. And every institution—political, social, cultural, educational—had been under severe attack as a vast postwar generation came of age and engaged themselves in great numbers to the corrosive, nihilistic dissent of the period. To add to the complexities of the Church’s troubles, it lost the august beauty of the Latin or Tridentine Mass, for it was Paul and not the council who ended up approving a total vernacular Mass. In the process he cast aside the bull of Pope Pius V, Quo Primum Tempore (1570), which enjoined that the Roman Mass could not be altered, amended, or dropped. To a friend, the pope admitted the loss of the universal and structured ritual of the Latin Mass, but he insisted that one had in this day and age to bring the sacred liturgy closer to the people, and that this could only be done by using their own language. The problem was that in some places the Mass was so popularized that it lost its senses of awe and mystery. Abuses were reported, such as balloon Masses with nuns prancing down the aisles, secular music that distracted from the sacrifice at the altar, priests who seemed more interested in giving catalogs of social work prescriptions without reminding the faithful of the exhortations of Jesus. One Dutch canon read, “Lord, if you exist, come among us.” In other churches, the Gospel was replaced with readings from newspapers, novelists and even Karl Marx! At the other extreme, the conservative Archbishop Lefebvre in France insisted on retaining the Tridentine Mass, as if it were given by Christ himself at the Last Supper, instead of being only one rite in the long history of the Church. Eventually he would attack the pope, the teaching authority of the council, and the Church itself. For the longest time, Paul sought to avoid a break; his personal nightmare was that the post-concilar period would lead to a massive schism. It did not. In part, Pope Paul was tirelessly patient and skillful, absorbing abuse in ways alien to the instincts of the pontiffs of this century and before. Unlike in the past, Catholics who disagreed often did not leave the Church. They simply

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segmented their lives and beliefs, as in the case of contraception. They continued in the sacraments, or at least nominally in the Church, and picked and chose what beliefs they wished to observe. Some, including Polish prelate Karol Wojtyla, called it “cafeteria Catholicism.”51 The second problem Paul faced in that period, which has lasted into Pope Benedict’s reign, was the increasing number of theologians, especially those teaching in Catholic universities and seminaries, who reinterpreted, redefined, or even denied what are traditional articles of faith in such areas as the inerrancy of the Bible, the Immaculate Conception, the Resurrection, the Assumption, the Ascension, the infallibility of the pope, and the nature of the Eucharist among other tenets. Often they took these articles of faith and using philosophical or linguistic tools, presented them as mere culturally determined metaphors that did not mean what they traditionally had. Or when they wished to explore the modern worlds of scholarship as in biblical studies, for example, they simply did so and then said, as an aside almost, that to maintain the Church’s position was often a matter beyond reason and scholarship—that is, it is in the realm of faith. That differentiation is not a unique view. Even the greatest Church philosophers would probably agree. But what was happening is that this explanation has been not attributed to a confidence in faith as much as it is a timid cop-out to allow Church biblical scholars both to stay within the formal hierarchy and yet participate in scholarly conferences as equals. So the Sacred Scriptures, critics charge, are treated as mere archaeological findings. The difficulty for Pope Paul and other churchmen was that the Church was financially supporting these theologians and scholars who were supposedly abandoning the deposit of faith to which that he was so committed. Since the earliest centuries the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches have regarded the Nicene Creed, for example, as truth, not as a string of fourth century metaphors. Was this modern equivocation another Cardinal Newman-type venture to update only the methods of presentation or was it really the treason of the clerics? Still did not the council and the popes speak eloquently about religious liberty as a part of the definition of the dignity of man? Could one insist on such freedom in Communist countries, for example, and deny it in Catholic universities? Paul, a conscientious reader of their works, must have wondered himself what the council and its celebration of the times had brought forth.52 On October 1, 1966, Paul addressed the disputed issue of the relationships between the teaching authority of the Church, called its magisterium, and theologians. He calmly portrayed the theologians as the mediators between the faith of the Church and the magisterium. He called for a communion of understanding, dedicated to preaching the Gospel of Christ. Later a weary pope visited the tomb of St. Celestine V in L’Aquila. Celestine was the last pope to resign that position. Elected at the age of eighty-five, he was a Benedictine hermit who lasted only five months as pope, and then went into exile in 1294. Was Paul simply indicating how difficult the papacy was, or was he too considering resigning, especially in light of his own decree on the mandatory retirement of

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bishops?53 As this study has shown, there was in many ways a real decline in the power and the vitality of popes of the twentieth century after a decade or so of service. But the tradition of life tenure is strong: how can a father resign, it is asked? And how can there be two or more “popes” that the faithful can look to, even if one or more has stepped down or has become a hermit? Apparently though both Paul VI and his successor John Paul II considered this option. But quickly Paul snapped out of that passive mode. First he began a very critical review of the Jesuit Order in late 1966. It was a portent of things to come. Then the pope began to reevaluate the American Catholic Church, finally breaking the power of the ailing Cardinal Spellman over the appointments of bishops. In 1973, the pope appointed Jean Jadot his apostolic delegate to the United States with a mandate to name so-called “pastorally oriented” bishops to implement the reforms of Vatican II. Gone would be the builders, the powerful Church prelates, who had exercised so much clout over the immigrant American Church. Later his successors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, would move away from the pastorally oriented approach to a much tougher and sterner set of orthodox bishops and cardinals who were especially attuned to their desire for a restoration of both papal authority and traditional dogma. 54

Paul and the Social Gospel In some ways, the pope continued his overtures to the modern world. On the feast of the Epiphany in 1967 he set up a council dealing with the laity which he called “a listening post to the world.” He also emphasized the need for greater social concern in his encyclical Populorum Progressio which the American Wall Street Journal disapprovingly called “souped-up Marxism.” Conservative Catholic critic Michael Novak saw it as an abstract, unrealistic descent into Third World economics and a departure from traditional Catholic social philosophy. Others, however, were to hail it as a gospel of hope and reform.55 In India, Pope Paul had seen human misery and the plight of the Third World nations in a poignant and powerful way. This pope was not simply talking about the difficulties of the working class in the industrialized West as Leo XIII had focused on. The great divide now was between the northern hemisphere and the southern regions. Under the influence of Vatican II and with Pope Paul’s sympathy, the Latin American Church took a marked turn to the left. Attempts at moderate social reforms, especially in Brazil, Chile, and Peru had not proven to bring sufficient relief to the very poor. At a historic meeting in 1968 in the Colombian city of Medellín, the Latin American bishops pledged their support to the poor. The pope had traveled to Bogotá and opened the meeting, giving his imprimatur to the gathering, although some said he was cautious toward the so-called “liberation theologians” then coming of age in this region. The bishops ended up advocating land reform,

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income redistribution, and greater democracy for the masses. They castigated the “institutionalized violence” of oligarchic rule as a “social sin,” and they advocated the establishment of new movements to further the political and spiritual liberation of the poor. From that meeting came approval for the creation of “base communities” that supplemented churches in some places, the use of the Bible for consciousness-raising, and the development of “liberation theology” in which the Church and its clergy were agents—often radical agents—of social change. Later in 1969, Paul went to another continent and pledged to stay in Nigeria until the bloody civil war in Biafra ended. Clearly this was a very different papacy. Observing these and other harsh realities around him, the pope strongly attacked both the “euphoria of the age,” as he termed it, and the “superfluous wealth of the rich countries.” As with Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church became a critic of unrestrained capitalism and the harsh values of the marketplace. Armed with a faith that was so old that it viewed capitalism as merely one system of economics among many in history, the modern popes had a perspective that went beyond the calculations of rugged individualism and consumerism so rampant in the late twentieth century and beyond.

Guarding the Faith And again like John Paul II, Paul would be called a social liberal but a conservative in theology. That seemed paradoxical, but anyone who understands the history of the Church can see how that makes predictable sense. The popes view themselves as primarily the guardians of the deposit of the faith; thus they are conservatives in the strictest sense of the word. But in current times, the horrendous tolls of war, the overall brutalizing of society, the maldistribution of wealth, and the exploitation of common people all seem to cry out for the types of humane prescriptions that Christianity in its best times represents. Thus the modern popes have become voices for peace, social justice, and a more humane community. In the past they were traitors to the world—that is, they did not accept the advances of philosophical liberalism, progressive democracy, free market economics, and fervent nationalism, especially in Europe. But as the negative byproducts of each of those movements have become apparent, and the excesses of those developments have borne fruit, the intransigencies of those modern popes seem to have become somewhat appealing, if not prophetic. The archconservative pontiffs in the pre- and the post-war eras suddenly appear to have become rebels in part against the signs of their times. That peculiar transformation was clearer with Paul and has become accelerated with John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Their views on abortion, feminism, priestly celibacy, and contraception were framed as rigid and repressive in the eyes of the critics. Yet the same se-

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verity and rigidity seemed to give them strength in a world that is bemoaning the lack of values by which to live. Although in our day-to-day lives we equivocate, compromise, and embrace the relativity of right and wrong; still we cannot teach our children to be nihilists, and yet protect our social fabrics. Like them or not, most of the postwar popes and many more before them seem to comprehend that source of strength. John XXIII generally ignored it. Paul intuitively understood it; John Paul II and Benedict XVI have expressly reminded all who would listen that this is the way it is to be. The difference is that while Paul had lamented that responsibility, his successors gloried in it. One can see that difference in the treatment of priestly celibacy. There is no doctrinal reason why priests in the West cannot marry. Some are married in the Eastern Catholic Church, and even in the West, celibacy has been fully mandated only since the First Lateran Council in 1123. In Paul’s statement, Sacredotalis Caelibatus, issued on June 24, 1967, celibacy was characterized as “a dazzling jewel” in the crown of the Church. Yet Pius XII, Paul, John Paul II and Benedict XVI allowed Protestant married priests to be ordained in the Western Catholic Church. Why can priests who are converts be married, but those who have lived longer in full communion with the Church not be given such an option? And if the notion of celibacy was influenced by the Holy Spirit, as Pope Paul concluded, why has the Spirit taken centuries in the West and not visited the East to provide such guidance on the question? As has been seen, celibacy is actually a historical development that came out of the policies of the great reforming monk-popes who emerged from a more ascetic tradition than the world of bishops and parish priests. 56 Pope Paul also insisted that an option on the question of celibacy would not increase the number of vocations. Yet between 1963 and 1983, the Vatican reported that 46,302 dispensations were granted for priests to marry. The argument has been made that for every one dispensation there was another priest who was refused or who did not even choose to go through the process. Pope Paul was plagued by a flood of petitions for the laicization of priests, many desiring to enter into the companionship of marriage. While he was genuinely troubled by the requests, he instituted some humane procedures in 1971 to deal with the distasteful disposition process of priest resignation and marriage within the sacraments of the Church. His successor, John Paul II, simply slowed down the process to a trickle, believing that once a priest always a priest. But the whole discussion of celibacy underscored to many that Pope Paul was really a conservative and not like Pope John who once said that he could end the celibacy requirement with a stroke of his pen. Indeed Pope John said that, but it would have been unthinkable for him to do so considering his own background and beliefs. Oddly enough it was Pius XII with his sense of self-assuredness and his willingness to research a question to the very end who probably could have made such a radical change without personal doubts and within familiar theological grounds, but it was neither the time nor was the need so apparent. In addition, the Catholic Church, especially in the United States and Western Europe, has been plagued with sexual scandals that the Church has found even more

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problematic than relaxing the ban on celibacy. Since the 1980s, the Church has been beleaguered with charges of child molestation from so-called celibate clergy, to the extent of nearly bankrupting some dioceses from victim lawsuits.57 In 1967 Paul also had to deal with the increasing demands for autonomy from the Dutch church. The issue came to a head with the new catechism that became a best seller, including its English edition. The text, however, seemed to equivocate on the virgin birth of Jesus and on the existence of angels and devils. A commission of cardinals examined the catechism and listed ten errors. A supplement which had to be attached to the catechism soon appeared to deal with those objections. As noted, Paul also presented his apostolic constitution, Regimini Ecclesiae, which aimed at reforming the Roman Curia. The pope ended multiple officeholding, barred lifetime tenure, and substituted five-year terms renewable twice, guaranteed that all appointees ended at the death of a pope, and required all members of the Curia to resign at age seventy-five. In practice the Secretariat of State became the major agency for papal domination of the Curia. And one could now communicate with Curia in languages besides Latin. Paul not only was implementing the spirit of the council, but was effectively asserting the ascendancy of the papacy even further, and now over his true rival—not the bishops—but the permanent bureaucracy.58 The ailing pontiff, though, was not up to par in 1967 and to help him administer the papacy, he decided to appoint Giovanni Benelli, a hard-driving and well-organized cleric as his chief of staff. At the end of Paul’s tenure, the pope promoted him to cardinal and assigned him to the prestigious see of Florence. His name would be circulated as a possible papal candidate, but he had alienated too many members of the hierarchy over the years and died prematurely on October 24, 1982, at the age of sixty-one. In 1967, the pope decided to visit Turkey to meet with Patriarch Athenagoras, the first such visit to that city since Pope Constantine I made the long arduous journey in the early eighth century. It further underscored Paul’s commitment to ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox churches. During the trip the pope returned to Turkey the military standard captured at the Battle of Lepanto and kept in Rome since 1571. Paul went on to call the Orthodox Church “a sister church,” a rare compliment, and he urged that individuals rediscover that unity and diversity and faithfulness that can only be the work of the Holy Spirit. But the recent development of Roman Catholic dogma—especially on the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, and the infallibility of the pope— greatly hindered reconciliation. Several months later the Patriarch came to Rome to visit the pope, as another historic milestone was recorded.

The New Collegiality At the same time, Paul had called a synod in Rome—a development arising

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from the reforms of the council. Later in the year the pope had an operation for prostate problems and at the end of the year the recuperating pontiff received President Johnson. It was reported that the usually calm pope shouted at Johnson and slammed his hand down, protesting the American escalation of the war in Vietnam. Whether it is true or not, Paul continued to emphasize tranquility and social justice, and later became an intermediary for peace in that region. 59 As tensions within the Church increased, the pope was attacked by both the conservatives and progressives. Paul also began to experience the criticism of his one-time friend and ally Leo Joseph Cardinal Suenens, who had made his election as pope possible and who began turning on the pontiff, arguing that he had betrayed the reforms of the council. Paul also clumsily forced out Cardinal Lercaro whom he had supposedly trusted with liturgical reform, and on the same day balanced that dismissal with the firing of the conservative prefect of the Congregation of the Rite, Arcadio Larraona. Perhaps he was just getting tired of controversies, realizing that moderates are the most politically vulnerable, even in the Catholic Church. On March 19, 1968, Cardinal Suenens asked the pope to act more in association with the episcopal conferences. He further urged that the birth control and ordination of married men questions be taken up at the next synod, supposedly as a way to build some consensus for the pope’s positions. But in fairness to the pope, his role did not give him the flexibility to swing with the moods as did his old friend from Belgium. Suenens started out as one of the fathers of Vatican II, a close associate of John XXIII, and a co-strategist with Montini as to the directions in which the lumbering and floundering council should go. He pushed for Montini’s selection, was denied the secretary of state position because of conservative opposition, and became an opponent of the non-collegial process surrounding the promulgation of Humanae Vitae. Suenens was quickly viewed by the media as a very vocal critic of a chastised Paul. Then he discovered the charismatic movement and tried to convince the Pope that the Church should move more in the direction of an emotional, experiential, and existential ecclesia. The media loved him, for he was a man of ideas and the media lived for ideas, if only for one day.60 Six months after his Humanae Vitae, the pope did call for an extraordinary synod to be held on October 11, 1969, in order to explore the relationships between the primacy of the pope and the collegiality of the bishops. At the same time, Paul replaced the elderly Cicognani with Jean-Marie Cardinal Villot in the secretary of state position—a person more sympathetic to the notion of collegiality. In April Paul also named thirty-five new cardinals—raising the number of the College of Cardinals up to an unprecedented 133 members. The pope announced a new ordo missae, a new calendar of the Roman Church, a division of the responsibility of the Congregation of Rites, and the establishment of an International Theological Commission. In addition, Paul finally challenged Suenens in a meeting, criticizing his authoritarian ways in Belgium, and appar-

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ently at one point asking for his resignation as cardinal. The same prelate who so advocated consultation and collegiality ran his own show by himself it seemed. The cardinal returned the criticism, and the pope cooled down and simply responded, “Yes, pray for me; because of my weakness the Church is badly governed.” Instead of accepting those rather generous sentiments, Suenens went public, attacking the pope again, arguing that he had abandoned the council’s definition of collegiality. To Paul’s dismay his accusations were supported by major theologians, including Karl Rahner and Hans Küng. Three French cardinals, including Villot, responded in private letters aimed at becoming public, charging Suenens’ remarks with being disrespectful and even slanderous. On June 23, Paul briefly alluded to the fact that he was not insensitive to criticisms that were inaccurate and yet concluded, “It is not easy to hold a post of responsibility in the Church today. It is not easy to rule a diocese, and we well understand the conditions in which our brothers in the episcopate of faith have to exercise their mission.” The pope promised to take legitimate criticisms into account, and went on to visit the World Council of Churches in Geneva in June—another startling precedent for a Church that historically had opposed such ecumenical efforts. In July he became the first pope ever to visit Africa, going to Uganda to pay his respects to the shrine of the twenty-two martyrs who had been canonized during the third session of the council. Bishops from all over Africa came and Paul, quoting the words of the Apostle who was his namesake, praised, “all the Churches of Christ’s reach.” To a very sympathetic audience, he observed that it was time for the Africans to become “missionaries to yourselves,” for the Church is “well and truly planted in this blessed soil.”62 He observed that the Catholic Church was by its nature a conservative institution, and that “we are not the inventors of faith, we are its custodians.” But then he sensitively observed that the Church favored the adaptation of the Christian life to indigenous conditions, and that “you may, and indeed must, have an African Christianity.” Thus away from the burdens of the papacy and the intrigues of the bureaucratic church, Paul the modern apostle to the world, was to be liberated if only for a day—to do what he did best: to encourage evangelization of the Third World. The pastor and the diplomat overcame the hesitating theologian . . . somewhat. As preparations for the synod began, Suenens publicly insisted that the primacy of the pope was never really an issue. It was the style of papal authority and the balance between the pope and the bishops that he was talking about. The episcopal conferences had not been consulted before the pope’s birth control pronouncement. The cardinal also identified himself more with the increasing dissidents in the Church during the difficult 1968–1969 period. Paul responded in part on October 6, 1969, in a talk to the International Theological Commission where he stressed the importance of the papacy for the “government, stability, peace, and unity of the Church.” Still he emphasized the significant role of the theologians in the magisterium and argued that it was not

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a question of primacy. In the area of divine truth, the pope observed, “There is only one primacy of revealed truth and faith which people give their assent to in their own way.” The synod stressed its unity with the papacy and urged some broader reforms that Paul in part accepted. Some unease seemed to prevail and as that was happening, Paul was forced to face directly another challenge from the Dutch church on the question of priestly celibacy. The hierarchy there, closely in touch with the faithful, advocated an end to mandatory priestly celibacy and a restoration of posts to priests who had subsequently married. The bishops were moving to implement their suggestions very quickly. Privately Paul tried to stem the revolt, and Cardinal Villot was sent to reach some compromise. The Secretary did propose, however, one loophole in his draft—where there was an extreme shortage of priests it would be possible to ordain older married men. The pope was not pleased at first, and a diplomatic Villot responded, “Holy Father, act as if this text never existed.” Paul then seemed amenable to the exception, although it would not affect the Netherlands, since it was mainly aimed at the Third World. Again, Suenens from Belgium criticized the pope for acting alone on the issue.63 The pope continued his missionary ways. In November 1970 he visited the Philippines. There he was physically assaulted by a Bolivian painter, Benjamin Mendoza, who came at him with a dagger. Paul seemed not to be injured, but later blood was found on his cassock. A later synod that met in the autumn of 1971 would take up the issue of celibacy, and ended up splitting 107 to 87 against the ordination of married men. The pope announced publicly that “the bishops of the entire Catholic world want to keep integrally this absolute gift by which the priest consecrates himself to God.” The Archbishop of São Paolo, Brazil, Paolo Evaristo Arns, insisted much later that the pope had confided to him that if the change had passed, he would have carried it out. Apparently, Paul even privately offered an alternative proposal which would have allowed the pontiff to permit the ordination of married men of “mature age and proven life.” The pope later explored other lay ministries and the role of women in some of those ministries as well. In 1972, Cardinal Suenens was visiting the United States, and there met several nuns from the Sisters of Charity who told him of the powers of the charismatic movement in their prayer house. The prelate suddenly went on to become a full convert to that style of enthusiastic worship, and he began to feel the irrelevancies of his previous causes, including Church reform and the ordination of married men.64 But such a luxury was not open to Pope Paul. Early in 1968, he was interviewed by a reporter from La Stampa who said that Russia was the only country in the world where the principle of authority was intact. Paul remarked, “Is that a great strength or a great weakness?” As he approached seventy-five and the tenth year of his pontificate, he began to experience profound depression and a personal sense of sorrow. He worried about the state of the Church and his own leadership of it. At this time, Paul chose to give a sermon in which he observed

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that “through some crack in the temple of God, the smoke of Satan has entered.” He went on to conclude that today any misguided prophet could get public media attention, while the authentic voice of the Church was ignored. As expected, elements of the Italian press picked up the sermon and turned it into humorous commentaries on the devil—a topic taboo to the modern mentality. Paul also had to confront directly the public referendum conducted in Italy on the topic of divorce which had been debated at some length in the early 1970s. In 1970, the Italian Parliament narrowly passed the Fortuna-Baslini Bill, permitting divorce in that nation. For four years, the debate continued, and on May 12, 1974, a popular referendum resulted in a strong vote of approval for the law 59.1 to 40.9 percent. As some of the Vatican officials feared, the acrimony led to a wide-ranging discussion of the role of the Church in the modern Italian state. The referendum showed starkly the limits on the ability of the hierarchy to influence the political and social attitudes of the Catholic faithful. In August 1972, Paul pronounced that the “minor orders” of lector and acolyte were open to the laity and along with the deaconate were no longer simply stepping-stones to the priesthood, but were separate and unique. These orders were initially reserved in the pope’s early decisions to men alone. Then on May 3, 1973, the pope set up a Study Commission on Women and Society, charging it to “gather, verify, interpret, revise, sharpen the ideas that have been expressed on the role of women in modern society.” Once again, Paul sought to compromise, to harmonize, to straddle a bit, rather than to command or to ignore. Critics must have wondered, if this another birth control commission with all the perils involved in true dialogue? 65 He also listened carefully as Suenens, enthralled with his discoveries, spoke of the charismatic movement, and the pontiff affirmed the cardinal’s special mission to that venture. Seven days later he admitted that the Holy Spirit operates at times outside the institutional church. While he was reaching out to this new development, the pope also hosted Amba Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria, and Patriarch of the Church of St. Mark in May 1973. The discussion revolved around the elements of unity between the Coptic Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Earlier discussions had concentrated on the common faith articulated in the first three ecumenical councils of the Church. Great Church fathers such as St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and St. Cyril, also of Alexandria, as well as the Egyptian hermit St. Anthony, were part of both Churches’ common patrimony. The questions of the primacy of the pope and the fate of the loyal Catholic elements in Egypt presented problems for those advocating joint efforts.66

The Vatican Bank But for all of his concerns with things spiritual, the pope’s attentions in the remaining years of his tenure were often distracted with the secular, the mundane,

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and the temporal. He had to come face to face with his decisions on changing investment policies that would lead to various problems and considerable embarrassment for the Holy See. It starts out as it usually does—with good intentions but bad advice. Concerned about the continuing financial drain on the Vatican, the pope sought to get the so-called Vatican Bank or Institutio per lo Opere di Religione (IOR), to help somewhat. But the IOR was independent, with most of its assets coming from religious orders, episcopal conferences, and Catholic organizations, and not the Holy See. The main assets of the Vatican were still from the 1929 settlement struck with Mussolini’s Fascist regime. Those funds had been invested, and the pope now insisted that they be diversified across a variety of nations in order to avoid any blame for economic downturns. The man put in charge of that diversification program was Michele Sindona, a Sicilian banker with secret ties to the Mafia and a group called Lodge P-2. Sindona’s good friend was Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, a Chicago-born prelate who was in charge of the Vatican Bank. The bishop had placed millions—if not hundreds of millions of dollars—into Sindona’s 140 companies in ten countries. Among those enterprises was Società Generale Immobiliare, Sindona’s Italian holding company which had invested in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., the Meurice Hotel in Paris, and an assortment of European luxury hotels. In 1969, Sindona had originally purchased a one-third interest in the SGI from the Vatican Bank. He also bought a controlling interest from the Vatican Bank in the company that provided water for the city of Rome. Marcinkus and Sindona had interests in a banking and security firm in Geneva, a Bahamian banking operation, and banks in Italy which included partnerships with the Continental Illinois National Bank among others. In 1981, Marcinkus’s major lay assistant was arrested in Rome on charges of complicity in the Sindona swindles and bankruptcies. To many it was clear that the head of the Vatican Bank understood what was happening all along. But in the fall of 1971, there were only rumors that Sindona and Marcinkus were involved in depositing $100 million in counterfeit American corporate bonds in West German banks. That equity was being used to buy Bastogi, a giant Italian holding company. That deal fell through, but Sindona begin to seize control of Franklin National Bank, the nineteenth largest bank in the United States. Within two years Sindona bankrupted that institution, the first such major bank failure in that nation since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Sindona was charged with fraudulently receiving at least $15 million from the bank, manipulating its foreign currency speculation so that the bank lost $30 million, and transferring $40 million illegally out of Italy. It was alleged, but not proven, that the transfer had been done through the Vatican Bank. Soon the Sindona empire collapsed. He had illegally removed at least $225 million from his bank in Milan. Five Italian investigators looking into the collapse were murdered, and Sindona was later indicted for those murders. One American prosecutor, John Kenney, said that Sindona was a launderer of funds for prominent Italians and others, and that the Vatican Bank was involved in

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those operations. Author Richard Hammar has charged that Archbishop Marcinkus plotted to purchase $1 billion in phony securities, and that the respected Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, who died in 1972, was initially involved. Whether those charges were true is not clear, but it has been estimated that the Vatican lost over $200 million.67 After Sindona, the Vatican then turned to Roberto Calvi, and Calvi led the Vatican into another scandal with his Banco Ambrisano of Milan. For years later, three popes would struggle to set right the Holy See’s finances and sever ties with the embarrassed banking community, angry investors, and government investigators on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The wiles of the high wired world of twentieth-century finance were too slippery even for the usually adept Vatican operatives.

More Doubts At about the same time, the pope incurred increasing attacks from conservative elements for his abandonment of the Tridentine Mass established during the reign of St. Pius V in 1570. There was probably very little thought from the council Fathers that Latin, especially for the Eucharistic Prayer, would be totally abandoned in the Mass, but that was the pope’s decision. The chief critic of those changes was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was increasingly challenging the pope’s authority on that and other issues. Another right wing organization, Opus Dei, was growing and seeking permission to become a “secular institute.” The Opus Dei movement had been founded by Monsignor Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer (1902-1975) in Spain, a figure who was beatified in 1992. The organization followed a series of ninetynine spiritual maxims and is characterized by secrecy, theological conservatism and rigorous spirituality. Its leaders, seeing the difficulties facing the Holy See, volunteered to take over 30 percent of the cost of operating the financially strapped Vatican. But Pope Paul generally was cautious about that group; his successor John Paul II would warmly embrace it and named it a personal prelature in 1982. John Paul II also praised the corrupt founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Rev. Marcial Maciel Degallado, who was discovered to be a philander, a pedophile, and a priest who betrayed not only his vows, but common decency. 68 In the same year Pope Paul received from the synod an unhappy set of proceedings on the topic of evangelism. The Latin American and the African representatives had been especially displeased with the draft presented by Karol Cardinal Wojtyla. The Polish prelate stressed not the new developments in conversion and liberation theology, but the notion that one should reject the world and much of its values and avoid sin and Satan. The draft was rejected by the synod in 1974. The missionary churches were becoming full-fledged establishments, and the early misunderstandings that Wojtyla embraced would continue as pope. Consequently Paul was left with the opportunity to go his own way on the is-

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sue.69 The pope could indeed be forgiven if he smiled at the synod’s confusions after the emphasis that the Vatican Council and progressives, especially Cardinal Suenens, placed on its importance. But probably he did not even smirk, but merely carried on his duty and researched the question thoroughly as his patron Pius XII would have done. Paul also continued his scrutiny of the Jesuits. The Jesuit General Superior, Don Pedro Arrupe, called a general congregation together which was asked to review his own record in office among other items. The pope was aware of the marked decline in Jesuit vocations, the opposition from some in their ranks to his birth control encyclical, the Jesuit supposed preoccupation with consultation over authority, the rise among certain chapters of close (but supposedly nonsexual) fellowships with women, and the prominence of Jesuit theologians involved in speculations that the Holy See found troubling. Conservative Jesuits had informed the Vatican of Arrupe’s alleged indifference to these pernicious developments. The desire of the members to avoid classes or grades in the order, which had been part of its history also led to the charge that it was abandoning now its vow of obedience to the pope. The General Superior was quickly summoned in the middle of the congregation’s proceedings to the Vatican, and informed by the pope that there would be no changes in grades. 70 Thus battered on the left and the right, the pope still tried to exercise consensus leadership, to remain true to his progressive leanings and yet to preserve the conservative deposit of the faith. Such objectives were somewhat contradictory, at least in the public image he conveyed to the outside world, and he seemed an equivocating figure. Such is the peril of moderate reformers, as Pius IX had found out very early in his reign. In 1975 at the age of seventy-eight, Paul wrote of himself, “What is my state of mind? Am I Hamlet? Or Don Quixote? Or on the left? On the right? I don’t feel I have been properly understood. I have two dominant feelings, superabundo gaudio. I am full of consolation, overcome with joy, throughout every tribulation” [II Corinthians 7:4]. In the year before his death, however, a weary Paul was to conclude a “non-Catholic mentality was increasingly dominant in the Church.” The Papal Commission on the Status of Women added another controversy with its division on the ordination of women, although it did recommend that they be admitted to the nonordained lay ministries of lector and acolyte. The deaconate was seen by some as only a short step from the priesthood, and thus presented real problems for many conservatives. Later John Paul II has the Vatican rule that it was a near infallible pronouncement that women were excluded forever from the priesthood. Under Paul, however, many theologians openly concluded that the New Testament gave no evidence either way on the issue. In 1975 the Anglicans indicated that they were moving toward ordination of women, and that pronouncement ended much of the talk about reunion between the two congregations, although Pope Paul was remarkably cautious in reaching that conclusion himself. And as the years passed, Paul’s celebrated patience began to wear thin as he dealt with Archbishop Lefebvre. At one point the French prelate was informed

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that his ordination of priests dedicated to the Tridentine Rite was valid but not licit, and that he had to exhibit a public act of submission for his rebellion toward the Church, the council, and the magisterium. In 1976 Lefebvre ordained thirteen or fourteen priests and thirteen deacons and subdeacons. Finally the Congregation of Bishops formally suspended Lefebvre. Paul called him “the greatest cross of my pontificate.” Later the pope did grant him an audience, but greeted him coolly, saying, “What have we here, a brother or an enemy?” Lefebvre was intent in continuing his opposition, expanding his seminary, and ordaining priests opposed to the work of the council. But now he was challenging the authority of the pope as well. Concerning the controversial changes in the liturgy, Paul insisted that “not only have we maintained everything of the past, but we have rediscovered the most ancient and primitive condition, the one closest to the origins. This tradition has been obscured in the course of centuries, particularly by the Council of Trent.”71 Then once again, Paul confounded observers. For reasons of his own, Paul curtly dismissed the progressive archbishop in charge of liturgical reform, Annibale Bugnini, just as he had dismissed Cardinal Lercaro in 1968. Perhaps he was trying to strike a balance after his criticism against the conservative Lefebvre, but it was clear the era of concilar experimentation in the area of liturgy was over. With it some of the decentralization of power to the episcopal conference was abridged as well.72 As age took its toll and the pains of arthritis increased, Pope Paul was unable to travel much. In fact since 1970 he had not left Italy after his celebrated pilgrimages across the world as the new apostle to the unbelievers. Confidentially, he had talked with the abbot of Monte Cassino about resigning and ending his days in the Benedictine monastery.

Duty and Service Sensing his own end, the pope in 1977 moved Giovanni Benelli out as his chief of staff, making him the archbishop of Florence and a cardinal. He would be seen as a possible successor in the two conclaves in 1978, but his enemies were legion, and he died in 1982. As he observed the pope, Benelli realized that he could never resign: “He cannot come down from the cross.” The pontiff himself judged the condition of modern man in increasingly critical terms, concluding on one occasion, “He is seized by a frenzy, he is exalted by a fury to overthrow everything (and here we have a worldwide protest) in blind belief that a new order, a kind of rebirth not yet properly perceivable, is inevitably about to dawn.” At eighty, Paul seemed weary of life and was ready to end his service. It was his sad fate to have to watch another shocking tragedy—the kidnapping and eventual murder of Aldo Moro, the head of the Christian Democratic party and a

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friend of the pope. For fifty-five days the drama continued as this high-ranking leader was kept in captivity by the Red Brigades who charged him with crimes against the people. Moro was a threat to the militant left because he was exploring a coalition government with the Communist Party in Italy. The Red Brigades asked for a release of some comrades, so-called political prisoners in their eyes. Moro appealed to the pope for assistance in the exchange, but Paul was informed that it would be interference in the affairs of the sovereign state. The pope instead wrote a letter as a private citizen directly to the captors asking for Moro’s release and calling him a decent and innocent man. On May 9, 1978, Moro’s dead body was found in a parked Renault. At a funeral Mass for the slain leader, Paul lamented, “Oh Lord, You have not answered our prayers.” 73 On June 29, the fifteenth anniversary of his coronation, he explained that he had kept the faith. “That was my duty, to be faithful. I have done everything, now I’ve finished.” On his deathbed he was asked in passing what he wanted. The pope responded appropriately, “a little patience.”74 Those were his last words, patience, always patience. Those were the skills taught him at his father’s knee and enshrined in his mother’s faith. Those were the attitudes of the Curia where he spent his formative years and the sensitivities of his patron, Pius XII. Montini remained remarkably humble for a long-time ecclesiastical power broker and then prince of the Church. One cannot imagine Pius XI, for example, putting up with the criticisms and disobedience from his own clergy and hierarchy as Paul did. Paul worried that the council would lead to a major schism as councils had before, and by his patience and fortitude he probably obviated many of those consequences. Pope Paul was a subtle man, trained in the arts of listening, delaying, and calibrating responses. He was a true Curia politician in the best sense of the term. Paul tried to hold together the progressive impulses of Vatican II for collegiality and decentralization, with his own sense of a conservative stewardship as Peter’s successor—a stewardship defined in large measure by his modern predecessors and which was generally antithetical to the council’s departures. Paul was a highly educated and well-informed person. He somehow embraced the core but not the harsh edges of many new theologies and social movements. In the leadership of institutions such a balancing act is hard to maintain and almost impossible to pass on. His immediate successor was chosen to cast away in part the gloom of the last years of Paul’s pontificate, but it would be his protégé, the stronger and more youthful colleague Karol Wojtyla who would seek to buttress, to restore, and to roll back the Church to its older formulations of dogma, authority, and social concerns.

Notes 1. Peter Hebblethwaite, Paul VI: The First Modern Pope (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 8; this is the most comprehensive biography of Paul and

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my account is indebted to both its chronology and some of its opinions; Wilton Wynn, Keepers of the Keys: John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II, Three Who Changed the Church (New York: Random House, 1988), 24; and Alden Hatch, Pope Paul VI (New York: Random House, 1966), 192. 2. John C. Clancy, Apostle for Our Time: Pope Paul VI (New York: J. Kenedy, 1963), 144–49; Correspondence, John XXIII (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965). 3. Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 46; Jean Guitton, The Pope Speaks: Dialogues of Paul VI with Jean Guitton (New York: Meredith Press, 1968), pt. one; Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 192. 4. Hatch, Pope Paul VI, chaps. 2–3; Corrado Pallenberg, Pope Paul VI, rev. ed. (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), chaps. 1–4; Roy MacGregorHastie, Pope Paul VI (London: Frederick Muller, 1964), passim; William E. Barrett, Shepherd of Mankind; A Biography of Pope Paul VI (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1964), book I; Jose Luis Gonzalez and Teofilo Perez, Paul VI (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1964). 5. Owen Chadwick, The Christian Church in the Cold War (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), chap. 1. 6. Francis X. Murphy, “A Brief Biography of Paul VI,” in Paul VI: Critical Appraisals, ed. James Andrews (New York: Bruce Publishing Co., 1970), 140; Archbishop Angelo dell’Acqua said during Pius’ illness in 1954 Montini was running the Church; see Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 99. 7. Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 26–28; Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 104, 107; Malachi Martin, Three Popes and the Cardinal (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), 8. 8. Clancy, Apostle for Our Time, 117; James F. Andrews, “The Pope in an Age of Insecurity,” in his edited Paul VI: Critical Appraisals, 7–27; Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 118; Guitton, The Pope Speaks, 58. 9. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 318. 10. Alberto Melloni, “Pope John XXIII: Open Questions for a Biography Review of Pope John XIII Shepherd of the Modern World,” Catholic Historical Review, 72, no. 1 (January 1986), 51–67. 11. Clancy, Apostle for Our Time, 189–90; Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 147. One cardinal is supposed to have said after the conclave of Montini’s election, “We have John with Pacelli’s brains,” Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 149. On new rules of election, see Celestine Bohlen, “New Rules for Electing Pope Stress Secrecy,” New York Times, February 25, 1996, 4. From 1945 to John Paul II, the rules required that a successful candidate had to get a majority of two-thirds plus one of those voting. 12. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 328–29. 13. Carlo Falconi, Pope John and the Ecumenical Council: A Diary of the Second Vatican Council, September–December 1962 (New York: World Publishing Company, 1964). On “docility,” see Aelred Graham, Zen Catholicism (New York: Crossroad, 1963), 46; Giancarlo Zizola, The Utopia of Pope John XXIII (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1978).

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14. Rather useful are twelve pamphlet portraits of cardinals in Michael Novak, ed., The Men Who Made the Council (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964). See also the anthology by Walter M. Abbott, Twelve Council Fathers (New York: Macmillan Co., 1963). 15. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 2–25; Guitton, The Pope Speaks, 11, 110–12. 16. I have followed closely the account of Xavier Rynne [Francis X. Murphy] in summarizing the proceedings of Vatican II. See also Henri Fesquet, The Drama of Vatican II: The Ecumenical Council, June, 1962–December, 1965 (New York: Random House, 1967); Vatican II, ed. Austin Flannery (Northport, N.Y.: Costello Publishing Co., 1987); The Documents of Vatican II (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966). Relevant here is Rynne, The Second Session; The Debates and Decrees of Vatican Council II, September 29 to December 4, 1963 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Co., 1964), 10–33. 17. Rynne, Second Session, 37. 18. Rynne, Second Session, 158; George Bull, Vatican Politics and the Second Vatican Council, 1962–5 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), chap. 5; Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 50; Augustin Bea, Ecumenism in Focus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1969). 19. Michael Serafian, pseud. [Malachi Martin], The Pilgrim (London: Farrar, Straus & Co., 1964), 159; Hugh Morley, The Pope and the Press (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968); Edward L. Heston, The Press and Vatican II (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967). 20. Rynne, Second Session, 62–63. 21. Rynne, Second Session, 88; Hans Küng, Infallible? An Inquiry (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971). A more moderate view is Yves Congar, Diversity and Communion (London: S. M. Press, 1984). 22. Rynne, Second Session, 99, 100, 104, 111, 117. 23. Rynne, Second Session, 117–18; Paula Butturini, “Vatican Move Raises Question,” Boston Globe, November 23, 1995, 2. 24. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 358–65. 25. Pope Paul VI in the Holy Land (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964) is the source for this section. Also see Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 372–75; and Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 166–67; George Cornell, Voyage of Faith: The Catholic Church in Transition (New York: Odyssey, 1966), 144–46. 26. Cornell, Voyage of Faith, 72, 85; Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 350, 375–77; on the papacy as an obstacle, 350; E. J. Stormon, Towards the Healing of Schism: The Sees of Rome and Constantinople: Public Statements and Correspondence between the Holy See and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 1958–1984 (New York: Paulist Press, 1987). 27. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 381–82. 28. Xavier Rynne, The Third Session; The Debates and Decrees of Vatican Council II, September 14 to November 21, 1964 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965), 3–7. 29. Rynne, The Third Session, 25–33, 128. 30. Rynne, The Third Session, 141; Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 195; Stjepan

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Schmidt, ed., Augustin Cardinal Bea: Spiritual Profile; Notes from the Cardinal Diary (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1971). 31. Rynne, The Third Session, 184–89. 32. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 403–6; Bull, Vatican Politics, 63. 33. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 408–12; Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 210–11; Cornell, Voyage of Faith, 52. 34. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 423–27. 35. Xavier Rynne, Fourth Session (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966), chap. 2. 36. Bill Adler, Pope Paul in the United States: His Mission for Peace on Earth, October 4, 1965 (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1965); An Instrument of Your Peace: The Mission for Peace by Pope Paul VI and His Momentous Visit to America (New York: Commemorative Publications, 1965); Joseph Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 71–73. 37. Rynne, Fourth Session, 56, 73–75. 38. Rynne, Fourth Session, 137–47. 39. Rynne, Fourth Session, 149. 40. Rynne, Fourth Session, 163. 41. “Nostra Aetate,” http://listserv.American.edu/catholic/church/ VaticanII/nostra-aetate.html. 42. Rynne, Fourth Session, 201–34. 43. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 436–59; Cornell, Voyage of Faith, 3; Tad Szulc, Pope John Paul II (New York: Scribner, 1995), chap. 15. 44. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 462–65; Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey: A Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), chap. 13. 45. John T. Noonan, Jr., Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (New York: New American Library, 1965), pt. 1. 46. Hatch, Pope Paul VI, 222 on “Vatican roulette” characterization; John N. Kotre, Simple Gifts: The Lives of Pat and Patty Crowley (New York: Andrews and McMeel, 1979), chap. 9. 47. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 253. 48. Dan Sullivan, “A History of Catholic Thinking on Contraception,” in What Modern Catholics Think about Birth Control: A New Symposium, ed. William Birmingham (New York: New American Library, 1964), 28–72; Noonan, Contraception, pts. 1–2; Charles F. Curran, “Natural Law and Contemporary Moral Theology,” in his edited Contraception: Authority and Dissent (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 151–75. The anti-women quotes are from Sullivan; William E. May, Contraception: Humanae Vitae and Catholic Sexual Thought (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1984) argues that the majority report was written between June 4 and 9, 1964. 49. “Humanae Vitae,” in The Papal Encyclicals 1958–1981, comp. Claudia Carlen (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath Publishing Co., 1981), 223–36; Joseph A. Selling, The Reaction to Humanae Vitae: A Study in Special and Fundamental

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Theology, 2 vols. (S.T.D. thesis, Catholic University of Louvain, 1978); The Teaching of Humanae Vitae: A Defense (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988); John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), chap. 2; Anthony Kosnik, ed., Human Sexuality, New Directions in American Catholic Thought: A Study (New York: Paulist Press, 1977); Norman St. John-Stevas, The Agonizing Choice: Birth Control, Religion and the Law (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1971); Janet E. Smith, Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1991); Robert Blair Kaiser, The Politics of Sex and Religion: A Case History in the Development of Doctrine, 1962–1984 (Kansas City, Mo.: Leaven Press, 1985); Robert C. Hoyt, ed., The Birth Control Debate (Kansas City, Mo.: National Catholic Reporter, 1968); John Paul II, Reflections of Humanae Vitae: Conjugal Morality and Spirituality (Boston: St. Paul’s Editions, 1984); Andrews, “The Pope in an Age of Insecurity,” 30; Jay Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 435–38; George Gallup Jr. and Jim Castelli, The American Catholic People: Their Beliefs, Practices, and Values (Garden City: Doubleday, 1987), 52, 55, 56, 62, 93, also indicates that only 60 percent believe the pope is infallible under certain circumstances. 50. Andrew Greeley and Mary Greeley Durkin, How to Save the Catholic Church (New York: Viking, 1984) indicates that nine out of ten Catholics do not accept the birth control ban, with four out of five weekly communicants dissenting. The decline of vocations is in Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 435– 38. 51. Yves Congar, Challenge to the Church: The Case of Archbishop Lefebvre (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, 1976); Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, 2 vols. (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1986); Eugene Kennedy, Tomorrow’s Catholics, Yesterday’s Church: The Two Cultures of American Catholicism (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948–1975 (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1990); Peter Hebblethwaite, The Runaway Church: Post Conciliar Growth or Decline (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), chap. 2. 52. A more sympathetic view is given in the judicious volume: Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church, rev.ed. (New York: Image Books, 1990), chap. 34. 53. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 475–76; on St. Peter Celestine V, see J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 206–8. 54. Some of the popular histories of the Jesuits loosely call them an “Order,” that is a group of people who live under a religious rule like the Benedictines. I have used that nomenclature as well as “Society” which is its actual title. For a critical review of the Council see Avery Dulles, “Vatican II and the American Experience of Church,” in Gerald M. Fagin, ed., Vatican II: Open Ques-

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tions and New Horizons (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1984); 38–57; Rene Latourelle, ed., Vatican II: Assessments and Perspectives, Twenty-Five Years After (1962–1987), 3 vols. (New York: The Paulist Press, 1988). 55. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 479; a different view of Paul’s achievements are contained in Michael Novak, The Open Church: Vatican II, Act II (New York: Macmillan, 1964); Novak later became a major figure praising the ethical implications of moving toward capitalism and celebrating the profit motive in his The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1991). See also: Joseph Gremillion, ed., The Gospel of Peace and Justice: Catholic Social Teaching since Pope John (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1976); on Medellín: Penny Lernoux, People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism (New York: Viking Books, 1989), 25–26. 56. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 495–97; Bokenkotter, A Concise History, 377– 80; Raymond Hedin, Married to the Church (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995); Thomas C. Fox, Sexuality and Catholics (New York: George Braziller, 1995), chap. 6; Lawrence K. Altman, “Study Challenges Beliefs on Conception,” New York Times, (Dec. 7, 1995) , A 28; on Nigeria see Salvatore J. Adams, “The Anguish of the Pope,” in Andrews, ed., Paul VI, 39. 57. James Wolf, ed., Gay Priests (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989). 60 found that 48.5 percent of priests and 55.1 percent of current seminarians were judged by others to be gay, although the methodology of this study leaves much to be desired; Jeannine Gramick and Pat Furey, The Vatican and Homosexuality: A Reaction to the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” (New York: Crossroad, 1988), for a larger context arising from the 1986 letter on the topic of homosexuality; Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press 1996); James F. Clarity, “Ireland’s Catholic Hierarchy Confronts Sex Abuse of Children,” New York Times, (October 19, 1995), A 11; Annie Murphy and Peter de Rosa, Forbidden Fruit: The True History of My Secret Love Affair with Ireland’s Most Powerful Bishop (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993). 58. Bokenkotter, A Concise History, 385–86; Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 490– 91. 59. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 500–6; Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 326–27; Thomas E. Quigley, ed., American Catholics and Vietnam (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Williams B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1968). 60. On the Suenens controversy see José de Broucker, The Suenens Dossier: The Case for Collegiality (Notre Dame, Ind.: Fides Publishers, Inc., 1970); Elizabeth Hamilton, Cardinal Suenens: A Portrait (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975); Léon-Joseph Suenens, Coresponsibility in the Church (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968). 61. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 523–34. 62. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 536–38. 63. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 543–52. 64. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 585–93; Edward D. O’Connor, Pope Paul and

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the Spirit: Charisms and Church Renewal in the Teaching of Paul VI (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1978); Léon-Joseph Suenens, A New Pentecost? (New York: Seabury Press, 1975). 65. Hebblethwaite, The Runaway Church, 86; Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 595–603; Giuseppe De Rosa, “Learning the Hard Way: The Referendum on Divorce in Italy,” The Month, August 1974, 668–71. 66. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 610–11. 67. Richard Hammer, The Vatican Connection (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982), chaps. 16–18; a more general treatment is Avro Manhattan, The Vatican Billions: Two Thousand Years of Wealth Accumulation from St. Peter to the Space Age (London: Paravision Books, 1972). The figure of $200 million may be exaggerated. Thirty million is also noted, and the role of Tisserant and other Vatican officials may not be supported by other sources. See Luigi DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker (New York: Franklin Watts, 1983); Nick Tosches, Power on Earth (New York: Arbor House, 1986); Rupert Cornwell, “God’s Banker” (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1983); Charles Raw, The Moneychangers (London: Harvill, 1992); Larry Gurwin, The Calvi Affair: Death of a Banker (London: Macmillan, 1983); and Manfred Ketrs de Vries, “Leaders on the Couch: The Case of Roberto Calvi,” Research and the Development of Pedagogical Matrials (Fontainebleau, France: Insead, 1990). 68. Lernoux, People of God, 302–24; in 1984 Pope John Paul II allowed the celebration of the Tridentine Mass under certain strictly controlled circumstances, and Benedict XVI has restored it totally. 69. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 627. 70. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 628–32; Malachi Martin, The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). 71. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 7 on the Hamlet-Don Quixote quote; 670–73 on Lefebvre. 72. Bugnini, Reform of the Liturgy, passim. 73. On modern man remark: Andrews, “The Pope in the Age of Anxiety,” 23; Leonard Sciascia, The Moro Affair, and the Mystery of Majorana (Manchester: Carcanet, 1987). 74. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 710.

Chapter 26

John Paul II: The Uneasy Agenda of Restoration Before he passed away, Pope Paul whispered, “See, so the pope dies like any ordinary man.” His last will and testament mandated a “pious and simple” service—as simple as a pope can probably request in any case. It was in August, the traditional vacation month of Italians, that his reign ended. Almost immediately some of the Curia insisted that the next pope also had to be an Italian in order to deal with that nation’s unique brand of politics. That demand was countered by a letter from Third World prelates supporting the election of a pastorally oriented pope who could understand their increasing difficulties in the underdeveloped nations.1

Choosing John Paul I The Curia conservatives moved quickly to derail two major candidates who were being prominently mentioned: Sebastiano Cardinal Baggio, the head of the Congregation for Bishops, and Sergio Cardinal Pignedoli, from the Secretariat for Non-Christians. The former was portrayed as a committed progressive, and the latter had been criticized for being indiscrete in his dealings with the international pariah Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya who had hosted a conference that attacked Zionism and Israel. The conservatives advocated instead Giuseppe Cardinal Siri—a staunch opponent of Vatican II, Pope John’s papacy, and any rapprochement with the left in foreign policy matters. The normally very patient Pope Paul had on one occasion relieved Siri from the presidency of the Italian Conference of Bishops because of his obstinacy. On the first ballot, Siri led with twenty-five votes; the only other candidate close to him was Albino Luciani, the amiable Cardinal Patriarch of Venice. Three times in the twentieth century, the College of Cardinals has turned to that ancient fabled city for a pope, and now it was to elect from its citizenry the first pope to be born in that century. If the cardinals insisted on an Italian and wanted 525

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a moderate progressive from outside the Curia, there were really few other candidates of available age and pastoral experience from which to choose. Thus the assets of Albino Luciani seemed to become more obvious as the weeks passed by. On the third ballot, Luciani received over sixty-five votes, and then he was elected with over ninety votes, while his own went to the liberal Aloisio Cardinal Lorscheider of Brazil. It was truly unanimity for a relatively unknown person. Before the conclave, the sociologist, Reverend Andrew Greeley, had remarked that the Church needed to name a “holy man who could smile”—and that is exactly what the cardinals got. Albino Luciani was born on October 17, 1912, in Forno di Canalo (now Canalo d’Agordo) in the Dolomite Alps of northern Italy. His father was a migrant laborer and a committed socialist, but still he agreed to send his son to a seminary at the tender age of eleven. Later Luciani earned a doctorate in theology at the Gregorian University in Rome and was made vice chancellor of the seminary he had attended in Belluno. In 1958, he was named bishop of Vittorio Veneto where he was known for his strong pastoral orientation. Luciani generally supported the reforms of Vatican II, although he never played a major role in any of the four sessions of the council. In 1969, he was named the patriarch of Venice and insisted that the people there abandon the triumphant procession of colorful gondolas and decorated boats that had so delighted Angelo Roncalli at his own installation. His admirers in Venice said that Luciani dressed in a simple priest’s cassock and ate seaweed pizza with students. He soon sold his pectoral cross—a gift from John XXIII that had originally belonged to Pius XII. He did so to raise money, some $14,000, for the causes of the physically handicapped in his diocese. In a trip to Venice, Pope Paul removed his own stole and placed it on Luciani’s shoulders, an act of high approval that embarrassed the humble and unpretentious prelate. In 1973, he was named a cardinal, a normal honor for that ancient see. In his spare time, Luciani also authored a series of fictional letters titled Illustrissimi, addressed to famous “historical” figures, ranging from Pinocchio and Figaro to Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Empress Maria Teresa of Austria. The letters aimed at presenting the Catholic faith to common people in understandable formats.2 Once elected to the papacy, however, he glumly observed, “I have neither the wisdom of the heart that Pope John had, nor the preparation or learning of Pope Paul.” On one occasion he had confided, “I am only a poor man, accustomed to small things and silence.” Soon he was repeatedly asking his secretary, “Why did they choose me? Why on earth did they choose me?”3 For the first time in the long history of the office, an incumbent took a dual name, in honor of the two pontiffs who had so influenced him and advanced his career. Also with that designation, he seemed to refuse to choose between those who respected John’s memory and liberal legacy, and those who preferred Paul’s more cautious style of reform. What exactly his views were on the Church and the pressing controversies

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of post-conciliar reform was unclear because of the brevity of his term. Clearly he was pastorally oriented and even considered once, before finally dismissing the idea, that bishops should again be elected as they had been in the distant past. He seemed at ease with ecumenism, advised Paul VI not to issue any definitive statement on birth control, was privately critical of the increasingly controversial Vatican Bank, and was charmingly hospitable when he was still a cardinal welcoming to the world the first “test tube baby,” the pretty Louise Brown. Later, however, the Holy Office (renamed by Paul the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) would formally condemn artificial insemination. Its theologians had never seen the lovely infant child.4 The new pope showed his lack of experience in diplomacy on several occasions, most apparently when he warmly welcomed General Jorge Videla, the president of Argentina, a symbol of right-wing Latin American regimes. And despite his reputation as a progressive, he was really rather conservative in many ways. He had denounced “false moralism” during the Italian divorce controversy, and had real concerns at first with the council decree on religious liberty. Luciani had been a student of Cardinal Ottaviani and had probably been inculcated in some of those rigid Romanist attitudes. In response to popular demand and despite his own inclinations, he restored the sedia gestatoria on September 23, and at St. John Lateran Basilica, the bishop of Rome’s traditional church, he criticized those so overcome with creativity that they lead the faithful into “liturgical excesses.” What his views were on other pressing questions would never be known. Five days later he was found dead in his bed. For some reason, Vatican authorities insisted on maintaining that he was discovered dead earlier than he actually was, and that he had been reading that night the world-weary devotional work, Imitation of Christ, by Thomas á Kempis. Others said that he was absorbed over a distressing report on the abuses of the Vatican Bank or going over a mundane speech for the next day that never came. Rumors spread that “the smiling pope,” as he was called, was murdered by various sorts of suspects. A book was even written detailing the alleged conspiracy, and one popular American film, Godfather III, had a pope poisoned by the Mafia. It appears, though, that the pontiff had had some serious cardiac problems and was not up to the demanding office he assumed and probably died of a pulmonary embolism.5 Pope John Paul I reigned for thirty-three days—a month in time—and left only two marks on the Church: a remarkable smile that lit up his pictures and appearances and a genuine disdain for the once royal trappings of the office. At his funeral, some spectators sadly commented on how the soles of his new shoes were barely scuffed. Now a very shaken College of Cardinals had to elect a successor—as the faithful waited for their third pope in a year. 6

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A Man from a Distant Country And so in October 1978, the College of Cardinals—some 111 in number— returned to Rome for a second conclave. It was increasingly obvious after the election of Luciani that there would be problems finding another acceptable Italian candidate who could carry the two-thirds plus one vote necessary at that time for election. Part of the reason was the clear split between Giuseppe Siri of Genoa, who at seventy-two was still seen as a protégé of Pius XII and who had been a consistent vocal critic of Vatican II and of Pope John, and Giovanni Benelli of Florence—the young, fifty-seven-year-old,hard driving administrator who shook up the Vatican bureaucracy when he served Paul VI, and who emerged in this conclave as a candidate and not just a kingmaker. Three days before the conclave, fifteen Western European and Third World cardinals met to plot a stop Siri strategy. They put forth the names of Benelli; Ugo Poletti, the vicar general of Rome; and Giovanni Colombo, the archbishop of Milan as candidates.7 At first Siri seemed to be very close to being the choice, but strong opposition developed especially from some Western European and Third World cardinals, and it proved in the long run to be an insurmountable obstacle. In addition, an Italian newspaper, La Gazzetta del Popolo, prematurely printed an illtempered interview with Cardinal Siri in which he again criticized the council in harsh terms. The interview was mysteriously delivered to the Roman residence of each member of the Sacred College. Privately the cardinal observed of John Paul I, “You can’t govern with smiles or protestations of modesty and simplicity.” Since Pope John, and especially since Paul VI, the percentage of Italians in the College of Cardinals had markedly declined. In addition, in 1963, fifty-five of the eighty cardinals who elected Paul were Europeans; in 1978 only fifty-six of the 111 were Europeans. Also Paul VI had prohibited cardinals over the age of eighty from voting, thus eliminating nine cardinals, most of whom were probably conservatives, from having a role.8 As a group, the cardinals wanted a man who was pastoral in his orientation, was in good health, and could exhibit a personal presence that appealed to the public at large. Some of the favorites of the previous conclave were no longer mentioned; they were in the Italian expression bruciati—burnt out cases.9 Before the conclave met, Cardinals Krol and König, both men with Polish roots, had a candidate—the Polish prelate from Krakow, Karol Wojtyla. Wojtyla was not well known outside of the College and the upper levels of the Vatican bureaucracy. Although he may have received up to ten votes in the previous conclave, his name was not mentioned prominently except in a brief reference in Time magazine. Years before, however, it was rumored probably apocryphally, that the mystic and stigmatic Padre Pio had fallen to his knees when he first met Wojtyla and had predicted that he would be elected pope and that his reign would be marked by an act of violence.10 After four ballots on Sunday—the first day of voting—it became more ob-

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vious that no Italian cardinal could be elected. Meanwhile between the rounds of balloting, Wojtyla spent some time reading a quarterly review on Marxism while waiting in the picturesque Sistine Chapel. On Monday afternoon, four foreign candidates emerged: Wojtyla, König (who did not want the position), Eduardo Pironio of Argentina, and Johannes Willebrands of the Netherlands who soon gave his support to Wojtyla.11 Still many of the Italian cardinals declined to support the Polish cardinal until Sebastiano Baggio of the Congregation of Bishops backed Wojtyla. In the end seventeen cardinals persistently refused to concur in his election on the eighth and final ballot. It has been rumored, but not confirmed, that Wojtyla was actually elected on the seventh ballot and refused, only accepting the office after Cardinal Wyszynski, the primate of Poland, insisted that he bow to God’s will. After his election, he sat alone at a table beneath Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, holding his head in his hands, and slumping down in his chair.12 Whether the speculation of his initial refusal is true or not, one of the cardinals there, Vicente Enrique y Tarancón, simply observed, “God forced us to break with history to elect Karol Wojtyla.” To observers, Cardinal Benelli generously commented on Wojtyla’s close ties to the Vatican Council, “His theological attitude is perfectly correct . . . what he says comes from his personal convictions. He is the right man at the right time. If there was one man who believed in the Second Vatican Council and had a firm will to carry it out it was Cardinal Wojtyla.” Later the new pope would candidly admit that the conclave had taken a gamble in choosing him. There was indeed some concern that at fifty-eight he was too young for the position—making him the most youthful pontiff since Pius IX in 1846. And most startling, he was the first non-Italian elected in 456 years, since the Dutchman Adrian (Hadrian VI) was chosen in 1522.13 Wojtyla wished at first to take the name of Stanislaus in honor of the Polish Catholic bishop and saint from Krakow who had been murdered during Mass by the knights of King Boleslaw the Bold nearly 900 years before in 1079. But in a more measured gesture, he announced his choice of a name—John Paul II in honor of his predecessors. When he addressed the crowd outside St. Peter’s Square in the early evening, he remarked in Italian that the conclave had called him “from a distant country and yet [one] always close because of our communion in faith and Christian tradition.” Then he asked their forgiveness if he made a mistake in “your—our Italian language.” It was a calculated slip and the crowd loved his gesture. When he playfully continued, “If I make mistakes, please correct me,” the crowd responded, “Yes, we will.” He was to be the most consummate actor in the history of the modern Church. 14 The next day he surreptitiously sent his red skull cap to the altar of the Polish Virgin of Ostrabrama in Vilnius in Soviet Lithuania—a special tribute to his people and their tribulations. And in the evening, he called home to Krakow, to say how lonely he was. “I am sad without my friends,” he remarked. Later he was to call the Apostolic Palace, “a cage, a gilded cage.” His schoolboy ac-

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quaintance, Dr. Karol Poliwka, was to characterize Wojtyla as “a man of loneliness.”15 He was a mystery—a public man who commanded enormous audiences wherever he went, and yet retreated into private spaces filled with religious fervor, ascetic mysticism, and deep personal loss. He wore heavily his complex and difficult past. We are all formed in so many ways by our childhood and our adolescent years. For Wojtyla those were years of war, death, and deepening religious commitment.

The Making of a Pope Karol Wojtyla was born on May 18, 1920 in the small drab city of Wadowice, fifty kilometers southwest of Krakow and in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, at the end of the tragedy called the Great War. Once he remarked, “During my childhood, I listened to veterans of World War I, talking about endless horrors of battle.” He continued to grow to manhood as the Nazis and the Soviet armies ruthlessly divided up Poland. His family roots were in the peasantry, although his father, a strict but loving and religiously devout parent, was a retired military officer in the then Austro-Hungarian Army’s quartermaster corps and was an admirer of Polish Marshall Józef Piludski. Before he was twenty-one he lost his entire family. His mother, a one-time school teacher, died when he was only eight and an older sister passed away as well early in life; his elder brother, a physician, died of scarlet fever when Karol was eleven; and his father of complications from a stroke when Karol was twenty. In 1984, Wojtyla recalled the night of his father’s death, saying, “I never felt so alone.” Sadly he observed years later, “At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved and even the ones I might have loved.” And he wistfully remarked that there comes a time when boys brought up by their fathers (no matter how well and tenderly) make the painful discovery that they have been deprived of a mother.16 Unlike most of his modern predecessors in the papacy, he did not seem to be committed at an early age to the priesthood. Wojtyla chose that vocation only a year and a half after his father’s death, after he himself had been nearly killed in several freak accidents, and as his world was coming apart in the Nazicontrolled zone of violence. The Church was feeling the full weight of totalitarian oppression, and the cardinal prelate of Krakow, Prince Adam Stefan Sapieha, informed the Vatican that the Poles were being annihilated just as brutally as the Jews. In that horrible environment, Wojtyla wrote poetry, studied philosophy, gained a military exemption by working in a quarry and then a water purification plant, and spent his free time as an actor in the Rhapsodic Theater (Teatr Rapsodyczny, or the “Theatre of the Spoken Word”), founded by Mieczyslaw Kotlarczyk. He was to say that his time as a worker was of greater value to him than his two university doctorates. Those sentiments found expression in a line

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in his poetry: “How splendid these men, no airs, no graces.” Later in 1982 he reflected on how his experience as a worker and his seeing the horrors of Polish deportation “have profoundly marked my existence.”17 At one point he fell under the spiritual influence of a tailor named Jan Tyranowski who introduced him to the writings of the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, as well as to the “Living Rosary” devotions and the Catholic Youth Association. Wojtyla was later to characterize him as a saint. 18 One tale that gained some circulation after he was chosen pope was that Wojtyla was married and that his wife was killed by the Gestapo, a story that has been discredited. One woman student, a contemporary of his, said that Wojtyla “did not avoid feminine company as a colleague, but he did not seek it.” In his autobiography he notes how he had female acquaintances, but was preoccupied with the theater and literature. Another incorrect story spread after his election is that Wojtyla was imprisoned for a while at the Dachau death camp. 19 A more dramatic account is that during those dark years, he was involved in the underground in Poland, which sought through the Christian Democratic organization, UNIA, to save Jews from the Holocaust. Consequently he was put on the Gestapo’s blacklist, and was labeled an “unwanted person.” But he has denied that he helped in such efforts, saying to a Polish Jew, Marek Halter, “I cannot lay claim to what I did not do.” He was anti-Nazi but rather apolitical, seeing liberation as coming through Christian values and prayer. In 1942 he enrolled in the theological department at Jagiellonian University, an action that was illegal and could have led to his arrest and death.20 Some time after his father’s death, Wojtyla decided to become a seminarian, as the Nazis grew increasingly murderous, putting over six million Poles, or one-fourth the total population, to death in just six years. The Church was also continually attacked, and 1,932 priests, 850 monks, and 289 nuns were killed or murdered in concentration camps. The SS leader, Reinhard Heydrich, ordered that the nobility, the priesthood, and the Jews had to be liquidated to protect the Reich’s interests.21 On one occasion Wojtyla himself was arrested, only to be fortuitously let go. Cardinal Sapieha moved several seminarians to his episcopal palace, and there Wojtyla spent the rest of the war, largely unnoticed by the outside world. His absence from factory work was initially reported, but the influential cardinal intervened quietly, and his name was never forwarded to the Germans. He had for all intents and purposes disappeared. Wojtyla had wanted to join the austere Discalced Carmelite monastic order, but his confessor insisted that he was made for greater things (Ad maiores res tu es), and besides, Poland desperately needed parish priests after the Nazi genocides. In his autobiography, he affirmed that Sapieha himself discouraged him from joining the order. 22 In November 1946 he was ordained, and then sent to the Angelicum, the Dominican house of studies in Rome to do graduate work in philosophy. Up to then, Wojtyla’s education was sketchy because of the disruption of local academic institutions and seminaries in Poland. One can only imagine the excitement of going to Rome for a student who had lived in a Polish city plagued by

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wartime conditions, food shortages, and the stiff coldness of drafty rooms and endless winters. And above all, he must have endured the loneliness of a young man without any family in a foreign land.23 His counterparts found him to be very cheerful, pleasant, forthright, humble, highly intelligent, and generally nonjudgmental toward others. Wojtyla studied under the compelling influence of traditional Thomists, although his own scholarly research examined the mystic St. John of the Cross, the author who charted the Dark Night of the Soul. Wojtyla was also attached to the Catholic War Relief Services where he assisted Polish refugees outside their homeland, and he came into contact with a Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini who would become his mentor years later. On one occasion, he also visited Marseilles, France, to meet with Father Jacques Loew, one of the founders of the controversial worker-priest movement.24 Wojtyla graduated with highest honors; ironically on his doctoral board were two future members of the College of Cardinals who would choose him to be pope. In July 1948, he returned to Krakow and was shipped off for a brief time to a desolate parish at Niegowic in the Galician countryside thirty miles from Krakow. Then he was transferred to Lublin University to become the university chaplain and a faculty member. Having just survived the brutalities of the Nazis, the Church was now under attack from the Communist Party, and about 10 percent of its clergy would end up imprisoned. 25 The traditional Polish Church was becoming a heroic fortress of martyrs under totalitarian states of the right and the left. Unlike most Catholic thinkers, Wojtyla gravitated toward the philosophical theories of the German Catholic phenomenologist Max Scheler and the Polish thinker Roman Ingarden, as well as the personalist philosophers of the French Catholic existentialist movement, such as Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Blondel, and Emmanuel Mounier.26 On October 23, 1948, Pius XII named Stefan Wyszynski to be the prelate of Poland, archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw. A canon lawyer by training, Wyszynski was involved with the Christian worker movement in his nation and had been a vigorous opponent of Nazism and later Communism. Wyszynski immediately moved to reach some rapprochement with the Communists, and he signed an agreement that was criticized in some offices of the Vatican. The basic provisions acknowledged that while the pope had the highest authority on matters of faith, morality, and Church jurisdiction, the episcopate pledged that it would be guided by the national interests of Poland. In the process, the Church’s bishops would seek to carve out their own autonomy and identity, but had to do so without threatening the viability of the Marxist state. In exasperation at the Vatican’s criticisms, Wyszynski observed, “You talk about the Church of Silence, but here in Rome is the Church of the Deaf.”27 In 1947 Wojtyla was awarded a doctorate in sacred theology from the Jagiellonian University, the alma mater of the astronomer Copernicus and the real Doctor Faustus. In 1951, Cardinal Sapieha died, but his successor Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak continued Wojtyla’s high-level mentoring, advising

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him to take a two year leave of absence to complete still another doctorate. Responding to the diverse needs in his complex personality, Wojtyla also published, under at least four pseudonyms, major works of verse, including dramas revolving around religious themes.28 In the early 1950s, Wyszynski came under increasing hostility from the Communists and also from the Vatican. In Rome the Polish prelate insisted that he was not “soft on Communism,” but that “I want my priests at the altar, at the pulpit, and in the confessional—not in prison.” He and later Wojtyla would consistently insist upon the importance of protecting the flexibility of the Church, but they also usually avoided partisan politics. As Wyszynski was to find out, state officials, however, insisted on interfering in the choice of bishops, and several members of the hierarchy were arrested during this period. In November 1952, Pius XII named Wyszynski a cardinal in a clear show of support. In September 1953 he was arrested by the secret police, the first major Polish prelate to be arrested since the Prussians had imprisoned Archbishop Mieczyslaw Ledóchowski in 1866. Wyszynski was released three years later in October 1956 when a more conciliatory regime came to power.29 The authorities also closed down the theological faculty at Jagiellonian University where Wojtyla had been teaching. At that time he was finishing up his doctoral thesis on Christian ethics and the philosopher Max Scheler, enlarging his circles of friends, and engaging in rigorous recreation, especially hiking and skiing. He would continue that latter sport even while pope until age seventy-four when he fractured his hip in a bathroom accident. 30 In 1956, tensions further increased among the Polish government, nationalist liberals, and the Soviet Union. To calm matters down, Russian armies were withdrawn for a while, and Wladyslaw Gomulka, who himself had once been jailed by Stalinists, came to power promising “the Polish road to socialism.” He immediately made overtures to Cardinal Wyszynski, then under house arrest in a monastery for three years, and allowed him to resume full episcopal powers. During those difficult years, Wojtyla was teaching at the Catholic university in Lublin and climbing up the academic ladder, establishing himself as a prolific scholar and a well-regarded teacher.31 Among other projects, he was interested in preparing a study of the Decretum Gratiani, the compilation of Church canon law done by the twelfth century scholar, Franciscus Gratiano. Through it all, he continued to express himself as a poet, usually under the pseudonym of Andrzej Jawién. Explaining the appeal of drama and poetry, Wojtyla insisted that art is “a companion to religion and a guide on the road to God.” In 1957 and 1958, he was working on an essay on love and responsibility that would become important in understanding his later views on sexuality and contraception. 32 In his book, Wojtyla argued that “sexual relations outside marriage always cause objective harm to the woman, even if she consents to or positively desires them.” As pope, he would even criticize the sinfulness of men who looked upon their wives “with lust” in their hearts. He was widely ridiculed for that remark, but it is in perfect harmony with his view that to treat a person as an object is unethical and immoral. Such a view is a noble signpost in evaluating behavior.

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But life is so ambiguous at times, and sexual activities such a mixture of the physical and fantasy, that it often does not fit its robust expressions into such hermetically sealed categories. Even love is more complicated than that. The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov noted of love, “Either it is a remnant of something degenerating, something which had once been immense, or it is a particle of what will in the future develop into something immense, but at the present it is unsatisfying, it gives much less than one expects.” 33

Called to the Hierarchy On July 8, 1958, an ailing Pius XII named Karol Wojtyla auxiliary bishop. It was a surprising nomination, for the priest and academic had no extensive pastoral or administrative experiences. The promotion was undoubtedly due to the intercession of Archbishop Baziak who may in turn have been following some earlier pledges made to the late Cardinal Sapieha. Wojtyla was only thirty-eight years old at the time, and probably was not known except by reputation to even Cardinal Wyszynski. Indeed his nomination marked the first time the cardinal had been in effect bypassed in the appointment of a Polish bishop. As for Wojtyla, he never hesitated when asked if he accepted the nomination from Rome. And one of his first acts was to move his mother’s remains from Wadowice to rest beside his father in a Krakow cemetery.34 When Baziak died, Wojtyla was elected Capitular Vicar of the diocese of Krakow. Traveling to Rome with the Polish delegation to the Vatican Council, he met for the first time the influential Franz Cardinal König who would be years later an important figure in his election as pope. König remarked that the friendly young bishop before him seemed to lack a sense of self-assurance, spoke German poorly, and was dressed in frayed clothes. 35 Wojtyla was diligent in working on various commissions, even though at first he said little in the public debates. One Protestant observer to the council, George H. Williams of Harvard University, however, predicted that Wojtyla would become a pope before he was known to a wider international audience of clergy and Vatican watchers.36 Much later in 1977, Basil Cardinal Hume of Westminster met him and concluded, “I was struck by the impression he gave of strength, determination and durability.”37 Wojtyla’s biographer, Tad Szulc, disclosed that Wojtyla was one of the major authors of Paul’s controversial encyclical Humanae Vitae, and in his own papacy he was its single most consistent supporter in the Roman Catholic Church. It has been speculated that some 60 percent of the encyclical was written by Wojtyla. It is unclear if the progressive cardinals such as König who supported his candidacy in 1978 were aware of his central role. Wojtyla, a member of the enlarged commission dealing with the birth control issue, did not attend any of the working meetings, but apparently played a major part in shaping the mind of the hesitating Pope Paul. In his own statements, Wojtyla never wavered, and as pope he allowed his subordinates to

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suggest that the ban on contraception approached an infallible declaration, a view that Paul would never have ventured to advance publicly, although he may have contemplated it.38 As noted, after Archbishop Baziak’s death, Wojtyla was temporarily in charge of the Krakow diocese, but it was left to Cardinal Wyszynski to choose a successor. Under the agreed-upon procedures with the government, the primate was to submit a list of at least three names to the Communist regime, and it could accept or reject any of the nominees. Then the cardinal would forward a name to the Vatican for final approval. It is clear that Wyszynski opposed having Wojtyla named archbishop of Krakow, just as fifteen years later he discounted the idea that his younger colleague could be elected pope. In fact, he put his own name forward if the conclave decided to go “foreign.” After the first session of the council, the cardinal submitted a series of names to the Communist government, and each was rejected, one after another, until finally the government received and accepted the name of Wojtyla. Clearly the cardinal did not wish him to become archbishop of Krakow; and just as clearly the Marxist government was responsible for putting in place a man who would become “the Slavic Pope,” and a person who helped end the Communist regime in his homeland. Such is the irony of history. The Polish Communists thought they wanted bishops like Wojtyla who had a reputation for being apolitical. After he was installed, however, he proved to be in many ways a tougher and more determined foe than they had expected. And so, on March 3, 1964, Karol Wojtyla at age forty-three was solemnly installed by Pope Paul as the Metropolitan Archbishop of Krakow. At first he had some difficulties with the local clerical establishment and remarked on one occasion, “Well, what can I do? When Cardinal Adam Sapieha [a predecessor], who was born a prince, looked down on them from his lofty height, they were afraid of him. But I simply can’t impress them in the same way—not as a former worker.” Indeed, he was the first prelate in the history of that see not to come from the aristocracy.39

A Son of the Council He would speak more often in the later sessions than in the first session of the Vatican Council. Wojtyla addressed the People of God analogy, ecumenism, and religious freedom—all in a positive way. But his views were often traditionally oriented rather than progressive in tone, and he was still a major proponent of a strong papacy, even in discussions about collegiality. During the council, Archbishop Wojtyla appeared before some students of the Polish College in Rome to answer questions on Vatican II. In response to criticism of Pope John XXIII and his rather abrupt call for a council, Wojtyla insisted that the Church had to deal decisively with some immense challenges: the rapid development of technology, a society oriented toward consumption and lacking altruistic values, the popula-

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tion explosion, the wide extent of atheism, and the need for world peace. The Church was becoming less effective under modern conditions, and many contemporary forms of behavior were in conflict with traditional Church ethics. He maintained that in four years the Church had undergone an amazing change. An enormous outpouring of valuable opinion had come forth from the upper echelons of the hierarchy and theologians. He acknowledged the important part played by such eminent theologians as Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Riccardo Lombardi, and Karl Rahner. The Church also had come to understand better non-Catholic and non-Christian religions, and to recognize that atheism’s appeal often came from its claim to liberate man from feelings of alienation. He praised the healthy debates in the council and the salutary effects of pluralism of opinion shown in its sessions. Wojtyla commented to a friend on the important changes in the relationship between the center and the periphery of the Church—the pope and the bishops, the clergy and the laity. He advocated greater decentralization and an emphasis on collegiality. Also in his view, there had to be an end to “Constantinism,” the principle of a close alliance between Church and the political regime which had been so important to Catholicism since the fourth century. 40 Most dramatically, though, he was in the last session a major mover on the draft on the relationships with the Jews. Born and raised near the death camp of Auschwitz (Óswiecim), he lived in a town with a large Jewish population and had formed close friendships with Jewish students. Wojtyla was acutely sensitive on the issue of Jewish persecution, and called the camp “this Golgatha of the modern world.” He went on to be the first pope to visit a synagogue and finally approved the Vatican’s recognition of the state of Israel in 1994. At the council, he also opposed the attempt of some bishops to condemn Communism. Later he stressed the need for dialogue with atheists and warned, “It is not the Church’s role to lecture to unbelievers. . . . We are involved in a quest along with our fellow men. . . . Let us avoid moralizing, or the suggestion that we have a monopoly of the truth. One of the major defects of this draft is that in it the Church appears merely as an authoritarian institution.” It was difficult enough to deal with them back home without new provocations. 41 On May 29, 1967, Paul VI named Wojtyla a cardinal, some said to balance the influence of Wyszynski, who was becoming more intractable in the pope’s eyes. As for Wojtyla, he was rather deferential at first to the older man, trying to allay any appearance of differences. At the age of forty-seven, the Polish intellectual and poet was the second youngest cardinal in the Church and had probably reached the apex of his ecclesiastical career. Celebrating his installation, Wojtyla humorously said to his clergy in Krakow, “I can’t go any higher now.” There was no other position a non-Italian could aspire to in the Catholic Church, or so it seemed.42 Biographer Tad Szulc related that the Polish secret police had files on both Wyszynski and Wojtyla. They recorded that the elder prelate was from a traditional Catholic family, and that he had built his ecclesiastical career on antiCommunist sentiments. His hard-line position during the Cold War was very

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significant in establishing the directions of the Vatican’s foreign policies under Pius XII, but with the advent of John XXIII his influence diminished as the tenor of that policy changed significantly. The reports judged that Wyszynski was characterized by a “shallow, emotional, and devotional Catholicism.” Wojtyla, on the other hand, was presented as an intellectual, one of the few in the Polish episcopate. He was judged as having roots in the working class and leftist university circles, and his rise in the hierarchy was seen as due not so much to his advocacy of anti-communism, as to the high regard others had for his intellectual breadth. He was not engaged in “anti-state” political activity, the report stated, and he lacked organizational and leadership qualities. His “secular lifestyle” also brought him closer to young intelligentsia and students. Recognizing the differences between the two men, the report advocated that the authorities make additional overtures to Wojtyla.43 Later the Communist authorities would regret their sanguine assessments. The Vatican Council and its call for greater collegiality spawned more opportunities for participation, and Wojtyla was appointed to three major congregations of the Curia—the Congregations for the Clergy, for Sacraments and Worship, and for Catholic Education. He was also a consultant to the Council for the Laity and was chosen by the pope in 1969 to be a member of the Synod of Bishops. A high point of his career was Paul VI’s invitation in February 1976 to give the Lenten retreat sermons to the Roman Curia and the pope. Paul asked Wojtyla to deliver his lectures in Italian, indicating to some that the pope was grooming a foreign successor to be the next bishop of Rome. In fact, before the conclave that elected him pope in 1963, Montini was supposed to have commented that maybe it was time then for a non-Italian pope. To an associate, Paul much later remarked that Wojtyla was “a brave, magnificent man.” Between 1973 and 1975, Wojtyla privately visited the pontiff eleven times, a sign of high regard indeed. Wojtyla’s homilies, published later in 1979 under the title Sign of Contradiction, presented a somber picture of the West and its values, although he was critical of the excesses of both economic imperialism and Marxism. Still he specifically denounced liberal regimes where “men are sick with affluence and an overdose of freedom.” A very frail Paul listened to Wojtyla’s spirited defense of his ill-fated encyclical, Humanae Vitae. In May 1978, Wojtyla paid his last visit to Paul, and in August he attended his funeral. It was time for another Italian; although as noted there has been some speculation that the Polish cardinal received a few votes in the conclave that named Albino Luciani pope. At the conclave, Luciani related that the Polish prelate was writing furiously—not taking notes it turned out, but working on his next publication!44 On September 28, Wojtyla was celebrating the twentieth year of his consecration as a bishop in the Catholic Church; Pope John Paul I had just died in the Vatican apartments. Some have recorded that Wojtyla had a premonition that he would be elected pope this time; if so, he was one of the few who predicted that choice, although his godmother had foreseen such an occurrence years ago, and

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over a century before, the noted Polish poet Juliusz Slowacki insisted that there would be a Slavic pope. His friends recorded that the usually mild-mannered and even-tempered Wojtyla became fretful and preoccupied after news of the pope’s death, almost as if he knew the direction the next conclave would take. Except for several years in Rome, he had spent his whole life in Poland. Whatever close human ties he had forged in place of his lost family were in that land. Although John Paul II took the name of his predecessors, he quickly moved away from both the open style of John XXIII and the caution and hesitations of Paul VI. After making some important gestures of support to the Roman Curia and to the Roman people in his new diocese, the pope established his brand of rule. Although he was a new voice in the council, he was never seen as a leading progressive force in those sessions. Still he immediately committed himself to its full implementation. His first words seemed to summarize his life, “Be not afraid.”45 Rather than characterize Wojtyla as a betrayer of the council, as his critics have, one can view him as having some of the same reservations that Paul VI expressed over the years. Although he was committed to the legacy of the council, at various times, Paul spoke of his concern about its diverse directions. On November 23, 1966, he denounced the view that the council had given the “goahead for any kind of arbitrary changes.” In October 1968, he pleaded for a return to obedience, and in March of the following year, he attacked the “giddiness” of certain priests. In January 1969, the pope remonstrated, “How many things, how many truths are questioned or doubted? How many liberties are taken with the authentic patrimony of Catholic teaching?” Commenting on the adverse reaction to Humanae Vitae, Paul wondered aloud on September 10, 1969, how the “most poignant pain comes to her [the Church] from the indocility and infidelity of certain of her ministers and some of her consecrated souls, that the most disappointing surprises come to her from circles that have been the most assisted, the most favored and the most beloved.” He spoke frequently of a “crisis of authority and faith,” and a year before his death, he concluded that “a non-Catholic mentality was increasingly dominant in the Church.”46

The Church of Karol Wojtyla There are major differences between Paul and his successor. Paul was a man who appeared cautious, tentative, and ambivalent. But actually he saw his role as implementing the policies of a council that he himself would never have dared to call in the first place. John Paul II has always praised the movement of the Holy Spirit in the council, and in his first major address after his election, pledged “our primary duty to be that of promoting with prudent but encouraging action, the most exact fulfillment of the norms and directions of the council.”47 But his actions, and especially those of the Congregation for the Doctrine of

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Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger, at times aimed at rolling back the new order or reaffirming aspects of the old. It is not without reason that the era of John Paul II (and later Benedict XVI) has been termed the “restoration.” Coming from a nation where the Church knew intense persecution and where the basis of piety was strong and far-reaching, the pope was not able to understand—or accept—the very complexities of the new Church he headed. The comparatively young pontiff moved quickly, perhaps at times a bit abruptly, to reassert the hierarchical model of the papacy. Occasionally, his role model seemed to be more Pius XII, without the aristocratic aloofness of that Roman cleric. His administration appeared often as unyielding as Pius XI. And in his search for orthodoxy he has somewhat paralleled Pius X’s campaign against the assorted errors of Modernism. But this pope was above all a man of ideas, a person who moved easily with other intellectuals and theologians in a manner similar to the autocratic and well-educated Leo XIII. The man and the movement came together in another way. The last part of the twentieth century was saturated with the electronic media, and John Paul II was immediately at home in that milieu. The once Polish actor exuded a sense of poise, timing, and command that added to the usual aura of the papacy. He was a genuine crowd pleaser, even with those who disagreed with his rigid theological views. It has been said in the United States that while many faithful disliked the message, they loved the messenger. The sources of progressive discontent during this time were manifested in three major focal points, and the pope moved to exercise greater control over each. The new synods—the symbol of collegiality— became groups that were more often meant to help the pope administer the policies that he initiated and approved. The new episcopal conferences of bishops were also brought to heel and were watched by the Curia as they served John Paul’s bidding. And the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stepped up its warnings and criticisms of highly visible theologians, some of whom were welcomed in the council and acknowledged by the Church Fathers to be periti. At the very start of his tenure, the pope challenged the “liberation theologians” in Latin America, sometimes without fully understanding the complexities facing the Church there. His synods walked away from the expression “People of God” and its implications, which he himself had once praised, as some in the Church bureaucracy were trying to restore the old hierarchical metaphors. As the years passed, the pope both celebrated the virtues of women and yet moved almost belligerently to put them in their place, that is, outside the pale of the priesthood by his exercise of near infallible teaching. He denounced priests who engaged in partisan politics, while he himself stage-managed Polish domestic affairs in major ways, and played a significant role in the upending of the Soviet empire. And no churchman before assuming the responsibilities of pope ever spoke so graphically of sexual union and pleasure, and yet he seemed so wedded to characterizing all forms of contraception as part of an “anti-life philosophy,” associating it with war, abortion, and euthanasia.

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This conservative pope filled stadia with the young, and was named by Time magazine as its “Man of the Year” in 1995 because of the very surety and self-confidence he exuded in the service of moral values that that very organ of opinion and others so often ridiculed. This pontificate of an “outsider” became one of the most controversial in modern times, accelerating the phenomenon of selective denial of doctrine by a usually docile faithful, especially in the United States and Western Europe. How was this papacy cast in such complex molds? One explanation that has been posited was that Karol Wojtyla, despite his incredible intellectual brilliance, was really rather provincial. He spent nearly all of his life in an Iron Curtain country, a nation without much contemporary intellectual importance or flavor. Poland was and is a backward land in many ways, blessed with a sense of deep patriotism and intensive piety, but at the fringe in terms of Western culture. Thus Wojtyla, for all his exposure to the world of ideas, had very limited perspectives. Perhaps that criticism was somewhat just, but no one is born a cosmopolitan; we all come from somewhere. As one of his friends observed, “He is not a cosmopolitan, but he does have a sense of ‘cultural collegiality.’” Some close to Wojtyla would not agree with that sanguine assessment. Three years into John Paul’s pontificate, the eighty-eight-year-old Carlo Cardinal Confalonieri observed, “We Italians have a universal vision. As for the foreigner at present in the Vatican, he is out of his element, he needs to study the milieu, and he should seek advice through the properly constituted channels.” Indeed the pontiff himself on one occasion remarked, “I don’t think the eminent cardinals knew what kind of personality I am, and therefore what kind of papacy they were getting.” 48 Another view is that Polish Catholicism is very different from Latin Catholicism. One of the reasons why the Catholic Church has survived over the centuries is because it has been governed by Italians who tend to be more cynical, more world-weary, and less passionate about ideas, ideology, and religion itself. They regard human nature as somewhat fallen, and the Church as a very imperfect institution that helps sinners, as best it can, get a decent stab at salvation. But the path is slippery, life can be sweet, and we all fall victim to various temptations. So when that happens, one looks the other way, uses the sacrament of Confession, and covers up if the behavior of the Church and its clergy could lead to scandal. By contrast, Polish Catholicism is tinged with the celebration of martyrs. Wojtyla’s speeches are very much cast in the heroic model, and his own life and tribulations have been witness to its demanding standards. Indeed he himself has observed that “the younger generation grew up in an atmosphere marked by a new positivism, whereas in Poland, when I was a boy, romantic traditions prevailed.” For such people, compromises are counterfeit and great betrayals. However for popes like Della Chiesa, Ratti, Pacelli, Roncalli and Montini, who learned their leadership skills in wartime diplomacy, the world is not black and white, but filled with varying hues of gray. One must accommodate, build alliances, work with fools and even evil men. Sometimes the best one can do in life is to

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minimize suffering by making common cause with very objectionable types of people. Did not Montini imply that in his persistent defense of Pius XII; did not Roncalli live that way by working with the Nazi Ambassador Franz von Papen to save Jews in the Balkans? They survived, as Roncalli once bluntly observed, by bending and not breaking. And their moral vision of Catholicism and their role as pontiffs were much more complicated than Wojtyla’s. Then too, the role models of our lives are rarely our contemporaries. They are the heroes of our youth, and the pontiffs that Wojtyla knew in passing were Pius XI and especially Pius XII, neither of whom were good guides to the contemporary world. The first was a stubborn, obstinate, unbending autocrat who dallied with dictators and then exploded in righteousness and self-righteousness against them. And his successor was the epitome of the regal aloof pontiff. Wojtyla never knew Pius XII’s agonies and hesitations, more akin to Paul VI’s than to his own certainties. The popular view of Pius XII embraced respect, admiration, and high intellectual regard. He spoke on every topic imaginable, and like Wojtyla considered himself both a linguist and a philosopher. However, he never called a Church council, and never had to deal with the unleashed forces of dissent that so perplexed Paul VI. Reform has its own hope and its own dynamics, sparking an exuberance that comes from upending the old order of things. But restoration has its own model as well, and it is based on a romantic interpretation of the past. Wojtyla seemed to be pleading for such a restoration of the papacy of Pius XII, without, though, the arched pomp that the latter engaged in. Wojtyla believed that if one could strip the papacy of its pretentious symbols and be more accessible to the media, one can restore the Church and the papacy back to the era of unquestioning obedience. Once when he was discussing possible bishopric candidates for the United States, he took off his papal ring, and uncharacteristically slammed his hand on the table, saying, “No, we need stronger men there.” Strength, fortitude, authority, heroism—such was the worldview of John Paul II. As for he himself, he once reflected, “I have received more graces than battles to fight.” 49 But the forces of dissent are powerful in the Roman Catholic Church, and they arise from complex causes that have little in common with the dreams of restoration. It is not a failure of will that the Church is facing; it is profound economic, social, and cultural changes. Pope John felt that intuitively; in the beginning, Paul clearly articulated it. Wojtyla denied it. In defense of the conservative position, however, one can ask if the Catholic Church lost so much after Vatican II, how can one say that more accommodation with the world will now work? The progressive response is that if the Church cannot change, it will not survive; and the rejoinder is obvious—if it changes, can it survive with its integrity intact? That was the central dilemma that faced John Paul II’s entire papacy, and his answer was very clear: the Church will remain conservative in dogma and practice, but try to reach out to the concerns of the world by emphasizing social justice, while not compromising basic tenets of the faith. Under such a prescription, the universal Catholic Church may be reduced to a smaller

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but more hard core, militant and obedient faithful.50 Understanding this formulation should not lead one to the simplistic conclusion that the state of the Catholic Church was simply a conservative Polish pope versus a progressive reforming faithful. The history of the modern Church involves the basic problem of providing leadership in an organization that lives not by production or consumption, but by ideas, beliefs, and symbols of the most important and intimate experiences of our brief lives. One can see this difficulty in Wojtyla’s convoluted dealings with the Latin American church. Organizationally, the Catholic Church is essentially a bureaucracy, headed by Italians (until recently), funded by Americans and Germans, trying increasingly to convert restless peoples in the Third World. It is in Latin America, Africa, and also Asia, where the populations are increasing dramatically, that the Church must focus—thus Vatican II’s emphasis on evangelicalism. The great opponents of Catholicism as expressed in John Paul II’s speeches, are materialism, secularism, commercialism, and sexual exploitation. Catholics have always lived beside decadence, corruption, and hedonism, and the Church continues to survive. The real ideological challenge to Catholicism today is Islam, and the most profound problem facing the Church is the condition of teeming poverty-stricken masses across the non-industrial southern hemisphere, many of them practicing or nominal Catholics. The challenges there are more basic, more demographic, more explosive than many people realize.51 The Protestant Reformation came about not just because of the failings of priests and popes, but also because of the long-term consequences of the plagues that killed off the local clergy and left people unchurched and ignorant of the faith. In a similar situation, in the United States Catholicism has become more secularized in large part because of the dearth of vocations, especially of nuns who once rather ably controlled the schools and the hospitals—the beginning and the end of the life cycle. The Vatican’s increasing alienation from many women has had deleterious consequences far beyond making American feminists unhappy. It very well may be that the Catholic Church will lose many women, in the same way that in the nineteenth century it lost much of the industrial workers in Europe. At times, though, John Paul seemed to sense that he had gone too far; in March 1996, for example, he urged that women, especially religious, be given greater power in the Church, but stopped short of talking about the priesthood. In 1996, a Vatican spokesman had to admit that in 1970 the Czech Church during the Cold War had ordained several women and some married men because of the severe shortage of clergy at the time. The ordinations were simply dismissed by the Vatican as “invalid,” and those individuals were not reordained in 1992 when the Communist regime was over. The world Karol Wojtyla was born in was the aftermath of the profound breakup of the Great War, where old patterns of deference based on class, authority, and religion that had persisted since the Middle Ages, were destroyed. 52 The postwar period was unable to heal those wounds, and the Second World War advanced the chaos even further. The Catholic Church re-entered politics to

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stabilize some of the countries in Western Europe, but it must be remembered that it was basically the Catholic countries that fell to totalitarianism—Italy, Spain, Portugal, Vichy France, Austria, and the Catholic parts of Germany. Small wonder that Pius XII had a difficult time condemning the Fascist regimes in World War II, since so many of his co-religionists lived in those lands. Still the Roman Catholic Church was remarkably resourceful in both wars through its humanitarian efforts and was solidly committed to defending its own religious liberty after the last conflict, becoming aligned by necessity with the United States. All of those dramatic expressions—the 1920s, the war years, the Cold War period—were a part of Wojtyla’s background, just as the Napoleonic regime was a looming presence in the tenures of Pius VI and Pius VII in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although those wars, the thirty years’ war of the twentieth century, are over, the consequences have continued to be unsettling. The Catholic Church is mainly successful where its beliefs are supported by strong families, dependably funded Catholic schools, and a popular culture that respects tradition and piety. The economics of the postwar industrial states and their effects have upset much of those props of the first two; the communications revolution with its pervasive commercialism and sexuality has upended the last one.

Liberation Theology Pope John Paul II started his reign with a clear, confident agenda of restoration. In Latin America he moved from the very beginning to clamp off the growth of so-called “liberation theology.” But the animosity he created and his own intelligent reappraisal led him to reassess what he believed at first and what the conservatives told him about that region of the world. His predecessor, Paul VI, had gone to Medellín in 1968 and given his guarded support to what turned out to be the beginnings of a very radical turn to the left. Paul VI, for all his subtleties, clearly placed the tradition-bound Roman Catholic Church on the side of the poor. In his encyclical Populorum Progressio and his letter Octogesima Adveniens, he embraced the Third World and pledged that the Church “cannot plead for the status quo.” The synods held in Rome in 1971 and 1974 further supported the transformation of unjust economic and political systems. Thus the Church, especially in Latin America, developed a “preferential option for the poor” and denounced the “institutionalized violence” of oligarchical rule as “a social sin.”53 Although Paul spoke out against identifying the Church with any political party or ideology, elements of the clergy still became radicalized, and numerous murders and tortures of priests and nuns ensued on that continent. The People of God often became organized in ecclesiastical base communities, the Bible became a tract for revolution, and Jesus was celebrated as the greatest revolutionary of them all, whose gospels were interpreted in neo-Marxist rhetoric. The

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conservative Church, once aligned so closely with the Latin American ruling classes in the 1940s and 1950s, was becoming increasingly committed to the poor and the dispossessed. John Paul I had indicated a desire to visit that continent, seeking to replicate the trip of his immediate predecessor. Now it fell to Wojtyla to take his place, and the consequences would be clearly troubling to the progressive wing of the Church. Before John Paul II arrived, there were reports that he had already condemned “liberation theology,” which in fact was not true. Actually his views, which seemed so confusing at the time, were rather clear upon closer scrutiny. He opposed priests and nuns getting involved in politics, arguing that their true vocation was to teach the word of God, but he was also very much on the side of land reform, a just wage, and democratic changes. His attitudes toward Marxism were honed in his own longtime battle against the Communist state in Poland, and the last thing he was amenable to was any attempt to encourage a Christian synthesis with that atheistic philosophy. The Gospels’ radicalism came from true liberation, which he maintained was the freedom to know and to appreciate God’s workings. He also had some concerns about a nonhierarchical or horizontal church that some radical theologians had advocated. The pope must have worried about the toll that revolutionary activities were taking on the Catholic Church in Latin America. By the end of the 1970s more than 850 priests and nuns had been martyred in that area. So when the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) and others met at Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico, in 1979, the pope faced a very difficult situation. Initially the pope was advised by Sebastiano Cardinal Baggio of the Congregation of Bishops and Colombian Archbishop Alfonso López Trujillo, both of whom warned that base communities were threatening the authority of local bishops and had to be abolished. Puebla must correct the abuses of Medellín, the new pope was counseled.54 But the pope, for reasons of his own, turned away from such an irrevocable and drastic step that would condemn the directions of much of his Latin American Church. He vigorously supported the search for social justice, which he was always comfortable with, but criticized the assertion that Christ was a political figure, a revolutionary, or a subversive. The conservatives did not get a specific statement of condemnation, although they would work in the Curia to get censures of liberation theologians. As for the progressives, they were rather demoralized by the pope’s lack of fervor in their cause.55 One of the figures in the more radical wing of the Church in Latin America was Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was actually a rather quiet, nonpolitical prelate at the beginning of his tenure. But swept up in the civil war taking place in his nation and the murders of clergy, he became an articulate spokesman for social justice and human rights. In May 1979, he visited the pope and asked John Paul to condemn the murders of priests and others by Salvadorian death squads. The pontiff recommended instead “great balance and prudence,” and asked that Romero stay with defending basic principles rather than incurring risk from making specific accusations. Yet the pope insisted on the

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need for “courage and boldness.” After another visit by the archbishop in January 1980, John Paul II expressed his personal sympathies for the plight of the Church in Latin America and was deeply concerned about the possibilities of more bloodletting and retribution from the left. Several months later, on March 24, 1980, Romero was murdered by agents of the military intelligence command as he said Mass in the chapel of a hospital. It was a modern St. Stanislaus; it was another St. Thomas Becket in the making. The Church thus added another martyr to its long rolls. 56 The Polish-born Wojtyla was himself a courageous man, not above using the fault lines of politics to advance the interests of the Church in his native country. But to be successful there, one had to have a near monolithic church willing to face the clumsy Communist client state that was indirectly under the control of the Soviet Red Army. But Latin America was very different. The continent was infected by Marxist guerrillas, decadent military or oligarchical regimes, and very weak nascent democratic states. And the level of poverty on that continent was not being alleviated in many areas by social reforms or state planning. The religious faith in his land was and is conservative and pietistic. While the hierarchy, including Wojtyla, was on the right side of the river called Vatican II, in Latin America the Church was faced with aggressive Protestant evangelical sects, articulate Marxist ideologues, and revolutionary happenings. The Church moved quickly from being a prop of the local and national oligarchies to becoming the vanguard of revolution in some nations. As in Poland the progressive clergy looked to the Church for solace, but in John Paul the more radical Catholics seemed at times to find more of a critic than an advocate. That discomfort was accentuated by the pope’s disastrous visit to Nicaragua, and the Curia’s attacks upon liberation theologians. Thus the revolutionary church of Latin America found danger at home and censure in Rome.57 To John Paul the situation in Latin America was symptomatic of a larger problem—the unraveling of discipline in the Church since Vatican II. From his very strict perspective, he saw such dislocations everywhere: the liberation theologians of Latin America, the advocates of synchretism in Africa, the easy ways of theologians and bishops in the United States and liberal Western Europe, the laxity of the Jesuits, and the general confusion of so many professors of Catholic theology. Not since Pius X had a pope sought to exercise such authority over the way the faithful lived, thought, and prayed. Gone was the smiling tolerance of John XXIII and the nuanced hesitations of Paul VI. Their successor believed that by a determined exercise of his indomitable will and extremely charismatic personality he could restore the Roman Catholic Church, preserve its ancient doctrines, and prepare it for the third millennium. Will and faith and leadership by only one dedicated man could make the difference. It was an extraordinary agenda and as expected, it partially failed. John Paul had read and understood the words of the liberation theologians, although he did not empathize with all their sentiments and their neo-Marxist

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vocabulary. Those theologians advocated basic Church communities, comunidades eclesiales de base, which had been defined as families that lived together and pondered what they can do in common according to the spirit of the Gospel. The leftist Brazilian priest and theologian Leonardo Boff argued “a commitment to faith must have its political manifestation.” Thus it was understandable how some conservatives—Church leaders and secular politicians— saw these communities as having subversive implications. In the decade from 1968 to 1978 the Church, especially in Brazil, was under considerable attack with a long list of assaults and murders of its clergy. In El Salvador the InterAmerican Human Rights Commission concluded that the Catholic Church was being “systematically persecuted.” In Colombia, Camilo Torres, a priest and a guerrilla, was killed, and other priests were engaged in similar activities in Colombia, Nicaragua, and Argentina. At first the Church was just a haven for hope, then it became an agent of social and political change.58 Before Wojtyla came to that continent, he was approached by conservative prelates, arguing that he had to stop the abuses of the liberation theologians and revolutionary priests. He was himself orthodox, but still he was cognizant of the fact that in his own words, “the future of the Church will be decided in Latin America.” On the evening before his arrival, the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City was already attracting people waiting for the pontiff’s visit. When the pope finally arrived in Mexico, he kissed the soil and welcomed the religious who were dressed in simple civilian black trousers. Mexican law prohibited priests and nuns from wearing their religious garb in public—a part of the country’s long tradition of anti-clericalism. The road to the city was thronged with cheering crowds extended as far as eighty miles, with people crying out “Viva la papa,” and scattering flowers and confetti along the way. In Zocalo Square, originally laid out by the Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortes, over two hundred thousand people waited, many of them dressed in rags and frayed clothing. “You are Peter,” some chanted as he passed by; and above the cathedral square was a huge banner that tellingly read, Marxismo no. True to his conservative leanings, the new pope criticized theological deviations and reiterated the need for fidelity to the Catholic creed and to his own office. Later at the airport he was presented with a blanket full of roses, the sign of the Dark Virgin of Guadalupe. According to religious legend, an Indian Juan Diego wanted to have a shrine built at Tepeyac where he claimed he first saw the Virgin. When the local Catholic bishop demanded proof of her visitation, Mary returned and had Diego pick roses from a nearby mountain. At the bishop’s palace the Indian offered up his blanket, which had enfolded in it an imprint of the Virgin. Even today, the nature of the imprint is unexplained. For the pontiff, what he saw in that nation must have seemed a great resemblance in piety to Our Lady of Czestochowa whom he deeply revered. Everywhere John Paul II celebrated easily the special blessings of Mary. At one point the virile and handsome pope stopped a cheering group of nuns, chastising them, “Remember you are the mystical brides of Christ.” And

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he also insisted in his addresses that political action and radical ideologies were not a substitute for prayer, an obvious swipe at liberation theology. John Paul pointedly remarked, “You are priests and members of religious orders, not social or political leaders. . . . Let us have no illusion that we will serve the gospel if we ‘dilute’ our charisma by showing an exaggerated interest in temporal problems.” The trip to Latin America was a distasteful chore in some ways—for the pope appeared to many as a rigid conservative, although a person with a committed sense of social justice. In a visit to Brazil in 1980, John Paul showed his personal sympathies by insisting, “The Church is on the side of the poor, and that is where she must stay.” On March 9, 1983 in a very poor and exploited Haiti, the pontiff blurted out, “Things must change here.” Addressing a group of students in that nation, he pleaded for a just society, and recalled, “In my youth I lived these same convictions. . . . As a young student I proclaimed them with the voice of literature and art.” Still he was not portrayed as a friend of the progressive impulses unleashed by Vatican II in Latin America. In that sense reality and appearance were indeed one.59

Poland—Mother of All Poles But his second major trip was a return of the heart, an odyssey back to his beloved Poland. To the relief of the Communist regime, then headed by party boss Edward Gierek, the pope insisted that his visit was to be a religious and not a political event. The government added to that theme by saying that it was the Polish episcopacy, not the state that had invited him. But in that nation, the political implications soon mixed with the spiritual, exactly the sort of behavior that John Paul II warned against elsewhere. Indeed his attitudes and activities were contradictory; while he has urged priests and bishops to stay out of politics in their own nation, Karol Wojtyla has been deeply enmeshed in political action, public policy debates, and even partisan intrigue in his own nation before and especially after his election. In 1970 Gomulka had been displaced after violent riots in the Baltic area, and the party put in Gierek who promised some accommodation with the Catholic Church. By 1973, however the state demanded a unified socialist education system that made it impossible for children to attend church for religious instruction. The bishops denounced that step as a violation of freedom of conscience, and proclaimed the new laws not binding on the faithful. In 1976, steep rises in the cost of food led to greater unrest, and the Church supported the right to protest. In addition, Cardinal Wojtyla publicly denounced discrimination against Catholics in filling various offices and positions and maintained that atheism was not a legitimate political philosophy.60 Before he became pope, Wojtyla also encouraged the so-called “flying university” to hold classes on Church property, and he vigorously criticized anti-Church propaganda. Most

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importantly, Wojtyla took state censorship to task, saying with other Polish bishops that “the spirit of freedom is the proper climate for the full development of a person.”61 The situation facing the Marxist state was quite different. The government permitted the pope to return—what else could a Polish regime do? But he wished to go to Krakow in May to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Stanislaus. That legendary bishop had been killed for criticizing the wicked ways of a Polish king, and as with the death of St. Thomas Becket in Britain, the king’s knights had rid the monarch of that troublesome man. The symbolism was too powerful for the Communist party, and so they postponed the pope’s visit until the next month—June 1979—a delay that probably meant more to the party cadres than to anyone else. The Communist regime also prohibited the pope from visiting Piekary Slaska near the Silesian capital of Katowice, the site of a popular annual pilgrimage by Catholic men at the end of the month of May. The government was worried about the Church’s growing influence among the workers of that region. Instead the pope could celebrate Mass at the more important shrine of Czestochowa on June 5, and workers would be shipped in from parts of Silesia to attend. In addition, he was not allowed to say Mass in the new church at Nowa Huta, the site of Wojtyla’s successful battle against government directives opposing the construction of new churches. In May before he came, an explosion ripped off the leg on a statue of Lenin—a portent of events to come in that uneasy nation. Then on a cloudless June 2, the pope’s Alitalia Boeing 727 landed at Warsaw airport. The government had carefully kept the airport crowd size as small as they could. Greeting the pontiff were the thin Cardinal Wyszynski, dressed in a black cassock, and high-ranking officials of the Polish nation led by President Henryk Jablónski, accompanied by a military band and guard of honor. The Cardinal prelate entered the plane first and privately greeted his once younger colleague. Some time later John Paul II emerged and dropped to his knees to kiss Polish soil. To the surprise of Vatican observers, the Communist leader delivered a warm welcome, calling the pope several times “Your Holiness,” not exactly an accepted Communist salutation. He was praised as his proud nation’s son, embraced by Poland, the “Mother of All Poles.” John Paul was deeply moved and extended his own warm greetings as well. The first stop was Victory Square for an open air Mass before three hundred thousand people. It was there that the Russians had built an Orthodox church in the nineteenth century; it was there that Czar Nicholas I had created a parade ground for his troops; and it was there that the Germans had constructed a monument to their 1939 successful invasion. Overlooking that square stood an imposing oak cross. Addressing the crowd, the vigorous pope remarked, “The Pope can no longer remain a prisoner of the Vatican; he had to become Peter the pilgrim once more.” John Paul went on to other ceremonies and services. At one point he visited Gniezno, the ancient see of the Polish primates, where the earliest Polish kings

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were crowned and prayed at the tomb of St. Adalbert, who was a missionary to the Baltic peoples and who was killed by Prussian pagans. The pope also stressed the saint’s Czechoslovakian background, as he trumpeted the theme that he was not just a Polish pope, but a Slavic one as well. He sang with the crowds, embraced the enthusiasm of the young, and reached deeply into the chords of piety. At the great folk shrine of Polish Catholicism, Czestochowa, the crowd held up signs proclaiming the coming of the 600th anniversary in 1982 of the Black Madonna’s visitation. The Poles believed that the Virgin Mary saved Poland from invading Swedish armies in the battle of Czestochowa in 1655. At that site a small number of monks and knights forced the Swedes to retreat. The town has a revered monastery on a hill called Jasna Góra (“Luminous Mountain”) which is the site of the shrine of the Black Madonna. The famed portrait of the Madonna housed there is an icon that has become darkened over the centuries, and is supposed to have been painted by St. Luke the Evangelist on a wooden plank from the actual table of the Holy Family in Nazareth. In 1430 a Hussite soldier scarred the face of the portrait with a saber. The pope greeted the massive crowds with a simple exclamation—“I am here.” They responded with the song Sto Lat, Sto Lat (“May he live 100 years”). The pope toyed with the crowd, saying, “If this Pope lives all those years, your grandchildren will be coming to see him, and what can be done with such an old Pope? I can see only one solution: he’ll have to run away and live in a monastery.” Shades of Paul VI’s melancholy thoughts, and on such a fine occasion. John Paul cited the Virgin Mary’s role in Polish history and life, saying, “She is present here in some strange way.” When he was entertained by a young woman musician, he engagingly remarked, “I had to come to Poland to learn to sing again.” The pontiff later talked to a meeting of bishops at a local monastery and gave his views on the uneasy relationships between the Church and state, as he urged authentic dialogue and a respect for the rights of all citizens. It was estimated that three and a half million people saw him at Czestochowa alone, and some twelve million people, or one-third of the total population, came out to visit him while he was in Poland. On another occasion he reiterated his earlier position that the priesthood is a gift to God, a gift forever. He noted in passing, “It has been suggested that the Pope was trying to impose the Polish model of priesthood on whole world.” But he observed that only with a life consecrated to the Church could the Church survive in “today’s secularized world.” At the Catholic University in Lublin which he knew so well, he celebrated the development of human potential, and then observed that universities around the world seemed to be undergoing “some kind of deformation.” Coming back to Krakow, the pope praised his old associations, and sadly remarked, “I have discovered in Rome that it is not easy to leave Krakow behind.” He continued, “My heart has not ceased to be united with you, with this city, with this patrimony, with this ‘Polish Rome.’” That night he sought to retire from the hectic pace and stayed at the archbishop’s palace on

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Franciszkanska Street where he had once lived. But the crowds would not let him go. He teased them, “Do you intend to sleep tonight?” And they shouted back, “No.” The pontiff countered, “Well I am going to bed because tomorrow I have got to walk on my feet, not my eyelashes.” Then he said the Angelus with them and a prayer for the dead and closed the window tightly. On the sixth day of his visit, he returned to his birth place at Wadowice where he met his old teacher of religion and acknowledged the parish of his family. Then he went on to the death city of Auschwitz, called in Polish Óswiecim, which is now a gruesome museum, and which had the wrought iron lettering over the gate that reads, Arbeit macht frei—Work will make you free. Some four million people from twenty-eight countries and fifty nationalities had been exterminated in the Auschwitz and the neighboring Birkenau (Brzezinka) complexes. One of the priests murdered there, Father Maximilian Kolbe, had traded his life for a Polish father of ten children, and had been beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1971. The pope knew Auschwitz well, having been there before, and he walked quietly to Block Eleven, Cell 18, and prayed at the site of Kolbe’s interment. Outside was the man, Franciszek Gajowniczek, for whom the priest had traded his life on July 30, 1941. Near the camp the pope saw the railroad cars that had led countless people to their death, the international monument to the victims of Fascism, and a large canopy with a cross that carried a coil of barbed wire and a striped flag with the letter P for prisoner, and the designation 16670, Kolbe’s camp number. The Polish pontiff had referred to Auschwitz as the “Golgotha of our times,” and he called Abraham the father of all. He specifically cited the people of Yahweh and insisted that no one should indifferently pass by the memorial tablets written in Polish, Russian, and Hebrew. He reminded listeners that six million Poles had died in this war—one-fifth of our “people”; he repeated Paul VI’s powerful admonition at the United Nations against war, and then he left the crowd in tears. Pointedly, John Paul observed, “Responsibility for war rests not only with those who directly cause the war, but also with those who do not do everything in their power to prevent it.” The next day was more upbeat as the pontiff visited the mountains that he so loved. There he appeared at Our Lady of Ludzmierz, another Marian shrine. Colorful costumes of the mountain people dotted the crowd. Later that day he went back to Krakow and renewed old acquaintances with academics and clergy. He addressed a large audience of students and talked of his much valued ties to youth and contradicted those who saw them as materialistic and seduced by the consumer society. Sometime in the early morning, he walked incognito along the streets of Krakow to remember once again its sights and sounds. On June 9 the pope finally got permission to go to Nowa Huta, the sterile state community planned without a church, the city of the Communist future—it was said. Karol Wojtyla had fought a long battle to erect a church there, and he consecrated it in 1977. The Communists finally agreed that he could celebrate a Mass, not though at that church, but at a Franciscan church nearby—another

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empty party prohibition. Later the Polish trip ended with the pontiff unexpectedly kissing Polish President Jablonski on both cheeks, and whispering to him good wishes to his mother. Then rather remarkably Jablonski kissed the pope’s hands. The picture of those events raced across the nation’s newspapers. Thus it was that Karol Wojtyla, the one-time factory worker, seminarian in exile, quiet intellectual, and reluctant prelate came home to his beloved Poland. For him it was a sentimental journey, for the Communist state it was the beginning of the end. The Soviet leaders had been less sanguine about the whole visit. When the Polish episcopate issued the invitation to the pope, the Russian premier Leonid Brezhnev warned Gierek, “I advise you not to receive him because it will cause you much trouble.” He cited with approval Gomulka’s refusal in 1966 to give Paul VI a visa for the Christian millennium celebration. But as Gierek knew, there was now a Polish pope. And besides he himself had been graciously received by Paul VI on December 1, 1977.62 The pope’s visit resurrected a true sense of pride among the Polish people. Clearly their allegiances were more with the Catholic Church than with the Communist state. A little more than a year later, the Gierek government raised food prices by 80 percent and unrest boiled over. At the Lenin shipyard at Gdansk, the workers led by a thirty-six-year-old electrician named Lech Walesa staged a sit down strike. From those activities Solidarity and Rural Solidarity were born, and the Communist government’s eventual demise was in sight. After some hesitation, the Church supported the unions, and the Gierek regime was replaced by another Communist government headed by Stanislaw Kania. Polish dissidents demanded and eventually got the right to strike, a relaxation of censorship, an end to Communist monopoly on the press, a five-day workweek, more economic reforms and worker self-government, and some autonomy for the universities. In December 1981, the pendulum swung again to a crackdown on dissidents after the concerned Soviet government insisted that the Polish regime restore order to their homeland. Security forces began a series of arrests, transportation was disrupted, and communications were cut off. The new authority was called the Military Council of National Salvation, and was headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski who declared martial law and announced that a “state of war” existed. On June 16, 1983, with martial law still in effect, the pope re-visited his homeland. The pontiff was received by warm crowds again, but the context was more somber. Wojtyla the patriot appealed to figures of Polish history and recounted the nation’s long history of torment and troubles, as if saying “this too will pass away.” Subtly he spoke of the “solidarity” of the Church with the people, and it was taken by the cheering crowds and the regime as a code word for solidarity with the union. The Communist government angrily accused John Paul of political activity, and indeed in Poznan the pontiff paid tribute to those who had died in 1956 during riots over escalating prices, before moving on to dedicate another new church at Nowa Huta. The pope had met with Walesa, and the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore

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Romano informed its readers that the pope had distanced himself from the labor leader in return for concessions from the Polish regime, including ending military rule. Clearly Walesa was offered up as a sacrifice. A distraught John Paul II fired the editor, but in fact the substance of the story was correct. 63 Four years later he returned to Poland again, and once more expressed his solidarity with his homeland. The pope again met with union leader Lech Walesa, and the pontiff also visited a suburban church where Father Jerzy Popieluszko had been assigned. In 1984 the priest was murdered by the secret police because of his support of the Solidarity movement. The pope prayed at his grave and placed yellow and white flowers, the colors of the Vatican city state, on it. The government eventually realized that it needed Solidarity’s cooperation, and with Moscow’s consent it sought to work with the union to better economic conditions. Free elections were held and Solidarity won handily. The Catholic Church was granted total freedom, and Jozef Cardinal Glemp approved of the formal separation of church and state in Poland.

The Slavic Pope Watching these events was a major admirer of the pope, the new American president, Ronald Reagan, who suggested that CIA Director William Casey establish some closer ties with the Vatican on the Polish question. Reagan had been deeply moved by John Paul’s reception in 1979 in his homeland. Rumor had it that in December 1980 the pope had already sent Leonid Brezhnev a letter warning him that if the Soviet premier decided to invade Poland, the pope himself would return and rally the people to resist the occupation. If true, it was a extraordinary communication. In 1979, the pope had also appointed a cardinal in pectore (in secret), and word spread throughout Lithuania that it was their imprisoned archbishop. The Soviet press at that time called the pope’s views “an infection” and accused the Vatican of trying to “extend its religious influence over the republic.” In January 1981 Lech Walesa had visited the pontiff in Rome and was hosted by Luigi Scricciolo, a spokesman for the Italian Labor Conference. Walesa may have misplaced his trust, for the Italian intelligence agencies believed that Scricciollo was a source for Bulgarian intelligence and a conduit to the Communist regime. Casey, a devout Roman Catholic himself, went to Rome to seek to establish some ties with the Vatican and to exchange information. His request for a formal meeting, however, was denied, and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Casaroli refused even to see him privately. Meanwhile, the U.S. government quietly moved to dry up investments that might help the Polish government, and the regime began to totter economically. Then in July 1981, the Reagan administration offered Poland $740 million in aid aimed at promoting reform and protecting Solidarity. In addition, the American labor movement, through the AFL-

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CIO, was providing advice, training, and financial support to Solidarity. After the military takeover in Poland and with the pope’s near assassination fresh in his mind, Cardinal Casaroli finally agreed to meet with Casey. The Church, he insisted, could not play a covert role with the intelligence agency or serve as a cover for CIA operatives, but it would provide information and facilitate contacts within Poland. Admiral John Poindexter, a National Security Council staffperson and later himself director of the CIA, summarized the relationship, “clearly in terms of gathering information as to what was happening and from the standpoint of talking to Solidarity and other supporters of Western objectives in Poland, the Vatican was very helpful.” The Church was not a partner, but had “mutual objectives in Poland.” The agency gave the Catholic Church a code name in its own jargon—“the Entity.” The Israeli intelligence services and the French counterespionage units were also involved in helping to provide information and protecting some Solidarity activists. CIA funds were transferred in and out of accounts in order to help Solidarity publish and distribute literature and to buy electronic transmitters. The Solidarity movement, though, was infiltrated with spies in the service of the military government, while the CIA in turn penetrated the Polish regime at least as high as the deputy minister of defense. Having recovered from an assassination attempt on his life in 1982, Reagan had promised to keep the pope informed of his administration’s actions toward Poland. Casey was later to bring John Paul information about what was being done to help Solidarity, but what specifics he gave are not public. In 1996 a major biography of the pope maintained, undoubtedly with some exaggerations, that the pontiff was deeply involved in directing Solidarity, met personally with Casey, and in return avoided criticizing the Reagan administration’s policies in Nicaragua and its decision to upgrade nuclear weaponry in NATO. By July 1984, the Jaruzelski government tried to reach some accommodation with the dissidents and declared an amnesty, but its efforts were only partially successful. The KGB and Soviet intelligence officers had from the very beginning of John Paul’s election watched the Vatican closely. One report concluded, “the anti-socialist bias of the Vatican’s activities have [sic] become particularly marked with the arrival on the papal throne of John Paul II.” The KGB also charged that “the Vatican’s principal interest is concentrated on the most ‘promising’ countries of Eastern Europe, from its point of view, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia.” By 1985 the Soviet Union would be headed by a new sort of leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose liberalization policies would lead to a democratization of Poland and the ultimate demise of the Soviet empire. As for the Vatican, it sought to get the United States administration to end economic sanctions against Poland, arguing in the words of the pope that the people had suffered enough. Walesa and other Solidarity leaders agreed, but the sanctions continued until January 1987.64 Pope John Paul moved quickly in the late 1980s and early 1990s to regularize relations with Poland, Hungary, the former Soviet Union states, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. In 1985 he had issued an encyclical,

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Slavorum Apostoli, which praised the Slavic peoples and their common roots. Once again a pope paraded out Saints Cyril and Methodius—the two Greek monks who had transported Christianity to the Slavic peoples a millennium ago. They were saints in the undivided church, that is, before the split with Eastern Christianity in 1054. In 1985 the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia had prevented John Paul from going to there. By 1990 the world had changed, and playwright and president Václav Havel remarked that he himself had been a prisoner of the state six months ago, and now he was there to greet the first Catholic pontiff to visit his homeland in history. The pope in his youth had lived near the Czech border and acknowledged their common heritage, exclaiming, “Here are our roots.” When he was asked by a reporter to characterize the collapse of Marxism throughout Eastern Europe, he confidently said that it was just “another tower of Babel.”

Facing the Soviet State After his first visit to Poland, the Soviet leadership had ordered a top secret worldwide smear campaign against the pope and the Vatican’s foreign policies. On November 13, 1979, the Secretariat of the Central Council approved a sixpoint program that was also signed off by men who would become future premiers of the Soviet Union: Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The plan included the mobilization of Communist parties of Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia, and also of the news agency Tass, the Soviet television, the Academy of Sciences, and other organizations that were to begin a propaganda campaign against the pontiff. The second point in the proposal urged an exchange of information and propaganda with various other Communist parties, especially in states with large Catholic populations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was instructed to stress the Soviet Union’s commitment to world peace, and the Ministry and the KGB secret police were told to upgrade their efforts in the struggle against the Vatican’s Eastern European diplomacy. The fifth point enumerated in the plan had the KGB publicizing in various countries that the Vatican’s policies were harmful, and that the pope was dangerous to his own Church. Special channels were to be employed in both Western and socialist countries to spread that alarm. Lastly the Academy of Sciences was to organize more studies on the benefits of scientific atheism. The new pope was portrayed by the Soviet leaders as using religion in an ideological struggle against socialism, and of having encouraged the activities of what it called “disloyal priests.” The Marxist state was pledged to encourage what it identified as tendencies in the Catholic Church that opposed the antiCommunist foreign policies of the Vatican. Oddly enough, this particular proposal did not mention Poland and the special consequences that a collapse of that Soviet puppet regime would bring. Later it would be charged that the party

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leadership had approved more than simply a propaganda offensive against the pope. As John Paul II prophetically observed to Archbishop Romero, political activity, especially in non-democratic states, can exact from the Church a terrible price—including the blood of martyrs.65 It was ironically fated that the other important political figure who would cross the pope’s diplomatic horizon would be a Slav also, Mikhail Gorbachev. And in some ways, he shared some characteristics with John Paul: he came to power at the early age of fifty-four; had advanced rapidly with the aid of powerful mentors; was deemed charismatic; and sought to channel directly the powerful forces of democratization sweeping through an authoritarian organization. Mikhail Sergevich Gorbachev was born in 1931 in the Stavropl territory of the Soviet Union. He studied law at Moscow State University, joined the Young Communist organization, and in 1971 was elected to the powerful Central Committee. In 1978, he was appointed secretary of agriculture—the traditional elephant burial ground for ambitious Soviet bureaucrats, but he succeeded in staying viable and became the youngest person promoted to the Politburo. In March 1985 he was named the leader of the Soviet Union, the youngest man to hold that position since Joseph Stalin. In 1988 he became the Soviet president, its chief of state. As soon as he took office, he announced that he was intent on nothing less than a major overhaul of Soviet society. He called his policies glasnost, (opening up) and perestroika (restructuring). He sought to overcome the increasingly obvious consequences of seventy years of Communist political oppression and economic stagnation by a profound transformation of the Soviet system. Gorbachev adopted modified open elections and advocated a modernization program to achieve a more flexible economic system—giant steps that would challenge total party control then held by the bureaucratic cadre and its props, the internal secret police and the Red Army. While all his reforms at home did not satisfy the expectations that they aroused, still Gorbachev’s initiatives were well received by Western foreign leaders, especially Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain. Even Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush entered into important arms limitations agreements that partially curtailed the nuclear arms race and led to disarmament on an unparalleled scale. Gorbachev also took the popular step of removing Soviet troops in Afghanistan by early 1989, thus ending one of the major points of contention with the West. He met with John Paul, and there seemed to be a real understanding of the magnitude of the changes that the Soviet Union was facing, as they both seemed to enter into a sort of mutual admiration society. For some reason, Gorbachev publicly commented that he had informed the pope that he had been baptized as a Christian—in the Russian Orthodox faith! The pope correctly remarked that the Soviet leader’s problem was to find a way “to change the system without changing systems,” and privately he expressed the hope that Gorbachev could keep the Soviet Union together. In the process, Gorbachev permitted a lessening of Soviet pressure on its satellites, including the pope’s beloved Poland. There

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the Communists finally allowed free elections which Solidarity handily won. As is so often true, the tides of revolution overwhelm the forces of reform, especially in recent history. Modern reformers raise expectations that they cannot fulfill in time and are too often replaced by the forces of chaos and then repression. The course of modern revolution is the tale of eighteenth-century France and not colonial United States. After the great uprising for liberation comes too often deep discontent, terror, and repression. Although these two Slavic leaders lived in different worlds, still both faced some similar management difficulties. By 1990 John Paul was still dealing with the problems of trying to mobilize the Church in the face of the loosening tendencies unleashed by Vatican II. He was permitting crackdowns and admonitions, although generally to no avail. Vatican II had raised expectations in his own authoritarian system. But in the Soviet Union Gorbachev was facing even more serious problems at home because of the worsening economy. He insisted that the state had to remain socialist, that Communism could function with “a human face.” He was being challenged not just by reactionary elements, but also by democratic forces ironically led by Boris Yeltsin, a flamboyant demagogue who had been a harsh Communist apparatchik at one time. As matters worsened, Yeltsin was elected the first president of the Russian Republic, still encased, however, in the Soviet system. Gorbachev faced continued old-line Communist opposition, and on August 19, 1991, those elements staged an inept coup to remove him while he was on vacation. Yeltsin rallied the people of Moscow, and other cities followed in support, and the coup failed within seventy-two hours. Gorbachev was restored quickly, the Communist Party officially banned, and the Baltic states given their independence. By December 1991, the Soviet Union just collapsed. Eleven of the remaining republics formed the Commonwealth of Independent States, but Gorbachev was the president of no remaining nation, and thus went into retirement on Christmas Day. Later he observed, “Everything that happened in Eastern Europe those last few years would have been impossible without the presence of this Pope.”66 John Paul must have watched the mind-boggling events with incredible attention. He knew the politics of Eastern Europe as well as anyone, but no one could have expected what happened. The Vatican diplomats and the Western intelligence agencies never predicted the quick demise of the Soviet Union. To some of the faithful, it also seemed as if the Virgin’s predictions came true, and only a few years after John Paul’s final dedication with the bishops of Russia on March 25, 1984, to the cause of Mary. The formidable empire crumbled like pie crust—to paraphrase Lenin’s remarks. The pope, however, refused to see those occurrences as an act of God. Communism fell because of its own injustices, he concluded. As for his own role, the pope judged, “I didn’t cause this to happen. The tree was already rotten. I just gave it a good shake and the rotten apple fell.” The peculiar events that took place later, especially in 1995, added another twist. Repudiated Communist Party adherents in Poland helped elect a president, Alexsander Kwasniewski, who defeated Lech Walesa, the Solidarity hero! And

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Communists in Russia began to make remarkable inroads into the democratic parliament. In once tightly ruled Tito’s Yugoslavia, the demise of the Communist state there led to enormous ethnic violence, especially genocidal attacks in Bosnia. The pope deplored such misery once again. What could one make of what had taken place in such a short period of time? The pope had laid aside his own admonitions that the Church should not be involved in secular politics, and now he was seeing that the ways of Mammon were not only sometimes evil, but increasingly fickle. And as Poland was experiencing the problems of democratization, the role of the Church itself in that state began to lessen. There was an official separation of church and state, an increase in the number of divorces, and even reports of greater acceptance of abortion. A disillusioned pope watched as his own countrymen insisted on keeping abortion legal. He sadly remarked, “I was offended by the Poles. But I’m getting over it.” There was less talk about the so-called “third Rome,” the role of Moscow in Christendom. The pope had always believed that “the light comes from the east,” but it did not. There was also less rhetoric about the triumph of a Slavic pope and less success in promulgating the goals of reuniting an activist and diverse Roman Catholic Church with what was an increasingly ossified Eastern Orthodox set of national communities. The pope warned these newly freed nations that they must avoid the perils of the West, the emphasis upon profit, upon rampant personal liberty, and especially the excesses of consumerism. But to many the appeal of the West was not just its eighteenth century Enlightenment legacies, its liberal political rhetoric, or its sophisticated financial institutions, but the creature comforts that it brought to people so long denied the most basic elements of life. Thus once again the pope seemed to be out of tune with the movement which, in this case, he himself had help to father—the demise of the Marxist-Leninist states of Eastern Europe. In reflecting on the strength of his own Polish Catholic church, John Paul had often praised the unity of that congregation, the importance of tradition, authority and obedience to the bishops and to Rome. But those conditions were not present in other Eastern European nations, or at times even in Poland. In many ways the pontiff lived in a pre-Vatican II world. And early in his pontificate, he seemed to believe that if only he wished it to be so and said it, that the Church in very different lands would restore the hierarchical model. But that was not to be.

Reasserting Papal Authority It was that assumption that led the pope to turn the synods from consultative assemblies to another forum for implementing his will and his view of the Church. It was that assumption that led him to assert in the most vigorous, and at times intolerant ways the magisterium—the teaching authority of the Church—

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which in reality became the teaching authority of the pope exercised over national congregations of bishops and over Church theologians. John Paul II was an incredibly prolific pope in his written pronouncements—rivaling Pius XII, the last traditionalist in that office. Very early in his reign, he issued his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, obviously written by the pope himself, and not by a collection of Curial theologians and experts. Because of his very different personalist philosophical bent and his Polish background and language, the messages were rather complex if not convoluted. For example, that first letter was seen as a critique of atheism, a real preoccupation with this pope who had lived almost all of his life behind two Iron Curtains of totalitarianism. But was it also, some people asked, a critique of interfaith ecumenism? John Paul II was fascinated by the benchmark year 2000 and hoped to be the pope of the third millennium of Christianity. Yet at times, he used the creaky Marxist vocabulary of alienation to talk about modern man’s sophisticated ills. Because he was so very bright, so full of ideas, it appeared that John Paul had abandoned the slow, cumbersome processes characteristic of collegiality. Again like Pius XII, he knew that he could do it faster and say it better, which in many cases was true—for both of them. For example, he accepted in principle Vatican II’s formulation of a common priesthood of the faithful, but his real interest was in the traditional sacramental priesthood of men. Referring to priestly vows, he abandoned the more flexible policies of Pope Paul and concluded, “One must think of all these things, especially in moments of crisis, and not have recourse to a dispensation, understood as an ‘administrative instruction,’ as though in fact it were not, on the contrary a matter of profound question on conscience and a test of humanity.” The response of many liberal Catholics in France, Spain, and Germany was critical toward the pope’s “Letter to the Priests.” One theologian, Hans Küng, actually attacked the pope for “violating the human right to marriage.” On one level the pope insisted to a gathering of cardinals in November 1979 that the main task of his pontificate would be to implement Vatican II. Later he called a synod to give its participants a very candid and depressing review of Vatican finances, asked for their advice on how to reform the Curia, and discussed the relationships between the Church and culture, especially the gap between science and faith—two carryover topics from the council. He was in so many ways, though, a son of that council, and its broad reach made it possible for him to travel and be noticed—that is, to become in the end, pope. But he has criticized false notions of liberty and renewal, and opposed any reinterpretations of traditional dogma. And his strong assertion of Catholic identity made ecumenism at times less possible. As John Paul said, he opposed reducing dogmatic concerns to “a common minimum”—a strategy used sometimes in interfaith dialogues, especially in their initial stages. The pontiff’s very intense devotion to Mary, which some attribute to being a substitute for the human mother he lost so early, also discouraged new approaches to Protestant Christianity that often had no strong traditions of worship and respect in that

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area.67 He resolutely moved against theological dissidents as well. For some time the Vatican had been looking closely at the work of one of Catholicism’s best known theologians, Edward Schillebeeckx, a Flemish Dominican who taught at a Catholic university in the Netherlands. Even before John Paul’s tenure, Schillebeeckx’s work on Jesus had raised conservative eyebrows, especially when those unorthodox views in his complex books received wide currency. One of his volumes aimed to show how Jesus was experienced by his contemporaries—an approach that stressed his humanity rather than his divinity, the latter which the theologian did not deny.68 Especially troubling to the Vatican was his view that in cases of extreme necessity the Christian community could provide itself with extraordinary ministers for consecrating the Eucharist. In December 1979, he was summoned to Rome to appear before two judges and a defense lawyer appointed by the Congregation. At about the same time the Congregation moved against Hans Küng, a Swiss theologian teaching at the University at Tübingen in West Germany. Among other controversial pronouncements, Küng has argued that the notion of Jesus as the Son of God was really not to be taken literally. He directly challenged the concept of infallibility, concluding that the Church, not the pope, was infallible and only in the sense that the Church persists in the truth of Jesus Christ. He further cited historical examples of alleged papal heresies that were later appropriately rejected by councils, and he agreed with another author’s conclusions that Pius IX was mentally unbalanced at the time of the first Vatican Council, having actually threatened the bishops into making their infallibility proclamation. In October 1979, Küng publicly attacked the new pope, picturing him as having repudiated the directions of Vatican Council II with its emphasis on freedom, ecumenism, and collegiality. Consequently Küng was stripped of his authority to teach as a Catholic theologian, but allowed to stay on at the university in another department. 69 Thus his claim to be a Catholic theologian was denied to a man who once was brought to Rome and celebrated as one of the periti or experts. At the same time, the Congregation was also reviewing the writings of American Catholic author David Tracy and the Latin American Leonardo Boff, the father of liberation theology, among others. Overall the Congregation’s sanguine view was that the faithful “have a sacred right to receive the word of God, uncontaminated, and so they expect vigilant care should be exercised to keep the threat of error from them.”70 In August 1979, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned a book on human sexuality brought out by a half-dozen members of the Catholic Theological Society of America, and in September the pope went after the Jesuits. In October the Holy See informed the Jesuit priest, Robert Drinan of Massachusetts, that he could not seek re-election for a sixth term to the U.S. Congress.71 Two additional episodes that received widespread publicity were the expulsion of Rev. Charles Curran from his teaching position at the Catholic Universi-

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ty in Washington, D.C., and the controversial treatment of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle. Curran had speculated that sexual morality had to be viewed within broader contextual frameworks than the ones then current in Vatican theology, and his views over the years generated substantial concern in the Curia and with traditional Catholics. For example, he indicated that masturbation was not really sinful or important. He also argued that while homosexual actions were wrong, such acts might be the only way for some to achieve a degree of humanity and sexuality. He advocated a “theology of compromise” toward those acts as well, as toward premarital sex. In addition, he suggested that contraception was acceptable. In his writings he was also tolerant of artificial insemination and sterilization. More pointedly, Curran refused to accept the view that abortion was synonymous with murder, and had gone on record supporting the Roe v. Wade decision in which the Supreme Court established a national policy in America permitting abortions within limits. His dissenting views included a more liberal attitude toward divorce as well, and he maintained that questions of morality were part of the “noninfallible” magisterium of the Church, that is, they were open to dissent. Curran had been under close scrutiny before. As early as April 1967, he was fired from Catholic University because of his statements on abortion, but a strike by students and faculty forced the administration to reinstate him. The next year he helped lead a petition drive among Catholic theologians who opposed publicly the pope’s birth control encyclical. Once again the faculty supported the dissidents and Curran remained. But in March 1986 Curran and Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation of the Faith, met in Rome, and the matter remained unresolved. By late summer of 1986, he was again dismissed from his position in the university, and over three hundred fellow theologians protested the Vatican’s condemnation. Finally the university trustees offered him an opportunity to teach elsewhere, but not in the graduate school of theology. Later he left for other institutions outside of the Church’s purview.72 As controversial was the Vatican’s treatment of one of its own bishops, Archbishop Hunthausen, a reputed liberal, who had supported pacifism and refused at one time to pay part of his income taxes as a protest against defense spending. The Vatican was bombarded with conservative Catholic protests that accused him of general permissiveness in running his diocese. It was alleged, for example, he had allowed a special Mass for homosexuals in the cathedral, had expressed his sympathy for them, and had tolerated weird liturgies featuring clowns, balloons, and dancing at a funeral. In addition, he had granted an imprimatur to a book on sexual morality that was somewhat outside of the Church’s orthodox views. Finally in late summer 1986, Hunthausen was instructed to turn over to Donald Wuerl, new auxiliary bishop, his decision-making authority in the areas of the treatment of former priests, the training of new priests, marriage regulations, the moral supervision of homosexuals, and the management of health care

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facilities in the diocese. The result was an enormous outcry in the diocese and outside for what was perceived as an insult to the bishop and also to the church in that region. Even the Canon Law Society questioned whether his treatment did not violate Church law. The Vatican was forced to back down this time, and a three-bishop commission was appointed to examine the various charges. By 1987 Rome reinstated the archbishop’s authority, but it named a coadjuctor bishop with whom he should consult. Traditional Catholics and clergy waited anxiously for his coming retirement.73 The leading agent in these condemnations was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger of Bavaria, a once well-regarded liberal who had cooperated with the progressive periti at Vatican II. He had been an articulate critic of the Holy Office—the precursor to his own congregation—saying its behavior was detrimental to the Catholic faith. However, reacting to the student unrest of the 1960s and postVatican II excesses, he felt that discussions had often led to “lies,” and that the age-old truths of the Church were being threatened by the turns that the legacy of the council had taken. Pope Paul had named him archbishop of Munich and Freising, and he met Karol Wojtyla at an episcopal synod a year before the latter’s election. As he admitted, he became more conservative after 1968 as he saw that the consequences of the council were leading to an unraveling of the Church. What the popes and the council Fathers expected, he said, was a new Christian unity; what they got instead was dissension that seemed to pass from self-criticism to self-destruction. He advocated “restoration” as a way to achieve a new balance and not as a turning back. It would be a recovery of lost values, he insisted, within a new totality, and he cited St. Charles Borromeo who helped to rebuild the Catholic Church after the Council of Trent without retreating back to the Middle Ages. The real crisis of the Church was above all else a crisis of priests and religious orders, he publicly argued. Traditional pillars of ecclesiastical reform—the great religious orders—had vacillated, lost vocations, and experienced identity crises. In addition, bishops in episcopal conferences often accepted group decisions instead of being strongly persistent in their convictions, Ratzinger explained. He then went on to speak of the major challenge before the Church—the teaching of moral theology. Like Wojtyla, he had serious reservations about the cultural influence of the West, noting that “economic liberalism creates its exact counterpart, permissivism, on the moral plane.” Theologians must choose between opposing modern society or opposing the magisterium of the Church. Even in women’s religious orders, there was a “feminist mentality,” especially in North America. Only those who had lived in cloistered contemplative orders had withstood the Zeitgeist because of their sheltered life and their clear sense of mission. In other instances, John Paul himself took the lead in dealing with discipline problems in his Church. In January 1980 the pope invited the Dutch bishops to Rome to end their divisions and to bring to heel one of the most unorthodox

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churches in his realm. Unlike Paul he was clearly not willing to accept their unruliness. Meeting behind closed doors, the bishops ended up accepting the pope’s criticisms and his prescriptions. They went home and curtailed liturgical innovations, ecumenism, intercommunion, and the use of pastoral workers instead of priests. They also terminated appeals by bishops for a relaxation of priestly celibacy. The Dutch church was brought in line, but deep resistance toward the pope by elements of the faithful was apparent in his later visit to that nation. The normal indices of Church participation also began to decline in the Netherlands. Thus it appeared that the progressive bishops were meeting the aspirations of what represented a good segment of their Church.74 Having finished that business, the pope called the Ukrainian bishops to the Vatican to resolve several long standing problems. In 1946 the Ukrainian Catholic Church with ties to Rome was declared illegal by the Soviet Union, and its archbishop, Josef Slipyi, was shipped to Siberia for eighteen years. Finally Pope John XXIII’s appeals to Premier Nikita Khrushchev to have him released were successful. The archbishop was later made a cardinal and lived in exile in Rome. On his own, Slipyi decided to declare himself a patriarch—a step that Pope Paul disapproved of, and he went on to criticize the pope’s overtures toward Eastern European Communist governments as “an obscene insult to the blood of martyrs of the Gulag Archipelago.”75 John Paul persuasively informed a suspicious Slipyi that he supported the right of religious freedom, including in the Ukraine, and that the Ukrainian Catholics were invited to give him a name for assistant bishop who would be the successor to the cardinal. The local synod chose a successor, and the pope had patched over an old quarrel. Not all areas of contention lent themselves to such easy solutions. Two of John Paul’s predecessors, Pius XII and Paul VI, both had reservations about the Jesuits at times, but they were still admirers of the society. During Vatican II, Jesuits such as Bea, Rahner, and John Courtney Murray among others, helped to set the impressive agenda; later, though, some members of the society were rather vocal in their reservations about Paul’s encyclical on birth control. Beginning in 1965, a Basque named Don Pedro Arrupe had led the group and advocated an opening to the left that included democratization of the Jesuits and an emphasis on its social calling. Conservatives saw that as a betrayal of its historic religious apostolate in favor of social activism, rabble-rousing, and Marxism. Paul began to become concerned about the society’s loss of identity, and whether it was laicizing itself by becoming simply a humanitarian agency. In September 1973 Paul wrote a letter to General Superior Arrupe, condemning the intellectual and disciplinary tendencies he felt would injure the society. He also opposed the attempts to end the differences in the organization between priests and non-priests, and a proposal to allow Jesuits the right to object to certain commands, including those from the pope himself. He directly intervened when conservatives told him that there might even be a possibility that the Jesuits at their general conference would be moving toward ending their traditional fourth vow—that of strict obedience to the pope.

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It is with this background that John Paul II acted quickly and sternly in dealing with the Jesuits. When Arrupe decided to resign, the pope refused to accept his resignation, arguing that under the society’s bylaws such a decision required his prior approval. Arrupe stayed, but was afflicted later by a stroke; he was finally permitted to resign, and he moved to name one of his lieutenants, American Vincent O’Keefe, to the position of Vicar General until a General Congregation could elect a successor. The pope then surprised the Jesuits and decided to stop any such appointment. In a deliberate slap at the Society, the pope named his own “personal delegate,” vested with full powers to lead and personally control the society. In September 1983, the Jesuits elected Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach successor to Arrupe. Kolvenbach proved to be a moderate and judicious leader as he toned down but kept the basic thrust of the Decree Four statement. John Paul, who had no real close experience with religious orders or the Society of Jesus, may have over-reacted as he took the next logical step to Paul’s warnings and applied shock therapy to a proud and often haughty company of men. In any case, after the controversy settled down, he went on to praise the Jesuits for their “docile harmony with the directives of the magisterium.” As for Arrupe, he had candidly indicated to the Society that the last three popes had serious reservations about the directions in which the Jesuits were going—directions he himself favored. Still it seemed to some that the conservative Polish pope was more at home with conservative organizations such as Opus Dei, an association that Pope Paul had kept at arm’s length, than with the long-established religious orders, which included not just the Jesuits but the Dominicans and Franciscans as well.76

The Assassination Attempt Pope John Paul II was a leader of surety and tenacious purpose, but on May 13, 1981, he experienced an event that had profound personal impact on him, one that threatened his life, deepened his already intense spirituality, and turned him even more to the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As the late afternoon sun was setting, the pope was riding in a Jeep through the crowds in St. Peter’s Square. At a range of less than ten feet, Mehmat Ali Agca fired a Browning 9 directly at the vulnerable pontiff. Two bullets entered the pope, one penetrating his abdomen and the second hitting his right forearm and injuring the second finger of his left hand. A nun from Bergamo, Sister Letizia, had deflected the aim of the professional assassin by pulling on his jacket, and thus probably saved John Paul’s life. The pope sank down in the vehicle into the arms of one of his aides, losing blood profusely and exhibiting on his face a strange mixture of pain and almost tranquility as he prayed. In the hospital, he kept repeating, “Mary, my mother, Mary, my mother,” as he came perilously close to death.77 Overnight the vigorous pope appeared less triumphant and desperately hu-

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man and mortal. Once he had observed that when he was young sick people used to intimidate him.78 He was now to come to understand that his pontificate was to be closely linked to martyrdom and to suffering, and that he was spared hopefully to lead the Church into its third millennium, while he was destined to endure more pain. In his hospital room he contemplated the intercession of Mary, and then later read the collected information on the apparitions at Fatima, Portugal. He and others had been informed by the nun Sister Lucy, the last living Fatima child, that the Virgin’s request had still not been met. She had mandated that Russia had to be dedicated to her, and that dedication had to be done by the pope in concert with the Catholic Church’s other bishops. This he would do, as he prayed publicly for the conversion of Russia. At the time it seemed far-fetched, because the Western intelligence agencies reported the continuing strength of the Soviet regime. It has been speculated that the professional assassin who wounded the pope was hired by the Bulgarian secret police on behalf of the Russian KGB. The Soviet leaders had begun a campaign to discredit the pope, and had been especially wary of his activities with the Ukrainians and of course with the Poles. The argument that was made in some quarters was that the Russians had ordered the pope’s murder and used their allies to pull the trigger. However, the opening of some historical archives in previously Communist countries has not lent any verification to that charge. After his recuperation, John Paul visited his assailant in a Roman prison, and in one of the most impressive photos of the time, the world saw the pope, as if almost hearing a confession, listening intently to Agca. Lip readers claimed that the assassin asked him how he was still alive, and the pope responded that another hand had directed matters. Then John Paul bluntly asked the assailant who had sent him. The latter’s responses to the pontiff questions are not recorded, although he had said that John Paul knew everything about the episode.79 The pope, who had experienced such a lamentable young adulthood, once again knew pain and loneliness, and also a sense of being specifically saved by God’s direct intercession. That experience probably added to his heroic sense of mission, his willingness to ask more of his fellow co-religionists than they were sometimes willing to give, and enhanced his view of the Blessed Virgin’s watchful care. He sent one of the bullets that had wounded him to Fatima to be placed in a crown on a statue of Mary. Privately he later observed of the new bulletproof, glassed-enclosed popemobile, “All these precautions are useless. As soon as I go out, dressed in white from head to foot, I’m a target they can’t possibly miss.”80 The pope had rushed his recovery and had to return to the hospital and deal with a serious infection. But gradually he seemed physically mended, and he continued to devote himself to a more intensive role in the life of Polish national politics, as he came to embrace even more the Solidarity movement and Walesa. For over a century there had been prophecies of a Slavic pope, but this one’s impact on geopolitics in that area was truly beyond expectations. Karol Wojtyla

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became even more than he imagined, a man of great destiny striding the world stage. In some strange way, the pope who so rejected the extremes of the West seemed to take solace at first in the view that Moscow, the so-called “Third Rome” as it has been called, would play a special role in the changing nature of faith and religious allegiances in the third millennium. 81 It was an Eastern Europe romance, one that misjudged the nature of contemporary Russians and one that denigrated the true importance of the industrialized West in the world of ideas and ideologies.

The Heroic Pope The pope demanded more of his faithful, but the peoples of North America and Western Europe were weary of such sacrifices. They had been through two terrible World Wars and the Great Depression. They intended to enjoy prosperity and peace—and yes, wallow a bit in their consumer products. That selfindulgence bothered the pontiff, and he reached out to the children of the next generation, as he pleaded for faith and justice. Rather remarkably they seemed somewhat attuned to his admonitions and to his extraordinary charisma. They responded in lively ways to his personal appearances, but as a group they still prized their possessions and their sexual and creative freedom. Thus the great contradiction of public attitudes in the United States and elsewhere toward this pope. That same dimension can be seen in the pope’s treatment of Catholic universities. Since the late 1970s, Catholic educators in the United States, led by the respected president of Notre Dame University, Father Theodore Hesburgh, and Jesuit priest Robert Henle of Georgetown, departed from the Vatican’s attempts to control Catholic colleges and universities. They argued that such a step threatened the tradition of trustee control (important to American concepts of incorporation) raised problems for academic accreditation, and might present hurdles in receiving federal aid. So they insisted on delaying revisions. In 1990 the pope issued a new apostolic constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which sought to impose a unified charter that would place Catholic institutions of higher education under local bishops. In November 1996, the American bishops brokered a compromise with the major Catholic universities’ leaders.82 John Paul had moved easily with academics and intellectuals throughout most of his adult life, and he had been an articulate spokesman for freedom of expression. He argued that the Church in the modern world was really the champion of reason, freedom, and progress. Rather remarkably, he also insisted in 1979 that the Curia reopen the Church’s condemnation of Galileo Galilei, and he finally rehabilitated that controversial astronomer in 1992; the Vatican would end up calling Galileo ironically a “man of faith.” Galileo had been originally brought to trial before the Inquisition in 1633 and threatened with torture if he did not recast his view that the earth revolved around the Sun, a view advanced

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earlier by the Polish scientist Copernicus. Wojtyla had been an admirer of Copernicus and lamented the consequences of Galileo’s trial that established the popular view that faith and science were inherently in conflict. 83 In October 1996, the pontiff lent his support to the theory of human evolution as well, thus separating Catholicism from fundamentalist Protestant thought. The pope also reinvigorated the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and had its members focus on informing national leaders of the horrors of nuclear weapons. In the industrial city of Turin, in April 1980 the pope once again criticized both liberalism and Marxism, and his views seemed to be remarkably similar to the long-standing complaints of the European Catholic right that somehow the West took a wrong turn back at the Enlightenment. Behind it all in the pope’s eyes was the menace of aggressive atheism and its war on God. Later in 1981, he spoke of the need for “those great souls” in history, individuals committed to respecting the faith. Addressing the crowd, the pontiff exhorted simply, “Europe needs Christ!”84 But it would be a mistake to view John Paul as a simple conservative. In fact, his statements were very critical of capitalism and its emphasis on unbridled wealth and consumerism. His first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, was an affirmation of the dignity of workers written by the only pope who has ever worked in an industrial setting. While he supported the struggle for justice, he opposed class warfare and hatred of others, a clear critique of Marxism. On March 19, 1981, he addressed a group of factory workers north of Rome and insisted, “Be assured that the Pope is with you, that the Pope is on your side, whenever justice has been violated, peace is threatened or the due rights of anyone and the common good need to be encouraged.” He then walked with the workers, ate, and drank wine with them. The pope answered their questions, listened to their grievances, and remembered his own times as a worker during World War II. When a television reporter observed to someone that this was the first time that a pope had eaten with the workers, the pontiff overheard the remark. Quietly he responded, “and that’s not the only novelty of this pontificate.” To mark the ninetieth anniversary of Leo’s Rerum Novarum, John Paul II issued in September 1981 his encyclical Laborem Exercens. In it he supported joint ownership of the means of work, stressed the need for unions to be nonpolitical, and reiterated once again the idea of a Catholic social doctrine. 85

The Restive New World But his idea of social doctrine was very different from that taking place in Third World countries. The Vatican, with the pope’s concurrence, had moved against the leaders of the liberation theologian movement in Latin America. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sent a letter to the Peruvian bishops listing objections to the writings of the theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez. The bishops were, however, divided, and Gutiérrez was invited to Rome for some private

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consultations. Then the Congregation went after the Brazilian Franciscan, Leonardo Boff. Instead of presenting his case to the bishops, the Congregation also called him to Rome. Two Brazilian bishops went with him in a show of support. In March 1985 the Vatican issued a document answering Boff’s criticisms, and in May he was prohibited from publishing or teaching for a period of time. Later, though, the scrutiny continued, and a frustrated Boff left the priesthood altogether.86 In 1983, John Paul had made a controversial visit to Nicaragua, a visit that ended up being the nadir of his travels. The Nicaraguan revolution had expelled the Somoza family which for several generations had impoverished that tiny nation. Coming to power was a group of Castro-like Marxist guerrilla fighters called the Sandinistas. What made that situation difficult for the Vatican was that five of its major political leaders were Catholic priests, the most visible being the Minister of Culture, Ernesto Cardenal. Cardenal was a committed revolutionary and poet, a priest, and an associate of the gentle Trappist monk Thomas Merton. He was to comment, somewhat sarcastically, that the pope was correct, clergy should not be involved in politics. “I used to be a poet. I became a priest, and the love of God led me to revolution. I have never gone in for politics.”87 The position of the Vatican was that priests could not hold public office, and that if they did, they could not then exercise priestly functions until they resigned. The pope at first insisted that he would not visit that nation until that “irregularity” was resolved, but he decided on the trip anyhow. When he arrived at the airport, he publicly chastised Ernesto Cardenal while the priest knelt to receive the pontiff’s blessing. John Paul uncharacteristically shook his finger at him angrily, and insisted that he had to normalize his status. Later, in front of a large crowd, the pope ended up in a shouting match with hecklers, probably planted there by the Sandinistas. When some people chanted, “We want peace!,” the pontiff shouted back, “Silence,” three times. In his visit he avoided mentioning the attacks of the anti-Sandanista Contras who were being heavily funded then by the Reagan Administration, and he demanded that Catholics support their bishops.88 It was an extremely distasteful episode. The Vatican insisted that the priests still in the government had to resign. One finally left the priesthood and became laicized, one left the Jesuits, and two were suspended from their priestly functions. In early 1996, the pope visited Nicaragua again. By then the Sandinistas had been voted out by the people, and the pope was greeted by enthusiastic crowds. In place of the strident guerilla leader President Daniel Ortega, who had once greeted the pontiff in military greens, the new president was Violeta Chamorro who was elected in 1990. She embraced John Paul and kissed his head as if she were welcoming a long lost uncle. As the pope proceeded down the major highway, lo and behold there was a billboard from previous President Ortega celebrating John Paul’s visit. The pope had insisted that the Church be separated from the regime, and it appeared that in the longer perspective he was once again correct.89 In October 1996, Ortega again ran for president—this time

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on a platform emphasizing God, forgiveness, and private enterprise. He lost a second time. In 1985 and in 2007 he again served as president. Over the years, John Paul had made his position very clear—the Church “does not need to have recourse to ideological systems in order to love, defend, and collaborate with the liberation of the human being.” As for liberation theology, one comes away with two very different impressions of that development. There is a genuine sense of righteousness against exploitation and a charming resurrection of the powerful image of Jesus’ thirst for justice’s sake. But overall the theology seems to be rather shallow, intellectually ragged, and often a collection of socialist slogans loosely wrapped in religious garb. By 1996, John Paul was dismissing liberation theology as irrelevant. And Cardinal Ratzinger was focusing his concerns on moral relativism. Karol Wojtyla, the scholar of Marxism, probably had a better command of that ideology than did either its priest-advocates in Latin America or the Communist party bosses in Eastern Europe. Although the basic and primary problems of poverty, exploitation, and government violence remained, even the liberation theologians acknowledged that John Paul addressed those issues as well as they did. In fact, two such theologians, the Boffs, noted that while the pontiff put distance between himself and their rhetoric, he shared many of their legitimate concerns.90 It may be, though, that, once again, John Paul reacted too swiftly and too abruptly to a very complex problem in the Third World, where he himself had said that the future of the Catholic Church would be decided. By April 1986, the Vatican issued an “Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation,” which took a more benign view, although, as noted, in a somewhat abstract sense, of the liberation theology movement. In the same month the pope had a friendly three-day meeting with the Brazilian bishops. The restrictions on Leonardo Boff, who had humbly observed the Vatican’s limitations on his freedom, were at first lifted, although the criticisms were to be resurrected later. 91 Looking back at the pope’s confusing journey into Latin American ecclesiastical controversies, one can appreciate more fully Pope Paul VI’s carefully nuanced style; sometimes vigor and assertiveness are not unalloyed virtues. At times John Paul seemed to be too preoccupied with reining in deviating intellectual constructs, such that he gave the impression of a lack of sympathy toward the very movements with which he himself was genuinely aligned. Unlike John XXIII, he insisted on setting everything right; unlike Paul VI, he could not live in a world filled with ambiguities. After his first Polish trip, the pope also visited another historic Catholic country, Ireland. Again, John Paul warned against the prevailing materialism, self-indulgence, and consumerism that was so much a part of Western society in his view. At one point in Galway, he looked over a huge crowd of two hundred thousand people on a racetrack and cried out, “Young people of Ireland, I love you.” Across the aisle, the pope spoke out against moral shortcuts, the preoccupation with comfort, wealth, and pleasure, and the need to remember the kingdom of God. He supported the traditional bans on divorce and abortion and

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strongly opposed sectarian hatred in that island. In English, the pontiff proclaimed “violence is evil . . . violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems . . . violence is unworthy of man . . . violence is a lie”—references to the bloody sectarian wars so common in Ireland’s life. But as in Italy, Ireland would show signs of moving away from the traditions of the faith. In 1995, Ireland voted for a statute permitting divorce. That outcome was allegedly due in part to the revelations of a bishop living with his long-time mistress. Across the English Channel, in early 1996, even the saintly Mother Teresa seemed to approve of a divorce for the much publicized and estranged prince and princess of Wales in Great Britain. A continuous stream of soap opera headlines, taped lovers’ conversations, and public confessions of infidelity on both their parts had taxed even her legendary patience. Thus at times the pope during his term in office had to face continuing deviations from the deposit of the faith—even among the usually faithful. He was especially embarrassed when the conservative cardinal he appointed to the see in Vienna, Hermann Grör, had to be replaced after accusations of pedophilia were made. 92 Nowhere were the corrosive evidences of consumerism, hedonism, and excessive freedom more apparent in the pope’s eyes than in the United States. There too the effects of Vatican II and the birth control encyclical had contributed to a general loss of faith, to confusion in the seminaries, and to a massive decline in vocations. The pope was to observe that the Americans were nice people, but when it came to matters of religion, they sometimes followed outdated European trends. The pontiff sarcastically observed on one occasion that they had yet to “get past Bultmann”—a reference to the unorthodox Biblical scholar of the twentieth century. American Catholic attitudes generally reflected those of their fellow countrymen rather than traditional papal admonitions. For example, at the time of the pope’s visit in October 1979, 66 percent of Catholics approved of birth control, 63 percent of divorce, 53 percent wished for priests to be allowed to marry, and 51 percent tolerated abortion on demand. The Church that the pope saw was not just one militant Church, but a host of groups, often speaking past each other. John Paul was concerned about the lack of Church discipline and the supposed weakness of some bishops, and he moved to change those directions. 93 On his first visit his reception was enormously positive. In Boston, for example, the city and the neighborhoods turned out in force, even in the rain, and the pope graciously remarked, “America the beautiful, even when it rains.” A six-foot poster in Boston quoted his words at his installation, “Be not afraid to open the door wide for Christ.” In New York City he addressed the United Nations General Assembly where he pleaded for peace and insisted on the inalienable rights of every human being. That evening he said Mass before seventy-five thousand people in Yankee Stadium, and spoke against “the frenzy of consumerism.” The next morning at Madison Square Garden, a youth concert exploded with football chants, “Rack’em up, stack’em up, bust’em in two—Holy Father, we’re for you.” And the pope began to sing along, “Whoa—hoo—whoa—.” In

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Harlem he consoled his predominantly black audience saying, “If we are silent about the joy that comes from knowing Jesus, the very stones of our cities will cry out. For we are an Easter people and alleluia is our song!” 94 In Philadelphia, he reaffirmed his belief that “the priesthood is forever,” and in Washington, D.C., on September 7, 1979, he had to face the forces of feminism within his own Church. A Sister Mary Theresa Kane, the head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, in an address to Pope John Paul spoke of “the intense suffering and pain that is part of the life of many women in the U.S. Church.” She insisted that in supporting dignity for people, the Church must open up its own ministries to all as well. Later the pope maintained that women were excluded from the priesthood, not because the Church was making a statement about human rights, or because of any exclusion of women from the mission of the Church. Rather, the exclusion was due to historical tradition— Christ had not included any women in the first twelve apostles. John Paul went on to praise the Blessed Virgin Mary, noting that while she was not incorporated into the hierarchical constitution of the Church—“yet she makes all hierarchy possible.”95 Later in other countries, the pope would face the same criticisms from other women religious. On June 3, 1980, John Paul met a crowd of five thousand French nuns at the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity where the Miraculous Medal was struck by Catherine Labouré in 1830. There Sister Daniéle Souillard spoke of the need to abandon the traditional garb of nuns in order to pursue their professional work. The pope had insisted that the nuns should “never be ashamed to recognize your identity as women consecrated to the Lord.” But some of the religious thought the admonition ill-advised, if not trivial. A third example occurred on November 20, 1980, in Germany where Barbara Engl, president of the Munich Association of Catholic Youth, was critical of the pope’s homily on Satan. She contended that young people felt the Church was more concerned with perpetuating divisions with the Evangelical Church than in promoting unity. She also indicated that there was a real need for priests and chaplains, and that the celibacy ban made little sense, as did the limits on women’s ministry. The pope did not respond immediately, but in April 1980 he praised Saint Catherine of Siena, the sometime advisor and sometime harsh critic of popes. He called attention to the fact that “her feminine nature was richly endowed with fantasy, intuition, sensibility, an ability to get things done, a capacity to communicate with others, a readiness for self-giving and service.96 Thus the pope’s attitudes toward women remained both respectful and traditional, seeing them primarily as helpmates. In 1995 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith insisted that the pope’s ban on women as ministers had the force of an infallible declaration, increasing in some a sense of second class membership in a Church dedicated ironically to the special intercession of the Virgin Mary. The most doctrinaire of the pope’s addresses in the United States came to 350 American bishops in a Chicago seminary. There he proceeded to outline the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine that had to be safeguarded and taught. He

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extolled Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae, and asked the bishops to give witness to the truth, thereby serving all of humanity. He went on to indicate that it was the laity’s right to receive “the word of God in its purity and integrity as guaranteed by the magisterium of the universal Church.”97 He observed that he was not offended to be called a conservative, for “the pope is not here to make changes, but to conserve what he has received with his charge.” Thus, to the pope, Catholicism remained a fairly rigid belief system with a strong disciplinary code. Even though many Catholics disagreed with the message, as has been noted, they still loved the messenger. Throughout his visits to the United States over the years, the public responses, especially from the young, were extremely positive and respectful. After a year in office, John Paul was praised by Time magazine in an article which called him “John Paul, Superstar.”98 In the article, that journal of opinion indicated that the pope lifted people above the drabness of their own lives and showed them that they are capable of expressing better emotions and performing better deeds than they may have thought. In 1995, the pope was proclaimed the “Man of the Year” for many of the same reasons. John Paul’s commitment to traditional Catholic dogma and its distinctive mission had another side effect. The day after his election, John Paul indicated that he was committed to overcoming the obstacles to Christian unification—a preoccupation of both John XXIII and Paul VI. But almost immediately he seemed less interested in such efforts, especially as it dealt with the churches in the West. He was not much influenced by the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission and its discussions on the nature of the ministry. In Washington, D.C., he said to an interfaith group, “Recognition must be given to the deep divisions which still exist over moral and ethical matters. The moral life and the life of faith are so deeply united that it is impossible to divide them.”99 He clearly rejected ecumenism as a limited collaboration, and insisted the churches should avoid reducing matters to a doctrinal minimum or the lowest common denominator. The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith had warned against glossing over problems inherent in any discussions of reunification and ecumenism, and John Paul concurred with that view. Still the pope spoke of “the great common treasury” of the various Christian faiths, and in November 1980 the pope visited West Germany and directly faced some difficult Protestant authorities and clergymen. Instead of confronting them and stressing their doctrinal and historical differences, John Paul referred to St. Paul’s “Epistle to the Romans,” which their Martin Luther had called “the heart of the New Testament.” He even quoted Luther approvingly in that regard, a neat rhetorical trick indeed.100 His interests in interfaith efforts were more oriented toward the Eastern Orthodox, as he continued his appeal as a Slavic pope to the peoples of the East. As early as February 1980, he talked of “the rearticulation of the ancient traditions of the East and West.” As Pope Paul VI recognized, however, the papacy itself was a major obstacle—if not the major obstacle, for all non-Catholic Christians. John Paul spoke of the peterine ministry in October 1978 and

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stressed its relationship to the Church’s internal unity and the need to guarantee its special mission. In his eyes, as in Pope Paul’s, only the pontificate could accomplish those objectives. But much later in May 1995 in his Ut Unum Sint he seemed to praise ecumenism and solicit opinions about problems of the papacy posed in that regard. As some commentators noted, the search for unity was also hindered by the addition of the doctrine of infallibility in the nineteenth century and the promulgated Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. As the years passed, John Paul continued to insist on dogmatic rigor. When the pope came back to the United States in 1987, some of the American bishops tried to explain the differences between European and American cultures. Joseph Cardinal Bernardin told the pope, “It is important to know that many Americans, given the freedom they have enjoyed for than two centuries, almost instinctively react negatively when they are told they must do something. As a result the impression is sometimes given that there is a certain rebelliousness in American Catholics, that they want to ‘go it alone.’” He continued, “When someone questions how a truth might be better articulated or lived today, he or she is sometimes accused (by the Vatican) of rejecting the truth itself or portrayed as being in conflict with the Church’s teaching authority. As a result, both sides are locked in what seems to be adversarial positions. Genuine dialogue becomes almost impossible. They must be able to speak to one another in complete candor, without fear.” Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee tried to explain even further, “The faithful are now more inclined to look at the intrinsic worth of an argument proposed by the teachers in the Church than to accept it on the basis of the authority alone.” But the pope insisted, “It is sometimes claimed that dissent is totally compatible to being ‘a good Catholic’ and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments. This is a grave error. Dissent from Church doctrine remains what it is, dissent; as such it may not be proposed or received on an equal footing with the Church’s authentic teaching.”101 The pope did what one would expect he would do in dealing with the American church. In 1980 he installed a Vatican papal nuncio in Washington, Archbishop Pio Laghi, to look closely at new appointments to that hierarchy, and he placed men in high-profile American dioceses—Boston, New York, Washington and Los Angeles—individuals whom he knew shared his views and his insistence upon orthodoxy. Rumor has it that the new apostolic delegate was being given five years “to clean up the American Church.” In 1985, he good-naturedly remarked, “They just gave me five more years.”102 In order to guarantee orthodoxy throughout the Church, the Vatican, led by Cardinal Ratzinger, pushed for a new oath of fidelity, reminiscent of the Modernist hysteria of Pius X. The new oath, to be effective March 1, 1989, indicated that all parish priests, rectors, professors of theology in seminaries, and rectors of Catholic universities, as well as teachers of subjects dealing with faith and morals were to take a pledge. It read as follows: “I firmly embrace and retain all and everything which is definitely proposed in doctrine about faith and morals

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by the Church. In addition, I adhere by religious assent of the will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops declare when they exercise the authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim them by definitive act.” The Vatican gave its final judgment on any dissent from that instruction, saying that if Catholic theologians could not agree then they should in conscience be quiet or “suffer for the truth in silence and prayer.”

The Dissenting Faithful The pope also decided to reach some conclusion in dealing with rebellion on the right. He had tried desperately, as had Paul, to deal with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre who at the age of eighty-two had moved to ordain bishops and priests from his followers, individuals committed to the Tridentine Latin Rite and to the Church before Vatican II. He had named his seminary in a Swiss mountain valley at Econe, “The Fraternity of St. Pius X.” By voiding an earlier agreement with the Vatican, Lefebvre in turn incurred automatic excommunication. Before a congregation of five thousand supporters, he reasserted his continuous opposition to the changes that had taken place since the last council. Three years later he died of cancer, still unrepentant, and the pope issued a statement saying that he hoped for a moment of repentance, and would have been willing to lift the excommunication decree if there had been any sign of reconciliation. The pope, in a gesture to traditional Catholics, did permit the Latin Rite to be celebrated if the local bishop concurred, as long as it was not seen as a repudiation of the changes of Vatican II. When the vernacular Mass was criticized for not being very contemplative because of its excessive dialogue, and not much mystery, the pontiff simply remarked, “The Word is also a mystery.” Eventually his successor, Benedict XVI, would re-establish the Tridentine Mass and encourage its frequent use, but by then few priests could say the Mass in Latin.103 Sometimes John Paul himself seemed to be uncomfortable with the extent to which he felt he had to go to protect orthodoxy. After his confrontation with the Dutch bishops and their decision to support him over the wishes of most of their faithful, the pope was to realize the consequences of his tough stand. In 1985, he made a trip through the Benelux countries and in The Netherlands; the streets were almost deserted in marked contrast to almost every other area he had gone. When there was strong protest against the pope’s decision about nominating a new local bishop against the wishes of the faithful, he tried to explain his thoughts on the matter, saying, “In all sincerity, the Pope attempts to understand the life of the Church and the appointment of every bishop. He gathers information and advice in accordance with ecclesiastical law and custom. You will understand that opinions are sometimes divided. In the last analysis, the Pope has to make the decision. Must the Pope explain his choice? Discretion does not permit him to do so.” On another occasion, he argued, “You cannot

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take a vote on truth. You cannot pick or choose.” The pope’s recalcitrance in consulting with clergy and informed lay people in individual countries led him into another firestorm when he invited President Kurt Waldheim to the Vatican in June 1987. That invitation raised an avalanche of protest from Jews because of questions that had been raised about Waldheim’s Nazi past that had recently been discovered. The Vatican’s answer was that the pope had an absolute right to invite whomever he wished to the Vatican, and that Waldheim was the then president of Austria. As proof began to mount about Waldheim’s complicity in some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, the Vatican for unexplained reasons gave him a knighthood, the Order of Pius IX, almost as if to insist that it had no intention to listening to other people’s judgments or the outcries from Jews and Christian alike. 104 In his dealings with the African Church, the pope also sounded a sense of alarm. His predecessor, Paul VI, had asked for an African Christianity, and indeed that was being worked out to the chagrin of many traditionalists in the Vatican. The successes of early Christianity were due in part to its remarkable ability to synthesize, borrow, adapt, and twist pagan, Jewish, Greek, and Middle Eastern customs and cultic devotions into Christian channels. At Vatican II, Cardinal Wojtyla had voted for enculturation, and as late as 1995 argued in favor of it, citing in fact the failures in China where the Church had refused to compromise with that nation’s revered customs. In May 1980, however, he had visited the African continent with a very different message. In Zaire, to the disappointment of many Catholics, he refused to attend a Mass featuring dancing and drums. He argued that the dangers of Africanization were especially apparent in worship because there had to be “a substantial unity with the Roman rite.” The pope seemed to say that there was really only one dominant ritual, and that that was rooted in European tradition. His real concern may have been expressed in his remarks to young married couples in Kinshasa when he seemed to indicate that if Africa Africanized the Mass, they would wish to Africanize their marriage customs as well, which would include trial marriage and polygamy. He insisted that monogamy was not a European but a Semitic idea, and that Africans were perfectly capable of that commitment. Being a Christian meant being converted, that is changing customs, he insisted. Six months later at a general synod, forty African bishops continued to advocate that the Church should approve of African marriage customs in which it is believed that marriage unfolds progressively and is not fully sealed until the birth of the first child. In an environment in which sensuality seemed to be less repressed than in the West (or at least so it is usually assumed), the pope faced another dilemma. It was reported that a considerable number of Catholic priests lived in various states of intimacy with women companions—another topic on which John Paul felt strongly. Thus even in the newly converted missionary fields, the pope saw the same challenges and the chaos due to a lack of discipline, loose ties of Church unity, and above all a failure of nerve. 105 The pope was in a peculiar position—he was the son of the council and in fact was genu-

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inely committed to its implementation. But he and his closest advisors, such as Ratzinger, had to believe that its alleged effects were often disastrous for the Catholic Church, at least within the traditional framework. In a sense of collegiality, he called general synods, including one on the role of the family in the modern world. One hundred-sixty-one bishops were elected by their peers to attend. This time the agenda would be structured, as were the results. The problem, of course, was that Humanae Vitae had hemmed in the basic contexts of the debate. The tone of the conference was set when the pope hailed a Chilean mother of seventeen children as a heroine. To listen to the married couples invited to the Synod, one would assume that everyone accepted Paul’s ill-fated encyclical on birth control. The pope was generally quiet during the synod, but his views were well known to all. And on October 8, he told a general audience in St. Peter’s Square that husbands who looked at their wives with “concupiscence” had committed adultery in their hearts. That view, explainable within the context of his philosophical statements, drew sharp and often humorous commentaries—adding to the criticism that a celibate clergy, including its pope, really knew very little about the allures of sex. But John Paul was unbending. He had earlier expressed his frustrations with American bishops when he pointed to their 1968 pastoral letter on birth control and demanded, “Here’s your own doctrine. When are you going to start insisting on it?” That tone continued to be evident over the years in his treatment of the topic of sexual morality. Much later, John Paul would have to deal with sexual morality in a very different way. But for all his reflections on what he called “the theology of the body,” this mystical and holy man could not deal with the greatest crisis of his papacy—the child abuse scandal in his own Church. John Paul had so celebrated the religious life, especially of priests, that he seemed unable at first to come to deal with the idea of priests sexually abusing children and adolescents. But as the scandal rocked the American Church (forcing the humiliation and resignation of Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston) and then the church in Ireland, in continental Western Europe, and even his own beloved Poland, he had to come to grips with it. Perhaps it was his age that prevented him from dealing expeditiously with the scandal. Cardinal Ratzinger was asked to investigate, and with disgust he perceived the threats of what appeared to be long periods of clerical abuse. And of further importance, it was obvious that members of the hierarchy had engaged in decades-long patterns of cover-ups of such behavior as they shuttled offenders from one parish to another, one monastery to another. Secular courts intervened, and the Church was left with enormous financial judgments that went to victims of abuse. Eventually, Catholic Church officials argued that since the peak of such activity was in the 1960s, it was obviously a reflection of the loosening of moral standards in that era. And since most of the abuse cases involved priests and boys, then it was another example of the evils of homosexuality, not the problems of celibacy, or the nature of an authoritarian Church.106 Dealing with the topic of divorced Catholics, the pope insisted that those

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who re-married could receive Communion only if they abstained from sex. Critics again charged that the physical contact and not spiritual renewal was becoming the continuing preoccupation of the Vatican. One well-known conservative American monsignor, George Kelly, bluntly observed as early as 1981 that the Church “lost its people to contraception, and in a very few years.” As for the pope, he dismissed a close friend’s criticism of the contraception ban, concluding, “I can’t change what I’ve been teaching all my life.”107 By the mid and late 1980s the overall contours of the Wojtyla papacy were set. Despite John Paul’s insistence that he was dedicated to implementing the council’s decrees, it was clear that he saw his papacy as a time of restoration, of a return to traditional values and discipline. He not only insisted on preserving the deposit of the faith as all popes are sworn to do, but he also moved beyond that obligation. John Paul came close to enclosing the teaching proclamations of his papacy with the status of being nearly infallible. Infallibility is a loose and historically unclear formulation, which itself has never been fully defined, even at Vatican I. At times it seems that with mounting opposition to his restoration ideology, John Paul has insisted on raising the ante and by doing so he made the Church and the papacy more vulnerable to attack in the long run, both inside and outside the fold. Even the extreme Pius IX never went so far. One good example is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s edict in 1995 that the exclusion of women from the priesthood was an infallible declaration. If that were so, some asked, why has it never been enunciated before by any pope, even by the most conservative ones. Infallibility was being used to quell debate rather than to simply preserve the faith. 108 And a few months later, the pope defensively stressed the need to open leadership positions to religious women—excluding, however, the ministry of Christ. The call to dialogue that this pope so celebrated, the invitation to intellectual freedom about where Cardinal Wojtyla so lacerated the Polish regime, were casualties of the march toward restoration. The second trend of his papacy was the increasingly frantic pace of the pope, almost as if he believed the alleged prophecy of Padre Pio that he would be both pope and also live an endangered life. He has faced enormous cheers in America, hostile reactions in the Netherlands, and nasty episodes in Nicaragua, but he continued on. Across the globe the pope brought his message and nowhere was he more insistent than in his denunciations of abortion.

The Culture of Life Abortion, of course, is not new in Western history. The classical Greeks and Romans practiced it as did other cultures, but by the twentieth century the techniques of medical technology became more sophisticated and also safer in allowing women abortion as an option. In the United States the issue came to a head rather late in a Supreme Court case, which is the usual way that Americans

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deal with intractable issues—that is, by turning them into legal controversies. That decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) led to a Solomonic verdict that abortion was permitted in the first three months, was generally prohibited in the last three, and was a judgment call in the second trimester. No one was totally happy with the compromise, and the Court based its verdict on biological views of the human fetus’s viability, rather than on any metaphysical or spiritual basis, a judgment one would expect in a pluralistic society such as the United States. 109 The difficulty is that the definitions of viability at conception or potentiality are so complex that it is impossible to conduct public policy based on the latest monograph from a research laboratory. At times John Paul seemed to accept the biological basis for his condemnation, as when he had to acknowledge that medieval theologians such as the great Aquinas had said that human life does not begin until the “quickening period,” or the beginning of the fourth month. The pope pointed out quite correctly that such observations were based on an obsolete view of biology. John Paul reflected that “in the Middle Ages, it was thought that the developing being passed through a vegetable phase, then into an animate phase, and so forth, thus the responsibility for interrupting a pregnancy might not have seemed so serious to tender consciences as one might have believed that they were only putting an end to a plant or to an animal. Today that sort of rationalizing is no longer possible. The human being exists from the moment of conception. Modern medicine uses other ways to express that, but as for us we say that even an embryo, a baby is already marked with the image of God.” 110 The pope then explained that some people oppose abortion but support artificial contraception. “But to permit the use of artificial contraceptives is the same as to open the way for abortion, because the moral attitude is what counts in this instance. Human life is an absolute value, tied up with the creative power of God. It is not manipulatable.” But the positions of some Vatican theologians were and are more complex. The view or usual stereotype is that the Church believes that life begins at the very moment of conception—long before any definition of viability such as pain or neurological reactions are apparent to observers. Some theologians in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, however, have argued that the ontological status of the embryo has no bearing on the propriety of abortion. Respect for human life is called for from the moment that the process of gestation begins, and human biological life has value and must be protected whether it is considered to have a spiritual soul or not.111 That view is a little different from the general pronouncements of John Paul. Those theologians were saying that the prohibition against abortion from the moment of conception is “an intuition of faith.” Those views free the questions of morals from the latest findings of laboratory scientists, but they also introduce elements of ambiguity that are less than persuasive in diverse societies. Taking the advice of Cardinal Bernardin in the United States and others, the pope expanded his abhorrence of abortion into a full-length encyclical titled

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Evangelium Vitae. Arguing against abortion, birth control, capital punishment, and modern war, the pope proposed instead a seamless garment, a tapestry of respect for the culture of life against the culture of death. It is a powerful document even for those who may have reservations about its absolutist tone. 112 The pope’s commitment was not just limited to teaching the faith on the issue. In an old-time display of international power politics, the Vatican had in the past made common cause with Islamic regimes in order to oppose a U.N. conference in Cairo, Egypt, meant to support reproductive freedom and world wide abortion on demand. The Moslem theologians and many Protestant fundamentalists have opposed abortion as well, although John Paul II became at the time the single most articulate spokesperson against that accelerating practice. The then-archbishop of New York, John Cardinal O’Connell, observed, “I see an alliance forming between the Catholic Church and the Muslim world against the west. It would really change an awful lot.” It was a statement from a man who obviously did not know history or understand comparative cultures.

A Third Millennium The pope continued his frantic pace on into his seventies. In addition to his travels, generally four major journeys a year, he continued to issue a steady stream of letters and pronouncements. In 1983, he completed John XXIII’s work by promulgating a new code of canon law. In 1985, he celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Vatican II in his own way. In 1991, he used the occasion of a Church synod to celebrate the collapse of Communism. In 1992, a new catechism of the Catholic Church came out in Italy and France, and was followed in 1994 by a best-selling English edition for Britain and the United States. He had attended two colorful international interfaith conferences at Assisi, home of the beloved St. Francis, much to the chagrin of conservative Curia officials, and expressed a desire to host a gathering at Jerusalem. Eventually, his successor removed the leadership at Assisi. In 1992, John Paul issued an encyclical called Veritatis Splendor which reiterated traditional Catholic moral theology and called for disciplinary action against dissident theologians. On October 19, 1994, John Paul became the first sitting pope to write a book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, and two years later, after his sixth operation, he published his autobiography. In September 1994, he spearheaded international opposition to abortion at the Cairo Conference on Population and Development, and earlier sitting in a hospital bed on May 22, 1994, the pope signed an apostolic letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, that said women could never be priests. In a radio address heard in Communist China on January 14, 1995, the pope offered to acknowledge China’s officially sponsored church, if it recognized the pope’s authority over China’s Catholics. In November 1996, after another serious operation and a short recuperation, he met with Fidel Castro and planned a visit to Cuba. The aging

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dictator exclaimed how as a boy he never dreamt he would meet a pope and dine with cardinals. Still, at times the usual sensitive and humane pope seemed to become cavalier in his treatment of dissent. When on one occasion he was asked to reconsider seriously the question of a married clergy and female ministers, he recited the World War I tune, “It’s a long way to Tipperary.” It was an uncharacteristically flippant tone for a serious prelate to take. There was also the way he dealt with Jacques Gaillot, the Catholic bishop of the diocese of Évreux in Normandy, a gentle and low-keyed individual who dressed in common street clothes. Gaillot had taken to television to talk about the problems of the dispossessed, supported the distribution of condoms to combat AIDS, and advocated a married priesthood, among other views. The pope agreed that he should be named to a Sahara desert site called Partenia in Southern Algeria where there were few Catholics left. It was a cynical display of papal authority. But true to our times, the bishop turned Partenia into “a virtual diocese”—one linked up to the Internet. Thus the bishop’s views were available to anyone with a computer connected to the World Wide Web! The bishop would answer questions, accept e-mail, and give out his unorthodox views while living in the comforts of France. When the bishop saw the pope again, John Paul asked him, “Why are you so metitaque?” Gaillot responded, “I am just trying to be like you.” 113 Popes live in real time too, and this pope was prone to slow down as the ailments of the advancing age caught up. In 1994, he lamented, “I’m a poor wretch.” At times he even seemed frail, his hands shaking, his eyes glazed, and his legendary strength sapped. In addition to his wounds in 1981, and the subsequent viral blood disorder right after the shooting, John Paul had also been plagued with other ailments. In 1992, he had a large intestinal tumor removed, described as non- or pre-cancerous; in 1993, he had a shoulder injury after he tripped on a carpet; in 1994, he had a partial hip replacement after he broke his thighbone in a bathroom fall; in 1996 he had an appendectomy and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. After his election, he had answered the complaints of some in the Vatican about the costs of building a swimming pool at Castel Gandolfo. He responded that the pool was cheaper than a new conclave! Into his seventies he still cut a graceful figure as a skier and kept up an exhausting pace, wearying his younger associates. As John Paul exhibited more signs of deterioration, however, there was speculation about what attributes the next pope should have. Rumors circulated that he turned over the managerial responsibilities to three senior cardinals Ratzinger, Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, and Giovanni Baptista Re, prefect for the Congregation of Bishops. As his Parkinson’s disease became more serious, he considered resigning, but wondered how could a father resign? Usually the pattern of papal conclaves was to tilt to the other side—but this pope was a philosopher, a poet, a theologian, a pastor, and a diplomat. Which was the path to the future? The New York Times laid out a list of cardinals that were “papable,” and those so listed characteristically praised the pontiff and celebrat-

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ed his good health. As for John Paul, he insisted that with God’s permission he would lead the Church into the third millennium, the beginning of a new time of the faith coming under the aegis of the Slavic pope. It seemed his destiny. Since he was young he had been seen as a special, but never a pampered child. His uniqueness came from a very real and true sense that he was a survivor of a family that died around him, of a genocidal war and brutal occupation, of youthful accidents, of Communist terror and intermittent persecution, of a near assassination. Whatever he tried his hand at, he had succeeded brilliantly. Popes rarely come to that office with such a record of genuine achievements, especially from a far-off nation. Apologists of the pope saw his election as a special sign of the Holy Ghost’s inspiration for a Church in crisis. Once there he seemed clear on his agenda, but at times even he appeared to have reservations that the conservatives were too willing to write off large segments of Catholics for a leaner, more militant Church. He preferred exhortation and example, and in those regards he had no peer. And at times he must have been weary of the ways of restoration himself. In fact at times his efforts were remarkably innovative and unpredictable. He made special efforts to reach out to Jews, Muslims, Anglicans, Lutherans, and especially the Orthodox Christians— showing that he was in many ways the heir to John XXIII and Paul VI. His Assisi meetings with religious of many faiths and sentiments were the most graphic testimony to those sympathies. Despite his views on an exclusive male priesthood, the pope apologized to women for past slights. Indeed, as part of the new millennium celebrations, he delivered a series of apologies for the sins committed by members of his Church in the past centuries. It has been estimated that over the years, he issued some ninety-four apologies for the transgressions associated with the Church. Some of those initiatives were poorly received by some of the College of Cardinals, but it is an extraordinary step by any pope. The pontiff observed, “The Church too must make an independent review of the darker side of its history.” His most poignant apology was made during his trip in March 2000 to the Holy Land. There in Jerusalem, at the Western Wall, he placed between the stones his prayer expressing sorrow for the suffering of Jews at the hands of Christians. On a personal level, Wojtyla was a man known for being mild-mannered, remarkably charitable, and almost nonjudgmental of people and their failings. He was uninterested in material possessions, including his own clothes, almost to the embarrassment of his friends. His companions were his books, his world ideas, and he was above all a skilled listener. The burdens of the papacy turned him into a very different symbol for millions. John Paul II will never be called “the good Pope John.” He will be enshrined as a charismatic and formidable reactionary figure who began in earnest the process of reining in the Church and spurning the excesses of the modern world. He will be seen as having turned away from the spirit of Vatican II, while repeating the expressions of its rambling documents and religious clichés. He was not a deal maker, an equivocator, an old-time Vatican diplomat. He tellingly proclaimed, “We must never separate ourselves from the Cross. Nev-

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er.”114 Although he must have had his own doubts at times, he insisted on protecting the traditional doctrines of his Church and of his right as pope to exercise its magisterium, its teaching responsibilities. His message was the same as the one he proclaimed at his installation—Non abbiate paura. “Be not afraid.” It was to be the hallmark, not just of his pontificate, but of his entire extraordinary life. As he grew older and his disease advanced, John Paul became increasingly unable to do the simplest of duties, even of blessing his beloved people. Still he did not resign. His admirers said that he had taught us how to live, and front of us in 2005 he was showing us how to die. And so on the eve of the feast of Divine Mercy Sunday this strong advocate of the mystic St. Faustina of Poland, went as he asked—to the Mansion of the Father. The huge crowds outside his window cried out that he should be declared by acclamation a saint, and that he was “John Paul the Great.” Later on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2011, he was proclaimed by his successor as “Blessed,” one miracle away from sainthood.

Notes 1.

Francis X. Murphy, The Papacy Today (New York: Macmillan, 1981)

141. 2. Murphy, The Papacy Today, chap. 7; Albino Luciani, Illustrissimi: Letters from John Paul I (Bedford, England: Mount, 1978); Peter Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes (New York: Collins, 1978), chaps. 5–9; Andrew Greeley, The Making of the Popes 1978: The Politics of Intrigue in the Vatican (Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1979); Malachi Martin, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1981). 3. Trevor Hall and Kathryn Spink, Pope John Paul II: A Man & His People (New York: Exeter, 1985), 7; David Remmick, “The Pope in Crisis,” New Yorker, October 17, 1994, 50–64. 4. Hall, Pope John Paul II, 8. 5. David A. Yallop, In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I (New York: Random, 1984) and the rejoinder, John Cornwell, Thief in the Night: The Death of John Paul I (New York: Viking, 1989). 6. Peter Hebblethwaite, “John Paul I” in Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After, ed. Adrian Hastings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 444–46. 7. Tad Szulc, Pope John Paul II (New York: Scribner, 1995), 273; Nicholas Cheetham, Keepers of the Keys: A History of the Popes from St. Peter to John Paul II (New York: Scribner, 1983), chap. 25; Adam Bujak, John Paul II (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992); Jef de Roeck, John Paul II: The Man from Poland (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1979); George Huntson Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: Origin of His Thought and Action (New York: Seabury Press, 1981); and Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, His Holiness: John Paul

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II and the Hidden History of Our Time (New York: Doubleday, 1996). 8. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 272; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 159, 166. 9. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 274. 10. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 141, says that Wojtyla met Padre Pio in the 1940s, but in John Whale, ed., The Pope from Poland: An Assessment (London: Collins, 1980), 260, the time is placed in the 1960s, and it was predicted by Pio that he would have a short papacy terminated by violence. 11. George Blazynski, Pope John Paul II: A Man from Poland (New York: Dell, 1979), 3. 12. Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope John Paul II and the Church (Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed and Ward, 1995), 12; Hall, Pope John Paul II, 14. 13. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 271–81; Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, 106. 14. Mieczyslaw Malinski, Pope John Paul II: The Life of Karol Wojtyla (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 4. 15. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 79, 283; Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, 3; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 370. 16. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 17, 117; John Paul II, “Be Not Afraid”: John Paul II Speaks Out on His Life, His Beliefs, and His Inspiring Vision for Humanity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 13–14; Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, 33 indicates that his mother died of a heart ailment; while Mary Craig, Man from a Far Country: An Informal Portrait of Pope John Paul II (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1982), 3 indicates that she died in childbirth, and that the other female child, which died after living only one day, was born three years before Karol; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, says that his mother was not a teacher but a seamstress, 28. 17. Hall, Pope John Paul II, 16; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 55. 18. Malinski, Pope John Paul II, 48. 19. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 24; Malinski, Pope John Paul II, 37; Pope John Paul II, A Gift and a Mystery (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 5–6. 20. Hall, Pope John Paul II, 17–18. On Wojtyla’s underground activity, see Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, 49, substantiated by Joseph L. Lichten, the representative of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith in Rome; a denial is in Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 60. 21. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 101–3. 22. Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, 51. Wojtyla said that it was Cardinal Sapieha who opposed his joining the Carmelites, in John Paul II, “Be Not Afraid,” 32; and Pope John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, 24–25. 23. Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, 58. 24. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 147. 25. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 40. 26. Karol Wojtyla, “The Acting Person,” in Analecta Husserliana, vol. 10 (Boston: D. Reidel, 1979); Kevin Wildes “In the Name of the Father,” New Republic, December 26, 1994, 21–25. 27. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 155–56; Craig, Man from a Far Country, 52.

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28. The best known of Wojtyla’s verse plays is The Jeweler’s Shop: A Meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony Passing on Occasion into a Drama (New York: Random House, 1980; appeared first in December 1960). A collection of his verse in English is The Place Within (New York: Random House, 1982). 29. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 171. 30. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 19, 181; Malinski, Pope John Paul II, 42 says erroneously that the pontiff had a mild form of leukemia. 31. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 95, 190. Later the L’Osservatore Romano listed Wojtyla as having published five books, 44 philosophical pieces, 27 essays, and a variety of poetry. 32. Andrew N. Woznicki, A Christian Humanism: Karol Wojtyla’s Existential Personalism (New Britain, Conn.: Mariel Publications, 1980), 62; Malinski, Pope John Paul II, 113; Ronald Modras, “The Moral Philosophy of Pope John Paul II,” Theological Studies 41 (December 1980) 683–97; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 133, 144. 33. Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, rev. ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1995). 34. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 59; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 88. 35. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 205–12, 223. 36. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 218. 37. Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, 170. 38. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 253–55; Robert McClory, Turning Point: The Inside Story of the Papal Birth Control Commission and How Humanae Vitae Changed the Life of Patty Crowley and the Future of the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1995). 39. Blazynski, Pope John Paul II, 83. 40. Malinski, Pope John Paul II, chap. 19. 41. Hall, Pope John Paul II, 33; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 102. 42. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 83. 43. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 243–44; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 107, 162. 44. Karol Wojtyla, Sign of Contradiction (New York: Seabury Press, 1979); Malinski, Pope John Paul II, 42; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 482. 45. John Paul II, “Be Not Afraid,” passim; André Frossard, Portrait of John Paul II (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 15. 46. Peter Hebblethwaite, Paul VI (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 7; James F. Andrews, “The Pope in an Age of Insecurity,” in Paul VI: Critical Appraisals, ed. James F. Andrews (New York Bruce Publishing Co., 1970), 14–15; Peter Hebblethwaite, The Runaway Church (New York: Seabury Press, 1975); George A. Schlichte, Politics in the Purple Kingdom: The Derailment of Vatican II (Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed & Ward, 1993). 47. Peter Hebblethwaite, Introducing John Paul II: The Populist Pope (London: Collins, 1982), 54; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 482. 48. Hebblethwaite, Introducing, 21; Whale, The Pope from Poland, 27;

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Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 424. 49. On the romantic tradition, see John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Knopf, 1995), 120; Frossard, “Be Not Afraid,” 35. 50. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 23. 51. Peter Hebblethwaite, The Next Pope (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995). 52. Arno Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe in the Great War (New York: Pantheon, 1981); “Pope Sees Larger Role for Nuns,” Washington Post, March 29, 1995, 2 from Reuters News Service. Information on women priests in Czechoslovakia was carried on the Associated Press wire and reported in the United States in November 1995. 53. Penny Lernoux, People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism (New York: Viking, 1989), 24–28. 54. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 325. 55. The respected historian Jaroslav Pelikan in his Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) argues that the images of Jesus have changed immensely over the years. 56. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 327. 57. Whale, ed., The Pope from Poland, 65–86. 58. Whale, ed., The Pope from Poland, 65–86; David Willey, God’s Politician: John Paul at the Vatican (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992), chap. 6. 59. Phillip Berryman, The Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in Central American Revolutions (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1984), 275; John Paul II, “Be Not Afraid,” 142; Hall and Spink, Pope John Paul II, 331. 60. Hall, Pope John Paul II, 31; Willey, God’s Politician, chap. 1. 61. Whale, ed., The Pope from Poland, 112. 62. On the Pope’s visits to Poland see Szulc, Pope John Paul II, chap. 23; and Whale, ed., The Pope from Poland, passim. The quote on the war is in Whale’s volume, 165. 63. Willey, God’s Politician, 40–43. A postscript on Poland is Jane Perlez, “Shrinking Gap between Church and State,” New York Times, July 17, 1995, A3. 64. The ties to the Reagan Administration are presented in Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, passim; Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Empire (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994). 65. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, chap. 21. 66. Frossard, Portrait of John Paul II, 105; Remmick, “The Pope in Crisis,” 54; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 351 and 476. 67. Whale, ed., The Pope from Poland, 117–19, 229–31; John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 130–31; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 494. 68. Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Vintage, 1981); Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 48; Jason Perry and Gerald Renner, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John

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Paul II (New York: Free Press.2004). 69. Peter Hebblethwaite, The New Inquisition? Schillebeeckx and Kung (London: Collins, 1980); Charles E. Curran, ed., Contraception: Authority and Dissent (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969); John A. Coleman, An American Strategic Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1982); Eugene Kennedy, “A Dissenting Voice: Catholic Theologian David Tracy,” New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1986, 1+. 70. Hebblethwaite, Introducing, 69. 71. Louis Baldwin, The Pope and the Mavericks (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988), 45. 72. Baldwin, The Pope and the Mavericks, 71–99. 73. Baldwin, The Pope and the Mavericks, 101–3; Kenneth A. Briggs, Holy Siege: The Year That Shook Catholic America (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992). 74. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 197–98; Joseph Ratzinger and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985). See also his more moderate and scholarly Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Eccesiology (New York: Crossroad, 1988). 75. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 158. 76. Jean Lacouture, Jesuits: A Multibiography (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1995), chaps. 16–17; Malachi Martin, The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), pt. 4; Henry Kamm, “The Secret World of Opus Dei,” New York Times Magazine, January 8, 1984, 8+; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 422. 77. Szulc, Pope John Paul II, 355–67. 78. Frossard, Portrait of John Paul, 68. 79. Paul B. Henze, The Plot to Kill the Pope (New York: Scribner, 1983); Claire Sterling, The Time of the Assassins (New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1985). An unproven tale is that the pope and Leonid Brezhnev actually met on a Soviet warship in the Mediterranean in Luigi Forni, The Dove and the Bear (Kent, England: Midas Books, 1983.) Brezhnev said, “All that stuff about communism is a tall tale for popular consumption. After all, we can’t leave the people with no faith. The church was taken away, the czar was shot, and something had to be substituted. So let the people build communism.” Washington Post Book World, July 9, 1995, 3. On Fatima, see Timothy Tindal-Robertson, Fatima, Russia and Pope John Paul II: How Mary Intervened to Deliver Russia from Marxist Atheisim May 13, 1981–December 15, 1991, 2nd ed. (Devon: Augustine Publishing Co., 1992). 80. Frossard, Portrait of John Paul II, 58. 81. Hansjakob Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican 1917–1979 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981), chap. 9. 82. George A. Kelly, The Battle for the American Church Revisited (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1995), chap. 6; Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics (New York: Scribner, 1990).

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83. James Reston, Galileo: A Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), passim. 84. Hebblethwaite, Introducing, 89–91; Gordon Thomas and Max MorganWitts, Averting Armageddon (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1984); Philip J. Murnion, ed., Catholics and Nuclear War: A Commentary on the Challenge of Peace, the U.S. Catholic Bishops Letter on War and Peace (New York: Crossroad, 1983). 85. Hebblethwaite, Introducing, 99–113. 86. Phillip Berryman, Liberation Theology: Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America-and Beyond (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 109. 87. Whale, ed., Pope from Poland, 93. 88. Berryman, Liberation Theology, 108; Humberto Belli, Breaking Faith: The Sandinista Revolution and Its Impact on Freedom and Christian Faith in Nicaragua (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1985); Robert Kagan, A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua (New York: Free Press, 1996). 89. Julia Preston, “Pope Returns in Jubilation and Triumph to Nicaragua,” New York Times, February 8, 1996, A14; Larry Rohter, “Church Bombings Worry Nicaragua as Papal Visit Nears,” New York Times, January 21, 1996, 3. 90. Some of the major works on liberation theology that I have reviewed are: Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff, Salvation and Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1984); Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1988); Leonardo Boff, Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1986); Michael Novak, ed., Liberation South, Liberation North (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1981), especially Juan Luis Segundo, “Capitalism-Socialism: A Theological Crux,” 7–23; Richard Shaull, Heralds of a New Reformation: The Poor of South and North America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1984); José Miranda, Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1974). 91. Berryman, Liberation Theology, 110. 92. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 166–70; Norman St. John-Stevas, Pope John Paul II, His Travels and Mission (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 45; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 510. 93. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 173–77. 94. Hebblethwaite, Introducing, 115–16. 95. Hebblethwaite, Introducing, 117–21. 96. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 178–79. 97. Craig, Man from a Far Country, 181; Frossard, Portrait of John Paul II, 90. 98. Hebblethwaite, Introducing, 142. 99. Hebblethwaite, Introducing, 149–53. 100. Willey, God’s Politician, 85–86. 101. Kelly, The Battle, 9. 102. Willey, God’s Politician, 90–92; Frossard, Portrait of John Paul II,

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113. 103. Willey, God’s Politician, 88; Remmick, “The Pope in Crisis,” 52. The Vatican would have usually given Waldheim the higher Order of the Golden Spur rather than the lesser Order of Pius X. Roberto Suro, “John Paul Holds Waldheim Meeting,” New York Times, June 26, 1987, 1+. 104. Willey, God’s Politician, chap. 7. 105. Janet E. Smith, Humanae Vitae, A Generation Later (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1991); John Paul II, Reflections on Humanae Vitae: Conjugal Morality and Spirituality (Boston: St. Paul’s Editions, 1984). 106. Robert Blair Kaiser, The Politics of Sex and Religion: A Case History in the Development of Doctrine, 1962–1984 (Kansas City, Mo.: Leaven Press, 1985), chap. 11–12; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 83. For more extensive sources on pedophilia see chapter postscript on Benedict, footnote 13. 107. Peter Steinfels, “Vatican Says the Ban on Women as Priests Is ‘Infallible’ Doctrine,” New York Times, (November 19, 1995), 1+; Peter Steinfels, “Wariness Greets Vatican Doctrinal Claim,” New York Times, November 22, 1995, 24. The pronouncement followed the revelation that in 1970 women were ordained in Communist Czechoslovakia when the Church was forced underground. See the Associated Press report for November 13, 1995, and also Paula Butturini, “Vatican Move Raises Questions,” Boston Globe, November 23, 1995, 2. Also relevant is Richard McBrien, “Ten Points on Infallibility,” Catholic Free Press, April 12, 1993, 4. 108. James J. McCartney, Unborn Persons: Pope John Paul II and the Abortion Debate (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), 83–84. 109. Frossard, Portrait of John Paul II, 80–81. 110. McCartney, Unborn Persons, 83–84. 111. Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (Evangelicum Vitae) (New York: Random House, 1995). 112. Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 526; Hebblethwaite, Next Pope, passim; Roberto Suro, “12 Faiths Join Pope to Pray for Peace,” New York Times, October 28, 1986, 3; John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope; on women, see: “Pope Sees Larger Role,” 2; on China, Alan Cowell, “Pope Offers the Chinese a Deal on the Church’s Role,” New York Times, January 15, 1995, 3; on irresponsible behavior, Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 521. 113. Adam Gopnik, “A Virtual Bishop,” New Yorker, March 18, 1996, 59– 63. 114. On the number of apologies, see Luigi Accattoli in David Gibson, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 2006); Frossard, Portrait of John Paul II, 111; Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 114.

Postscript

Benedict XVI (2005– ) As John Paul’s body gave way to the ravages of his various illnesses, he delegated more authority to several senior Curial figures, most importantly Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Ratzinger was a Bavarian-born theologian and historian, deeply influenced by the gloomy thought of St. Augustine. He was a good church historian with a clear command of sources and a nice written style. He was originally a critic of Vatican centralization, became one of the council’s periti, and was an early supporter of the German liberal agenda at the council. But the challenges in the Church and changes in the cultural environment in the 1960s turned him away from liberal thoughts and sentiments. In 1977 Pope Paul named him Archbishop of Munich and Freising, and four months later made him a cardinal.1 Along the way up the Church ladder of preferment, he met a young cardinal from Krakow who, when he became pope, insisted that Ratzinger leave his beloved Germany just as he had left his beloved Poland in the service of the Church. Ratzinger was the custodian of the faith as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and had a reputation as the persecutor of liberal theologians. He made the difficult decisions, while the pope appeared in public to cheering crowds. Still, they both were instigators of the restoration, a partial repudiation of the spirit of Vatican II, although the pope was more circumspect.2 During the last years of John Paul, the pope was too infirm to conduct interviews with the bishops from all over the world. They would frequently go to Ratzinger’s office to talk, and the courtly and courteous cardinal would listen and sympathize. By the time of the new conclave, all but three of the voting cardinals were John Paul’s appointees, and they clearly represented the post-concilar attitudes of restoration and disdain for the allures of the secular world. By then Ratzinger was the Dean of the College of Cardinals and gave them in the interregnum after John Paul’s death a strong conservative lecture on the world and its misfortunes. The cardinals loved the intensity, and eventually voted on the fourth ballot for 589

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the seventy-eight year old German. He was to epitomize John Paul’s reactionary views without his charm.3 Benedict XVI, as he chose his name, was sincerely upset at the demise of Catholicism in most of Western Europe. He knew that the future of the Church was in Latin America and Africa, but his heart remained in the confines of Old Europe with its traditional values, its music and theology that he had grown up in and so loved. He was a gentle civilized man, but not a media star as his predecessor was.4 Benedict was also a person who knew the answers before the questions were asked. He lived in a hermetically sealed Vatican environment, and he appreciated the values of centralized leadership instead of collegiality or even collaboration. As pope, he cut off ties to the Assisi ecumenical meetings, and yet was a pleasant visitor to foreign ports. He talked about faith and love, and not the more conservative parts of his agenda which others implemented. Benedict made overtures to the traditionalists in the Society of St. Pius X, restoring the Latin Mass in the Tridentine Rite in 2007. He insisted that the rite was “never juridically abrogated.” Unfortunately the restoration of the old rite brought back the anti-Semitic overtones of the Holy Week prayer for the Jews— an expression the Pope John XXIII had eliminated. 5 The uproar over the Society of St. Pius X injured Benedict’s public image. He seemed so preoccupied in a managerial sense with bringing that schismatic group back into the Church that he and his agents became increasingly careless in their disregard for public opinion. In 2009 he lifted the excommunication of the leaders of that Society. But one of the bishops readmitted to the Church was Richard Williamson, a denier of the Holocaust. Jewish groups, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and even several leaders of the German Catholic hierarchy expressed outrage at the sloppy background checks of the bishop. Meanwhile the Society still refused to embrace the legitimacy of Vatican II and later popes. Questions were raised about the pope’s judgment and general ability. Ironically, Ratzinger over the years had a rather good record of relations with Jews. Months later he admitted that the Vatican had to use the resources of the Internet to check out background information more often. After the Society of St. Pius X controversy and the German chancellor’s lecture, the German-born pope ruefully reflected that the Jews had been more forgiving of the mistake than his fellow churchmen. After all, he was the apostolic successor to St. Peter, didn’t they realize that, he commented.6 The pope was a strong adherent of a Christian Europe—at a time when Europe was becoming secular. Like many leaders of the Vatican he was troubled by the continuing aggressiveness of Islam. For some reason, in 2006 the pope gave a lecture at the University of Regensburg in which he quoted the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos who said in 1391, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” In the speech the pope had called the emperor’s remark “surprisingly harsh,” but to many Muslims it was another attack on their religion by the West. Some out-

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breaks occurred and several missionaries died. The pope tried to foster dialogue between Catholics and Muslims, visited Turkey, and prayed at the Blue Mosque. He even backtracked from his earlier view that the European Union should not include predominantly Muslim Turkey.7 In Brazil in 2007, Benedict proved again to be insensitive in his remarks, when he seemed to support the conversation of the indigenous population saying they were “silently longing” for the Christian faith. Later he observed lamely that the colonizers had trampled on the indigenous people’s fundamental human rights.8 Yet he proved to be more surefooted in his visit to the United States. There he conducted large public services, private meetings with sexual abuse survivors, and a quiet memorial at the base of the remains of the Twin Towers in Manhattan. Although he came off as a gentle, committed churchman, Benedict also exhibited the perils of the restoration papacy. Basically his management style does not indicate any real intuitive sympathy with the ambitions and hopes of many people in and outside the Church. The Vatican media people have spent hours of time and reams of paper qualifying what the pope said—about Muslims, old Jewish stereotypes, Buddhism, Hinduism, gay people, and condoms in Africa contributing to AIDS. After a time, one wonders if one should believe the initial statements or the subsequent qualifications.9 Right after his election, Benedict met with several newspapermen and was remarkably candid about the Church and its image. The Roman Catholic Church, he observed, was too often seen as a group that simply said “no.” But that general negative attitude continued as members of the hierarchy, often speaking in his name, continued the agenda of restoration—as they condemned in vitro fertilization, argued for Lenten restrictions of the use of text messaging, created new commandments for driving, excommunicated a mother who had her raped pregnant nine-year-old presented for an abortion, and celebrated Pope Paul’s ill-fated letter on birth control. In the United States, the Church hierarchy, thinking they were reflecting Benedict’s orientations. became a virtual arm of the Republican party, and when the Democrats swept the 2008 election carrying 53 percent of the Catholic vote, the bishops seemed confused. Then when they got little attention from the Obama administration when they wanted to express their opinions, they seemed to be startled. What was especially galling to them was being forced to listen to devout Catholic politicians talk about the complexities of moral issues and citing St. Augustine and St. Thomas.10 Managing a voluntary community of faith is a very difficult and complex matter; indeed the great challenge facing the Church is how to convert the baptized in a post-Christian environment. The papacy is facing major challenges in the contemporary world—secularism, commercialism, poverty, aggressive fundamentalist Protestantism, and expanding Islam. The development of biotechnical medicine presents a new set of dynamics which the Church cannot deal with confidently. The ability of first rate Catholic theologians has been hampered by the post-Vatican II campaign of repressing their speculations or rein-

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terpretations. Over one hundred theologians were silenced by Ratzinger alone when he was guardian of the faith, and now the Church has paid an intellectual price driving some of its best thinkers underground or out of speculative theology. 11 For example, just as the early Church fathers incorporated Plato into the faith, and Aquinas brought Aristotle into traditional medieval Catholicism, Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin tried to incorporate Darwin’s evolution into eschatology.12 His work was banned, as was Aquinas’s for a while. Catholic thinkers like Rev. Charles Curran, previously of the Catholic University, reinterpreted the bounds of sexual behavior and made the Church’s admonitions less severe and less restrictive. Whole subjects of concern—women’s ordination, birth control, Jesus’ role in world history and culture, the return of divorced Catholics to the sacraments—have all been banned from serious discussion. Priests and bishops are like all of us—they are careerists, and they must toe the narrow line, more and more rigid since Vatican II; consequently, they are increasingly removed from the real world of their parishioners. One priest told me that the Church leaders wanted a smaller but more disciplined Church. They are surely getting that wish fulfilled. But somehow, one must be more impressed by Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John—I have not come to condemn man, but to save him. Benedict made progress in welcoming Anglican clergymen who wanted to establish communion with Rome, and provided an Apostolical Constitution for “personal ordinariates,” sort of national dioceses with bishops and permission for married priests to service Anglican laity who changed allegiances. The Vatican claimed it was approached by Anglicans who were disenchanted with gay bishops and women clergy in populating Anglican Church ranks. Clearly the days of ecumenism at least with the Church of England were over. But enthusiasm for that change came to a slow-down due to a major catastrophe that confronted the Vatican that crested in early 2010. Benedict had wanted to “re-Christianize” Western Europe. Instead the Church faced enormous problems with a rapid series of disclosures of child abuse charges against priests, monks, and bishops, which alienated even the most devout Catholic. Members of the hierarchy, including the beloved pope, John Paul II, were also accused of knowingly shipping predators around, of covering up sexual abuse charges at the highest levels. The Vatican powerbrokers had originally seen the U.S. as the place where the child abuse episodes were confined. It was another American problem they smugly judged, a product of that nation’s loose views of homosexuality and liberal seminary entrance policies prominent in the 1960s. John Paul and Ratzinger have always believed that the American bishops were weak. Then the scandal became international, at first in such varied lands as Poland, Austria, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and then capped with several major reports by the government in Ireland. The Irish found widespread sexual exploitation over a very long period of time in that island’s churches, abbeys, orphanages, and schools. In a rare move for that land, the prime minis-

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ter, Edna Kenny, gave a speech strongly attacking the Catholic Church for its tolerance of sexual abuse of Irish children by priests, nuns and monks. Even Mexico, Norway, Argentina, and Chile reported sexual abuse by clergy, and complicity in cover-ups by bishops. One cardinal, Dario Castrillon Hoyos, wrote a letter praising a bishop who did not comply with civil authorities investigating a priest abuse scandal; when the cardinal was criticized, he answered that John Paul had approved the letter. Yet publicly, the aged pope had issued a statement condemning child abuse by priests in 2002. At first the Holy See charged that the critics in the media, were aiming at the papacy, and one Holy Week speaker in the Vatican compared the charges to the anti-Semitism in the 1930s. Another major figure in the Curia raised again the old canard that the abuse scandal was a direct result of homosexuals in the clerical priesthood. The papal spokesman had to immediately admit that the research done by social scientists did not support that judgment. Papal officers were clearly out of touch with the world-wide outcry, as even secular leaders demanded that the Church clean up its act. As for the pope, Ratzinger’s record is complicated. In a controversial sermon given at the Coliseum on Good Friday, he denounced the “filth” in the Catholic Church, a judgment reached after his review of child abuse files from all over the world. However, John Paul seemed to be unfocused on the matter. One of the major points of disagreement in the Vatican was over the record of the Legionaries of Christ. John Paul admired their strength in getting vocations and had a special regard for the Legionaries and its founder, Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, who for years had been accused of all sorts of sexual outrages for years. Maciel was protected by important members of the Curia, especially the Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano, and the pope’s personal secretary of forty years, Stanislaw Dziwisz (later cardinal of Krakow). Machiel was a shrewd political operator who controlled up to $40 billion in assets, and who laced Vatican officials often with cash gifts. Conservative columnist and John Paul biographer, George Weigel, has speculated that he provided the money to help the Solidarity movement in Poland. Ratzinger was a good enough Curialist to stay away from taking Fr. Marcial Maciel on, knowing John Paul’s views. Thus three of the four major advisors around John Paul as he aged supported the Legionaries’ founder. When Ratzinger became pope, the Holy See moved quickly and found that Machiel had committed grave sins and insisted on him being confined to a life of prayer and penance. Then the international media focused on the role of bishops who were less concerned with the protection of children, than in shielding the pedophiles and avoiding any scandal in the Church. In the process, they created a scandal of mammoth proportions. It is usually the cover-up more than even the crime that stays with people. Evidence grew that even in the pope’s old diocese, Munich and Freising, in which he was archbishop, people claimed he himself knew about the transfer of offenders from one post to another. 13 The child abuse scandal grew more and more intense in 2010, and opened up some especially nasty cases in the United States, especially Philadelphia. It

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was clear that the abuse scandal was not just a pastoral betrayal, a sexual exploitation of the young, a violation in some cases even of the sanctity of the sacrament of penance. It was a total management breakdown. The delegation of power to bishops is sanctioned by canon law, but that mandate had prevented any commonality of understanding of the issue; the centralization of review in Rome on the other hand led to a slowdown and a bureaucratic matrix of delay, obscurification and canonical hair-splitting. Gone was the simple admonition of Jesus, “if any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). The pope had argued that the great enemies of the Catholic Church in the modern times are secularism, relativism, and hedonism. But for many, child abuse scandals showed that the real enemy of Western civilization was instead the culture of deceptive, self-contained clericalism in the Roman Catholic Church. The bishops, as we have seen in previous chapters, were the very linchpins of the early Church, but now they became, even in equalitarian democracies, princes cut off from the needs of their people and the requirement that they protect the children. They feared scandal, so they resorted to cover-ups; it was not “prudent” to take action, they would judge in bureaucratic tones, to betrayed parents. The study of management metaphors is not just an intellectual exercise, but a way we describe our environment. And the management of the Roman Catholic Church from the parish, especially the diocese, and the Vatican was woefully deficient. Communication, discernment, judgment were all lacking, as was clear and consistent leadership. Oddly enough, it was a New York Times reporter, Nicholas Krisof, who reminded readers on April 24, 2010, of the incredible work done by selfless Catholic missionaries whom he saw in Africa as they took care of the sick and the dying. They had a different model of a non-hierarchical Church in mind, one that is out of fashion in the John Paul-Benedict restoration of the culture of high clericalism. The child abuse scandal was a public relations disaster of the first magnitude. So like the manufacturers of Tylenol and Toyota, the Holy See called in, a group of public relations experts. In the process Federico Lombardi S.J., the pope’s spokesman, admitted that he rarely spoke personally to the Holy Father.14 The group that came to discuss the public relations initiative from the Vatican heard from an expert trying to figure out what the “brand” of the Church was. After two thousand years what was the brand? When the traditionalist pope, John XXIII, wanted to redefine the Church, he called an ecumenical council, Vatican II, and prayed for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That was how the Church had “branded” itself since the time when Paul confronted Peter at the Council of Jerusalem.

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Notes 1. John L. Allen, The Rise of Benedict XVI : The Inside Story of How the Pope Was Elected and Where He Will Take the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 2005); John L. Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith (New York: Continuum, 2000). 2. Pope Benedict XVI with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985). 3. John L. Allen, Conclave: The Politics, Personalities and Process of the Next Papal Election (New York: Image Books, 2002). 4. David Gibson, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006). 5. “Pope Benedict XVI,” in Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_XVI. 6. Rachel Donadio, “Vatican Calls the Apology of Bishop Insufficent,” New York Times, March 13, 2009; Rachel Donadio, “Pope Advocates Online News Can Provide Infallible Aid, New York Times, March 13, 2009. 7. “Pope Benedict XVI,” Wikipedia; personal conversation of the author with Angelo Cardinal Sodano, Secretary of State. 8. “Pope Benedict XVI,” Wikipedia. 9. Gibson, The Rule of Benedict, passim. 10. John Thavis, “In Africa, Pope Challenges Attitudes, Cultural Trends,” Catholic Free Press, March 27, 2009; “21st Century Fasts,” Catholic Free Press, March 2, 2009; “Vatican Excommunicates Stemming from an Abortion,” New York Times, March 8, 2009. 11. Ratzinger was responsible for silencing over one hundred Catholic theologians as prefect of the Congregation for the Dogma of the Faith. See Gibson, Rule of Benedict, 198. 12. Doran McCarty, Teilhard de Chardin (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1976). 13. Jane Kramer, “A Canterbury Tale,” New Yorker, April 26, 2010, 40– 51; Daniel J. Wakin and James McKinley Jr, “Abuse Case Offers a View of Vatican Politics,” New York Times, May 3, 2010; Jason Berry, “Money Paved Way for Maciel’s Influence in the Vatican,” National Catholic Reporter, April 6, 2010; “Abuse Crisis Is Actually a Hierarchy Crisis,” National Catholic Reporter, April 30, 2010; John Thavis, “Frustration, Some Optimism,” Catholic Free Press, April 23, 2010, 4; John L. Allen, Jr., “Will Ratzinger’s Past Trump Benedict’s Present?” National Catholic Reporter, March 17, 2010; Thomas C. Fox, “Munich Vicar General Reportedly Says He Was Forced to Take the Fall for Cardinal Ratzinger,” National Catholic Reporter, April 19, 2010; Jason Berry, “Vatican Cardinal Bucked US Bishop on Abuse,” National Catholic Reporter, April 26, 2010; A. W. Richard Sipe, “Secret Sex in the Celibate System,” National Catholic Reporter, April 25, 2010; Stacy Meichtby, “In Crisis, Catho-

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lic Response Is Ad Hoc,” Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2010. Most informative was an interview with the pope on his way to Fatima, Portugal, where he called the crisis “terrifying” and concludes that “the greatest persecution of the church doesn’t come from enemies on the outside, but is born in sin within the church.” See John L. Allen, Jr., “Sex Abuse Crisis ‘Terrifying’ Pope Says,” National Catholic Reporter, May 11, 2010. Irish Prime Minister Edna Kenny attacked the Holy See after the publication of the Coyne report on clerical abuses of children. 14. See note 13.

Conclusion The basic research objective of this long volume is to understand better how one leads a huge voluntary association of faith—in this case, the Roman Catholic Church. This study examines the papacy in part through the development of its internal structures and also within the contexts of its times over two millennia. The central thesis is somewhat counterintuitive: the papacy as a leadership subject is best understood as an institution that repeatedly adopted the customs and practices of the social organizations surrounding it. The Church started out using the norms and the systems of Jewish synagogues with their tradition of collective leadership. But being in, as well as a part of, the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, like the barbarian tribes that eventually overran Italy, adopted often the assumptions, the mannerisms, and the bureaucratic habits of the empire. The Church may have governed in the Latin tradition, but it spoke, wrote, and often prayed in classical Greek—the language of the epistles of St. Paul, the Gospels, and the creeds of the Church councils dealing with the great Christological disputes involving heretics and schematics. With the end of the empire in the West, the popes appealed to the emperor based in the East and to his legates in Italy, but often to no avail. The popes turned to the Franks to save the papacy and most of Italy. The barbarian tribes had tended to be pagans or often Arians, but with Charles Martel who stopped the Moors, with his son Pepin who created the early papal states, and with the ambitious Charlemagne the Church had found a new family to declare royal and holy. The Franks adopted orthodox Christian ways, and the Church gave them titles that reflected the great legacies of the Romans. The managers of the Church set up agencies, issued proclamations, and created even a code of law to centralize authority and direct appeals to the court of the Roman bishop, the heir to St. Peter’s mantle—the pontifex maximus of the new, religiously-based Roman Empire. The Church tried to restrict the violence of the Dark Ages, and promote some common liturgies and sacraments. Isolated monasteries held tightly on to some of the most important manuscripts of the classical and patristic pasts, the Greeks and the Church Fathers. As the secular monarchies began to move to a more centralized expression of power to overcome the forces of feudalism and assorted nobles, the papacy 597

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adopted that dynamic to centralize power, issue edicts, change the procedures to elect the pope, and alter the selection process of bishops. Indeed in some ways the first autocratic regime in the age of autocracy was the papacy. The papal monarchy often prevailed in such conflicts with kings and dissident clergy, for it had more compelling resources in a theocratic society. That hierarchical model was moderated by the realities and the respect for contracts in a changing Middle Ages. The modes of leadership had to reflect the balances between and among the European thrones, such that the papacy was part of the shifting balance of politics, of alliances and dynastic politics that made it seem more concerned in the late Middle Ages with alliances than with the nature of the faith. The early Renaissance saw the popes adapt to the classical world of ideas and exquisite beauty. The papacy became a city-state in one sense, and the popes were patrons of arts, letters, painting, and architecture. The themes of the visual arts were at first a mixture of classical and Old Testament stories, and then intense representations of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. We are all enriched by that legacy in the arts, but to build those structures and support those artists, the popes held hostage the spiritual treasure of virtues, and sold them as indulgences. The popes, many of whom came from Renaissance families, took with them all the airs of their fathers, mothers, and siblings. Their leadership styles often adopted the dark hues of Italian city-states, dens of inequity and constant earthy ambition. Machiavelli’s The Prince celebrated the amoral behavior of Cesare Borgia—Pope Alexander’s son, a fitting heir who learned much from his corrupt father. Reaction to the Church’s dallying in the Renaissance style was of course the strict, puritanical Protestantism of the north that went back to the decentralized, non-hierarchical primitive Church. But the Roman pontiffs and the Curia had invested so much in their centralized bureaucracy with their privileges. As is so typical of leaders who lose a portion of their empire, territory, or business, they explored the peripheries. In this case, they encouraged the missionary orders to bring the faith beyond the European borders to the New World. And as the papacy did, so did the major empires: the Spanish, Dutch, British, and French, with their trading associations, foreign governors, as well as their chaplains, missionaries, traveling priests and religious. Up to that time, the Church was remarkably successful in adapting its tight dogma to the management structures of the environment around it. But the papacy and its court also exhibited many of the attributes so prominent among some Italian males of the time in leadership positions—intriguing, subtle, arrogant, ill disposed to popular sentiment, haughty, sullen, provincial, rule-bound, and tradition-driven careerists. There were also occasional people of brilliance, and often the Church benefited from the many isolated men and women of holiness in the churches, the monasteries, the schools, the hospitals. The Church could not deal with the razor sharp cynicism and active secularism of the so-called Enlightenment that denigrated faith and loved to poke fun at the religious life, especially its monks living in splendor behind abbey walls. A Catholic Enlightenment had little opportunity to take place as a legitimate coun-

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terweight, for the waves of Romantic sentiment led to the French Revolution and the severe Napoleonic rule. It is then under the fierce attacks on the Church that the papacy stopped employing a supple, adaptive leadership style and encouraged a bunker mentality to protect itself, its possessions, its faith, and its clergy from wholesale attacks. By the time of Napoleon and his captivity of the pope, it was becoming a common prediction that the papacy would simply expire. But this very intransigence that served the Church so poorly in so many ways (and still does) led to its long-time survival in spite of the French Revolution and Napoleon. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Church was highly defensive, deeply fearful of the surrounding environment, theologically conservative, wedded to the forces of reaction and autocracy. The West was also in such a mood for some time. But soon the ruling classes in Europe, and the ruling class in the Holy See, with their institutions, traditions, and managerial structures had to deal with the nineteenth century tides of nationalism, liberalism, and assorted freedoms. The Church stopped adapting, stamped its papal foot, and declared the enemy to be anything modern. Pius IX and Vatican I codified that recalcitrance, and in many ways the papacy embraced those reactionary sentiments until Vatican II. It is odd that a Church that synthesized its complex Christology with pagan rituals and feasts, that tamed barbarian tribes, that spread the faith to the North and then in the New World, that created with a sense of memory and explanation the first real schools and true universities should come to fear the outside world. Not just heresies, but railroads and street lights, and freedom of conscience, and birth control pills. The Church tried to adapt by becoming in the twentieth century more pacifist in a world of violence, more universal than being an Italian satrap, more conducive to lay participation while excluding women from posts as priests and deacons, more open to biblical scholarship while struggling over its own triumphantism, more ecumenical while insisting on protecting its monopoly on religious truth. The leadership styles of the Catholic Church have not always been what they became in the early twentieth-first century. Once they were decentralized, collegial, faith-oriented communities of wealth and burden-sharing. This volume has sought to explore the diverse leadership styles over the long run and throughout its checkered history of managing a mass voluntary association of faith. As the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay concluded, “The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. . . . The papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor.”

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo; A Biography. Berkeley: University California Press, 1967. Brown, Raymond E. The Churches the Apostles Left Behind. New York: Paulist Press, 1984. Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church. New York: Penguin Books, 1988. Chadwick, Owen. The Popes and the European Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Daniel-Rops, Henri. The Catholic Reformation. New York: Dutton, 1962. Dulles, Avery. Models of the Church (New York: Doubleday, 1974). Falconi, Carlo. The Popes in the Twentieth Century, from Pius X to John XXII. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968. Frend, W. H. C. The Rise of Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. Hales, E. E. Y. Pio Nono: A Study of European Politics and Religion in the Nineteenth Century. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962. Hales, E. E.Y. Revolution and Papacy, 1769-1846. South Bend, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1966. Holmes, Derek, The Triumph of the Holy See: A Short History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century. Shepherdstown, W. Va.: Patmos Press, 1978. Huizinga, Johann. The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth centuries. London: Penguin Books, 1955. 601

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Selected Bibliography

Jalland, Trevor. The Life and Times of Saint Leo the Great. London: Society for the Promoting of Christian Knowledge,1941. Jones, Arnold Hugh Martin. Constantine and the Conversion of Europe. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1978. Pagels, Elaine H. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books, 1982. Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971-1989. Pennington, Kenneth. Popes and Bishops: The Papal Monarchy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. Tierney, Brian. Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300: With Selected Documents. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1988. Ullmann, Walter. The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966. Ullmann, Walter. A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. London: Methuen, 1974.

Index Abbe Camier, 215 Abillot, Louis, 393 The Academy by Raphael, 31 Action Francaise, 393 Acton, Lord Harold, 78, 291 Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, 345, 346 An Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, 118 adoptimism, 48 Adzhubei, Alexsei, 455, 456 Aeterni Patris, 314 Agagianian, Pietro, 429, 449, 491 Agca, Mehmat Ali, 563, 546 Alaric, 20, 25 Albani, Giovanni Francesco, 230 Albert, Prince of Brandenburg, 114, 191 Albertini, Luigi, 360 Alcuin, 48 Alexander I, Czar, 227, 265, 266 Alexander II, 65 Alexander III, 71 Alexander VI, 76, 81–91, 93, 98, 102, 181, 182, 598; Inter caetera and Dudum sigudiem, 85, 159, 160, 163 Alexander VII, 195, 197, 199, 202, 219 Alexander VIII, 200, 220 Alexandre de Calonne, Charles, 241 Ali, 56 Amba Shenouda III, 512 Ambrose, St., 39, 40 Anabaptists, 126 Anastasius I, 40 Andrieu, Pierre-Paulin, 393

Andropov, Yuri, 554 Annunzio, Gabriele d’, 369 Anthony, St., 8, 512 Antonelli, Giacomo, 283, 288, 291, 297, 299, 300 Antoniutti, Ildebrando, 478 Apostles Creed, 29 Apostolicae Curae, 307 Aquilana, Mike, 31 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 31, 36, 73, 77, 160, 193, 195, 210, 217, 299, 314, 315, 328, 378, 501, 591, 592 Arendt, Hannah, 441 Arians, 17, 18, 597 Aristotle, 31, 77, 195, 592 Arles, Council of, 17 Arns, Paolo Evaristo, 511, 562, 563 Arrupe, Pedro, 496, 515 Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, xii, 290, 428, 452 Athanasius, St., 9, 32, 512 Athenagoras, Patriarch of Constantinople, 454, 498, 508 Attila the Hun, 24 Augustine the missionary, 45, 459 Augustine, St., 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 53, 58, 100, 113, 163, 193, 308, 501, 591, 589 Aurelian, 21 Averescu, Alexander, 419 Avignon Captivity, 102, 103 Bacon, Francis, 210 Badoglio, Pietro, 411 603

604 Baggio, Sebastino, 528, 529, 544 Balfour, Anthony James, 354 Bartholomew Day’s massacre, St., 170 Barras, François de, 250, 252, 253 Basil, St., 9 Batanian, Pierre XVI, 483 Battle of Lepanto, 168 Battle of Milvian Bridge, 15, 16 Baziak, Eugeniusz, 532, 534, 535 Bea, Augustin, 448, 455, 458, 459, 460, 485, 490, 562 Beauharnais, Josephine de, 230, 263 Becket, St. Thomas, 71, 545 Bede, Venerable, 305 Béla Kun, 367 Bellarmine, Robert, 190 Bernardin, Joseph, 572, 577 Bernadotte, Jean Baptiste Jules, 266 Benedict X, 477 Benedict XIII, 233 Benedict XIV, 228, 234, 235, 345 Benedict XV, 305, 331, 334–61, 368, 371–73, 388, 395, 406, 407, 408, 414, 418, 422, 423, 427, 444, 495, 540 Benedict XVI, 18, 29, 463, 505–07, 539, 560, 567, 568, 575, 589–94, 599 Benedict of Nursia, St., 9 Benelli, Giovanni, 508, 516, 528, 529 Beneš, Edvard, 367 Benigni, Umberto, 330, 331, 344 Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 57, 170 Bernadine of Siena, St., 156 Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobold von, 354 Bevilacqua, Giulio, 452, 494 Bismarck, Otto von, 289, 293, 294, 302, 303, 304, 346, 389 Black Death, 112 Blessed Virgin Mary, 21, 53, 56, 290, 310, 501, 549, 556, 558, 563, 564, 570, 598 Blondel, Maurice, 532 Boff, Leonardo and liberation theology, 559, 546, 567 Bokenkotter, Thomas, 3 Boleyn, Ann, 142, 143 Bonaparte, Joseph, 260 Bonaparte, Napoleon, xix, 249–55, 259–69, 288, 333, 347

Index Boniface I, St., 21 Boniface II, 42 Boniface VIII, 264 Bordeaux, Henri, 403 Borgia, Cesare, 90, 91, 92, 94, 598 Borgia, Lucrezia, 90 Boris III, King of Bulgaria, 443, 444, 445 Borromeo, Charles, 169, 172, 335 Borromeo, Frederico, 370 Bowersock, G. W., 39 Brezhnev, Leonid, 551 Briand, Aristide, 353 Bruno, Giordano, 180, 181, 305 Brüning, Heinrich, 406 Brusilov, Aleksey, 348 Bugnini, Annibale, 516 Bukharin, Nicolai and Eugenii A. Preobrazhensky, 387 Bülow, Bernhard von, 298 Bunnefor, Jean de, 334 Bury, J. B., 22 Bush, George H. W., 555 Cadaver Synod, 61 Cahensly, Peter Paul, 312 Cajetan, Tommasso de Vio Cardinal,116, 117 Calixtus II, 71 Calixtus III, 14, 81, 82 Calles, Plutarco Elias, 394 Callistus III, 76 Calvin, John, 35, 125, 126, 165, 192, 203 Campeggio, Lorenzo, 140 Capovillo, Loris, 469 Canisius, St. Peter, 173 Capuchins, 157 Cardenal, Ernesto, 567 Carlos II, king, 223, 229 Carroll, John, 311 Casaroli, Augostino, 553 Casey, William, 552, 553 Casti Connubi, 394, 500, 502 Castro, Fidel, 578 Catherine of Siena, St., 75, 170, 501, 570 Catherine the Great, 213, 226, 229 Catholic Action, 332, 383, 384, 420, 424

Index Cathurs, 58 Cavour, Camille, 279, 283, 284, 285, 286, 288, 289 Celestine, St., 504 Cereijera, Manuel Gonçalves, 421 Cerretti, Bonaventura, 358 Cerularius, Michael, 51, 52 Chalcedon, Council of, 41, 52 Chamberlain, Austen, 374 Chamberlin, E. R., 78, 86 Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de, 461 Charles Albert, 281, 283 Charles, Emperor of Austria, 351 Charles the Great (Charlemagne), 47, 48, 53, 61, 72 Charles, King of France, 87, 88 Charles I of Great Britain, 198 Charles II of Great Britain, 216 Charles II of Spain, 230 Charles V, 100, 102, 116, 119–27,133, 136, 139–48, 163, 185 Charles VI, 232, 234 Charles VII, emperor, 150 Charles VIII, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93 Charles IX of France, 173 Charles-Roux, François, 394 Charlemagne. See Charles the Great Chateaubriand, Baron de, 326 Chenu, Marie-Dominique, 458 Chernenko, Konstantin, 554 Chicherin, Georgy Vasilyevich, 388 Chigi, Fabio, 377 Child, Richard Washburn, 374 Chekhov, Anton, 534 Chesterton, G. K., 40, 41 The Church in the Modern World, 497, 498 Churchill, Winston S., 374, 410, 411 Cisneros, Francisco Jimenez de, 155 Christian, King of Denmark and Norway, 188 Christopher, anti-pope, 62 Cicero, 9 Cicognani, Amleto, 459, 460, 476, 479, 508 Claudius II, 21 Clausewitz, Karl von, 347 Clemenceau, Georges, 354 Clement III, 56, 69, 88 Clement V, 74, 78, 180, 267

605 Clement VI, 114 Clement VII, 133, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 156 Clement VIII, 172 Clement IX, 219 Clement XI, 199, 230, 233; and Vigenius Dei Filius, 231, 232, 234 Clement XII, 215, 234 Clement XIII, 229, 236 Clement XIV, 215, 227, 236; and Dominus ac Redemptor, 229 Clement of Alexander, St., 13, 31, 32, 27, 501 Clovis, king, 239 Colombo, Giovanni, 528 Columbus, Christopher, 86 Combes, Emile, 333 Concordat of Worms, 70 Confalonieri, Carlo, 540 Congar, Yves-Marie, 69, 458, 461, 536 Congress of Vienna, 266 Consalvi, Ercole, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 267, 268, 269, 342 Constance, Council of, 75, 87 Constantantius, 15, 16 Constantine I, 508 Constantine V, 54 Constantine XVIII, 9, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18–23, 39, 47, 51, 52 Constantini, Celso, 413 Constantinople, Council of, III, 17, 47 Contarini, Gasparo, 145, 156 Copernicus, Nicholaus, 190, 532, 566 Copleston, Frederick, 31 Corday, Charlotte, 246 Cortese, Gregorio, 156 Cossa, Baldassare, 450 Coughlin, Charles, 396 The Council, Reform and Reunion, 459 Count of Chambord, 308 Crispi, Francesco, 305 Cromwell, Oliver, 198 Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 578 Crusades, 56, 57, 58 Cule, Peter, 466 Cum ex Apostelatus, 166 Curran, Charles, 559–60 Curzon, Lord George, 375 Cushing, Richard, 464, 479, 482, 489 Cyril of Alexandria, St., 21, 512

606 Damascus, St., 20, 40 Daniélou, Jean, 458, 536 Dante Alighieri, 299 Danon, Georges Jacques, 246, 248 Darwin, Charles, 328 De Ecclesia, 482, 485, 490 de Gaulle, Charles, 446 De Oecumenismo, 485 De Salis, John, 354 Degallado, Marcial Maciel, 514, 593 Delcasse, Theophile, 334 Dell, Robert, 349 Descartes, Rene, 210, 211, 226 Diderot, Denis, 226, 229 Diego, Juan, 546 Dilectissima Nobis, 392 Diocletian, xvii, 14, 15, 21, 30 Divine Mercy Sunday, 581 Divini Redemptoris, 374, 388 Divino Afflante Spiritu, 430, 458 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 367 Dominic, St., 77 Donation of Constantine, 18, 19 Donatists, 16, 17, 38 Döpfner, Julius, 461 Dooley, Tom, 477 Dovizi da Bibbiena, Bernardo, 97 Dreyfus, Alfred, 334 Drinan, Robert, 559 Ducos, Pierre-Roger, 253 Duffy, Eamon, 77 Dulles, Avery, xiv, xv Dumaine, Jacquest, 446 Dupanloup, Felix, 289 Duphot, Mathurin-Léonard, 255 Eck, Johann, 117, 118, 119 Ecken, John von der, 119 Edict of Nantes, 172, 187, 200 Edict of Restitution, 188 Editae Saepe, 335 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 477 Elizabeth I, 143, 150, 151, 169, 173, 181, 305 Elliott, Walter, 313 Ephesus, Council of , 290 Erasmus, Desiderius, 98, 115, 133, 134, 135, 166 Erzberger, Matthias, 353 Escrivá de Balaquer, Josemaria, 514

Index Eugenius I, 46 Eugenius III, 170 Eusebius of Caesarea, 6, 32 Evangelius Vitae, 577 Exsurge Domine, 118 Falconi, Carlo, 420 Farnese, Pierre Luigi, 148 Fatima apparitions, 360 Faulhaber, Michael von, 390 Faustus, Doctor, 532 Febronianism, 225–26, 253 Felix III, 40, 41 Feltin, Maurice, 447 Ferdinand of Aragon (Spain), 86, 100 Ferdinand, emperor, 185 Ferdinand, King of Naples, 82, 84, 254, 260 Ferranti, king, 93 Ferrari, Carlo Andrea, 369, 372, 441, 442 Ferrarta, Domenico, 341, 342, 345 Fesch, Joseph, 261, 262 “Filioque” dispute, 48, 53 Fisher, Geoffrey, 459 Flavian of Constantinople, Tome to, 23 Fisher, St. John, 305 Florit, Ermenegildo, 483 Fortura-Baslini Bill, 512 Formosus, 61 Franchi, Alessandro, 297, 308 Francis I, 100, 139, 150, 174 Francis II, 72, 169 Francis de Sales, St. and Introduction to the Devout Life, 196 Francis of Assisi, St., 1, 57, 58, 77, 211, 378, 578 Francis Ferdinand, archduke, 347 Franco, Francisco, 386, 392 Frank, Hans, 419 Frederick, Emperor, 326 Frederick the Great, 213, 224, 226, 229 Frederick II, 58, 72 Frederick III, 75 Frederick III of Aragon, 88 Frederick Barbarosso, 58, 71 Frederick the Wise of Saxony, 116, 117, 118, 121, 122 Freemasons, 215, 234, 304, 305, 324, 367

Index Frings, Josef, 461, 465, 478 Fugazzaro, Antonio and Il Santo, 329 Fülóp-Miller, Rene, 298 Gaddafi, Muammar al, 525 Gaiseric, 27 Gaitán, Jorge Eliecer, 367 Gajowniczek, Franciszek, 550 Galeazzo-Lisi, Riccardo, 439 Galen, Clemens von, 416 Galilei, Galileo, 189, 190, 191, 192, 223, 565, 566 Gallagher, Michael, 396 Galli, Aurelio, 344 Gallicanism, 227, 261 Galliot, Jacques, 579 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 279, 284, 285, 292 Gasparri, Pietro, 349, 350, 354, 357, 378, 379, 387, 388, 404, 442 Gasperi, Alcide de, 477 Gauthier, Paul and Jesus, the Church and the Poor, 486 Gelasius I and Duo Sunt, 40 Gentile, Giovanni, 381 Gibarti, Gian Matteo, 156 Gibbon, Edward, 45 Gibbons, John , 312, 313, 314, 335 Gierek, Edward, 547, 551 Gioberti, Abbe Vincenzo and Primacy or Il primate morale e civile degli Italiani, 279 Girondists, 246 Giustiniani, Giacomo, 326 Gizzi, Tomas Pasquale, 277 Gladstone, William, 316 Gnosticism, 7, 8, 14, 31, 32 Goering, Hermann, 373 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 553, 554, 555, 556, 557 Gratiano, Franciscus, 533 Great Schism, 102, 103 Greeley, Andrew, 526 Gregory I, the Great, xviii, 27, 43, 44, 45, 78, 183, 459, 482 Gregory II, 54 Gregory III, 54 Gregory VI, 64 Gregory VII, 61–71, 77, 78, 164, 280, 303

607 Gregory IX, 57, 58, 180, 184 Gregory X, 431 Gregory XI, 75, 170 Gregory XIII, 169, 171, 172, 181 Gregory XIV, 171 Gregory XV, 160 Gregory XVI, 270–72, 275–78, 288, 298, 403 Gregory Nazianzen, St., 32 Grente, Georges, 453 Grey, Edward, 348 Groesz, Joseph, 426 Guicciardini, Francesco, 101, 183 Guise of Lorraine, 167 Gustavus Adolphus, 189, 198 Gutierrez, Gustavo, 566 Hadrian I (Adrian I), 47 Hadrian IV, 71 Hadrian VI, 121, 133–35, 137, 160, 529 Hales, E. E. Y., 285 Halifax, Lord (Viscount Charles Lindley), 306, 394 Halter, Marck, 531 Hammar, Richard, 514 Hardenberg, Karl, 267 Härning, Bernhard, 488 Harnack, Adolph von, 31, 35 Harvey, William, 210 Havel, Václav, 354 Hebblethwaite, Peter, 458 Hecker, Isaac, 313 Hegesippus, 6 Henle, Robert, 565 Henrietta Maria of France, 198 Henry, Duke of Orleans, 141 Henry I of England, 70 Henry II of England, 63, 71 Henry II of France, 127, 149, 187 Henry III of France, 173 Henry IV, Emperor, 57, 66, 70, 77, 203 Henry IV of France, 167, 194, 196, 212 Henry VI, 72 Henry VIII, 77, 99, 100, 124, 127, 132, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 305 Henry Navarre, 170 Henry the Navigator, 160 Hermariuk, Maxim, 483 Hesburgh, Theodore, 565

608 Heydrich, Reinhard, 416, 531 Hindenberg, Paul von, 348, 354 Hitler, Adolph, 356, 367, 386, 387, 389, 391, 405–17, 421, 445 Hland, August, 421 Hobbes, Thomas, 203, 212, 224, 475 Hobsbawm, Eric, 366 Hochhuth, Rolf and The Representative, 417 Hohenlohe, Gustav, 302 Honorius I, 46, 52 Hontheim, Johann Nikolaus von, 225 Hoover, Herbert, 361, 368, 395 Horthy de Nagybánya, Miklós, 423 Hotzendorf, Conrad von, 348 Hoyos, Dario Castrillon, 553 Humanae Vitae, 505, 534, 537, 538, 570–71, 575 Humani Generis, 430, 447, 452, 460 Hume, Basil, 534 Hume, David, 210, 211, 212 Hunthausen, Raymond, 560, 561 Hus, John, 367, 368 Hussein, King of Jordan, 488 Iacobini, Louis, 342 iconoclasm, 53 Immaculate Conception, xii Immortale dei, 308 infallibility, 291, 292, 293, 515, 576 Iniquis Affictisque, 395 Innitzer, Theodor, 390 Innocent I, St., 20 Innocent II, 71 Innocent III, xviii, 69, 72–74, 77, 78, 314, 458; Licet perfidia ludaeorum, 179 Innocent V, 73, 431 Innocent VII, 84, 93 Innocent IX, 171 Innocent X, 197, 199, 200 Innocent XI, 199, 200, 219, 220, 431 Innocent XII, 200–03, 220, 230 Inter Sodalicia, 360 Irenaeus of Lyons, 6 Ireland, John, 312-14 Irene, empress, 54 Isabella of Castile (Spain), 86, 155 Islam, 51–59, 590, 591

Index Jablónski, Henryk, 548 Jacobins, 243, 246 Jadot, Jean, 505 James III, 231 Janelle, Pierre, 172 Jansen, Cornelius Otto, 195 Jansenism, 195, 228, 229, 233 Jefferson, Thomas, 489 Jerome, St., 501 Jesus, Society of, 157, 175, 199, 210, 215, 227–32, 235, 276, 333, 394, 476, 493, 493, 502, 505, 515, 562, 563, 567 Jesus of Nazareth, 1–3, 6, 7, 56, 337, 389, 487 Journet, Charles, 494 Jews and Vatican Council II, 490, 497 Jews in World War II, 412–22 Joan, “Pope,” 61, 484 John II (Mercury), 41 John VIII, 62 John XI, 62 John XV, 63 John XVIII, 62 John XXI, 73 John XXIII, xxi, 173, 331, 353, 406, 415, 419, 428, 439–70, 475, 489, 490, 492, 498, 507–09, 525, 526, 528, 537, 535–41, 571, 580, 590, 594 John Damascene, St., 501 John, King of England and the Magna Carta, 73 John of Capistrano, St., 156 John Paul I, 361, 525–27 John Paul II, xii, xiii, xxi, 58, 160, 191, 327, 360, 463, 481, 499, 504–07, 514, 517, 528–81, 592–93 John the Baptizer, 1, 2 John of the Cross, St., 531, 532 Johnson, Lyndon B., 495 Jones, A. H. M., 16 Joseph II, 2, 3, 215, 227, 230, 253, 254 Joseph, King of Portugal, 228 The Journey of a Soul, 440 Julius II, 86, 91–99, 103, 131, 135 Julius III, 131, 149, 165 Justin, St., 31 Justinian I, emperor, 33, 42

Index Kane, Theresa, 570 Kania, Stanislaw, 551 Kant, Immanuel, 209 Kellogg-Briand Pact, 361 Kelly, George, 576 Kemal, Mustafa (Ataturk), 444 Kempis, Thomas á and the Imitation of Christ, 527 Kennedy, Jacqueline, 495 Kennedy, John F., 456, 490 Kenny, John, 513, 592 Kepler, Johannes, 210 Keynes, John Maynard, 341 Khrushchev, Nikita, 457, 458 Knox, John, 198 Kolbe, Maximilian, 550 Kolvenbach, Hans, 561 König, Franz, 455, 567, 578, 493, 494, 528, 529, 534 Kotlarczyk, Meczyslaw, 50 Krol, John, 528 Kowalska, St. Faustina, xi Kwasniewski, Aleksander, 557 Kulturkampf, 278, 289, 294, 299, 302, 303, 390, 406 Küng, Hans, 459, 461, 510, 536, 558 La Fontaine, Pietro, 373 Laborem Exercens, 566 Labouré, St. Catherine, 290, 570 Lafayette, Marquis, 243 Laghi, Pio, 572 Lamennais, Félicité Robert de, 271 Lambruschini, Luigi, 276 Lamentabile Sane, 329, 330 Lamont, Donal, 495 Latapi, Louis, 349 Lateran I, Council of, 507 Lateran III, Council, 58, 71 Lateran IV, Council of, 73, 165 Lateran V, Council of, 91, 101, 114 Lateran Treaty, 305, 351, 378, 379, 380, 413 Laurentius of Santa Prassede, 41 Law, Bernard, 575 Lavigerie, Charles, 308, 309 League of Cambrai, 95 Ledóchonwski, Mieczyslaw, 533 Lefebvre, Marcel, 494, 495, 503, 504, 573

609 Léger, Paul-Émile, 466, 478 Legionnaires of Christ, 514 Lehnert, Sister Pasquelina, 431, 432, 453, 503 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 211 Lenin, Vladimir, 366, 387 Leo I, the Great, 19, 20, 23, 24, 24, 25, 27, 36, 40, 42, 43, 52, 458 Leo II, 46, 52 Leo III, 47, 48, 61 Leo III the Saurian, 54 Leo IV, 61 Leo VIII, 62 Leo IX, 51, 63–65 Leo X, 98, 102, 103, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 133–37, 139, 140, 142, 145, 160 Leo XI, 182 Leo XII, 269, 270 Leo XIII, 191, 271, 297–319, 323, 324–27, 330, 332, 333, 339, 342, 358, 370, 373, 378, 393, 406, 427, 476, 499, 502, 539 Leopold II, 201,226, 230, 234, 245 Leopold, King of Belgium, 299 Lercaro, Giacomo, 448, 468, 479, 483, 516 Letizia, Sister, 563 Liberius, 20 Licinius, 16 Liénart, Achille, 465, 466, 478 Lloyd George, David, 353 Locke, John, 212, 213, 495 Loew, Jacques, 532 Lombardi, Federico, 574 Lombardi, Riccardo, 536 Longinqua Oceani, 313 Louis XII, 95, 99 Louis XIV, 194, 197, 198–203, 212, 216, 219, 222, 224, 227, 232, 271, 341 Louis XV, 224, 229 Louis XVI, 239, 242–46 Louis XVIII, 266, 267 Louis d’Orleans, 93 Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III), 282, 284–86, 292, 293, 307, 333 Louis Philippe, King of France, 270, 308, 333

610 Loyola, St. Ignatius, 236; and Scintillae Ignatiano, 443; and The Spiritual Exercises, 175 Lubac, Henri de, 458, 461, 536 Ludendorff, Erich, 348, 354, 358 Ludwig III, King of Bavaria, 353 Lumen Gentium, 491 Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 387 Luther, Martin, xviii, xix, 35, 96, 111– 36, 147, 155, 159, 164, 165, 203, 571 McBrien, Richard, 17, 46, 61, 62 McKenzie, John L., 458 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 599 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 82, 85, 98, 598 Macmillan, Harold, 463 Maffi, Pietro, 330, 341, 342 Maglione, Luigi, 406, 408, 476 Magisterium, 52, 511, 516, 563, 571 Mahon, Father G., 491 Maidalchini, Donna Olimpia, 197 Manicheanism, 24, 36 Manning, Henry, 297, 306, 316 Manuel II Paliologos, 590 Marat, Jean Paul, 246, 268 Marcel, Gabriel, 532 Marcellinus, St., 14 Marcello II, 166 Marcinkus, Paul, 513 Marcion, bishop, 14 Marcion, emperor, 24 Marella, Paolo, 488 Maria Cristine, 271 Maria Theresa, 202, 215, 224, 225, 236 Marie Antoinette, 220, 245 Marie-Louise, 263 Marquis of Pombal, 228 Marsilius of Padua, 74 Martel, Charles, 597 Martin, St., 46, 47, 447 Martin V, 75, 144, 184 Martin, Malachi, 469 Marx, Karl, 316, 317 Marxism, 545, 458, 554, 566, 567, 568 Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland and England, 169, 186 Mary Tudor, Mary I Queen Regent, 150, 169, 173 Masaryk, Tomas, 367

Index Masella, Aloise, 449 Mater et Magistra, 447 Matthew 16:18, 14 Maurras, Charles, 393 Maxentius, 15, 16 Maximilian, Habsburg King, 95 Maximilian I, 96, 100, 116, 121, 135, 180 Maximilian II, emperor, 169 Maximos IV Saigh, 463, 494 Maximum Illud, 368 Mazarin, Jules, 197, 201, 202, 219 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 278–89 Medellin Conference, 505, 506 Mediator Dei, 429, 465 Medici, Catherine de’ (De Medici), 141, 169, 170, 187 Medici, Giulano de’, 76 Medici, Lorenzo de’, 76, 88, 98, 99 Melchiades, 16 Mendoza, Benjamin, 511 Mercellus II, 150 Mercier, Desire Felician, 394 Merial, Angela, 590 Merry del Val, Rafael, 333–36, 342– 345, 359, 360, 372, 378 Merton, Thomas, 195 Metternich, Klemens von, 265–68, 275, 276, 277, 280, 281 Meyer, Albert, 489 Micara, Clemente, 477 Michaelis, Georg, 354, 355 Michelangelo, Buonarroti, 96, 98 Mindszenty, J., 426, 494 Mit brennender Sorge, 474 Modernism, 325, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 334, 344, 441, 442, 460, 572 Mohammed the prophet, 51, 55, 56, 259 Mohammed V, 355 Moltke, Helmuth von, 397 Monasticism, 8–9 Monico, Jacopo, 324 Monophysitism, 23 Monothelitism, 47 Montagnards, 246 Montanism, 32 Montesquieu, Baron de, 300 Montini, Giorgio, 476

Index More, St. Thomas, 305 Moro, Aldo, 517 Morone, Giovanni, 15, 167, 174 Morris, Colin, 69 Morrow, Dwight, 395 Morrow, Louis La Ravoire, 491 Mortara, Edgardo, 284 Mounier, Emmanuel, 532 Mundelein, George, 396 Murray, John Courtney, 458, 590, 562 Mussolini, Benito, 293, 305, 350, 359, 367, 369, 370, 373–79, 381–89, 394, 404–12, 423, 513 Mustafa, Grand Vizier Kara, 360 Musurillo, Herbert, 7 Mystici Corporis Christo, 415, 425, 430 Mysterium Fidei, 494 Nasser, Gamal, 486 Nero, 7 Nesselrode, Karl, 267 Newman, John Henry, 3, 6, 305 Newton, Isaac, 211 Nicea, Council of, xvii Nicene Creed, 17, 18, 20 Nicholas I, 61, 62 Nicholas I, czar, 548 Nicholas II, 62 Nicholas III and Unam Sanctum, 74 Nicholas V, 75, 76 Niehans, Paul, 432 Nina, Lorenzo, 308 Ninety-Five Theses, 115 Nobili, Roberto de, 160 Non Abbiamo Bisogno, 383 Nowa Huta, 550 Ockham, William, 74, 75 O’Connell, Daniel, 268 O’Connell, John, 578 Octogesima Adveniens, 543 O’Keefe, Vincent, 563 Olivier, Amelia, 327 Opus Dei, 514, 563 Oratory of St. Jerome, 156 Oratory of the Divine Love, 156 Organic Articles, 260, 261, 262 Origen, 14, 32, 195 Ortega, Daniel, 567, 568

611 Osborne, Francis D’Arcy, 407, 410 Ottaviani, Alfredo, 449, 452, 465, 466, 477, 478, 482, 500, 527 Otto the Great, 63 Otto IV, 72 Oudinot, Nicholas, 283 Pacem in Terris, 456, 469 Palmer, R. R., 365, 366 Palmerston, Lord John Henry, 305 Papen, Franz von, 445, 490, 541 Parente, Pietro, 500 Pascal, Blaise and Provincial Letters, 195 Pascendi dominci gregis, 329, 330 Pastor, Ludwig von, 97, 101, 156, 235, 396 Paul, St., 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 23, 35, 113, 114, 408, 501, 571, 594; and Martin Luther, 165 Paul II, 83 Paul III, 86, 99, 147–50, 157, 158, 164, 166; and Sublimis Deus, 160 Paul IV, 150, 151, 166, 167, 168; and Cum nimis absurdum, 184 Paul V, 182, 183, 198 Paul VI, xii, 51, 156, 158, 185, 353, 380, 406, 414, 420–52, 461, 462, 467, 468, 475–517, 525–27, 532, 535, 536, 537, 538, 540, 541, 545, 551, 558, 562, 568, 571, 580, 591 Paulo, Fra, 101 Pawley, Bernard, 492 Pazzi conspiracy in 1478, 76 Peace of Augsburg, 127, 150, 187, 188 Peel, Robert, 285 Pelagianism, 20, 21, 35 Pelagius II, 43, 44 Pepin III, 47, 261 Peter, St., 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 19, 20, 23, 26, 30, 463, 590, 594, 597 Peter the Great, 213, 216, 223–26 Peter the Hermit and the People’s Crusade, 57 Petrarch and the Babylonian captivity, 75 Petrucci, Alfonso, 101 Philip II, 72, 168, 186, 187, 198 Philip V, 230, 231 Philip Neri, St., 170

612 Phocas, emperor, 46 Photius of Constantinople, 53, 62 Piffl, Gustav, 384 Pignedoli, Sergio, 525 Pilsudski, Józef, 369, 530 Pio, Padre, 337, 528, 576 Pironio, Eduardo, 429 Pisani, Francesco, 95 Pitt, William the Younger, 285 Pius I, St., 14 Pius II, 490 Pius III, 98, 135, 143, 144, 145 Pius IV, 167, 168, 169, 184, 325, 414; and Praedara Charissimi, 308 Pius V, 168, 169, 171, 172, 180, 188; and Quo Primum Tempore, 503 Pius VI, 225, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 259 Pius VII, 259, 260, 264, 265, 267, 268, 269, 333 Pius VIII, 270 Pius IX, xii, xx, 275–95, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, 303, 309, 311, 318, 326, 327, 328, 403, 428, 490, 498, 559, 576, 599 Pius X, xx, 323–37, 341, 343, 437, 441, 442, 461, 545, 572 Pius XI, 305, 352, 353, 357, 359, 360, 363–97, 404, 427, 443, 444, 449, 452, 454, 494, 500, 502, 517, 539– 41 Pius XII, xii, xvi, 58, 232, 290, 336, 337, 343, 352, 373, 374, 385, 388, 390, 395, 403–33, 436, 439, 445– 49, 454–59, 460, 461, 462, 476, 495–98, 500, 520, 528, 533, 534, 537, 539, 541, 543, 558, 561, 562 Pizzardo, Giuseppe, 460, 476, 477 Plato, 31, 33 Pliny, 7 Poindexter, John, 551 Poletti, Ugo, 528 Pole, Reginald, 156 Polwka, Karol, 530 Pontian, St., 14 Popieluszsa, Jerzy, 552 Populorum Progessio, 505 Portal, Abbé Fernand, 306 Pragmatic Sanction, 96, 100 Praise of Folly, 135

Index Priestley, Joseph, 215 Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, Miguel, 392 Puzyna, Jan Kozielska, 326 Q document, 29 Quadragestimo anno, 387, 457 Quam Multa, 342 Quanta Cura, 288 Quiroga y Palacious, Fernardo, 489 Radini-Tedeschi, Giacomo, 441 Rahner, Karl, 458, 481, 510, 536, 562 Rampolla, Mariano, 305, 306, 324, 333, 341, 342, 343, 344, 358 Ramsey, Michael, 499 Raphael, Sanzio da Urbano, 98 Rarkowski, Franz Josef, 416 Rattazzi, Urbano, 298 Re, Giovanni Baptista, 579 Reagan, Ronald, 552, 553, 555, 567 Redemptor Hominis, 558, 560 Regimini Ecclesiae, 508 Reign of Terror, 246, 247 Regalitate Mariae, 447 Renaissance, xviii, 47, 59, 78, 83, 209– 10, 598 Rerum Novarum, 316–19, 387, 457, 566 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 406, 415 Ricci, Matteo, 160 Richard the Lionhearted, 58 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, 187, 188, 192 Ritter, John, 489 Roberti, Francesco, 479 Robespierre, Augustin, 250 Robespierre, Maximilian, 246, 247, 248, 249 Roe v. Wade, 560, 577 Roger, Count, 57 Roman Question, 297, 299, 300, 304, 305, 351, 352 Romero, Oscar, 544, 555 Romulas Augustus, 25 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 426 Roosevelt, Franklin, 374, 395, 405, 407, 408, 413, 415, 423, 425 Roosevelt, Theodore, 335, 377 Rosenberg, Alfred and the Myth of the

Index Twentieth Century, 416 Rossi, Pellegrino, 281 Rouquette, Robert, 446 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 218, 317, 495 Rudolf II, 188 Ruffini, Ernesto, 424, 465, 466, 468, 477, 484, 489, 490 Rugambwa, Laurean, 483 Sacredotalis Caelibatus, 507 Saladin, 58 Salazar, Antonion de Oliveira, 367 Samoré, Antonio, 451 Sandinistas, 567, 568 Santucci, Luigi, 449 Sapieha, Adam, 415, 416, 418, 530, 531, 532, 535 Savonarola, Girolamo, 88, 89 Scheler, Max, 532, 533 Schillebeeckx, Edward, 559 Schimmelpfennig, Bernard, 26 Schmalkaldic League, 144, 147 Schuster, Ildefonso, 384 Seipel, Ignaz, 367 Serafini, Domenico, 341 Sergius I, 47 Seripando, Girolamo, 158, 165 Seven Years’ War, 224 Severoli, Gabriele, 326 Sfurza, Ascanio, 84 Shaw, Christine, 95 Sheen, Fulton J., 427 Shehan, Lawrence, 484 Sieyés, Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph, 242, 251 Sign of Contradiction, 537 The Silence of Benedict X, 352 Silverius, 42 Sindona, Paul and the Vatican Bank, 513, 514 Siri, Giuseppe, 447, 448, 449, 465, 466, 467, 499, 525, 528 Siricius, 20, 40 Sixtus IV, 76, 93 Sixtus V, 170, 171, 173, 193, 332, 450 Slavorum Apostoli, 554 Slipyi, Josef, 455, 562 Slowacki, Juliusz, 538 Smedt, Emile-Joseph de, 468 Smith, Adam, 212

613 Sobreski, Jan III (Jon), 200, 219, 360 Sodalitium Planum, 330, 344 Sodano, Angelo, 181, 579 Sonnino, Sidney, 355 Souillard, Daniéle, 570 Spaur, Charles, 282 Spellman, Francis, 408, 426, 427, 432, 452, 453, 458, 484, 505 Stalin, Josef, 396, 414, 415 Stanislaus, St., 545, 548 Stephen I, St., 14 Stephen III, 47 Stephen VI, 61 Stepinac, Alojzije, 425, 447 Sturzo, Luigi, 358, 378, 384, 476, 477 Suárez, Francisco, 212 Suenens, Leo Joseph, 461, 467, 478, 479, 509, 510, 511, 512 Suleyman I, sultan, 136 Sylvester, 17 Summi Pontificatus, 407, 414 Syllabus of Errors, 285, 286, 289, 291, 300, 318 Symmchus, 40, 41 Szulc, Tad, 534, 536 Tacitus, 7 Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, 252, 260, 267, 268 Tardini, Domenico, 415, 416, 428, 430, 431, 445, 446, 452–53, 459, 460, 461, 472 Tetzel, Johann and indulgences, 114, 121 Teresa Avila, St., 195, 501 Teresa, Mother, 560 Tertullian, 10, 33, 36 Testa, Gustavo, 469, 479 Testem Benevolen Tiae, 313 Theatines, 156 Theodolinde, Queen, 487 Theodora, Empress, 54 Theodoric, 41 Theodosius I, Emperor, 19 Theodosius II, xvii, 21, 23 Theotokus, 21, 53 Thérese of Lisieux, St., 360 Thiene, Gaetano de, 156 Thirty Years’ War, 187, 188, 189, 193 Three Chapters, 42

614 Tisserant, Eugene, 420, 430, 460, 465, 483, 492, 514 Tito, Josip, 425 Tondine, Amleto, 478 Torquemada, Tomás de, 181 Tracy, David, 559 Trajan, 7 Treaties of Westphalia, 197 Treaty of Paris, 267 Treaty of Rapallo, 366 Treaty of Versailles, 369 Trent, Council of, xiii, xxi, 146–51, 163–75, 187, 197, 201–03, 225, 459, 466, 470, 490, 561 Trevor-Roper, H. R., 193 Trujillo, Alfonso López, 544 Truman, Harry S, 424, 425, 427 Tyranowski, Jan, 531 Ultramonianists, 294, 308 Umberto II, 385 Unigenitus, 228 Urban II, 56, 57, 69, 70, 71, 114 Urban VI, 477 Urban VIII, 171, 190, 192, 195, 196, 197, 199, 331 Ut Unum Sint, 572 Valentinian, emperor, 40 Valeri, Valerio, 446 Vannutelli, Vincenzo, 301 Vargas, Getulio, 367 Vatican I, Council of, xii, 26, 87, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 303, 358, 481, 490, 559, 573, 574, 576, 578, 594, 599 Vatican II, Council of, xi, xxi, 431, 451, 458, 470, 479, 528, 534, 535, 537, 538, 541, 542, 547, 556, 591 Verdier, Jean, 406 Veritatis Splendor, 578 Vernazza, Ettore and the Confraternity, 156

Index Vespucci, Augustino, 82 Veterum Sapientia, 460, 465, 466 Victor II, 65 Victor Emmanuel, 283, 284, 285, 287, 359, 389, 444 Victoria, queen, 283, 299, 305 Videla, Jorge, 527 Vigilius, 41, 42 Villot, Jean-Marie, 509, 511 Vincent de Paul, St., 191, 198 Virchow, Rudolf, 302 Volta, Gabriel della, 121 Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet), 213, 226, 228, 229; Candide, 211 Waldheim, Kurt, 574 Walesa, Lech, 551, 552, 553, 557 Wallenstein, Albrecht von, 188 Walsh, Edmund A., 388 Weakland, Rembert, 572 Weber, Max, 30, 192 Western Schism, 75 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 338, 354, 404 Willebrrands, Johannes, 455, 529 Williams, George H., 534 Wilson, Woodrow, 353, 354, 357, 358, 363 Wiseman, Nicholas, 305 Wolsey, Thomas, 133, 143 Woodward, E. L., 276 Wright, John J., 485 Wuerl, Donald, 560, 561 Wyszynski, Stefan, 447, 455, 499, 529, 532, 534, 535, 536, 548 Yeltzin, Boris, 556 Yemmeru, Asrate Mariam, 468 Zacharias, 47 Zoghby, Elias, 468 Zosimis, 20 Zwingli, Ulrich, 125, 133, 136, 165

About the Author

MICHAEL P. RICCARDS is the executive director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy-NJ and previously was the Public Policy Scholar in Residence at The College Board, the president of three different colleges in Massachusetts, West Virginia, and New Mexico, provost at Hunter College in New York City, and dean of arts and sciences at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He holds a B.A., M.A., M.Phil, and Ph.D. from Rutgers University He has been a Fulbright Fellow in Japan, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in religion at Princeton University, and a Henry Huntington Library Fellow in California. He was the chairman of the New Jersey Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and his state’s representative to the national commission. He is the author and/or editor of fifteen books, fifteen plays, numerous articles, and reports. He is married and has three children and three grandchildren.

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