Pope Innocent III (1198-1216)
Cardinal Lothaire (or Lotario de Conti) was
unanimously elected Pope in January 1198, taking the name Innocent III.
Like the boy-Pope Benedict IX, Innocent was from the Alberics family of
Tusculum which in time was to boast 13 popes, 3 anti-popes and 40
cardinals. At his consecration at St Peter’s, the Cardinal Archdeacon
placed a jewelled tiara on his head and intoned: “Know
that thou are Father of princes and kings, Ruler of the World, the Vicar
on earth of our Saviour Jesus Christ…”
Innocent dressed and acted like the old
Emperor Constantine. His garments shining with gold and jewels, he
rode on a scarlet covered horse in a cavalcade, making its way under the
old imperial arches through the garlanded city. At the Lateran palace,
he received the oath of allegiance from the Roman Senate and his foot
kissed by prelates and princes alike. He affirmed: “We are the
successors of Peter but not his vicar…
We are the Vicar of
Christ before whom every knee shall bow”.
He went about restoring his temporal domains
and within two years, he and not the emperor was
virtual ruler of Rome and Italy.
England under Interdict
John Lackland became King of England when
Richard the Lionheart died in 1199. Within a year of becoming king, he
discarded his wife, Isabel of Gloucester, and married the young and
beautiful Isabel of Angouleme. Pope Innocent was not pleased but seemed
placated when King John sent 1000 men to the Crusades and built an abbey.
John began taxing the clergy to help fund his wars and appointed his own
man to the See of Canterbury. The Pope appointed another but John refused
to recognise him. The pope responded by placing the whole of England under
an interdict in 1208. A year later, he excommunicated John.
John retaliates
John promptly confiscated church property with
the help of his greedy barons.
Churches were bolted, all services banned, the bells were silenced. With
8000 churches closed, thousands of priests and assistants were jobless.
The dead were wrapped in shrouds and buried like dogs.
In 1212, Innocent asked Philip of France to
invade England. As Philip made preparations, King John gave in. He not
only promised to return church funds and lands but give away England
itself ‘to God and Our Lord Pope Innocent and his successors’.
Henceforth English rulers would have to pay 1000 marks as annual rent to
the pope in addition to Peter’s Pence. Only after John had paid all dues
in June 1214 that the interdict was revoked and church doors re-opened.
Massacre of Heretics
Having dealt with King John, the pope
authorised a special crusade in 1209 against the Albigensians, a group
considered heretical. This crusade against fellow
Christians turned out to be the bloodiest episode of the Middle Ages.
When the King of France refused to lead this crusade; the pope appointed
Arnald, Cistercian head of Citeaux instead. In response to the pope’s
special offer of an indulgence for a 40-day service,
a vast mob of knights, clergy, peasants, etc joined in. The cavalry alone
numbered some 20,000. The crusaders marched to Bezier, the Albigensian
stronghold, looting and killing along the way. The townsfolk had locked
themselves into the churches of St Jude and St Mary Magdalene. 7000 women,
children and elderly were crammed into Mary Magdalene's. Bells tolled and
while priests in black chanted at the requiem mass, the doors were being
hammered down by axes and soon gave way. The invaders singing Come Ye
Holy Spirit spared none at all, not even babies. The last to go were
the two celebrants holding a crucifix and the chalice.
The mercenaries then set fire to the town and
all that remained of Beziers were smouldering heaps of ashes. The monk in
charge, Arnald, wrote to the pope: “Today, your
holiness, 20,000 citizens were put to the sword, regardless of age or sex.”
The crusaders next marched to Carcassone and
then Lavaur, led by the Norman knight, Simon de Montfort. Numbers
were fewer as soldiers left after completing their
40 day tour of duty, happy in the knowledge that all their sins had been
forgiven. ‘Heretics’ were captured in their hundreds, some had
their eyes gouged out and noses lopped off but most were burnt on mass
pyres. The pope was kept informed at every stage.
Pope condemns Magna Carta
Meanwhile in England, the barons, tired of
John’s autocratic ways, forced him to sign the Magna Carta in 1215,
guaranteeing people’s rights and making the king himself subject to the
law. John, now a good Catholic, complained to Rome. In a Bull, Innocent
annulled the charter ‘from the plenitude of his unlimited power which
God has given him to bind and destroy kingdoms’. Anyone who subscribed
to the charter stood excommunicated. Pope”. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of
Canterbury, thought the pope went too far and refused to carry out the
order. He was suspended from office.
Hunt for Heretics
The Albigensians Crusade continued with the
next pope, Honorius III, until 1226. Hundreds of thousands
perished. He approved the Dominicans (1216), Franciscans
(1223) and the Carmelites (1226).
His successor, Gregory IX, began to
hound heretics in earnest. In 1229, he declared at the Council of
Toulouse: “It is the duty of every Catholic to persecute heretics”.
In 1232, he published a Bull setting up the Inquisition, whereby
heretics were to handed over to civil authorities for punishment. He
approved Emperor Frederick's law that decreed death by fire for
unrepentant heretics. In 1233, two full time inquisitors were appointed -
Peter Siela and William Arnald, the first in a long line of persecutors.
In 1237, Frederick invaded the Papal States and pope Gregory
excommunicated him a second time, the first for not launching a crusade in
1227.
In 1239, Bishop Moranis of Champagne was
accused of allowing heretics in his diocese. He and 180 others were burnt
at the stake.
Innocent IV allows torture
As early as 384, a synod in Rome had condemned
the use of torture. Pope Nicholas I (858-67) had ruled that torture was a
violation of divine law. But Pope Innocent IV thought otherwise. In his
Bull Ad Extirpanda, he allowed the Inquisition to use torture. He
further decreed that any disobedience even in thought was
punishable.
Manual for
Inquisitors
The Dominican Inquisitors, being the pope’s
appointees, were subject to no one but His Holiness. They were a law unto
themselves, acting both as prosecutors and judges. They operated in total
secrecy and they could not err. By papal command, they were explicitly
forbidden to show mercy to their victims. There was a manual called
Libro Nero (Black Book) for the guidance of inquisitors. Excerpts:
“If a person confesses the whole of what he
is accused of, he is unquestionably guilty of the whole; but if he
confesses only a part, he ought still be regarded as guilty of the whole…
Bodily torture has ever been found the most efficient means of leading to
spiritual repentance… If the unfortunate wretch still denies his guilt, he
is to be considered a victim of the devil… Let him perish among the
damned.”
Inquisitors were forbidden to maim or kill but
of course accidents occurred. A victim who did not confess was left in
solitary confinement, manacled, cold and dark in his own filth. Entire
families were tortured when a member informed on them. Sentences were also
passed on the dead and their property confiscated.
Pope Celestine V
Pope Nicholas IV died in 1292. For nearly
two years, the conclave could not agree on contenders from two great
Roman families, the Colonna and the Orsini. Benedict Gaetano, an
influential member of the Sacred College, a lawyer and related to both
families hoped to be chosen but eventually a simple, holy hermit called
Peter who preferred to live in caves on Mount Morone, was elected
in 1294, taking the name Celestine V. He was in his 80s.
Holy Ghost speaking!
Celestine, shocked at the licentious ways of
Rome and the riches accumulated by the church, set up his seat in Naples
and began giving away church possessions to the poor. He had to be
stopped. The cardinals entrusted Gaetani with the task.
Gaetani bored a hole
into the wall of the pope’s cell and inserted a speaking tube. Late in
the night, he whispered down the tube: “Celestine, Celestine, lay
down your office. It is too much for you to bear.”
After several nights of listening to the
voice of the Holy Ghost (as he believed), Celestine decided to step down
and returned to his hermitage. He was pope for about 5 months.
Pope Boniface VIII
(1294-1303)
Gaetani now claimed the papal throne as
Boniface VIII in late 1294. Fearing that Celestine might re-appear,
he had him locked in a castle where the old hermit died a few months
later of hunger and neglect.
Boniface lost no time in making three of his
nephews cardinals and bestowing vast possessions on them. The Colonna
family, not too happy with his ways, kept questioning the legitimacy of
his election. When in 1297 they ambushed a papal convoy laden with gold,
the pope sent his soldiers to destroy their citadels, forcing them
behind the walls of Palestrina. Boniface excommunicated the two Colonna
cardinals. Papal forces next stormed Palestrina, killing some 6000
people and destroying all settlements except the Cathedral. The Colonnas
fled to France. Meanwhile the French king Philip IV (the Fair)
was getting impatient with the pope for not crowning him Emperor. He
began taxing the clergy and withholding church revenues - despite a
earlier papal bull that this was a grave offence.
Unam Sanctam
In 1302, Boniface penned a Bull Unam
Sanctam (‘one holy’) not just to Philip but to the whole church:
‘There is but one, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church outside of which there is no salvation …
‘We declare that it is
wholly necessary for salvation for every creature to be subject to the
Roman Pontiff’.
A year later, Boniface was working on
another Bull, this time to excommunicate Philip. What he didn’t know was
that Nogaret had joined forces with Sciarra Colonna, relative of the
sacked cardinals. In October that year (1303), their forces stormed into
Anagni, the pope’s favourite retreat. The invaders began burning the
main doors of the cathedral and slaughtered all who had not yet fled.
They then advanced towards the palace, killing all (bishops included)
along the way. The pope’s bodyguards surrendered.
Sciarra made his way to
the huge audience chamber. There sat the pope, 86, alone except for a
single cowering cardinal. He was attired in full regalia, including a
gold cross in his hands. Initially awed, Sciarra strode slowly towards
the Pontiff. “Resign”, he shouted and slapped him across the
face, the chamber walls echoing with the sound.. Too proud to beg for
mercy, Boniface lowered his head and intoned that he was ready to die.
Sciarra hesitated and then raised his sword.
Just then Nogaret
burst in and shouted at him that the pope was wanted in France to face
a general council. Sciarra put back his sword but proceeded to strip the
pope of his costly tiara and garments until he stood nearly naked,
showing his body infested with lice. He was thrown into a dungeon, dark
and dank. Meanwhile the people of the town got organised, drove away the
invaders and rescued the pope.
Boniface was a changed man. The hunger and
thirst in the dungeon, the darkness and isolation, the rats scampering
over him had unhinged him. He kept himself locked in the Lateran for 5
weeks and there in solitude he died. His predecessor Celestine had
foretold: “You leapt to the throne like a fox, you will rule like a
lion, you will die like a dog.”
The Avignon Exile (1309-78)
The next pope, Benedict XI, died of
dysentery in 8 months. There was 11 months of wrangling between the
French and other cardinals deciding on his successor. In the end, the
Archbishop of Bordeaux was elected as Pope Clement V. King Philip
of France had a French pope at last. Clement never set foot in Rome. In
order not ‘to cause pain to our dear son, the King of France’, in 1309
he moved to Avignon, a small city in Provence which then belonged
not to France but to the king of Naples.It was almost surrounded by
papal territory. He agreed to be crowned at Lyon, absolved Philip and
Nogaret of all wrong doing and even published a bull praising Philip for
his hostile actions against Boniface. Clement created a large number of
cardinals, most of them French, 5 being members of his own family. He
died in 1314. It took two years to decide on his successor, John XXII.
John alienated the German King Louis IV who
marched into Rome in 1328 and had himself crowned emperor by the fiery
Sciarra Colonna. He deposed John and appointed an anti-Pope
Nicholas V who lasted 18 months. In his later years, John preached
some strange ideas of his own about heaven and was condemned as a
heretic by several theologians. His successor, Pope Benedict XII
started building the papal palace in Avignon. Though basically
austere, he was smitten by the sister of Francesco Petrarch
(1304-74), the great poet and scholar of the time and offered to make
him cardinal if he could have her. When Francesco refused, the pope
turned to his brother, Gerardo and won her.
The Archbishop of Rouen and Chancellor to
the French King became Pope Clement VI in 1342.
He turned the papal court into a sumptuous palace
and lived in princely style. He used to joke: “No one knew
how to be pope before me. If the English King wants his donkey made a
bishop, he has only to ask”. His tapestries came from Spain, silk
from Tuscany, gold cloth from Syria. He had an eye for beautiful women,
his favourite being Cecile, Countess of Turenne. Petrarch who visited
Avignon described the papal court as “the
shame of mankind, a sink of vice, a sewer holding the world’s filth…God
is held in contempt, only money is worshipped…”.
The papal palace also housed the huge
torture chamber of the Inquisition where the shrieks of ‘heretics’ could
be heard and their mangled bodies seen.
Gregory XI returns to Rome
Clement's successor, Innocent VI, was
condemned by St Brigit of Sweden after his death. She said: "Pope
Innocent, more abominable than Jewish usurers, a greater traitor than
Judas, more cruel than Pilate, has been cast into hell like a
heavy stone." Of the next two French popes, Urban V
did leave for Rome in 1367 but civil unrest forced him to return to
Avignon. The last of the French popes, Gregory XI, felt guilty
about the papal absence in Rome. Catherine of Siena (1347-80),
the Dominican mystic, wrote the pope many letters begging him to return,
even going to Avignon in 1376 to plead her case. In the end he yielded
and entered Rome in 1377. Italy was still in turmoil and when the papal
legate (a future anti-pope) ordered a massacre of 8000 in Cesena in the
same year, the people took arms and the pope was forced to retire to
Anagni. In 1378, while a peace settlement was being worked out, Pope
Gregory took ill and died in March 1378.
The Great Schism (multiple popes)
The conclave met in 1378 to elect the next
pope. The 7 Avignon popes had created 134 cardinals, 112 of them French.
The French members (11) of the conclave (16) wanted a French pope but a
riotous mob of 30,000 outside chanted for an Italian. They finally broke
down the door of the meeting room and stormed inside. The French gave
in.
The Archbishop of Bari (Naples) was elected,
taking the name of Urban VI. Used to life in the alleys of
Naples, he proved too coarse for the pretentious French cardinals. He
was also spiteful, foul-tempered and addicted to alcohol. He
tongue-lashed the cardinals and bishops and threatened to end the French
domination of the church. The French took his rages to be evidence of
madness and decided to elect a pope of their own, Clement VII,
who promptly set out for Avignon.
In 1389, Pope Urban VI died with Europe in
turmoil. His successor, Boniface IX, turned out to be a shameless
trader in favours. Dispensing indulgences, promoting a cleric or signing
documents all carried a price in gold. Boniface XI became increasingly
autocratic, even abolishing Rome’s government in 1398 and choosing his
own senators. He and anti-pope Clement VII excommunicated each other.
Clement died of a fit in 1394 whereupon the French cardinals elected
another, Benedict XIII. But by now the French king withdrew state
support for the Avignon court and the University of Paris proposed an
end to the schism: both popes should resign and a fresh election
held, with a general council deciding on the genuine pope.
However, the schism dragged on until 1414.
NOTE:
Aloysius Pieris in
his
wide ranging essay (2002) urged the
pope to give up the usurped title 'Vicar of Christ'.
He also lamented the embarrassing
pronouncement of Popes Gregory VII, Innocent III and Boniface VIII,
mentioned above.
REFERENCES
1 Vicars
of
Christ, Peter de Rosa (Corgi 1994)
2 Popes
through the Ages,
J Brusher (New Advent 1996)
3 Chronicles
of the Popes,
P Maxwell-Stuart (Thomas & Hudson, 1997)