Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes; Second Edition 9780300175035

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface
1. ‘Upon This Rock’ C. AD 33-461
I. From Jerusalem to Rome
II. The Bishops of Rome
III. The Age of Constantine
IV. The Birth of Papal Rome
2. Between Two Empires 461-1000
I. Under Gothic Kings
II. The Age of Gregory the Great
III. The Byzantine Captivity of the Papacy
IV. Empires of the West
3. Set Above Nations 1000—1447
I. The Era of Papal Reform
II. From Papal Reform to Papal Monarchy
III. The Pinnacle of Papal Power
IV. Exile and Schism
4. Protest and Division 1477—1774
I. The Renaissance Popes
II. The Crisis of Christendom
III. The Counter-Reformation
IV. The Popes in an Age of Absolutism
5. The Pope and the People 1774—1903
I. The Church and the Revolution
II. From Recovery to Reaction
III. Pio Nono: The Triumph of Ultramontanism
IV. Ultramontanism with a Liberal Face: The Reign of Leo XIII
6. The Oracles op God 1903-1997
I. The Age of Intransigence
II. The Attack on Modernism
III. The Age of the Dictators
IV. The Age of Vatican II
V. Papa Wojtyla
VI. The Way We Live Now
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Notes
Bibliographical Essay
Index

Citation preview

S A IN T S A N D S I N N E R S A History o f the Popes

Saints & Sinners A H I S T O R Y OF T H E PO P ES

Eamon Duffy

Yale University Press New Haven and London

Fo r J enny

A Note on the Third Edition: For this new edition I have updated the bibliography, and extensively revised and extended chapter 6 to take account o f recent work on Pius X II, o f the death o f John Paul II, and o f the election o f Benedict X V I.

— E.D.

Published in association with S4C (Wales) First published as a Yale Nota Bene Book in 2002 Copyright © Eamon Duffy 1997 N ew material © Eamon Duffy 2006 All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 o f the U. S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact U S. office:

[email protected]

Europe office:

[email protected]

ISBN-13: 978-0-300-11597-0 ISBN-10: 0-300-11597-0 Library o f Congress Catalog card number for the cloth edition 97-60897 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States o f America 10

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CO N TENTS

Acknowledgements vii Preface to the Second Edition ix Preface xi 1 ‘U p o n T h is R o c k ’ c. a d 33-461 I From Jerusalem to Rom e 1 II The Bishops o f Rom e 13 III The Age o f Constantine 23 IV The Birth o f Papal Rom e 37 2 B e t w e e n T w o E m p ir e s 461-10 0 0 I Under Gothic Kings 48 II The Age o f Gregory the Great 59 III The Byzantine Captivity o f the Papacy 72 IV Empires o f the West 86 3 S e t A bo v e N a t io n s 1000—1447 I The Era o f Papal Reform n o II From Papal Reform to Papal Monarchy 128 III The Pinnacle o f Papal Power 138 IV Exile and Schism 151 4 P r o t e s t a n d D iv isio n 1477—1774 I The Renaissance Popes 177 II The Crisis o f Christendom 196 III The Counter-Reformation 208 IV The Popes in an Age o f Absolutism 230

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5 T h e P o pe a n d t h e P e o p l e

177 4 —1903

I The Church and the Revolution 247 II From Recovery to Reaction 260 III Pio Nono: The Triumph o f Ultramontanism 286 IV Ultramontanism with a Liberal Face: The Reign o f Leo X III 305 6 T h e O r a c l e s op G o d

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I The Age o f Intransigence 319 II The Attack on Modernism 325 III The Age o f the Dictators 332 IV The Age o f Vatican II 354 V Papa Wojtyla 369 V I The Way We Live N ow 386 Appendix A: Chronological List o f Popes and Antipopes 397 Appendix B: Glossary 406 Appendix C: H ow a N ew Pope Is Made 415 Notes 421 Bibliographical Essay 428 Index 456

ACKN O W LED GEM EN TS

I owe debts o f gratitude to many people: to H arri Pritchard Jones, ‘onlie begetter’ , and to his w ife Lenna, for their friendship and truly Celtic hospitality. To Opus Television and its staff, in particular to M ervyn Williams, for the invitation to w rite this book, to Heyden Denm an, cameraman, and to Amanda R ees, w ho directed the tel­ evision series to which this book is the companion volume. To Jo h n Gillanders o f Derwen, for endless patience and technical w i ­ zardry. To Yale University Press and especially to Peter Jam es, the copy-editor, to Sheila Lee, w h o researched the pictures, to Sally Salvesen, w ho designed the book and nursed it, (and me), through its final stages, and to John N icoll, prince o f publishers. Once again, R u th Daniel read the proofs out o f the goodness o f her heart.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

For this new edition o f Saints and Sinners, I have taken the oppor­ tunity to correct a (thankfully small) number o f errors, to expand and revise parts o f all but the first two chapters, and to update the Bibliographical Essay. T he account o f the papacy o f Jo h n Paul II has been extensively rewritten and augmented, and vigilant read­ ers w ill detect the modification o f some earlier judgements. I have also added a b rie f appendix explaining the procedures for the elec­ tion o f a new Pope set in place by Pope Jo h n Paul II in 1996. The process o f revision has greatly benefited from the insights and crit­ icisms o f the reviewers o f the first edition: I w ould like to express m y particular thanks to Patrick Collinson, T.F.X. N oble and Simon Ditchfield. The illustrations to the first edition elicited much favourable comment, and though it is flattering to the author o f a lavishly illustrated book w hen his publishers reckon his text worth reproducing in its ow n right, there is inevitably some loss. This edition is less sumptuous than the first, but I hope that the large number o f pictures and captions w e have retained w ill continue to extend and deepen the narrative in the text, rather than simply decorate it. I am greatly indebted to Sally Salvesen and to Ruth Applin w ho designed the new edition. Finally, I renew the heart­ felt dedication o f this book to my w ife Jenny.

Eam on D uffy Feast o f St M ary M agdalene 2001

PREFACE

N early 900 million human beings, the largest single collective o f people the world has ever known, look to the Pope as their spiri­ tual leader. His office symbolises the rule o f G od him self over their hearts and minds and consciences. T h e words o f the popes w eigh in the halls o f power, and in the bedrooms o f the faithful. A n d the papacy is the oldest, as well as arguably the most influen­ tial, o f all human institutions. T h e R o m an empire was new -born w hen the first popes ascended the throne o f St Peter almost two thousand years ago. W hen Karol Wojtyla became the 261st Pope in 1978, the dynasty he represented had outlived not merely the R o m an and Byzantine empires, but those o f Carolingian Gaul, o f medieval Germany, o f Spain, o f Britain, and the Third R e ic h o f Hitler. Wojtyla him self was to play a not inconsiderable role in the collapse o f the latest o f these empires, the Soviet U nion. In the flux o f history, the papacy has been, not a mere spectator, but a major player. As the R o m an empire collapsed, and the bar­ barian nations arose to fill the vacuum , the popes, in default o f any other agency, set themselves to shape the destiny o f the West, acting as midwives to the emergence o f Europe, creating emper­ ors, deposing monarchs for rebellion against the Church. Popes have divided the known and yet to be discovered world between colonial powers for the sake o f peace, or have plunged nations and continents into war, hurling the Christian West against the M us­ lim East in the Crusades. T h e history o f the papacy is therefore the history o f one o f the most momentous and extraordinary institutions in the history o f the world. It has touched human society and culture at every

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point. From contemporary concern with issues o f life and death, the morality o f abortion or the death-penalty, o f capitalism or o f nuclear war, to the history ofW estern art and the major commis­ sions o f M ichelangelo and Raphael, Bramante and Bernini, the papacy has been and remains still at the heart o f many o f the most urgent, the most profound and the most exuberant o f human concerns. This book, which is linked to a series o f six television pro­ grammes, attempts to provide an overview o f the whole history o f the papacy from the Aposde Peter to Pope Jo h n Paul II. It traces the process by w hich Peter, the humble fisherman o f Galilee, became the figurehead and foundation stone o f a dynasty w hich has been able to challenge the most powerfid secular rulers, and w hich commands the religious allegiance o f more than a fifth o f the w orld’s population. The book is not a w ork o f theology, though no history o f the papacy can or should altogether avoid theology. I have tried to include enough theological explanation to enable the non-specialist reader to understand the milestones in the emergence o f the papacy as a religious and political institu­ tion, but I have not thought it m y business to justify or defend that evolution. For R o m an Catholics, o f course (of w hom I am one), the story o f the popes is a crucial dimension o f the story o f the providential care o f G od for humankind in history, the neces­ sary and (on the whole) proper development o f powers and responsibilities implicit in the nature o f the Church itself. B u t by no means all Christians accept such a claim, and for some the papacy, at least in its m odern form , is a disastrous cul-de-sac, and a prim e cause o f Christian disunity. For non-Christians the story o f the popes is simply one more o f the myriad stories o f humanity, another o f the multiple forms in w hich human hope and human ambition have expressed themselves. W hatever the reader’s con­ victions, however, I hope that the narrative offered here provides a fram ework for understanding one o f the w orld’s longest-endur­ ing and most influential institutions. This is a history o f the popes: it cannot claim to be the history o f the popes. N o one-volum e survey o f an institution so ancient and so embedded in human history and culture can be anything

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m ore than a sketch, just as no historian can claim equal com pe­ tence and grip across a 2,000-year sketch.There is no single story­ line, for history does not evolve in lines, and the papacy has been at the centre o f too many different human stories and enterprises for it to have a single story o f its own. Them es do o f course recur. In w riting the book I have been struck by the extent to w hich the mere existence o f the papacy, and even its most self-aggran­ dising claims, have again and again helped ensure that the local churches o f Christendom retained something o f a universal Christian vision, that they did not entirely collapse back into the narrowness o f religious nationalism, or becom e entirely subordi­ nated to the w ill o f powerful secular rulers. From Barbarian Italy or Carolingian Europe, to the A ge o f Enlightenment, or the Age o f the Dictators, the papacy has helped keep alive a vision o f human value which transcended the atavisms o f history and the rule o f mere force, and has borne witness to the objectivity o f truths beyond the shifts o f intellectual fashion. For all its sins, and despite its recurring commitment to the repression o f ‘error’ , the papacy does seem to me to have been on balance a force for human freedom, and largeness o f spirit. I have tried to ensure that the narrative offered here is reason­ ably comprehensive, and that it accurately reflects the current state o f knowledge o f the issues and events it covers. Inevitably, however, the attempt to compress so much into so small a space has involved drastic and painful decisions about what to omit, as w ell as what to include: I do not expect my judgem ent about w hat is central and what marginal to be agreed w ith by everyone. N o r is every stretch o f papal history equally easy going. Som e readers may be daunted by the theological complexities and the historical unfamiliarity o f some o f the material covered in C hap­ ter Two, w hich deals w ith the popes o f the so-called‘D ark A ges’ . I have dealt w ith them in some detail, however, because the funda­ mental orientation o f the papacy towards the West and away from the East was decided in those centuries. Similarly, in the section on the Renaissance popes, readers may be surprised to find far more about the relatively obscure Nicholas V than about the far more notorious Alexander V I, the ‘B orgia Pope’ . This is not

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because Nicholas was respectable and pious, and Alexander scan­ dalous and debauched (though both these things are true), but because in my view the career o f Nicholas V tells us far m ore about the nature and objectives o f the Renaissance papacy than the more colourful and better-known escapades o f Alexander. Readers must judge for themselves. A nd finally, it is o f course too soon to form a mature assessment o f the nature or importance o f the pontificate o f Jo h n Paul II, or indeed those o f his immediate predecessors. M ore than any other part o f the book, the final chapter is offered as a tentative interim report, and a personal per­ spective. I have tried not to clog the text w ith too many technical aids. A light sprinkling o f reference notes identifies extended or con­ tentious quotations, w hile more detailed guidance to the litera­ ture on any given subject w ill be found in the chapter-by-chapter and topic-by-topic Bibliographical Essay at the end o f the book. A Glossary provides b rie f explanations o f technicalities; I have included also a numbered chronological list o f popes and anti­ popes. Eam on D uffy College o f St M ary Magdalene, Cam bridge Feast o f Sts Peter and Paul, 1997

CH A PTER ONE

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F rom J erusalem to R ome

R oun d the dome o f St Peter’s basilica in R om e, in letters six feet high, are Christ’s words to Peter from chapter sixteen o f Matthew’s Gospel: Tu es Petrus, et super hancpetram aedifkabo ecdesiam meant et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum (Thou art Peter, and upon this R o c k I will build my Church and I will give to thee the keys o f the Kingdom o f Heaven). Set there to crown the grave o f the Apostle, hidden far below the high altar, they are also designed to proclaim the authority o f the man w hom almost a billion Christians look to as the living heir o f Peter. W ith these words.it is believed, Christ made Peter prince o f the Apos­ tles and head o f the Church on earth: generation by generation, that role has been handed on to Peter’s successors, the popes. As the Pope celebrates Mass at the high altar o f St Peter’s, the N ew Testament and the modern world, heaven and earth, touch hands. The continuity between Pope and Apostle rests on traditions which stretch back almost to the very beginning o f the written records o f Christianity. It was already well established by the year ad 180, when the early Christian writer Irenaeus o f Lyons invoked it in defence o f orthodox Christianity. The Church o f R om e was for him the ‘great and illustrious Church’ to which,‘on account o f its commanding posi­ tion, every church, that is the faithful everywhere, must resort’ . Ire­ naeus thought that the Church had been ‘founded and organised at R o m e by the two glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul,’ and that its faith had been reliably passed down to posterity by an unbroken succession o f bishops, the first o f them chosen and consecrated by the Apostles themselves. He named the bishops who had succeeded the Aposdes, in the process providing us with the earliest surviving list o f the popes — Linus, Anacletus, Clement, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, and so on

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down to Irenaeus’ contemporary and friend Eleutherius, Bishop o f R om e from ad 174 to 189.1 All the essential claims o f the modern papacy, it might seem, are contained in this Gospel saying about the R ock, and in Irenaeus’ account o f the apostolic pedigree o f the early bishops o f R om e. Yet matters are not so simple. The popes trace their commission from Christ through Peter, yet for Irenaeus the authority o f the Church at R om e came from its foundation by two Apostles, not by one, Peter and Paul, not Peter alone. The tradition that Peter and Paul had been put to death at the hands o f Nero in R om e about the year ad 64 was universally accepted in the second century, and by the end o f that cen­ tury pilgrims to R om e were being shown the ‘trophies’ o f the Apos­ tles, their tombs or cenotaphs, Peter’s on the Vatican Hill, and Paul’s on the Via Ostiensis, outside the walls on the road to the coast.Yet on all o f this the N ew Testament is silent. Later legend would fill out the details o f Peter’s life and death in R om e - his struggles with the magi­ cian and father o f heresy, Simon Magus, his miracles, his attempted escape from persecution in Rom e, a flight from which he was turned back by a reproachful vision o f Christ (the ‘Quo Vadis’ legend), and finally his crucifixion upside down in theVatican Circus in the time o f the Emperor Nero. These stories were to be accepted as sober history by some o f the greatest minds o f the early Church —Origen, Ambrose, Augustine. But they are pious romance, not history, and the fact is that we have no reliable accounts either o f Peter’s later life or o f the man­ ner or place o f his death. Neither Peter nor Paul founded the Church at R om e, for there were Christians in the city before either o f the Apostles set foot there. N or can we assume, as Irenaeus did, that the Apostles established there a succession o f bishops to carry on their work in the city, for all the indications are that there was no single bishop at R om e for almost a century after the deaths o f the Apostles. In fact, wherever we turn, the solid outlines o f the Petrine succession at R om e seem to blur and dissolve. That the leadership o f the Christian Church should be associated with R om e at all, and with the person o f Peter, in itself needs some explanation. Christianity is an oriental religion, born in the religious and political turmoil o f first-century Palestine. Its central figure was a travelling rabbi, whose disciples proclaimed him as the fulfilment o f Jewish hopes, the Messiah. Executed by the Romans as a pretender to the throne o f Israel, his death and resurrection were interpreted by ref­

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erence to the stories and prophecies o f the Jewish scriptures, and much o f the language in which it was proclaimed derived 60m and spoke to Jewish hopes and longings. Jerusalem was the first centre o f Christian preaching, and the Church at Jerusalem was led by members o f the Messiah’s own family, starting with James, the ‘brother’ o f Jesus. Within ten years o f the Messiah’s death, however, Christianity escaped from Palestine, along the seaways and roads o f the Pax Romana, northwards to Antioch, on to Ephesus, Corinth andThessalonica, and westwards to Cyprus, Crete and Rom e. The man chiefly responsible was Paul o f Tarsus, a sophisticated Greek-speaking rabbi who, unlike Jesus’ twelve Apostles, was himself a Rom an citizen. Against opposition from fellow Christians, including Jesus’ first disci­ ples, Paul insisted that the life and death o f Jesus not only fulfilled the Jewish Law and the Prophets, but made sense o f the world, and offered reconciliation and peace with God for the whole human race. In Jesus, Paul believed that God was offering humanity as a whole the life, guidance and transforming power which had once been the posses­ sion o f Israel. His reshaping o f the Christian message provided the vehicle by which an obscure heresy from one o f the less appetising corners o f the Rom an Empire could enter the bloodstream o f late antiquity. In due course, the whole world was changed. Paul’s letters to the churches he founded or visited make up the largest single component o f the N ew Testament, and the story o f his conversion and preaching dominates another major N ew Testament text, the Acts o f the Apostles. He was, without any question or rival, the most important figure in the early history o f the Church. But he was never its leader. From the start, the Church had no single centre: it was founded at Jerusalem, but Jerusalem was destroyed by the Rom ans in ad 70, and already there were flourishing churches throughout the Empire at Antioch (where the disciples o f Jesus were first called ‘Christians’) at Corinth, at Ephesus and at R om e itself. Paul’s authority was immense, even beyond the churches he himself had founded. But he had never known Jesus, and did not feature in the foundation stories of Christianity. Though he claimed and was con­ ceded the status o f ‘Apostle’ , he was not one o f the ‘Twelve’ , and had not walked the roads o f Palestine with the Son o f God. W ith Peter, however, it was a different matter. The N ew Testament speaks with many voices. It is not a single book, but a library, built up over half a century or so from traditions o f

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the remembered sayings and actions o f Jesus, early Christian sermons, hymns and liturgies, and the letters o f the great founding teachers o f the early Church. Despite that, the Gospels do offer a remarkably per­ suasive portrait o f Peter the Apostle, a Galilean fisherman whose orig­ inal name was Simon Bar Jonah. Warm-hearted, impulsive, generous, he was, with his brother Andrew, the first to respond to Jesus’ call to abandon his old life and become ‘fishers o f men’ . Ardently loyal and constantly protesting his devotion to Jesus, Peter is just as constantly portrayed in all the Gospels as prone to misunderstand Jesus’ mission and intentions, angrily rejecting Christ’s prophecy o f his Passion, refus­ ing to have his feet washed at the Last Supper, snatching up a sword in a misguided attempt to protect Jesus when the Temple police come to arrest him in Gethsemane. Peter acts first and thinks later. His denial o f Christ in the courtyard o f the High Priest —and his subsequent bitter repentance —are all o f a piece with the other actions o f the man as he emerges from the sources. In all the Gospels he is the leader, or at any rate the spokesman, o f the Apostles. Throughout the Gospels o f Matthew, Mark and Luke Peter’s name occurs first in every list o f the names o f the Twelve. In each Gospel he is the first disciple to be called by Jesus. At Caesarea Philippi, at the turning-point o f Jesus’ ministry, it is Peter who recog­ nises and confesses him as the Messiah, thereby explicitly expressing the Church’s faith in its Lord for the first time. Peter is the first o f the inner circle o f disciples permitted by Jesus to witness his transfigura­ tion on the mountain, and it is Peter who (foolishly) calls out to Christ in wonder and fear during it. O f all the evangelists, it is Matthew who insists most on the cen­ trality o f Peter. In particular, Matthew elaborates the account o f Peter’s Confession o f Faith at Caesarea Philippi. In his version, Jesus declares Peter’s faith to be a direct revelation from God, and rewards it by renaming Simon ‘Kephas’, Peter, the R ock. He goes on to declare that ‘upon this R o ck I will build my Church, and I will give to you the keys o f the kingdom o f heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven’ , the text that would later come to be seen as the foundation charter o f the papacy (Matthew 16 :13—23). There is an equivalent scene in the final chapter o f the Gospel o f John. Christ, in an exchange designed to remind us o f Peter’s three­ fold betrayal o f Jesus during the Passion, asks Peter three times,‘D o you love me?’, and in response to the Apostle’s reiterated ‘You know

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everything, you know that I love you,’ Jesus three times commands him ,‘Feed my lambs, feed my sheep.’ For John, as for Matthew, Peter is the privileged recipient o f a special commission, based on the con­ fession o f his faith and trust in Christ (John 2 1: i5 -i7).T h e special sta­ tus o f Peter in the Gospels, his commission to bind and loose, to feed the sheep o f Christ, flow from his role as primary witness and guardian o f the faith. In the subsequent reflection o f the Church that complex o f ideas would decisively shape Christian understanding o f the nature and roots o f true authority. The office o f Peter, to proclaim the Church’s faith, and to guard and nourish that faith, would he at the root o f the self-understanding o f the Rom an community and their bishop, in which it was believed the responsibilities and the priv­ ileges o f the Aposde had been perpetuated. Unsurprisingly, the relationship between Peter and Paul seems to have been uneasy, and Paul’s attitude to Peter prickly and defensive. Paul himself provides the evidence for this unease in the earliest N ew Testament document to mention Peter, the Epistle to the Galatians. Anxious to vindicate his independent claims, he seems determined to concede as little as possible to the senior Aposde. Nevertheless, he recognises Peter’s special place. It is to Peter, he tells us, that he went for information after his conversion, staying with him for fifteen days and seeing no other Aposde except James, the Lord’s brother. He tells us also that Peter was charged with the mission outside Palestine to the Jews o f the diaspora, while he, Paul, was sent to the Gentiles. In chap­ ter two o f the Epistle, Paul tells o f his famous rebuke to Peter at Anti­ och, when he ‘withstood Peter to his face’, protesting against the fact that the leader o f the Aposdes had tried to conciliate hard-line Jewish Christians worried about breaches o f the kosher laws, by abandoning his previous table-fellowship with Gentile converts. Paul tells this story to vindicate his own independent authority, and maybe his superior fidelity to Gospel teaching, over against Peter’s notorious proneness to cave in to hostile criticism. The whole account, however, derives its rhetorical power from Paul’s awareness o f the shock-value for his read­ ers o f his temerity in ‘withstanding [even] Peter to the face’ . If Peter’s authority were not recognised by Paul’s readers as being especially great, Paul’s rebuke would not have carried the frisson o f daring which the passage clearly intends. The picture o f Peter which emerges from Paul’s writings, as the most authoritative Aposde and head o f the mission to the Jews o f the

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Mediterranean diaspora, is developed and elaborated in the first half o f the Acts o f the Apostles. Though other disciples play important roles, here in these early chapters o f Luke’s continuation o f his Gospel Peter is the dominant figure. He leads the Pentecost procla­ mation o f the resurrection, presides over the meetings o f the young Church, works many miracles, is rescued from prison by an angel, and even pre-empts Paul’s later role as Apostle to the Gentiles by baptising the centurion Cornelius, having received a vision from heaven reveal­ ing that this was God’s will. Mysteriously, however, Peter fades out o f the Acts of the Apostles, and o f the N ew Testament, after his escape from prison in chapter twelve. Luke tells us enigmatically only that Peter sent word o f his escape to James, now the leader o f the Jerusalem church, and then ‘departed and went to another place’ . O f his subsequent career the N ew Testament has nothing at all to say. Neither Paul, Acts nor any o f the Gospels tells us anything direct about Peter’s death, and none o f them even hints that the special role o f Peter could be passed on to any single ‘successor’ . There is, there­ fore, nothing direcdy approaching a papal theory in the pages o f the N ew Testament. Yet it is hard to account for the continuing interest in Peter in the Gospels and Acts unless Peter’s authority continued to be meaningful after his death. Matthew, whose Gospel was probably written for the church at Antioch, clearly thought so. He follows his account o f the giving o f the keys o f the kingdom to Peter, the com­ mission to bind and loose, with an extended section o f instructions about the ordering o f Church life. In it the authority o f the commu­ nity is backed up with the promise that ‘whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ (Matthew 18:18). Peter was widely believed to have founded the church at Antioch, and this unmistakable echo o f Christ’s words to him about binding and loosing in Matthew 16:18—19 seems to imply that, for Matthew, Peter’s authority continued within his community. The same sense that Peter’s authority is perpetuated within the Christian community is in evidence in the N ew Testament writings attributed to Peter himself. The First Epistle o f Peter claims to have been written by the Apostle, in a time o f persecution, from ‘Babylon’ , an early Christian code-name for Rom e. Many scholars have detected an early Christian baptismal sermon buried under the letter format, however, and the elegant Greek style o f the letter makes it very unlikely

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indeed that it is Peter’s unaided work. Possibly it represents Peter’s teaching mediated through an educated amanuensis. Whether he wrote it or not, however, Peter is presented in the letter not merely as an aposde and witness o f the saving work o f Christ, but as a source for the authority and responsibilities o f the elders or governing officials o f the Church. He writes to ‘the elders among you’, uniquely for an aposde, as ‘a fellow elder’, thereby underlining the continuity between the authority o f the Aposdes and that o f the elders who now lead the Church which the Aposdes had founded.The other hearers o f the let­ ter are urged to submit to the elders, whose role is presented as that o f shepherds, tending the flock o f Christ, the C h ief Shepherd, and lead­ ing by humble example. This imagery might o f course be derived directly from any number o f Old Testament passages in which God is depicted as the Shepherd o f his people, but its similarity to the Johannine commission to Peter,‘feed my lambs, feed my sheep’, is very strik­ ing, and can hardly be a coincidence. A general belief in the precedence o f R om e emerged in the Christian writings o f the second century, and was accepted appar­ ently without challenge. From its beginnngs, this was rooted in the claim that both Peter and Paul had ended their lives in martyrdom at R om e under the Emperor Nero. On this matter, the N ew Testament is not much help. The last chapter o f John contains a mysterious ref­ erence to Peter in old age having to ‘stretch out his arms’ and being led where he does not wish to go: the early Church believed this referred to his crucifixion (John 21:18 ). As we have seen, I Peter places Peter in Rom e, and is very much a letter o f comfort in the face o f persecution. It is shot through with references to the ‘fiery ordeal’ and sufferings which its hearers are enduring, but it says noth­ ing direct about Peter’s own death. The Acts o f the Apostles, similarly, ends with Paul in R om e, preaching ‘quite openly and unhindered’, with no hint o f a coming martyrdom. Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt the ancient tradition that both Peter and Paul were put to death in R om e during the Neronian persecution o f the mid 60s a d . The universal acceptance o f this belief among early Christian writers, and the failure o f any other Church to lodge competing claims to the possession o f the Apostles’ witness or their relics, is strong evidence here, especially when taken together with the existence o f a second century cult o f both saints in R om e at their ‘trophies’ - shrines at their graves or cenotaphs over

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the sites o f their martyrdoms. These monuments were mentioned by a Rom an cleric around the year ad 200, and their existence was dra­ matically confirmed by archaeology in this century. Building-work in the crypt o f St Peter’s in 1939 uncovered an ancient pagan ceme­ tery on the slope o f the Vatican Hill, on top o f which Constantine had built the original Christian basilica in the fourth century. As excavation proceeded, it became clear that Constantine’s workmen had gone to enormous trouble to orientate the entire basilica towards a particular site within the pagan cemetery, over which, long before the Cotistantinian era, had been placed a small niched shrine or trophy, datable to c. ad 165.This shrine, though damaged, was still in place, and fragments o f bone were discovered within it, which Pope Paul V I declared in 1965 to be the relics o f St Peter. Unfortu­ nately, controversy surrounds the methods and some o f the findings o f the excavations, and we cannot be sure that the shrine does in fact mark the grave o f Peter. The fragments o f bone discovered there were at the foot o f the wall and not in the central niche. We cannot be certain that they are his, especially since executed criminals were usually thrown into unmarked mass graves. It is possible that the excavation uncovered the site o f Peter’s execution, rather than his burial. Whether it is Peter’s grave or his cenotaph, however, the mere existence o f the shrine is overwhelming evidence o f a very early Rom an belief that Peter had died in or near the Vatican Circus. The early written sources support this tradition. A letter written around ad 96 on behalf o f the Rom an church to the Christians at Corinth speaks o f Peter and Paul as ‘our Aposdes’, suffering witnesses o f the truth w ho,‘having born testimony before the rulers’, went to glory. Writing to the Rom an Christians about the year 107, Ignatius, Bishop o f Antioch, declared that ‘I do not command you, as Peter and Paul did,’ a clear indication that he believed that the Apostles had been leaders o f the Rom an church. Two generations further on, Irenaeus wrote that the Church had been ‘founded and organised at R o m e by the two glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul.’2 For all these reasons, most scholars accept the early Christian tra­ dition that Peter and Paul died in Rom e. Yet, though they lived, preached and died in R om e, they did not strictly ‘found’ the Church there. Paul’s Episde to the Romans was written before either he or Peter ever set foot in R om e, to a Christian community already in existence. First-century R om e had a large and thriving Jewish popu­

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lation, perhaps as many as 50,000 strong, scattered throughout the city but especially concentrated in Trastevere, across the river from the city proper, and organised in over a dozen synagogues. The R om an Jews were an expansive and self confident group, eager to make converts, and they had strong links with Palestine and Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the first centre o f the Christian mission, and so it is not surprising that Jews believing in Christ found their way to R o m e by the early 40s. B y ad 49 they had become a significant pres­ ence in the Rom an synagogues, and their beliefs were causing trou­ ble. According to the pagan historian Suetonius, the Emperor Claudius became alarmed by the constant disturbances among the Jew s over ‘Chrestus’ (a common early form o f the name Christ), and expelled them from the city in ad 49.This expulsion can hardly have included all 50,000 Jews, but Jewish Christians certainly were obliged to leave the city, for two o f them surface in the pages o f the N ew Testament. The Jewish Christian tent-maker Aquila and his w ife Priska or Priscilla were among the victims o f Claudius’ purge. They moved to Corinth, where they befriended the Apostle Paul (Acts 18:2), accompanying him when he moved on to Ephesus.They eventually returned to R om e, however, where their house became the meeting place o f a church (Romans 16:3—5). O f a church, notice, not o f the Church, for Christian organisation in R om e reflected that o f the Jewish community out o f which it had grown. The Rom an synagogues, unlike their counterparts in Anti­ och, had no central organisation. Each one conducted its own wor­ ship, appointed its own leaders and cared for its own members. In the same way, the ordering o f the early Christian community in R om e seems to have reflected the organisation o f the synagogues which had originally sheltered it, and to have consisted o f a constellation o f independent churches, meeting in the houses o f the wealthy mem­ bers o f the community. Each o f these house churches had its own leaders, the elders or ‘presbyters’ . They were mostly made up o f immigrants, with a high proportion o f slaves or freedmen among them —the name o f Pope Eleutherius means ‘freedman’ . To begin with, indeed, there was no ‘pope’, no bishop as such, for the church in R om e was slow to develop the office o f chief pres­ byter, or bishop. B y the end o f the first century the loose pattern o f Christian authority o f the first generation o f believers was giving way in many places to the more organised rule o f a single bishop for

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each city, supported by a college o f elders. This development was at least in part a response to the wildfire spread o f false teaching — heresy. As conflicting teachers arose, each claiming to speak fo r ‘true’ Christianity, a tighter and more hierarchic structure developed, and came to seem essential to the preservation o f unity and truth. The succession o f a single line o f bishops, handing on the teaching o f the Aposdes like a baton in a relay race, provided a pedigree for authen­ tic Christian truth, and a concrete focus for unity. A key figure in this development was Ignatius o f Antioch, a bishop from Asia Minor arrested and brought to R om e to be executed around the year 107. En route he wrote a series o f letters to other churches, largely consisting o f appeals to them to unite round their bishops. His letter to the Rom an church, however, says nothing what­ ever about bishops, a strong indication that the office had not yet emerged at Rom e. Paradoxically, this impression is borne out by a document which has sometimes been thought o f as the first papal encyclical.Ten years or so before Ignatius’ arrival in Rom e, the Rom an church wrote to the church at Corinth, in an attempt to quieten dis­ putes and disorders which had broken out there. The letter is unsigned, but has always been attributed to the Rom an presbyter Clement, generally counted in the ancient lists as the. third Pope after St Peter. Legends would later accumulate round his name, and he was to be venerated as a martyr, exiled to the Crimea and killed by being tied to an anchor and dropped into the sea. In fact, however, Clement made no claim to write as bishop. His letter was sent in the name o f the whole Rom an community, he never identifies himself or writes in his own person, and we know nothing at all about him.The letter itself makes no distinction between presbyters and bishops, about which it always speaks in the plural, suggesting that at Corinth as at R om e the church at this time was organised under a group o f bishops or pres­ byters, rather than a single ruling bishop. A generation later, this was still so in Rom e.The visionary treatise The Shepherd of Hennas, written in Rom e early in the second century, speaks always collectively o f the ‘rulers o f the Church’, or the‘elders that preside over the Church’ , and once again the author makes no attempt to dis­ tinguish between bishops and elders. Clement is indeed mentioned (if Hermas’ Clement is the same man as the author o f the letter written at least a generation before, which we cannot assume) but not as presiding bishop. Instead, we are told that he was the elder responsible for writing

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‘to the foreign cities’ —in effect the corresponding secretary o f the R o ­ man church. Everything we know about the church in R om e during its first hundred years confirms this general picture.The Christians o f the city were thought o f by themselves and others as a single church,.as Paul’s letter to the Romans make clear. The social reality behind this single identity, however, was not one congregation, but a loose constellation o f churches based in private houses or, as time went on and the com­ munity grew, meeting in rented halls in markets and public baths. It was without any single dominant ruling officer, its elders or leaders sharing responsibility, but distributing tasks, like that o f foreign corre­ spondent. B y the eve o f the conversion o f Constantine, there were more than two dozen o f these religious community-centres or tituli. R om e was the hub o f empire, the natural centre for anyone with a message to spread - which was o f course why the Apostles Peter and Paul had made their way there in the first place. Early Christianity jos­ tled for space cheek by jow l with the other blossoming new religions o f empire, a fact graphically illustrated by the presence o f Mithraic shrines under the ancient churches o f San Clemente and Santa Prisca (the reputed site o f the house o f Paul’s friends Aquila and Priscilla). Late into the second century the language o f the Christian commu­ nity in R om e was hot Latin but Greek, the real lingua franca o f an empiré that increasingly looked east rather than west. The Christian congregations in R om e themselves reflected the cosmopolitan m ix o f the capital city, and many had strong ethnic and cultural links back to the regions from which their members had migrated. As a result, the life o f the Rom an Church was a microcosm o f the cultural, doctrinal and ritual diversity o f Christianity throughout the empire. B y the early second century, for example, the churches in Asia Minor had begun to keep the date o f the Jewish Passover, fourteenth Nisan, as a celebration o f Easter, whether or not it fell on a Sunday. Those Christian congre­ gations in R om e who came from Asia M inor naturally maintained this regional custom, and this marked them off from ‘native’ congregations, w ho celebrated Easter every Sunday, and had not yet evolved a sepa­ rate annual commemoration. Despite these differences, the governing elders o f the ‘native’ Rom an congregations maintained friendly rela­ tions with these foreign communities, sending them portions o f the consecrated bread from their own celebrations o f the eucharist as a sign o f their fundamental unity.

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This variety in the customs o f Rom an Christians was not con­ fined to their calendar. Christianity all over the Rom an world in the first and second centuries was in a state o f violent creative ferment. What would come to be seen as mainstream orthodoxy coexisted alongside versions o f the Gospel which would soon come to seem outrageously deviant,‘heretical’ . But the outré and the orthodox were not always easy to distinguish at first sight, and the early Christian community in R om e had more than its fair share o f competing versions o f the Gospel. For R om e was a magnet, attracting to itself a stream o f provincial elders, scholars and private Christians, eager to see and learn from so ancient a church, above all eager to visit the resting place o f the two greatest Apostles. Am ong them came a succession o f teachers and thinkers deter­ mined to make their mark in the greatest city o f the empire. They included the arch-heretic Marcion, who arrived in the city in ad 140. Marcion denied that matter could be redeemed, rejected the whole o f the Old Testament and most o f the N ew Testament scrip­ tures, and taught a radical opposition between the angry Creator God o f the Old Testament and the loving God and Father o f Jesus Christ. He was a wealthy shipowner from the Black Sea, and by way o f credentials presented the Rom an church with a handsome sum o f o f money (22,000 sesterces, roughly the annual income o f a noble citizen). For a largely lower-class urban organisation with its own overstretched social welfare system for widows, orphans and the eld­ erly, and with an expanding aid-programme to needy churches else­ where in the empire, wealth on this scale was an eloquent testimo­ nial. Marcion was able to function as an accepted Christian teacher in Rom e, for several years before his expulsion from communion by the elders o f R om e in ad 144: his money was returned. But Marcion was merely the most influential o f a succession o f such deviant teachers round the mid century —men like Tatian, the Syrian philosopher who came to reject the whole o f Hellenic civili­ sation as incompatible with the Gospel, or Valentinus, who taught a bizarre gnostic system (from the Greek word for knowledge) in which thirty ‘aeons’ or spiritual powers emanate from the Supreme God, in male and female pairs, Christ and the Holy Spirit forming one such pair. All these men to begin with at least operated within the loose framework o f the Rom an church, and Valentinus for a time even entertained hopes o f election as bishop or ruling elder.

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T he B ishops of R ome

It was against this mid-century background o f ritual and doctrinal confusion that the ‘monarchic episcopate’ , the rule o f the church by a single bishop, was accepted in Rom e. Throughout the Mediter­ ranean world the rule o f bishops came to be seen as a crucial defence against heresy. As Irenaeus wrote in his Treatise against the Heresies, ‘It is within the power o f anyone who cares, to find the truth and know the tradition o f the Apostles. . . we are able to name those who were appointed bishops by the Apostles in the churches and their succes­ sors down to our own times.’3 There is no sure way to settle on a date by which the office o f ruling bishop had emerged in R om e, and so to name the first Pope, but the process was certainly complete by the time o f Anicetus in the m id-15 os, when Polycarp, the aged Bishop o f Smyrna, visited Rom e, and he and Anicetus debated amicably the question o f the date o f Easter. Polycarp, then in his eighties, had known John, the ‘beloved disciple,’ in his old age. He therefore strongly urged direct apostolic authority for the practice o f the churches from Asia Minor (and their satélite ethnic congregations in R om e itself) o f keeping Easter at Passover. Anicetus contented him­ self more modestly with defending the practice o f ‘the presbyters who had preceded him’ in having no separate Easter festival. B y how the pressure o f heresy and the need for a tighter organisa­ tion was forcing the Christian movement as a whole to sharpen and refine its self-understanding, to establish its boundaries and clarify its fundamental beliefs. As part o f that process o f development and selfanalysis, the Rom an church began to reflect more self-consciously on its apostolic pedigree. It was in the time o f Anicetus that the ear­ liest attempts were made to compile a succession-list o f the Rom an bishops, drawing on the remembered names o f leading presbyters like Clemént. It was probably under Anicetus, too, that the shrinemonuments to Peter and Paul were first constructed at the Vatican and the Via Ostiensis. This architectural embodiment o f the church’s claims to continuity with the Apostles would continue into the next century, and from at least ad 230 onwards successive bishops were buried in a single ‘crypt o f the popes’ in the Catacomb o f San Callisto, the burial-ground on the Appian Way which the Church had acquired some time in the late second century. Such monuments were the architectural equivalent o f the succes­

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sion-lists, expressions o f the increasingly explicit sense o f continuity between the contemporary Rom an church and the Apostles. The earliest list to survive for R om e is the one supplied by Irenaeus, and in it this symbolic function is very clearly at work. Irenaeus under­ lines the parallels between Apostles and bishops by naming precisely twelve bishops o f R om e between Peter and the current incumbent, Eleutherius. The sixth o f these bishops is named Sixtus. It all seems suspiciously tidy. The list is certainly a good deal tidier than the actual transition to rule by a single bishop can have been. The bishops laboured steadily to extend their authority and to regulate the life o f the church in the city — Pope Fabian’s division o f the city during the 240s into seven regions, each under the supervision o f a deacon, looks like part o f this long-term effort at better order. But well into the third century Christianity in R om e would remain turbulent, diverse, prone to split. We know o f several such dissident groups, such as the Theodotians, active at the end o f the second century in the time o f bishops Victor and Zephyrinus. Financed by a wealthy Byzantine leather-seller and a banker (both called Theodotus), these ‘Theodotians’ taught that Jesus was merely a very good man who had been adopted by God at his baptism and then raised to divinity at his resurrection. They failed to secure official acceptance o f their views, but their economic clout meant that they were able to form a separate church and to pay the salary o f their own rival bishop. In the next century, other dissidents like Hippolytus or Novatian, more orthodox than Marcion or Valentinus but all the harder to deal with on that account, would also find backers for a challenge to the authority o f the official bishop o f Rom e. From the start, then, the Rom an bishops had to face difficult prob­ lems o f unity and jurisdiction. The consequences o f that preoccupa­ tion for the future were already becoming clear in the time o f the last Bishop o f the second century, Victor (189-98). Victor was the first Latin leader o f the Christians o f R om e, a sign that the church was spreading out o f the immigrant milieu in which it had first taken root. He brought a Latin rigour to his office. He was a disciplinarian, deter­ mined to kick the dissident elements in the Rom an church into line, and he adopted stern measures. It was Victor who excommunicated the Theodotians, and he also deposed a number o f clergy who had been spreading gnostic teaching within the ‘mainstream’ communities

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in the city. But his most momentous exercise o f authority was pro­ voked by the perennial problem o f the date for the celebration o f Easter. Our information about this incident comes from the extended account in Eusebius’ Church History, written more than a century after the event. As Eusebius tells it,Victor picked a fight with all the churches outside R om e which were celebrating Easter at Passover, fourteenth Nisan (the so called Quartodecimans) instead o f on the Sunday after Passover, which by now had been adopted in R om e and the West more generally. According to Eusebius, this developed into a full-scale confrontation between Victor and the churches o f Asia Minor, whose position was vigorously defended by Polycrates, Bishop o f Ephesus. After a series o f regional synods all over the Mediterranean world had been held to debate the issue, Victor solemnly excommunicated all the Quartodeciman churches. He was respectfully rebuked by Irenaeus, who reminded him o f the more tolerant attitude o f earlier Rom an presbyters, who, despite their dis­ agreement, used to ‘send the eucharist’ to the churches which kept the Quartodeciman date for Easter. This is a baffling incident, not least because any fragments o f eucharistic bread sent on the long sea journey to the churches o f Asia M inor would have gone mouldy or hard long before they reached their destination. It has become the focus for centuries o f debate about papal authority, for both the friends and the enemies o f the papacy have seen inVictor’s high-handed actions an assertion o f Rom an juris­ diction over the whole o f Christendom, as the Pope tried to make R om an custom the norm for all the churches. In fact, it is far more likely that Eusebius misunderstood his source materials. He wrote in the fourth century, at a time when his hero, the first Christian Emperor Constantine, was trying to impose uniformity on the Church on this very issue o f Easter. Eusebius tells the story o f the Quartodeciman controversy as a sort o f rehearsal for Constantine’s concerns.The tell-tale detail o f the sending o f the morsels o f eucharis­ tic bread, however, suggests that the dispute actually arose in the first instance within the city o f Rom e, and should be seen as primarily an internal affair.Victor was not brawling randomly around the Mediter­ ranean spoiling for a fight, but trying to impose uniformity o f practice on all the churches within his own city, as part o f a more general quest for internal unity and order. The churches o f proconsular Asia may

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well have protested at this condemnation o f a custom which they believed they had derived from the Aposde John, but Victor’s excom­ munication was aimed at Asian congregations in Rom e, not fired broadside at churches over which he had no direct jurisdiction.4 Bishop Victor, then, was probably not taking the first steps towards universal papal jurisdiction. All the same, some notion o f the special authority o f the Rom an church was already widespread. At the beginning o f the second century, Ignatius wrote extravagantly about the Rom an church as ‘she who is pre-eminent in the territory o f the Rom ans . . . foremost in love . . . purified from every alien and dis­ colouring stain’ . Ignatius admonished other churches, but for the church at R om e he had only praise. As the century advanced, that note o f deference was echoed by others. We have already met in Irenaeus the claim that ‘it is necessary that every Church, that is, the faithful everywhere, should resort to this Church [of R om e], on account o f its pre-eminent authority, in which the apostolical tradi­ tion has been preserved continuously .. .’5 This ‘pre-eminent authority’ sprang, above everything else, from the fact that R om e preserved the witness o f not one but both o f the great­ est Apostles; as Irenaeus’ contemporary, the African theologian Tertullian, wrote, R om e was the ‘happy Church . . . on which the Apostles poured forth all their teaching, together with their blood’ . It was a ‘happiness’ that Rom an Christians themselves were increasingly proud of, and devotion to Peter and Paul deepened in the third century. A new cult centre based at what is now the church o f San Sebastiano emerged in the mid century, and hundreds o f surviving graffiti there, invoking R o m e’s two great patron saints, convey the fervour o f R om an popular devotion to them: ‘Paul and Peter, pray for Victor,’ ‘Paul, Peter, pray for Eratus,’ ‘Peter and Paul, protect your servants! Holy souls, protect the reader.’ From the year 258 a joint feast o f Peter and Paul was celebrated at R om e on 29 June, a sign o f the centrality o f the two Apostles in the Rom an church’s self-awareness.6 To this apostolic prestige was added the fact that the church at R om e sat at the hub o f empire. This was not necessarily a short-cut to stardom in early Christian eyes, for there was a strong anti-Roman tradition in the early Church. R om e was the harlot city soaked in the blood o f the saints, the centre from which spread out wave after wave o f persecution. The Book o f Revelations’ gloating vision o f the coming ruin o f Rom e, ‘Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great’ (Revela­

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tions 14:8), remained a persistent strand so long as the empire contin­ ued to persecute the church, and survived even into the Middle Ages. But by the same token, the church at R om e bore the brunt o f persecution, as the deaths o f Peter and Paul under Nero showed, and its witness was all the more glorious for being in the eye o f empire. The conviction that the Apostles had ‘founded’ the church at R om e sprang above all from the fact that the shedding o f their blood there was the ultimate witness, marturion, to the truth o f their Gospel. But Christianity’s rapid growth in the capital had more mundane consequences. The church in R om e, even under persecution, was wealthy. Because o f the cosmopolitan nature o f the Christian commu­ nity there, the Rom an church was especially aware o f the ecumenical character o f the faith, its spread through the whole Rom an world. That awareness lay behind the Epistle o f Clement to the Corinthians in ad 96, which was a demonstration o f the Rom an church’s sense o f responsibility for other churches. The Rom an community continued to show that broad concern in practical ways, by sending money as well as advice and reproof to churches in need. In the mid second cen­ tury, Dionysius, Bishop o f Corinth, wrote a letter o f grateful acknowl­ edgement for financial aid sent by Pope Soter. He went on to say that Soter’s accompanying letter was being read out during services in Corinth, as the Epistle o f Clement still was from time to time.7 As aris­ tocratic converts entered the Church, moreover, the Bishop o f Rom e, even in the age of persecution, was an increasingly influential person. Pope Victor was able to use the fact that the Emperor Commodus’ mistress, Marcia, was a Christian, to get Christian prisoners released from the penal colony o f the Sardinian mines. The habit o f appealing to the Bishop o f R om e in doctrinal disputes, which in later contro­ versies would become a crucial lifeline for embattled supporters o f orthodoxy, sprang both from the sense o f the dignity o f a community which had inherited not only the teaching but the eloquent blood o f the two Apostles, and, more mundanely, from the fact that the Pope was an important grandee, a patron. But the prestige o f the church o f R om e was not at this stage pri­ marily a matter o f the bishop’s status or authority. It was the church o f R om e as a whole which basked in the glory o f the Apostles and commanded the respect o f other second- and third-century Christ­ ian communities. About the year ad 200 the allegorical epitaph o f Abercius, Bishop o f Heropolis in Asia Minor, recorded that he had

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gone to R om e at Christ’s command,‘to behold an empire and to see a queen in a golden robe and golden shoes; I saw there a people with a shining seal.’8 The honourable status o f the Rom an church, the ‘people with a shining seal’, persisted even when there was no bishop in charge. In the long vacancy in the bishopric after the death o f Pope Fabian in the Decian persecution (ad 250—1) , the presbyters and deacons o f R om e went on exercising the oversight and care for other churches which had become characteristic o f their church, sending four letters o f advice and encouragement to the churches o f North Africa, letters which were copied, circulated and read aloud during worship just as the letters o f Clement and Soter had been. The letters breathe the distinctive sense o f dignity and responsibility which was becoming the mark o f the Rom an church; ‘The brethren who are in chains greet you, as do the priests and the whole Church which also with deepest concern keeps watch over all who call on the name o f the Lord’ .9 B y the beginning o f the third century, then, the church at R om e was an acknowledged point o f reference for Christians throughout the Mediterranean world, and might even function as a court o f appeal. When under attack for teaching heresy, the great Alexandrian theologian Origen would send letters appealing for support not only to the bishops o f his own region, but to faraway Bishop Fabian at R om e, where he himself as a young man had made a pilgrimage. For the earliest Christians apostolic authority was no antiquarian curios­ ity, a mere fact about the origins o f a particular community. The Apostles were living presences, precious guarantors o f truth. The apostolic churches possessed more than a pedigree, they spoke with the voices o f their founders, and provided living access to their teaching. And in Rom e, uniquely, the authority o f two Apostles con­ verged. The charismatic voice o f Paul, bearer o f a radical authority rooted not in institution and organisation but in the uncompromis­ ing clarity o f a Gospel received direct from God, joined with the authority o f Peter, symbol o f the Church’s jurisdiction in both heaven and earth, the one to whom the commission to bind and to feed had been given by Christ himself. Yet we should also bear in mind that all these signs o f the special status o f the church and Bishop o f R om e were a matter o f degree, not o f kind. N o other community could claim succession to two Apostles, but apostolic authority and the responsibilities and status it

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brought could be matched elsewhere. Other bishops and other churches sent gifts abroad, wrote letters o f advice, rebuke or encour­ agement, and broke off communion with churches which were believed to have fallen into grave error. Irenaeus and Tertullian, in praising the glory o f the Rom an church, were praising the most notable example o f a wider phenomenon. Come, urged Tertullian, ‘recall the various apostolic churches . . . Achaia is very near you, where you have Corinth. I f you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, i f you can travel into Asia, you have Ephesus. But i f you are near Italy, you have Rom e, whence our authority [in Africa] is derived close at hand.’ 10 Africa, in the person o f its greatest theologian before Augustine, acknowledged the weight o f R o m e’s authority. Yet even Africa might qualify and withdraw that allegiance. One o f the most divisive issues in the life o f the Church o f the third century was the question o f the treatment o f those who lapsed from the faith during periods o f perse­ cution. Christianity had prospered within the empire, and by the early third century was a force to be reckoned with. In Rom e, it was already a substantial property-owner, and by ad 251 the church employed forty-six elders, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolytes and fifty-two lesser clerics, readers and door-keepers: it had over 1,500 widows and other needy people receiving poor-relief. Its total mem­ bership in the city may have been as many as 50,000. In an empire which was now threatened by internal breakdown and by the external pressure o f the Gothic hordes, the visibility and expan­ sion o f Christianity provided an ideal scapegoat. Pope Callistus (c. 217—22) was murdered inTrastevere by a lynch-mob who were proba­ bly angered by recent Christian expansion in the crowded district. R om e celebrated a thousand years o f prosperity under its ancestral gods in 247. The ills o f the empire were now laid at the door o f the growing numbers o f those who refused to honour those gods. Riots against Christians became commonplace, and in 250 the Emperor Decius launched an official pogrom against the Church. Leading Christians were rounded up, and forced to offer sacrifice, in return for which they were given a certificate o f compliance. Bishops and other leaders were specially targeted, and many o f these behaved with great courage. Pope Fabian (236—50) was among the first to be arrested, and died from brutal treatment in prison. But there was also mass surrender —the Church’s very success in recruiting huge numbers o f the superfi-

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dally committed backfired, and all over the empire Christians queued up to comply with the law. The overworked officials in charge o f the sacrifices had to turn crowds away, telling them to come another day. Christianity laid immense weight on the value o f suffering for the faith.The word martyr means ‘witness’, and the martyr’s death was the ultimate witness to the truth. B y contrast, those who broke under per­ secution, offering the pinch o f incense or the libation to the gods which the Rom an state made the test o f good citizenship, or those who simply surrendered the holy books or vessels o f the Church — these people were considered apostates who had sacrificed their salva­ tion. Opinion was bitterly divided about their ultimate fate and, more pressingly, about whether they could ever again be restored to mem­ bership o f the Church. In Africa, the Christian community would eventually split down the middle on the issue. A hard-line party emerged in the fourth century, called Donatists after one o f their lead­ ers.They believed that any contact with lapsed clergy, including those traditores or traitors who without offering pagan sacrifice had never­ theless handed over books or Church goods, contaminated a church and all its members, and invalidated the sacraments which were administered in it. The Donatists formed a separatist pure Church, with their own elders and bishops. The Rom an church had its own bitter experience o f persecution, and o f both heroism and failure under persecution. Both experiences were manifest in its bishops.To the heroism o f Pope Fabian was added that o f Pope Sixtus II (257—8), arrested in 258 while presiding over worship in one o f the funerary chapels in the catacombs. To avoid reprisals against his congregation he surrendered himself to the officers in charge o f the raid, and was summarily beheaded with his deacons. B y contrast, in the later persecution under Diocletian in 303, Pope Marcellinus (296-304?) would cave in to pressure. He surrendered copies o f the scriptures and offered sacrifice to the gods. He died a year later in disgrace, and the Rom an church set about forgetting him. In R om e as in Africa, hard- and soft-line responses to the problem o f the lapsed developed. In the wake o f Pope Fabian’s death, the church in R om e delayed electing another bishop till persecution eased. In the interim, the brilliant presbyter Novatian played a lead­ ing role in running the church, and all the indications are that he expected to become bishop in due course. Instead, the majority o f the clergy and their lay supporters elected a far less able man, Cor­

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nelius (251-3). Novation refused to accept the election, and his sup­ porters had him consecrated by three bishops from the south Italian countryside: he set up as a rival to Cornelius. The key to this fiasco almost certainly lay in the two men’s attitudes to the lapsed. Novatian was a hard-liner, believing that those who had denied the faith could never again be received into the Church, while Cornelius favoured the restoration o f the repentant after they had done appropriate penance. It seems likely that the less able man was elected to imple­ ment this more realistic and humane pastoral policy. Cornelius was a mild and unambitious man, who basked in the sup­ port o f his fellow bishops - he gathered sixty o f them at R om e to back his claims over those o f Novatian, and collected letters o f communion from those further afield. In particular, he won the approval o f Cyprian o f Carthage, the leading African Bishop. Cyprian had a very exalted view o f the episcopal office, and emphasised the dignity o f every bishop in his own church. He accepted the special standing o f the see o f R o m e ,‘the chair o f Peter, the primordial [or “ principal” ] church, the very source o f episcopal unity’ . But Cyprian did not mean by this that other bishops were subordinate to the Pope. He himself, like many other bishops in the early Church, used the title ‘Pope’, which only came to be confined to the Bishop o f R om e from the sixth cen­ tury. Christ had indeed founded the Church on Peter, but all the Apostles and all bishops shared fully in the one indivisible apostolic power. There were, therefore, limits to Cyprian’s deference to R om e, and that deference was to be stretched to its limits within a couple o f years, with the election as pope o f an aristocratic Rom an, Stephen. Stephen (254—7) was a member o f the Julian family, and he was a bishop in the mould o f Pope Victor, not Pope Cornelius. He was imperious, impatient, high-handed. He quickly got himself into Cyprian’s bad books by rashly readmitting, not merely to commun­ ion but to office, a Spanish bishop who had been deposed for lapsing into paganism during the Decian persecution. Further provocation came when Stephen failed to take action against a Novatianist Bishop o f Arles who was refusing the sacraments to the repentant lapsed even on their deathbeds. The Bishop o f Lyons reported the matter to Cyprian —an interesting comment in itself on their under­ standing o f shared episcopal responsibility for all the churches, as opposed to an exclusively papal role. Cyprian had then vainly pleaded with Stephen to excommunicate the Bishop o f Arles. The

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request was o f course also a tacit acknowledgement o f R o m e’s supe­ rior jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the Pope evidendy resented Cyprian’s interference. The final breach came when Stephen intervened direcdy in Africa, and challenged Cyprian’s practice about the rebap­ tism o f heretics. Though Cyprian was a moderate in his willingness to receive back the repentant lapsed, he refused to recognise any sacraments administered in the hard-line breakaway churches o f the Novatianists, who had established themselves in Africa. Converts baptised by Novatianist clergy were now seeking admission to Catholic communion: they were rebaptised as i f they were pagans. Behind Cyprian’s practice here was a stern doctrine which denied that any grace could flow to human beings outside the visible com­ munion o f the Catholic Church. R om e took the milder view, which would eventually become the accepted teaching, that every baptism was valid provided it was duly performed in the name o f the Trinity, whatever the status o f the minister, and whether or not he was in heresy or schism. Stephen therefore ordered that returning schismat­ ics should not be rebaptised, but simply admitted again to the Church by the laying on o f hands. Cyprian, however, refused to accept this ruling, and organised two synods o f African bishops to condemn it. The Pope was not men­ tioned, but it was obvious who was the target o f Cyprian’s remarks in his preamble that ‘none o f us sets himself up as a bishop o f bishops or exercises the powers o f a tyrant to force his colleagues into obedi­ ence’ .11 N ot surprisingly, the clergy he sent to R om e to inform the Pope o f these moves were turned away unheard. Enraged by the African bishops’ temerity, Stephen wrote to the churches in Asia M inor who followed Cyprian’s tougher line on rebaptism o f heretics, threatening to cut o ff communion with them, though he died before he could carry out this threat. The incident had a broader significance. Though his letter does not survive, we know from Cyprian’s comment on it that Stephen had backed up his condemnation o f the African churches with an appeal to Matthew 16: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.’ During Pope Cornelius’ lifetime, Cyprian had written a treatise on the Unity of the Catholic Church, in which he had bolstered his own authority and that o f the Pope against the Nova­ tianist schism by stressing the unique role o f the See o f Peter as the foundation o f unity. He now rewrote the treatise, editing out these

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passages and denying that the Bishop o f R om e had any special claim on Christ’s promise to Peter. It was indeed the foundation o f the See o f R om e —but it was also the charter for every other bishop, all o f w hom shared in the power o f the keys given to Peter. For Cyprian, therefore, it was folly for Stephen to ‘brag so loudly about the seat o f his episcopate and to insist that he holds his succession from Peter’.12 Significantly, however, even at the height o f his confrontation with Stephen, Cyprian avoided open attacks on the authority o f R om e, and he suppressed the details o f the Pope’s maltreatment o f his envoys. R om e remained a fundamental symbol o f the unity o f the episcopate, with whom an absolute breach was unthinkable. The death o f Stephen in 257, and the heroic martyrdom in the fol­ lowing year o f his successor the Greek Pope Sixtus, followed six weeks later by Cyprian’s own execution, defused this potentially disastrous confrontation - Sixtus, Cornelius and Cyprian would all in due course be commemorated together in the most solemn prayer o f the Rom an Church, the Canon o f the Mass. But in many ways this was the first major crisis o f the papacy, and it was charged with significance for the future. Stephen’s invocation o f Matthew 16 is the first known claim by a pope to an authority derived exclusively from Peter, and it is the first certain attempt by a pope to exert a power over other bishops which was qualitatively different from, and qualitatively superior to, anything they possessed.Till the reign o f Stephen, the Rom an church’s primacy had been gladly conceded, rooted in esteem for a church blessed by the teaching and the martyrdom o f the two great Apostles to the Jews and to the Gentiles, and augmented by the generosity and pastoral care for other Christian communities which had marked the Rom an church in its first two centuries. With the confrontation between Stephen and Cyprian, the divisive potential o f papal claims became clear. Ill

T he A ge of C onstantine

The Rom an empire in the third century was divided by civil war, and swept by plague and disease. It was ruled by a bewildering suc­ cession o f emperors (twenty-five in forty-seven years, only one o f whom died in his bed) thrown up by an army increasingly staffed by terrifying foreigners. In the ferment o f oriental religions and new philosophies, old certainties were dissolving: it was for many an age o f acute anxiety. For the Church, by contrast and partly in conse­

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quence, it was an age o f growth and consolidation. In the meltingpot o f empire, Christianity alone seemed to offer a single overarch­ ing intellectual and moral frame o f reference, a simple code conveyed in vivid stories by which men and women could live.The parables o f Jesus struck home where the arguments o f the philosophers faltered. The Church’s episcopal framework provided a remarkable network crossing the whole civilised world and a little beyond, and its charita­ ble activities offered a life-line to the (Christian) poor in a state which no longer had the resources or the will to help them. In the Decian persecution, the resolution o f the martyrs had offered an example o f certainty and courage in sharp contrast to the weary rou­ tine which characterised much official pagan religion. In the free­ dom from persecution which descended on the Church for the last forty years o f the century, Christianity became a dominating pres­ ence in many o f the cities o f the empire, especially in the East. The steps o f the Emperor Diocletian’s favourite palace at Nicomedia commanded a fine view o f the Christians’ new basilica in the town. It was Diocletian, tough Dalmatian career-soldier and great reforming emperor, who launched the last great Rom an persecution o f the Church. Diocletian had been content to tolerate Christianity for twenty years (his wife and daughter were probably Christians) but his Caesar (military second-in command), Galerius, was a fanati­ cal pagan, and Christianity was clearly an obstacle to Diocletian’s vision o f a reformed empire based on a return to traditional (that is pagan) values. In 298, pagan priests conducting the auguries at Anti­ och complained that the presence o f Christian officials was sabotag­ ing the ceremonies (the Christians had defended themselves from demons during the ceremony by making the sign o f the cross). This was enough to trigger a confrontation which had been long brew­ ing, and the persecution commenced. The aim at first was to oust Christians from the civil service and army, to close down and destroy churches, and to compromise the clergy. Under Galerius’ influence, the persecution escalated and became a bloodbath. The toll was worst in the East and in North Africa, with most o f the West rela­ tively unscathed, but R om e was scandalised by the cowardly surren­ der o f Pope Marcellinus, and the legacy o f the persecution was to be a permanent schism in the African church over the question o f com­ munion with the lapsed. Christianity, however, was now too entrenched in the empire to be stamped out in this way. Galerius,

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who had succeeded Diocletian on the latter’s retirement in 305, died in 3 11. He detested Christianity, but he was forced to issue an edict o f toleration for Christians on his deathbed. And in the following year the fortunes o f the Church changed irrevocably with the accession o f Constantine as emperor. Constantine had been declared emperor by the troops at York in 306 on the death o f his father, Constantius, commander-in-chief o f the imperial armies in the West. Like his father, he had originally wor­ shipped Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, but his mother Helena was a Christian, and his sister Anastasia’s name means ‘Resurrection’. Constantine himself now moved towards Christianity. He achieved mastery o f R om e in October 312, defeating the rival Emperor M axentius at the Milvian Bridge outside Rom e. Constantine attributed this improbable victory to divine intervention, but just which divin­ ity he credited is a matter o f debate. Years later he told the historian Eusebius that while still in Gaul he had prayed before battle to Sol Invictus for help. Next day he had seen in the sky a cross o f light, and the words ‘In this [sign] conquer.’ For his struggle with Maxentius Constantine had banners made bearing this ‘labarum’, the cross being formed by the Greek monogram for Christ, the Chi R o : the emblem was painted on the shields o f his soldiers. Constantine was not a sophisticated man, and this identification o f the Unconquered Sun with Christ seems to have presented him with no problems. B y 312, however, Constantine was certainly widely believed to be a Christian. When the Arch o f Constantine was erected to commemorate his victory over Maxentius the inscription prudently omitted any mention o f the ‘ Immortal Gods’ , vaguely attributing his triumph to the ‘prompting o f the Divinity’ . His conversion to Chris­ tianity was probably gradual. The Chi R o symbol would not appear on his coins until 315, and for five years after his accession Constantine continued to issue coins depicting himself as a devotee o f the Uncon­ quered Sun, or carrying images o f the pagan gods. From the moment o f his accession, however, the fortunes o f Chris­ tianity throughout the empire changed for ever. Whatever the state o f his private conscience, Constantine had identified the Church not as the principle obstacle to unity and reform, but as its best hope. Chris­ tianity would provide imperial R om e with the common set o f values and the single cult which it so badly lacked. From a persecuted sect, Christianity became the most favoured religion. A stream o f edicts

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granted religious freedom ‘to Christians and all others’ (the order o f the words here was crucial). Confiscated Church property was returned (without compensation to the purchasers), Christian clergy were exempted from the responsibilities o f public office, and public funds were allocated for the work o f the Church. For the church in R om e, it was a bonanza beyond their wildest imaginings. The meagre early entries o f the official papal chronicle, the Liber Pontificalis, based on scraps o f half-remembered information or simply invented, suddenly explode into lavish detail in the entry for Pope Sylvester (314-35). Page after page lovingly enumerates Constantine’s benefactions, above all, the great basilican churches he would build in and around the city: a cathedral, baptistry and resi­ dence for the Pope at the Lateran, raised partly in the palace o f his wife Fausta and partly on the ruins o f the barracks o f the imperial horseguards, who, unluckily for them, had fought for Maxentius; the church o f Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in the old Sessorian Palace; the great cemetery churches on the Vatican over the shrine o f Peter, and at the third-century site o f the joint cult o f Peter and Paul, San Sebastiano. But the buildings were only the tip o f the iceberg. To maintain them, massive grants o f land and property were made — estates in Numidia, Egypt, in the Adriatic islands, on Gozo, farms in Tyre, Tarsus, Antioch, gardens, houses, bakeries, and baths in R om e itself. And then there was the avalanche o f precious metals: for the Lateran, seven silver altars, weighing 200 pounds apiece, over a hun­ dred silver chalices, a life-sized silver statue o f Christ enthroned, sur­ rounded by the twelve Aposdes and four angels with spears and je w ­ elled eyes, a chandelier o f gold hung with fifty dolphins; in the baptistry, a golden lamb and seven silver stags from which water poured into a porphyry font.13 These benefactions were intended to establish the worship o f Christ on a properly imperial footing. The Lateran basilica was immense, bigger than any o f the secular basilicas in the Forum, capa­ ble o f accommodating crowds o f up to 10,000. But Constantine drew back from the symbolic imposition o f Christianity in the his­ toric heart o f Rom e. His two main city churches, at the Lateran and at Santa Croce, were on the fringes, near the walls, not at the centre, and, like St Peter’s, they were built on imperial private property, not on public land. R om e remained pagan still, and Constantine’s depar­ ture in 324 for his new capital, Constantinople, at Byzantium on the

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Bosphorous and closer to the heartlands o f empire in the Eastern and Danube provinces, left the city to the domination o f conservative senatorial families. Their hereditary paganism was as precious to them as Protestantism would be to the Cabots and Lowells in nine­ teenth-century Boston, a mark o f true Romanitas and o f old money, and a witness against the vulgarity and populism o f the Emperor’s unpleasant new religion. For Constantine, Christianity meant concord, unity in the truth. G od had raised him up, he believed, to give peace to the whole civilised world, the oecumene, by the triumph o f the Church. As he rapidly discovered, however, the Church itself was profoundly divided.The providential instrument o f human harmony which God had placed in his hand turned out to be itself out o f tune. Undaunted, he set himself to restore the unity o f Christians, confi­ dent that for this, too, God had given him the empire. It was an aim and a confidence which his successors would share, and the imposi­ tion o f unity on the churches at ah costs became an imperial prior­ ity: ironically, it was a priority which set them on a collision course with the popes. Constantine’s first encounter with Christian division was not long in coming. In North Africa a new bishop o f Carthage, Caecilian, had been consecrated in ad 311, and one o f the officiating bishops was sus­ pected o f having handed over copies o f the Scriptures during the great persecution. In a now familiar move, hard-line Christians announced that Caecilian’s ordination was invalid because o f the involvement o f this traditor, and they set up their own bishop. Neighbouring bishops and congregations took sides, the hard-liners soon earning the name Donatists from their leading bishop, and once again the church in N orth Africa found itself deeply divided. Within six months o f his seizure o f power, Constantine had been approached by the Donatists, asking him to appoint bishops from Gaul (where there had been no traditores) to decide who was the true Bishop o f Carthage. This extraordinary appeal to an unbaptised emperor, whose con­ version to Christianity may well not yet have been known in Africa, was highly significant. It had long been the custom for disputes in the African church to be referred to the bishops o f R om e for arbitra­ tion or judgement, but this was an unattractive option for the Donatists, since Rom an theology denied that the involvement o f a ‘traitor’ bishop could invalidate a sacrament. Whether Constantine

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appreciated the politics o f the appeal to himself, rather than to Pope Miltiades (311—14), is doubtful, but he wrote to the Pope, command­ ing him to establish an inquiry in collaboration with three bishops from Gaul, and to report back to him. It was the first direct interven­ tion by an emperor in the affairs o f the Church. Caecilian and Donatus both came to R o m e for the hearing, but in the meantime Miltiades had taken steps to transform the commission o f inquiry into a more conventional synod, by summoning fifteen Italian bishops to sit with him and the Gallic bishops. Predictably, the synod excommunicated Donatus and declared Caecilian the true Bishop o f Carthage in October 313. Miltiades set about coaxing Donatist bishops back into mainstream or ‘Catholic’ communion by promising that they would be allowed to retain episcopal status. Doggedly, the Donatists appealed once more to Constantine, and once more he responded with scant respect for papal sensibilities. He summoned a council o f many bishops to Arles, appointing the bish­ ops o f Syracuse and Arles to oversee its proceedings. Miltiades had by now died and the new Pope, Sylvester I (314-35), did not travel to Arles. Nevertheless, with a better sense o f the Pope’s prerogative than the Emperor, the synod duly reported their proceedings in a deferen­ tial letter to Sylvester, lamenting that he had been unable to leave the city ‘where the Apostles to this day have their seats and where their blood without ceasing witnesses to the glory o f God’ .They asked the Pope to circulate their decisions to other bishops, a clear recognition o f his seniority. Constantine’s dismay at the divisions o f Christian North Africa was to be redoubled when, having overthrown the pagan rival Emperor in the East, Licinius, he moved to his new Christian capital, ‘N ew R o m e’, Constantinople. For the divisions o f Africa were as nothing compared to the deep rift in the Christian imagination which had opened in the East. It was begun in Egypt, by a presbyter o f Alexandria, Arius, famed for his personal austerities and his fol­ lowing among the nuns o f the city. Arius had been deposed by his Bishop for teaching that the Logos, the Word o f God which had been made flesh in Jesus, was not God himself, but a creature, infi­ nitely higher than the angels, though like them created out o f noth­ ing before the world began. Arius saw his teaching as a means o f rec­ onciling the Christian doctrine o f the Incarnation with the equally fundamental belief in the unity o f God. In fact, it emptied Christian­

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ity o f its central affirmation, that the life and death o f Jesus had power to redeem because they were G od’s very own actions. But the full implications o f Arianism were not at first grasped, and Arius attracted widespread support. A master-publicist, Arius rallied grass­ roots support by composing theological sea-shanties to be sung by the sailors and stevedores on the docks o f Alexandria. Theological debate erupted out o f the lecture-halls and into the taverns and bars o f the eastern Mediterranean. The theological issues were mostly lost on Constantine, though many o f the clergy he surrounded himself with were supporters o f Arius, including the fluffy-minded Bishop Eusebius o f Caesarea, his­ torian o f the Church and Constantine’s chosen official biographer. It was obvious, nonetheless, that something had to be done to settle a dispute that threatened to wreck Constantine’s vision o f Christianity as the cement o f empire. In 325 he summoned a council o f bishops to meet at Nicaea to resolve the issue. Only a handful ofWesterners attended, including the bishops o f Carthage and Milan. Pope Sylvester sent two priests to represent him. The Council o f Nicaea, summoned by the Emperor, who presided over some o f the sessions, was an event o f enormous signif­ icance for the Christian Church. In due course,‘ecumenical’ or gen­ eral councils, o f which this was the first, would come to be recog­ nised as having binding authority in matters o f faith. The Council was an unqualified disaster for the Arian party. Arius and his follow­ ers were condemned, and the Council issued a Creed containing the statement that Christ was ‘o f the same essence’ (homoousios) with the Father, a resounding affirmation o f his true divinity. Nicaea was the beginning, not the end, o f the Arian controversy. The defeated Arians had been frogmarched into agreement by an emperor determined to sew things up quickly. They were silenced, not persuaded, and after the Council was over, they regrouped and returned to the attack. Modified forms o f Arius’ teaching would win support throughout the Eastern empire for the next three genera­ tions, and Constantine’s son and successor in the East, Constantius, himself adopted Arian beliefs. Constantine remained firmly commit­ ted to the Nicene faith —it was, after all, his Council. But he longed for a settlement o f the disputes, and never abandoned hope that some form o f words could be found which would paper over the differ­ ences between the two sides. Constantine himself was finally bap­

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tised on his deathbed in 337 by his Arian chaplain, Eusebius o f N icomedia. His body lay in state in the white robe o f the newly baptised, and all around him his Empire began to fall to pieces. The chief defender o f the orthodox faith at Nicaea had been the deacon, Athanasius, from 328 Bishop o f Alexandria. Athanasius was the greatest theologian o f his age and a man o f epic stamina and courage, but he was undiplomatic to the point o f truculence, and as bishop he was not above strong-arm methods o f enforcing disci­ pline. In 335 his enemies, who were many, took the opportunity o f the forthcoming anniversary celebrations o f Constantine’s thirty years as emperor to call for the renewed pacification o f the Church. They persuaded Constantine that Athanasius had threatened to cut o ff Egyptian corn supplies to Constantinople i f the Emperor inter­ fered with him, and they succeeded in having Athanasius deposed, excommunicated and exiled to Gaul. One by one, his supporters were then picked off. These struggles convulsed the Christian East: the fierce monks o f the Egyptian deserts, led by St Anthony o f Egypt, rallied to Athana­ sius and the Nicene faith. But for a generation all this was heard in the West only as a faint echo. Western theologians did not trouble themselves with Greek subtleties, and Latin, which had replaced Greek as the language o f the Rom an church relatively late in the third century, did not yet even possess adequate technical terminol­ ogy to handle the debate properly. The Pope had played no part at Nicaea, though as a matter o f honour his legates signed the Conciliar decrees before all the bishops, immediately after the signature o f Hosius o f Cordoba, president o f the Council. But successive bishops o f R om e endorsed the teaching o f Nicaea, and saw support for Athanasius as support for the apostolic faith. As a stream o f Athana­ sius’ supporters made their way as refugees into the West, they were received with open arms at Rom e, sometimes without much scrutiny o f their theological views. In ad 339 Pope Julius (337-52) publicly received Athanasius himself into communion, and sum­ moned his Arian enemies, gathered at Antioch, to come to R om e for a council to resolve the issue. He received a stinging reply, delayed till the date he had set for the meeting in R om e had passed, challenging his right to receive into communion a man condemned by a synod o f Eastern bishops. Rom e, they conceded, was a famous church, well known for its orthodoxy. Nevertheless, all bishops were equal, and

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the basis o f R o m e’s spiritual authority, the Apostles Peter and Paul, had come there in the first place from the East. The Pope must choose the communion o f a handful o f heretics like Athanasius, or the majority o f the bishops o f the East. This was a direct challenge to the Pope’s authority. The gap between Eastern and Western perceptions o f the place o f R om e in the wider Church was clearly growing. Just how wide that gap might become was revealed three years later in 343, at the disastrous Coun­ cil o f Sardica. There had been a bloodbath in the imperial family as rivals scrabbled for power on the death o f Constantine, and the empire was now ruled by his two surviving sons. Constantius, in the East, was a declared Arian. Constans, who ruled the West from Milan, was an ardent Catholic, and a strong supporter o f Athanasius and Pope Julius. Worried by the theological rift which threatened the fragile unity and stability o f empire, the brothers agreed that a joint council o f East and West should be held at Sardica (modern Sofia in Bulgaria). Eighty bishops from each side attended, and the assembly was to be chaired by the leader o f the Western delegation, Hosius o f Cordoba, veteran president o f the Council o f Nicaea. Sardica was a fiasco, which widened the rift it had been called to heal. For a start, Athanasius and his friends were allowed to sit as equals among the Western bishops, despite the fact that the Arians now wanted their case reviewed by the Council. The enraged Easterners refused to enter the assembly, and set up their own rival council, which excommunicated Hosius, Athanasius and the Pope. In retaliation the Westerners restored Athanasius, excommunicated his leading oppo­ nents, passed a series o f canons defining R o m e’s right to act as a court o f final appeals in all matters affecting other bishops throughout the empire, and sent a dutiful letter to Julius as their ‘head, that is to the See o f Peter the Apostle’ .14 The Canons o f Sardica became fundamental to Rom an claims to primacy.They were inscribed in the records o f the Rom an church in a place o f honour immediately after those o f Nicaea, and in the course o f time they were mistakenly believed to have been enacted at Nicaea. The claim o f R om e to be head o f all the churches was thus thought to have the strong backing o f the first and greatest o f all the general councils. Over the next few years, the unwavering support o f Constans bolstered the Catholic party, and Constantius was even pressured into restoring Athanasius (briefly) to his see. But Constans was killed

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in 350, and Constantius became master o f the whole empire. It was a disaster for the Nicene faith, and for the papacy. Like his father, Constantius saw Christianity as an essential unifying force within the empire. The debates about the person o f Christ had to be solved, and he set about solving them by suppressing all support for Athanasius and the creed o f Nicaea. Pope Julius died in 352. He had handled the Arian troubles with a firm and steady courage, but also w ith tact and courtesy to his opponents. His successor, Liberius (352-66), a cleric with an enthusiastic following among the pious matrons o f R om e, was equally committed to the Nicene cause, but was a man o f less steadiness and skill. Lobbied by Eastern bishops to repudiate Athanasius, Liberius unwisely appealed to Constantius to summon a general council to reaffirm the faith o f Nicaea. Instead, at two synods, held at Arles in 353 and Milan in 355, Constantius armtwisted the assembled bishops into condemning Athanasius. The handful who refused were exiled from their sees. Liberius was appalled, and repudiated his own legates, w ho had caved in to pressure and subscribed to the condemnation o f Athana­ sius. The influential court eunuch Eusebius (not to be confused with Eusebius o f Caesarea) was sent to R om e to put pressure on the Pope. Liberius turned him away and, when he discovered that he had left an offering from the Emperor at the shrine o f St Peter, he had the gift cast out. To the Emperor he wrote that his opposition was not to uphold his own views, but the ‘decrees o f the Apostles:... I have suffered noth­ ing to be added to the bishopric o f the city o f R om e and nothing to be detracted from it, and I desire always to preserve and guard unstained that faith which has come down through so long a succes­ sion o f bishops, among whom have been many martyrs’.15 The enraged Emperor had the Pope arrested and taken north to Milan, where he confronted him. Arian clergy round the Emperor suggested that Liberius’ resistance was nothing more than a hint o f old Rom an republicanism, designed to curry favour with the Senate.The Emperor rebuked the Pope for standing alone in support o f Athanasius, when most o f the bishops had condemned him. Liberius reminded the Emperor that in the Old Testament Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego had stood alone against the idolatrous tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, and scandalised courtiers accused the Pope o f treason —‘You have called our Emperor a Nebuchadnezzar.’ The Pope remained firm, and was exiled to Thrace. In a final act o f defiance, he sent back the 500 gold

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pieces the Emperor had allocated for his journey expenses, suggesting, with a nod in the direction o f Judas, that they should be given to the Arian Bishop o f Milan.16 Liberius’ courageous conduct in the face o f imperial pressure pre­ figured the struggles between papacy and empire which would dominate the history o f medieval Europe. But his resolve did not last. Constantius detested Liberius, but knew he could not long retain control o f the Church without the support o f the Pope: the pressure was kept up. In the misery o f exile, surrounded by imperial clergy and far from home, Liberius weakened. H e agreed to the excommu­ nication o f Athanasius, and signed a formula which, while it did not actually repudiate the Nicene Creed, weakened it with the meaning­ less claim that the Logos was ‘like the father in being’ and in all things. In 358 he was finally allowed to return to Rom e. He found the city deeply divided. On Liberius’ exile in 355, the Emperor had installed a new pope, Liberius’ former archdeacon Felix. Consecrated by Arian bishops in the imperial palace in Milan, Felix was an obvious fellow traveller, but imperial patronage was a powerful persuader, and many o f the Rom an clergy had rallied to him. Constantius was now unwilling simply to repudiate Felix, and commanded that Liberius and he should function as joint bishops. The populace o f R om e would have none o f it. There was tumult in the streets in support o f Liberius, the crowds yelling ‘One God, one Christ, one bishop’, and Felix was forced to withdraw. He built him­ self a church in the suburbs, and lived there in semi-retirement, retaining a following among the city clergy and people. Liberius’ credibility had been badly damaged by his ignominious surrender in exile, but painfully he rehabilitated himself, helping to organise peace-moves among the moderates on both sides o f the Arian debate while insisting on loyalty to the Nicene formulas. Athanasius, i f he did not quite forgive him, attributed his fall to understandable frailty in the face o f pressure. Liberius’ successor Damasus (366-84), who had served as deacon under both Liberius and Felix, would inherit some o f the conse­ quences o f his predecessor’s exile. His election in 366 was contested, and he was confronted by a rival pope, Ursinus, whom he only got rid o f with the help o f the city police and a murderous rabble. Dama­ sus was a firm opponent o f Arianism and, with the support o f a new and orthodox emperor, would resolutely stamp out heresy within the

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city. But the street battles and massacres o f Ursinus’ supporters with which his pontificate had begun left him vulnerable to moral attack, and very much dependent on the goodwill and support o f the city and imperial authorities. Damasus was also wary o f taking sides in the quarrels which were still tearing apart the Church in the East. Hard-pressed supporters o f Nicaea in the East like Basil the Great repeatedly begged his support. Damasus stalled, and sent a series o f lofty letters eastwards, addressing his fellow bishops there not as ‘brothers’ , the traditional formula, but as ‘sons’ , a claim to superiority which was noticed and resented.With no intention o f embroiling himself in the nightmare complexities o f the Eastern theological debates, he thought the right procedure was for the bishops o f the East to establish their orthodoxy by signing Rom an formulas. His position was enormously strengthened by the accession as emperor o f the Spanish General Theodosius, a devout Catholic who detested Arianism and who in February 380 issued an edict requiring all the subjects o f the empire to follow the Christian religion ‘which Holy Peter delivered to the Romans . . . and as the Pontiff Damasus manifestly observes it’. In the following year Theo­ dosius summoned a general council at Constantinople — the first since Nicaea - and this Council, at which no Western bishops were present and to which Damasus did not even send delegates, suc­ ceeded in formulating a creed, incorporating the Nicene Creed, which provided a satisfactory solution to the Arian debates. This Constantinopolitan/Nicene Creed is still recited every Sunday at Catholic and Anglican eucharists. But, in addition to its doctrinal work, the Council o f Constantino­ ple issued a series o f disciplinary canons, which went straight to the heart o f Roman claims to primacy over the whole Church.The Coun­ cil decreed that appeals in the cases o f bishops should be heard within the bishop s own province - a direct rebuttal o f R o m e’s claim to be the final court o f appeal in all such cases. It went on to stipulate that ‘the Bishop o f Constantinople shall have the pre-eminence in honour after the Bishop o f Rom e, for Constantinople is new R om e’.17 This last canon was totally unacceptable to R om e for two reasons. In the first place it capitulated to the imperial claim to control o f the Church, since Constantinople had nothing but the secular status o f the city to justify giving it this religious precedence. Worse, however, the wording implied that the primacy o f R om e itself was derived not

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from its apostolic pedigree as the Church o f Peter and Paul, but from the fact that it had once been the capital o f empire. Damasus and his successors refused to accept the canons, and the following year a coun­ cil ofWestern bishops at R om e issued a rejoinder, declaring that the Rom an see had the primacy over all others because o f the Lord’s promise to Peter - ‘Tu es Petrus’ - and because both Peter and Paul had founded the see.The bishops went on to specify that if R om e was the first See o f Peter, then the second was not Constantinople, but Alexandria, because it had been founded from R om e by St Mark on the orders o f Peter, and the third in precedence was Antioch, because Peter had once been bishop there before he came to Rom e. Damasus’s pontificate exposed the growing rift between Eastern and Western perceptions o f the religious importance o f R om e. The troubles o f Liberius had made it clear that imperial oversight o f the Church, and the overwhelming imperial priority o f unification, might put Pope and Emperor at odds. But R om e itself was increas­ ingly remote from the centre o f imperial affairs. N o emperor since Constantine had lived in R om e, and even the Western emperors based themselves in the north —at Trier, Arles and especially Milan. M ilan had been the centre o f Constantius’ attempts to impose Arianism on the West, and an Arian bishop, Auxentius, remained in office till his death in 374. Auxentius was succeeded as bishop by an impeccably orthodox career civil servant, the unbaptised Governor o f the city, Ambrose, and it was Ambrose, not Damasus or his successor Siricius (384-99), who would become the dominant figure in the life o f the Western Church in the last quarter o f the fourth century. Ambrose set himself to increase the influence o f the see o f Milan, taking on the metropolitan role over the north Italian bishoprics formerly exercised by Rom e, involving himself in episcopal appointments as far away as the Balkans, attracting clergy and religious to the city from Piacenza, Bologna, even North Africa. He presided over the creation o f a series o f great churches which would establish Milan as a Christian capital, in a way which R om e itself, still dominated by paganism, could not hope to do. The Basilica Nova at Milan, now buried under the present Duomo, was a gigantic church, almost as big as the Pope’s cathedral church o f St John Lateran, and unique outside Rom e. Inheriting a bishopric in which Arianism was deeply entrenched, Ambrose set himself at the head o f a movement to restore Nicene orthodoxy, mobilising the bish­

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ops o f the West behind the Catholic cause. Above all, in a series o f con­ frontations with the imperial family he marked out the boundaries o f secular and ecclesiastical power, refusing to surrender any o f the city churches for the use o f Arian troops in the imperial army, denying the right o f the imperial courts to judge in ecclesiastical cases, preventing Church funds being used to rebuild a synagogue destroyed in a reli­ gious riot, and finally excommunicating the Emperor Theodosius for having ordered the punitive massacre o f civilians at Thessalonica after the murder o f an imperial official. Ambrose was the real leader o f the Western Church, and his biographer Paulinus significantly remarked o f him that he had ‘a concern for all the churches’, a Pauline text often invoked by the popes. The career o f Ambrose is a salutary reminder o f the limits o f the papal primacy in the age o f the great councils. But Ambrose’s domi­ nant position in Italy was built on a high doctrine o f the papacy, not on an attempt to erode it. He had been brought up as a child in Pope Liberius’ Rom e. A sister had taken the veil as a nun from Liberius’ hand in St Peter’s, and the Pope was a familiar visitor to the house. Ambrose had been fascinated as the women o f the family clustered around Liberius, kissing his hand, and the boy had amused and infu­ riated his relatives by imitating the Pope’s stately walk and offering his own hand to be kissed by the womenfolk. It was from Liberius’ career that he had his first lessons in resistance to imperial diktat, and there was nothing anti-papal about Ambrose’s campaign to increase the influence o f Milan. Indeed, the high prerogatives o f the papacy were vital to Ambrose, for he frequently justified his activities as being carried out on behalf o f the Pope. In 381 he masterminded the Council o f Aquilea, which had despatched a letter to the Emperor in support o f Damasus against the antipope Ursinus, in which R om e was described as ‘the head o f the whole Rom an world’ . From R om e flowed ‘the sacred faith o f the Apostles. . . and all the rights o f vener­ able communion’.18 N ot surprisingly, Ambrose’s Arian enemies saw him as Damasus’ toady, obsequiously buttering up the Pope to increase his own influence. For his part, Ambrose promoted the cult o f Peter and Paul in Milan as a pledge o f shared religious loyalty to the Apostles, and Damasus encouraged him by sending him relics o f the Apostles — the silver casket in which they came to Milan from R om e survives in the church o f San Nazaro. Ecclesiastically, Ambrose’s northern Italy was as yet a raw frontier. Its handful o f

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bishoprics were scattered over vast, largely pagan areas, and nothing bound them together, or to Milan, except their common allegiance to R om e and R om e’s Apostles. Ambrose’s dominance in the region reminds us o f the limitations o f the papacy’s leadership in the West, but it also reminds us o f the powerful symbolic and practical need for that leadership. If the fourth-century papacy had not existed, it would have had to be invented. IV

T he B irth of P apal R ome

The conversion o f Constantine had propelled the bishops o f R om e into the heart o f the Rom an establishment. Already powerful and influential men, they now became grandees on a par with the wealthiest senators in the city. Bishops all over the Rom an world would now be expected to take on the role o f judges, governors, great servants o f state. Even in provincial Africa Augustine would complain bitterly o f the devouring secular responsibilities o f the bishop. In the case o f the Bishop o f R om e, those functions were complicated by his leadership o f the Church in a pagan capital which was the symbolic centre o f the world, the focus o f the Rom an peo­ ple’s sense o f identity. Constantine washed his hands o f R om e in 324, and departed to create a Christian capital in the East. It would fall to the popes to create a Christian Rom e. They set about it by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, though to begin with nothing that rivalled the great imperial basilicas at the Lateran and St Peter’s. Over the next hundred years their churches advanced into the city — Pope Mark’s (336) San Marco within a stone’s throw o f the Capitol, Pope Liberius’ massive basilica on the Esquiline (now Santa Maria Maggiore), Pope Damasus’ Santa Anastasia at the foot o f the Palatine, Pope Julius’ foundation on the site o f the present Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santa Pudenziana near the Baths o f Diocletian under Pope Anastasius (399—401), Santa Sabina among the patrician villas on the Aventine under Pope Celestine (422-32). These churches were a mark o f the upbeat confidence o f postConstantinian Christianity in Rom e. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at

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home in the wealthy salons o f the city, he was also a ruthless powerbroker, and he did not hesitate to mobilise both the city police and the Christian mob to back up his rule. His election had been con­ tested, and he had prevailed by sheer force o f numbers - as the Liber Pontificalis put it, ‘they confirmed Damasus because he was the stronger and had the greater number o f supporters; that was how Damasus was confirmed’.19 Damasus’ grass-roots supporters included squads o f the notoriously hard-boiled Rom an fossores, cata­ comb diggers, and they massacred 137 followers o f the rival Pope Ursinus in street-fighting that ended in a bloody siege o f what is now the church o f Santa Maria Maggiore. Damasus and Ursinus were competing for high stakes: as the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus commented sardonically, I do not deny that men who covet this office in order to fulfil their ambitions may well struggle for it with every resource at their disposal. For once they have obtained it they are ever after secure, enriched with offerings from the ladies, riding abroad seated in their carriages, splendidly arrayed, giving banquets so lavish that they surpass the tables o f royalty.. .20 Ammianus’ gibe about gifts from rich women was no random shot. An imperial decree in 370 forbade clerics from visiting the houses o f rich widows or heiresses, and Damasus himself was nick­ named matronamm auriscalpius, ‘the ladies’ ear-tickler’ . But the new worldliness o f the Rom an church and its bishops was not the sole invention o f its clergy. Since the mid third century there had been a growing assimilation o f Christian and secular culture. It is already in evidence long before Constantine in the art o f the Christian burialsites round the city, the Catacombs. With the imperial adoption o f Christianity, this process accelerated. In Damasus’ Rom e, wealthy Christians gave each other gifts in which Christian symbols went alongside images ofVenus, nereids and sea-monsters, and representa­ tions o f pagan-style wedding-processions. This Romanisation o f the Church was riot all a matter ofworldliness, however.The bishops o f the imperial capital had to confront the Rom an character o f their city and their see. They set about finding a religious dimension to that Romanitas which would have profound implications for the nature o f the papacy. Pope Damasus in particular took this task to heart. He set himself to interpret R om e’s past in the light not o f pagan­

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ism, but o f Christianity. He would Latinise the Church, and Christianise Latin. He appointed as his secretary the greatest Latin scholar o f the day, the Dalmatian presbyter Jerome, and commissioned him to turn the crude dog-Latin o f the Bible versions used in church into something more urbane and polished. Jerome’s work was never completed, but the Vulgate Bible, as it came to be called, rendered the scriptures o f ancient Israel and the early Church into an idiom which Romans could recog­ nise as their own.The covenant legislation o f the ancient tribes was now cast in the language o f the Rom an law-courts, and Jerome’s version o f the promises to Peter used familiar Rom an legal words for binding and loosing —ligare and solvere —which underlined the legal character o f the Pope’s unique claims. For Damasus, the glory o f the saints had to be naturalised as Rom an. Many o f R o m e’s martyrs had come from elsewhere, but their deaths in the city had made them honorary citizens. He col­ lected and reburied the bodies o f the great saints, composing verse inscriptions for the new tombs which were carved in a specially devised lettering based on classical models. His inscription for the joint shrine o f Peter and Paul at San Sebastiano is typical, and it direcdy tackled the claim made by the Eastern bishops in Pope Julius’ time, that Peter and Paul belonged to the Christian East just as much as to Rom e: ‘Whoever you may be that seek the names o f Peter and Paul, should know that here the saints once dwelt. The East sent the disciples - that we readily admit. But on account o f the merit o f their blood . . . R om e has gained the superior right to claim them as citizens. Damasus would thus tell your praises, you new stars.’21 The pagan love o f R om a Aeterna, the Eternal City, took on a new and specifically Christian meaning, which attached itself to the papacy, and its inheritance from Peter and Paul. This was not achieved without struggle, most famously the confrontation with the pagan senators led by Symmachus in 384 to preserve the pagan Altar ofVictory in the Senate. Damasus mobilised Ambrose to lobby on his behalf in Milan, and the altar was abolished, leaving the statue o f the Goddess to be reinterpreted by later ages as an angel. Prudentius, the great Latin hymn-writer, though well aware o f the persistence o f paganism among the conservative senatorial families, celebrated R om e as the capital o f a world united in the Christian faith: ‘Grant then, Christ, to your Romans a Christian city, a capital Christian like the rest o f the world. Peter and Paul shall drive out Jupiter.’ In the

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visual equivalent o f Prudentius’ prayer, the Apostles appear in the togas o f Rom an senators in the apse-mosaic o f the church o f Santa Pudenziana, built at the end o f the fourth century.22 The Romanisation o f the papacy was more than a matter o f external decoration. Self-consciously, the popes began to model their actions and their style as Christian leaders on the procedures o f the Rom an state. In the last months ofDamasus’ life the Bishop ofTarragona in Spain wrote to the Pope with a series o f queries about the ordering o f the day-today life o f the Church. Damasus died before the letter could be answered, and it was one o f the first items across the desk o f his succes­ sor, Pope Siricius (384-99).The Pope replied in the form o f a decretal, modelled direedy on an imperial rescript, and, like the rescripts, provid­ ing authoritative rulings which were designed to establish legal prece­ dents on the issues concerned. Siricius commended the Bishop for con­ sulting R om e ‘as to the head o f your body’, and instructed him to pass on the ‘salutary ordinances we have made’ to the bishops o f all the sur­ rounding provinces, for no ‘priest o f the Lord is free to be ignorant o f the statutes o f the Apostolic See’.23 Siricius quite clearly had no sense that he was inventing anything, as his references to the ‘general decrees’ o f his predecessors show: it may be that this form o f reply to enquiries had already become routine.Yet his letter is a symptom o f the adoption by the popes o f an idiom and a cast o f mind which would help to shape the whole mental world o f Western Christendom.The apostolic stability o f Rom e, its testimony to ancient truth, would now be imagined not simply as the handing on o f the ancient paradosis, the tradition, but specifically in the form o f lawgiving. Law became a major preoccupation o f the Rom an church, and the Pope was seen as the Church’s supreme lawgiver. As Pope Innocent 1 (401-17) wrote to the bishops o f Africa, ‘it has been decreed by a divine, not a human authority, that whatever action is taken in any o f the provinces, however distant or remote, it should not be brought to a conclusion before it comes to the knowledge o f this see, so that every decision may be affirmed by our authority’. 24 This serene confidence in the Rom an see was maintained in part by the immersion o f the Rom an clergy in a distinctive mental world. R ound the papal household there developed a whole clerical culture, staffed by men drawn often from the Rom an aristocracy, intensely self-conscious and intensely proud o f their own tradition —Jerome dubbed them ‘the senate’. Damasus himself was a product o f this

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world, the son o f a senior Rom an priest who had himself founded a titulus church. Pope Boniface was the son o f a Rom an priest, Innocent I was the son o f his predecessor as pope, Anastasius I (399-401), and had served his father as deacon. Indeed it was routine for the Pope to be elected by the senior clergy from among the seven deacons .The deacons dressed like the Pope himself in the distinctive wide-sleeved dalmatic with its two purple stripes, and they formed the heart o f the papal administration —Boniface I (418-22) Leo I (440—61), and Felix III (483-92) were all succeeded by their archdeacons. In this clerical world, memories were long, and records were carefully kept.The tra­ dition o f R om e was thought o f as part o f the law o f God, and pre­ served accordingly.‘The rules rule us,’ declared Celestine I (422—32), ‘we do not stand over the rules: let us be subject to the canons’ .2$ These claims went largely unchallenged in the West, and even in strife-torn Africa, though interventions there by the inexperienced and clumsy Greek Pope Zosimus (417—18) caused a good deal o f resentment. B y and large, Innocent I’s conviction that the faith had been sent from the Apostles at R om e to the rest o f Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa and Sicily was accepted, and R o m e’s theoretical and practical primacy acknowledged in consequence. In practice, however, that primacy was experienced, and understood, quite differently in differ­ ent regions o f the West. In most o f peninsular Italy, the Pope was in effect the sole Archbishop, and his power was wide-ranging and very direct.The popes called and presided at synods, ordained the bishops, intervened to regulate discipline and enforce the canons. Outside Italy, this metropolitan authority obtained directly only in those parts o f the West where the popes had succeeded in establishing and main­ taining vicariates, a succession o f local episcopal representatives through whom they exercised supervision —at Arles in Gaul in the fourth century, revived in the sixth century under Pope Symmachus (498—514), in Illyria (the Balkan region) from the late fourth century, and briefly for Spain at Seville under Pope Simplicius (468—83). These apostolic vicars were thought o f as sharing the papal ‘care for all the churches’ , and the popes permitted them to wear the distinc­ tive papal white woollen stole or ‘pallium’ as a sign o f their co-oper­ ation in the papal ministry. Elsewhere, the Pope’s authority was that o f the Patriarch o f the West, on a par with that o f the patriarchs o f Alexandria, Antioch and, eventually, Constantinople and Jerusalem, over their regions. The

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Pope’s patriarchal authority was uniquely enhanced by the added prestige o f Peter’s authority. That prestige, however, was a matter o f moral authority rather than o f administrative power. It was occa­ sional rather than constant, for the regional churches governed themselves, elected their own bishops without reference to R om e, held their own synods, ordered their own life and worship. R om e was important not as a daily presence, but as a fundamental resource, the only apostolic see in the West, above all functioning as a court o f appeal in special circumstances.This last function was to be crucial in the emergence o f papal theory: the ‘case-law’ built up in the course o f such appeals was formalised in the decretals or letters containing the decisions ,of successive popes. In due course the decretals would be collected, and would play a key role in shaping Western thought about the Church, and the central place o f the papacy in it. For the churches o f Gaul, Africa and Spain, therefore, the charac­ teristic expression o f papal primacy was not a matter o f executive rule from Rom e, which they would certainly have rejected. Instead, the Petrine ministry was experienced in the form o f occasional interventions, almost always in response to local requests, designed to give the added solemnity o f apostolic authority to the decisions and actions o f the local churches. During the controversy over the teach­ ings o f Pelagius on free will and grace, for example, St Augustine and his fellow African bishops sent an account o f the synodal decisions to Pope Innocent I. In pouring ‘our little trickle back into your amplp fountain’ , Augustine wrote, ‘we wish to be reassured by you that this trickle o f ours, however scant, flows from the same fountain-head as your abundant stream, and we desire the consolation o f your writ­ ings, drawn from our common share o f the one grace’ .26 The African bishops, it should be noticed, had asked not for guidance, but for a clinching final endorsement o f their own decisions, a recognition that the doctrinal question had in fact been settled —that, in Augus­ tine’s words, causa finita est (‘the debate is over’). Revealingly, how­ ever, Pope Innocent treated their letter as a request not for a seal o f approval, but for an authoritative decision. Where the strongly colle­ gial language o f the African bishops spoke o f the stream o f their authority and that o f R om e issuing from the same source, Innocent spoke o f all streams as issuing from Rom e. It was a difference o f emphasis full o f significance for the future claims o f the papacy. In the East it was yet another matter. There the papal primacy o f

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honour derived from the succession to Peter, was indeed acknowl­ edged, but the practical consequences the popes deduced from it were ignored or denied outright. R om e was seen as the senior patri­ archate, one o f five, the Pentarchy, whose harmony and agreement was the fundamental apostolic underpinning o f the Church’s author­ ity. In Eastern thought, for example, the recognition o f a council by the Pentarchy came to be seen as the decisive mark o f a ‘general’ council, whereas, in the West, recognition by the Pope alone was the crucial criterion. Above all, the claim o f Constantinople to be ‘N ew R o m e ’ was a constant threat to papal primacy, which the popes actively tried to counteract. From the 380s onwards the popes estab­ lished a vicariate at Thessalonica, giving the Bishop extensive dele­ gated powers in the appointment o f new bishops and related matters, to prevent traditional papal influence in the Balkans passing to C on­ stantinople. This vicariate was threatened in 421 when the Eastern Emperor transferred ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the area, now an official part o f the Eastern empire, to the Patriarch. Pope Boniface fought a successful rearguard action to preserve his rights there, asserting papal oversight o f all the churches, even in the East. All these developments came together in the most remarkable Pope o f the early church, Leo the Great (440-61), elected after acting as an extremely influential deacon under Celestine and Sixtus III (432-40). Leo, though not a Rom an by birth, took on himself the mantle o f Romanitas which had become the distinctive mark o f the popes o f late antiquity. He kept the anniversary o f his consecration, 29 September, as his ‘birthday’, and in a series o f sermons preached then and on the feasts o f Peter and Paul he hammered home the identity o f the papacy with Peter. Leo’s sense o f this identity was almost mystical. Peter was eternally present in Peter’s see, and Leo, though an ‘unworthy heir’, was the inheritor o f all Peter’s prerogatives. Indeed, Peter himself spoke and acted in all that Leo did - ‘And so i f anything is rightly done and rightly decreed by us, i f anything is won from the mercy o f God by our daily supplications, it is o f his work and merit whose power lives and whose authority prevails in his See.’To be under the authority o f Peter was simply to be under the authority o f Christ, and to repudiate the authority o f Peter was to put oneself outside the mystery o f the Church.27 For Leo, the coming o f Peter to the centre o f empire had been a providential act, designed so that from R om e the Gospel might spread to all the world. Christian R om e, refounded on Peter and Paul

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as ancient R om e had been founded on Romulus and Remus, was the heart o f the Church. Leo acted on these convictions, harnessing his immense talents to strengthening papal authority throughout the West. His surviving correspondence reveals the sheer range o f his activities —long letters o f admonition to the bishops o f Africa, Gaul and Italy, combating heresy, rebuking deviation from Rom an customs, prescribing reme­ dies for schism, disorder and irregularities in clerical appointment and conduct. He strengthened papal control over Milan and the north Italian bishoprics. When Hilary o f Arles stepped out o f line by assuming patriarchal powers over the bishops o f Gaul, he confined him to his own diocese, and mobilised the Emperor o f the West into a formal recognition o f papal jurisdiction over all the Western churches. Leo was intensely conscious o f his own responsibility for ensuring the teaching o f the orthodox faith. He took vigorous meas­ ures against the Manichees in Rom e, using the police against them as well as ecclesiastical censures, and he organised the bishops o f Spain against the Priscillianist heresy there. Leo had not a word o f Greek, but he had made many Eastern con­ tacts while still a deacon. As pope he worked to extend papal influence in the East, though he was conscious o f the need to tread carefully. He savagely rebuked Anastasius, the Bishop o f Thessalonica, his vicar in Illyricum, for overstepping his powers, invading the rights o f the local metropolitans (archbishops with jurisdiction over the other bishops o f a province), and generally offending the local bishops. Anastasius was merely a representative, he insisted, and did not have the plenitudo potestatis, the fullness o f power, which was Peter’s, and Leo’s. Leo’s extensive use o f the language o f intervention and o f author­ ity, however, was not a matter o f domination, nor o f the simple exer­ tion o f power. His writings are also characterised by a language o f service, and in them the Petrine ministry is seen as a vocation to vig­ ilance on behalf o f the whole Church, a commission to ensure that all is according to the traditions o f the Apostles and the canons o f the Church. ‘If we do not watch with the vigilance which is incumbent upon us,’ he declared, ‘we could not excuse ourselves to Him who willed that we should be the sentinel.’ The prerogatives o f R om e are gifts for the building up o f the whole Christian community: ‘The Lord shows a special care for Peter and prays in particular for the faith o f Peter, as i f the future situation would be more secure for oth­

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ers i f the spirit o f the leader remains unconquered. Thus in Peter the courage o f all is fortified and the aid o f divine grace is so arranged that the strength which comes to Peter through Christ, through Peter is transmitted to the Apostles’ .28 It was heresy in the East which provided the opportunity for the greatest single exercise o f papal ministry as Leo understood it. In 431 a general council at Ephesus had affirmed the divinity o f Christ by declaring that M ary his mother was not merely the mother o f Jesus, but ‘the God bearer’, ‘Mother o f G od’ . In the wake o f Ephesus, dis­ pute had arisen about the precise nature o f the union o f the divine and human in Christ. Was Jesus’ human nature absorbed into his divine nature? Were there two natures in him after the incarnation, human and divine - in which case was Christ really divine —or just one — in which case was he really human? The disputes became as fraught as the Arian problem had ever been, and combatants on both sides looked to R om e for support. One o f them, Eutyches, taught that there was only one nature in Christ after the Incarnation, and that as a result his humanity was fundamentally different from ours. W hen this man appealed to Leo, the Pope was horrified. He com­ posed a treatise on the Incarnation, refuting Eutyches and teaching that in Christ there are two natures, human and divine, unmixed and unconfused, yet permanently and really united in a single person, so that it is possible to attribute to the humanity o f Jesus all the actions and attributes o f his divinity, and vice versa. This ‘Tome’ , which took the form o f a letter to Flavian, Bishop o f Constantinople, was not particularly original, but it was clear, precise and strikingly phrased, and it became the basis for the settlement o f the question at the General Council o f Chalcedon in 451, at which L eo’s legates presided. The Council Fathers greeted the reading o f L eo’s document with enthusiasm, declaring that ‘Peter had spoken through Leo.’ This was no more than Leo’s belief about all papal utterances, and he took the view that the Council adopted his teach­ ing because it was the teaching o f the Pope. Since the time o f Damasus, Rom an theologians had considered that it was papal endorse­ ment which gave general councils their special authority and marked them off from other assemblies o f bishops. The bishops at Chal­ cedon, however, made no such assumption. They acknowledged the special dignity and honour o f the apostolic see, but they did not therefore assume that whatever its bishop said must be true, and

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seemed to have believed that on this particular occasion Peter had spo­ ken through Leo. They had adopted his solution to the problem, therefore, not merely because it was his, but because they judged it true. To underline this, in canon 28 o f the Council they restated the teaching o f the Council o f Constantinople that Constantinople took precedence after R om e ‘because it is new R o m e’ .There could not have been a clearer demonstration o f the gap between Eastern and Western views o f the papacy, and Leo delayed his acceptance o f Chalcedon for two years on the strength o f it. Leo the Great gave the papacy its definitive form in the classical world, and set the pattern o f its later claims. Already around him the ruin o f ancient R om e was visible, as barbarian armies, once viewed as potential recruits for the Rom an legions, ravaged Italy. He had witnessed the sack o f R om e by Goths in 410, an event which had rocked the civilised world. Jerome, far away in his hermitage in the Holy Land, thought it the end o f the world. When he tried to dictate a letter on the subject, he could not speak for tears: capta est urbs quae totum cepit orhem — captured is the city which once held the whole world captive. Worse was to come, however. In 452 ‘for the sake o f the Rom an name’ , as the Liber Pontificalis expresses it, Leo had to travel to Mantua to persuade Attila the Hun to turn back his armies from Rom e, and, miraculously, he succeeded. In 455, however, the best he could manage was to persuade the armies o f Gaiseric the Vandal to content themselves with looting the city, and not to put it to the torch. For fourteen days, R om e lay at their mercy. W hen they had gone, he set himself to patch up the damage, melting down silver ornaments at St Peter’s from the great days o f Constantinian R om e to make chalices for the devastated city’s churches. R om e, for Leo, was indeed the caput orbis, the head o f the world. But it was Christian R om e which was the Eternal City, not the thousand-year old wonder that he saw dissolving around him. The empire had been born so that Christianity might triumph. The spir­ itual R om e, built on the blood o f the Apostles and alive in Peter’s heir and spokesman, could not be ruined. Even in the palmy days o f Constantine’s conversion, the popes had had to make a distinction between Church and empire, for all around them the signs o f empire were pagan. The trials o f Pope Liberius and the defiance o f Ambrose had taught the churches o f the West that God and Caesar, allied as they might be, were not the same. In Leo’s vision o f the papacy as the

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head o f an imperium which was not o f this world, the Church had found an ideal which would carry it through the collapse o f the clas­ sical world, and into the future.

C H A P T E R TW O

B E T W E E N TW O E M P I R E S 461-1000

I

U nder G othic K ings

In the year 476 the last Emperor o f the West was deposed by the Ger­ manic General Odoacer the Rugian, and Italy became a barbarian kingdom. The change from empire to kingdom, from toga to trousers, however, was to take generations to make its full imaginative impact. The barbarian kings o f Italy pursued their own interests, but they ruled, to begin with at least, in the name o f the distant Emperor in Constantinople, maintaining and honouring the Rom an Senate, and accepting the honorific title ‘Patrician o f the Romans’ . Even Odoacer’s ferocious successor Theoderic, a man who could sign his own name only with the help o f a stencil cut from a plate o f gold, accepted and exploited the fiction o f empire. Theoderic adopted Rom an dress, and his coinage carried the image o f the Emperor. The Gothic kings based themselves on the Adriatic coast, in the old capi­ tal o f the Western empire at Ravenna, and the glamour o f R om e per­ sisted. As Theoderic himself declared, ‘Any Goth who can, wants to be a Rom an: no Rom an wants to be a Goth.’ The papacy was the West’s most concrete link with the Rom an past and with the living empire. Inheritors o f Leo’s vision o f Christ­ ian R om e as the providential instrument o f God, first citizens o f the ancient capital and the most powerful men in central Italy, the popes led the Senate in honouring the Emperor’s image at the inauguration o f each new reign. The popes looked east, and their loyalty to the Emperor was increased by the fact that the kings o f Italy were Arians, heretics who denied the divinity o f Christ. Gothic supremacy in northern Italy decimated the Catholic hierarchy there, and the Popes’ authority cut no ice with Theoderic’s Arian bishops. In such a situation the papacy might easily have come to seem no

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more than a Byzantine chaplaincy within barbarian Italy. But all was not well between Pope and Emperor, for in the late fifth century Constantinople and R om e were in conflict over fundamental Chris­ tian beliefs. The Council o f Chalcedon owed its fundamental teach­ ing to the Tome o f Pope Leo, and the Church o f R om e took the teachings o f the Council o f Chalcedon as the definitive expression o f the Christian faith. Chalcedon had asserted both the full divinity o f Jesus Christ, and his full humanity, two natures joined without con­ fusion in one person. For Western theologians this ‘two natures’ for­ mulation was an essential safeguard o f Christ’s solidarity with the human race he had come to redeem - it proclaimed the real involve­ ment o f human nature in the process o f salvation. For many Eastern Christians, by contrast, to emphasise a two-nature Christology was to deny the reality o f Christ’s divinity, and to threaten the overwhelm­ ing truth that in the man Jesus the eternal God himself had suffered and died. For Christians o f this outlook, Christ’s humanity was absorbed and overwhelmed within the majesty o f his divine nature, like a drop o f water mingled in a cup o f wine. Huge areas o f the empire subscribed to this anti-Chalcedonian one-nature (in Greek, ‘monophysite’) theology, especially Egypt, where it had the backing o f many o f the desert monks. The Eastern emperors, struggling to hold their scattered dominions together, could not afford to ignore or alienate monophysite feeling, least o f all the cornfields o f Egypt, the bread-basket o f the whole empire. And so successive emperors pursued a desperate search for compromise. In 484 Acacius, Patriarch o f Constantinople, adopted a pro-monophysite theology. He was supported by the Emperor Zeno, and R om e and Constantinople broke o ff communion with each other. Outrageously, the papal writ o f excommunication was actually pinned to patriarch Acacius’ robes by pro-Chalcedonian monks as he celebrated Mass. This so-called Acacian schism, dividing East and West, was to last for thirty-five years. The popes, therefore, might loathe the barbarian kings, and long for closer links with a Catholic empire. In practice, however, the emperors were suspect, supporters o f heresy. This suspicion led the popes to make an increasingly sharp distinction between the secular and the sacred, and to resist imperial claims to authority over the Church. Pope Gelasius (492—6) saw himself as a loyal citizen o f the empire, and declared that ‘as a Rom an born, I love, respect and hon­

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our the Rom an Emperor’. But he did not bother to inform the Emperor Anastasius o f his election, and he made clear the limits o f his obedience: There are, most august Emperor, two powers by which this world is chiefly ruled: the sacred authority o f bishops and the royal power. O f these the priestly power is much more important, because it has to render account for the kings o f men themselves at the judgement seat o f God. For you know, most gracious son, that although you hold the chief place o f dignity over the human race, yet you must submit yourself in faith to those w ho have charge o f divine things, and look to them for the means o f your salvation.You know that it behoves you, in matters concerning the reception and reverent administration o f the sacraments, to be obedient to ecclesiastical authority, instead o f seeking to bend it to your w ill.. .And i f the hearts o f the faithful ought to be submit­ ted to priests in general. . . how much more ought assent be given to him who presides over that See which the most high G od him­ self desired to be pre-eminent over all priests, and which the pious judgement o f the whole Church has honoured ever since?1 This was not the sort o f language Anastasius was accustomed to hearing from the docile court bishops o f the East. Gelasius, however, set the tone for imperial-papal relations in the decades that followed. Anastasius was a devout amateur theologian, and had once even been considered as a candidate for the vacant bishopric o f Antioch. He did not take kindly to these papal harangues, and in 517 told Pope Hormisdas (514-23) , ‘You may thwart me, reverend sir, you may insult me: but you may not command me.’2 For the Gothic regime at Ravenna, tension between R om e and Constantinople was good news. King Theoderic was an Arian, but he was also a wise and indulgent ruler to his Catholic subjects, and he cultivated good relations with successive popes.These overtures got a mixed reception in Rom e, where the Senate and the wealthy Rom an families longed for reconciliation with Byzantium and the restoration o f the empire in Italy. Divisions between pro-Gothic and Byzantine factions within both Senate and the clergy came to a head after the death o f Pope Anastasius II (496—8), and led to the election o f rival popes. The Archpriest Laurence was the candidate favoured by the aristocratic laity, anxious at all costs for reconciliation with the

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Emperor, and willing to make doctrinal concesssions to achieve it. The clergy’s candidate was the deacon Symmachus, unusually at this late date a convert from paganism, and a stern upholder o f Rom an doctrinal purity and papal claims. The population o f R om e took sides on the issue, and to end the ensuing bloodshed the rival candi­ dates presented themselves for arbitration in Ravenna before King Theoderic. According to the papal chronicler, Theoderic ‘made the fair decision that the one who was ordained first and whose faction was found to be the largest should hold the apostolic see’ , but it can hardly be a coincidence that this turned out to be the anti-Byzantine, pro-Goth Symmachus (498-514). Laurence was bundled off to a con­ solation bishopric at Nuceria. The spectacle o f a heretical barbarian arbitrating a disputed papal election did not bode well for imperial authority in Italy. But pressure was building at Constantinople for the resolution o f the breach with R om e. Theology dominated the public imagina­ tion in fifth-century Constantinople, as football or baseball does that o f modern Manchester or N ew York. Even the circus teams, the Greens and the Blues, adopted theological slogans. Though the Emperor was an ardent monophysite, most o f the population o f Constantinople supported the teaching o f Chalcedon. W hen monophysite additions were made to the liturgy in the chapel royal and in the cathedral o f Hagia Sophia, bloody riots broke out. R am ­ paging mobs terrorised the city in support o f the two-natures the­ ology. Anastasius was forced to seek a reconciliation with Sym­ machus’ successor, Pope Hormisdas, inviting him to preside over a synod in Thrace to sort out their differences. Neither the Pope nor the Emperor was prepared to compromise, however. The deadlock was broken by Anastasius’ sudden death, and the proclamation o f a Latin-speaking peasant soldier, Justin, as his succes­ sor. Justin was a no-nonsense Chalcedonian Catholic with a simple faith: he had litde patience with fine theological distinctions. Riding a tide o f popular support, he forced the Eastern bishops to accept a formula drawn up by Pope Hormisdas, condemning Acacius and his teaching and acknowledging the authority o f Chalcedon. The for­ mula, which cited Christ’s words to Peter in Matthew 16, Tu es Petrus, recognised the primacy o f R om e, as the apostolic see in which the true faith had always been preserved, and made commun­ ion with R om e the essential test o f membership o f the Catholic

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Church. It was a tremendous coup for the papacy, and thirteen cen­ turies later the ‘Formula o f Hormisdas’ would be cited by the First Vatican Council as proof o f papal infallibility.3 Predictably, this settlement caused consternation in the East, but it marked the beginning o f a real reconciliation between empire and papacy. Justin, and his nephew Justinian, who dominated his uncle and succeeded him in 527, were determined to restore imperial direct rule in Italy. Reconciliation with the papacy was fundamental to this plan. Theoderic recognised what was happening, and in the years before his death in 526 became paranoid about anything that smacked o f proByzantine feeling, which he interpreted as treason. In 524 he had his trusted adviser the philosopher Boethius garrotted in prison for alleged treasonable correspondence with Constantinople. Theoderic thought o f himself as the protector ofArian Christians everywhere. He watched with rage as the Emperor Justin’s zeal for the Catholic faith overflowed into a campaign against heresy in the East. The Emperor confiscated Arian churches and had them recon­ secrated for Catholic worship. Arian Gothic populations under imperial rule were forcibly converted to Catholicism. Determined to stop this policy, the King summoned Hormisdas’ pro-imperial suc­ cessor, Pope John I (523—6), to Ravenna. The Pope was ordered to lead a deputation o f senators and ex-consuls to Constantinople. He was to persuade the Emperor to end the persecution, return the con­ fiscated churches and allow the forcibly converted to resume their Arian beliefs. This mission was a deep humiliation for the Pope, w ho felt acutely the contradiction o f his position, the teacher o f orthodoxy forced to act as apologist for heretics. With considerable courage, John flatly refused to ask the Emperor to allow converts to revert to heresy. He did however agree to seek toleration for existing Arian populations, and to ask for an end to the confiscations o f church buildings. Despite his great age and failing health, he set off for C on ­ stantinople early in 526, arriving there just before Easter (19 April), the first Pope to make the journey to Constantinople. Once there, what had begun as a humiliation turned into a tri­ umph, for the Pope was received as a hero. The whole city came out to the twelfth milestone to greet him, and the Emperor treated him with ostentatious reverence, prostrating himself on the ground before him in a gesture which would have gladdened the heart o f

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Pope Gelasius. On Easter Day John was installed in Hagia Sophia on a throne higher than that o f the Patriarch, he celebrated Mass before the Emperor in Latin, not Greek, and using the ritual customs o f R om e, not Constantinople: he was allowed to place the Easter crown on the Emperor’s head, an honour normally reserved for the Patri­ arch. The clerks o f the papal chancery, hardened to Eastern rejection o f R o m e’s Petrine claims, recorded ecstatically the honours heaped on the Pope by the Emperor, and the gratitude o f the Greeks for being able ‘to receive in glory the vicar o f St Peter the Apostle’ .4 Justin agreed to suspend hostilities against the Arians and return their churches, but the Emperor refused to allow the forcibly con­ verted Arians to return to their damnable errors. This, however, was the element o f the embassy which mattered most to Theoderic.The Pope and senatorial party returned to Ravenna to find the K ing con­ vinced that they had not seriously attempted to secure real conces­ sions from the Emperor, and maddened by accounts o f the Pope’s tri­ umphant reception and the Rom an party’s delight in it.Worn out by the journey and shattered by the K ing’s furious hostility, John died within days o f his arrival in Ravenna. His body, carried in state back to R om e for burial in St Peter’s, immediately became the focus o f miraculous healings. Yet popes retained their uses for the Gothic kings. As preparations mounted in Constantinople for a campaign to reclaim the West, the court at Ravenna looked for ways to buy time. The shortlived Pope Agapitus I (535—6) seemed a likely ally. Agapitus was an aristocrat from a distinguished Rom an clerical dynasty, and a scholar deeply read in the Church Fathers. He was a stern disciplinarian, who risked offending the Emperor Justinian by taking a hard line over the reha­ bilitation o f the Arian Goths o f North Africa, now being forcibly recatholicised in the wake o f Count Belisarius’ triumphant imperial reconquest there. From Ravenna, Agapitus looked like a pro-Gothic pope, andTheodohad, the last Gothic K ing o f Italy, sent him to C on ­ stantinople to try to deflect Justinian’s preparations for the imminent invasion designed to restore imperial rule in Italy. Justinian soon made it clear to the Pope that the reinvasion o f Italy was not negotiable, and it is doubtful i f Agapitus tried very hard to dissuade him. On the theological front, however, the Pope swept all before him. Justinian’s forceful wife Theodora was an ex-actress with a lurid sexual reputation for wearing out relays o f athletic young

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courtiers. She was also a devout monophysite, who kept a monastery o f heretical monks in the imperial palace. Theodora exercised enor­ mous influence over Justinian, and had secured the appointment o f a monophysite, Anthimous, as patriarch o f Constantinople. Pope Agapitus determined to have nothing to do with this man, refusing to hold communion with him, and, when threatened by the angry Emperor for his truculence, he was unintimidated. He had long wanted to meet the devout Justinian, he declared: instead, he seemed to stand before the pagan persecutor Diocletian. He demanded a public debate with the Patriarch, at which he had little difficulty in demonstrating Anthimous’ suspect opinions. Overawed, Justinian ‘abased himself before the apostolic see, prostrating himself before the blessed Pope Agapitus’ . He agreed to the deposition and exile o f the Patriarch, and invited the Pope to consecrate an orthodox replacement, who testified his faith by signing an expanded version o f the formula o f Pope Hormisdas.The Patriarch o f Constantinople bowed to the superior doctrinal purity o f the Pope o f Rom e. Agapitus, however, did not survive long to enjoy his triumph. Six weeks into his visit to Constantinople he sickened and died: his body, wrapped in lead, was taken back to R om e for burial. But his mission to the imperial capital had demonstrated once again R o m e ’s unflinching defence o f orthodoxy, and, in the reverence o f the Emperor and the papal consecration o f a new patriarch, the Pope’s primacy over the whole Church, East and West. The suddeness o f Pope Agapitus’ death threatened to undo all these gains.Vigilius, the papal Apocrisiary (ambassador) in Constan­ tinople, was an aristocrat whose father and brother were consuls. Consumed with ambition, he had lost no time in ingratiating him­ self with the real power in the court o f Constantinople, the Empress Theodora. Posing as a monophysite sympathiser, he won her sup­ port for his candidacy for the papacy. In return, he promised to rein­ state the banished monophysite Patriarch Anthimous, and even to repudiate altogether the teaching o f the Council o f Chalcedon. Laden with bags o f Theodora’s money for bribes, he raced Pope Agapitus’ body to R om e. But he was too late. The Gothic K ing Theodahad had pre-empted any imperial candidate by forcing through the appointment o f Pope Hormisdas’ son, Silverius (536—7). The papacy seemed to have slipped through Vigihus’ fingers. Vigilius, however, was not a man to be trifled with. In December

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536 the imperial General Belisarius ‘liberated’ R om e on Justinian’s behalf, and established himself on the Palatine as governor. His wife Antonina was Theodora’s closest friend and confidante, and together she andVigilius persuaded Belisarius to arrest Pope Silverius, on a trumped up charge o f plotting to open the gates o f R om e to the Gothic army. Demoted to the status o f a monk, the Pope was ban­ ished to an obscure town in Anatolia, and the see was declared vacant.The clergy now obediently electedVigilius (537-55) as pope. Worse was to follow. The bishop o f the town in Anatolia to which Pope Silverius had been deported took up his cause. He secured an audience with Justinian and impressed on him the enormity o f what had been done. There were any number o f earthly kings, he pointed out, but only one pope. Rattled, Justinian had Silverius returned to R o m e for a fair trial, to be reinstated i f found innocent. Vigilius, however, now firmly in charge, was having none o f this. The wretched Silverius was arrested again as soon as he arrived, and bun­ dled o ff to a second exile on the island o f Palmaria. There, a few months later, he died o f malnutrition. To all intents and purposes, one pope, and he the son o f a pope, had been deposed and murdered by another. For Vigilius, however, chickens now began to come home to roost. Justinian badly needed to find ways o f conciliating m onophysite opinion in the empire, and in 543 his advisers came up with a scheme designed to do just that. They singled out for condemna­ tion the writings o f three long-dead writers, all o f whom had sup­ ported a ‘two-nature’ Christology, and each o f whom was a special target o f monophysite loathing. The writings in question, known as the ‘Three Chapters’, provided Justinian with a way o f distancing himself and his regime from Chalcedon, without actually repudiat­ ing the formal teaching o f the Council. With some reluctance, the Patriarch o f Constantinople and the other Eastern bishops signed the condemnation o f the Three Chap­ ters. But feeling in the West was violendy against anything which threatened the authority o f Chalcedon, and Vigilius, whatever his private opinions, did not dare comply with the imperial demand. Here, with the imperial campaign to recapture Italy in full swing, was potential disaster. Justinian simply could not afford a pope at odds with the rest o f the empire. In November 545 he had Vigilius arrested while he was presiding over the ceremonies for St Cecilia’s

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Day, a major festival in Rom e, and put aboard a ship for Constan­ tinople via Sicily. There were few tears shed forVigilius in Rom e. According to the Liber Pontificalis, the crowd threw stones and yelled abuse at the Pope as his ship pulled away from the dock, for they blamed the many mis­ fortunes o f the city on the sordid way in which he had become pope. He was honourably received by Justinian on his arrival in Jan­ uary 547, however, and once again his ambition ran away with him. After a show o f firmness, he resumed communion with the ‘hereti­ cal’ Patriarch Menas, and in April 548 he published a solemn Iudicatum, or judgement, condemning the Three Chapters, only preserving a fig-leaf o f consistency by stating that this condemnation in no way impugned the authority o f Chalcedon. Reaction in the West was volcanic. Vigilius was universally denounced as a traitor to Rom an orthodoxy. The bishops o f Africa solemnly excommunicated him, and many o f his own entourage repudiated him. In the face o f this hostility, which threatened to pull the empire apart,Justinian allowed the Pope to withdraw his Iudicatum. He extracted a secret undertaking from him, however, to renew his condemnation o f the Three Chapters at an opportune moment. Pope and Emperor agreed that a council was needed to settle the whole matter, but Justinian was not a man to wait on events. In 551 he pub­ lished a long edict o f his own once more condemning the Chapters. Even Vigilius’ capacity for accommodation to imperial pressure was now exhausted. He was determined to salvage whatever shreds o f credibility remained to him in the West, and he organised resist­ ance to the imperial decree. He summoned a synod o f all the bishops then in Constantinople, and once more excommunicated the Patri­ arch. In the ensuing conflict, the Pope fled from imperial troops and sought sanctuary in the palace church o f Sts Peter and Paul. Onlook­ ers were treated to the sight o f the elderly Pope clinging to the columns o f the altar (which gave way and collapsed), while the palace guard attempted to drag him away by his hair, beard and clothing. The scandalised crowd forced the soldiers to leave the suc­ cessor o f St Peter alone. Public feeling obviously ran high, and next day the Emperor sent Belisarius himself to apologise.The Pope knew he was no longer safe, however, and, escaping by night across the Bosphorous, symbolically sought refuge in the church in which the Council o f Chalcedon had met.

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Had Vigilius died at this point, the scandals o f his earlier career might have been forgiven him, for the sake o f this heroic stand in defence o f the Chalcedonian faith. Instead, he patched up a reconcil­ iation with Justinian, and in May 553 the promised General Council, the fifth, met in Constantinople. Proceedings were dominated by imperial pressure, there were hardly any Westerners present, and no one was left in any doubt about what was required o f them. The Pope boycotted the Council, and issued a careful theological manifesto o f his own, condemning some but not all o f the writings included in the Three Chapters. Justinian, however, had no longer any need to walk on eggshells in respecting Western sensibilities. His troops had defeated the Gothic forces in Italy, and R om e was safe in Byzantine hands. He therefore decided to neutralise Vigilius once and for all. This he did by sending to the Council a dossier ofV igilius’ secret correspondence with him, exposing for all to read the Pope’s repeated promises to condemn the Three Chapters. Vigilius was totally discredited. The Council condemned not only the Three Chapters, but also the Pope, and Justinian formally broke o ff com­ munion with Vigilius, while emphasising that it was the manVigilius, and not the See o f Rom e, he was rejecting: non sedem, sed sedentem (‘not the see itself, but the one who sits in it’). The disgraced Pope was put under house arrest, and his clerical entourage were impris­ oned or sent to the mines. Broken in spirit, he published a series o f humiliating retractions, before being finally permitted to leave C on ­ stantinople in 555. He never reached R om e, however, dying from gallstones on the journey at Syracuse. The Vigilius affair dealt a series o f shattering blows to the papacy. The prestige and leadership gained for R om e over the previous cen­ tury had been frittered away, the papacy’s reputation dragged through the mire. And the actions ofVigilius cast long shadows. His successor in Rom e, Pelagius (556—61), was an elderly aristocrat, who had played a very creditable role in stiffening Vigilius’ theological resistance to imperial pressure over the Three Chapters. He was, however, determined to become pope by hook or by crook, and turned his coat on Vigilius’ death. To secure the Emperor’s support, he suddenly accepted the Fifth General Council’s condemnation o f the Three Chapters. Pelagius’ conversion may just possibly have been genuine —he was perhaps influenced by the fact that both a general council and the

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previous Pope had ruled on the matter. His action, however, was uni­ versally denounced in the West as self-seeking treachery. His accept­ ance o f the condemnation o f the Three Chapters confirmed the fail­ ure ofVigilius, and left papal prestige in the West in ruins, especially in northern Italy and the Adriatic provinces. The sees o f Milan and Aquilea, and all the bishops o f Istria, broke o ff communion with R om e. It would be fifty years before communion was restored between Milan and R om e, and the Istrian schism was to persist for a century and a half. In Gaul, too, the Catholic bishops looked on him with suspicion, and the close links with R om e established through the papal vicariate at Arles were eroded. Fifty years later, the Irish monk Columbanus in a letter full o f Irish wordplay would remind Pope Boniface IV (608—15) o f the fall ofVigilius, and warn him o f the need to preserve the orthodoxy o f the apostolic see:‘Watch [vigila] that it does not turn out for you as it did for Vigilius, who was not vigilant enough.’ Otherwise ‘the normal situation o f the Church will be reversed. Your children will become the head, but you . . . will become the tail o f the Church; therefore your judges will be those w ho have always preserved the Catholic faith, whoever they may be, even the youngest.’5 The pontificate ofVigilius had also laid bare a fundamental differ­ ence o f outlook between Emperor and Pope. In the hothouse atmos­ phere o f Constantinople, a theology o f empire had evolved which raised the person o f the Emperor far above any bishop. Constantine had thought o f himself as the thirteenth Apostle, and had made a bri­ dle for his horse from o f one o f the nails with which Christ was cru­ cified. The emperors o f Byzantium proved themselves worthy suc­ cessors o f Constantine. Justinian, like Gelasius, believed that there were indeed two powers set over this world, the imperial and the pontifical, but unlike Gelasius he was certain that the senior partner in that alliance was the Emperor, not the Pope. It was the responsibil­ ity o f the Emperor to see that bishops performed their share o f the work. To the Emperor belonged the care o f all the churches, to make and unmake bishops, to decide the bounds o f orthodoxy. The Emperor, not the Pope, was G od’s vicar on earth, and to him belonged the title Kosmocrator, lord o f the world, ruling over one empire, one law, one Church. Byzantine court ceremonial empha­ sised the quasi-divine character o f the Emperor’s office. His servants performed an act o f solemn adoration, the proskynesis, on coming

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into his presence, and his decrees were received with divine honours, even the parchment they were written on kissed with reverence as if it carried holy scripture. The bishops o f the East saw no cause to challenge any o f this. They accepted the Christian vocation o f the Emperor as God-given, and they saw their role as that o f obedient collaborators with the Lord’s anointed. To a papacy nurtured in a high sense o f apostolic dignity, and based in R om e with its civic traditions and recruitment from senatorial families, such values seemed increasingly alien. Pope and Emperor might have mutual interests, and emperors, when it suited them, might pay genuine homage to the senior Bishop and the successor o f St Peter. Between the imperial vision o f Byzantium, however, and the theological ethos o f R om e, there was a great and growing gap. The experience o f the popes as they set themselves to meet the needs o f Italy and the West in the years after the imperial reconquest would see that gap widen to a gulf. II

T he A ge of G regory the G reat

The imperial reconquest o f Africa from the Vandals was achieved by Belisarius in one short and brilliant campaign launched in 533. The campaign to recover Italy from the Goths began the following year. It was to drag on for twenty years, but there would be no joy at its end­ ing, for it left Italy depopulated and impoverished. U p to a third o f the population had perished, and to the traumas o f war and its attendant famines were added natural disaster, as successive waves o f plague swept through the peninsula. Politically, too, the overthrow o f the Gothic kingdom proved a disaster, not a liberation.The restoration o f imperial rule brought no revival o f the fortunes o f the Rom an aristocracy. Instead, every position o f importance was filled by career administra­ tors from the East: Italy became a Greek colony. It was expected, moreover, to pay handsomely for the privilege.The burden o f imperial taxation proved far more oppressive, and far more efficient, than any­ thing the Goths had imposed - Justinian’s chief tax-collector in Italy was grimly nicknamed ‘the scissor-man’. From the 540s onwards most o f the surviving ancient families o f R om e in a position to do so migrated east, to Constantinople, where it had become clear that all the opportunities and the fruits o f empire lay. R om e had a double share o f the woes o f Italy. Stripped o f its tra­

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ditional ruling class, separated by a long sea journey from the court at Constantinople, it had no real place in the new imperial order. Ravenna would remain the political centre o f imperial Italy, as it had been o f the Gothic kingdom. There, in the basilica o f San Vitale, Jus­ tinian and Theodora set up their images behind the altar, unforget­ table icons o f the Byzantine convergence o f regal and priestly authority. There the imperial governor o f Italy, the Exarch, would rule in the Emperor’s place. R om e was left to the crows and its own devices. Repeatedly besieged and plundered, it had been captured and devastated by Totila in 546. Its population, 800,000 in ad 400, had dropped to 100,000 by ad 500, and was down to 30,000 by the year o f Totila’s sack. Pope Pelagius, a man caught, as his epitaph declared, ‘in a falling world’, was reduced to begging clothing and food from bishops in Gaul for the poor —and even the former rich o f the city. The Senate was gone, and the wars had shattered the physical glory o f Rom e. Many o f the great aqueducts which fed the city’s baths, cisterns and fountains, and which had turned the cornmills on the Janiculum hill, had been deliberately cut by the Goths, or stripped by thieves o f their lead linings. They leaked precious water from the mountains into the surrounding plain, beginning the long transformation o f the Rom an Campagna into the fever-ridden swamp which it would remain till the days o f Mussolini. B y the end o f the sixth century, the city’s population was creeping up again, to about 90,000. Many o f these, however, were refugees from a new invasion. For the imperial conquest, in destroying the Gothic occupiers, had removed the only real obstacle to a far worse scourge, the part-pagan and part-Arian Lombard tribes who descended in their tens o f thousands from Austria in 568. In Septem­ ber 569 Milan fell to them, and their king Alboin took the title ‘Lord o f Italy’. B y 574 the Lombards commanded half the peninsula, and had all but cut the connections between Ravenna and R om e. They were to remain in control for the next two centuries. This was the inheritance o f Gregory the Great (590-604). Gre­ gory, who was born some time around the year 540, was a product o f the patrician aristocracy which had suffered so much from the Gothic war. The family had a distinguished tradition o f service to Church and city. Gregory was the great-grandson o f Pope Felix III and a relative o f Pope Agapitus I. Fie himself, while still in his early thirties, was to serve as prefect, the highest secular office in the city, as

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his brother would after him. Gregory’s father, Gordianus, was one o f the Church’s regionaries, the lay officials responsible for administer­ ing the temporalities o f the Rom an see. In her widowhood his mother Sylvia became a nun, as did three paternal aunts. They fol­ lowed a common Rom an pattern o f vowed life by living in retire­ ment on their own property, where two o f the aunts enjoyed visions o f their papal ancestor, ‘St’ Felix, shortly before their deaths. The retreat o f the Rom an aristocracy from the world into the Church was by no means confined to the womenfolk. In part it reflected the growing dominance o f the Church in the life o f the West. The call o f monastic life, to contemplation instead o f action, was powerful in a world in which all action seemed to lead to disas­ ter, and in which the secular order seemed to be near its end. This was certainly so for Gregory:‘the world grows old and hoary’, he was to w rite,‘and hastens to approaching death’ . About 575 he resigned his city office, turned his parental home on the Caelian Hill into a monastery dedicated to St Andrew, and became a monk.The family’s extensive estates in Italy and Sicily passed into the patrimony o f the Rom an Church, and on them too Gregory established a series o f six monastic houses. Gregory was to look back on the next few years, given over to prayer and reflection on scripture, as the happiest o f his life. He was a dedicated monk, and was to destroy his health, and his stomach lin­ ing, by excessive fasting. His Dialogues, a set o f miracle-encrusted lives o f the early Italian monks, in particular the father o f Western monasticism, St Benedict, was to become one o f the most influential books o f the Middle Ages (and the only work o f Gregory’s to find a Greek as well as a Latin readership). But above all, it was the contem­ plative dimension o f monastic life he valued, and which as pope he missed: I remember with sorrow what I once was in the monastery, how I rose in contemplation above all changeable and decaying things and thought o f nothing but the things o f heaven . . . But now, by reason o f my pastoral care, I have to bear with secular business, and, after so fair a vision or rest, am fouled with worldly d u st. . . I sigh as one who looks back and gazes at the shore he has left behind.6 He was not left long in his retreat. In the crisis years o f the late

753 women religious in France alone, many o f them in brother­ hoods and sisterhoods devoted to active works. The same vigour is in evidence in the spread o f Christian missions outside Europe. After 1850 missionary orders multiplied, and men and women flooded into the mission field: by the end o f the century there were in the region o f 44,000 nuns alone working in mission territory Within established Catholic churches the same vigour is in evi­ dence, and was deliberately fostered by Pio Nono. Responding to expanding Catholic numbers, he introduced new hierarchies into England (1850) and the Netherlands (1853) in the face o f angry Protestant reaction. During his pontificate as a whole he created over

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200 new bishoprics or apostolic vicariates. All this represented a mas­ sive growth o f papal involvement and papal control in the local churches. The rapidly expanding church in the U SA, in particular, whose bishops were effectively appointed in Rom e, developed a strongly papalist character.That increased control was self-conscious. Pio Nono and his entourage saw to it that all these new religious energies were firmly harnessed to the papacy. Early on in his papacy he set up a special curial congregation to deal with religious orders, and he systematically encouraged greater centralisation, often inter­ vening directly to appoint superiors for some o f the orders —in 1850 for the Subiaco Benedictines and the Dominicans, in 1853 for the Redemptorists, in 1856 and 1862 for the Franciscans. The drive to centralisation on R om e was seen at its starkest and least attractive in Pio N on o’s treatment o f the Eastern R ite Catholic churches, the so-called ‘Uniates’. These local churches — in the Ukraine, India, the Middle East - were indistinguishable from the Eastern Orthodox in every respect: they used the Byzantine liturgy, had a married clergy, followed their own legal customs, elected their own bishops and held their own Eastern-style synods. They differed from the Orthodox, however, in recognising the Pope’s authority. ‘Uniate’ Catholics had always had a difficult time, rejected by the Orthodox as traitors, suspect to the Latin authorities as half-schismatic. Ultramontanism, however, had particular difficulty in accepting the value o f these Eastern R ite Catholics. Ultramontanes identified Catholicism with Romanitas: they saw the unity o f the Church as inextricably tied to uniformity. One faith meant one discipline, one liturgy, one code o f canon law, one pyramid o f authority presided over by a proactive and interventionist papacy. R om e paid lip-service to the value o f the Eastern R ite communities and their traditions as signs o f the Church’s universality, and as potential bridges to Eastern Orthodoxy. In practice, however, it systematically undermined them. Latin missionaries were encouraged to wean congregations away from oriental rites, and pressure was brought to bear to phase out a married clergy. R om e tried to use patriarchal and episcopal elections to install pro-Latin candidates, and insisted on the presence o f apos­ tolic delegates at Eastern Catholic provincial synods, under whose pressure Latin customs were intruded. An attempt in i860 to impose the Gregorian calendar on the Melkite Church (Syrian Christians under a patriarch at Antioch, who had been in communion with

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R om e since the late seventeenth century) drove some o f the Melkite clergy into communion with the Orthodox, and came near to split­ ting the Church. When they protested against this erosion o f their distinctive traditions, the Melkite leaders were treated as disloyal, and during the celebrations for the anniversary o f the martyrdoms o f Sts Peter and Paul in 1867 the Pope issued the bull Reversurus, which rebuked the Eastern R ite churches for their schismatic tendencies, insisted that close papal supervision was for their good, and reorgan­ ised the machinery for episcopal and patriarchal elections to exclude involvement o f the laity and the lower clergy. Unsurprisingly, the patriarchs o f the Melkite, Syriac and Chaldean churches were among the minority bishops who left the Vatican Council early. These tensions were inevitable, for Ultramontanism was a form o f absolutism, revelling in what Cardinal Manning called ‘the beauty o f inflexibility’ .30 It could give no coherent or positive value to diver­ sity and independence. Papal invasion o f the prerogatives, authoritystructures and rites o f the Eastern churches merely highlighted a process which was far more highly advanced within the churches o f the Latin West itself. In addition to defining papal infallibility, the Vat­ ican Council had asserted that the Pope had ‘immediate and ordinary jurisdiction’ over every church and every Christian. ‘Immediate and ordinary jurisdiction’, however, is what bishops have over their flocks, and the Council never addressed the problem o f how two bishops, the Pope in R om e and the local bishop, could have identical jurisdiction over the same flocks. Indeed, it is an issue which has still not been satisfactorily settled. Under Pio Nono, the problem was resolved by the steady papal erosion o f the authority and independ­ ence o f the local hierarchies. Bishops were increasingly thought o f as junior officers in the Pope’s army, links in the line o f command which bound every Catholic in obedience to the one real bishop, the Bishop o f Rom e. The death o f Pio Nono did little to halt or reverse these trends. IV U ltramontanism w ith a L iberal F a c e : T he R eign of L eo X II I The Conclave which began on 19 February 1878 took only three bal­ lots to choose a new pope, Gioacchino Pecci, Cardinal Bishop o f Perugia, who took the name Leo X III (1878-1903). Pecci was virtually

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unknown outside Italy. He was not a member o f the Curia, and had been bishop o f the relatively obscure see o f Perugia since 1846. A pro­ tege o f both Leo X II and Gregory X V I, he had been a highly success­ ful administrator in the Papal States, before being sent as nuncio to Belgium in 1843. He made a hash o f this post, however, by wading into a complicated and delicate political situation and encouraging intran­ sigent Catholic opposition to government educational measures, and he was withdrawn at the specific request o f the royal family. This was the end o f his career in the papal- service: Perugia was his not very splendid consolation prize. Pio Nono made him a cardinal in 1853, but, for reasons which are still unclear, the coarse and worldly Secre­ tary o f State Cardinal Antonelli, distrusted him and saw to it that he stayed in obscurity. A year before his own death, however, Pio Nono made him Camerlengo, the Cardinal who administers the Rom an Church between the death o f a Pope and the election o f his successor. It was a back-handed compliment, for there w^as a well-established tra­ dition that the Camerlengo is not elected pope. His election was probably based on three things: his impeccably conservative opinions (he had helped inspire the Syllabus and was an ardent defender o f the temporal power), his success and popularity as a diocesan bishop, and the fact that between 1874 and 1877 he had published a series o f pastoral letters which spoke positively about the advance o f science and society in the nineteenth century, and which argued for reconciliation between the Church and the positive aspects o f modern culture. Many o f the cardinals felt that the apocalyptic denunciations o f the world and political intransigence o f Pio N ono had painted the Church into a corner. It was time for a little sweet-talk. It was as if Cardinal Pecci had been waiting to be pope. Within hours o f his election he declared,‘I want to carry out a great policy/ From his first day the new Pope displayed an astonishing sure-footedness in walking a tightrope, restoring the international prestige o f the papacy without abandoning any o f its religious claims. He would stand by the doctrines o f the Vatican Council and the Syllabus, but he would abandon their shrillness o f tone and confrontational manner. His first encyclical, Inscrutabili Dei, was typical. In it he laments the evils o f the time —rejection o f the Church’s teaching, obstinacy o f mind rejecting all lawful authority, endless strife, contempt for law. Out o f this has sprung anti-clericalism and the theft o f the Church’s property. All this is misconceived, however, for the Church is the friend o f society, not

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its enemy. It has led humanity from barbarism, abolished slavery, fos­ tered science and learning, it is the mother o f Italy. Italy must restore to the Pope what is his own, once more receive his authority, and society will flourish again. And Catholics everywhere, kindled by their clergy, must show ‘ever closer and firmer’ love for the Holy See,‘this chair o f truth and justice’.They must‘welcome all its teachings with thorough assent o f mind and will’. He recalled with approval Pio N on o’s ‘apos­ tolic smiting’ o f error.31 The world noted both the content and the manner. The Italian journal Riforma declared that ‘The new Pope does not . . . curse, he does not threaten .. .The form is sweet, but the substance is absolute, hard, intransigent.’32 Italian perceptions o f Leo’s ‘intransigence* were influenced by the continuing stand-off between the Pope and Italy. He had not given the blessing ‘Urbi et Orbi’ after his election (he had wanted to, but was prevented by the Vatican staff), he refused to recognise the K ing’s title and did not notify him o f his election as pope, he maintained Pio N ono’s ban on political involvement in national elections, and he refused the income provided under the Law o f Guarantees. R om e and the papacy, therefore, remained at odds. In 1881, when Pio N ono’s body was moved by night to its final resting-place at San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, an anti-clerical mob almost succeeded in throwing the coffin into the river. The 1890s saw the erection o f an aggressive monument to Garibaldi within sight o f the Vatican, and a statue to the heretic Giordano Bruno in the Campo di Fiori, deliberate gestures o f defiance and rejection. Leo was never in fact to abandon hope that he would recover Rom e, and a good deal o f his political activity outside Italy was undertaken in the hope o f exerting external pressure to recover his temporal power. He was to establish himself as a great ‘political’ pope. To that extent, however, he never faced political reality. Outside Italy, he was anything but intransigent. He inherited con­ frontations with Prussia, where the Kulturkampf still raged, with Switzerland, with Russia over the oppression o f Polish Catholics, with some o f the Latin American states where anti-clerical regimes were attacking the Church, and with France, where the republican govern­ ment was fiercely anti-clerical. He set himself to defuse all these situ­ ations. The letters in which he announced his election to European heads o f state were uniformly conciliatory, conceding nothing o f sub­ stance, but expressing a strong desire for an accommodation.

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His most spectacular success was in Bismarckian Germany. Bis­ marck was weary o f the Kulturkampf for it had backfired. The Centre Party, far from shrivelling away, had increased its representation with every election, and its tactical alliances with other opposition groups, like the National Liberals and the Social Democrats, were causing government defeats.The strong leadership o f the German bishops was holding Catholic resistance to the Falk Laws steady, and Catholic pub­ lic opinion was increasingly vocal.The conflict was also complicating Prussian rule in Poland. For his part, Leo hoped that Bismarck, now the most powerful statesman in Europe, might help him recover R om e, and he feared long-term damage to the Church if the con­ frontation persisted. Secret negotiations were initiated by the nuncios in Munich and Vienna, and, although these eventually broke down, Bismarck began to suspend the worst o f the anti-Catholic legislation. Between 1880 and 1886 the Falk Laws were dismantled, though the Jesuits were not readmitted to Germany till 1917, and bishops remained bound to clear all appointments o f priests with government. It became clear, however, that Bismarck would do nothing to help Leo recover Rom e. The Pope turned, therefore, to France. Most French Catholics were monarchists, sworn enemies o f the principles o f 1789. Most o f the clergy were Ultramontanes, convinced that France should intervene to get the Pope his temporal power back. But from 1879 Republican anti-clericals were in the majority in the Senate and the Chamber o f Deputies, and the government launched a campaign, like the Kulturkampf]to reduce the Church’s influence in national life - restrictions on the religious orders, introduction o f divorce, Sunday working permitted, prayers and processions abol­ ished on state occasions, religionless funerals encouraged. Through­ out the 188os Church and government were at each other’s throats, Church newspapers denounced the Republic, Catholics involved themselves in royalist plotting. It was the Syllabus given nightmare reality, and a total breach between the Church and French political culture seemed inevitable. All through the 1880s, Leo did what he could to prevent this polar­ isation, and to conciliate the French state. He wrote a mild letter to the President in 1883, he published an encyclical to the bishops o f France, Nobilissima Gallorum Gens, in 1884, expressing his love for France, recalling its ancient faithfulness to the Church, urging an end to hos­ tilities, praising the Concordat o f 1801, encouraging the bishops to

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stand firm on fundamentals but urging them to abandon extreme opihions for the sake o f the common good. In 1885 he issued an encyclical on the nature o f the state, Immortali Dei, arguing that Church and state are distinct but complementary societies, each with their own authority and freedoms.The state is truly free only when it supports the Church, and the Church is the best bulwark o f a peace­ ful state. Liberty o f religions, the press and oppression o f the Church by the civil power are all damaging to society. But he insisted that no one form o f government is privileged by the Church, and he urged Catholics to take a full part in the public life o f their societies. With his eye on the ferocious divisions between liberal Catholics and Ultra­ montane royalists in France, he urged Catholics to put aside their dif­ ferences in a common loyalty to papal teaching.33 Everyone thought the Church was the propaganda wing o f the royalists, and papal utterances by themselves would not change that. The Pope made the Archbishop o f Lyons and the Archbishop o f Paris cardinals, and asked them to write a letter encouraging Catholics to support the Republic. Grinding their teeth, they wrote a diatribe against the government so bitter that he had to suppress it. So he summoned the great missionary Bishop Cardinal Lavigerie o f Algiers, who had long believed that it was suicidal for the Church to make war on the state, and who needed French imperial support for his missionary efforts in Africa. On 12 November 1890, at a banquet for the mostly rabidly royalist officers o f the French Mediterranean fleet, Lavigerie made an electrifying speech. To rescue the country from disaster, he said, there must be unqualified support for the established form o f government (the Republic), which was ‘in no way contrary to the principles . . . o f civilised and Christian nations’. He was certain, he went on, that he would not be contradicted ‘by any authorised voice’ . The ‘toast o f Algiers’ was a failure, and not merely in the eyes o f the scandalised sailors who heard it. Everybody knew Lavigerie had been put up to it by Leo, and a few French Ultramontanes swallowed their horror and rage and said they would be loyal. Most, however, were too deeply alienated from the Republic to respond, and in any case the notorious Dreyfus affair was soon to unchain the worst o f Catholic right-wing opinion and anti-Semitism, and further polarise French public life. Leo went on trying to force French Catholics into constitutional politics, but to little effect, for he was asking them to abandon attitudes and instincts

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rooted in a century o f bitterness and conflict, and endorsed by several o f his predecessors. His attempt to persuade the Catholics o f France to ‘rally’ to the Republic, in fact, served only to demonstrate the limitations o f papal influence, even over Ultramontanes. Nevertheless, the Pope’s campaign in favour o f ralliement did help exorcise suspicions that Catholicism and democracy were incompat­ ible. It evoked from him a series o f encyclicals which registered the Church’s acceptance o f the legitimate autonomy o f the state, and the compatibility o f Catholicism with democratic forms o f government. There was nothing strictly new about this teaching, and it did little more than codify the compromises with democracy which the popes had been making in practice since the Concordat o f 1801. In many cases, his teaching repeats that o f more uncompromising papal utter­ ances like Mirari Vos or Quanta Cura and the Syllabus. But the tone o f voice was utterly different and, having stated the ideal, he added the pragmatic qualifications. Libertas Praestantissimum, for example, the encyclical on liberalism published in 1888, reworks all that Mirari Vos and the Syllabus had to say in denunciation o f freedom o f religion, o f conscience, o f the press - and then goes on to say that the Church can nevertheless live with religious toleration, a free press, and the rest o f the modern .‘false liberties’, ‘for the sake o f avoiding some greater evil’. It was as i f Bishop Dupanloup had become pope.34 The papacy had a bad record on social reform. The posture o f reactionary condemnation into which it had been frozen since the publication o f Mirari Vos in 1832 made it suspicious o f any schemes for the transformation o f society. From the early years o f Pio N ono socialism was a particular bogey. The call o f Lamennais, Henri Lacordaire the Dominican priest and political activist, and o f Count M ontalambert to the popes to ‘turn to the democracy’ had been rejected. Papal rhetoric was concerned with the obligation o f obedience, the rights o f princes and popes, it had nothing to say to people whose lives were captive to the market forces o f laissezfaire capitalism, and who had no stake in the political process o f the societies that fed o ff their labour. Other Catholics, however, felt the urgency o f the social question. Industrialisation and urbanisation had brought massive hardship for the proletariat o f Europe, and a widespread and deepening alienation from organised Christianity in both its Catholic and its Protestant forms. In England, Germany, Belgium and France, sensitive Chris­

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tians wrestled with the plight o f working people, and with the need for the Church to move beyond exhortation and almsgiving, to questions o f justice, and to a Christian vision o f society. This sensitiv­ ity was found among both Ultramontanes and liberals. In Germany such movements were represented by Bishop Ketteler, in England by Cardinal Manning, in France by Count Albert De M un and the industrialist Lucien Harmel. Harmel was a practical visionary He had launched an experiment in social partnership at his factory in Val-des-Bois, where he intro­ duced model housing, saving-schemes, health and welfare benefits, and workers’ councils to share in policy-making for the business. Harmel wanted other Catholic employers to follow suit, but was unable to persuade them. He decided to enlist the Pope. In 1885 he took 100 o f his workforce on pilgrimage to Rom e. Leo was impressed. Two years later 1,800 came, in 1889 10,000 came. These pilgrimages o f working people, living proof that democracy and the Pope might shake hands, caught Leo’s imagination, and helped per­ suade him that industrial society need not be conflictual, that social peace under the Gospel was a possibility. Leo took a close interest in the American church, for there was a society where the ‘liberal’ doctrine o f a free Church in a free state seemed not to be code for anti-Christian attacks on religion. In America, Catholic labour was organising in bodies like the Knights o f Labour, which did not seem to be communistic or irreligious. Leo began to hope that in Europe, too, Catholic labour organisations might offset the communist unions. From 1884 Catholic social thinkers from France, Germany, Aus­ tria, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland met annually at Fribourg to dis­ cuss the social question. The working papers o f this conference accu­ mulated as a summary o f and stimulus to Catholic reflection on the condition o f the working class. In 1888 Leo received members o f the Union o f Fribourg and discussed their ideas with them. Out o f this conversation emerged the idea o f a papal document which would address the social issue. The result was Leo’s most famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum, published in 1891.35 Rerum Novarum opens with an eloquent evocation o f the plight o f the poor in industrial society, in which ‘a small number o f very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses o f the labouring poor a yoke which is very little better than slavery itself’ . From this

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misery socialism offers an illusory release, fomenting class hatred and denying the right to private property. Defending this right to owner­ ship, the Pope argues that class and inequality are perennial features o f society, but need not lead to warfare. The rich have a duty to help the poor, and this duty goes beyond mere charity Christianity is concerned with the healing o f society as well as o f individual souls, and in that healing the state must play a part. The state depends on the labouring poor for its prosperity, and must therefore protect the rights o f labour, both spiritual and material. This protection extends to regulating working conditions, and ensuring that all receive a liv­ ing wage, which will allow the worker to save and so acquire prop­ erty and a stake in society. Labouring people have a right to organise themselves into unions, which ideally should be Catholic. Though the Pope thought strikes were sometimes the work o f agitators, he thought they were often the result o f intolerable conditions. He accepted the right to strike, but thought the state should legislate to remove the grievances that provoke strikes. Rerum Novarum is one o f those historic documents whose impor­ tance is hard now to grasp. Enough o f what it had to say was couched in the traditional language o f paternalism to allow conservatives to evade its radical thrust, and to pretend that nothing new had been said. Such people seized on passages like that in which Leo said suf­ fering and inequality were part o f the human condition, or exhorted the poor to be content with their lot.The Popes social analysis was elementary, and what he had to say about the unions was timid, and wrapped up in romantic tosh about medieval craft gilds. The Angli­ can Christian Socialist Henry Scott Holland said the encyclical was ‘the voice o f some old-world life, faint and ghostly, speaking in some antique tongue o f long ago’ .36 Many Christians, many Catholics, in the 1880s and 1890s were saying more penetrating and more chal­ lenging things. For the successor o f Pio Nono to say these things, however, was truly revolutionary. Leo’s attack on unrestricted capitalism, his insistence on the duty o f state intervention on behalf o f the worker, his assertion o f the right to a living wage and the rights o f organised labour, changed the terms o f all future Catholic discussion o f social questions, and gave weight and authority to more adventurous advocates o f Social Cath­ olicism. Without being either a democrat or a radical himself, Leo opened the door to the evolution o f Catholic democracy.

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Rerum Novamm demonstrated that Leo was a more advanced social thinker than most nineteenth-century Catholics. With hindsight, he has come to be seen as a liberal pope, a courageous revolutionary trans­ forming the Catholic intellectual and moral landscape, equipping the Church to deal with the modern world. As evidence for this view, one can put alongside Rerum Novarum a whole series o f measures which reversed the policies o f his predecessor, and nudged the Church out o f the rigid posture into which the reign o f Pio Nono had frozen it. A clear case in point is Leo’s reversal o f papal policy towards the Eastern Catholic churches, and towards Orthodoxy in general. Leo called a halt to the drive to Latinisation and uniformity which had been such a feature o f Pio N onos treatment o f Eastern R ite Catholics. In 1882 Leo stopped the offensive practice o f naming Latin titular bishops to churches in Orthodox territory In the same year he founded a Melkite seminary in Jerusalem, in 1883 an Arm en­ ian seminary in Rom e. In 1894 he issued the encyclical Praedara Gratulationis, which praised the diversity o f churches and rites within a single faith, and the brief Orientalium Dignitatis, which emphasised the need to preserve the integrity and distinctiveness o f the Eastern R ite churches. In the following year he regulated the relations between Eastern R ite bishops and patriarchs and the Apostolic Del­ egates, a matter which had been the source o f endless friction and offence under his predecessor. Many o f these measures were in fact frustrated by unrepentant Latinisers among missionaries, the papal diplomatic corps and the Curia. Leo’s own intentions, however, were abundantly clear, and were the opposite o f his predecessor’s. Theology had suffocated under Pio Nono. Great and original the­ ological work was done far from R om e in the German Catholic universities, and by isolated and idiosyncratic figures like John Henry Newman in England. In R om e itself, however, a rigid, defensive and largely second-hand scholasticism dominated, and everything else was viewed with suspicion. Leo was determined to change this. In 1879 he made Newman a cardinal, an extraordinarily eloquent ges­ ture given that Cardinal Manning believed, and often said, that N ew ­ man was a heretic. The Rom an authorities disliked and feared mod­ ern historical enquiry, which they thought was anti-Catholic and sceptical. In 1881 Leo opened the Vatican Archives to historians, including Protestant historians. The scholarly world recognised the revolutionary nature o f this step, and applauded a liberal pope.

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But, above all, Leo believed that the key to a renewal o f Catholic theology lay in a return to the greatest o f the scholastic theologians, St Thomas Aquinas, and with the encyclical Aeterni Patris o f 1879 he initiated a renaissance in Thomistic and scholastic studies to break the straitjacket o f the Rom an schools. He established an Academy o f St Thomas in Rom e, imported distinguished theologians, philoso­ phers and textual scholars, and encouraged the establishment o f Thomistic studies at the Catholic University o f Louvain. From 1882 the future Cardinal Mercier was appointed to lecture on St Thomas at Louvain, where his classes became the focus for a theological ren­ aissance in the university and beyond. All these measures infused new life and confidence into Catholic theology, and the 1880s and 1890s saw a flowering o f scholarship in biblical studies, Church history and philosophy which had all suf­ fered from the paranoia and narrowness o f Pio N ono’s later years. The foundation o f the Ecole Biblique under Dominican manage­ ment in Jerusalem, the publication in 1893 o f the encyclical Providentissimus Deus, which, however cautiously, accepted the legitimacy o f scholarly study o f the Bible using the resources o f modern science and historical and textual criticism, and the establishment o f the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1902, with relatively liberalminded personnel, all contributed to a sense o f new openings. Leo’s preoccupation with St Thomas, however, points to the limits o f his vision. St Thomas was indeed a transcendent genius, and the rediscovery o f his teaching and his method opened a world o f intel­ lectual discourse and source-material which proved enormously fruitful.There were limits, however, to the usefulness even ofThomas in dealing with the intellectual problems o f the late nineteenth cen­ tury, yet Leo saw Thomism not as the starting point o f theological enquiry, but as the end o f it. In 1892 he sent a letter to all professors o f theology, directing that all ‘certain’ statements o f St Thomas were to be accepted as definitive. Where Aquinas had not spoken on a given topic, any conclusions reached had to be in harmony with his known opinions. Within a generation o f the publication o f Aeterni Patris, ‘Thomism’ had itself become an ossified orthodoxy in the Rom an schools. The limits o f Leo’s liberalism were shown also in the condemnation o f Americanism.The intransigents and the party o f ralliement in France had their counterparts in America. A substantial group o f conservative

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Catholics, led by Archbishop Corrigan o f N ew York and Bishop McQuaid o f Rochester, campaigned for a complete withdrawal o f Catholics from the state educational system in America. Others, led by Archbishop John Ireland o f St Paul, wanted a compromise which would allow continuing Catholic participation in the public schools. Archbishop Ireland’s attitude reflected a more general openness to the distinctiveness o f American social and religious culture, which was demonstrated by the participation o f Cardinal Gibbons in the Chicago Parliament o f Religions during the Exhibition there in 1892. For ten days Christian Churches and denominations took part with Bud­ dhists, Hindus and Muslims in a public affirmation o f ‘basic religious truths’ . Gibbons closed the proceedings by leading the assembly in the Lord’s Prayer and giving the Apostolic Blessing —a sharing in public worship with Protestants and even non-Christians unheard o f at the time, for which, remarkably, he had obtained permission directly from Leo X III. Such a display o f ‘indifferentism’ would have been inconceivable in Europe, and many in America were disturbed by it. Leo himself condemned ‘inter-Church conferences’ in 1895. The continuing eagerness o f ‘progressive’ Catholics to participate fully in American life and to integrate Catholic values as fully as possible into the ‘American way’ led many to fear a dilution o f Catholic truth. M on­ signor Satolh, the Apostolic Delegate in the U SA, having initially supported Ireland and the progressives, came increasingly to feel that there was ‘nothing o f the supernatural’ about the American church. In 1899 these tensions came to a head when a French translation appeared o f a life o f Father Hecker, founder o f the Paulist order and a leading figure in the progressive wing o f American Catholicism. The biography was prefaced by an enthusiastic essay by Father Felix Klein o f the Institut Catholique in Paris, which ‘out-Heckered Hecker’ in recommending the adaptation o f Catholic teaching to the modern world. Critics fastened on this preface, and besieged Rom e with demands for condemnation.The outcome in 1899 was Leo’s letter Testem Benevolentiae addressed to Cardinal Gibbons, condemning the ideas that the Church should adapt her discipline and even her doctrine to the age in order to win converts, that spiritual direction was less important than the inner voice o f the spirit, that natural virtues like honesty or temperance were more important than the supernatural virtues o f

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faith, hope and charity, and that the active life o f the virtues was more important than the contemplative and religious life. Many Catholics, and many bishops, in America were grateful for this papal warning against the over-enthusiastic adoption o f pluralist values, the ‘false liberalism’ which they believed threatened the integrity o f the American church. Cardinal Gibbons, however, who had tried to fend off the condemnation, indignantly denied that any American Catholics held such views, and believed that the use o f the word ‘Americanism’ to describe them was a slur on a great church. Certainly the condemnation had wider implications. There is no doubt that European tensions had a good deal to do with the con­ demnation o f Klein’s preface to the Hecker biography, and the con­ demnation was a sign that the liberalising forces released by Leo’s own style o f papacy were here being called to a halt, the limits o f assimilation were being set. In America, the condemnation had a serious impact on American Catholic theological scholarship, inau­ gurating a phase o f conservative anti-intellectualism which had a sterilising effect on American theology. In Europe, it was a straw in the wind which would turn to a gale in the pontificate o f Pius X , and the Modernist crisis. The fact is that however much Leo’s tone of voice differed from that o f his immediate predecessors, like them he believed that the Church —and therefore the Pope —had all the answers. I f he thought less confrontationally, more historically, than Pio Nono, he had no doubt that the questionings and uncertainties o f his age could all be resolved painlessly, by attention to what the Church, through St Thomas, through the popes, had long since taught.There is a numbing smugness about the insistence in many o f his encyclicals that the Church is responsible for all that is good in human society, human cul­ ture. It is the voice o f a man who has worn a cassock and lived among clerics all his life. In recommending the study o f St Thomas, he was not calling Catholic scholarship to an open-ended encounter with histor­ ical and philosophical texts, but proposing a new standard o f ortho­ doxy. It is no accident that the canonisation o f St Thomas’ writings was accompanied by the condemnation not only o f the influence o f Kant and Hegel, but o f other, specifically Catholic, schools o f thought, like the posthumous condemnation o f the philosophy o f Antonio R o smini in 1887. He genuinely desired reunion with the Churches o f the East, but could imagine such an outcome only in terms o f their

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‘return’ to Roman obedience. In the Churches o f the Reformation he had no interest, and his condemnation o f Anglican ordinations in 1896 as ‘absolutely null and utterly void’ was the inevitable outcome o f illjudged overtures by naively hopeful Anglo-Catholics. He himself could not bear contradiction. When his Secretary o f State once questioned his decision on some minor administrative matter he tapped the table and snapped at him ,‘Ego sum Petrus’ —(‘I am Peter’).That authoritarianism is in evidence in everything he did. He insisted punctiliously on the style and ceremony o f a sovereign, and he systematically exalted the papal office. His encyclicals are lit­ tered with paragraphs urging the faithful - and their pastors - to undeviating obedience to papal teaching. The sheer quantity o f that teaching in itself testifies to his extraordinary commitment to a teaching office. Its quantity, however, was not its most significant characteristic. Until the time o f Leo X III, papal doctrinal interven­ tions had been relatively rare, and their form generally reflected the papacy’s role as a court o f final appeal. Popes judged and, therefore, sometimes condemned. One o f the attractions o f Leo’s encyclicals is that they rarely merely condemn, but we should not allow relief to blind us to the radical shift in the nature o f papal teaching which his collected encyclicals represent. Here, for the first time, we have the Pope as an inexhaustible source o f guidance and instruction. N o pope before or since has come anywhere near his eighty-six encycli­ cals. Leo taught and taught, and expected obedience. He expected obedience, too, in the day-to-day running o f the Church. Despite his reversal o f Pio N ono’s centralising measures over the Eastern R ite Catholics, he himself tightened papal control over all the Church. He greatly increased the role o f papal nuncios and apos­ tolic delegates, insisting on their precedence over local hierarchies and other ambassadors as representatives o f the Holy See. From 1881 the rise o f international devotional rallies, known as Eucharistic Con­ gresses, provided a platform for public manifestations o f Catholic enthusiasm, in which the papacy played a growing role. From the late 1880s these events were routinely presided over by apostolic delegates or specially appointed groups o f cardinals; in 1905 Leo’s successor Pius X would personally preside over a eucharistic congress in Rom e. In negotiating with the ralliement and with Bismarck, Leo over­ rode the wishes o f the local bishops and the leaders o f the German Centre Party, in Germany even organising a secret settlement from

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which they were excluded. He kept a tight reign on episcopal con­ ferences - the American hierarchy’s momentous Third Council o f Baltimore in 1884 was planned in Rom e, and Archbishop Gibbons presided at it as the Popes personal representative.The first Confer­ ence o f Latin American Bishops was actually held in R om e under the Pope’s personal chairmanship. N or was his policy o f support for the Republic an indication o f liberal political views. He told the Bishop o f Montpellier that if Catholics threw themselves into repub­ lican politics they would soon have the upper hand:‘If you follow my advice, you will have 400 Catholic deputies in France and you’ll establish the monarchy. I’m a monarchist myself.’37 His denuncia­ tions o f socialism so delighted Tsar Nicholas II that he had them read out in Orthodox churches in Russia. Leo’s conception o f the papacy, in fact, was no less authoritarian or Ultramontane than that o f Pio Nono. He surrounded himself with the trappings o f monarchy, insisted that Catholics received in audi­ ence kneel before him throughout the interview, never allowed his entourage to sit in his presence, never in twenty-five years exchanged a single word with his coachman. And all his actions tended to con­ solidate and extend papal involvement at every level o f the Church’s life. In a world in which the Church was increasingly being pushed to the margins, he retained grandiose ideas o f the popes as arbiters o f nations, elder statesmen at the centre o f the web o f world politics. Most o f this was self-delusion: when Bismarck asked him to arbitrate in a territorial conflict between Prussia and Spain over the Caroline Islands he was offering a sop to Leo’s vanity. Leo imagined he was being invited to give a ruling, and was dismayed when Spain insisted he was no more than a go-between. Yet he lived long, and by the end o f his pontificate the papacy had indeed recovered much o f the prestige which it had forfeited in the fraught years between the Revolutions o f 1848 and the Vatican Council. It had also become the unquestioned focus o f policy-mak­ ing and doctrinal teaching in the Church. Pio Nono had made the Vatican Council; Leo X III was its principal heir and beneficiary.

CHAPTER SIX

THE ORACLES OF GOD 1903-2005

I T he A ge of I n tra n sig en ce

At the end o f the nineteenth century, the fortunes of the papacy seemed at an all time low. The Pope was beleaguered and landless, the Prisoner of the Vatican. But, as if in compensation, his spiritual role and symbolic power had grown to dizzying heights. The Pope was infallible, the un­ questioned head and heart of the greatest of the Christian churches, spir­ itual father of millions of human beings, revered from Asia to the Amer­ icas as the oracle o f God. In the nineteenth century, the popes had used their oracular powers to denounce secular thought, to present a siege mentality Catholicism which opposed the revelation of God to the godless philosophy of the modern world. In the new century, the modern world would test this new papacy as it had never before been tested. New currents of thought in philosophy, in the physical sciences, in the study o f history, in biblical criticism, would challenge ancient certainties, not from outside the Church, but from its own seminaries, universities and pulpits. How would an infallible papacy respond to these new currents in thought? And in place o f the hostile liberal governments o f Italy, France and Bismarckian Germany, the Church and the world would witness the rise o f dictatorships more savage than any in human history. The nineteenthcentury popes had first condemned and then struggled to come to terms with the industrial revolution. Now, all the resources o f the industrial revolution would be put to unimaginably terrible use, as the Nazi gaschambers and the camps o f Stalin’s Gulag harnessed modern technology, communications and bureaucracy, in the service of death. Pope after pope

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had denounced the anti-clerical activities o f nineteenth-century govern­ ments. What would the oracle o f God have to say to evil on this scale? The twentieth-century papacy began, as was appropriate in this cen­ tury of the common man, with a peasant pope, the first for three cen­ turies. Giuseppe Sarto, who took the name Pius X (1903—1914), was the son of a village postman and a devout seamstress from northern Italy. He was chosen in deliberate contrast to the style of his predecessor, the re­ mote and regal diplomat Leo XIII. The French Curial Cardinal Mathieu later declared that ‘We wanted a pope who had never engaged in poli­ tics, whose name would signify peace and concord, who had grown old in the care of souls, who would concern himself with the government of the Church in detail, who would be above all a father and shepherd’.1 This feeling was not universal: there had in fact been strong support for a continuation o f Leo’s policies, and the old pope’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Rampolla, was a strong contender throughout the conclave. He was, however, vetoed by Austria, the last occasion in which one o f the Catholic monarchies exercised a veto, and in any case he would proba­ bly not have won. After Leo’s long and political reign, Mathieu’s views were widely shared, and the new Pope could hardly have been less like his predecessor. Where Leo was cool, austere, detached, Sarto had a gutsy humanity, a strong emotional piety and an eager sense of the priority of pastoral issues which had made him an extraordinarily effective diocesan bishop. Not one o f his nineteenth-century predecessors had been a par­ ish priest. Sarto, even as Bishop o f Mantua and Patriarch of Venice, had never really been anything else. The positive reforms measures of his pon­ tificate sprang directly out o f his own experience as parish priest and di­ ocesan bishop, and he never lost the urge to function as a parish priest. One of his most startling innovations as Pope was to conduct catechism classes himself every Sunday afternoon in the courtyard o f San Damaso. His pontificate was therefore to be distinguished both by a personal approachability and warmth which contrasted absolutely with his prede­ cessor, and by a series of important practical reforms. These included the reconstruction and simplification of the Code of Canon law, the improve­ ment of seminary education for the clergy and of catechetical teaching in the parishes, the reform o f the Church’s prayer-life through the breviary and missal, and a sustained campaign to get the faithful to receive com­ munion more frequently, which included the admission o f children to communion from the unprecedented early age o f seven. These pastoral reforms, and especially the reform o f the liturgy, modest in scope as they

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were, were to be picked up and extended in the mid-century by Pius XII, and would bear their full fruit at the Second Vatican Council. All this, combined with his anti-intellectualism, his plump, handsome face and warm, open-hearted manner, won an immense popular follow­ ing for Pius X , a devotion which was to culminate in his canonization in 1950. He was in many ways the first ‘pope of the people’, a type which would become more familiar in the television age in the person o f John X X III, and the short-lived John Paul I. But if Sartos pontificate looked forward to a new populism, it also looked backwards to a nineteenthcentury agenda. For the choice o f the name Pius X was no accident. The new pope saw himself as a fighter against the modern world like Pio Nono, ready to suffer as he had suffered for the rights of the Church. He too was pre­ occupied with the Italian question, the confiscation of the Papal States and the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See, the issue which had made Pius IX the voluntary ‘Prisoner of the Vatican’ . As Patriarch of Venice, Pius X had cooperated pragmatically and tacitly with moderate liberal politicians, but this was mainly for fear o f a growing socialism in Italy. He detested the Italian State, and distrusted even the modest advances towards other liberal regimes made by his diplomat predecessor. His first pastoral letter as Patriarch of Venice had emphasized this almost apoca­ lyptic distrust o f modern society: God has been driven out o f public life by the separation o f Church and State; he has been driven out o f science now that doubt has been raised to a system . . . He has even been driven out o f the family which is no longer considered sacred in its origins and is shorn o f the grace of the sacraments. His remedy for these ills was an undeviating devotion to papal directives, an absolute ultramontanism: When we speak o f the Vicar of Christ, we must not quibble, we must obey: we must not . . . evaluate his judgements, criticize his direc­ tions, lest we do injury to Jesus Christ himself. Society is sick . . . the one hope, the one remedy, is the Pope.2 That exalted view of papal authority was directed, in the first place, to the renewal of the life of the Church, and the first five years o f his pontificate saw the inauguration of a series of far-reaching reforms. R e­ acting to the interference o f Austria during the Conclave which had

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elected him, he abolished once and for all the right o f any lay power to a voice in the electoral process. Though he had never worked in the Curia, he had served for eighteen years as Chancellor of Treviso, and he was an effective administrator. He restructured the Roman Curia, stream­ lining its thirty-seven different agencies and dicasteries to eleven congre­ gations, three tribunals and five offices, and redistributing its responsi­ bilities on a more rational and efficient basis. His work at Treviso had also convinced him o f the urgent need for a revision o f the Code o f Canon Law. He commissioned Mgr. Pietro Gasparri, former professor of Canon Law at the Institut Catholique, to coordinate this project, assisted by the young Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII. The revised code was not finally approved till 1917, three years after Pius’ death, but it was a project very close to his heart, and he person­ ally drove it forward. It drew on a wide circle of expertise outside Rome, and its sections were sent out to the world’s bishops for comment and ap­ proval. Its overall effect, however, was a massive increase of centraliza­ tion. It owed more to the spirit of the Napoleonic Code than to scripture or patristic tradition (scripture is rarely quoted in it), and it canonized as permanent features o f Church life aspects of the papal office which were very recent developments. O f these, the most momentous was the new Canon 329, which declared that all bishops were to be nominated by the Roman Pontiff, setting the seal o f legal timelessness on a radical exten­ sion of papal responsibility which had taken place virtually in living memory. These administrative and legal reforms were undertaken in the inter­ ests o f greater pastoral effectiveness. That pastoral motive was evident in Papa Sarto’s campaign for greater frequency of communion. The Eu­ charistic Congresses of the late nineteenth century had been designed as international demonstrations of Catholic fervour, and rallying-points of Catholic identity. They had not been designed to encourage the laity to receive communion more frequently, but this had been a prime objec­ tive of Pius X as diocesan bishop, and he now made it a priority o f his pontificate. Many lay people received communion only a few times a year. Pius X believed that weekly and even daily communion was the key to a fully Catholic life. Between May 1905 and July 1907 he issued a stream o f initiatives, a dozen in all, to encourage more frequent communion, easing the fasting regulations for the sick, emphasizing that communion was a remedy for shortcomings, not the reward o f perfection. In 1910 he took these measures to unprecedented lengths, in reducing the age o f

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First Communion, conventionally administered at twelve or fourteen, to seven, laying it down that a child need only be able to distinguish the dif­ ference ‘between the Eucharistic bread and common bread’ to be eligible to receive it. The admission of children to communion was one o f those relatively minor-seeming changes which profoundly transformed the re­ ligious and social experience o f millions o f Catholics. Round these childcommunions grew up a celebration of innocence and family —little girls dressed and veiled in white, little boys in sashes and rosettes, the gather­ ing of kindred to celebrate, community processions and parades of firstcommunicants - which rapidly entered Catholic folk-culture: Pius’ own popularity as a pope of the people grew as a direct result. He also pushed on a series of reforms within the structure of the liturgy itself. Nineteenth-century church music, especially in Italy, had been colonized by the opera-house, and musical settings for Mass and Office often featured bravura solo and ensemble performances, and the use of orchestral instruments, which were often aggressively secular in character. In November 1903 the new pope denounced this decadent musical tradition, and called for a return to the ancient tradition o f plainsong, and the classical polyphony of the Counter-Reformation. The li­ turgical work o f the Benedictine monks of Solesmes, who had pioneered the restoration of Gregorian Chant, was given papal backing, and the re­ sult was the production o f a new Kyriale, Graduate and Antiphonary, pro­ viding revised plain-chant for all the solemn services of the Church. He also set about the reform of the breviary, the daily prayer o f the clergy. Over the centuries the ancient structure of the Divine Office, fol­ lowing the pattern of the liturgical year and drawing on most of the Psalter, had been overlaid by the multiplication o f saints’ days and special observances. Pius commissioned an extensive revision o f the breviary, simplifying its structure, reducing the numbers o f psalms priests were ex­ pected to recite (from eighteen at Sunday matins to nine short psalms or sections o f psalms), increasing the readings from scripture included in it, and giving the ordinary Sunday liturgy priority over saints days. There were critics of all these measures, but they were clearly and explicitly de­ signed to encourage greater participation in the liturgy, and they were the first official stirrings o f interest in the nascent liturgical movement. Pius’ other reform measures all show the same practical orientation — the improvement of seminary syllabuses to produce a better-qualified pastoral clergy, the production of a new catechism which he hoped to see used throughout the world, and the closer scrutiny of the pastoral

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work of bishops through stricter enforcement of ad limina visits every five years. He cared passionately about the parish ministry, kept a statue of the patron saint of parish priests, the Curé d’Ars, on his desk, and on the fiftieth anniversary of his own ordination published an Apostolic E x­ hortation on the priesthood which is a classic of its kind. He was equally committed to raising episcopal standards, and devoted one encyclical, Communium Rerum (1909) to the qualities required in a good bishop. The increased emphasis on ad limina visits was designed to further this end. At them, bishops had to submit circumstantial accounts o f the condition o f their dioceses, based on a detailed questionnaire. The same growth of central supervision by the papacy was evident in Pius’ measures to secure better episcopal appointments by personal scrutiny of the files of every candidate for promotion to the episcopate, papal absolutism in the ser­ vice of Tridentine-style reform. The dilemmas o f a pastoral papacy in an age of intransigence are re­ vealed in the relations of Pius X with the movement known as Catholic Action. The vigour o f nineteenth-century Catholicism had produced a wave of Catholic activism and organizations devoted to good works, from charitable confraternities distributing old clothes to Catholic tradesunions and youth organizations. Successive popes had encouraged such groups, but had also displayed a marked nervousness about the dangers of uncontrolled lay initiative within them. The popes were also anxious that the strictly confessional character of Catholic organizations be pre­ served, and Pius X was particularly emphatic about this. Catholic Action in Italy therefore had a strong ‘ghetto mentality’, aggressive towards the Italian state, strident and militant in tone. Since the 1870s Catholic vol­ untary organizations had been grouped together under the umbrella of the Opera dei Congressi, whose leader was appointed by the Pope. Here, as in so much else, Leo XIII, without radical intention, had caused a shift in ethos. The relatively open atmosphere of Leo’s pontifi­ cate had encouraged the emergence of a ‘social Catholicism’ which en­ gaged with the problems of modern society and sought solutions in so­ cial policies which had something in common even with socialism, and which did not flinch from calling itself Christian Democracy. In this more hopeful and upbeat atmosphere, and despite the condemnation of ‘Americanism’, Christian Democratic groups had emerged in France and Italy, which aimed to promote a new and more optimistic assessment of the relationship between the ancient faith and the new political order. These stirrings were reflected within even the traditionally hard-line

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Opera dei Congressi, some of whose members now sought more direct po­ litical involvement in the Italian state, and greater freedom from clerical control. Tensions flared within the movement within a year o f Pius X ’s election. Pius X himself passionately believed in an active laity as the key to the success of the Church’s mission in society, but he was deeply suspicious of all ‘Christian Democratic’ movements which were even remotely po­ litical. As Patriarch of Venice he had insisted that Christian Democracy ‘must never mix itself up in politics’, and that Catholics writing about the conditions of the working classes and the poor must never encourage class animosity by speaking ‘of rights and justice, when it is purely a ques­ tion o f charity’ .3 This was a definite retreat from the position mapped out in Rerum Novarum. He was equally clear that all lay action must be unquestioningly obedient to clerical direction. In July 1904 he dissolved the Opera dei Congressi, and in the following year issued an encyclical, II Fermo Proposito, setting out the principles of Catholic Action. He encour­ aged Catholic organizations to pool their energies ‘in an effort to restore Jesus Christ to his place in the family, in the school, in the community’, but insisted that all such associations must submit themselves ‘to the ad­ vice and superior direction of ecclesiastical authority’ . As he wrote else­ where, ‘The Church is by its very nature an unequal society: it comprises two categories of person, the pastors and the flocks. The hierarchy alone moves and controls . . . The duty of the multitude is to suffer itself to be governed and to carry out in a submissive spirit the orders o f those in control’ .4 II T he A ttack

on

M o dernism

Encouraged by the freer atmosphere of Leo X III’s pontificate, Catholic theologians and philosophers in Germany, England, France and Italy had tried to adapt Catholic thought to a new age. Official theology seemed to many to have become locked into a rigid formalism, dependent on a biblical fundamentalism which had long since been discredited, insisting that the truths of Christianity were externally ‘provable’ by miracles and prophecies, suspicious of the whole movement of ‘romantic’ theology and philosophy which pointed to human experience, feeling and ethical intuition as sources of religious certainty. In the last years of the nine­ teenth century Catholic biblical scholars and historians began to explore the early origins o f Christianity with a new freedom, Catholic philoso­

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phers to engage creatively instead o f defensively with the currents o f thought which stemmed from Kant and Hegel, and Catholic systematic theologians to explore the nature of the Church not as a timeless and rigidly disciplined military structure centring on the Pope, but as a com­ plex living organism subject to growth and change. But the reign of Pius X was to see all these movements ruthlessly crushed. Deeply hostile to intellectualism of every kind, Pius X and the advisers he gathered round him saw in every attempt at the liberalization o f Catholic theology and social thought nothing but heresy and betrayal. In his first pastoral as Patriarch of Venice he had declared that ‘Liberal Catholics are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and therefore the true priest is bound to unmask them . . . Men will accuse you of clericalism, and you will be called papists, retrogrades, intransigents . . . Be proud o f it!’5 As pope, he acted on this obligation to ‘unmask’ the rot of liberalism which he saw everywhere in Catholic intellectual life. Confrontation came over the work of the French priest and biblical scholar, Father Alfred Loisy, Professor at the Institut Catholique in Paris. Loisy’s book, The Gospel and the Church, was designed to defend the Cath­ olic faith by demonstrating that the findings of radical biblical criticism dis­ solved traditional Protestant reliance on Scripture alone, over and against the tradition of the Church, and made impossible any naive biblical lit­ eralism. In the New Testament, Loisy argued, we do not have a picture o f Christ as he actually was, as many Protestants imagined, but as he was understood within the Early Church’s tradition. There was therefore no getting behind the tradition o f the Church to an unmediated Christ. We know him and can relate to him only through the developing life of the Church. Christ had proclaimed the Kingdom o f Heaven, and what came was the Catholic Church. Loisy’s book was a sensational success. Many Catholics saw in it con­ clusive proof that modernity, in the shape of the latest theological scholar­ ship, worked for and not against the Church. Even the Pope himself re­ marked that here at any rate was a theological book that wasn’t boring. But the remark implied no approval. He and his conservative advisers believed that Loisy’s argument was based on a corrosive scepticism about biblical facts which would erode all religious truth and certainty. This subjectivism must be stamped on. Loisy was silenced, and in 1907 Pius issued a decree against the Modernist heresy, Lamentabili Sane, and two months later, the ninety-three page encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, lumping a miscellaneous assortment of new ideas together under the

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blanket term ‘Modernism’, and characterizing these new ways of think­ ing as a ‘compendium o f all the heresies’.6 Pascendi had been drafted by Joseph Lemius, a curial theologian who had spent years obsessively col­ lecting doctrinal propositions from the works o f contemporary Catholic theologians, and assembling them into the elaborate anti-doctrinal sys­ tem which he believed underlay all their works. There was more than a hint o f fantasy and conspiracy theory behind all this, and the encyclical itself was characterized by extreme violence of language. The Modern­ ists were denounced as not only mistaken, but as vicious, deceitful, and disloyal: ‘enemies of the Church they are indeed: to say they are her worst enemies, is not far from the truth . . . their blows are the more sure be­ cause they know where to strike her. All Modernists are motivated by a mixture of curiosity and pride.’ No one ever subscribed to all the views condemned by Lamentabili and Pascendi: at one level the Modernist heresy was a figment o f the Pope’s imagination (or that of his ghost-writer). Yet it cannot reasonably be doubted that the Pope was responding to a genuine crisis within Catho­ lic theology, as a host of thinkers wrestled, sometimes unsuccessfully, to appropriate for Catholicism new methods and discoveries in the natural sciences, in history and archaeology, and in biblical studies. To some ex­ tent, however, the crisis was o f the papacy’s own making. The increas­ ingly narrow orthodoxy o f the nineteenth-century Roman Schools left Catholic philosophers and theologians little room for manoeuvre, and the enforced secrecy and isolation o f much o f the work being done meant that new thinking could not be properly integrated into the tradition. Despite the liberalizing trends o f Leo X III’s pontificate, many o f the best theologians of the period felt themselves to be working as outcasts, against the grain o f official Catholic theology. Inevitably there were ca­ sualties, and there were those whose work took them well beyond the limits o f any recognizably Catholic or even Christian framework of thought. By the time he published L ’Evangile et L’Eglise, for example, Loisy himself had long since ceased to believe in the divine character o f the Church, or in any supernatural revelation. In condemning Modernism, therefore, Pius X not unreasonably saw himself as exercising the papacy’s traditional responsibility of ‘vigilance’ on behalf o f the Church, sounding a warning against the disastrous false direction in which he believed many theologians were leading the faith­ ful. The trouble lay in the undiscriminating character of the condemna­ tion, its unfocused severity and paranoia. If the Pope had a duty to warn

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against error, he also had a duty to care for the erring, and to discrimi­ nate real error from legitimate freedom of reflection and investigation. No such discriminations were made, and little quarter was shown to those suspected o f straying beyond the allowed limits. The encyclical was simply the opening shot in what rapidly became nothing less than a reign of terror. The Popes denunciation not merely o f ideas but of motives unleashed a flood of suspicion and reprisal. Liberal Catholic newspapers and periodicals were suppressed; seminary teachers and academics sus­ pected of flirting with new ideas were disgraced and dismissed from their posts. A secret organization designed to winkle out theological deviants, the Sodalitium Pianum, (‘The Society o f St Pius V ’) led by Mgr. Umberto Benigni, was personally encouraged by the Pope. It lied to, spied on and harassed suspect theologians. Private letters were opened and photo­ graphed, clerical agents provacateurs lured unwary liberals into incrimi­ nating themselves and, ludicrously, over-zealous seminary professors even denounced their students for heresy, on the basis of essays written in class. The blamelessly orthodox Angelo Roncalli, future Pope John X X III, taught Church history in the obscure seminary at Bergamo. He was secretly denounced for encouraging his students to read a suspect book, the Vatican’s informant even checking out the records of the local bookshop to see who was buying what (the book was Louis Duchesne’s masterly The Early History of the Christian Church). Roncalli, on a routine visit to the Vatican, was duly frightened out of his wits by a heavy warn­ ing from one of the most senior curial cardinals. Great scholars were sacked, compliant nonentities promoted. No one was safe, and distin­ guished bishops, even curial cardinals found their every action and word watched and reported. Merry del Val, the Cardinal Secretary of State, an uncompromising opponent o f the new heresy often blamed for the cam­ paign o f repression himself, became alarmed by the extremism o f these measures. He tried unsuccessfully to restrain Benigni, who in turn ac­ cused him of spineless over-caution. The Sodalitium Pianum never had more than fifty members, but its influence and spirit was far more widespread than its mere numerical strength. A new intransigence became the required mark o f the ‘good’ Catholic. ‘Real’ Catholics were ‘integralists’, accepting as a package-deal everything the Pope taught, not picking and choosing in the ‘pride and curiosity’ of their intellect. In September 1910 the general atmosphere of suspicion was institutionalized when a lengthy and ferocious oath was devised to impose a straitjacket of orthodoxy on suspects, and subscrip­

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tion to this oath became a routine and repeated part o f the progress of every cleric’s career, from the lowliest priest to the most exalted cardi­ nal. The ‘Anti-Modernist Oath’ shattered public confidence in the in­ tegrity and freedom of Catholic academic standards. Only in Germany did the bishops succeed in having university professors exempted from subscription to the oath. The worst features o f the anti-Modernist purge were suspended at the death of Pius X in 1914. It was rumoured that one of the first documents across the desk of his successor, Benedict XV, was a secret denunciation o f himself as a Modernist, which had been intended for Pius X s eyes. However that may be, the new pope’s first encyclical formally renewed the condemnation of Modernism, but in fact dismantled the witch-hunt against it. He insisted on freedom of discussion where the Church had not formally pronounced on an issue, and called for an end to name-calling by the Integralists. When, a generation later, the cause o f Pius X s can­ onization was put forward, detailed evidence o f the Pope’s personal in­ volvement in this witch-hunt was published. It revealed his own passion­ ate commitment to the campaign, shocking many Catholics who admired Sarto’s warmth and humanity. Some people, he had declared, want the Modernists ‘treated with oil, soap and caresses, but they should be beaten with fists.’ 7 The canonization went ahead. But the impact of the Modernist cri­ sis on Catholic intellectual life was catastrophic, and persisted almost to the present. The anti-Modernist oath remained in force into the 1960s, a feature of the intellectual formation of every single Catholic priest, cre­ ating a stifling ethos of unjust and suspicious hyper-orthodoxy, and dis­ couraging all originality. Catholic biblical studies withered, shackled to absurd and demonstrably false claims like the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch or the unity o f authorship of the whole book of Isaiah. Catholic philosophers and theologians were forced into silence or into token parroting o f the party line. Obedience, not enquiry, became the badge o f Catholic thought. It was to be a generation before anything ap­ proaching an open and honest intellectual life was possible for Catholic theologians. The confrontational attitudes which underlay the Modernist purges also informed Pius X ’s political actions. He had announced the motto of his pontificate as being ‘To restore all things in Christ’. For him, though he denied he was a politician, that motto had an inescapably political meaning, for what he sought was a society which reflected Catholic val-

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ues. The Pope, he declared in his first papal allocution to the cardinals, ‘is absolutely unable to separate the things o f faith from politics’. The Pope is ‘head and first magistrate o f the Christian Society’, and as such he must ‘confute and reject such principles o f modern philosophy and civil law as may urge the course o f human affairs in a direction not per­ mitted by the restrictions o f eternal law.’8 Within a few years, in pursuit o f this mission to ‘confute and reject’ secular laws that conflicted with Church teaching, Pius had demolished the diplomatic achievement of Leo XIII. In contrast to his predecessor, Pius saw papal diplomatic activity not in terms of the art o f the possible, o f compromise, but in confrontational - or perhaps he would have said prophetic - terms. Professional papal diplomats were replaced as Legates and Nuncios by bishops and heads of religious orders, who would act as mouthpieces for the Pope’s fiery and apocalyptic views o f the modern world. The problems of this policy o f confrontation were laid bare in the collapse o f relations between Church and State in France in 1905, and the subsequent confiscation by the Republican government of all Church property in 1907. This disaster was not, to begin with at least, Pius’ fault. Relations be­ tween the Church and the French state had been rocky for twenty years, growing anti-clericalism expressing itself in a succession of government measures o f a depressingly familiar kind —the suppression of religious instruction in schools, attacks on and eventual expulsion of religious or­ ders from France. Matters came to a head with the accession as Prime Minister in 1902 of Emile Combes, a rabid anti-clerical who had once been a seminarian, and was all the more bitter against the church that had refused him ordination. Even the expert diplomacy of Leo X III and his secretary o f State Cardinal Rampolla could do nothing to restrain Combes, who flouted the informal arrangements which had made the Concordat workable for a century, and he nominated unsuitable bishops without any consultation with Rome. By the time Pius X became pope, France and the Vatican were eyeball to eyeball over these bishops. The problem deepened when the Pope demanded the resignation o f two bishops accused of immorality and freemasonry. M. Combes refused to accept their resignations, on the grounds that the Pope’s action consti­ tuted an infringement o f government rights. This situation would have been hard for any pope to handle, but the political inexperience and clumsiness o f Pius and his Secretary o f State now proved fatal. When the French President paid a state visit to Rome

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in May 1904 and called on the King, Merry del Val issued a routine diplo­ matic protest against this recognition o f the Italian State in papal Rome. Foolishly and offensively, however, the Secretary o f State circulated a copy to o f this protest to all governments, and these copies contained a sentence claiming that the papacy was only maintaining relations with France because the fall o f the Combes Ministry was imminent. Here was a blatantly public political act by the papacy, apparently designed to bring about or at any rate speed up the fall of the French government. French public opinion was at frenzy pitch, the French ambassador was withdrawn from the Vatican, and, though Combes’ government did in­ deed eventually fall, in December 1905 a law abrogating the Concordat o f 1801 and separating Church and State was promulgated. The state would cease to pay clerical stipends, Church buildings and property would be passed to the state, and managed for the use o f the Church by religious associations of lay people, known as Associations Culturelles. The Law of Separation was unjust and arbitrary, and it unilaterally re­ voked an international treaty: the Concordat. Nevertheless, the over­ whelming majority of French bishops believed that the Church had no choice but to accept it, if it was to continue its work in France. The Pope took a different view. To accept the separation o f Church and State any­ where was to acquiesce in robbing Christ of his crown rights over so­ ciety, ‘a grave insult to God, the Creator of man and the Founder of human society’ . Moreover, the whole principle of the Associations Cul­ turelles was anti-Christian, for they challenged the hierarchical structure o f the Church. Lay people, he considered, had no business ‘managing’ the Church’s property or affairs. On 11 February he issued the encyclical Vehementer Nos, denouncing the Law of Separation as a violation o f nat­ ural and human law, contrary to the Divine constitution o f the Church and her rights and liberty. A fortnight later he reiterated his rejection of the Law when he consecrated fourteen new bishops in St Peter’s, chosen by himself, for the Church of France. This condemnation left the French bishops almost no room for ma­ noeuvre. They tried to modify it along the lines laid down in 1864 by Dupanloup in his pamphlet on the Syllabus, accepting the condemnation of the Separation in principle, but devising practical working arrange­ ments so that Church life could go on, the clergy be paid, the churches kept open. The Associations Culturelles might be renamed Associations Canoniques et Légales, and put under the tacit supervision o f clergy. Rome would have none of this. In August 1906 the Pope issued another en-

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cyclical, Gravissimo Officii Munere, in which he seized on the bishops’ du­ tiful endorsement of the papal condemnation of the Law, and under the pretence of supporting ‘the practically unanimous decision of your as­ sembly’, ordered them to have no truck or compromise with the Law. When the plight of the French bishops was explained to the Pope as part o f a plea for political realism, he was unsympathetic and unyielding: ‘They will starve, and go to heaven,’ he declared.9 As his canonization in 1950 demonstrated, Pius X set a pattern of papal behaviour that went on influencing his successors. Since the defini­ tion o f Papal Infallibility, the mystique of the papacy had intensified, though it manifested itself in different ways - in the regal detachment of Leo XIII, in the startling authoritarianism o f Pius X ’s personal style. At the very beginning of his pontificate, the Swiss Guard, as was custom­ ary, went on strike for gratuities to mark the new reign: the new Pope listened, and then abruptly announced the dissolution of the Guard, a decision from which he was only dissuaded with much pleading. His successors would emulate him, keeping their advisers and court standing round them while they sat, acting without consultation or consulting only an inner circle. Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pius XII in 1939 and a much gentler figure than either Pius X or Pius XI, declared that ‘I do not want collaborators, but people who will carry out orders’. Now with the growing papal monopoly of episcopal appointments, the system of papal nuncios, sent to Catholic countries all over the world, directing pol­ icy, over-riding local decisions, decisively influencing the choice of bish­ ops, became an evermore powerful instrument of centralization within the Church. In an age in which monarchies were tumbling everywhere, the popes had become the last absolute monarchs. Ill T he A ge

of the

D ictators

The election of Giacoma della Chiesa as Benedict X V (1914-1922) to succeed Pius X was as explicit a reaction against the preceding regime as it was possible to get. Della Chiesa was a wisp o f a man with one shoul­ der higher than the other - his nickname in the seminary had been ‘Piccoletto’ (‘Tiny’) - and none of the papal robes kept in readiness for the election was small enough to fit him. He was a Genoese aristocrat trained as a papal diplomat, who had served Cardinal Rampolla as Under­ secretary o f State to Leo XIII. He had initially been retained in post under Merry del Val and Pius X , but the Pope distrusted him as a pro-

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tégé o f Rampolla’s, and in 1907 he had been kicked upstairs as Arch­ bishop o f Bologna. The Pope made clear the nature o f this ‘promotion’ by withholding till 1914 the cardinal’s hat that went automatically with the job, and della Chiesa became a cardinal only three months before the Conclave that made him pope. Della Chiesa was to have his revenge, for immediately after his election as pope, Merry del Val was sent packing from his post as Secretary o f State without so much as time to sort his papers. The Conclave took place one month into the First World War, and the choice o f della Chiesa was a recognition that blundering if saintly intransigence would not do in wartime. War was to dominate and to blight Benedict’s pontificate. He was a compassionate and sensitive priest, horrified by the realities o f modern warfare, passionately committed to diplomatic solutions o f international conflicts. He bent all his efforts to persuading the combatants to seek a negotiated peace. He refused to take sides, judging that the Holy See would only be listened to if it preserved a strict neutrality. In a war where public opinion was stoked by stories o f atrocities o f the ‘babieson-bayonets’ type, he refused to condemn even documented outrages. The result was that each side accused him of favouring the other. Hurt but undeterred, he went on condemning the ‘senseless massacre’ and ‘hideous butchery’ being perpetrated by both sides. In 1917 he proposed a peace plan which involved all concerned agreeing to waive compensa­ tion for war damage. Most o f this damage had been done by Germany in victim countries like France and Belgium, and they not unnaturally saw the Pope’s plan as favouring Germany. They also drew their own conclusions from the fact that Germany approved the scheme, and had offered to help the Pope recover Rome in the wake o f the defeat of Italy. In France even the clergy spoke of him as ‘the Boche Pope’ . The continuing confrontation with Italy over the Roman question further paralyzed Benedict’s efforts for peace. By a secret agreement in 1915 Italy persuaded her allies, including England, not to negotiate with the Pope, for fear he would attempt to bring international pressure on Italy to recover Rome - as indeed he had hoped to do. To his bitter dis­ appointment, he was excluded altogether from the Peace negotiations of 1919, and he was highly critical of what he took to be the ‘vengeful’ character of the Versailles settlement. In hard terms, therefore, his con­ tribution to the amelioration of war was confined to the money he lav­ ished on relief work for the wounded, refugees, and displaced people — 82,000,000 lire, leaving the Vatican safes empty.

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In the aftermath o f war however, his diplomatic skills came into their own. He recognized that the war had thrown much of the political struc­ ture o f Europe into the melting-pot, and that the position o f the Church everywhere from France to the Balkans, from Spain to Soviet Russia needed to be secured. He threw himself and his hand-picked helpers into a flurry of negotiation to secure new Concordats, sending the Vatican Li­ brarian Achille Ratti, destined to be his successor as Pius XI, to the newly resurrected Poland and Lithuania, and sending Eugenio Pacelli, the fu­ ture Pius XII, to Germany. Benedict X V was as conciliatory as his predecessor had been con­ frontational, and in many ways his policies can be seen as a resumption o f the course drawn out for the papacy by Leo XIII. As we have seen, he dismantled the machinery of Integralist reaction, dissolving the Sodalitium Pianum and calling a halt to the anti-Modernist witch-hunt. He prepared the way for reconciliation with the state of Italy by lifting in 1920 the Vatican ban on visits by Catholic heads o f state to the Quirinal. He tacitly lifted the ‘Non Expedif ban on involvement in Italian electoral politics for Catholics by giving his blessing to the new Partito Popolare, the Catholic political party led by the radical priest Don Luigi Sturzo. In another reversal of Pius X ’s policy, he encouraged Catholics to join the trade union movement. Most spectacularly, he inaugurated a reconcili­ ation with France. Ironically, he was helped here by the war he had hated so much. The abrogation o f the Concordat had meant that French clergy and seminarians lost their immunity from military service. 25,000 French priests, seminarians and religious were called up and went to the trenches, and their participation in the national suffering - in sharp contrast to the non-combatant status of chaplains in the British army - did a great deal to dissolve inherited antagonisms between Church and nation. The Pope signalled the new spirit o f reconciliation by canonising Joan of Arc in 1920, a highly imaginative symbolic gesture: 80 French deputies attended, and the French government sent official representatives. By the time of his death in 1922 Benedict had greatly increased the papacy’s diplomatic standing, and twenty-seven countries had ambassadors or similar repre­ sentatives accredited to the Vatican. Nobody was ready for another Conclave in 1922, for Benedict X V was still in his sixties and died after only a short illness. No one could predict the outcome of the election, and the outcome in any case was as­ tonishing. Achille Ratti, who took the name Pius XI, (1922-39) was a scholar who had spent almost all his working life as a librarian, first at

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the Ambrosiana in his native Milan, and then at the Vatican, where he replaced a German as Prefect at the outbreak o f the First World War. He was a distinguished scholar o f medieval paleography, and had edited im­ portant texts on the early Milanese liturgy. He was also a keen moun­ taineer, and the author of a readable book on alpine climbing. He had been mysteriously whisked out of his library by Benedict X V in 1919, consecrated titular Archbishop of Lepanto, and sent as Nuncio to Po­ land, which had just emerged from Tsarist rule and where the Catholic Church was in process of reconstruction. Why Benedict o f all people should have given this delicate mission to a man like Ratti, utterly with­ out any relevant experience, is a mystery. He was a gifted linguist, and his German and French proved useful, but he had no Slav languages at all. His time in Poland was extremely eventful, for Polish bishops re­ sented and cold-shouldered him as a spy for a pro-German Pope. The Revolution in Russia raised the spectre o f a Bolshevik takeover of the whole of Eastern Europe. The Nuncio, who refused to flee, was besieged in Warsaw in August 1920 by Bolshevik troops. The experience left him with a lasting conviction that Communism was the worst enemy Chris­ tian Europe had ever faced, a conviction which shaped much o f his pol­ icy as Pope. He returned from Poland to appointment as Archbishop o f Milan, and the cardinals hat, but he had been in office only six months when he was elected Pope, on the fourteenth ballot in a Conclave deadlocked between Benedict X V s Secretary o f State, Cardinal Gasparri, and the intransigent anti-Modernist Cardinal La Fontaine. Gasparri had been Ratti s immediate superior when he was Nuncio in Poland, and when it became clear that his own candidacy could not succeed, he was instru­ mental in securing Rattis election. It was certain, then, that the new Pope would continue Benedict X V ’s (and Gasparri s) policies. Despite the new Pope’s choice o f name, there would be no return to the Integralism o f Pius X. Benedict X V had been preparing the ground for a settlement of the Roman question, and Pius X I’s first act as Pope made it clear that he in­ tended to carry this through. Having announced his papal name, he told the cardinals that he would give the blessing Urbi et Orbi from the bal­ cony in St Peter s square, and a window closed against Italy for fifty-two years was opened. The instant announcement that he would use the balcony into the square for his blessing was characteristic of the decisiveness o f the new

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regime, a decisiveness soon revealed as nothing short o f dictatorial. The mild and obliging scholar-librarian from the moment o f his election became Pope to the utter degree. He remained genial, smiling and ap­ parently approachable. The Vatican filled with visitors, especially from Milan, he spent hours in public audiences, he met and blessed thousands of newly-weds, he had expensive display-shelves built for the tacky gifts the simple faithful gave him. Nonetheless, an invisible wall had de­ scended around him. He ruled from behind it, and he would brook no contradiction. He accepted advice, if at all, only when he had asked for it, and he soon became famous for towering rages which left his en­ tourage weak and trembling. Even visiting diplomats noted that the key word in the Vatican had become ‘obedience’. The obedience was directed towards a vigorous development of many of the initiatives of Benedict X V These included the rapprochement with France signalled by the canonization o f the Maid of Orléans. The way here, however, was blocked by the intransigent hostility o f many Catholics to the French Republic. A key influence here was Action Fran­ çaise, an extreme anti-republican movement with its own eponymous newspaper, edited by Charles Maurras. Maurras, a cradle Catholic, had long since abandoned belief in God, but he admired the organization of the Church, and saw it as the chief and indispensable bastion of conser­ vatism in society. Christianity, he thought, had fortunately smothered the ‘Hebrew Christ’ in the garments of the Roman Empire. Religion, he declared, ’was not the mystery o f the Incarnation, but the secret o f so­ cial order’ . Royalist, anti-Semitic, reactionary, Maurras had an immense following among Catholics, including some o f the French episcopate. In 1926 the Catholic youth of Belgium voted him the most influential con­ temporary writer, ‘a giant in the realm of thought, a lighthouse to our youth’. Maurras’ views had long caused unease in the Vatican, but he championed the Church, and Pius X had protected him: he told Maur­ ras’ mother ‘I bless his work’.10 Pius X I was made of sterner stuff. Catholics excused Maurras’ work on the grounds that it was politics pressed into defence of the Church. Ratti believed that in fact Maurras exploited religion in the service of his politics, and that in any case all politics went rotten unless inspired by true religion. Maurras was a barrier in the way of the political realism in France which Pius, like Benedict X V and Leo XIII, thought essential for the well-being o f the Church. Despite stonewalling by the Vatican staff (the crucial file went missing, till the Pope threatened all concerned with

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instant dismissal) in 1925 he moved against Maurras and his movement, first by instigating episcopal condemnation in France, then by placing Ac­ tion Française and all Maurras’ writings on the Index, and finally, in 1927, by a formal excommunication of all supporters of the movement. The suppression of Action Française was a measure of Pius X I’s strength o f character and singleness of mind. He was accused of betrayal o f the Church’s best friend, of siding with Jews, Freemasons and radicals. From the French clergy he met with a good deal of dumb resistance. The Je­ suit Cardinal Billot, who had been a key figure in the anti-modernist purges and was the most influential theologian in Rome, sent Action Française a note o f sympathy, which of course they published. Billot was summoned to explain himself to the Pope, and was made to resign his Cardinalate. Pius was equally ruthless with all who resisted the suppres­ sion. Support for Maurras was strong among the French Holy Ghost Fa­ thers, one o f whom was the rector of the French Seminary in Rome where the students had a strong Action Française group. Pius sent for the ancient, bearded superior of the Order, and told him to sack the rector. The old man replied, ‘Yes, Holy Father, I’ll see what I can do’, upon which the Pope grabbed his beard and shouted ‘I didn’t say, see what you can do, I said fire him’.11 Pius also extended Benedict X V ’s concern with the renewal o f Cath­ olic missions. Benedict had published in 1919 an encyclical on missions, Maximum illud, in which he had identified three priorities for future Catholic missionary activity: the recruitment and promotion o f a native clergy, the renunciation of nationalistic concerns among European mis­ sionaries, and the recognition o f the dignity and worth o f the cultures being evangelized. These anti-imperialist guidelines became the basis for Pius X I’s policy. He himself published an encyclical on missions in 1926, and in the same year put theory into practice by consecrating the first six indigenous Chinese bishops in St Peter’s, and a year later the first Japan­ ese Bishop of Nagasaki. He was later to ordain native bishops and priests for India, Southeast Asia and China. Once again, this was a policy which met with widespread resistance, and once again Ratti doggedly persisted. At his accession, not a single missionary diocese in the Catholic Church was presided over by an indigenous bishop. By 1939 there were forty, the numbers o f local-born mission priests had almost trebled to over 7,000, he had created 200 Apostolic Vicariates and prefectures in mission terri­ tories, and missiology was an established subject for study and research in the key Roman Colleges. It was a dramatic internationalization o f the

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Catholic Church in an age o f growing nationalism, and it was only achieved by the maximum exertion of papal muscle. In diplomacy too, Ratti followed in his predecessor’s footsteps. From his first year as Pope a stream of new Concordats were concluded, to se­ cure freedom of action for the Church in post-war Europe: Latvia in November 1922, Bavaria in March 1924, Poland in February 1925, R o­ mania in May 1927, Lithuania in September 1927, Italy in February 1929, Prussia in June 1929, Baden in October 1932, Austria in June 1933, Nazi Germany in July 1933, Yugoslavia in July 1935. Behind them all, was a concern not merely to secure Catholic education, unhampered papal appointment of bishops, and free communication with Rome, but to halt as far as was possible the secularizing of European life which the popes had been resisting under the label ‘Liberalism’ for more than a century. So, his encyclical o f 1925, Quas Primas, inaugurating the new Feast of Christ the King, denounced the ‘plague of secularism’, and asserted the rule o f Christ not merely over the individual soul, but over societies, which precisely as societies, and not as aggregates of individuals, must re­ vere and obey the law of God proclaimed by the Church. From the Vatican’s point of view, incomparably the most important o f these Concordats was that with Fascist Italy, the result of almost three years of hard bargaining with Mussolini, and finally signed in February 1929. The Concordat gave the Pope independence in the form of his own tiny sovereign state, the Vatican City, (at 108.7 acres, just one-eighth o f the size of New York’s Central Park) with a few extra-territorial de­ pendencies like the Lateran and Castel Gondolfo. He had his own post office and radio station (a guarantee o f freedom o f communication with the world at large), the recognition of Canon Law alongside the law of the state, Church control of Catholic marriages, the teaching o f Catho­ lic doctrine in state schools (and the consequent placing of crucifixes in classrooms, a weighty symbolic gesture) and finally a massive financial compensation for the loss o f the Papal States - 1,750,000,000 lire, a bil­ lion o f it in Italian government stocks, but still a sum which in the hun­ gry 193os enabled Pius X I to spend like a Renaissance prince. This Concordat did not deliver all that the Pope had hoped, and it hor­ rified those committed to Catholic Action and the anti-Fascist struggle. Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, was disgusted, and asked ‘was it worth sixty years of struggle to arrive at such a meagre result?’12 Pius viewed it as a triumph, nonetheless, for it represented a decisive repudi­ ation of the ‘Free Church in a Free State’ ideal of Liberalism. Moreover,

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M ussolini had not m erely resolved the R om an question; he had also suppressed the C h u rch ’s enemies, the Italian Com m unists and the Free­ masons. In the first flush o f enthusiasm, and against G asparri’s advice, Pius spoke publicly o f M ussolini as ‘a man sent by Providence’ . In the elections o f M arch 1929, most Italian clergy encouraged their congrega­ tions to vote Fascist. There is no such thing as a free Concordat however, and the m ajor casualty o f the agreement was the increasingly powerful Catholic Partito Popolare. In the run-up to the Concordat M ussolini made it clear that the dissolution o f this rival political party was part o f any deal, and the Vatican duly w ithdrew support for the Popolare, and secured the resignation o f its priest-leader, D on L u igi Sturzo, and his self-exile in London. Pius X I thereby assisted at the deathbed o f Italian dem oc­ racy. It is unlikely that he shed many tears, for he was no democrat. H e disapproved o f radicalism, above all radicalism in priests, and though he was passionately com m itted to Catholic Action, and devoted his first en­ cyclical to the subject, like Pius X he envisaged it as being confined to what he rather chillingly described as ‘the organized participation o f the laity in the hierarchical apostolate o f the C hurch, transcending party politics’ . 13 Nevertheless, the defence o f CatholicAction in this broader sense was to bring him rapidly into conflict with Mussolini. O ne o f the lesser casual­ ties o f the Concordat was the Catholic scout movement, w hich M ussolini insisted must be m erged w ith the state youth organizations. This went against the grain w ith Pius X I, w h o valued Catholic youth movements as a prim e instrument o f Christian formation. M ussolini was bullish on the issue, bragging that ‘in the sphere o f education w e remain intractable. Youth shall be ours’ .14 Fascist harrassment o f Catholic organizations m ounted, and in June 19 31 the Pope denounced the actions o f the Fas­ cist regime in the Italian encyclical, Non abbiamo bisogno.15 This letter was prim arily concerned to denounce the harrassment o f Catholic organiza­ tions, and to vindicate Catholic Action from the Fascist claim that it was a front for the old Partito Popolare, Catholic political opposition under an­ other name. B u t the Pope broadened his condemnation to a general at­ tack on Fascist idolatry, the ‘Pagan worship o f the State’ . H e singled out the Fascist oath as intrinsically against the law o f G od. Pius was not calling Italy to abandon Fascism. Th e encyclical was careful to insist that the C hurch respected the legitim ate authority o f the governm ent, and was essentially a w arning shot across M ussolini’s bows to lay o ff C hurch groups. In this, it was largely successful. It was an indi­

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cation nonetheless that the Pope was aware o f the need for a long spoon w hen dealing w ith totalitarian regimes, and that certainly applied to the Concordat with H itler in 1933. That Concordat was negotiated by E u ­ genio Pacelli, Secretary o f State from 1930. Pacelli had spent most o f the 1920s in M unich as N uncio, and was devoted to G erm any and its cul­ ture. H e had no illusions about Nazism , however, w hich he recognized as anti-Christian, and indeed from 1929 a number o f the G erm an bish­ ops were vocal in denouncing its racial and religious teachings, insisting that no Catholic could be a Nazi. From R om e, however, N azism looked like the strongest available bulwark against Com m unism , and the Vati­ can’s overriding priority was to secure a legal basis for the C hu rch ’s work, whatever form o f governm ent happened to prevail. Pacelli in fact later claimed that he and the Pope were prim arily con­ cerned to establish a basis for legal protest against N azi abuses, and that they entertained no high hopes o f establishing peaceful coexistence w ith what they both had rapidly com e to feel was a gangster regime. B etw een 1933 and 1936 Pius X I directed three dozen such notes o f protest about infringements o f the Concordat to B erlin. T h ey were m ostly drafted by Pacelli, and their tone is anything but cordial. O nce again, the price o f this Concordat was the death o f a Catholic political party. Th e Centre Party had been the major instrument o f C ath­ olic political advance in G erm any since 1870, and it too was led by a priest, M gr. Lud w ig Kaas. The Centre Party helped vote H itler in, but H itler had no intention o f tolerating a democratic rival, Cardinal Pacelli made it clear that the Vatican had no interest in the C en tre’s survival, and it did not survive. Kaas was sum m oned to R om e, w here he became keeper o f the building works at St Peter’s: it was to be K aas’ activities in reordering the crypt o f St Peter’s to make space for Pius X I ’s coffin w hich w ould lead to the discovery o f the ancient shrine o f St Peter. There was widespread dismay in Europe at the political castration o f Catholicism in H itler’s Germ any, and the removal o f yet another buffer between the G erm an citizen and the N azi state, but article 31 o f the Concordat protected Catholic Action, ‘the apple o f the Pope’s eye’ , and Pius X I was content. In his dealings both w ith Fascism and w ith Nazism , Pius X I staked the w ell-being o f Catholicism in Italy and G erm any on the development o f a vigorous religious life, fostered not m erely by the C h u rch ’s liturgy and sacramental life, but through Catholic social organizations from boyscouts to trade unions and newspapers: hence his enthusiasm for Catho-

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lie Action. H e was aware also that in the age o f the totalitarian state such organizations needed political protection i f they were to survive. U nlike Benedict X V , however, he im agined that the papacy alone could provide that political protection. H e failed to grasp that freedom could not be guaranteed merely by international treaties — w hich is what Concordats were. B y sacrificing the Catholic political parties Pius assisted in the de­ struction o f mediating institutions capable o f acting as restraints and pro­ tections against totalitarianism. This is all the more striking because in 19 31 he published a m ajor en­ cyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, to com m em orate the fortieth anniversary o f Rerum Novarum. In it he extended L e o ’s critique o f unrestrained capital­ ism, w h ile emphasizing the incom patibility o f Catholicism and social­ ism. In the most remarkable section o f the letter, however, he argued the need for a reconstruction o f society, w hich was in danger o f becom ing stripped dow n to an all-pow erful state on the one hand, and the mere ag­ gregate o f individuals on the other. W hat was needed were interm edi­ ate structures, ‘corporations’ like guilds or unions, without w hich social life lost its natural ‘organic form ’ . H e sketched out the principles o f ‘sub­ sidiarity’ , by w hich such groups w ould handle m any social tasks w hich were currently left to the state. These suggestions seemed to m any to have strong similarities w ith the Fascist ‘corporations’ established for trades by M ussolini. T h e Pope, however, emphasized the need for free and voluntary social organization, in contrast to the Fascist corporations, in w hich ‘the State is substituting itself in the place o f private initiative’ , and so im posing ‘an excessively bureaucratic and political character’ on what ought to be free social cooperation.16 As these m ild criticisms and the m uch stronger attack on socialism in Quadragesimo Anno indicate, however, all Pius’ social thinking was over­ shadowed by hatred and fear o f Com m unism . H e denounced the B o l­ sheviks as ‘missionaries o f antichrist’ , and spoke often o f Com m unism ’s ‘satanic preparations for a conquest o f the w h ole w orld ’ 17. In the late 1920s and early 1930s his fears seemed am ply justified. To the m urder o f clergy and persecution o f the C hurch in Russia, against which he openly protested in 1930, was added the savagely anti-Catholic regime in M exico, w hich from 1924 seriously set about eradicating C hris­ tianity. From 19 31 the new Republican regim e in Spain was increasingly hostile to the C hurch. W ith the outbreak o f the Spanish C iv il War in 1936 hostility turned to active persecution, and refugees flooded into R o m e w ith accounts o f Com m unist atrocities, the massacres o f priests

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and seminarians (7,000 murdered within months), the rape o f nuns. T he Nationalist opposition, by contrast, though also guilty o f atrocity, and not originally noted for their piety, increasingly saw the C hurch as inte­ gral to their vision o f Spain. T h ey received the endorsement o f all but one o f the Spanish bishops in a jo in t pastoral in 1937, and despite G en ­ eral Franco’s murderous acts o f repression, the papacy backed him. There was no disguising, then, Pius X I ’s softness towards the right. A n authoritarian himself, he saw no particular evil in strong leadership, and he valued Fascism s emphasis on the fam ily and social discipline. W hen Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935 the Pope did not condemn, and delivered speeches couched in such bew ildering and lofty generalities that it was impossible to say what he thought - it seems likely they were w ritten by Cardinal Pacelli. Yet there were lim its to this papal tendency to the right. Pius X I view ed w ith horror the claims o f the dictatorships to the absolute sub­ mission o f their subjects, and he detested the racial doctrine w hich under­ lay Nazism . W ith the Concordat safely achieved, H itler discarded the mask o f cordiality towards the C hurch, and the N azi press began a smear campaign. Th e Archbishop o f Baden, it was claimed, had a Jew ish mis­ tress, the Vatican was financed by Jew s, the Catholic C hu rch was profi­ teering on inflation. Press attacks gave way to physical intimidation. B y 1936 the Vatican had accumulated a vast dossier o f N azi attacks on the C h u rch ’s freedom in Germ any, w hich, it was rum oured, it intended to publish. Cardinal Pacelli, on a visit to Am erica, declared that ‘everything is lost’ in Germany. T he Pope was now a sick man, his energy ebbing fast, prone to doze o ff in audiences, uncharacteristically leaving more and more to his subordinates. B u t he was increasingly agitated by what was hap­ pening, and had come to feel that N azism was little better than the B o l­ shevism he had hoped it w ould counteract. Always irritable, he horrified Cardinal Pacelli by shouting at the G erm an ambassador that i f it came to another Kulturkampf, this time for the survival o f Christianity itself, the C hurch w ould w in again. M ussolini com forted the G erm an - he had had this trouble himself, there was no point arguing w ith the ‘old m an’ . In January 1937 key figures from the Germ an hierarchy came to R om e on their ad limina visit. T h ey told the Pope that the time for caution had passed, and Pius X I decided to act. Cardinal Faulhaber, Archbishop o f M unich, was commissioned to produce a draft encyclical, w hich was ti­ died up by Pacelli, and signed by the Pope. In a triumphant security op­ eration, the encyclical was smuggled into Germ any, locally printed, and

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read from Catholic pulpits on Palm Sunday 1937. Mit Brennender Sorge (‘W ith B urn in g A n xie ty’) denounced both specific governm ent actions against the C hurch in breach o f the concordat and N azi racial theory more generally. There was a striking and deliberate emphasis on the per­ manent validity o f the Jew ish scriptures, and the Pope denounced the ‘idolatrous cult’ w hich replaced belief in the true G od w ith a ‘national religion’ and the ‘myth o f race and blood’ . H e contrasted this perverted ideology w ith the teaching o f the C hu rch in w hich there was a home ‘for all peoples and all nations’ . 18 T h e impact o f the encyclical was immense, and it dispelled at once all suspicion o f a Fascist Pope. W h ile the w orld was still reacting, however, Pius issued five days later another encyclical, Divini Redemptoris, denounc­ ing Com m unism , declaring its principles ‘intrinsically hostile to religion in any form whatever’, detailing the attacks on the Church w hich had fol­ low ed the establishment o f Com m unist regimes in Russia, M exico and Spain, and calling for the implementation o f C atholic social teaching to offset both Com m unism and ‘amoral liberalism ’ . 19 T h e language o f Divini Redemptoris was stronger than that o f Mit Brennender Sorge, its condemnation o f Com m unism even more absolute than the attack on Nazism . Th e difference in tone undoubtedly reflected the Pope’s ow n loathing o f Com m unism as the ultimate enemy. T h e last year o f his life, however, left no one in any doubt o f his total repudia­ tion o f the righ t-w in g tyrannies in G erm any and, despite his instinctive sympathy w ith some aspects o f Fascism, increasingly in Italy also. His speeches and conversations were blunt, filled w ith phrases like ‘stupid racialism ’ , ‘barbaric H itlerism ’ . In M ay 1938 H itler visited R om e. T h e Pope left for Castel Gondolfo, and explained to pilgrim s there that he could not bear ‘to see raised in R om e another cross w hich is not the cross o f C h rist’ . In Septem ber he told another group that the C anon o f the Mass spoke o f A braham as ‘our father in faith’ . N o Christian, therefore, could be anti-Sem itic, for ‘spiritually, w e are all Sem ites’ . In the summer o f 1938 an Am erican Jesuit, Jo h n Le Farge, the author o f a recent study o f A m erican racial discrimination against black A m er­ icans entitled Interracial Justice, was summoned to a secret audience w ith the Pope. Papa R atti asked him to draft an encyclical against N azi racial theories and their Italian imitations. T h e resulting draft, ‘H um ani G e ­ neris U n itas’ , was a product o f its time, w hose prim ary focus was the w ell-b ein g and w ork o f the C h u rch rather than any abstract philan­ thropy, and w hose text, recently recovered from oblivion, grates again

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and again on a m odern sensibility, for it reiterates centuries o f Christian suspicion o f the Jew s, ‘this unhappy people . . . doom ed to wander per­ petually over the face o f the earth’ because o f their rejection o f Christ. T h e encyclical stresses the dangers to the Christian faith o f excessive contact between Jew s and Christians. Yet it also unequivocally asserted the unity o f the w h ole hum an race, and denounced all racialism, and anti-Semitism in particular. ‘Hum ani Generis U nitas’ was never to see the light o f day, however, its progress through the R om an m achinery slowed by shocked conservative resistance, and by the Pope’s failing health. This ‘lost encyclical’ epitomizes the contradictions o f Papa R a tti’s pontificate, showing everywhere a mindset w hich was the outcome o f centuries o f papal suspicion o f the direction o f m odern religious, polit­ ical and social developments, yet reaching out towards a larger and more inclusive understanding o f humanity, and, for all its limitations, offering an absolute opposition to the root ideology o f Nazism . That opposition became the all-absorbing preoccupation o f the dying pope. In the last weeks o f his life he drafted a blistering denunciation o f Fascism and its collaboration w ith N azi lies, w hich he had hoped to deliver to the as­ sembled bishops o f Italy: he begged his doctors to keep him alive long enough to make the speech, but died, on io February, w ith just days to go. ‘A t last,’ declared M ussolini, ‘that stubborn old man is dead.’ H e had not a liberal bone in his body. H e distrusted democratic pol­ itics as too w eak to defend the religious truth w hich underlay all true hum an community. H e thought the British Prim e M inister C ham berlain feeble and smug, and no match for the tyrannies he confronted. H e loathed the greed o f capitalist society, ‘the unquenchable thirst for tem ­ poral possessions’ , and thought that liberal capitalism shared w ith C o m ­ munism a ‘satanic optim ism ’ about human progress. H e had even less time for other forms o f Christianity. H e hoped for reunion w ith the East, but envisaged it as the return o f the prodigal to the R om an father. In 1928, in what is perhaps his least attractive en­ cyclical, Mortalium Annos, he rubbished the infant Ecum enical M o ve­ ment, sneering at ‘pan-Christians consumed by zeal to unite churches’ and asking, in a characteristically tough-m inded phrase, ‘can w e en­ dure . . . that the truth revealed by G od be made the object o f negotia­ tions?’ T h e encyclical made it clear that the ecumenical message o f the Vatican for the other churches was simple and uncom prom ising: ‘ C om e in slowly w ith your hands above your head.’ Yet that is not all there is to be said. Always a strong man and an en­

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ergetic pope, in the last years o f his pontificate he rose to greatness. T h e pope o f eighteen concordats ceased to be a diplomat, and achieved the stature o f a prophet. British diplomats and French Com m unist news­ papers com m ented that the Pope, o f all people, had becom e a champion o f freedom. W hen he died, the British G overnm ent’s man in R om e, Francis d’A rcy Osborne, not always an admirer, reported to the Foreign O ffice that Pius’ courage at the end o f his life had raised him to be ‘one o f the outstanding figures o f the w o rld ’ and that ‘he may be said to have died at his post’ .20 This was the inheritance o f Eugenio Pacelli, w hen he was elected Pope as Pius X I I on the first day o f the Conclave on 2 M arch 1939. H e was the inevitable choice. Im mensely able, an exquisitely skilled politi­ cal tactician, he had been groom ed for the succession by Pius X I , w h o had sent him all over the w orld as N uncio. T h e Pope told one o f Pacelli s assistants in the Secretariat o f State that he made him travel ‘so that he may get to know the w orld and the w orld may get to know him.’ T h e remark meant more than at first appeared. Pius X I ’s authoritarian regim e had marginalized the cardinals as a body, and he had not held consisto­ ries. As a result, none o f the non-Italian cardinals knew more than a handful o f their colleagues. M ost o f them knew Pacelli, however, and that fact had a m ajor bearing on the outcome o f the Conclave. B u t he seemed born to be Pope. Austere, intensely devout, looking like a character from an E l Greco painting, Pacelli was everyone’s idea o f a Catholic saint. As N uncio in G erm any he had struck Kaiser W ilhelm II as the ‘perfect m odel’ o f a high-ranking R om an prelate. As a young man he stammered slightly. T h e deliberate and emphatic speech he adopted to cope w ith this gave his words a special solemnity, w hich he him self came to believe in. H e was fond o f dramatic devotions and ex­ pansive gestures, raising his eyes to heaven, throwing his arms wide, his great and beautiful eyes shining through round spectacles. D espite the austere persona and the hieratic poise, he responded to people’s emotion, sm iled and w ept in sympathy w ith his interlocutor. As Pope, he had a mystical, overwhelm ing sense o f the w eight and responsibility o f his ow n office, going dow n into the crypt o f the Vatican by night to pray am ong the graves o f his predecessors. In every photograph he seems poised in prayer, preoccupied w ith another world. Vatican staff were ex­ pected to answer the phone from his apartments on their knees. H e was elected, as everyone knew, to be Pope in time o f total war, a role for w hich everything about his career — his diplomatic skills, his gift

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o f languages, his sensitivity and intelligence - all equipped him . B u t there were complications. H e had been N uncio for many years in G er­ many, spoke fluent G erm an for preference w ith his ow n household, and although he loathed and despised N azi racial theory, he loved G erm an music and culture. M oreover, like Pius X I he saw Soviet Com m unism , not N azism or Fascism, as public enemy number one. H e had been in M unich in 19 19 during the Com m unist uprising there, and had been threatened by a group o f C om m unist insurgents armed w ith pistols. H e had faced them down, but the experience marked him for life w ith a deep fear o f socialism in all its forms. T h e allies therefore w ould be suspicious o f his pro-G erm an as w ell as his pro-Italian sympathies. D eeply com m itted to the papacy’s role as spiritual leader o f all nations, he spent his first months as Pope in a hope­ less effort to prevent the war. As he declared in an impassioned speech in A ugust 1939: ‘nothing is lost by peace: everything may be lost by war.’ O nce it began, he w ould struggle to avoid taking sides, to prom ote peace at every opportunity, to seek to prevent atrocities and inhum anity, yet to avoid sprinkling holy water on the arms o f either side. In a w ar w hich came increasingly to be seen as a crusade against tyranny, that balanced stance became daily more difficult, and came to seem less and less toler­ able in the leader o f Catholic Christendom . Pacelli h im self was not en­ tirely consistent. Longing for a negotiated peace, and recognizing that this was impossible w h ile H itler was alive, in 1940 he personally acted as intermediary between the Allies and a group o f army plotters in Germ any w h o were planning to m urder Hitler. H e anguished over the m orality o f this, and concealed his actions from even his closest advisers. A t the heart o f all his actions was an increasingly tim id indecisiveness, a diplomatic sophistication in w hich the w eigh ing o f every contingency seemed to paralyze action. His difficulties came to focus on the question o f N azi genocide against the Jew s. T h e Catholic C hu rch had a bad record on the Jew s, particu­ larly in Central and Eastern Europe. M any Catholics thought o f the Jew s as the murderers o f Christ, and H itler had learned a good deal about the political appeal o f anti-Sem itism from early twentieth-century rightw in g Catholic parties in Austria and Germ any. B u t official C hu rch teaching ruled out the racial theories w hich underlay N azi policy, and as the war progressed the Vatican built up an appalling dossier on N azi atrocities against the Jew s. Pressure m ounted on the Pope to speak out, not only from the Allies, w h o wanted a papal denunciation as propa­

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ganda for the w ar effort, but from his ow n advisers. H e was operating Benedict X V s policy, but in a different war, and a different world. To m any o f those around him , the moral circumstances seemed qualitatively different, and Pacelli h im self sometimes felt it. It took, he told the A rch ­ bishop o f Cologne, ‘almost superhuman exertions’ to keep the H o ly See ‘above the strife o f parties’ .21 B y temperament, training and deep conviction, however, Pacelli flinched away from denunciation. H e had none o f his predecessor’s fiery impulsiveness, and the increasingly plain-spoken asides w hich had punc­ tuated papal speeches in the last years o f Pius X I were now a thing o f the past. In his peace broadcast o f A ugust 1939 he w rote into his typescript a direct reference to G erm any: ‘W oe to those w h o play nation against nation . . . w h o oppress the w eak and break their given w ord’ .22 B u t he thought better o f it, and crossed it out again, and never spoke the words. H e was a diplomat, and like his first mentors Cardinal Gasparri and Benedict X V he believed that prophetic denunciations closed doors, nar­ rowed room for m anoeuvre. Vatican funds were diverted into rescue measures for Jew s, and he did all he thought possible to protect the Jew s o f R om e, offering to lend fifteen o f the fifty kilos o f gold demanded as a ransom for the safety o f the R om an Jew s by the G erm an head o f p o ­ lice there in 1943. Yet the question was whether what the cautious and diplomatic Pope thought possible did in fact exhaust the options open to him, and whether it was adequate for the urgency o f the occasion. W h en the Jew s o f R o m e were rounded up in O ctober 1943 Pacelli’s protest was charac­ teristically m uted and oblique. T h e Cardinal Secretary o f State, Lu igi M aglione, earnestly lobbied Ernst von Weizsacker, the G erm an ambas­ sador, to intervene on beh alf o f the Jew s. W hen Weizsacker asked what the Pope w ould do ‘i f these things continued’ , M aglione told him that ‘the H o ly See w ould not want to be obliged to express its disapproval.’ B u t he left it up to Weizsacker to decide h ow m uch to say to the G e r­ man high com m and and after the deportation o f the R om an Jew s Weizsacker told B erlin o f his relief that the Pope ‘has not allowed h im ­ self to be stampeded into m aking any demonstrative pronouncem ent against the removal o f the Je w s from R o m e ’ .23 Nevertheless, as pressure on the Italian Jew ish com m unity m ounted, R om an religious houses w ere opened as places o f refuge — 5,000 Je w s were sheltered there and in the Vatican itself. Historians have recently questioned the Pope’s di­ rect involvem ent in these relief measures, but at the time he was w id ely

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credited w ith having saved tens o f thousands o f Jew ish lives, and after the war, the ch ie f R ab bi o f R om e became a Catholic and took the bap­ tismal name Eugenio. It is clear from M aglione’s intervention that Papa Pacelli cared about and sought to av^rt the deportation o f the R om an Jew s. B u t he did not denounce: a denunciation, the Pope believed, w ould do nothing to help the Jew s, and w ould only extend N azi persecution to yet more Catholics. It was the C hurch as w ell as the Jew s in Germ any, Poland and the rest o f occupied Europe w ho w ould pay the price for any papal gesture. There was some weight in this argument: w hen the D utch Catholic hierarchy denounced measures against Jew s there, the G erm an authorities retali­ ated by extending the persecution to baptized Jew s w ho had form erly been protected by their Catholicism . Pacelli, moreover, was anxious to ensure a role for the papacy as peacemaker by maintaining papal neu­ trality. Given his horror o f Com m unism , he was not prepared to de­ nounce N azi atrocities w h ile remaining silent about Stalinist atrocities. Yet h ow could the oracle o f G od remain dumb in the face o f sins so ter­ rible, so m uch at odds w ith the Gospel o f the Incarnate? T h e Am erican representative to the Vatican, M yron Taylor, told M gr. Tardini, one o f the Pacelli s two principal Vatican aides, ‘I’m not asking the Pope to speak out against H itler, just about the atrocities.’ Tardini confided to his diary ‘I could not but agree’ .24 A t the end o f 1942 Pius did give in to the m ounting pressure, and in his Christm as address included what he believed to be a clear and un­ equivocal condemnation o f the genocide against the Jew s. H e called on all men o f good w ill to bring society back under the rule o f G od. This was a duty, he declared, w e owe to the war dead, to their mothers, their w idow s and orphans, to those exiled by war, and to ‘the hundreds o f thousands o f innocent people put to death or doom ed to slow extinc­ tion, sometimes m erely because o f their race or their descent’ .25 B oth M ussolini and the G erm an Ambassador, von Ribbentrop, were angered by this speech, and G erm any considered that the Pope had aban­ doned any pretence at neutrality. T h ey felt that Pius had unequivocally condemned N azi action against the Jew s. B u t not everyone agreed. To the Allies, and not only to them, but to some in the Vatican, it seemed a feeble, oblique and coded message, w hen w hat was demanded by the horrifying reality was something more fiery and direct. Pius X I , they were certain, w ould have acted differently. This feeling was largely silent in Pius X I I ’s lifetime, and after the w ar it was the Vatican’s immense hu­

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manitarian efforts - Vatican officials had processed no fewer than 1 1 , 250,000 missing persons enquiries — w hich attracted attention and grat­ itude. It erupted in public controversy over R o lf H ochhuth’s play The Representative in 1963, however, w hich portrayed an avaricious and antiSemitic Pacelli as refusing to make any efforts on beh alf o f the Jew s o f R o m e in 1943, and controversy has raged since. For m any people, the m oral credibility o f the papacy and the C ath ­ olic C h u rch had been radically com prom ised. Pius X I I s actions w ere vigorously defended by those nearest to him , including Cardinal M o n tini, w h o had been his closest adviser on such matters during the war, and the integrity and hum anity o f w hose ow n role was accepted by everyone. B u t clearly the accusations o f m oral failure cut deep, and in the wake o f H ochh uth ’s play the Vatican took the unprecedented step o f appointing a team o f Jesu it historians to publish everything in the archives that bore on Vatican involvem ent w ith the War and especially w ith the Jew ish question. T h e resulting eleven volum es o f documents decisively established the falsehood o f H ochh u th ’s specific allegations, but did not entirely exorcise the sense that the troubling silence and tor­ tuous diplom acy o f the Vatican had m ore to do w ith Pius X I Is oblique and tim id sensibility than w ith rational prudence, m uch less prophetic witness.26 C ontroversy revived in the 1980s w ith suggestions that the ‘ratline’ from R o m e to Latin Am erica, dow n w hich N azi war-crim inals like Klaus Barbie and possibly even the Gestapo chiefs M artin Borm ann and H einrich M ü ller had escaped, was a Vatican network. Pius X II dreaded C om m unism above all, and some at least o f these form er fascists were view ed in R om e, it was alleged, as defenders o f the faith. T h e accusa­ tions were far-fetched in the case o f figures like Borm ann and M üller, but were given considerable w eight by the Vatican’s failure to condemn the actions o f the Catholic fascist wartim e Ustashe regim e o f Ante Pavelic in Croatia. Pius X II and his wartim e staff were aware o f Ustashe atrocities against Croatian Jew s and O rthodox Christians, and privately intervened to condemn and attempt to restrain them, but once again diplom acy prevailed, and there was no open denunciation. A fter the war, a large number o f refugee clerics and others accused o f w ar crimes in Croatia were given shelter oh Vatican property. There can be no doubt that pro-N azi Austrian and Croatian clerics in R om e, and right-w ing Catholic circles in France, actively concealed and assisted such w ar crim ­ inals. Some at least o f the fugitives travelled on Vatican identity papers.

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It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Vatican at least tacitly con­ nived at some o f these escapes. Even w h ile Europe was plunged in total war, however, theological renewal had begun w ithin the Catholic Church. D espite the stifling in ­ tellectual atmosphere inherited from the anti-M odernist era, there had em erged in G erm any and France, particularly in the intellectual orders o f Dom inicans and Jesuits, a m ovement away from the rigidly hierar­ chical understanding o f the C hurch w hich had prevailed since the First Vatican C ouncil. These new movements emphasized the spiritual char­ acter o f the Church, rather than its institutional structure, and pointed to the liturgy o f the Mass and B reviary as a rich source o f understanding o f the nature o f Christianity. There was a renewal o f interest in the w rit­ ings o f the Early Christian Fathers, w ith a consequent downplaying o f the ‘timeless’ authority o f the more recent theological orthodoxies dom ­ inant in seminaries and text-books. Th e Jesuit H en ry de Lubac pointed the C hurch back to the writings o f the G reek Fathers in particular, w h ile the French Dom inican Y ves C ongar urged the importance o f the cor­ porate dimension o f the Church, and the active role o f every Christian w ithin it, not simply as obedient foot soldiers under the m ilitary rule o f the hierarchy. These currents o f thought began to appear in papal utterances. B e ­ tween 1943 and 1947 Pius X II published three theological encyclicals, each o f them in different ways opening up new and hopeful avenues for Catholic theology. In Mystici Corporis the Pope proposed an organic and mystical m odel o f the Church as the B o d y o f Christ, supplementing the political m odel o f the ‘perfect’ (meaning ‘com plete and self-contained’) society in w hich the Pope was general or ch ief magistrate, w hich had dom inated Catholic thinking for three centuries. In Divini Afflante the Pope reversed the suspicion o f biblical scholarship w hich had stifled Catholic theology since 19 10, recognizing the presence in the B ible o f a variety o f literary forms w hich made any straight-forward ‘fundam en­ talist’ reading o f scripture inadequate. In Mediator Dei, published in 1947, the Pope placed the renewal o f a more participatory liturgy at the heart o f the renewal o f Catholicism. These documents had their limitations. Mystici Corporis, despite its emphasis on the organic nature o f the Church, identified the C hurch o f Christ absolutely w ith the visible R om an Catholic C hurch (to the im ­ plicit exclusion o f all other Christian bodies) and remained dispropor­ tionately preoccupied w ith the hierarchical dimension and the centrality

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o f the papacy. Mediator Dei warned against over-eager ‘liturgizers’, and showed how long R om an m emories could be by including an attack on the ‘pseudo-synod’ o f Pistoia o f 1786, and its liturgical reforms. N ever­ theless, their cumulative effect as the w orld em erged from total w ar was an almost m iraculous liberation for theology w ithin the Church. T h e in­ tellectual and imaginative freeze w h ich had set in the wake o f the cam­ paign against M odernism began to thaw. Pius h im self follow ed up these initiatives in the early 1950s by practical reforms like permission for evening Masses, the relaxing o f the need to fast from m idnight before re­ ceiving com m union, and above all by reform ing and restoring the heart o f the ancient liturgy, the m oving and pow erful ceremonies o f H o ly W eek, w hich for centuries had been in abeyance. B u t this was a false dawn. Pius at heart was deeply conservative, in­ creasingly fearful o f the genie he had let out o f the lamp. His early papal utterances had often called for ‘audacia’ , daring, in action. In the last ten years o f his life that w ord virtually disappeared from his vocabulary. In August 1950 he published another encyclical, Humani Generis, in w hich he warned against the dangerous tendencies o f the new theology, at­ tacking the historical contextualizing o f dogma as leading to relativism, and w arning also against a ‘false irenicism ’ towards other Christian tra­ ditions w hich w ould lead to com prom ise over fundamentals o f the faith. H e called on bishops and the superiors o f religious orders to prevent the spread o f these new and dangerous opinions. N o one was named, but that made the im pact o f the condemnation all the worse, w idening the net o f suspicion to anyone w hose views were considered unconventional. A new attack on theologians began, and m any o f the most distinguished o f them, like the great French Dom inicans Y ves C ongar and M arieD om inique C henu, were silenced and forbidden to teach or publish. T h e last years o f Pius X II increasingly resembled the regime o f Pius X , as new initiatives in theology and pastoral w ork were suppressed, and the Pope became preoccupied with the struggle with the universal enemy, Com m unism . Catholics in the Soviet U nion, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Rom ania lived under Com m unist rule, and papal denunciations could make life harder for them. B u t this struggle had a particular urgency in post-war Italy, where Communists were reaping the benefits o f having led the anti-Fascist resistance. In Em ilia between 1944 and 1946 fifty-tw o priests had been murdered by Communists. T h e Vatican did not forget. T h e Pope believed that the freedom o f the C hurch w ould be at an end in an Italy ruled by Com m unists, he talked

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gloom ily about being ready to die in R om e, and he did everything he could to ensure that Com m unists w ould not w in elections. T h e Vatican pum ped funds into the Christian Dem ocratic party, and prom oted links between Italy and A m erica. In 1949 Pius excom m unicated anyone w h o jo in ed the Com m unist Party or supported Com m unism in any way. T h e ruling unleashed a flood o f anti-Catholic measures in Eastern Europe. M gr. Alfredo Ottaviani, head o f the H oly O ffice (the Inquisition) boasted that people could say anything they liked about the divinity o f C hrist and get away w ith it, but that ‘if, in the remotest village in Sicily, you vote Com m unist, your excom m unication w ill arrive the next day’ .27In 1952, the Vatican encouraged an anti-Com m unist political alliance between Italian Christian D em ocrats and neo-Fascist and other extrem e rightw in g groups. Catholic politicians unhappy about this ‘opening to the right’ were elbowed aside. Pius watched in anguish the arrest, torture, and show-trial o f Cardinal Jo z se f M indszenty by the Com m unist regim e in H ungary in 19 48 —9. W hen the Russians sent in the tanks to suppress the H ungarian Revolution in 1956 he published three encyclicals o f de­ nunciation in ten days. ‘I f w e were silent,’ he insisted in his Christm as message for 1956, ‘w e would have to fear G o d ’s judgem ent much m ore’ .28 T h e contrast w ith the silences o f the w ar years was striking. In France the most exciting Catholic experim ent for generations, the W orker Priest movement, fell victim to this grow ing hatred and fear o f Com m unism . T h e movement had begun from the war-tim e recognition by clergy like Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop o f Paris, that huge tracts o f urban France were effectively de-Christianized, mission territory as much in need o f evangelization as anywhere in A frica or the Far East. Suhard and other bishops authorized a small group o f priests to shed clerical garments and life-style, to take jobs as factory-w orkers or dockers, and to explore a new type o f ministry. T h e French D om inican O rder was closely associated w ith this m ovem ent, and provided its theological ra­ tionale. M any o f the priests became involved in union activities, many developed Com m unist sympathies. A few were unable to sustain their vocation to celibacy. In 1953, the year in w hich it signed a new C on cor­ dat with Franco’s Spain, the Vatican ordered the suppression o f the W orker Priest experiment. In the Vatican an atmosphere o f suspicion and denunciation o f the m odern w orld flourished, feeding o ff the inflated rhetoric o f a century o f papal condemnation o f m odernity. In response to the prom pting o f M gr. A lfredo O ttaviani at the H o ly O ffice and Cardinal R u ffm i o f Pa­

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lerm o the Pope toyed w ith the idea o f calling a General C ouncil, w hich w ould denounce m odern errors like existentialism and polygenism (the view that the hum an race evolved from more than a single pair), and define the doctrine o f the V irgin M ary s bodily Assumption into heaven. T h e C onciliar plan was abandoned, but its condemnations reappeared in 1950 in Humani Generis, and in the same year the Pope, for the first time since the definition o f Papal Infallibility in 1870, exercised the Infallible Magisterium and defined the doctrine o f the Assumption in his ow n right. T h e definition embarrassed many Catholic theologians, since it was un­ supported in Scripture and was unknow n to the E arly C hurch, and it was a disaster for relations w ith other churches, even those w hich, like the O rthodox churches, believed the doctrine, but rejected the unilateral right o f the Pope to define articles o f faith. In 1950 Pacelli also canon­ ized the anti-M odernist Pope Pius X , whose embalmed body, enshrined in glass, was sent on a sacred tour o f Italy. T h e Pope him self retired into ever more rem ote isolation. Giovanni Battista M ontini, one o f his two closest assistants during the war, and w idely tipped as the next Pope, fell under suspicion o f holding danger­ ously liberal sympathies. A sensitive, w arm , and highly intelligent man, M ontini, though him self im peccably loyal and sharing som ething o f Pius X I I s mystically exalted view o f the papacy, sympathized w ith the new theology and disliked the reactionary ethos w hich Pius had let loose. In an age w h en Vatican attitudes to other churches were characterized by hostility or dismissiveness, he was an ecumenist, cultivating friends among Anglicans and Protestants, seeking to make and maintain contacts in other churches. H e did what he could to protect potential victims o f the new ultra-orthodoxy, and even rescued stocks o f condemned books by the French Jesuit H enri de Lubac. H e had especially close links w ith the C hurch in France, and sympathized w ith the W orker-Priest experim ent. H e strongly disapproved o f the Vatican-backed political alliance between Christian D em ocracy and neo-Fascists. In 1954 the inevitable happened. T h e Popes m ind was poisoned against M ontini by a whispering campaign, and he was dismissed from his Vat­ ican post, and kicked upstairs to be Archbishop o f M ilan. This post in­ variably carried w ith it a cardinal’s hat, but Pius X I I, w h o had last held a consistory to name new cardinals in 1953 never held another. W hether or not the withholding o f the R e d Hat was a deliberate rebuke, M ontini, w h o w ould increasingly be seen as the inevitable choice as next pope, was in fact excluded from the succession.

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Surrounded now by ultra-conservative advisers, his privacy jealou sly guarded by his G erm an nun-housekeeper, the dragon-like Sister Pasqualina, Pius X II retreated into a suffocating atmosphere o f exalted piety ex­ acerbated by hypochondria. His health, always a subject o f acute anxiety to himself, visibly deteriorated. A quack remedy designed to prevent softening o f his gums tanned and hardened his soft-palate and gullet: he developed a permanent uncontrollable hiccup. As he weakened, his doc­ tor tried to keep him alive w ith injections o f pulverized tissue taken from slaughtered lambs. R um ours o f visions o f the V irgin and participations in the sufferings o f Christ granted to him circulated. H e cultivated his role as Vatican oracle. Teaching gushed from him , unstoppable, a speech a day. Since the Pope was the C h u rch ’s hotline to G od, everything he had to say must be o f interest. Pius h im self came to believe that he had something valuable to contribute on every subject, no matter h ow spe­ cialized. H e lived surrounded by encyclopedias and monographs, swot­ ting up for the next utterance. M idw ives w ould get an update on the lat­ est gynocological techniques, astronomers were lectured on sun-spots. O ne o f his staff recalled finding him surrounded by a new m ountain o f books in the summer o f 1958. ‘A ll those books are about gas,’ Pius told him - he was due to address a congress o f the gas industry in Septem ­ ber. T h e notion o f Pope as universal teacher was getting out o f hand.

IV T he A ge of V atican II Pius X I I died on 10 O ctober 1958. As always at the end o f a long ponti­ ficate, the conclave that met two weeks later to replace him was deeply divided between an old guard com m itted to continuing and extending Pacelli’s policies, and a group o f younger cardinals disillusioned by the sterility, repression and personality cult o f the last years o f Pius X I I ’s re­ gime. Th e ‘youth’ o f these men was relative. Pius X I I had held only two consistories during his long pontificate, and although for the first time Italian cardinals were outnumbered almost tw o-to-one, nearly h alf the Sacred C ollege were in their late seventies or eighties. T h e ideal Pope o f those w h o hoped for change, however, was Archbishop M ontini, elec­ table in theory, even though he was not a cardinal, (he got two votes during the Conclave) but in practice ruled out by his absence. D ead ­ locked, the cardinals looked around for an interim , seat-w arm ing Pope. T h eir choice fell on the fat seventy-seven year old Patriarch o f Venice, A ngelo Roncalli, a genial Vatican diplomat w h o had been made Patri­

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arch as a retirement job, w ith a reputation for peaceable holiness and pas­ toral warm th, and w h o clearly did not have long to live. H e was too el­ derly to rock any boats, and everyone believed that a few years o f K in g L o g inactivity w ould give the C hu rch time to take stock before choos­ ing a younger and more vigorous man to set the C h u rch ’s agenda for the second h alf o f the century. Hum an calculation has seldom been more spectacularly mistaken. Roncalli, even more than Pius X , was a peasant Pope, the son o f poor farm ing people from Bergam o w h o shared the ground floor o f their house w ith their six cows. H e had spent an entire life in the papal diplo­ matic service, m ostly in obscure posts, in wartim e B ulgaria and Turkey. In the process he had come to know a good deal about the Eastern churches, about Islam, about the non-Christian w orld o f the twentieth century. A keen student o f C hu rch history, he had a special interest in the career o f San C arlo Borrom eo, the great sixteenth-century A rch ­ bishop o f M ilan, and he arranged his coronation as Pope for San C a rlo ’s feast day. A ntiquarian interests o f this sort seemed harmless enough; no one noticed that what he valued about San C arlo was the fact that he was above all things a pastoral bishop, translating into action the reform ing program m e o f an Ecum enical C ouncil - the C ou n cil o f Trent. Jo h n him self was certainly no radical: his own theology and piety were utterly traditional. As N uncio in France, during the early stages o f the troubles over the W orker Priest experim ent, he showed some sympathy but little real understanding o f the issues, and as Pope he was to renew Pius X I I ’s condemnation o f the movement. H e was also to issue an en­ cyclical demanding the retention o f Latin as the language o f instruction in seminaries. Yet under the stuffy opinions was a great hum an heart. H e had managed to live a long life in the papal service without m aking any enemies, w inning the affection and trust o f everyone he came in contact, Catholic and non-Catholic, Christian and non-Christian. As Pope, he took the name Jo h n partly because it was his father’s name, and that hum an gesture set at once the keynote o f his pontificate, his transparent goodness and loveableness. A fter the arctic and self-conscious sanctities o f Pius’ reign, the w orld awoke to find a kindly, laughing old man on the throne o f Peter, w ho knew the m odern world, and was not afraid o f it. In part, it was because he had the freedom o f an old man. A nnouncing his name, he had jo k in gly pointed out to the cardinals that there had been more popes called Jo h n than any other name, and that most o f them had had short reigns.

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H e was unconventional: he hated the w h ite skull-cap popes wear, w hich w ould not stay on his bald scalp, so he reinvented and wore w ith aplomb the red and erm ine cap seen in portraits o f Renaissance popes. H e cut through papal protocol, and was a security nightmare, sallying out o f the Vatican to visit the R om an prisons or hospitals. D isapproving o f M arxism , he welcom ed Com m unists as brothers and sisters, and was visited in the Vatican by the daughter and son-in-law o f the Russian Pre­ m ier, N ikita Khrushchev. H e sent stamps and coins for K hrushchev’s grandchildren and asked their m other to give a special em brace to the youngest, Ivan, because that was the Russian form o f Jo h n . U nd er the warm th o f his overflowing hum anity the barriers w hich had been con­ structed between C hurch and w orld melted away. A nd the personal warm th was matched by a willingness to rethink old issues. His first encyclical, Mater et Magistra, published in 19 6 1, broke with Vatican suspicion o f lurking socialism by welcom ing the advent o f the caring state, and it insisted on the obligation o f wealthy nations to help poorer ones. The C IA thought the Pope gave com fort to Communists. His last encyclical, Pacem in Terris, published on M aundy Thursday 1963 was characteristically addressed not to the bishops o f the C hurch but ‘to all men o f good w ill.’ It welcom ed as representative o f ‘our m odern age’ the progressive improvement o f conditions for w orking people, the in­ volvem ent o f wom en in political life, and the decline o f imperialism and grow th o f national self-determination. A ll these were signs o f a grow ing liberation. H e declared the right o f every human being to the private and public profession o f their religion, a break with the systematic denial o f that right by popes since G regory X V I. A bove all, he abandoned the antiCom m unist rhetoric o f the C o ld War. H e denounced as ‘utterly irra­ tional’ the nuclear arms-race, declaring that war in an atomic age was no longer ‘a fit instrument with which to repair the Violation o f justice,’ as near as a pope could get to repudiating the value o f just war theory in a w orld o f nuclear weapons. Even the Russians were impressed, and the Italian M arxist film director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, dedicated his master­ piece, the film The Gospel According to St Matthew, to Pope Joh n. O ne o f the earliest acts o f the new Pope was to make Archbishop M ontini a cardinal, the first o f his reign. It was a clear signal that a new regim e had arrived, that there w ould be no more o f Pacelli’s later poli­ cies. Then, staggeringly, less than three months after his election, on 25 January 1959, Jo h n announced the calling o f a General C ouncil. K in g L o g was going to disturb the pond after all.

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There had in fact been some discussion o f a C oun cil under Pius X II. W hat had been im agined, however, was a continuation o f the First Vat­ ican C ouncil, a docile assembly w hich w ould denounce secularism and Com m unism , com pile a new list o f heresies in the spirit o f the Syllabus o f Errors, w ipe the floor w ith the Ecum enical M ovem ent, and perhaps define infallibly the doctrine that M ary was the M ediatrix o f all Graces, a favourite belief o f Pius X II w hich w ould have further alienated the Protestant and O rthodox churches. Jo h n, however, had different ideas. H e conceived his C ouncil not as one o f defiance and opposition to the w orld and the other churches, but as a source o f pastoral renewal and o f reconciliation between Christians, and with the w ider world. It was time, in his words, for aggiornamento, bringing up to date, a w ord that to conservative ears sounded suspiciously like Modernism. R ecent studies o f the origins o f the C ouncil have made clear just how opposed to it the Vatican old guard were. Th e w hole drift o f Pacelli s pontificate had been to subordinate the local churches and their bishops to the papal central administration, the Curia. The thought o f assembling the w orld’s three thousand bishops and letting them talk to each other, and maybe even have new ideas, was horrifying. It was suggested, appar­ ently seriously, that there was no need for the bishops to gather in R om e at all, but that copies o f papally approved ‘C onciliar’ documents should be posted to them for assent. Another Vatican adviser even suggested that no one but the pope should be allowed to speak during the Council. Even Cardinal M ontini, exiled in M ilan, was alarmed: he told a friend that ‘this holy old boy doesn’t realize what a hornet’s nest he’s stirring up’ .29 Vatican officials did w hat they could to block the preparations, and w hen it became clear that they could not prevent the C oun cil going ahead, tried to hi-jack its proceedings, to stack the preparatory com m it­ tees, determ ine the agenda, and draft the C onciliar documents. A t the H o ly O ffice, Cardinal Ottaviani refused all cooperation w ith other bod­ ies, insisting that doctrine was his department’s sole responsibility, and ‘w e are going to remain masters in our ow n house.’ Lists o f doctrines to be condemned m ounted up, and seventy-two draft schema were pre­ pared, all o f them destined to be rejected by the C ouncil. T heologically they were firm ly rooted in the integralism o f the last hundred years. T h e draft declaration o f faith drawn up for the C ou n cil contained no scrip­ tural citations whatever, reiterated the condemnations contained in Pascendi and Humani Generis, and quoted no theological text earlier than the C oun cil o f Trent.

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Jo h n s determ ination that this should be a pastoral C ouncil devoted to opening up the Church, not to barricading it in, was absolutely vital, strengthening bishops to reject the prepared texts and to demand a real voice in the deliberations o f the C ouncil. W ithout his encouragement, the C oun cil w ould have becom e a rubber stamp for the most negative as­ pects o f Pius X I I s regime. It was his personal insistence that the C o u n ­ cil was not to be a C ouncil against the m odern world. There were to be no condemnations or excommunications. Yet he him self had no clear agenda, and there was a desperate danger that lack o f clear guidance from the Pope w ould either lead to a demoralising lack o f achievement, or allow the direction o f the C ouncil to fall into the hands o f curial officials opposed to the very notion o f a Council. For guidance Jo h n turned to Cardinal M ontini, and the Belgian C ar­ dinal Suenens. T h ey saw that the C ouncil must centre on the nature and role o f the Church, that it must be ecumenical in character, must pres­ ent a pastoral not a bureaucratic vision, that it must renew the liturgy and restore the notion o f C ollegiality in the C hurch, that is, the shared re­ sponsibility o f the bishops w ith the Pope, no longer an isolated papal monarchy. It must also engage with the relationship o f the C hurch to so­ ciety at every level, freedom o f conscience, peace and war, the relation­ ship o f C hurch and State, the w orld o f w ork and industrial society, ques­ tions o f justice and economics. A ll these issues had preoccupied popes since the m id-nineteenth century, but always in a spirit o f confrontation and suspicion. T h e time had come for the C hurch to consider all these issues afresh, in the confidence o f faith and with a discerning eye for what Pope Jo h n called ‘the signs o f the times’ . Th e Pope’s inaugural address at the C ouncil, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, contrasted strikingly with most papal utterances since the 1830s. For over a century the popes had confronted the m odern w orld in the spirit o f J e ­ remiah, as a place o f m ourning and lamentation and woe. Jo h n urged a different spirit, and challenged the ‘prophets o f m isfortune’ w h o saw the w orld as ‘nothing but betrayal and ruination’ . Th e C hurch had indeed to keep the faith, but not to ‘hoard this precious treasure’ . T he Church could and should to adapt itself to the needs o f the world. There was to be no more clinging to old ways and old words simply out o f fear: it was time for ‘a leap forward’ which w ould hold on to the ancient faith, but re-clothe it in words and ways w hich w ould speak afresh to a w orld hun­ gry for the gospel: ‘for the substance o f the ancient deposit o f faith is one thing, and the w ay in which it is presented is another’ .30

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From the perspective o f the twenty-first century, there seems about Jo h n s rhetoric a note o f over-optim ism , a confidence in progress w hich was a characteristic o f the 1960s. H e spoke confidently and perhaps naively o f Providence guiding hum anity towards ‘a new order o f human relationships/ w hich the years since have not delivered. It was his lan­ guage about the possibility o f the recasting the substance o f Catholic teaching in new forms, however, that alarmed conservative forces in the Church. This was the language o f M odernism , and there were many w h o believed that they now had a M odernist Pope. W hen the Latin text o f his speech was published, it had been heavily censored to remove any hint that the teaching o f the C hurch m ight change, and recast in words borrowed from the anti-m odernist oath. Jo h n lived to inaugurate his C ouncil, but not to guide or conclude it. W h ile battles raged between the forces o f conservatism and reform w ithin the C ouncil, his life ebbed away in cancer. H e had reigned for only five years, the shortest pontificate for two centuries, yet he had transformed the Catholic C hurch, and w ith it the w orld s perception o f the papacy. W hen he died on 3 Ju n e 1963 the progress o f his last illness was followed by millions o f anxious people across the world, and through­ out his last hours St Peter’s square was thronged w ith m ourners for this, the most beloved Pope in hum an history. T h e C oun cil he had called, w ith no very clear notion o f what it m ight do, proved to be the most revolutionary Christian event since the Reform ation. D espite the divided state o f Christendom , it was, geo ­ graphically at least, the most catholic C o u n cil in the history o f the C hurch: 2,800 bishops attended, fewer than h alf o f them from Europe. O rthod ox and Protestant observers attended the sessions, and substan­ tially influenced the proceedings. T h e m onolithic intransigence w hich had been the public face o f the Catholic C hu rch since 1870 proved as­ tonishingly fragile, and over the four sessions o f the C o u n cil, between 1 1 O ctober 1962 and 8 D ecem ber 1965, every aspect o f the C h u rc h ’s life was scrutinized and transformed. As at Vatican I, the C ou n cil rap­ idly polarized (with the help o f sensational media coverage), but this time the intransigent group w ith curial backing w ere in a m inority, and one by one, often w ith considerable bitterness, the curial draft docu­ ments w ere swept aside, and replaced w ith radically different texts, m ore open to the needs o f the m odern w orld, and m ore responsive to pastoral realities. B y a supreme irony, the most influential theologians at the C o un cil w ere m en like Y v e s C ongar and K arl R ah n er w h o had

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been silenced or condem ned under Pius X I I, and their ideas shaped m any o f the crucial C onciliar decrees. T h e central document o f the C ouncil was the D ecree on the C hurch, Lumen Gentium. It m oved far beyond the teaching o f Mystici Corporis, abandoning the defensive juridical understanding o f the C hu rch w hich had dom inated Catholic thought since the C onciliar m ovem ent, and placing at the centre o f its teaching the notion o f the People o f G od, em ­ bracing both clergy and laity. This concept m oved understanding o f the nature o f the C hurch out o f rigidly hierarchic categories, and enabled a radical and far more positive reassessment o f the role o f lay people in the life o f the Church. T h e decree also m oved beyond Mystici Corporis and all previous R om an Catholic teaching by refusing to identify the R om an Catholic C hurch w ith the C hurch o f Christ, stating instead that the C hurch o f Christ ‘subsisted in ’ the Rom an Catholic C hurch, and not that it simply ‘was’ the R om an Catholic Church. This apparently fine distinction opened the w ay to the recognition o f the spiritual reality o f other churches and their sacraments and ministries. T h e decree’s use o f the image o f the ‘pilgrim people o f G o d ’ also opened the w ay to a new recognition o f the imperfections and reform ability o f the C hu rch and its structures. In one o f its most crucial and contested chapters, the D ecree sought to correct - or at any rate com plete — the teaching o f Vatican I on papal prim acy and the episcopate, by emphasizing the doctrine o f C ollegiality, and placing the Pope’s prim acy in the context o f the shared responsibility o f all the bishops for the C h u rch .31 B u t Lumen Gentium was not the only revolutionary document pro­ duced by the C ouncil. Gaudium et Spes, the ‘Pastoral Constitution on the C hurch in the M odern W orld’ (the Latin actually says ‘in this w orld o f tim e’), represented a com plete overturning o f the conciliar and papal de­ nunciations o f the ‘m odern w orld ’ w hich had been so regular a feature o f the Ultram ontane era. Setting out to ‘discern the signs o f the times,’ the Constitution em braced the jo u rn ey o f hum anity in time as a place o f encounter w ith the D ivine. It emphasized the need o f the C hu rch ‘in the events, needs and the longings it shares w ith other people o f our tim e’ to discern in faith ‘what may be genuine signs o f the presence or the pur­ pose o f G o d ’ . Faith is thereby presented as something w h ich completes and seeks to understand our com m on humanity, not a matter o f exclu­ sive concern w ith a supernatural realm set over against a hostile world. T h e religious pilgrim age towards the ‘heavenly city’ is claimed to in­ volve ‘a greater com m itm ent to w orking with all m en towards the es­

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tablishment o f a w orld that is more hum an’ . In the wake o f the C o u n ­ cil, this emphasis w ould provide the charter for the development o f the­ ologies o f social and political engagement, like Liberation Theology. It was one o f the C o u n cil’s most profound acts o f theological reorientation, and one w hich transcended the somewhat glib optim ism o f the Gaudium et Spes itself, w hich, it must be admitted, in its concern to affirm the w orth o f hum an culture, shows little sense o f the tragedy and broken­ ness o f hum an history. 32 Its central emphasis, nevertheless, lay at the heart o f the C o u n c il’s re­ thinking o f Catholic theology, and was worlds away from the aggressive, hard certainties o f the age o f Vatican I. Then Catholics had felt that they, and they alone, knew exactly what both C hu rch and w orld were. B y contrast, six months before his ow n election as Pope Paul V I, Cardinal M ontini told the young priests o f his diocese that in the C ouncil: the C hurch is looking for itself. It is trying, w ith great trust and w ith a great effort, to define itself more precisely and to understand what it is . . . the C hurch is also looking for the w orld, and trying to come into contact w ith society . . . by engaging in dialogue w ith the world, interpreting the needs o f society in w hich it is w orking and observ­ ing the defects, the necessities, the sufferings and the hopes and aspi­ rations that exist in hum an hearts.33

Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes were great acts o f theological re­ orientation, reshaping the parameters o f Catholic theology. T h e C o u n ­ cil’s w ork on specific issues was hardly less revolutionary. T h e decree on the Liturgy established a series o f principles w hich w ould transform the worship o f Rom an Catholics, introducing the vernacular in place o f Latin, encouraging greater sim plicity and lay participation. T h e D ecree on Revelation abandoned the sterile opposition between Scripture and Tradition w hich had dogged both Catholic and Protestant theology since the Reform ation, and presented both as com plem entary expressions o f the fundam ental W ord o f G od, w hich underlies them both. T h e decree on Ecum enism broke decisively w ith the attitude o f supercilious rejec­ tion o f the ecumenical m ovem ent w hich Pius X I had established in Mortalium Annos, and placed the search for unity am ong Christians at the centre o f the C h u rch ’s life. T h e decree on other religions rejected once and for all the notion that the Jew ish people could be held responsible for the death o f Christ, the root o f the age-old Christian tradition o f antiSemitism. Perhaps most revolutionary o f all, the decree on R eligious

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Liberty declared unequivocally that ‘the human person has a right to re­ ligious liberty’, and that this religious freedom, a fundamental part o f the dignity o f hum an beings, must be enshrined in the constitution o f soci­ ety as a civil right. 34 This was truly revolutionary teaching, for the persecution o f heresy and enforcement o f Catholicism had been a reality since the days o f Constantine, and since the French R evolution pope after pope had re­ peatedly and explicitly denounced the notion that non-Catholics had a right to religious freedom. O n the older view, error had no rights, and the C hurch was bound to proclaim the truth, and wherever it could to see that society enforced the truth by secular sanctions. Heretics and un­ believers m ight in certain circumstances be granted toleration, but not lib­ erty. Th e D ecree was opposed tooth and nail, especially by the Italian and Spanish bishops (the decree flew in the face o f the Concordat w hich reg­ ulated the life o f the Spanish church, and w hich discriminated against Protestants). A nother opponent was Archbishop M arcel Lefebvre, who, after the C ouncil, w ould eventually form his ow n breakaway m ovem ent com m itted not only to the pre-C onciliar liturgy but to the intransigent integralism and rejection o f religious liberty w hich had flourished under Pius X and the last years o f Pius X II. T h e decree on Religious Liberty was largely drafted by the Am erican theologian Jo h n Courtney M urray, another o f those under a cloud in the pontificate o f Pius X II. It was strongly pressed by the A m erican bishops, w ho felt that a failure to revise the C h u rch ’s teaching on this issue w ould discredit the C ouncil in the eyes o f the democratic nations. A lead had been given by the new Pope, Paul V I, during a flying visit to the U nited Nations in O ctober 1963, w hen he spoke o f ‘fundamental hum an rights and duties, human dignity and freedom - above all religious lib erty’ , a clear endorsement o f the new teaching. K ey support for the change also came from the Archbishop o f Krakow, K arol W ojtyla, the future Pope Jo h n Paul II, w ho saw in the decree’s assertion o f the fundamental human right to freedom o f conscience a valuable weapon in the hands o f the churches persecuted under Com m unism . O n every front, then, the C ouncil redrew the boundaries o f what had seemed till 1959 a fixed and imm utable system. For some Catholics, these changes were the long-awaited harvest o f the N e w Theology, the reward o f years o f patient endurance during the w inter o f Pius X II. For others, they were apostasy, the capitulation o f the C hurch to the corrupt and worldly values o f the Enlightenment and the Revolution, w hich the popes

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from Pius I X to Pius X II had rightly denounced. For others, perhaps the m ajority, they were a bew ildering stream o f directives from above, to be obeyed as best they could. M any o f the older clergy o f the Catholic C hurch found themselves sleep-walking through the C onciliar and postC onciliar years, loyal to an authority w hich called them to em brace at­ titudes w hich the same authority had once denounced as heresy. Pope Jo h n s successor w ould have to deal w ith all this. W ith a sort o f inevitability, Giovanni Battista M ontini, middle-class son o f a Partito Popolare politician from Brescia, was elected to succeed Jo h n on 2 1 June 1963, taking the name Paul V I (19 6 3—78). Everyone knew h ow crucial M ontini s insight and determ ination was to the shap­ ing o f the C ouncil and the forcing through o f its reforms. Jo h n had often felt outflanked by the Vatican bureaucracy, his peasant shrewdness no match for the com plexities o f curial filibuster and red tape. M ontini, by contrast, w ho had worked in the secretariat o f State from 1922 to 1954, knew every inch o f the Vatican and its ways, and could fight fire with fire. W h ile still a young man he had toyed w ith the idea that the Pope o f the future should break away from St Peter’s and the claustrophobia o f the Vatican City, and go to live am ong his seminarians at the Cathedral Church o f Rom e, the Lateran, to take the papacy once more to the people. H e never in fact had the daring to put this vision into practice, but it says m uch about his understanding o f the tasks and challenges that con­ fronted the Pope and the C ouncil that he entertained it at all. Yet he was emphatically no radical, and could hold the confidence o f all but the most die-hard reactionaries. It was up to him to steer the C ou n ­ cil to the successful com pletion o f its work, to oversee the im plementa­ tion o f its reforms, and to hold together conservatives and reformers w h ile he did so. In the turbulent sixties and early seventies, w hen religious re­ form and social and moral revolution flow ed together, the task was al­ most impossible. N o pope since the time o f G regory the Great has had so daunting a task. T h e societies o f the West were passing through a pe­ riod o f general questioning o f structures and authority, a crisis o f confi­ dence in old certainties and old institutions w hich was far w ider than the C hurch. T h e reforms o f Vatican II flowed into this general flu x and chal­ lenging o f values, and were often difficult to distinguish from it. A century and a h alf o f rigidity had left the C hurch ill-equipped for radical change. A n institution w hich had wedded itself to what M anning had called ‘the beauty o f inflexibility’ was now called upon to bend. T h e transformations o f Catholicism w hich flow ed from the C ouncil were

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drastic and to m any inexplicable. A liturgy once seen as timeless, beau­ tiful and sacrosanct, its universality guaranteed by the exotic vestments and whispered or chanted Latin in w hich it was celebrated, was n ow re­ clothed in graceless m odern vernaculars to the sound o f guitars and clar­ inets. Before the C ouncil Catholics had been forbidden even to recite the Lord’s Prayer in com m on with other Christians: they were now en­ couraged to hold jo in t services, prayer-groups, study-sessions. T h e reform was experienced by many as the jo y fu l clearing away o f outmoded lumber, by others as the vandalizing o f a beautiful and pre­ cious inheritance. In addition to the signs o f renewal and enthusiasm, there were signs o f collapsing confidence. Thousands o f priests left the priesthood to marry, nuns abandoned the religious habit, vocations to the religious life plummeted. In the exhilaration - or the horror - o f seeing ancient taboos broken, prudence, a sense o f proportion, and the simple ability to tell baby from bathwater were rare commodities. B oth the en­ thusiasts and the opponents o f reform looked to the papacy for leader­ ship and support. To hold this strife o f voices in some sort o f balance was a daunting task. M ontini, w h o took the name Paul to signify a com m it­ ment to mission and reform , rose to the challenge, signalling both con­ tinuity and reform from the very m om ent o f his election. H e allowed h im self to be crowned according to custom, but then sold the papal tiara w hich had been used for the ceremony, and gave the m oney to the poor. N o t everyone liked Paul’s methods. D eterm ined that the Conciliar reforms should not be thrown o ff course, he was also determ ined that no one should feel steam-rollered. There was to be, he declared, no one w h o felt conquered, only everyone convinced. To achieve this, he tried to neutralize conservative unease by m atching every reform gesture with a conservative one. In a series o f deeply unpopular interventions, he watered dow n conciliar documents w hich had already been through most o f the stages o f conciliar debate and approval, notably the decrees on the Church and on Ecumenism, to accommodate conservative worries (which he h im self evidently shared). H e gave to M ary the title M other o f the Church w hich the C ouncil had withheld because it seemed to separate her unhelpfully the rest o f redeemed humanity. H e delayed the promulgation o f the decree on R eligious Liberty. This balancing act was not confined to his interventions at the C o u n ­ cil. In 1967 he published his radical encyclical on social justice, Populorum Progressio, which advanced beyond the generalities o f Gaudium et Spes and denounced unrestrained econom ic liberalism as a ’w oefu l system’ ,

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and called for the placing o f the ‘superfluous w ealth’ o f the rich coun­ tries o f the w orld for the benefit o f the poor nations. Th is encyclical de­ lighted the theologians and pastors o f the T h ird World, and established Paul’s credentials as a ‘progressive’ on the side o f the poor. In the same year, however, he reiterated the traditional teaching on priestly celibacy, alienating many o f the same people w ho had acclaimed the encyclical. These contradictory gestures earned him , unjustly, the title ‘am letico’ a waverer like Hamlet. Yet steadily he pushed the essential changes onwards: the reform o f the Mass and its translation into the language o f everyday so as to involve or­ dinary people more deeply in worship; the establishment o f the notion o f episcopal collegiality along w ith the Pope, and the creation o f the Synod o f Bishops, w hich was to meet regularly to em body it. To increase efficiency and to break the stranglehold o f Pius X I I ’s cardinals and bish­ ops over the reform process, he introduced a com pulsory retirement age o f seventy-five for bishops (but not the Pope!) and decreed that cardinals after the age o f eighty m ight not hold office in the C u ria or take part in papal elections. Th is was a drastic measure. T h e average age o f the heads o f the Vatican dicasteries was 79: ten o f the cardinals were over eighty, one was over ninety. Two o f the leading curial conservatives, Cardinal O ttaviani and Cardinal Tisserant, made public their fu ry at their disen­ franchisement. To make the central administration o f the Church more representa­ tive, he hugely increased the membership o f the C ollege o f Cardinals, in­ cluding many third w orld bishops, thereby decisively w iping out the Ital­ ian domination o f papal elections. In the same spirit, he established a series o f bodies to carry out the w ork o f the Council. In particular he confirm ed permanent Secretariats for Christian U nity, for N on-C hristian Religions and for N on -B elievers as permanent parts o f the Vatican ad­ ministration. H e was deeply com m itted to Christian unity, going to J e ­ rusalem to meet the G reek O rthodox leader Patriarch Athenagoras in 1964. In the follow ing year they lifted the age-old mutual excom m uni­ cation o f the Eastern and Western churches. In 1966 he welcom ed the Archbishop o f Canterbury, M ichael Ramsay, on a form al visit to R om e, to w h om in a w arm ly personal but shrewdly dramatic gesture he gave his ow n episcopal ring. W ith calculated theological daring, he spoke o f the Anglican and Rom an Catholic churches as ‘sister churches’ . Paul began to travel, a new development for the m odern papacy, ad­ dressing the U nited Nations in 1963 in a dramatic speech w hich greatly

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enhanced his standing as a moral leader — ‘no more war, war never again’ and visiting the W orld C ouncil o f Churches in Geneva in 1969, the first Pope to set foot in C alvin s city since the Reform ation. In 1969 also he became the first Pope to visit A frica, ordaining bishops and encouraging the development o f an indigenous church. In 1970 he visited the P h ilip­ pines (where there was an assassination attempt) and Australia (where the A nglican Archbishop o f Sydney boycotted the visit). T h e character o f Paul V i ’s pontificate is perhaps most clearly revealed in the em ergence under him o f a new Vatican Ostpolitik, to ease the con­ dition o f the churches behind the Iron C urtain. D espite his apprentice­ ship under Pope Pacelli, Paul believed that the C h u rch ’s confrontational attitude to Com m unism was sterile and counter-productive, and he went far beyond Pope Jo h n ’s personal warm th, to a new policy o f realpolitik and accom modation to Com m unist regimes. There were casualties. T h e symbol o f the old confrontational attitude w hich had dom inated the pontificate o f Pius X I I was the heroic and intransigent cold w arrior C ar­ dinal Jo s e f Mindszenty, w h o had been living in the secular ‘sanctuary’ o f the Am erican embassy in Budapest since the failure o f the H ungarian Revolution in 1956, refusing every offer o f rescue, a permanent witness against and thorn in the side o f the Hungarian Com m unist authorities. In 19 71 the Am ericans told the Pope that M indszenty was an embarrass­ ment to them, preventing rapprochement with the Hungarians. T he Pope ordered him to leave, and he settled in Vienna, w riting his m em oirs a n d ' denouncing the Hungarian regime. Th e Hungarian bishops told the Pope the denunciations were m aking life harder for the C hu rch in H u n­ gary. In 1973 the Pope asked. M indszenty to resign as bishop o f Esztergom. H e refused, on the grounds that the new Vatican arrangements w ith the Hungarian governm ent w ould give Com m unists the final say in appointing his successor. Paul declared the see vacant, and in due course a replacement was appointed. Th e cardinal never forgave this ‘be­ trayal’ , and denounced Paul in his Memoirs. Mindszenty, like Archbishop M arcel Lefebvre, was the ghost o f the pontificate o f Pius X II, haunting the C hurch o f the Second Vatican C ouncil. In all this however, aspiration w ent further than achievement. Paul him self was often frightened by the runaway speed o f change and was afraid o f sacrificing essential papal prerogatives. H ow ever m uch he be­ lieved in the C hurch o f the Second Vatican C ouncil, however sincerely he fostered episcopal collegiality, he had been form ed in the C hu rch o f Vatican I, and he never abandoned the lofty and lonely vision o f papal au­

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thority w hich underlay the earlier C o u n cil’s teaching. Six weeks after becom ing Pope, Paul jo tted dow n a private note on his new responsi­ bilities. ‘T h e post,’ he wrote, is unique. It brings great solitude. I was solitary before, but now m y solitariness becomes com plete and awesome . . . Jesus was alone on the cro ss. . . M y solitude w ill grow. I need have no fears: I should not seek outside help to absolve me from m y duty; m y duty is to plan, de­ cide, assume every responsibility for guiding others, even w hen it seems illogical and perhaps absurd. A nd to suffer alone . . . me and God. T h e colloquy must be full and endless.35 This is a papacy conceived as service, not as power, but it is not a pa­ pacy conceived in terms o f partnership w ith others. G iven such a vision, and for all his good intentions, there were severe lim its to the sharing Paul thought possible w ith his fellow bishops. B etw een him and them was the awesome g u lf o f that lonely vision, an absolute difference in re­ sponsibility and authority. T h e international synods o f bishops w ould in­ creasingly turn into talking shops, w ith little real power, where even the topics for discussion were carefully chosen by the Vatican. In 1968, within three years o f the end o f the Council, his pontificate was profoundly dam­ aged by the furore provoked by his encyclical on artificial birth-control,

Humanae Vitae. In the face o f grow ing unhappiness with the C h u rch ’s total ban on all forms o f artificial birth-control, even w ithin marriage, Paul had taken the radical step o f rem oving the question o f contraception from the ju ­ risdiction o f the C ouncil and remitting it to an advisory commission o f theologians, scientists, doctors, and m arried couples. Th e commission prepared a report recom m ending m odification o f the traditional teaching to allow birth control in certain circumstances, and it was w idely ex­ pected that the Pope w ould accept this recommendation. In the event, he could not bring him self to do so, and the encyclical reaffirmed the tradi­ tional teaching, w h ile setting it w ithin a positive understanding o f mar­ ried sexuality. To his horror, instead o f closing the question, Humanae Vitae provoked a storm o f protest, and many priests resigned or were forced out o f their posts for their opposition to the Pope’s teaching. Paul never doubted that he had done what had to be done, but his confidence was shattered. H e never w rote another encyclical, and the last ten years o f his pontificate were marked by deepening gloom , as he agonized over the divisions w ithin the C hurch and his own unpopular­

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ity, the mass exodus o f priests and religious, and the grow in g violence o f the secular world, signalled for him in 1978, the last year o f his life, by the kidnap and m urder o f his close friend, the Christian D em ocratic politician A ldo M oro. Paul was a com plex man, affectionate, capable o f deep and enduring friendship, yet reserved, prone to fits o f depression, easily hurt. H e was passionately com m itted to the C oun cil and its pastoral renewal o f the C hurch, yet he passionately believed also in the papal prim acy, and was fearful o f com prom ising it. H ugely intelligent and deeply intuitive, he saw and was daunted by difficulties w hich others could brush aside, a fact w hich sometimes made him appear indecisive, where another w ould have acted first and reflected later. H e felt criticism deeply, and was acutely conscious o f the loneliness and isolation o f his position. His last years as Pope were a sort o f slow crucifixion for him , and he was often to iden­ tify him self w ith the suffering servant o f the prophet Isaiah, unloved, bearing the w o rld s woes. H e did not despair. In 1975, a w eary seventyeight year old, he jo tted dow n a series o f notes on his isolation: W hat is m y state o f mind? A m I Ham let or D on Q uixote? O n the left? O n the right? I don’t feel I have been properly understood. M y feelings are Superabundo Gaudio, I am full o f consolation, overcome w ith jo y, throughout every tribulation.36 Tribulation had indeed becom e the element he m oved in, yet he held the C hurch together during a period o f unprecedented change, and there was no doubting his deeply-felt Christian discipleship or his total dedication to the Petrine m inistry as he understood it. M ore than any one else, he was responsible for the consolidation o f the achievements o f the Second Vatican Council, and the renewal they brought to the Church. His funeral was conducted in the open air o f St Peter’s Square, his simple w ooden coffin bare o f all regalia except the open pages o f the gospel book, blow n about by the wind. It was a fitting symbol o f the most m o­ mentous but most troubled pontificate o f m odern times. H e was succeeded by another peasant pope, A lbino Luciani, son o f a m igrant w orker w h o had risen to becom e Patriarch o f Venice. Luciani was a pope in the m ould o f Roncalli rather than M ontini, a simple, goodhum oured pastoral bishop chosen to lift the gloom that had descended during Paul’s last years. H e signalled his com m itm ent to the C ou n cil by taking the composite name Jo h n Paul, and established him self at once as a pastoral figure, opposed to all pomp, refusing for example, to be crowned.

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There was universal enthusiasm for his appointment, despite his lack o f experience, and the English Cardinal H um e was unwise enough in the euphoric aftermath o f the conclave to call him ‘ G o d s candidate’ . There are in fact signs that the responsibilities o f the Papacy m ight have over­ whelm ed him , but there was no time to discover whether he had the stamina to cope w ith them or not, for just a month after his election he was found dead o f a coronary em bolism in the papal apartments. Sensa­ tional rum ours, later shown to be groundless, suggested that he had been murdered to prevent him exposing and cleaning up financial corruption in the Vatican Bank.

V Papa W o jtyla O nce more the shocked cardinals assembled. T h ey had elected a simple good man to be a pastoral pope, and the Lord had whisked him away. Was there a message in all this? General opinion called for another pas­ toral pope: but w ho? T h e choice o f the cardinals, an overwhelm ing 103 votes out o f 109, staggered every commentator. For the first time since 1522 they elected a non-Italian. H e was a Pole, K arol W ojtyla, A rch ­ bishop o f K rako w and at 58 the youngest pope since Pius IX . H e took the name Jo h n Paul II. Th ough not w idely know n to the general pub­ lic, his intellectual and physical energy, his record as an effective bishop under a hostile atheistic regime, and his remarkable linguistic gifts had impressed m any fellow-bishops. H e established h im self during the Vati­ can C oun cil as a com ing man, and had even attracted some votes at the Conclave w hich had elected Jo h n Paul I. In the second conclave o f 1978 he seemed to promise hope and grow th after the confusion and dem or­ alization o f Paul V i ’s last years. A form er university professor o f philosophy and a published poet and playwright, a practiced mountaineer and skier, a skilled linguist in French, Germ an, English, Italian and Russian, W ojtyla was by any standards a star, w ith a remarkable career behind him . B o rn in 1920, he was the son o f a retired arm y officer w idow ed w h ile K arol was still a child. A student at the outset o f the N azi occupation o f Poland, W ojtyla served as a labourer in a quarry and a chemical factory. H e was the first pope for two centuries to have had anything approaching an ordinary upbringing - i f such an upbringing counts as ordinary - and even a girlfriend. W hen he decided to becom e a priest he had to com m ence his studies in secret. His priestly and episcopal career had been conducted entirely under Com m unist rule.

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H e understood and was able to confront and handle the Com m unist sys­ tem. His philosophical interests were in the field o f ethics and hum an re­ sponsibility, and he was deeply read in existentialist thinkers like the Jew ish philosopher and theologian M artin Buber. Trained in theology at the A ngelicum U niversity in R om e under the decidedly old-fashioned neo-Scholastic Dom inican, Reginald Garrigou-Legrange, he was to com ­ plete a second doctoral dissertation in Poland on the personalist ethics o f the philosopher M ax Scheler, a Jew ish convert to Catholicism . E ven as bishop, he continued to teach at the Jagiellonian University. Paul V I greatly admired W ojtyla’s sanctified intellectualism, and had drawn on his book Love and Responsibility in drafting Humanae Vitae. In line w ith all these hopes and expectations, from the outset Jo h n Paul II pledged him self to continue the w ork o f the C ouncil and his im ­ mediate predecessors, whose names he took. B u t it was equally clear from the outset that his agenda was quite distinctive, profoundly marked both by his philosophical concerns, and by his Slav identity. M u ch pre­ occupied w ith the so-called ‘C hurch o f silence’ suffering under C o m ­ munism, he set h im self to strengthen it in its struggle w ith materialist regimes. H e returned to Poland as Pope in Ju ne 1979. T h e nervous C o m ­ munist regime, against the strongest possible advice from the Krem lin, did not dare to refuse him entry. It was a catastrophic miscalculation on their part. A rapturous one third o f the entire population turned out to listen to W ojtyla at meetings up and dow n the country. T h e visit focused national confidence in the face o f a shaky Com m unist regime, and was a m ajor factor in the em ergence o f the independent union Solidarity, the follow ing year. Papal support, both m oral and financial, played a crucial role in the success o f the Solidarity movement, and Polands eventual peaceful transition to self-government and the end o f Com m unism there. Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader w h o was to becom e President o f the liberated republic, w ould pointedly sign the agreement w ith the C o m ­ munist governm ent legalizing Solidarity w ith a plastic souvenir pen o f the 1979 papal visit, sporting a portrait o f W ojtyla. B u t he was to be m uch more than a national redeemer for the Poles. Like Pius X II, w h o had made him a bishop, Papa W ojtyla saw the Pope as first and foremost the supreme teacher, an oracle. In 1979 there ap­ peared the first o f an eventual fourteen teaching encyclicals. Entitled Redemptor Hominis, it set out a Christian doctrine o f hum an nature, in w hich C hrist is seen not merely as revealing the nature o f G od, but re­ vealing also what it is to be truly human. From this first encyclical,

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w hich picked up themes from the C onciliar Constitution on the C hurch in the M odern W orld, Gaudium et Spes, in the drafting o f w hich W ojtyla had played a part, the distinctive character o f the new Popes Christian hum anism was in evidence. H e based his teaching about hum an dignity and responsibility not on natural law, but on the m ystery o f love revealed in C hrist — as he w rote ‘the name for [our] deep amazement at m ans worth and dignity is the Gospel’ . 37 Th e spiritual profundity o f Jo h n Pauls thought was quickly recognized, but so also was its m arkedly conserva­ tive character, and Redemptor Hominis contained a stern call to theolo­ gians to ‘close collaboration w ith the M agisterium ’ w hich foreshadowed tighter central control over theological freedom within the Church. This concern w ith orthodoxy showed itself especially in the field o f sexual ethics. From the start o f his pontificate, W ojtyla campaigned tire­ lessly against birth control and abortion, w hich he invariably linked, and there were recurrent rum ours o f a solemn statement w hich w ould en­ dorse infallibly the teaching o f Humanae Vitae. N o such statement was forthcom ing, but his most form idable encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, pub­ lished in O ctober 1993, insisted on the objective reality o f fundamental m oral values, and asserted the existence o f ‘intrinsically evil’ acts, w hich purity o f intention could never make licit. Contraception was explicitly cited as one such act. Like Pius X I I ’s Humani Generis, the encyclical was designed to reject, w ithout nam ing names, a range o f current theologi­ cal approaches to morality. His concern w ith the evil o f abortion ex­ pressed itself in 1995 the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, in w hich he called for ‘a new culture’ o f love and reverence for life, and attacked the ‘cul­ ture o f death’ w hich he saw as characteristic o f materialist societies, and o f w hich abortion and euthanasia were the principal expression. T h e un­ com prom ising consistency o f his opposition to every aspect o f this ‘ cul­ ture o f death’ , however, was to involve him and his C hurch in appalling m oral dilemmas. T h e epidemic spread o f H IV -A id s in A frica seemed to demand the use o f condoms to prevent the transmission o f the disease. B u t for Papa W ojtyla, the use o f condoms was never justifiable, even in pursuit o f an undoubted good like the halting o f disease. T h e C hurch recom m ended chastity as the best and only protection against the disease, w h ile highly placed Vatican spokesmen even harnessed dubious science to query the effectiveness o f condoms as protection against the Aids virus. T h e w orld beyond the Church, and many w ithin, found such in­ transigent teaching hard to comprehend - or to forgive. Yet sex was by no means his main target. I f M arxism dehumanized

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by collectivism , liberal capitalism, he believed, dehumanized by ruthless com m odification, oppressing the w orld ’s poor w ith un-payable debt, and turning m oral agents into mere consumers. His visit to Poland in 1991 was embittered by agitation there for permissive abortion legislation, but also by the hectic grow th o f the trashier aspects o f consumerism. C h ris­ tian civilization, refined in the fire o f suffering and fresh from its victory over Com m unism , seemed about to be sold for a mess o f M cD on ald s. Taking the Ten Com m andm ents as the text for all his speeches, Papa W ojtyla shook his fist and wept at Polish crowds w h om he feared were in danger o f selling themselves into a new and worse kind o f slavery. Jo h n Pauls attitude to Liberation T h eology was to becom e one o f the most controversial aspects o f his theological stance. D u rin g the 1960s and 1970s theologians in Europe and the Am ericas increasingly gravi­ tated towards an account o f Christian salvation w hich emphasized the liberating effect o f the Gospel not merely in the hereafter, but wherever hum an beings are enslaved by economic, social or political oppression: they were able to appeal for justification both to Gaudium et Spes and to Paul V i ’s Populorum Progressio. Th e Exodus account o f the deliverance o f Israel from slavery, and the celebration in biblical texts like the M agnifi­ cat o f a G o d w h o ‘puts dow n the m ighty from their thrones’ and ‘lifts up the humble and m eek’ , were developed into a theological critique o f the political and econom ic order w hich had particularly direct applica­ tion in polarized societies like those o f Latin A m erica. Theologians like the Peruvian priest Gustavo Guttierez pressed into service M arxist n o­ tions such as ‘alienation’ , and emphasized the evils o f sinful econom ic and social structures as a form o f institutionalized violence against the oppressed. In Nicaragua, Liberation Th eology played a part in the Sandanista revolution, and five catholic priests took their place in the Sandanista cabinet, including the poet, Fr Ernesto Cardenal. These emphases were taken up by many bishops and priests in Latin A m erica during the pontificate o f Paul V I, and became central to m uch rethinking o f the nature o f the C h u rch ’s mission, not least in the Soci­ ety o f Jesus. T h ey alarmed Pope Jo h n Paul, however. Profoundly hostile to Com m unism , he was deeply suspicious o f the emphases o f Libera­ tion Theology, w hich he believed subordinated Christian concerns to a M arxist agenda. H e was deeply opposed, also, to the direct participation o f priests and bishops in politics, and he view ed the activities o f bishops like Oscar Rom ero, Archbishop o f San Salvador, or Evaristo Arns, A rch ­ bishop o f Sao Paulo, w ho had thrown themselves into the defence o f the

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poor against their governments, w ith a marked and somewhat surprising lack o f warm th. W hen R om ero was murdered by governm ent assassins w h ile saying Mass in 1980, he was acclaimed throughout Latin A m erica as a martyr. T h e Pope however, w h o had cautioned him not long before on the need for prudence, spoke o f him only as ‘zealous’ . T h ough he prayed at R o m ero ’s tomb during a visit to San Salvador in 1983, he would, w h en addressing the Conference o f Latin A m erican Bishops in 1992, re­ m ove from the agreed text o f the speech a reference to R o m e ro ’s mar­ tyrdom. A rns was underm ined by having his huge diocese subdivided without his agreement, and the five new suffragan sees created filled w ith conservative bishops hostile to his social com mitment. Yet this reserve about Liberation T h eology w ent alongside a profound suspicion o f W estern Capitalism , signalled in a series o f pow erful and distinctive social encyclicals, like the denunciation in Dives in Misericordia (1980) o f the ‘fundamental defect, or rather a series o f defects, indeed a defective m achinery . . . at the root o f contem porary economics and m a­ terial civilization’, defects w hich trap the ‘hum an fam ily’ in ‘radically unjust situations’ in w hich children starve in a w orld o f plenty.38 E ven more explicitly, in his remarkable Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, published in 1988 to com m em orate Paul V i ’s Populorum Progressio, Jo h n Paul II e x ­ coriated both ‘liberal capitalism’ and ‘M arxist collectivism ’ as systems em bodying defective concepts o f individual and social development both o f them in need o f radical correction, and both contributing to the w idening gap between N o rth and South, rich and poor. H e saw C atho­ lic social teaching as something quite distinct from either, offering a cri­ tique o f both, and even found space to praise the use o f the concept o f Liberation in Latin A m erican theology. T h e encyclical, w hich echoed the call for a ‘preferential love for the p oor’ caused consternation among conservative A m erican theologians and social theorists, used to seeing papal utterances as valuable underpinning for W estern econom ic and so­ cial theory.39 Nevertheless, for all these signs o f ambivalence, under his pontificate conservative theological forces steadily reasserted themselves in the Church, producing a series o f confrontations between theologians and the authorities, especially the Congregation for the D octrine o f the Faith (the old H o ly O ffice or Inquisition renamed) headed by the Bavarian Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. R atzinger had a distinguished record as an academic theologian, and in an earlier incarnation was one o f the theo­ logical architects o f the reforms o f Vatican II. H e had been profoundly

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shocked by student radicalism and the sexual revolution in G erm any in the sixties however, as w ell as by what he regarded as the hijacking o f genuine reform by essentially irreligious Enlightenm ent values. T h e flex­ ibility and openness o f his earlier writings gave w ay to a more pessimistic call for ‘restoration’ w hich suggested strong reservations about some el­ ements o f the legacy o f the Council. Poacher turned gam e-keeper, he now presided over the silencing or disowning o f a string o f theologians, beginning w ith Hans K u n g in 1979, (who had appointed him to his first academic post) and the reconstruction o f a tight and increasingly as­ sertive orthodoxy w hich became the hall-m ark o f the pontificate. T h e contrast w ith the pontificate o f Paul V I, w hen even the traumatic aftermath o f Humanae Vitae produced no papal denunciations or excom m u­ nications o f theologians, was striking. Jo h n Paul actively endorsed this trend, most notably in the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in 1995, declaring that the debate about the ordination o f wom en (hardly begun in the Catholic C hu rch outside N orth Am erica, and hardly an issue in most o f the developing world, where the m ajority o f Catholics live) was now closed. Christ had cho­ sen only men as apostles, and so only men may be priests. In order that ‘all doubt may be removed,’ therefore, ‘in virtue o f m y m inistry o f confirm ing the brethren,’ he declared that ‘the C hurch has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination to wom en and that this ju d g e­ ment is to be definitively held by all the C h u rch ’s faithful.’ T h e form in w hich this statement appeared - an ‘apostolic letter’- was several notches down in the hierarchy o f authoritative papal utterances, below that o f an encyclical, for example. Its phrasing however, hinted at some­ thing weightier - just what m ight be meant by ‘definitively held’ for ex ­ ample? A subsequent gloss by Cardinal Ratzinger, apparently attributing infallibility to the Pope’s statement, evoked protests as a blatant attempt to stifle discussion o f an issue which many considered not yet ripe for res­ olution. Pope Jo h n Paul’s suspicion o f Western liberalism was in part an aspect o f his Slav inheritance. From the start o f his pontificate he looked East more consistently than any Pope o f m odern times. His strong sense o f Slav identity expressed itself in the conviction that the religious schism between East and West had left the C hurch breathing ‘through only one lung’ , desperately in need o f the spiritual depth and the w isdom born o f suffering w hich the churches o f the East could bring. T h e 1995 encycli­ cal Ut Unum Sint on Christian U n ity contained an extended and hope­

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ful discussion o f the fundamental unity o f the ‘sister churches’ o f East and West (unlike Paul V I, Jo h n Paul was careful never to apply this phrase to any church o f the R eform ation). T h e encyclical left no doubt about the Pope’s ardent com m itm ent to reconciliation w ith the O rtho­ dox churches. Paradoxically however, his ow n exalted understanding o f papal authority and changes after the fall o f Com m unism (which brought pastoral pressures for the réintroduction or strengthening o f Catholic hi­ erarchies o f both the Latin and Byzantine rites to minister to Catholics in the countries o f the form er Soviet Union) did a good deal to set back relationships w ith the O rthodox world. Ut Unum Sint recognized the barrier presented by the Petrine ministry, but asserted its permanent and G od -given role as a special ‘service o f unity.’ T h e Pope, in a remarkable gesture, invited the leaders and theologians o f other churches to enter into a ‘patient and fraternal dialogue’ w ith him to discover h ow the Petrine m inistry m ight be exercised in a w ay w hich ‘may accomplish a service o f love recognized by all concerned.’ R u efu l Catholic hierarchies and theologians wondered i f he wanted a sim ilar dialogue w ith them .40 For W ojtyla, it was clear from the start, believed passionately in a hands-on papacy. As soon as he was elected, the flood o f permissions for priests to leave the priesthood and m arry dried up. Priests m ight leave the ministry, but w ith difficulty, and initially the Pope w ould not release them from their vows o f celibacy: there was no m istaking in this change o f policy W ojtyla s ow n stern convictions. Jo h n Paul II saw h im self as the universal bishop, and w ithin months o f his appointment he launched on an extraordinary series o f pastoral visits to every corner o f the world, carrying his message o f old-fashioned moral values and fidelity to the teaching authority o f the hierarchical C hurch, yet w ith a personal en­ ergy and charisma w hich brought the faithful out in their millions like football fans or zealots at a rally. This tireless jo u rn eyin g was to becom e the defining mark o f his papacy, and transformed the papal office. T h e ‘prisoner o f the Vatican’ , the administrative and symbolic centre o f the Church rooted in Rom e, had becom e the w orld ’s most spectacular rov­ ing evangelist. Asked by a reporter w h y he intended to visit B ritain in 1982 he explained, ‘I must go: it is m y C hurch.’ Critics deplored these paternalist visitations as disabling and absolutist, upstaging the local bish­ ops and placing the isolated figure o f the Pope in the limelight. W ojtyla saw them as a distinctive and necessary feature o f the m odern Petrine ministry, w h ile the actor and populist in him unfolded in the sun o f pop­ ular enthusiasm. H e appeared on balconies and platforms w earing M e x ­

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ican sombreros, or N ative Am erican headdress. As infirm ity descended on him he harnessed that too, tw irling his w alking cane like C harlie C haplin’s tramp, w h ile the crow d roared its approval. For the crowds adored him, especially the young, w h o rallied in their millions, respond­ ing to his demanding exhortations to generosity for C hrist and chastity in an age o f licence, w ith the chant ‘J o h n Paul Two, w e love you.’ There were an estimated five m illion at the W orld Youth D ay held in M anila in 1995. B y the end o f his pontificate he had conducted more than a hundred such international trips, and had addressed, and been seen by, more people than anyone else in history. His interventions extended to every aspect o f the C h u rch ’s life, not least that o f the religious orders, w h om he was anxious to recall to their traditional observance. E arly in his pontificate he became alarmed by the spread o f radical theological opinions among the Jesuits under Paul V i ’s friend, the saintly and charismatic General Pedro Aruppe. In 19 8 1, Aruppe had a stroke, and Pope Jo h n Paul suspended the constitution o f the S o ­ ciety o f Jesus, thereby preventing the election by the Jesuits o f a succes­ sor. Instead, the Pope, in an unprecedented intervention, im posed his ow n candidate, the 79 year-old Fr Paolo Dezza, a Vatican ‘trusty’, theo­ logically conservative and almost blind. Th e m ove was seen as an attempt to impose a papal puppet on the Society, and strained Jesuit loyalty to the lim it, evoking a letter o f protest from the venerable Jesuit theologian K arl Rahner. Th e pope subsequently allowed the order to proceed to a free election, and publicly expressed his confidence in their work, but the intervention was recognized as a shot across the bows o f an order w hich he felt was in danger o f politicizing the Gospel by over-com m itm ent to the T h eology o f Liberation. In his later years, Jo h n Paul II seemed at times at least as m uch the successor o f Pius IX , Pius X or Pius X II as o f Jo h n X X I I I or Paul V I. A n Ultram ontane, filled w ith a profound sense o f the im m ensity o f his ow n office and o f his centrality in the providence o f God, he was con­ vinced, for example, that the shot w ith w hich the deranged Turkish Com m unist M ehm et A li A gca almost killed him in St Peter’s Square in 1981 was m iraculously deflected by O ur Lady o f Fatima. There were res­ onances behind this conviction that went beyond mere piety. Fatima is a Portuguese shrine where the V irgin was believed to have appeared in 19 17. T h e apparitions and the Fatima cult rapidly became drawn into the apocalyptic hopes and fears aroused by the B olshevik R evolution and the Com m unist attack on Christianity. D u rin g the C o ld War years Fatima

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becom e a devotional focus for anti-Com m unist feeling, and the aging Pius X I I was rum oured to have received visions o f the V irgin o f Fatima. A gca s bullet was later presented to the shrine at Fatima, where it was set in the V irg in s jew elled crown. T h e assassination attempt was not the only event interpreted by Jo h n Paul as a manifestation o f his mystical vo ­ cation. In 1994, when, like m any another old man, he fell in the shower and broke his thigh, he saw the accident as a deeper entry into his prophetic calling: the Pope, he declared, must suffer. Suffering, indeed, offers an im portant key to his character: the death o f his m other w hen he was nine, o f his beloved elder brother w hen he was thirteen, the harshness o f his wartim e experience as a labourer in a quarry and a chemical factory, the years o f concealment, resistance and confrontation as seminarian, priest and bishop under N azi and then Com m unist rule. A ll these com bined to shape an outlook h alf grieved by and h alf contemptuous o f the self-indulgence o f the West, dismissive o f the m oral and social values o f the Enlightenm ent w hich, he believed, had led hum anity into a spiritual cul-de-sac and had more than h alf se­ duced the churches. Yet he was a hard man to measure. Sternly authoritarian he neverthe­ less abandoned the use o f the R oyal plural in his encyclicals and allocu­ tions: he was the first pope to w rite not as ‘w e ’ , but in his ow n persona, as K arol Wojtyla. H e was also a passionate believer in religious liberty, and at Vatican II played a key role in the transformation o f Catholic teaching in that area. O ften seen as dismissive o f other faiths, he had an intense in­ terest in Judaism, born out o f a lifelong friendship w ith a Jew ish boy from K rakow : he was the first Pope to visit the Rom an Synagogue, and in 1993 he established form al diplomatic relations with the State o f Israel. His openness to other religions extended to the non-Abraham ic traditions. In O ctober 1986 at Assisi he initiated acts o f worship involving not only M uslim s, but Hindus, the D ali Lama and assorted Shamans. W hen pray­ ing by the Ganges at the scene o f Gandhi s cremation he became so ab­ sorbed that his entourage lost patience and literally shook him back into his schedule. T h e uncom prom ising defender o f profoundly unpopular teaching on matters such as birth-control, he was nevertheless the most populist pope in history, an unstoppable tarmac-kisser, hand-shaker, granny-blesser, baby-embracer. Convinced o f his ow n immediate au­ thority over and responsibility for every Catholic in the world, he went to the people, showing himself, asserting his authority, coaxing, scolding, jo k in g, weeping, and trailing exhausted local hierarchies in his wake.

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W ojtyla had a special preoccupation w ith the m aking o f saints. B e ­ lieving that the creation o f indigenous models o f holiness was a funda­ mental part o f em bedding the Gospel in the w o rld ’s cultures, he beatified and canonized local saints wherever he went, creating in all nearly five hundred saints and fourteen hundred bead or ‘blesseds’ , more than had been made by all previous popes put together. This prodigal m ultiplica­ tion o f saints alarmed many even in the Vatican, and in 1989 even Joseph Ratzinger wondered whether too many saints were being declared ‘w h o don’t really have m uch to say to the great multitude o f believers’ .41 As Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out, every canonization represented a choice o f priorities. T h e priorities in practice were often those o f others, since pressure for the choice o f saints often originated in the local churches rather than at Rom e. Nevertheless, the lists o f new saints were eagerly scrutinized for whatever signals the Pope m ight be thought to be sending. O n 3 Septem ber 2000 W ojtyla beatified Pope Jo h n X X I I I , the m uch­ loved pope o f the C ouncil. This was an im m ensely popular move. Jo h n ’s tomb in the Vatican crypt had been constantly surrounded by kneeling pilgrim s since the day o f his burial, and his raising to the altars o f the C hurch was seen by many as an overdue endorsement o f Papa R oncalli s C oun cil and the changes it had brought. B u t in the same cerem ony W ojtyla also beatified Pio N ono, the pope o f the Syllabus of Errors and the First Vatican C ouncil, and the symbol o f an infallible papacy intransigently at odds w ith m odernity and w ith secular Italy. It had originally been planned to beatify R oncalli alongside his very different predeces­ sor, Eugenio Pacelli, Pius X II. Controversy over Papa Pacelli’s alleged si­ lence about the treatment o f the Jew s during the N azi era made this pair­ ing impossible. Pio N o n o ’s cause had in fact been in process long before R o n calli’s, but canonizations are public statements, and inevitably there were many w ho saw the linking o f these incongruously contrasting popes as an attempt to offset any advantage p ro-C on ciliar forces in the C hurch o f the T h ird M illennium m ight have derived from the raising o f Pope Jo h n to the altars. In all likelihood there was more than a w h iff o f para­ noia in such fears; that they were aired at all is a sign o f the tensions o f the last years o f the Polish pope. For the titanic energy o f W ojtyla’s pontificate had momentous conse­ quences for the C hurch, not all o f them good. T h e endless journeys, de­ signed to unite the C hu rch around the Pope, sometimes seemed in fact to highlight divisions. T h e rhetoric o f shared responsibility w ith other bishops was often belied by increasing Vatican intervention in the local

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churches, not least in some disastrous, and disastrously unpopular, epis­ copal appointments, like that o f M gr. W olfgang Haas to the Swiss dio­ cese o f Chur. Haas, deeply conservative and very confrontational, was w id ely believed to have been introduced by the Vatican to prom ote re­ actionary theological views and pastoral policies. H e rapidly alienated clergy and laity alike, priests applied in large numbers for transfers to other dioceses, and there were public demonstrations against him . T h e Canton o f Z u rich voted to cut o ff all payments to the diocese. Haas at­ tributed all this to the fact that he was a defender o f orthodoxy: ‘I f one fully accepts the m agisterium o f the C hurch, an essential condition for Catholics, then one comes under fire.’ In 1990 the other Swiss bishops went to see the Pope to secure Haas’ removal. H e was not removed. In­ stead, in 1997 the Vatican adopted the extraordinary face-saving device o f creating a new Archdiocese for the tiny principality o f Lichtenstein (form erly part o f the diocese o f C hur), and transferred Haas into it. U nder Jo h n Paul, the autonomy o f local hierarchies was systemati­ cally eroded. Vatican departments tightened their grip on matters for­ m erly in the remit o f regional hierarchies, including even the details o f the translation o f the liturgy into local vernaculars. Vatican scholars chal­ lenged the theological and canonical status o f the National Conferences o f Bishops, arguing that episcopal ‘collegiality’ is only exercised by the bishops gathered round the Pope, never acting independently. Jo in t de­ cisions o f Conferences o f Bishops — like those o f Latin Am erica, or the N orth A m erican bishops, represent merely ‘collective’ decisions, intro­ ducing inappropriate ‘ dem ocratic’ structures into the hierarchy o f the C hurch w hich have no theological standing. In all this, m any saw the re­ versal o f the devolution o f authority to local churches in the wake o f Vatican II. D espite his patent com m itm ent to the implementation o f the Second Vatican C ouncil, Jo h n Paul II threw his w eight behind movements and energies w hich seemed to some to sit uneasily with the spirit o f the Council. H e gave strong personal endorsement to lay movements like Communione e Liberazione, a renewal o f Catholic Action in the style o f Pius X I . In particular, he gave his protection and the unique canonical status o f a ‘personal prelature’ , and hence exem ption from local episcopal au­ thority, to the sem i-secret organization Opus Dei, founded in pre-Franco Spain by Josem aria Escriva. W ojtyla went to pray at Escriva’s tomb in R o m e just before the Conclave w hich elected him Pope in 1978. E s­ criva’s rapid beatification (1992) and canonization (2002), against strong

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and vocal opposition, was a political act w hich made clear the Pope’s identification w ith the spirit and objectives o f the Opus Dei M ovem ent, whose conservative theological and pastoral influence and grow ing back­ room control over many official C hu rch events and institutions, includ­ ing even episcopal meetings and synods, caused considerable unease to some local hierarchies. M ore disturbing was the slowness o f the Vatican under W ojtyla to grasp the scale and devastating implications o f the m ul­ tiple cases o f sexual abuse w ithin the C hurch w hich em erged in A m er­ ica, Australasia and Europe in the last ten years o f the pontificate, trig­ gering a massive withdrawal o f trust and a tidal wave o f legal actions. Jo h n Paul’s last years were dogged by inexorably advancing illness w hich reduced the form er athlete to a painfully stooped and frail figure. Parkinson’s disease froze his charismatic face into an im m obile mask in­ capable o f smiling: his left hand trembled uncontrollably. H e refused to be defeated. D espite increasingly explicit speculation in the media about the possibility o f a papal resignation, he soldiered on, perm itting no let­ up in the gruelling regim e o f roving evangelist he had evolved for him ­ self. T h e international trips went on, 104 by the time o f his death, to 130 countries, covering more than a m illion miles, every trip a punishing round o f receptions, mass-meetings and liturgies. Some, like that to C as­ tro ’s C uba in January 1998, were o f major international significance: a deal w hich helped Cuba in its efforts to lift the A m erican-led blockade against it, and w hich, from the Pope’s point o f view, gave him an op­ portunity to secure new freedoms for the C uban church and to carry his unswerving campaign for religious and human liberties into the last out­ post o f Soviet-style Com m unism in the West (W ojtyla secured from Castro the release o f 200 political prisoners). Kept on his feet by injec­ tions administered in the sacristy before long ceremonies, the ageing pope was often visibly exhausted, stunned or dozing as his illness over­ came him , yet capable o f sum m oning his strength in astonishing returns o f the old magic. T h e B im illennial H oly-Y ear 2000 was a series o f such surprises: W ojtyla drew a flood o f pilgrim s to R om e, and packed the year w ith far-reaching initiatives, like the D ay o f Pardon he presided over, brushing aside m ore cautious counsels in the Vatican, at the start o f Lent in M arch 2000. In the course o f this cerem ony in St Peter’s, designed to initiate a 'Purification o f M e m o ry ’ for the C hu rch in the T h ird M il­ lennium , he solem nly acknowledged and apologized for the Catholic C h u rch ’s past sins against human and religious freedoms, against the dig­ nity o f wom en, against the Jew s. H e reiterated this public act o f repen­

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tance during an historic visit to the H o ly Land later the same month, in an eloquent address at the Yad Vashem m em orial for the dead o f the Shoah, and, even more touchingly, w hen the stooped and trem bling old man inserted into a crevice in the W ailing Wail a prayer o f penitence for Christian sins against the Jew s. The H o ly Y ear had begun too, w ith spec­ tacular gestures, notably the cerem ony for the opening o f the H o ly D oors at St Paul’s outside the walls in January w hen W ojtyla was assisted in swinging back the door by the Protestant evangelical Archbishop o f Canterbury, G eorge Carey, an ecumenical gesture unimaginable in any previous pontificate, and a testimony to W ojtyla’s continuing ability to draw imaginative and generous responses from other Christian leaders. H e was to continue such gestures after the H o ly Year had ended, for exam ple in his remarkable visit to Greece in M ay 20 0 1, w hich initially evoked a storm o f protest from O rthodox ecclesiastics, but in the course o f w hich the Pope simply and hum bly apologized before the Archbishop o f Athens for R om an Catholic sins against the O rthodox churches, es­ pecially the Sack o f Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, an epi­ sode w h ich for m any O rthodox epitom ized the evils o f Latin C hristen­ dom. W ojtyla’s trip in Ju n e that year to the U kraine, w here historic tensions betw een the O rthodox C hu rch and the five m illion B yzantinerite Catholics had w orsened since the collapse o f Com m unism , heart­ ened the Catholic faithful there, but was less successful ecumenically. In these last journeyings the Pope’s frailty itself became an instrument o f his mission, almost a weapon, a reproach to his opponents and an elo­ quent sign o f the total dedication and abandonment to the w ill o f G od w hich he saw as the core o f the Christian and above all the priestly life. B u t it was also a source o f anxiety to many in the Church, w h o admired W ojtyla’s courage and fidelity, but w h o feared that his grow ing weakness left control o f the central administration o f the Church in the hands o f the Vatican bureaucracy. Always on the move, he had never given much at­ tention to administrative detail or Church structures, leaving such things largely to his staff. Th e lack o f concern for detail was evident in the new procedures he authorized in 1996 for future papal conclaves, w hich made provision for the abandonment o f the traditional two-thirds m ajority in the event o f deadlock, and perm itted election by a simple majority. M any viewed such a change as placing a weapon in the hands o f any w ellorganized faction determ ined to impose a particular candidate rather than w ork for consensus, and thus a recipe for disaster. A more experienced papal administrator w ould never have agreed to it. In his old age, the au­

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thority o f the Vatican Congregations grew, above all that o f Cardinal R atzinger’s Congregation for the D octrine o f the Faith, always the single most influential Vatican department and now, rightly or wrongly, w idely perceived as em pire-building. A case in point was the publication by the Congregation for the D octrine o f the Faith in Septem ber 2000 o f a dec­ laration on the unity and universality o f Christianity, Dominus lesus. M ark­ edly different in tone and rhetorical impact from Ut Unum Sint, the Pope’s ow n encyclical on this subject, Dominus lesus was an emphatic assertion not m erely o f the centrality o f Christ for salvation, but o f the im perfec­ tion and incompleteness o f all other religions. W ithin Christianity, it in ­ sisted on the centrality o f the Rom an Catholic C hurch. A ‘note’ on the usage ‘sister churches’ seemed to many to be designed to reverse a trend inaugurated by Paul V I, by forbidding the application o f the phrase to the C hurch o f England and other churches o f the Reform ation. This document was w idely understood as a restorationist attempt to halt creeping relativism in the Catholic C h u rch ’s relations w ith other churches and other faiths. It was issued, however, without prior consul­ tation w ith the two Vatican bodies charged w ith direct responsibility for Ecum enism and inter-faith dialogue, and was accordingly resented. C ar­ dinal Walter Kasper, head o f the Pontifical C ouncil for Prom oting C hris­ tian U n ity considered the document ecum enically disastrous, and issued a statement explaining and correcting its emphases: he described it as ‘perhaps too densely w ritten’ , a phrase which in Vatican-speak was as near to a how l o f protest as protocol allowed. Kasper later let it be know n that w hen he went to the Pope w ith a file full o f protests about Dominus Jesus from spokesmen and leaders o f the other Christian churches, Papa W ojtyla seemed uncertain o f the exact content o f the document. T h e im ­ plication was clear: the Pope was no longer in charge o f m ajor statements and policy decisions issued under his authority. Jo h n Paul II’s pontificate, the longest since Pius I X and the second longest in history, w ill also be judged one o f the most momentous, in which a pope not only once more reasserted papal control o f the Church, and thereby sought to call a halt to the decentralizing initiated as a result o f the Second Vatican C ouncil, but in w hich the Pope, long since a mar­ ginal figure in the w orld o f realpolitik, once more played a m ajor role in w orld history, and the downfall o f Soviet Com m unism . Jo h n Paul’s own contradictions defied easy categorizations. Passionately com m itted to the freedom and integrity o f the human person, he was the twentieth cen­ tu ry’s most effective ambassador for such freedoms, setting his ow n

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country on a path to liberation and thereby helping trigger the collapse o f the Soviet empire. Two o f his m ajor encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio, celebrate the ability o f the free hum an m ind to grasp fun­ damental truth and to discern the w ill o f G od w hich is also the fulfil­ ment o f hum an nature. Yet under his rule, the last quarter o f the twen­ tieth century saw a revived authoritarianism in the Catholic C hurch, in w hich, in the judgem ent o f many, theological exploration was needlessly outlawed or prem aturely constrained. Passionately com m itted to recon­ ciliation w ith the O rthodox, his pontificate saw an expansion o f C athol­ icism w ithin the form er Soviet U nion w hich outraged O rthodox leaders and hardened the ancient suspicions he so painfully and sincerely laboured to dispel. This Polish pope did more than any single individual in the w h ole history o f Christianity to reconcile Jew s and Christians and to re­ m ove the ancient stain o f anti-Sem itism from the Christian imagination: his visits to the Rom an synagogue and above all to the H o ly Land in 2000, and his repeated expressions o f penitence for Christian anti-Semitism, were imaginative gestures whose full implications and consequences have yet to appear. Yet he canonized M axim illian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan w h o voluntarily took the place o f a m arried man in a N azi concentration camp death cell, but w h o had edited an anti-Semitic paper between the Wars. W ojtyla also canonized Edith Stein, the Jew ish convert to C atholi­ cism w h o became a Carm elite nun and died because she was a Je w in A uschw itz in 1942. T h e Pope saw Stein as a reconciling figure. Jew s saw her as an em blem o f proselytization and, as in the case o f Kolbe, an at­ tem pt to annex the Shoah for Catholicism . W ojtyla was not deflected from his purpose, and despite protests both canonizations went ahead. W ojtyla s dying was as m agnificent as anything in his life. In the sum­ m er o f 2004 he visited the international shrine o f Lourdes. Visits to the national shrines o f the V irg in were a routine feature o f his apostolic jo u r­ neys, but now he came to the greatest o f all the shrines o f Catholicism , as he h im self declared, less as Pope than as a sick and ailing pilgrim . His increasing im m obility was both m oving, and painful to watch: praying at the grotto o f the apparition, he slumped forward and could not raise himself, manifestly a dying man. O ver the next six months speculation about resignation or what em ergency measures m ight be put in place if the Pope were to becom e m entally incapable, were rampant. In Febru­ ary 2005 he was rushed to the G em elli hospital in R om e w ith a respira­ tory infection w hich made a tracheotom y necessary: the w orld s most impassioned talker was now struck dumb. Still the crowds gathered, and

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still he struggled to greet them. B ack in the Vatican, he was unable to carry out the demanding ceremonies o f H o ly W eek: for the first time in the twenty-seven year w h irlw ind o f his pontificate, someone else (Car­ dinal Ratzinger) led the meditations on the stations o f the Cross in the C oliseum on G ood Friday. O n Easter Sunday, the Pope appeared at his Vatican w indow to bless the crowds and lead the m idday prayer o f the Angelus. A microphone was placed before him , but he struggled in vain to speak: the colossus was in chains. In the follow ing w eek his condition suddenly worsened. Papa W ojtyla, the second longest-serving pope in history, died at 9.37 pm on Saturday 2 A pril. His last spectacular crow d-pulling appearance now began. In the twelve hours after his death, 500,000 people flocked to St Peter’s square, and over the next w eek four m illion pilgrim s, a m illion and a h alf o f them from Poland, flooded into the city, queuing for up to sixteen hours at a time to file past his body. O n the day o f his funeral, more than a m illion m ourners assembled in St Peters square and the other great squares o f the city, where enorm ous T V screens had been placed. T h e funeral mass, presided over by Cardinal R atzinger and attended by representatives o f most o f the w orld ’s churches and by 140 leaders o f non-Christian reli­ gions, as w ell as by 200 heads o f state and diplomatic representatives in­ cluding three Presidents o f the U S A , was relayed to an estimated two billion viewers round the world, m aking it the most watched event in history. T h e Prince o f Wales postponed his w edding to C am illa Parker Bow les, scheduled for the same day, and attended the funeral. There was non-stop media coverage: the death o f the Pope, even more than his life, had becom e the greatest show on earth. Banners round the crow ded P i­ azza San Pietro demanded perem ptorily ‘Santo subito’ — ‘Canonize him at once.’ (It was said that the banners had been organized by the Focolare M ovem ent.) W ojtyla preached a craggy and at times uncomfortable Christianity, but he was neither a prude nor a pessimist. H e was the first pope in his­ tory to w rite extensively about sex as a m irror o f the life o f the G o d ­ head, even advocating that m arried lovers should seek orgasm together. His inaugural serm on had been a resounding affirmation o f a Christian hum anism , calling for a renewed w orld order in the light o f the gospel: ‘open w ide the doors for Christ. To his saving pow er open the bound­ aries o f states, econom ic and political systems, the vast fields o f culture, civilisation and development. D o not be afraid. C hrist knows what is in

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man. H e alone knows it.’ There was nothing escapistly otherworldly about his message. B elievin g that the Christian Gospel illum inates poli­ tics and economics as w ell as individual m orality, he translated theory into practice by his role in the liberation o f Poland. H e rejected M arx­ ism not only for its practical consequences, but for its collectivist meta­ physic, w hich he believed ‘degraded and pulverized the fundamental uniqueness o f each human person.’ His ow n philosophy emphasized the supreme value o f free and loving m oral action, in w hich each person re­ alizes their ow n individuality. B u t for him such action was never the freedom to invent oneself from scratch. True liberty and happiness came from grasping the divine reality w hich underlies the w orld — ‘the splen­ dor o f truth’ — and acting in harm ony w ith it. Truth is the hard thing, a terrible jo y, obedience to w hich runs counter to our ow n desire for se­ curity. B u t it join s us to C hrist on the Cross, that figure in w hich true hum anity, suffering humanity, is raised for all to see, a source o f resur­ rection, but also o f more authentic existence now. H e w ill be remem bered for m any things, not least for the way in w hich his charismatic and authoritarian personality halted and reversed the relativization o f papal power, which had been one o f the most marked and most apparently irreversible transformations effected by the Second Vatican C ouncil. V irtually single-handedly, he placed the Papacy back at the centre o f Catholicism . His long pontificate meant that he left behind h im a hierarchy most o f whose members he had appointed: he had ele­ vated to the Cardinalate, for example, all but two o f the 115 electors w h o were to choose his successor. B u t his uncom fortable vision o f the costly freedom o f the Gospel is perhaps his most distinctive legacy. For all his openness to people o f other faiths, he had utter confidence in the ancient teachings o f C atholi­ cism, certain that lives lived in accordance w ith them are the most richly human. His ow n excruciating perseverance in the face o f crippling ill­ ness was a deliberate clinging to the cross, a witness to the nobility o f suffering and the value o f the w eak w h om society prefers to sideline. In his last years he endured publicly all the indignities and diminishments o f the sick and aged, w hich he had once ministered to in others in a thousand encounters w ith the oppressed, the poor and the sick on those endless journeyings. Som eone in his entourage, daunted by the sight o f such sufferings, had once asked him i f it made him weep. ‘N o t on the outside,’ said W ojtyla.

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V I T he W ay W e L iv e N o w T h e unprecedented publicity surrounding the death and burial o f Pope Jo h n Paul II helped determ ine the outcome o f the Conclave to elect his successor. W ojtyla’s long and dramatic pontificate made the election o f an older and less flamboyant man a virtual certainty. T h e cardinals w ould not want another quarter-century pontificate, and were therefore likely to opt for a transitional figure, w h o w ould provide continuity w ith the previous regim e w h ile allow ing a breathing-space for reflection on new challenges and new directions. B u t the scale o f the media coverage o f the death and burial o f Papa W ojtyla brought home to them as to everyone else h ow m uch W ojtyla’s personal stature and celebrity had transformed the w o rld ’s perception o f the papal office itself. A holy and cheerful m ediocrity on the pattern o f A lbino Lucciani, Jo h n Paul I, was not this time a serious option. W hoever was elected must look like a pope, able to occupy W ojtyla’s chair w ith conviction, even i f by com m on consent there was no one in the Sacred C o llege capable o f filling his shoes. For there were few obvious giants am ong the cardinals. H ad W ojtyla died five years earlier, the im posing Jesuit Cardinal M artini o f M ilan, a firstrate and progressive theologian w h o had packed his cathedral w eek after w eek w ith crowds o f young people w h o came to listen to his challeng­ ing expositions o f the N e w Testament, w ould have been a virtually un­ stoppable candidate. B u t M artini, seventy-eight and retired, was now living for m uch o f the year in Jerusalem . M ore to the point, he was said to be in the early stages o f Parkinson’s disease, and though he did in fact attract substantial support on the first ballot, in reality another ailing pope was not to be contemplated. There were very few notable Italian papabile am ong the 115 cardinal electors, and the Conclave w ould feel freer than ever to look outside Italy for W ojtyla’s successor. Speculation ranged round a number o f A frican, Latin Am erican and Indian C ardi­ nals. N on e com manded sufficient support, however, and in the event a Germ an, Joseph Ratzinger, was elected on the fourth ballot, in one o f the shortest Conclaves o f m odern times, on Tuesday 19 A pril. B y a co­ incidence w hich passed largely unremarked, it was the feast day o f St Leo IX , the greatest G erm an pope o f the M iddle Ages. B o rn in Bavaria in 1927 into an intensely Catholic family, Joseph Ratzinger was the youngest o f three children o f a policem an whose dan­ gerously outspoken contem pt for H itler led him to take a series o f pro­ gressively low er-profile rural postings, and eventually to early retirement

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in 1937. Ratzinger himself, like his elder brother G eorge, had deter­ m ined on ordination, but he was co-opted into the H itler Youth, and served from 1943 in an anti-aircraft unit, though he later claimed never to have fired a shot. A t the end o f the w ar he deserted from the army, but was arrested anyway by the Am ericans. O n his release he returned to the seminary. His theological training was in the Catholic Faculty o f T h eo lo gy at M unich, where he com bined ordination preparation w ith w ork towards a doctorate on St Augustine, and he and his brother were ordained together in 19 5 1. A fter a year as a curate he was appointed to a teaching post in the sem inary at Freising, w h ile he w orked on his Ha­ bilitation, the post-doctoral higher qualification required o f anyone w ish­ ing to take up a teaching position in a G erm an University. R atzinger s theological vision had been shaped by the revival in patristic studies pio­ neered by exponents o f the Nouvelle Théologie like H en ry de Lubac. His ‘great M aster’ was Augustine, and he disliked what he saw as the exces­ sive intellectualism o f the neo-Scholasticism w hich even then dominated Catholic theology (and in w hich K arol W ojtyla was at the same m om ent being trained at the A ngelicum in Rom e). H e therefore chose to w rite his Habilitation dissertation on the m ore mystical theology o f St Bonaventura, for w h om revelation, R atzinger argued, was not a matter o f the transmission o f truth to the intellect, but the unveiling o f m ystery in the activity o f G od in history. W h ile he was still at w ork on this study, he was offered the chair o f Dogm atic T h eology at the U niversity o f Freis­ ing (the success o f his Habilitation being considered a foregone conclu­ sion) and his parents, now in their seventies, sold up the fam ily home and m oved into his professorial residence w ith him. H e was therefore devas­ tated w hen one o f the exam iners o f his Habilitation failed the disserta­ tion, placing the young professor’s new position in jeopardy, and threat­ ening his fam ily’s security. Ratzinger feverishly reworked his dissertation, and resubmitted successfully w ithin a matter o f months, but the embar­ rassment and fright o f this early (and, he was convinced, unjust) failure stayed w ith him. Forty years on he w ould devote an entire chapter o f his short m em oir, Milestones, to the episode, clearly still a neuralgic point w ith him. In fact, however, he was now launched on a stellar rise as one o f the brightest hopes o f G erm an Catholic theology. A series o f increasingly prestigious appointments took him to B onn, M unich and Tubingen, where in 1966 his appointment to the new chair in D ogm a was secured by an adm iring friend, Hans K ung. In 1969 he m oved back to Bavaria,

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to a senior position in the new U niversity o f Regensberg. B u t his celeb­ rity extended far beyond the U niversity world. W ith the opening o f the Second Vatican C ouncil, R atzinger had been appointed ‘peritus’ or ad­ viser to the Archbishop o f Cologne, Cardinal Joseph Frings, one o f the key progressive spokesmen in the Council, famous for a sensational speech attacking the most powerful o f the R om an curial congregations, the H o ly office, as ‘a source o f scandal’ . R atzinger made com m on cause with the other leading C onciliar theologians, including Y ves C ongar, K arl Rahner, and Hans K ung, in attacking the ossified Scholasticism dom i­ nant am ong the ‘Rom an theologians’ , arguing that the C hurch had ‘reins that are far too tight, too many laws, many o f w hich have helped to leave the century o f unbelief in the lurch, instead o f helping it to redem p­ tion’ .42 H e helped draft key sections o f the C o u n cil’s Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, and played a m ajor role in the com position o f the decree on Revelation, Dei Verbum. In his commentaries on the w ork o f the C oun cil he was vocal in support o f the notion o f collegiality, what he called an ‘ ordered pluralism ’ in the Church, and attached special im ­ portance to the w ork o f the local Episcopal Conferences as expressions o f the shared responsibilities o f the w hole episcopate. W ith Congar, Rahner, Kung, and others he was a founding m em ber o f the editorial board o f the progressive theological jo u rn al Concilium, and in 1968 he was one o f more than 1,30 0 signatories o f an outspoken declaration, or­ ganized by Concilium, on the right o f theologians ‘to seek and speak the truth, without being hampered by administrative measures and sanc­ tions.’ T h e declaration offered a trenchant critique o f the secretive m eth­ ods o f the H o ly O ffice in censuring theologians, calling for greater openness, and the right o f accused theologians to a proper hearing.43 Yet already by 1968 R atzinger had becom e alarmed by some o f the post-C onciliar developments w ithin the Church, and even by some o f the C o u n cil’s own documents. A n enthusiast for the decrees on the Liturgy, the C hurch and on Revelation, he had been consistent in an A u gustinian scepticism about the value o f hum an culture without grace, a scepticism w hich the horrors unleashed by the ‘atheistic pieties’ o f N azism and M arxist materialism seemed to confirm . H e was therefore dismayed by what he saw as the vapid and untheological optim ism o f the Constitution on the C hurch in the M odern World, Gaudium et Spes. In a laudable attempt to engage w ith m odern culture, its (mostly French) authors, he believed, had presented an unproblematized account o f hum an existence w ith insufficient religious content. T h e docum ent was

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full o f benign generalities, ‘whereas w hat is proper to theology, dis­ course about Christ and his w ork, was left behind in a conceptual deep freeze, and so allowed to appear . . . unintelligible and antiquated.’ T he Constitution also over-used the notion o f the ‘people o f G o d ’ , thereby encouraging merely sociological and political conceptions o f the Church, at odds w ith the more firm ly and centrally C hristological and spiritual emphases o f the Constitutions on the Liturgy and on the Church. H ere was an account o f hum anity w hich left sin out o f the equation, and w hich forgot that, as he w ould later say, the one legitimate form o f the C h u rch ’s engagement w ith the w orld was ‘mission’ .44 R atzin ger’s alarm about the direction o f post-C onciliar Catholicism was dramatically heightened by the revolutionary upheavals w hich swept through the Universities in 1968. Th e political radicalization o f many theology faculties included R atzinger’s own department at Tubingen. Cam pus pamphlets w hich denounced the cross as ‘the expression o f a sadomasochistic glorification o f pain’ and the N e w Testament as ‘a doc­ ument o f inhum anity, a large-scale deception o f the masses’ horrified him , and he came increasingly to relate these excesses to his fears that the C oun cil itself was being hijacked and distorted. Its true legacy, he believed, lay in its texts, read conservatively in the light o f earlier teach­ ing, not in the so-called ‘Spirit o f Vatican II’ , w hich he considered was becom ing a hold-all justification for a rationalizing theology without roots, the erosion o f what was distinctively Christian by ‘lightening loads, adapting, m aking concessions.’ H e concluded that ‘anyone w h o wanted to remain a progressive in this context had to give up his in tegrity’ .45 ‘Progressive’ jo in ed ‘speculative’ in his vocabulary as a term o f severe disapproval. H e began to distance h im self from form er theological col­ laborators like the great Jesuit theologian K arl Rahner, w h om he con­ sidered had allowed h im self ‘to be sworn in according to the progressive slogans’ and increasingly in thrall to a radical, speculative and politicized mindset w hich was remote from Scripture, the Fathers and the concrete realities o f Catholic tradition.46 A further source o f horror was the post-C onciliar transformation o f Catholic worship. Th e beauty and antiquity o f the R om an liturgy was one o f the anchors o f Ratzinger s ow n faith and vocation as a priest. As a young theologian he had been an ardent supporter o f the Liturgical M ovem ent, but he was now dismayed by the radicalism and, as a gifted musician himself, by the aesthetic desolation o f the liturgical reforms w hich followed in the wake o f the C ouncil. For him the essence o f the

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liturgy was its ancient ‘giveness’ . It was not something devised by com ­ mittees, but ‘a mysterious fabric o f texts and actions w hich had grow n from the faith o f the C hurch over the centuries.’ It bore ‘the w hole w eight o f history w ithin itself’ , and was in essence an organic grow th, not a scholarly construction. T h e new Missal authorized by Paul V I in 1973, and the subsequent outlawing o f the ‘Tridentine R it e ’ w hich it now superseded, by contrast, became for him a symbol o f the drastic dis­ continuities w hich he thought had been introduced into the life o f the C hurch in the wake o f the Council. As he later declared ‘A com m unity is calling its very being into question w hen it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden, and w hen it makes the longing for it seem dow nright indecent. C an it be trusted any more about anything? W on’t it proscribe again tom orrow what it prescribes today?’47 In the fraught years after the C ouncil, R atzinger s double credentials, as one o f the architects o f the great C onciliar documents, yet as an in­ creasingly outspoken critic o f what he saw as post-C onciliar excesses, com mended him to Pope Paul V I. In 1977 Paul took the daring step o f appointing this professor whose sole pastoral experience was a single year as a country curate, to be archbishop o f M unich, and, in a matter o f months, a Cardinal. H e was perceived in M unich as conscientious, but shy and somewhat lacking in warm th. B u t as Cardinal Archbishop he was now in a position to act on his grow ing disenchantment w ith the theological trends o f the previous tw enty years. H e played a part in the G erm an episcopal campaign to remove the licence to teach as a C atho­ lic theologian o f his form er friend and mentor in the Catholic Faculty at Tubingen, Hans K ung, w h o had published a w ork denying the doctrine o f papal infallibility. Archchbishop R atzinger also personally vetoed the appointment to a chair at M unich o f another form er colleague and pro­ tégé, Joh ann Baptist M etz, because he considered that M etz had allowed political ideology to distort his theology. Ratzinger was convinced the time had com e to draw a line in the sand, to emphasize that in the end it was the Pope and bishops, not the scholars, w ho must protect and pre­ serve the simple faith o f Catholic people: corrosive scholarship could be at least as tyrannical as the H o ly O ffice. To form er colleagues and the w ider theological com munity, the m ild-m annered Archbishop seemed seduced by ambition, poacher turned gamekeeper, eroding by authori­ tarian action the very freedoms for w hich he had once campaigned. K arl

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R ah n er published a bitter open letter to him , denouncing his action against M etz as ‘injustice and a misuse o f power.’ Ratzinger remained only four years at M unich. D uring the first C o n ­ clave o f 1978 he had struck up a friendship with young fellow-cardinal Karol Wojtyla. T h ey recognized in each other a similar set o f theological priorities, and a similar understanding o f the legacy o f the Council. Jo h n Paul II admired Ratzinger s theological sophistication, and in 1981 he summoned him to R om e as Prefect o f the Congregation for the D octrine o f the Faith (C D F), the form er H o ly O ffice o f the Inquisition, the very body w hich his form er mentor Cardinal Frings had denounced as ‘a cause o f scandal’ . As head now o f the Congregation w hich as a younger man he had been a notable critic, he did seek reform by extending its m em ­ bership to be more representative o f an international Church. Its secre­ tive procedures remained, however, and as R o m e’s principal watchdog o f orthodoxy, Ratzinger w ould become the architect o f some o f the most distinctive and most controversial acts o f Papa W ojtyla’s pontificate. These included in 19 8 4—6 the campaign against Liberation Theology w hich resulted in the tem porary silencing o f the Brazilian Franciscan the­ ologian Leonardo B off, and his subsequent abandonment o f the priest­ hood. In 1986 the Congregation w ithdrew the licence to teach o f the Am erican moral theologian Charles Curran, whose objections to the teaching o f Humanae Vitae Ratzinger felt constituted an assault on the au­ thority o f the papal M agisterium . As a consequence, C urran was dis­ missed from his chair at the Catholic U niversity o f A m erica, and the C u r­ ran case was part o f the background to the C D F ’s 1990 Instruction ‘O n the Ecclesial Vocation o f the Theologian’ , w hich was w idely perceived as an attack on the autonomy and integrity o f Catholic academic theology. A lready in 1998 theologians teaching in Catholic institutions were re­ quired to sign a profession o f faith and an oath o f fidelity to w hich many objected. B etw een 1986 and 2003 the C D F issued a series o f documents and instructions insisting in sometimes pastorally insensitive language on the intrinsic im m orality o f hom osexual acts. Cardinal Ratzinger’s own anxieties about the dangers o f relativism in Catholic theological dialogue w ith other religions was reflected in 1997 in the investigation o f the Je ­ suit theologian Jacques DuPuis, whose book Towards a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism became the focus o f a prolonged investigation. In 2001 Ratzinger’s determ ined insistence on the uniqueness o f Christ and the centrality o f the Rom an Catholic Church to human salvation was ex­

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pressed in the document Dominus lesus, w hich caused widespread offence (not least in the Vatican Congregations responsible for relations w ith other churches and other faiths) by its blunt characterization o f non-Christian religions and even o f other Christian denominations as ‘gravely deficient’ . These and similar official actions gave rise to a widespread feeling that under Ratzinger’s prefectship, relations between the official C hurch and the theologians were at their lowest ebb since the worst years o f Pius X II. Despite his courteous and even charm ing personal manner, R atzinger was w idely perceived as the hard man o f Jo h n Paul II’s regime, the ‘panzer Cardinal’ , the Vatican’s Rottw eiler. H e added to this reputation in a series o f outspoken book-length in­ terviews w ith favoured journalists, in w hich he called for the com ­ mencement o f the w ork o f ‘restoration’ after the post-C onciliar confu­ sions, a ‘reform o f the reform ’ w hich w ould re-insert the teachings o f the C oun cil into the longer perspective o f traditional Catholic b elief and practice. T h e language o f these interviews was occasionally startlingly unguarded for so highly placed a curial figure. H e called for a new ‘non­ conform ism ’ w hich w ould confront rather than collude w ith the cultural revolution w hich had m arginalized the Christian heritage o f Europe, and he criticized the C h u rch ’s ‘euphoric post-C onciliar solidarity’ w ith the secular world. His fierce and frequent criticism o f the new Mass was also remarkable in a Vatican official, since it im plied Paul V i ’s responsi­ bility for what Ratzinger saw as a tragically flawed liturgical revolution. T h e election o f so controversial a figure in one o f the shortest con­ claves o f m odern times took m any commentators by surprise. In fact, the cardinals opposed to his candidacy had been unable to identify a plau­ sible alternative, and Ratzinger had entered the Conclave already with an impressive body o f support. H e was quite clearly the ablest spokesman for the values o f the previous pontificate, and one o f the few curial car­ dinals w ith a w orld reputation. Everyone respected his intellect. As Pre­ fect o f the C D F for m ore than tw enty years, he was the best-known m em ber o f the C uria, and since an interview w ith the C D F was a rou­ tine feature o f ad limina visits, every cardinal w h o was also a diocesan bishop had had dealings w ith him . In these encounters, his careful prep­ aration, attentive listening, unfailing courtesy, and his linguistic gifts, had earned the respect even o f those w h o did not share his outlook. As D ean o f the C ollege o f Cardinals he presided and preached at the funeral o f Jo h n Paul II w ith dignity, presence, and a manifest em otion w hich sur­ prised those w h o had thought o f him as a bloodless administrator. As

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Cardinal D ean he also presided at the General Congregations w hich had administered the C hurch betw een the death o f Jo h n Paul and the start o f the Conclave. In these meetings he displayed a m arkedly collaborative spirit. E ven cardinals w h o believed that under Jo h n Paul II the Papacy had becom e over-directive, felt that here m ight be a man who, for all his close association w ith the previous regime, appeared to be a less dom i­ nant personality, and m ore o f a team player. To some observers, the choice o f a European cardinal was both a sur­ prise and a disappointment. D em ographic change and the spread o f dras­ tic secularism meant that the grow th areas o f Catholicism now lay out­ side Europe, in Latin Am erica, A frica, and Asia, where congregations w ere large, the seminaries and convents full. This m ight have suggested that the time was ripe for a non-European pope. B u t no single cardinal from the developing w orld com manded the confidence o f the C ollege o f Cardinals, and Europeans still just form ed the m ajority o f the elec­ toral C ollege. T h e fact that Christianity in Europe was on the defensive, numbers dwindling, vocations drying up, seemed to many cardinals a reason for seeking a pope w h o w ould make the reversal o f these trends a priority. Cardinal Ratzinger had w ritten and lectured extensively on the crisis presented to the C hu rch in secular Europe, he had repeatedly insisted on the continuing im portance o f the continent s Christian her­ itage, even to the extent o f publicly opposing the admission o f Turkey into the European U nion. His address to the cardinals before the C o n ­ clave had taken as its theme the need to oppose secularism in the West in all its manifestations. Here, it seemed, was a man w hose preoccupa­ tions met the needs o f the m oment, and w h o had the intellectual equip­ ment to attempt both diagnosis and cure. Two other considerations may have helped clinch R atzinger s election. Firstly, a sedate seventy-eight year-old w h o had repeatedly offered his resignation and longed for a Bavarian retirement in the latter years o f Papa W ojtyla, Papa Ratzinger was unlikely to be pope for long, and he would certainly be less peripatetic than his energetic predecessor. This would be a shorter, quieter pontificate. Secondly, the unfortunate new provision, allowing election by a simple m ajority in the event o f a long series o f deadlocked ballots, may w ell have short-circuited the normal processes o f the Conclave. M any papabile in the past have achieved fifty percent o f the vote, and yet not been elected, because in the end they could not com ­ mand the consensus o f two thirds o f the electors. N o w the realization that ILatzinger s supporters had only to keep their nerve and carry on voting,

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may have sapped the w ill, in so far as there was any, to pursue alternative candidates, once he had achieved fifty per cent o f the votes. T h e choice o f the name Benedict X V I was a shrewd gesture. Conflict w ithin the C hurch about the heritage o f Vatican II made the choice o f names a political m inefield, w hich the new Pope circum vented by avoid­ ing the name o f any recent pope. H e explained his choice o f name by rem inding the cardinals that Benedict X V had been a peacemaker and reconciler, as he h im self wished to be. H e reminded them also o f the key role o f the monastic movement in the form ation o f Europe: Jo h n Paul II had made St Benedict co-Patron o f Europe; here was confirm ation o f one o f the ch ief priorities o f the new Pontificate. Com m entators, fear­ ful o f the new Popes reputation as a hamm er o f dissent, took com fort from the fact that Pope Benedict X V had ended the hunt for heresy by calling a halt to the M odernist crisis. Pope Benedict’s early speeches and sermons made clear that he under­ stood w ell his ow n equivocal reputation, and the need to reassure those w ho feared from him authoritarian rigidity and a withdrawal from en­ gagement w ith other faiths and other Christian traditions. W ithin twelve hours o f his election, his program matic concluding address at the end o f the Conclave (delivered in Latin) stressed the im portance o f ‘collegial com m union’ and the fellowship o f bishops in ‘one apostolic college’ . H e asked for the ‘constant, active and w ise collaboration’ o f the cardinals and for a grow ing closeness with his fellow bishops ‘in prayer and counsel’ . H e pledged his com m itm ent to the continuing implementation o f the ‘timeless’ teaching o f the documents o f the Second Vatican C ouncil, though he added the significant qualifying phrases ‘in the wake o f m y predecessors and in faithful continuity w ith the m illennia-old tradition o f the C h u rch ’ . H e declared that his ‘prim ary com m itm ent’ w ould be to w ork for ‘the full and visible unity o f all C h rist’s follow ers’ , and he as­ sured those o f other faiths and none that ‘the C hu rch wants to continue to build an open and sincere dialogue w ith them.’ E very action o f a new pope is m icroscopically scrutinized for any clue it may offer to the likely pattern o f his papacy. Benedict X V I has pro­ vided few such clues, though the resignation o f Thom as R ees, editor o f the liberal Jesuit magazine America, w ithin days o f B enedict’s election, was taken as a straw in the wind. R e e s’ editorial policy, allow ing articles publicly questioning official teaching, had been the subject o f a number o f complaints from the C D F under Ratzinger. His ‘resignation’ now was taken as a foretaste o f more such removals to come. Yet the Pope’s early

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months were spent blamelessly enough at his desk, confirm ing appoint­ ments, seeing the heads o f the Vatican Congregations, receiving the w orld’s bishops on their ad limina visits, edifying the crowds at the w eekly Wednesday audiences w ith lo w -k ey devotional expositions o f the psalms. O n 13 M ay he announced, to no ones surprise, that the beatification process o f his predecessor w ould com mence immediately, without the usual five year pause, and the cause was duly launched in the Lateran Basilica on the eve o f the Feast o f St Peter and St Paul, 28 June. B u t there was otherwise a notable lack o f excitem ent: only two trips outside R om e were planned for his first year, the first o f them a helicopter-hop to the Adriatic coast o f Italy, to preach at the Eucharistic Congress at B ari, a m onth after his election. It was noted that the new Pope did not make a detour to visit the nearby shrine o f Padre Pio, Italy’s favourite m iraclew orking saint, as his predecessor certainly w ould have done. In greeting the G erm an cardinals on the day o f his election he had confirm ed that he w ould com e to C ologne in August for the W orld Youth Congress being held there, thereby signalling his adherence to a pattern o f contact w ith youth set by his predecessor. O nce again, however, the plans for the trip were notable for their brevity and minim alism, and a distinct lack o f W ojtyla-esque razzmatazz. B u t those fearful o f the new Pope’s liturgical reaction were confirm ed in their fears by the announcement that for the first time, such a Youth Congress w ould include delegates from Tradi­ tionalist youth organizations, for w h om a Mass in the Tridentine R ite w ould be celebrated by high ranking curial officials. To fill his ow n for­ m er post at the CD F, he appointed an Am erican, W illiam Levada, an unspectacularly intelligent conservative w h o had collaborated w ith him at the C D F and w ho as Archbishop o f San Francisco had been notably nonconfrontational in dealing with the city’s rampant gay culture. His ap­ pointm ent was seen as a sign both that the new pope w ould retain an ac­ tive engagement w ith the w ork o f the Congregation but also that he wished to see its procedures and w orking ethos m ove in a more sympa­ thetic direction. A fter a quarter-century in w hich the w o rld ’s largest religious organ­ ization was governed by one o f the w orld ’s most flamboyant and m ag­ netic leaders, the R om an Catholic C hu rch now has an elderly, fastidious and traditionalist scholar at its head. Close friends and collaborators though they were, Jo h n Paul II and Benedict X V I are radically different sorts o f men. Joseph Ratzinger is both m ore theologically sophisticated than his predecessor, and a good deal less religiously adventurous. Jo h n

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Paul II was a stout defender o f tradition, yet he was untroubled by the post-C onciliar liturgical discontinuities w hich so disturb his successor, and he thought nothing o f drastically recasting two o f the most precious devotional treasures o f the Catholic C hurch - he blithely added an en­ tirely new set o f ‘m ysteries’ to the ancient fifteen sorrowful, jo y fu l and glorious mysteries o f the Rosary, and he even dared to revise the num ­ ber and subjects o f the Stations o f the Cross, representations o f w hich have adorned the walls o f every Catholic church in the w orld for cen­ turies, elim inating m uch loved but apocryphal characters like Veronica, the wom an w ho allegedly w iped Jesus’ face w ith a towel (a theme w hich has inspired some transcendentally great religious art) and giving m ore prominence to M ary the M other o f Jesus. W ojtyla’s piety was populist, and saturated in the preoccupations and attitudes o f Polish Catholicism . It had a strong apocalyptic streak, represented by his insertion into the sacrosanct Easter Calendar o f the new and frankly K itsch visionary Pol­ ish cult o f the ‘D ivine M erc y ’ , and by his b elief that the bizarre and hazy visions o f the ‘T h ird Secret o f Fatim a’ related directly to him , and spe­ cifically to the attempt on his life by A li Agca. Benedict X V I is also deeply indebted to the traditional piety o f his native Bavaria, to the baroque churches, the music and the devotional practices o f his youth. B u t his traditionalism is altogether m ore considered, bookish and conceptual than W ojtyla’s. These instinctual differences between them were evident in R atzinger’s notable lack o f enthusiasm for the m illennium celebra­ tions, and appeared again when, on Jo h n Paul II’s authority, the third Se­ cret o f Fatima was published. T h e C D F ’s theological com m entary on it was notably lukewarm and generalizing, a dam age-lim itation exercise designed to em pty the ‘secret’ o f its apocalyptic menace and to dem on­ strate that, as Cardinal R atzinger observed dryly to one journalist, ‘nowhere does it say anything more than what the Christian message al­ ready says’ .48 Benedict X V I ’s papacy is unlikely to produce any dramatic theological discontinuities w ith that o f his great predecessor. B u t every new pope is a new beginning. Th e w o rld ’s oldest dynasty continues its long and eventful w alk through hum an history.

A P P E N D IX A

C H R O N O L O G I C A L L I S T OF P O P E S AN D AN TIPO PES

Dates for the first fifteen popes are approximate, and for the first five (excluding Clement) are arbitrary. Following the convention of the most ancient lists, the Aposde Peter is not reckoned as a pope. The-names o f popes are given in capital letters, preceded by a number giving their place in the succession.The names o f the antipopes are indented, without number, and in plain type.Where a pope assumed a new name on election, his baptismal name is given in square brackets.

I 2 3 4 5

6 7

8 9

10

n 12 13 14 15

St Linus St A nacletus St C lement I St Evaristus St A lexander I St Sixtus I St T elesphorus St Hyginus St Pius I St A nicetus St Soter St Eleutherius St V ictor St Z ephyrinus St C allistus I

c. 96

c. 116-c. 125 c. 125-c. 136 c. 138-c. 142 c. 142-c. 155 c. 155-c. 166 c. 166-c. 174 c. 175-c. 189 c. 189-c. 199 c. 199-c. 217 c. 217-222

St Hippolytus 217-c. 235

20

St Urban I St Pontian St Anterus St Fabian St C ornelius

21

St Lucius I

16 17

18 19

Novatian

c. 222-230 21 July 230-28 Sept. 235 21 Nov. 235-3 Jan. 236 10 Jan. 236-20 Jan. 250 Mar. 251-June 253 Mar. 251-258 25 June 253-5 Mar. 254

39 $ 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Saints & Sinners

St Stephen I St Sixtus II St Dionysius St Felix I St Eutychlan St Gaius (Caius) St Marcellinus St Marcellus St Eusebius St Miltiades (Melchiades) St Sylvester I St Mark St J ulius I Liberius St Felix II St Damasus I Ursinus St Siricius St Anastasius I St Innocent I St Z osimus Eulalius St Boniface St Celestine I St Sixtus III (Xystus) St Leo I (the Great) St Hilarus (Hilary) St Simplicius St Felix III (II) St Gelasius I A nastasius II St Symmachus Laurence St Hormisdas St J ohn I St Felix IV (III) Dioscorus Boniface II J ohn II [ M ercury ] St A gapitus I St Silverius

12 May 254-2 Aug. 257 Aug. 257-6 Aug. 258 22 July 260-26 Dec. 268 3 Jan. 269-30 Dec. 274 4 Jan. 275-7 Dec. 283 17 Dec. 283-22 Apr. 296 30June 296-?: died 25 Oct 304 c. 308-309 18 A p r-2 1 O ct 310 2 July 3 11-io Ja n . 314 31 Jan. 314-31 Dec. 335 18 Ja n -7 Oct. 33Ó 6 Feb. 337-12 Apr. 352 17 May 352-24 Sept. 366 355 - 35

i Oct. 366-11 Dec. 384 366-7: died 385 I7(?) Dec. 384-26 Nov. 399 27 Nov. 399-19 Dec. 401 21 Dec. 4 0 1-12 Mar. 417 18 Mar. 417-26 Dec. 418 418: died 423 28 Dec. 418-4 Sept. 422 10 Sept 422-27 July 432 31 July 432-19 Aug. 440 29 Sept. 440-10 Nov. 461 19 Nov. 461-29 Feb. 468 3 Mar. 468-10 Mar. 483 13 Mar. 483-1 Mar. 492 1 Mar. 492-21 Nov. 496 24 Nov. 496-19 Nov. 498 22 Nov. 498-19 July 514 498-499, 501-506: died 508 20 July 514-6 Aug. 523 13 Aug. 523-18 May 526 12 July 526-22 Sept. 530 530 22 Sept. 530-17 Oct. 532 2 Jan. 533-8 May 535 13 May 535—22 Apr. 536 8 June 536—11 Nov. 537: deposed,died 2 Dec. 537

T he Oracles o f G o d

58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 7i 72 73

VlGILIUS Pelagius I J ohn III B enedict I Pelagius II St G regory I (die Great) St Sabinian B oniface III St B oniface IV St D eusdedit I (Adeodatus) B oniface V H onorius I Severinus J ohn IV T heodore I St M artin I

St E ugenius I St V italian A deodatus II 77 D onus 78 St A gatho 79 St L eo II 80 S t B enedict II 81 J ohn V 82 C onon Theodore Paschal 83 St Sergius I 84 J ohn VI 85 J ohn VII 86 SlSINNIUS 87 C onstantine I 88 St G regory II 89 St G regory III 90 St Z acharias 91 Stephen II (III)* 74 75 76

399

29 Mar. 537-7 June 555 16 Apr. 556-3 Mar. 561 17 July 561-13 July 574 2 June 575-30 July 579 26 Nov. 579-7 Feb. 590 3 Sept. 590-12 Mar. 604 13 Sept. 604-22 Feb. 606 19 F e b -12 Nov. 607 15 Sept. 608-8 May 615 19 Oct. 615-8 Nov. 618 23 Dec. 619-25 Oct. 625 27 Oct. 625-12 Oct. 638 28 May 640-2 Aug. 640 24 Dec. 640-12 Oct. 642 24 Nov. 642-14 May 649 5 July 649-17 June 653: deposed, died 16 Sept. 655 10 Aug. 654-2 June 657 30 July 657-27 Jan. 672 11 Apr. 672-17 June 676 2 Nov. 676-11 Apr. 678 27 June 678-10 Jan. 681 17 Aug. 682-3 July 683 26 June 684-8 May 685 23 July 685-2 Aug. 686 21 Oct. 686-21 Sept. 687 687 687: died 692 15 Dec. 687-9 Sept. 701 30 Oct. 7 0 1-11 Jan. 705 1 Mar. 705-18 Oct. 707 15 Jan.-8 Feb. 708 25 Mar. 708-9 Apr. 715 19 May 7 15 -11 Feb. 731 18 Mar. 731-28 Nov. 741 3 Dec. 741-15 Mar. 752 26 Mar. 752-26 Apr. 757

* In March 752 an elderly presbyter, Stephen, was elected pope, but died before he was ordained bishop. His successor, confusingly, was also called Stephen. Under modem canon law, however, a man is pope from the moment o f election. Some modern Rom an Catholic lists therefore count the first o f diese two Stephens as Pope Stephen II, with a consequent disturbance o f the numbering o f all subsequent Stephens. He is omitted from our list, but the variant numberings are noted.

400

92

Saints & Sinners

St Paul I

Constantine Philip 93 Stephen III (IV) 94 Hadrian I 95 St Leo III 96 Stephen IV (V) 97 St Paschal I 98 E ugenius II 99 V alentine 100 G regory IV John 101 Sergius II 102 S t L eo IV

103 B enedict III Anastasius Bibliothecarius 104 St N icholas I (the Great) 105 H adrian II 106 J ohn VIII 107 M arinus I (Martin II) 108 St H adrian III 109 Stephen V (VI) no F ormosus 111 B oniface VI 112 Stephen VI (VII) 113 R omanus 114 T heodore II 115 J ohn IX 116 B enedict IV 117

Leo V

118 119 120 121

Christopher Sergius III A nastasius III Lando J ohn X

122 Leo VI 123 Stephen VII (VIII) 124 J ohn X I 125 Leo VII

126 Stephen VIII (IX)

29 May 757-28 June 767 767-768 768 7 Aug. 768-24 Jan. 772 1 Feb. 772-25 Dec. 795 27 Dec. 795-12 June 816 22 June 816—24 Jan. 817 24 Jan. 8 17 -11 Feb. 824 5/6 June 824-27 Aug. 827 Aug.-Sept. 827 end o f 827-25 Jan. 844 844 Jan. 844-27 Jan. 847 10 Apr. 847-17 July 855 29 Sept. 855-17 Apr. 858 855 24 Apr. 858-13 Nov. 867 14 Dec. 867-Dec. 872 14 Dec. 872-16 Dec. 882 16 Dec. 882-15 May 884 17 May 884-Sept. 885 Sept. 885-14 Sept. 891 6 Oct. 891-4 Apr. 896 Apr. 896 May 896-Aug. 897 Aug.-Nov. 897 Nov. /Dec. 897 Jan. 898-Jan. 900 May/June 900-July/Aug. 903 July/Aug.-Sept. 903: murdered 904 903-904 29 Jan. 904-14 Apr. 911 April/June 911-July/Aug. 913 Aug. 913-Mar. 914 Mar./Apr. 914-May 928: deposed, murdered 929 May-Dec. 928 Dec. 928-Feb. 931 Feb./Mar. 93i-Dec./Jan. 935/6 3 (?)Jan. 936-13 July 9 3 9 14 July 939-Oct. 942

T h e Oracles o f G o d

401

Marinus II (Martin III) A gapitus II J ohn XII Leo VIII* 131 Benedict V 127 128 129 130

132 133

134

135 136

137 138

139 140 141 142

143 144

145 146

147 148 149 150

151 152

153

30 (?) Oct. 942-May 946 10 May 946-Dec. 935 16 Dec. 955-14 May 964 4 Dec. 963-1 Mar. 965 22 May-23 June 964: deposed, died 966 J ohn XIII 1 Oct. 965-6 Sept. 972 Benedict VI 19 Jan. 9 7 3 -July 9 7 4 Boniface VÌI June-July 974, Aug. 984-20 July 985 Benedict VII Oct. 974-10 July 983 Dec. 983-20 Aug. 984 J ohn XIV [Peter Canepanova] Aug. 985-Mar. 996 J ohn X V [John Crescentius] 3 May 996-18 Feb. 999 Gregory V [Bruno of Carinthia] Feb. 997-May 998: died 1001 John X V I Sy Cvester II [Gerbert ofAurillac] 2 Apr. 999-12 May 1003 J ohn XVII [John Sicco] 16 May-6 Nov. 1003 J ohn XVIII [John Fasanus] 25 Dec. 1003-June/July 1009 Sergius IV [Pietro Buceaporca: ‘Pig’s snout’] 31 July 1009-12 May 1012 Gregory VI May-Dec. 1012 Benedict V ili [Theophylad II ofTusculum] 17 May 1012-9 Apr. 1024 J ohn X IX (Romanus ofTusculum] 19 Apr. 1024-20 Oct. 1032 Benedict IX [Theophylad III ofTusculum] 21 Oct. 1032-Sept. 1044, 10 M ar.-i May 1045, 8 Nov 1047-16 July 1048: deposed, died 1055/6 Sylvester III [John of Sabina] 20 Jan .-io Mar. 1045: deposed, died 1063 Gregory VI [John Gratian] 1 May 1045-20 Dec. 1046: deposed, died 1047 C lement II [Suidgcr of Bamberg] 24 Dec. 1046-9 Oct. 1047 17 July-9 Aug. 1048 D amasus II [Poppo ofBrixen] 12 Feb. 1049-19 Apr. 1054 St Leo IX [Bruno of Egisheim] V ictor II [Gebhard of Dollnstein-Hirschberg] 13 Apr. 1055-28 July 1057 Stephen IX (X) [Frederick of Lorraine] 2 Aug. 1057-29 Mar. 1058 1058-59: died 1074 Benedict X [John Mincius] 6 Dec. 1058-July 1061 N icholas II [Gérard of Lorraine] 30 Sept. 10 6 1-21 Apr. 1073 Alexander II [Anselm ofBaggio]

♦ Because John X II was deposed by the Emperor Otto I, the validity o f L e o V III’s election has been contested, and he Is included as an andpope in many lists. The Rom an Catholic Church’s official list o f popes, as printed in the Aimuario Poutijicio, recognises him as a true pope.

402

Saints & Sinners

Honorius (II) [Peter Cadalus] St Gregory VII [Hildebrand] Clement III [Guibert of Ravenna] 1 55 B l . Victor III [Desiderius ofMonte Cassino] 156 B l . U rban II [Odo of Lagery] 157 Paschal II [Rainerius of Bieda]

154

Theoderic Albert Sylvester IV [Maginulf] 158 Gelasius II [John of Gaeta] Gregory (VIIII) [Maurice Burdanus - (the donkey3] C allistus II [Guido of Burgundy] 159 160 Honorius II [Lambert Scornabecchi] Celestine II [Teobaldo] 161 Innocent II [Gregorio Papareschi] Anacletus II [Pietro Pierleoni] Victor IV [Gregorio Conti] 162 C elestine II [Guido di Castello] 163 Lucius II [Gherardo Caccianemici] 164 Bl . Eugenius III [Bernardo Pignatelli] 165 A nastasius IV [Conrad of Rome] 166 Hadrian IV [Nicholas Breakspear] 167 Alexander III [Orlando Bandinellt] Victor IV [Ottaviano ofMonticelli] Paschal III [Guido of Crema] Callistus III [Giovanni of Struma] Innocent III [Landò of Sezze] 168 Lucius III [Ubaldo Allucingoli] 169 U rban III [Uberto Crivelli] 170 Gregory V ili [Alberto di Morra] 171 C lement III [Paulo Scolari] 172 C elestine III [Giacinto Boboni] 173 174

175

176 177 178

179 180 181

1061-64: died 1072 22 Apr. 1073-25 May 1085 1080,1084-1100 24 May 1086,9 May-16 Sept. 1087 12 Mar. 1088-29 July 1099 13 Aug. 1099-21 Jan. 1118 Sept. 1100-Jan. 1101: died 1102 110 1/2 110 5 -11 24 Jan. 1118-29 Jan. 1119 1118 -2 1: died c 1140 2 Feb. 1119 -14 Dec. 1124 21 Dec. 112 4 -13 Feb. 1130 1124: died 1126 14 Feb. 1130-24 Sept. 1143 1130-38 1138) 26 Sept. 1143-8 Mar. 1144 12 Mar. 1144-15 Feb. 1145 15 Feb. 1145-8 July 1153 8 July 1153-3 Dec. 1154 4 Dec. 1154 -1 Sept. 1159 7 Sept. 1159-30 Aug. 1181

1159-64 1164-68 1168-78 1179-80 1 Sept. 118 1-25 Nov. 1185 25 Nov. 1185-20 Oct. 1187 21 O c t-17 Dec. 1187 19 Dec. 1187-Mar. 1191 30 Mar. 119 1-8 Jan. 1198 Innocent III [Lothar of Segni] 8 Jan. 1198-16 July 1216 Honorius III [Cencio Savelli] 18 July 1216-18 Mar. 1227 Gregory IX [Ugolino dei Conti di Segni] 19 Mar. 1227-22 Aug. 1241 C elestine IV [Goffredo da Castiglione] 25 O ct.-io Nov. 1241 Innocent IV [Sinibaldo Fieschi] 25 June 1243-7 Dee. 1254 Alexander IV [Rainaldo dei Conti di Segni] 12 Dee. 1254-25 May 1261 U rban IV [Jacques Pantaléon] 29 Aug. 126 1-2 Oct. 1264 C lement IV [Guy Foulques] 5 Feb. 1265-29 Nov. 1268 Bl. Gregory X [Tedaldo Visconti] 1 Sept. 12 7 1-10 Jan. 1276

The Oracles o f G o d

182 183 184 185

B l . I nnocent V [Pierre ofTarantaise] H adrian V [Ottobono Fieschi] J ohn X X I* [Pedro Juliano, Veter o f Spain J N icholas III [G io vann i G aetano O rsini ]

21 Ja n -2 2 June 1276 Ju ly-18 Aug. 1276 8 Sept. 1276-20 May 1277 25 Nov. 1277-22 Aug. 1280

11

186 M a r t in IV [Si>won de B rie (or Brion)]

22 Feb. 12 8 1 - 2 8 M ar. 1285

18 7 H o n o r iu s IV [Giacomo Savelli]

2 A pr. 12 8 5 -3 A pr. 12 8 7

188 N ic h o la s IV [G irolam o Mosci]

22 Feb. 12 8 8 -4 Apr. 1292

189 S t C e le st in e V [Pietro del Morrone]

5 J u ly - 1 3 D ec. 1294: resigned, died 1296

190 B o n iface V III [Benedetto Caetani] 1 91

B l . B e n e d ic t X I [Niccolo[2 ] Boccasino]

24 D ec. 1 2 9 4 - 1 1 O ct. 1303 22 O ct. 13 0 3 - 7 Ju ly 1304

19 2 C l e m e n t V [Bertrand de G ot]

5 Ju n e 13 0 5 -2 0 Apr. 13 14

193 J o h n X X I I [Jacques Duèse]

7 A u g. 1 3 1 6 - 4 D ec. 1334

N icholas (V) [Pietro Rainalducci]

13 2 8 -3 0

194 B e n e d ic t X II [Jacques Fournier]

20 D ec. 13 3 4 -2 5 Apr. 1342

195

7 M a y 13 4 2 -6 D ec. 135 2

C l e m e n t V I [Pierre Roger]

196 I n n o c e n t V I [Etienne Aubert]

18 D ec. 1 3 5 2 - 1 2 Sept. 136 2

19 7 B l . U r b a n V [G u illau m e de Grim oard]

28 Sept. 1 3 6 2 - 1 9 D ec. 1370

198 G r e g o r y X I [Pierre Roger]

30 D ec. 13 7 0 - 2 7 M ar. 1378

199 U r b a n V I [Bartolommeo Prignano]

8 Apr. 13 7 8 - 15 O ct. 1389

C lem en t V II [Robert o f Geneva] 200 B o n ifa ce I X [Pietro Tomacelli] B en ed ict X I I I [Pedro de Luna]

13 7 8 -9 4 2 N o v. 13 8 9 - 1 O ct. 1404 28 Sept. 13 9 4 -2 6 Ju ly 14 17 : died 1423

201 Innocent VII [Cosimo Gentile dei Migliorati] 17 Oct. 1404-6 Nov. 1406 202 G regory XII [Angelo Correr] 30 Nov. 1406-4 June 1415: abdicated at Council of Constance, died 18 Sept. 1417 AlexanderV [Pietro Philargt] 140910 John X X III [Baldassare Cosso] 14 10 - 15: died 1419 203 M artin V [O do Colonna] i i N ov. 14 17 - 2 0 Feb. 14 31 ClementVIII [ G il Sanchez M u n o z] 14 2 3 -2 9 : died 1446 Benedict (XIV) [Bernard G arier] 14 2 5 -? 3 Mar. 1431-23 Feb. 1447 204 E ugenius IV [G abriele Condultnaro] FelixV [Am adeus o f Savoy] I439“ 49* died 1451 6 Mar. 1447-24 Mar. 1455 205 N icholas V [Tommaso ParentucelU] 8 Apr. 1455-6 Aug. 1458 206 C allistus III [Alfonso Borgia] 19 Aug. 1458-15 Aug. 1464 207 Pius II [Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini] 30 Aug. 1464-26 July 1471 20 8 P aul II [Pietro Barbo] 209 S ixtus IV [Francesco della Rovere] 9 Aug. 14 7 1-12 Aug. 1484 ^Because of a mistake in the medieval numbering, no pope has ever borne the titleJohn XX

403

404

Saints & Sinners

29 Aug. 1484-25 July 1492 li Aug. 1492-18 Aug. 1503 22 Sept.-i8 Oct. 1503 1 Nov. 1503-21 Feb. 1513 11 Mar. 15 13 -1 Dee. 1521 9 Jan. 1522-14 Sept. 1523 18 Nov. 1523-25 Sept. 1534 13 Oct. 1534-10 Nov. 1549 8 Feb. 1550-23 Mar. 1555 9 A pr.-i May 1555 23 May 1555-18 Aug. 1559 25 Dee. 1559-9 Dee. 1565 Pius IV [G io van n i A n gelo M edici] 8 Jan. 1566-1 May 1572 S t P ius V [M ichele G hislieri] 14 May 1572-10 Apr. 1585 G regory XIII [U go Buoncotnpagni] 24 Apr. 1585-27 Aug. 1590 S ixtus V [Felice Peretti] 15-27 Sept. 1590 U r b a n VII [Giam battista Castagna] 5 Dec. 1590-16 Oct. 1591 G regory X IV [N icolo[2 ] Sfondrati] Innocent IX [G iovanni Antonio Fachinetti] 29 O ct-30 Dec. 1591 30 Jan. 1592-5 Mar. 1605 C lement V ili [Ippolito Aldobrandini] 1-2 7 Apr. 1605 L eo X I [Alessandro de* M edici] P aul V [C am illo Borghese] 16 May 1605-28 Jan. 1621 G regory X V [Alessandro Ludovisi] 9 Feb. 1621-8 July 1623 U rban V ili [M affeo Barberini] 6 Aug. 1623-29 July 1644 15 Sept. 1644-1 Jan. 1655 I nnocent X [Giam battista Patnfili] A lexander VII [Fabio C higi] 7 Apr. 1655-22 May 1667 C lement IX [G iu lio Rospigliosi] 20 June 1667-9 Dec. 1669 C lement X [E m ilio A ltieri] 29 Apr. 1670-22 July 1676 B l . I nnocent X I [Benedetto Odescalchi] 21 Sept. 1676-11 Aug. 1689 A lexander V ili [Pietro Ottoboni] 6 Oct. 1689-1 Feb. 1691 I nnocent X II [A ntonio Pignatelli] 12 July 1691-27 Sept. 1700 C lement X I [Gianfrancesco A lban i] 23 Nov. 1700-19 Mar. 1721 I nnocent XIII [M ichelangelo de’ Conti] 8 May 172 1-7 Mar. 1724 B enedictXHI [Pietro Francesco Orsmi-Gravina] 27 May 1724-21 Feb. 1730 C lement XII [Lorenzo Corsini] 12 July 1730-8 Feb. 1740 B enedici XIV [Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini] 17 Aug. 1740-3 May 1758 C lement XIII [Carlo della Torre Rezzonico] 6 July 1758-2 Feb 1769 C lement XIV [Lorenzo G anganelli] 19 May 1769-22 Sept. 1774 Pius VI [G io van n i A n gelo Braschi] 15 Feb 1775-29 Aug. 1799 Pius VII [Barnaba Chiaramonte] 14 Mar. 1800-20 July 1823 L eo XII [A nnibaie della G en g a ] 28 Sept. 1823-10 Feb 1829 Pius V ili [Francesco Saverio Castiglione] 31 Mar. 1829-30 Nov. 1830

210 I nnocent V ili [G io va n n i Battista Cibo] A lexander V I [Roderigo de Borgia ] 212 Pius III [Francesco Todeschini] 213 J ulius II [G iu lia n o della Rovere] 214 L eo X [ G iovanni d e ’ M edici] 215 H adrian V I [A drian D edei] 2 1 6 C lement VII [G iu lio d e’ M edici] 217 P aul III [Alessandro Farnese] 218 J ulius III [G io va n n i del M onte] 219 M arcellus II [Marcello C ervini] 220 P aul IV [G io van n i Pietro Caraffa]

2 11

221 222 223

224 225 226

227 228 229 230 2 31 232

233

234 235

236 237

238 239

240 241 242 243 244

245 246 247

248 249

250

Chronological L ist o f Popes and A n tipop es

251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262

G r e g o r y X V I [Bartolommeo Cappellari]

Pius IX [Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti] L eo X III [Gioacchino Vincenzo Peed] Pius X [Giuseppe Melchior Sarto] B e n e d ic t X V [Giacomo della Chiesa] Pius X I [Achille Ratti] Pius X II [Eugenio Pacelli] J o h n X X III [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli] P a u l V I [Giovanni Battista Montini] J o h n P a u l I [Albino Luciani] J o h n P a u l II [Karol Jo z e f Wojtyla] B e n e d ic t X V I [Joseph Alois Ratzinger]

4 05

2 Feb. 18 3 1- 1 June 1846 16 June 1846-7 Feb. 1878 20 Feb. 1878-20 Ju ly 1903 4 Aug. 1903-20 Aug. 1914 3 Sept. 19 14 -2 2 Jan. 1922 6 Feb. 19 2 2 -10 Feb. 1939 2 Mar. 1939-9 Oct. 1958 28 Oct. 1958-3 June 1963 2 1 June 1963-6 Aug. 1978 26 A u g - 2 8 Sept. 1978 16 Oct. 1978-2 April 2005 19 A pril 2005—

APPENDIX B

G LO SSA RY

A d L im in a : Latin for ‘to the threshold’, meaning a visit to the house

o f the Apostle Peter, i.e. Rom e or St Peter’s Basilica. The phrase applied originally to all pilgrimage to the shrine o f the Apostle. In modern usage it applies especially to the five-yearly visits bishops are required to make to R om e to give an account o f their dioceses to the Pope. Currently seen as an expression o f the c o ll e g ia l responsi­ bility o f the bishops with the Pope, historically it has been a way o f enforcing and underlining papal authority. A n t ip o p e : rival claimant to the papacy, elected or appointed in

opposition to the incumbent subsequently recognised officially as the ‘true’ Pope. A complete list will be found in Appendix A. A p o c r is ia r y : papal ambassador to the Byzantine Emperor. A r c h b is h o p : the senior bishop o f a region. Since the early Middle

Ages the authority o f the Archbishop over the subordinate or ‘suffra­ gan’ bishops has been symbolised by the gift o f the pa lliu m from the Pope. A r ia n is m : Christian heresy preached originally by the Alexandrian

presbyter Arius (died 336), denying the full divinity o f Jesus Christ, and teaching that as ‘Son o f God’ Christ was subordinate to God the Father, by whom he had been created before the beginning o f the world. The teaching seems to have sprung from a concern to protect the sovereignty and unchanging nature o f God from the limitations implied in the doctrine o f the I n c a r n a t io n . B ea t ific a t io n : the solemn papal authorisation o f religious cult in

honour o f a dead Christian; a step on the way to full or declaration that the canonised person is a saint.

c a n o n isa t io n

B ish o p : from Greek episcopos (‘overseer’); the senior pastor (‘shep-

T h e Oracles o f G o d

407

herd’) and focus o f unity within a Christian church: probably origi­ nally indistinguishable from the ‘elders’ (Greek ‘presbyter’ , from which the word ‘priest’ is derived). Within the first hundred years o f Christianity the bishops emerged as the chief ministers, to whom the government o f the churches, and the right to ordain other ministers, was confined. The territory over which bishops rule is called a d io ­ c e s e , though early bishops probably presided over the church in a single town. The Pope is Bishop o f Rom e. B r ie f : an official papal letter, less solem n than a papal bull. B u l l : solem n papal d ocu m en t o r m andate an n o u n cin g a b in d in g d ecision, and c a rryin g a fo rm al seal. B y z a n t iu m , B y z a n t in e : Byzantium was the Greek town on the Bosphorous where Constantine established the new capital o f the Rom an empire in 330, when it became Constantinople. It gave its name to the empire as a whole, to the state Church and to the dis­ tinctive liturgy o f the Church. In contrast to the Latin Church, where the Pope’s authority came to be seen as supreme, the Byzan­ tine Church paid special reverence to the Christian authority o f the Emperor. After the Turkish conquest o f 1453 Byzantium was renamed Istanbul. C a n o n : C a n o n la w : (i) Formal item o f Church law. (ii) A decree o f

a council or synod. C a n o n isa t io n : solemn declaration that a deceased Christian is a saint, to whom prayers and other religious honours may be paid. Originally canonisation was a matter for the local church, and was usually signalled and formalised by the ‘translation’ (transfer) by the bishop o f the relics o f the saint to a visible shrine, and the insertion o f their feast day into the calendar o f the local church. The first known papal canonisation was o f Ulrich o f Augsburg in 993; since the late twelfth century the power o f canonisation has been reserved to the Pope alone. C a r d in a l : from the Latin word cardo, a hinge. At first, any priest attached to a major church, later restricted to the parish clergy o f R om e, the bishops o f the su b a r b ic a r ia n d io c e s e s , and the district d ea c o n s o f Rom e. The special advisers and helpers o f the Pope and, since 1179, the exclusive electors o f a new pope. Since 1970 they have been excluded from voting in a c o n c la v e after the age o f eighty.

408

Saints & Sinners

Since the pontificate o f Paul V I all cardinals have had to be ordained bishop, but historically they needed only to be in ‘minor orders’ , and many o f the most famous cardinals o f history were never priests. C o l l e g ia l it y : the co-responsibility o f all bishops, in communion with the Pope and with each other, for the whole Church. Empha­ sised in the teaching o f early theologians like Cyprian o f Carthage, it was obscured by the growth o f the papal monarchy, but re-empha­ sised at the SecondVatican Council. C o n c il ia r is m , C o n c il ia r t h e o r y : the doctrine that supreme authority in the Church lies with a g en e r a l c o u n c il , rather than with the Pope: Conciliar theory had widespread support during the period o f the Great Schism, and was only finally rejected by the def­ inition o f papal in f a l l ib il it y in 1870. C o n c la v e : from the Latin con clave, ‘with a key’. Since 12 71, the closed place into which the assembly o f cardinals is locked to elect a new pope and, by extension, the assembly o f cardinals themselves. Regulations until recently emphasised the need to make conditions in the Conclave as uncomfortable as possible, to speed the process o f election. C o n c o r d a t : an agreement between the Church and a civil govern­ ment to regulate religious affairs. C o n sist o r y : the assembly o f cardinals, convoked by the Pope and presided over by him, to advise the Pope or witness solemn papal acts. C o u n c il , E c u m e n ic a l C o u n c il , G e n e r a l C o u n c il : a solemn

assembly o f bishops to determine matters o f doctrine or discipline for the Church. Councils called for the whole empire, the Oecumene, were called ‘ecumenical’ or general councils, and their solemn teach­ ing was believed to be in f a l l ib l e . The first o f these general councils was Nicaea, called by the Emperor Constantine in 325 to settle the Arian controversy. In Catholic theology, no general council can meet without papal agreement. C u r ia : Latin for ‘court’: the papal court and central administration o f the Rom an Catholic Church, organised in a number o f separate congregations each presided over by a cardinal known as the ‘Pre­ fect’. D e a c o n : Christian minister appointed to assist the Bishop in the

liturgy, and in Church administration and especially charitable activ­

T he Oracles o f G o d

4 09

ity. Often considered the most junior o f the three traditional grades o f ministry, in antiquity and the Middle Ages the deacons o f R om e were often more powerful than any o f the city’s priests or assistant bishops. Because o f their administrative experience and close associ­ ation with papal government, the Pope was often chosen from among the deacons. D e c r e t a l s : papal letters, usually in response to requests for guidance or rulings. Collected in the Middle Ages as the basis for c a n o n l a w . D ic a s t e r y : Vatican department. D io c e s e : the district governed by a bishop. The word, and the areas

covered, were originally taken over from units o f Rom an civil gov­ ernment. D o n a t ism : schismatic puritanical African movement in the fourth

century'and afterwards, which rejected the ministration o f any clergy who had lapsed under persecution, and which taught that the sacra­ ments o f such clergy contaminated the churches within which they were performed. It took its name from the third-century Numidian Bishop Donatus. E n c y c l ic a l : a solemn letter addressed by the Pope to the bishops,

the clergy, the whole Christian people or, more recently, to ‘all peo­ ple o f goodwill’ . Encyclicals came into use under Benedict XIV, and have become the favoured form o f papal teaching since the early nineteenth century. Individual encyclicals are known by the first two or three words o f their opening paragraph —normally in Latin. E x a r c h : the representative or ‘viceroy’ o f the Byzantine Emperor in

Italy and in Africa. E x c o m m u n ic a t io n : the sentence by which a bishop or pope

excludes an individual or group from a share in the sacraments and prayers o f the Church. In the Middle Ages excommunication effec­ tively deprived an individual o f all civil rights. F il io q u e : Latin word meaning ‘and from the Son’: a clause inserted

into the Nicene Creed in sixth-century Spain, and later adopted throughout the Western Church. It is part o f the Western version o f the doctrine o f the Trinity, and it teaches that the Holy Spirit pro­ ceeds from the Son as well as the Father.The Eastern Churches reject the formula, and it was one o f the principle reasons for the breaking o ff o f communion between East and West in the Middle Ages. Some

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Eastern theologians, however, agree that, although the inclusion o f the word in the Creed is illicit, the teaching contained in the Filioque is acceptable if rightly interpreted. G a l l ic a n is m : from the Latin name for France, Gallia: the teaching, current especially in France from the later Middle Ages, that local or national churches have independence from papal control. G n o s t ic , G n o s t ic is m : from the Greek word gnosis, knowledge. Blanket term for widely differing forms o f heretical Christian teach­ ing, current from the second century onwards, making a sharp dis­ tinction between spirit and matter, and claiming that only spirit can be redeemed. H e r e s y : from the Greek word haeresis, choice or thing chosen: the formal denial or doubt o f Catholic doctrine; a term o f disapproval for religious error. I c o n o c l a sm : Greek term meaning ‘image-breaking’ : applied espe­ cially to the reaction against religious images in the Eastern Church in the seventh and eighth centuries. I n c a r n a t io n : the teaching that in the life o f the man Jesus o f Nazareth, the second person o f the Trinity, God himself, took human flesh (Latin carnis) and became a human being. I n d u l g e n c e : the remission by the Church, and especially the Pope,

o f the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven. In medieval Western theology, sin was conceived o f as leaving behind it a tempo­ ral ‘debt’ or scar, even when it had been confessed and forgiven. This ‘debt’ could be wiped away by acts o f penance such as fasting or pil­ grimage. As part o f the ‘power o f the keys’ to bind and loose in mat­ ters o f sin and forgiveness, bishops had the power to remit the need to perform such acts. Theologians explained this by interpreting ‘indulgences’ as the dispensing to sinners o f a ‘treasure o f merits’ acquired by Christ and the saints, on the analogy o f transfers from a full bank account to an overdrawn one. In the late Middle Ages, it was believed that these indulgences could be extended to the souls suffering in pu r g a t o r y , and so could hasten their translation to heaven. Indulgences could be partial, i.e. equivalent to a fixed period o f penance, such as forty days or a year, or ‘plenary’, i.e. unlimited, and remitting all the temporal punishment due to sin. I n f a l l ib l e , in f a l l ib il it y : Latin word meaning free from error. From

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early times it was believed that the Church could not fall into error about the fundamental truths o f the faith. A negative concept, this infallibility does not mean that the Chiirch or any o f its teachers are inspired, but that in certain circumstances they will be protected from fundamental error. Infallibility was attributed from earliest times to the collective teaching o f die Church, and hence to the decrees o f general councils. In 1870 the First Vatican Council in its decree Pastor Aeternus laid down that the ex cathedra or most solemn teaching o f the Pope possessed the infallibility which Christ had willed for the Church. I n t e r d ic t : solemn ecclesiastical sentence cutting o ff a whole com­ munity or country from the sacraments o f the Church. J a n s e n is m : named after Cornelius Jansen, its founder: a religious and

doctrinal* movement within the Catholic Church from the seven­ teenth century onwards, which emphasised human sinfulness, the doc­ trine o f predestination and the sovereign grace o f God. Because o f successive papal condemnations and the interest it took in the early history o f the Church, Jansenism became associated with anti-papalism and an emphasis on the independent authority o f the bishops; it was therefore often allied with G a ll ic a n ism and J o se p h in ism . J o se p h in ism : named after the Emperor Joseph II o f Austria: a form o f

Gallicanism, which emphasised the independence o f local churches and bishops from papal control Josephinism was a doctrine propagated by secular rulers anxious to control the church in their territories, and keen therefore to restrict the supranational influence o f the popes. J u b il e e or H o ly Y e a r : a year during which the Pope grants a plenary

Indulgence to all who visit R om e on pilgrimage and fulfil certain conditions. Instituted in 1300 by Boniface VIII, it was originally intended to occur once a century. The interval was reduced to fifty years by Clement VI, to thirty-three (the supposed age o f Christ at the Crucifixion) by Urban V I, and to twenty-five by Paul II. The most important ceremony associated with the Jubilee is the opening o f the Holy Door into St Peter’s, which is bricked up between Jubilees. L eg a t e : clerical representative o f the Pope, exercising extensive papal

powers. L eg a t io n s : the prosperous parts o f the Papal States in the north west

o f Italy and the Adriatic coast, governed by cardinal legates.

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M a g ist e r iu m : Latin for ‘teaching’ .Term currently used to signify the

official teaching, and the teaching office, o f the Catholic Church, and especially o f the Pope and bishops. In the Middle Ages theologians were widely thought o f as exercising a parallel and complementary magisterium —hence Henry VIII consulted the theological faculties o f the European universities when refused a divorce by the Pope. M et r o po lita n : title given to senior bishop (always an archbishop) possessing authority over the other bishops o f a region. From the early Church down to the early nineteenth century metropolitan and papal authority frequently came into convict. In the Rom an Catholic Church, no metropolitan can function without the bestowal o f the p a lliu m by the Pope. M o n o p h y sit ism : from the Greek words for ‘only one nature’ : the

teaching that in Jesus Christ there was only one nature, which was divine, or an amalgam o f divine and human exactly corresponding to neither. Orthodox Christianity insisted that Jesus Christ was a single person composed o f two natures, human and divine. In him these two natures were united but not confused. Monophysitism, which was rejected as a heresy, was an attempt to protect the divine nature from suggestions o f change or limitation in the I n c a r n a t io n . M o n o t h e l it ism : a Greek word for the teaching that there was in Jesus Christ only one will: it arose from the dangerous religious divi­ sions o f the Byzantine empire in the seventh century, and was a politically inspired attempt to win over monophysite Christians by softening the teaching that Christ had two natures. N e st o r ia n ism : the teaching that in Jesus Christ there were two dis­

tinct persons, the God and the man, and not merely two natures.The doctrine takes its name from Nestorius, Patriarch o f Constantinople, who died c. 451, though it is now believed that he did not himself hold this teaching, which was condemned at the Council o f Chalcedon, 451. N u n c io : permanent diplomatic representative o f the Pope to a sov­

ereign state, who is also an instrument o f papal authority over the local church. P a l l iu m : circular w h ite stole o f lam b s w o o l, em broidered w ith crosses, given b y the p opes to other bishops, origin ally as a special m ark o f h o n o u r and com m u n io n , n o w as a form al sign o f m etro p o l­

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itan authority in their region. Since the papal reform era, successive popes have summoned archbishops to R om e to receive the pallium, as a sign o f papal sovereignty over them. P apal S t a tes : the areas o f Italy and southern France which acknowl­

edged the Pope as sovereign. Also known as the Patrimony o f St Peter, or the States o f the Church. Derived originally from the gifts o f Constantine, the Rom an imperial family and aristocratic converts to Christianity, they were formally recognised by Pepin and Charle­ magne, who undertook to protect them on behalf o f St Peter, and were finally abolished in 1870, when Italy confiscated the last o f the papal territories. P a t r ia r c h : from the fifth century, title given to the bishops o f the

five senior sees o f the universal Church —Antioch, Alexandria, C on­ stantinople, Jerusalem and Rom e. The Patriarch exercised authority over his whole region and had the right to ordain the metropolitans; from the Middle Ages the title has been extended to other bishops in East and West - e.g. Venice - though without the powers originally associated with the title. P a t r im o n y of S t P e t e r : see P apal S t a te s . P e n t a p o l is : the area o f the Papal States in Italy containing the ‘five

cities’ o f Rim ini, Pissaro, Fano, Senigalli^ and Ancona. P o n tiff , S u prem e P o n t iff : Latin pagan title {pontifex = a bridgebuilder) for priests and the supreme priest o f the Rom an religion, the Emperor, eventually taken over by bishops and by the Pope. P o p e : Latin term o f endearment and respect,‘papa’, meaning‘daddy*. Widely applied in the early Church to bishops (the Bishop o f Carthage was called ‘pope’), and in the Orthodox churches o f the East given to parish priests, from the early Middle Ages in the West its use was restricted to the Bishop o f Rom e. P u r g a t o r y : in Western Catholic theology, the place or state o f

cleansing in which redeemed but imperfect souls are believed to await after death the beatific Vision o f God. It is believed that the prayers o f the living, and the ecclesiastical privileges known as in d u l g e n c e s , can assist the souls in purgatory through this process o f cleansing. S a c r e d C o l l e g e : the collective body o f the c a r d in a ls .

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S c h is m : Greek word meaning tear: applied to formal divisions within the Church for doctrinal or other causes. S im o n y : from Simon Magus, a magician who attempted to buy mag­ ical powers from the Apostles. The name given to the sin o f paying or receiving money or favours in return for spiritual office or promo­ tion. In the period o f the reform papacy it was thought o f as a heresy. S u b a r bic a h ia n b is h o p r ic s : the seven ancient dioceses round R om e whose bishops were senior members o f the College o f Cardinals. S y n o d : a local assembly o f clergy under their bishop, or o f a number o f local bishops, and possessing less authority than a g e n e r a l c o u n ­ c il . U lt ra m o n t a n ism : Latin term meaning ‘the other side o f the moun­ tains’, i.e. the Alps, hence the doctrine that lays great emphasis on the supreme authority o f the Pope on the Church as a whole outside his own diocese: the opposite o f G a l l ic a n is m . B y extension, the style o f piety and churchmanship associated with the nineteenth-century papacy and Italian church. V a t ic a n : the modern centre o f the papacy, made up o f the basilica

church o f St Peter and the buildings round it, occupying the ancient Rom an mons Vaticams,Vatican Hill. Outside the ancient city o f Rom e, the Vatican was not the original papal residence, and St John Lateran not St Peter’s is the cathedral church o f Rom e. Since the annexation o f R om e to the state o f Italy in 1870, however, the Vatican has been the Pope’s main residence and the administrative centre o f the Church. B y the Lateran Treaty o f 1929 the Vatican City was recognised as an inde­ pendent state, o f which the Pope is the sovereign.

A P P E N D IX C

H O W A N EW P O P E IS M A D E

The papacy can be vacated only by the resignation or the death o f a reigning pope: there is no provision in canon law for the deposition o f a pope, even in the event o f lunacy or incapacity. N o pope has vol­ untarily resigned since St CelestineV in 1294, although in resolving the Great Schism by deposing all three claimants to the papacy, the Council o f Constance in 1415 permitted the ‘real’ (Roman) Pope Gregory X II the face-saving fiction o f resignation. The provisions for the election o f a new pope were last revised in February 1996 by Pope John Paul II, in the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, which introduced some revolutionary changes into a process which in essentials had been standardised for centuries. On the death o f the pope all the heads o f the various Vatican Con­ gregations are immediately suspended from their offices: only the Cardinal Camerlengo (Chamberlain, the head o f the Papal house­ hold), the Cardinal M ajor Penitentiary (responsible for the adjudica­ tion o f grave cases o f conscience), the Cardinal Vicar o f R om e (who administers the diocese) and the Cardinal Archpriest o f St Peter’s (where the Pope will be buried) remain in office. I f there is no Camer­ lengo at the time o f the pope’s death, the Cardinals present in R om e elect one.The Camerlengo is responsible for ascertaining and certify­ ing that the pope is in fact dead (traditionally this was done in a ritual in which he tapped on the dead pope’s forehead with a small ivory mallet, calling him three times by his baptismal name, but this custom has now lapsed).The Camerlengo also ritually smashes the Fisherman’s R in g , the gold signet-ring with which papal documents were once sealed, and which is made fresh for each pope and engraved with his name. The Cardinal Dean (the senior cardinal) then summons the whole college o f cardinals, and all the routine powers o f the papacy are

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exercised in the vacancy by them collectively, meeting daily in the Vat­ ican in General Congregations.The curial departments continue their ordinary business under their deputy prefects or secretaries. Nine days o f mourning are observed for the pope, whose funeral is held in St Peter’s. Popes are traditionally buried in a triple coffin, the inner shell o f cypress, the next o f lead and the outer one o f plain elm. N ot sooner than fifteen days, nor later than twenty, after the announcement o f the pope’s death the cardinals must assemble in conclave to elect a successor. In preparation for the conclave the car­ dinals are addressed by two preachers, chosen for their orthodoxy and wisdom, who reflect on the Church’s needs and the considera­ tions which the cardinals should bear in mind in making their choice. The conclave begins with a solemn mass invoking the aid o f the Holy Spirit in St Peter’s, and takes place in the Sistine Chapel within the Vatican Palace itself, into which the cardinals process while a hymn to the Holy Spirit is sung. In the past, provision o f ade­ quate accommodation in the Vatican for the cardinals and their staff during the conclave has been a recurrent problem, and conditions have often been primitive in the extreme. For the future, cardinals will live during the conclaves in a specially constructed and comfort­ able hostel in the Vatican grounds, the Domus S Marthae (the House o f St Martha), opened by John Paul II in May 1996. The Domus S Marthae normally serves as a conference centre and residence for selectedVatican officials, but it was built with conclaves specifically in mind. It has 130 suites and single rooms for the cardinal electors and their attendants - who include priests from the religious orders able to hear confessions in all the languages o f the cardinals - and two medical doctors, together with the catering staff needed to feed them. The number o f cardinal electors was set at 120 by Pope Paul V I, and this number was confirmed by John Paul II in 1996, cardinals losing the right to take vote in a papal election when they reach the age o f eighty. However, restricting the number o f electors to 120 is likely to prove impossible in practice, since the pope’s concern to make the College o f Cardinals as inclusive and representative as pos­ sible o f a world Church has inexorably inflated numbers.The consis­ tory o f February 2001, at which 37 new cardinals were created (the largest number ever announced at a single consitory), took the total number o f cardinals at that time to 178, and the number o f qualified electors to 128. There is no procedure in place for selecting the 120

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entitled to vote, nor, if these numbers are maintained or increased, is it at all clear where the extra numbers would be accommodated dur­ ing the conclave. Once the cardinals have entered the conclave, the Domus S Marthae and the Sistine Chapel are sealed off, all contact with the outer world is forbidden, and the cardinals and their assistant staff take an oath o f secrecy about the proceedings o f the conclave. Con­ clave means ‘with a key’ , and they have always been surrounded with rules designed to ensure that external pressure is not brought to bear on the cardinals as they make their choice. Under the current rules, however, electors who unavoidably turn up late have to be admitted, even i f the conclave has already begun its work (before the days o f air travel, American and other non-European cardinals often arrived too late to exercise their rights as electors, a matter which caused immense and understandable resentment). For more than 800 years the normal mode o f election o f a pope has been by secret written ballot. Nowadays the election takes place in the Sistine Chapel, from which all assistants are excluded during voting, leaving only the cardinals. Three ‘scrutineers’ are chosen at random from the cardinals to oversee the voting. The cardinals are given a small supply o f rectangular voting forms which say in Latin ‘I elect to the Supreme Pontificate’ , below which is a blank space in which to write a name. Each elector writes a name in the space pro­ vided, and folds the form once length-ways so as to conceal their choice. Cardinals are also encouraged i f possible to disguise their handwriting. Taking the folded form between thumb and index fin­ ger o f the right hand, the cardinals then approach the altar o f the Sis­ tine Chapel in order o f seniority, each one announcing in a clear voice ‘I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one whom, before God, I think ought to be elected.’ On the altar is a large chalice covered with a metal plate or paten. The cardinal places his ballot paper on the paten, and tips it into the chalice, watched by the other electors. He then returns to his place. Elderly or infirm cardinals have their votes collected from their places by a scrutineer. Cardinals confined to their rooms by ill­ ness place their votes in a sealed ballot box, carried to their room by three randomly chosen ‘Cardinal Infirmarians’ , who ensure that no malpractice takes place during this procedure. In theory the cardinals may vote for any adult male Catholic, and

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need not confine their choice to a member o f the College o f Cardi­ nals. In practice, every pope since 1389 has already been a cardinal, and the election o f a non-cardinal is nowadays almost unimaginable. When each round o f voting is complete, the three scrutineers count the ballot papers into another chalice. I f there is a discrepancy between the number o f papers and the number o f electors, all the ballots are burned unopened and the whole procedure is repeated. If however all is in order, counting begins. Each o f the three scrutineers in turn looks at each ballot paper and records the name there in writing: the third scrutineer calls out the names so that all the cardi­ nals can make their own record. The votes are totalled for each per­ son nominated, and each bundle is sown together with a thread through the word ‘eligo’, ‘I elect’ . The outcome is announced for­ mally, and then checked by three ‘cardinal revisers’, again randomly chosen at the outset o f the conclave. Since the eighteenth century, if the outcome has been indecisive the bundles o f votes are taken to a specially constructed stove with a chimney visible in St Peter’s Square, and burned along with a chemical which turns the smoke a dense black.This is a signal to the outside world that the vote has not produced a pope. If the vote has been successful, the chemical is omitted and the smoke is white. To elect a pope, there must be a two-thirds majority plus one (in case a cardinal has voted for himself).There are normally two ballots each morning, and two in the afternoon, but on the first day o f the conclave there is normally only a single ballot. If after three days o f voting no election has been made, the cardinals pause for prayer and reflection, for not more than a day.Voting resumes for another seven ballots, with another pause i f no pope has been elected. After thirty ballots, the Cardinal Camerlengo invites the cardinals to suggest some method o f resolving the deadlock. When they then resume voting, the requirement for a two-thirds majority lapses and a simple majority suffices.This is a truly startling change in the procedures in operation since the twelfth century, and, on the face o f it, an unwise one. The international composition o f the Sacred College and the large number o f electors involved means that the cardinals may take time to familiarise themselves with potential candidates, and makes a prolonged election by no means unlikely. There is a risk that this ‘emergency’ relaxation o f the two-thirds majority rule might in fact happen frequently, and result in the election o f popes who do not

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command the consensual support o f the College o f Cardinals as a whole. There is room in the new rules for abuse: a determined (and unscrupulous) group o f cardinals could block the necessary twothirds majority for thirty ballots, and then shoe in their own man by a simple majority (all forms o f partisan coordination and plotting o f this kind are absolutely forbidden in papal elections, on pain o f excommunication: they are nevertheless by no means unknown). Once an election has successfully taken place, the secretary o f the conclave (not a cardinal) and the papal Master o f Ceremonies are sum­ moned to the Sistine Chapel.The Cardinal Dean approaches the elect and asks him ‘Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pon­ tiff’. I f he accepts, the Cardinal Dean asks,‘B y what name do you wish to be called’, upon which the new pope chooses and announces his papal name. (With very few exceptions, for the last thousand years all new popes have chosen a name different from their baptismal or Christian name). I f he is not already a bishop (cardinals are normally ordained archbishops, but a new cardinal may not have been so ordained, and some choose to remain priests) he is immediately ordained by the Cardinal Dean.The new pope is then robed in white cassock and sash and white skull-cap, red slippers, a lace rochet or epis­ copal surplice, and a short red cape. (Three cassocks small medium and large are kept in readiness).The pope then sits on a stool before the altar, the Camerlengo gives him the Fisherman’s R ing, and the cardi­ nals come in order o f seniority and kneel to pay homage to him. The proceedings conclude with the singing o f a solemn hymn o f thanks­ giving, Te Deum Laudamus,'We Praise Thee O God. While all this is proceeding, crowds have gathered in St Peter’s Square, alerted by the white smoke. The Senior Cardinal Deacon goes to the balcony overlooking the Piazza, and declares ‘Annuntio vobis Gaudiam Magnam, habemus Papam’, ‘I announce to you a great joy: we have a Pope’, and he informs the crowd o f the pope’s old name and his new papal name. The new pope then appears and gives his blessing ‘U rbi et Orbi’ , to the City and the World. It is not customary for the new pope to make a speech at this point: when Karol Wojtyla did so, an impatient cardinalatial voice was clearly audible over the loudspeaker system muttering ‘Basta! Basta!’ , ‘That’s enough, that’s enough’. Up to and including the pontificate o f Paul V I, new popes were inaugurated by being solemnly crowned with the triple tiara in St

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Peter’s basilica, to which they were carried on the Sedia Gestatoria, the ceremonial throne carried on the shoulders o f members o f the old Rom an aristocracy, accompanied by two great ostrich-feather fans, relics o f Byzantine court ritual. Pope John Paul I renounced this ceremony, which had come to seem too reminiscent o f the medieval papacy’s conflicts with emperors and inappropriate claims o f the popes to temporal dominion. Popes now are simply inaugurated at a special mass in or outside St Peter’s, at which the pope is invested with the white woollen stole, known as the Pallium, by the Senior Cardinal Deacon: the mass concludes with a repetition o f the bless­ ing ‘Urbi et Orbi’ .

NO TES

C hapter O ne : U pon T his R

1

2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9

ock

Most o f the early texts bearing on the history o f the papacy up to the reign ofDamasus I are conveniently collected and translated into English in J.T. Shotwell and L. R . Loomis, T h e See o f Peter , New York 1927, reprinted in 1991.The passage from Irenaeus’ Contra Haereses III cited in the text will be found at pp. 265-72. For these passages, ibid., pp. 72,236-9,265-72. Ibid., pp. 266-7. Eusebius, H istory o f the C hurch, ed. A. Louth, Harmondsworth 1989, pp. 170-4 (V/24). Shotwell and Loomis, See o f Peter, p. 267, but following here the better translation in J. Stevenson, A N e w Eusebius, London 1963, p. 119. The cult o f Peter and Paul at San Sebastiano poses many problems, not least that o f whether at any stage the Apostles’ bodies were buried there. It has been suggested that the shrine was originally a schismatic one, independent o f any grave, set up by the supporters o f the Antipope Novation in opposi­ tion to the official Vatican cult, but there is no clear evidence for this claim. More plausibly, it has been suggested that the shrine at San Sebastiano was an unofficial ‘folk’ shrine, which the authorities were forced to adopt to prevent it spiralling out o f the Bishop’s control: either way, the cult demon­ strates the growing importance o f the two saints. Description and plans o f the site at San Sebastiano, D.W O ’Connor, Peter in R o m e, New York 1969, pp. 135-58; helpful discussion and examples o f the inscriptions quoted in the text, in H. Chadwick, ‘St Peter and Paul in Rom e’, in his H istory and Thought o f the E a rly C hurch, London 1982, pp. 31-S2. Shotwell and Loomis, See o f Peter, pp. 252-3. Quoted in K. Schatz, Papal Primacy from its O rigins to the Present, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1990, p. 6. Shotwell and Loomis, See o f Peter, pp. 334-7.

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Ibid., pp. 267,294. All the texts on the disputes gathered in ibid:, pp. 399-420. Ibid., p.415. R . Davis (ed.), T he B o ok o f Pontiffs (L iber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1989, pp. 14-26. Documents for Sardica in Shotwell and Loomis, See o f Peter, pp. 503-34. Ibid., pp. 561, 571. Ibid., pp. 572-6. Ibid., p.686. R . B. Eno, T h e R ise o f the Papacy, Wilmington, Delaware 1990, pp. 80-4. Davis, B o o k o f P o n tiff, p. 29. Shotwell and Loomis, See o f Peter, p. 633. Chadwick,‘St Peter and Paul in R om e’, pp. 34—5; R . Krautheimer, R o m e : Profile o f a C ity, 3 1 2 - 1 3 0 8 , Princeton 1980, pp. 39-41. Krautheimer, R o m e, p. 41. The whole letter is printed in Shotwell and Loomis, See o f Peter, pp. 699-708. Eno, R is e o f the Papacy, p. 94. Ibid., p. 100. Quoted in Schatz, Papal Primacy, p.35. Eno, R is e o f the Papacy, pp. 102-9. J.Tillard, The Bishop o f R o m e, London 1983, p. 91; R . B. Eno (ed.), Teaching A uthority in the E a rly Church, Wilmington, Delaware, 1984 pp. 16 1-2.

C hapter T w o : B etw een T wo E mpires

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

Text o f Gelasius’ letter in S. Z. Ehler and J. B. Morall, Church and State through the Centuries, London 1954, p. 11 (translation slightly altered). P. Brown, The World o f L ate A n tiqu ity, London 1971, pp. 146-8. Latin text in C. Rahner (ed.) H enrici D enzinger, Enchyridion Symbolorurn, Barcelona, Freiburg, Rom e 1957, no. 171-2. R . Davis (ed.), T h e B o o k o f Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1989, p. 49. Quoted in K. Schatz, Papal Primacy fro m its O rigins to the Present, Collegeville, Minnesota 1996, p. 54. J. Richards, C o nsul o f G o d : The L ife and Tim es o f Gregory the Great, London 1980, p. 36. P. Llewellyn, R o m e in the D a rk Ages, London 1993, p. 90. Jeffrey Richards, T h e Popes and the Papacy in the Early M id dle Ages, 4 7 6 -7 3 2 , London 1979, p. 283. J. Barmby (ed.), T h e B o o k o f the Pastoral R u le and Selected Epistles o f Gregory the G reat, Library o f Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, end Series vol. 12, N ew York 1895, p. 176. Ibid., p.176.

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11 12 13 14

Richards, C o nsul o f G o d , p. 31. Barmby, Selected Epistles o f Gregory the G reat, pp. 140 -1. Ibid., p. 179; Richards, C o n su l o f G o d , pp. 64-8. R.W . Southern, Western Society and the Church in the M id dle Ages, Harmondsworth 1970, p. 172. 15 Barmby, Selected Epistles o f Gregory the Great, p. 170. 16 Ibid., pp. 166-73 for a series o f letters on the dispute about the ‘Ecumeni­ cal’ title: the letter cited is ibid., pp 240-1, but I have preferred the transla­ tion in J.Tillard, T he B isho p o f R o m e, London 1983, pp. 52-3 (Latin text pp. 203-4). 1 7 Barm by, Selected Epistles o f G regory the Great, p. 88.

18 Bede, T he Ecclesiastical H istory o f the English Pope, i 27, para. Ill, ed. Judith McClure and Roger Collins, Oxford 1994, p. 43. 19 Ibid., iii 25, p. 159: for King Oswiu’s smile, Eddius Stephanus, L ife o f Wilfred, in J. F. Webb and D. H. Farmer (trans and eds), The A g e o f Bede, Harmondsworth 1983, p. 115. 20 Davis, B o o k o f Pontiffs, p. 72. 21 Ibid., p. 8s. 22 R . Davis (ed.), T he Lives o f the E ig h th -C en tu ry Popes, Liverpool 1992, p. 13. 23 W Ullmann, A Short History o f the Papacy in the M iddle Ages, London 1974, p. 72; Southern, Western Society and the Church, p. 59. 24 Davis, E ig h th -C en tu ry Popes, pp. 26-7; Llewellyn, R o m e in the D a rk A ges, pp. 202-3. 23 Text in Ehler and Morall, C hurch and State, pp. 15-22. 26 Text in J.Wallace-Hadrill, T h e Frankish Church, Oxford 1983, p. 186. 27 This is the interpretation o f Charlemagne’s reservations offered by Notker the Stammerer: L. Thorpe (ed.), Two L ives o f Charlemagne, Harmondsworth 1969, p. 124. 28 Ullmann, Short History o f the Papacy, pp. 105-8; R . Davis (ed.), T h e Lives o f the N in th -C en tu ry Popes, Liverpool 199s, pp. 201-2; H. K. Mann, T he L ives o f the Popes in the E a rly M id d le Ages, London 1902-32, vol. 3, pp. 58-61. 29 R .W Southern, T he M a k in g o f the M id dle Ages, London 1987, pp. 131-2 . C hapter T hree : S et A bove N ations

1

Text o f Cluny’s foundation charter printed in R . C. Petty (ed.), A H istory o f C hristianity: Readings in the H istory o f the Church, Grand Rapids 1981, vol. 1, p. 280-1 . 2 Quoted in G. Tellenbach, T h e Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Twelfth C entury, Cambridge 1993,p. 170. 3 For a translation o f the Dictatus, S. Z. Ehler and J. B. Morall, Church and State through the Centuries, London 1954, pp. 43-4. 4 Tellenbach, Western Church, pp. 206-7.

4 24

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5 Text of Henry’s letter printed in Petty, Readings in the H istory o f the Church, vol. i, p.237. 6 Text in H. Bettenson (ed.), Documents o f the Christian Church, Oxford 1954, pp. 144-57 Letter to Bishop o f Metz 1081, in ibid., pp. 145-53. 8 Quoted in C. Morris, T he Papal M onarchy :T h e Western Church from 1050 to 1250, Oxford 1991, p. 125. 9 Quoted in R.W . Southern, Western Society and the Church in the M id d le A ges, Harmondsworth 1970, p. 105. 10 J. D. Anderson and E.T. Kennan (eds), St Bernard o f C la irva u x: F iv e B ooks o f Consideration: A dvice to a Pope, Kalamazoo, Michigan 1976, p. 121. 11 Ibid., pp. 66-8. 12 Ibid., pp. 57-8. 13 Morris, Papal M onarchy, p. 213. 14 R .W Southern, T h e M a kin g o f the M id d le A g es, London 1987, pp. 147-8. 15 Quotations on Crusade and indulgences, I. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073-1198, Cambridge 1993,pp. 326-30. 16 Ibid., p. 299; W Ullmann, A Short H istory o f the Papacy in the M id d le Ages, London 1974, pp. 182-3. 17 Robinson, Papacy, p. 24. 18 Quoted in Morris, Papal M onarchy, p. 431. 19 Southern, Western Society and the Church, pp. 144-5. 20 Morris, P apal M onarchy, p. 440. 21 M y translation from Dante, Inferno, XVIII 25-33. 22 Edited texts o f both Clericos Laicos and Unam Sanctum in Bettenson, D ocu­ ments o f the Christian C hurch, p p . 157-61. 23 Kenelm Foster and Mary John Ronayne (eds), I, Catherine: Selected W ritings o f Catherine o f Siena, London 1980, p. 94. C hapter F our : P rotest

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

and

D ivision

L. Pastor, H istory o f the Popes fro m the C lose o f the M id dle Ages, London 19 12 vol. 2, p. 30. C. B. Coleman (ed.), T h e Treatise o f Lorenzo Valla on the D onation o f C onstan­ tine, New Haven 1922, p. 179. Pastor, Popes, vol. 2, p. 166. Ibid., pp. 125-37. A. Grafton (ed.), R o m e R e b o rn :T h e Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture, New Haven and London 1993,p. xiii. L. C. Gabel (ed.), M em oirs o f a Renaissance Pope, London i960, p. 81. J. C. Olin (ed.), T he Catholic Reform ation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola, West­ minster, Maryland 1969, p. 9; Pastor, Popes, vol. 6, p. 17. J. A. Froud, L ife and Letters o f Erasmus, London 1895, p. 15 8.

T he Oracles o f G o d

425

9 Ibid., p. 165. 10 P. Partner, Renaissance R om e, 15 0 0 -15 5 9 : A Portrait o f a Society, Berkeley 1976, p. 158. 11 Pastor, Popes, vol. 28, p. 348. 12 M. Walsh, A n Illustrated H istory o f the Popes, London 1980, p. 181. 13 Sanctissimi D o m in i N ostri Benedicti Papae X I V Bu llariu m ,Tomus Primus, Venice 1777, pp. 4-7. C hapter F iv e : T he P ope

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

and the

P eople

Text in S. Z . Ehler and J. B. Morall, Church and State through the Centuries, London 1954, pp. 236-49. Consalvi’s letter and the details o f the Conclave in F Nielsen, T h e H istory o f the Papacy in the X I X t h C entury, London 1906, vol. i,pp. 19 1-218 . Owen Chadwick, T h e Popes an d E uropean Revolution, Oxford 1981, p. 484. Printed in Ehler and Morall, Church and State, pp. 252-4. A. Dansette, Religious H istory o f M o d em France, Edinburgh and London 1961, vol. 1, p. 152. E. E.Y. Hales, R evolution and Papacy, Notre Dame, Indiana 1966, pp. 18 0 -1. Nielsen, Papacy in the X I X t h C entury, vol. 2, pp. 10 -11. Quoted in K. Schatz, Papal Prim acy fro m its O rigins to the Present, Collegeville, Minnesota 1996, pp. 148-9. A. R.Vidler, Prophecy an d P a p a cy :A Stu dy o f Lam ennais, the C hurch and the Revolution, London 1954. E. E.Y. Hales, T he Catholic Church an d the M o d em World, London 1958, pp.

93- 4 11 Vidler, Prophecy and Papacy, pp. 184-220. 12 K. O. von Arerin, T he Papacy an d the M o d em World, London 1970, pp. 64—6. 13 H .E . Manning,‘Roma Aeterna’, a lecture to the Roman Academy in 1862, printed in Miscellanies, N ew York 1877, p. 22. 14 ‘Occisi et Coronati’ in Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects, Dublin 1863, pp. 273- 5 15 F. Heyer, T he Catholic Church, 16 4 8 -18 7 0 , L o n d o n 1969, pp. 186-7; see also H. E. Manning, T h e True Story o f the Vatican Council, London 1877, pp. 42-3. 16 H .E . Manning, T h e G lories o f the Sacred Heart, London nd, pp. 167-88, ‘The Temporal Glory o f the Sacred Heart’. 17 E. E.Y. Hales, P io N on o, London 1954, pp. 278-9, 329. 18 Ibid., p.227. 19 [WS. Bainbridge, (ed.)] T h e Westminster H ym n a l, London 1941 no. 226 (words by Cardinal Wiseman). 20 S. Gilley, N ew m an and his A g e, London 1990, p. 344. 21 Extract from the encyclical, and the whole o f the Syllabus, in C. Rahner (ed.), H enrici D enzinger, Enchyridion Sym bolorum, Barcelona, Fribourg, Rom e

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1957, pp. 477~90 (nos 1688-1780); translated extracts from the Syllabus in Ehler and Morall, Church and State, pp. 281-5. 22 N. Blakiston, The Roman Question, London 1962, p. 303. 23 C. Butler, The Vatican Council, London 1962, pp. 57-61. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Ibid., pp. 101—7; Hales, Pio Nono, pp. 286—7. E. R . Purcell, Life of Manning, London 1896, vol. 2, p. 453. Butler, Vatican Council, p. 355. Denzinger, Enchyridion Symbolorum, p. 508 (no. 1839). Manning, True Story, p. 145. Butler, Vatican Council, p. 50. Manning, Glories of the Sacred Heart, p. 183. H. Parkinson (ed.), The Pope and the People: Select Letters and Addresses on Social Questions by Pope Leo XIII, London 1920, pp. 15-27. L. P. Wallace, Leo X III and the Rise of Socialism, Durham, North Carolina 1966, p. 92. Parkinson, The Pope and the People, pp. 7 1-10 0 . Ibid, pp. 101-30. Ibid, pp. 178-219. A. R . Vidler, A Century of Social Catholicism, London 1964, p. 127. J. McManners, Church and State in France 1870—1914, London 1972, p. 74.

C h a p t er S i x : T he O r a c le s of G od

1 2 3 4 5 6

Quoted in H. Daniel-Rops, A Fightfor God 1870-1939, London 1965, p. 51. I. Giordani, Pius X, a Country Priest, Milwaukee 1954, p. 47. R . Bazin, Pius X, London 1928, pp. 162-9 . R . Aubert (ed.), The Church in a Secularised Society, London 1978, pp. 12 9 -4 3 . Bazin, Pius X, p. 104. Extracts from Modernist texts, and from Lamentabili and Pascendi in B. Reardon (ed.), Roman Catholic Modernism, London 1968.

7 C. Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, London 1967, p. 54. 8 Quoted in Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, p. 73. 9 J. McManners, Church and State in France 1870-1914, London 1972, pp. 158-65; well-illustrated summary o f Pius’ point o f view in Bazin, Pius X, pp 192—30; Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, pp. 75—7. 10 11 12 13

A. Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922—1945, London 1973, pp.???? F. X . Murphy, The Papacy Today, New York 1981, p. 51. P. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, London 1993, p. 102. J. Derek Holmes, The Papacy in the Modern World, London 1981, p. 80 (from Pius’ first encyclical). 14 A. Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, London 1973, p. 49. 15 Text in S. Z. Ehler and J. B. Morall (eds.), Church and State throughout the Cen­ turies, London 1954, pp. 457—484. 16 Text in Ehler and Morall, Church and State, pp. 407- 56.

N otes

427

17 H. Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican 1917-1979, Athens Ohio 1981, pp. 151,169. 18 Text in Ehler and Morall, Church and State, pp. 519-39. 19 Ibid., pp. 545-78. 20 Despatch quoted in W O. Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War, Cambridge 1986, p. 28. 21 H. Jedin and J. Dolan, History of the Church, volume 10, London 1981, p. 80. 22 Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican, pp. 19 3-4 . 23 S. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, New Haven and London 2000, pp. 150-70. 24 M. Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930-1965, Bloomington 2000, P- 4925 Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, p. 218. 26 P. Blet, R . A. Graham, A. Martini and B. Schneider (eds.), Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, 11 volumes, Vatican City 1965-78. 27 P. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, London 1993, p. 245. 28 Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican, p. 296. 29 Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, p. 284. 30 Hebblethwaite, John XXIII, Pope of the Council, London 1984, pp. 430 -3. 31 A. Flannery (ed.), Vatican Council II: the Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, Leominster 1981, pp. 350-432. 32 Flannery, Vatican Council II, pp. 9 0 3-10 0 1. 33 Cited in A. Stacpoole (ed.), Vatican II by those who were there, London 1986, pp. 14 2 -3 . 34 Flannery, Vatican Council II, pp. 1- 5 6 (Liturgy), pp. 452-70 (Ecumenism): pp. 738 -4 2 (Other Religions), pp. 799 -8 12 (Religious Liberty). 35 Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, p. 339. 36 Cited in A. Hastings (ed.), Modern Catholicism, London 1991, p. 48. 37 J. M. Miller (ed.), The Encyclicals ofJohn Paul II, Huntington, Indiana 1996, p. 59. 38 Ibid., p. 137. 39 Ibid., pp. 442, 472. 40 Ibid., pp. 9 14 -77. 41 John L. Allen, The Rise of Benedict X VI, New York and London 2005, p. 200. 42 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium: An Interview with Peter Seewald, San Francisco 1996, P- 7343 John L Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith, N ew York and London 2000, pp. 62, 67-9. 44 Aidan Nichols, The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger, Edinburgh 1988, pp. 100, 151. 45 Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, pp. 7 3-8 . 46 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, San Francisco 1998, pp. 128, 14 0 -4 . 47 Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, pp. 176 -7. 48 Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, p. 105.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

T h is is not an exhaustive bibliography o f the papacy. It is intended as a guide to further reading on the main periods and issues discussed in the text. T h e emphasis is on books in English, but some works in other lan­ guages have been included where appropriate.

A . G en eral S urveys and R eferen ce W o rks . T h e best general history o f the papacy to the end o f the eighteenth cen­ tu ry is unfortunately available only in Germ an: E X . Seppelt, Geschichte der Päpste, M unich 1954—9; the same applies to J . Schm idlin, Papstgeschichte der neuesten Zeit, M unich 19 3 3-9 , w hich takes the story on from the pontificate o f Pius V II. There is a m odern one-volum e survey, from a respectful Rom an-C ath olic point o f view, w ith up-to-date bibliogra­ phies, edited by Y ves-M a rie H ilaire, Histoire de la Papauté: 2000 Ans de Mission et de Tribulations, Paris 1996. H orst Fuhrm ann’s Die Päpste: von Petrus zu Johannes Paul II, M unich 1998, is a stimulating survey b y à dis­ tinguished medievalist, though its episodic structure reflects its origins as a series o f radio broadcasts. There are now a num ber o f excellent dic­ tionaries: P. Levillain (ed.), The Papacy, An Encyclopedia, N e w York and London 2002 (3 volum es); J. N . D. Kelly, Th e Oxford Dictionary of the Popes, O xford 1986. Individual biographies are better in Kelly, but L evil­ lain covers a w ider range o f topics. F. J. C oppa, Encyclopedia of the Vatican and the Papacy, London 1999, is briefer than either, but still useful. The Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiano celebrated the Ju b ilee Year 2000 w ith the publication o f a m ajor three-volum e Enciclopedia dei Papi, R om e 2000. Th ough some o f the entries were originally w ritten for other ref­ erence books, and are showing their age, overall for those w ith the abil­

Bibliographical E ssay

429

ity to read Italian it is a tremendous resource, especially to be recom ­ mended for the bibliographies, the invaluable concluding ‘ cronotassi’ o f the Popes by M gr. Charles Burns, and for the handsome and sometimes unusual illustrations. For individual popes, in addition to the above, the entries in the fol­ low ing encyclopedias are generally reliable, though o f course not every pope is included: The New Catholic Encyclopedia, N e w York 1967 and supplements; Encyclopedia Cattolica, Vatican C ity 1949—54. For canonized popes, the entries in the Italian Bibliotheca Sanctorum, R o m e 19 6 1, are often outstandingly good. A llen Duston and R oberto Zagnoli (eds.), St Peter and the Vatican, Alexandria, V irginia 2003, is the sumptuously ed­ ited catalogue o f an exhibition o f objects and pictures from the Vatican collections w hich throws light on many unexpected aspects o f the papacy. For general reference, E . A . Livingstone (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edition, O xford 1997, provides concise articles and excellent bibliographies. There are many general histories o f the Church: the ten-volum e His­ tory of the Church, originally published in G erm an and edited by H . Jed in and J. D olan, London 19 6 5 -19 8 1, is sometimes densely w ritten but is packed w ith information. For English readers a disadvantage is that its bibliographies rely heavily on works in Germ an; note that volumes 1 and 3 appeared under the original G erm an title Handbook of Church History. Th e French m ulti-volum e history edited by Jean -M arie M ayeur, Charles and Luce Pietri, André Vauchz and M ark Venards, Histoire du Christian­ isme des Origines à nosJours, Paris 19 9 0 -, is excellent. B riefer, but still very good and more user-friendly is R . A ubert, D. K now les and L. J. R ogier, The Christian Centuries, London 19 69 -78, o f w hich only volumes 1, 2 and 5 appeared, covering the E arly C hurch, the M iddle A ges, and the m id-nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the bibliographies are now in need o f updating. Three general works provide useful introductory treatments o f the theology o f the papacy: T. G. Jalland, The Church and the Papacy, London 1944, (Anglican); J. Tillard, The Bishop of Rome, London 1983, (Rom an Catholic); K . Schatz, Papal Primacyfrom its Origins to the Present, C o llegeville M innesota 1996, (Rom an Catholic). For a range o f theological and ecclesiological reflections on the papacy after the Second Vatican C o u n ­ cil, see R obert M arkus and E ric Jo h n , Papacy and Hierarchy, London 1969 (two gifted historians call for the repudiation o f the legacy o f G regory V II and the papal monarchy); Patrick Granfield, The Limits of the Papacy,

430

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London 1987, (cautious exploration by a canonist); H . U rs Von Baltha­ sar, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church, San Francisco 1986, (attempt at reconstruction by the most influential theologian o f the era o f Jo h n Paul II).

B . S p e c if ic P e r io d s C H A P T E R o n e : ‘ U P O N T H IS R O C K ’

General histories o f the E arly C hurch provide basic introductions to the history o f the papacy in the first four centuries. D espite its age, Louis D uchesene’s m asterly three-volum e The Early History of the Christian Church, London 1909, remains in many ways the best o f these. There is a short and lively survey in H . Chadw ick, The Early Church, Harm ondsw orth 1993. R . B. Eno, The Rise of the Papacy, W ilm ington, Delaware 1990, focuses on the texts and theology. M ost o f the ancient texts bearing on the history o f the papacy up to the reign o f Damasus I are collected and translated into English in J. T. Shotwell and L. R . Loom is (eds.), The See of Peter, N e w York 1927, re­ printed 19 9 1. Supplem entary texts up to the time o f Leo I w ill be found in J. Stevenson (ed.), Creeds, Councils and Controversies: Documents Illustra­ tive of the History of the Church A. D. 337-461, London 1966. A fundam en­ tal source is Eusebius, The History of the Churchfrom Christ to Constantine, Harm ondsworth 1989. Th e Epistle o f Clem ent and Ignatian epistles can be found in M . Staniforth (ed.) Early Christian Writings, Harm ondsworth 1987; they are included along with*The Shepherd o f H erm as, G reek text and translation, in J. B . Lightfoot (edited by J. R . H arm er), The Apostolic Fathers, London 1898. O n the background o f Christianity and the Em pire: Peter B row n , The World of Late Antiquity, London 19 7 1, and the early chapters o f the same author s The Rise of Western Christendom, Cam bridge, Massachusetts 1996; R o b in Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century A.D. to the Conversion of Constantine, Harm onds­ w orth 1988; R . A . M arkus, Christianity in the Roman World, London 1974. Survey o f the treatment o f Peter in the N e w Testament by an ecu­ menical team o f scholars in R . E . B ro w n , K . P. D onfried and J. R e u ­ mann, Peter in the New Testament, London 1974; Oscar Culm ann, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr, London 1962; T. V. Sm ith, Petrine Controversies in Early Christianity; Tübingen 1985.

Bibliographical E ssay

431

T h ere is a huge literature on Peter’s presence in R o m e and the sup­ posed tomb o f St. Peter, m uch o f it unreliable. A start can be made w ith L. H e rd in g and E . Kirschbaum , The Roman Catacombs and Their Mar­ tyrs, M ilw aukee 1956; E . Kirschbaum , The Tombs of St Peter and St Paul, London 1959; J. Toynbee and J. W. Perkins, The Shrine of St Peter and the Vatican Excavations, London 1956; D. W. O ’C onnor, Peter in Rome, N e w Y ork 1969. For the developing cult o f Peter in R o m e and the shrine at San Sebastiano, see also H . C hadw ick, ‘St. Peter and St. Paul in R o m e ’ in History and Thought of the Early Church, London 1982, pp. 3 1 - 5 2 . Th e Jew ish com m unity in R om e is the subject o f H . J. Leon, TheJews ofAncient Rome, Philadelphia i960. Som e o f the older treatments o f the C hu rch in first and secondcentury R o m e retain value, notably G. La Piana, ‘T h e R om an C hu rch at the End o f the Second C en tu ry ’, Harvard Theological Review 18 (1925), pp. 2 0 1—77. B u t all m odern discussion o f the issues must now start from the exhaustive and persuasive analysis by Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the FirstTwo Centuries, London 2003. This is a difficult read for the non-specialist, but it conveys as no other w ork does the extraordinary ferm ent o f early R om an Christianity. O n the ar­ chitectural setting o f the early R om an Christian com m unity: R . K rau theim er and S. Curai^, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, N e w Haven and London 1986; G. Snyder, Ante-Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine, M acon, G eorgia 1985. O n persecution and the E arly Church, in addition to Lane Fox, Pa­ gans and Christians, chapter 9, see W. H . Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church, O xford 1965. For C y p ria n ’s treatise on unity, and his relations w ith the papacy: Jalland, The Church and the Papacy and Eno, The Rise of the Papacy (both mentioned above) and M . B evenot (ed.), St Cyprian, the Lapsed, and The Unity of the Church, London 1957. T h e best accounts o f Constantine’s religious beliefs: N . H . Baynes, Constantine the Great and the Christian Church, London 1929; A . H . M . Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, H arm ondsworth 1962; R . M acM u llen, Constantine, London 1970. O n Donatism : W. H . Frend, The Donatist Church, London 1952. O n Arianism : R . D. W illiam s, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, O xford 1987; R . P. C . Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: the Arian Controversy 318—381, Edinburgh 1988. T h e rationale and strategy behind the Constantinian settlement o f Christianity as the religion o f the E m ­

43 2

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pire is explored in H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: the Politics of Intolerance, Baltimore, Maryland 2001. Fundamental work on Rome in the Constantinian and post-Constantinian era, and on popes Liberius and Damasus, in C Pietri, Roma Chris­ tiana: Recherches sur VEglise de Rome . . . de Miltiade a Sixte III (311—440), Rome 1976, reissued 1994. R . Krautheimer, Profile of a City 312—1308, Princeton, New Jersey 1980, deals with far more than architecture; John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, New Haven and London 1979. On Milan and Ambrose: R . Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals, Berkeley 1983, pp. 69-92; N. B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital, Berkeley 1994. Papal relations with Africa are explored in J. E. Merdinger, Rome and the African Church in the time ofAu­ gustine, New Haven 1997. On Leo the Great: T. G. Jalland, The Life and Times of Leo the Great, London 1941; P. A. McShane, La Romanitas et le Pape Leon le Grand, Paris 1979; W. Ullmann, ‘Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy’, Journal of Theological Studies, New Series 11 (i960), pp. 25—51. There is an English translation o f Leo’s sermons and letters in C. L. Feltoe, Library ofNicene and Post Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series 12. C H A P T E R T W O .'‘ B E T W E E N T W O E M P I R E S ’

Surveys o f the period: Peter Llewellyn, Rome in the Dark Ages, London 1993; Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity and The Rise of Western Christendom (above); Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, Lon­ don 1989; the older study by H. St. L. B. Moss, The Birth of the Middle Ages 395-814, Oxford 1935, remains worth reading. Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages 476-752, London 1979, is fundamental, and should be read alongside Walter Ullmann, A Short His­ tory of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, London 1974, (over-schematic but packed with ideas). Bernard Schimmelpfennig, The Papacy, New York 1992, is a questioning survey by a distinguished Roman Catholic scholar but this English translation from the German leaves a good deal to be de­ sired. G. Barraclough, The Medieval Papacy, London 1968, is the best short narrative. On the Goths and other Barbarians: J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Bar­ barian West 400—1000, London 1967; P. S. Barnwell, Emperor, Prefects and Kings:The Roman West 395—565, London 1992; C. Wickham, Early Medieval

Bibliographical Essay

43 3

Italy, London 19 8 1. R . M cK itterick (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History Volume 2 c. 700—goo, C am bridge 1995, contains m any essays o f di­ rect relevance. For a one-volum e survey o f the religious background o f the period see D. K now les and D. Obolensky, The Christian Centuries Vol­ ume 2: the Middle Ages, London 1969, (good on Byzantine-Latin relations); C . M ango, Byzantium:The Empire of New Rome, London 1980 for fuller treatment o f the Byzantine church and its relations w ith the West; sur­ vey and good bibliographies in J. M . Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, O xford 1986; J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition Volume 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom 600-1700, Chicago 1977 is excellent on theology and spirituality. L. D uchesne’s I ! Eglise au Vie. siècle, Paris 1925 is strong on the often bew ildering theological controversies o f the sixth century, and the role o f the popes in them. T h e fundamental source for the popes o f the period is the Liber Pontificalis, the great papal chronicle w hich provides contem porary biogra­ phies o f the popes from the sixth to the ninth centuries. T h e Latin text w ith splendidly full French notes was edited by L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis:Texte, Introduction et Commentaire, Paris 1886—92, and then reis­ sued with a third supplementary volume, edited by C . Vogel, Paris 19 55-7. A good English translation from D uchesne’s edition, incorporating m uch o f the m aterial from his notes, has been published in three volum es by Raym ond Davis: The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1989; The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1992; The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1995. T h e fullest narrative history o f the popes for this period is H . K . M ann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, London 1902—32 (18 volum es). M ann was a R om an Catholic priest and R ecto r o f the English C o llege in Rom e. His book was solidly grounded in the available sources, and wears its prejudices on its sleeve. It is uncritical, but read­ able and (mostly) factually reliable. O n Ravenna, Rom e, and the Em pire: R . A . M arkus, ‘Ravenna and R o m e 554-6 0 4’ , Byzantion 51 (1981); T. S. B ro w n , ‘T h e C hurch o f R a ­ venna and the im perial administration in the seventh century’ , English Historical Review 94 (1979) pp. 1 - 2 8 ; G. B ovin i, Ravenna Mosaics, O xford 1978; L. Von M att and G. B ovin i, Ravenna, C ologne 19 7 1; J. M eyendorf, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, N e w York 1989. O n M onophysitism : A . A . Luce, Monophysitism: Past and Present, L o n ­ don 1920; W. H . C . Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, C am ­ bridge 1972.

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O n G regory the Great, F. H . Dudden, Gregory the Great: His Place in History and Thought, London 1905 (two volumes) is still valuable; Jeffrey Richards, Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great, London 1980; R . A . M arkus, From Augustine to Gregory the Great, London 1983, (important for English mission), and the same authors Gregory the Great and His World, Cam bridge 1997; C . Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, B erkeley 1988; C . Dagens, Saint Grégoire le Grand: Culture et Experiences Chrétiennes, Paris 1977. His letters and the Pastoral R u le have been translated into rather stiff English in J. B arm by (ed.), The Book of Pastoral Rule and Selected Epistles of Gregory the Great, Library o f N icene and Post-N icene Fathers, second series 12 and 13, N e w York 1895; his dialogues were translated by E . G. Gardner in The Dialogues of St Gregory, London 19 11. Th e best treatment o f the patrimony remains E . Spearing, The Patrimony of the Roman Church in the time of Gregory the Great, C am ­ bridge 19 18 , but see also Jeffrey, The Popes and the Papacy, chapter 18. For the C hurch in Ireland, K . Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Soci­ ety, London 1966, and a survey o f recent literature in D âibhi ô C rôinin, Early Medieval Ireland 400—1200, London 1995. For ‘m icro-christendom s’ in the age o f Gregory, see H errin, Forma­ tion of Christendom, and B ro w n , Rise of Western Christendom. For A n glo-Saxon Christianity: H . M ayr-H arting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, London 1972; discussion o f R om e and England in Eam onn ô Carragâin, The City of Rome and the World of Bede, N ew castle upon Tyne 1994; for the Lindisfarne Gospels lectionary and Southern Italian influence, J. Backhouse, The Lindisfarne Gospels, London 19 8 1, chapter 3. Essential sources translated in J. F Webb and D. H . Farm er (eds.), The Age of Bede, Harm ondsworth 1983 (includes Eddius Stephanus, ‘Life o f W ilfred’) and Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, edited by J. M cC lu re and R . Collins, O xford 1994. For the anti-G regorian reaction in R om e, Peter Llew ellyn, ‘T h e R om an C hurch in the Seventh C en tu ry: the legacy o f G rego ry the Great \ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35 (1974), pp. 36 3-8 0. For the rise o f Islam: F. Gabrieli, Muhammad and the Conquests of Islam, London 1968; H . Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Cali­ phates, London 1986. For Iconoclasm: H errin, Formation, chapter 8; B ro w n , Rise chapter 14 and ‘A D ark A ge Crisis: Aspects o f the Iconoclastic C ontroversy’ , En­ glish Historical Review 88 (1973), pp. 1 - 3 4 ; Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, pp. 30—68.

Bibliographical E ssay

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For Rom an Pilgrim age: Debra J. Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages, W oodbridge 1998; a delightful exploration o f English pilgrim age, m ostly focused, however, on later periods, is Judith Cham p, The English Pilgrimage to Rome: A Dwelling for the Soul, Leom inster 2000. For the em ergence o f the papal state: L. Duchesne, The Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes A.D. 754-1073, London 1908; P. Part­ ner, The Lands of St. Peter, London 1972; T. F. X . N oble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680—825, Philadelphia 1984. For the popes and the Franks: N oble, The Republic of St Peter.The Birth of the Papal State, 680—825; Ik- M cK itterick, The Frankish Kingdoms and the Carolingians 751—