Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes; Fourth Edition

by Eamon Duffy

  CURIA: Latin for ‘court’: the papal court and central administration of the Roman Catholic Church, organised in a number of separate congregations each presided over by a cardinal known as the ‘Prefect’.

  DEACON: Christian minister appointed to assist the Bishop in the liturgy, and in Church administration and especially charitable activity. Often considered the most junior of the three traditional grades of ministry, in antiquity and the Middle Ages the deacons of Rome were often more powerful than any of the city’s priests or assistant bishops. Because of their administrative experience and close association with papal government, the Pope was often chosen from among the deacons.

  DECRETALS: papal letters, usually in response to requests for guidance or rulings. Collected in the Middle Ages as the basis for CANON LAW.

  DICASTERY: Vatican department.

  DIOCESE: the district governed by a bishop. The word, and the areas covered, were originally taken over from units of Roman civil government.

  DONATISM: schismatic puritanical African movement in the fourth century and afterwards, which rejected the ministration of any clergy who had lapsed under persecution, and which taught that the sacraments of such clergy contaminated the churches within which they were performed. It took its name from the third-century Numidian Bishop Donatus.

  ENCYCLICAL: a solemn letter addressed by the Pope to the bishops, the clergy, the whole Christian people or, more recently, to ‘all people of goodwill’. Encyclicals came into use under Benedict XIV, and have become the favoured form of papal teaching since the early nineteenth century. Individual encyclicals are known by the first two or three words of their opening paragraph – normally in Latin.

  EXARCH: the representative or ‘viceroy’ of the Byzantine Emperor in Italy and in Africa.

  EXCOMMUNICATION: the sentence by which a bishop or pope excludes an individual or group from a share in the sacraments and prayers of the Church. In the Middle Ages excommunication effectively deprived an individual of all civil rights.

  FILIOQUE: 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 of the Western version of the doctrine of the Trinity, and it teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father. The Eastern Churches reject the formula, and it was one of the principle reasons for the breaking off of communion between East and West in the Middle Ages. Some Eastern theologians, however, agree that, although the inclusion of the word in the Creed is illicit, the teaching contained in the Filioque is acceptable if rightly interpreted.

  GALLICANISM: 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.

  GNOSTIC, GNOSTICISM: from the Greek word gnosis, knowledge. Blanket term for widely differing forms of heretical Christian teaching, current from the second century onwards, making a sharp distinction between spirit and matter, and claiming that only spirit can be redeemed.

  HERESY: from the Greek word haeresis, choice or thing chosen: the formal denial or doubt of Catholic doctrine; a term of disapproval for religious error.

  ICONOCLASM: Greek term meaning ‘image-breaking’: applied especially to the reaction against religious images in the Eastern Church in the seventh and eighth centuries.

  INCARNATION: the teaching that in the life of the man Jesus of Nazareth, the second person of the Trinity, God himself, took human flesh (Latin carnis) and became a human being.

  INDULGENCE: the remission by the Church, and especially the Pope, of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven. In medieval Western theology, sin was conceived of as leaving behind it a temporal ‘debt’ or scar, even when it had been confessed and forgiven. This ‘debt’ could be wiped away by acts of penance such as fasting or pilgrimage. As part of the ‘power of the keys’ to bind and loose in matters of 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 of a ‘treasure of merits’ acquired by Christ and the saints, on the analogy of 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 PURGATORY, and so could hasten their translation to heaven. Indulgences could be partial, i.e. equivalent to a fixed period of penance, such as forty days or a year, or ‘plenary’, i.e. unlimited, and remitting all the temporal punishment due to sin.

  INFALLIBLE, INFALLIBILITY: Latin word meaning free from error. From early times it was believed that the Church could not fall into error about the fundamental truths of the faith. A negative concept, this infallibility does not mean that the Church or any of 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 of the Church, and hence to the decrees of general councils. In 1870 the First Vatican Council in its decree Pastor Aeternus laid down that the ex cathedra or most solemn teaching of the Pope possessed the infallibility which Christ had willed for the Church.

  INTERDICT: solemn ecclesiastical sentence cutting off a whole community or country from the sacraments of the Church.

  JANSENISM: named after Cornelius Jansen, its founder: a religious and doctrinal-movement within the Catholic Church from the seventeenth century onwards, which emphasised human sinfulness, the doctrine of predestination and the sovereign grace of God. Because of successive papal condemnations and the interest it took in the early history of the Church, Jansenism became associated with anti-papalism and an emphasis on the independent authority of the bishops; it was therefore often allied with GALLICANISM and JOSEPHINISM.

  JOSEPHINISM: named after the Emperor Joseph II of Austria: a form of Gallicanism, which emphasised the independence of 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 of the popes.

  JUBILEE OR HOLY YEAR: a year during which the Pope grants a plenary Indulgence to all who visit Rome 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 of Christ at the Crucifixion) by Urban VI, and to twenty-five by Paul II. The most important ceremony associated with the Jubilee is the opening of the Holy Door into St Peters, which is bricked up between Jubilees.

  LEGATE: clerical representative of the Pope, exercising extensive papal powers.

  LEGATIONS: the prosperous parts of the Papal States in the north west of Italy and the Adriatic coast, governed by cardinal legates.

  MAGISTERIUM: Latin for ‘teaching’. Term currently used to signify the official teaching, and the teaching office, of the Catholic Church, and especially of the Pope and bishops. In the Middle Ages theologians were widely thought of as exercising a parallel and complementary magisterium – hence Henry VIII consulted the theological faculties of the European universities when refused a divorce by the Pope.

  METROPOLITAN: title given to senior bishop (always an archbishop) possessing authority over the other bishops of a region. From the early Church down to the early nineteenth century metropolitan and papal authority frequently came into conflict. In the Roman Catholic Church, no metropolitan can function without the bestowal of the PALLIUM by the Pope.

  MONOPHYSITISM: 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 of divine and human exactly corresponding to neither. Orthodox Christianity insisted that Jesus Christ was a single person composed of 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 natu
re from suggestions of change or limitati on in the INCARNATION.

  MONOTHELITISM: a Greek word for the teaching that there was in Jesus Christ only one will: it arose from the dangerous religious divisions of 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.

  NESTORIANISM: the teaching that in Jesus Christ there were two distinct persons, the God and the man, and not merely two natures. The doctrine takes its name from Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who died c. 451, though it is now believed that he did not himself hold this teaching, which was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon, 451.

  NUNCIO: permanent diplomatic representative of the Pope to a sovereign state, who is also an instrument of papal authority over the local church.

  PALLIUM: circular white stole of lamb’s wool, embroidered with crosses, given by the popes to other bishops, originally as a special mark of honour and communion, now as a formal sign of metropolitan authority in their region. Since the papal reform era, successive popes have summoned archbishops to Rome to receive the pallium, as a sign of papal sovereignty over them.

  PAPAL STATES: the areas of Italy and southern France which acknowledged the Pope as sovereign. Also known as the Patrimony of St Peter, or the States of the Church. Derived originally from the gifts of Constantine, the Roman imperial family and aristocratic converts to Christianity, they were formally recognised by Pepin and Charlemagne, who undertook to protect them on behalf of St Peter, and were finally abolished in 1870, when Italy confiscated the last of the papal territories.

  PATRIARCH: from the fifth century, title given to the bishops of the five senior sees of the universal Church – Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Rome. 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.

  PATRIMONY OF ST PETER: see PAPAL STATES.

  PENTAPOLIS: the area of the Papal States in Italy containing the ‘five cities’ of Rimini, Pissaro, Fano, Senigallia and Ancona.

  PONTIFF, SUPREME PONTIFF: Latin pagan title (pontifex = a bridge-builder) for priests and the supreme priest of the Roman religion, the Emperor, eventually taken over by bishops and by the Pope.

  POPE: Latin term of endearment and respect, ‘papa’, meaning ‘daddy’. Widely applied in the early Church to bishops (the Bishop of Carthage was called ‘pope’), and in the Orthodox churches of the East given to parish priests, from the early Middle Ages in the West its use was restricted to the Bishop of Rome.

  PURGATORY: in Western Catholic theology, the place or state of cleansing in which redeemed but imperfect souls are believed to await after death the beatific Vision of God. It is believed that the prayers of the living, and the ecclesiastical privileges known as INDULGENCES, can assist the souls in purgatory through this process of cleansing.

  SACRED COLLEGE: the collective body of the CARDINALS.

  SCHISM: Greek word meaning tear: applied to formal divisions within the Church for doctrinal or other causes.

  SIMONY: from Simon Magus, a magician who attempted to buy magical powers from the Apostles. The name given to the sin of paying or receiving money or favours in return for spiritual office or promotion. In the period of the reform papacy it was thought of as a heresy.

  SUBARBICARIAN BISHOPRICS: the seven ancient dioceses round Rome whose bishops were senior members of the College of Cardinals.

  SYNOD: a local assembly of clergy under their bishop, or of a number of local bishops, and possessing less authority than a GENERAL COUNCIL.

  ULTRAMONTANISM: Latin term meaning ‘the other side of the mountains’, i.e. the Alps, hence the doctrine that lays great emphasis on the supreme authority of the Pope on the Church as a whole outside his own diocese: the opposite of GALLICANISM. By extension, the style of piety and churchmanship associated with the nineteenth-century papacy and Italian church.

  VATICAN: the modern centre of the papacy, made up of the basilica church of St Peter and the buildings round it, occupying the ancient Roman mons Vaticanus, Vatican Hill. Outside the ancient city of Rome, the Vatican was not the original papal residence, and St John Lateran not St Peter’s is the cathedral church of Rome. Since the annexation of Rome to the state of Italy in 1870, however, the Vatican has been the Pope’s main residence and the administrative centre of the Church. By the Lateran Treaty of 1929 the Vatican City was recognised as an independent state, of which the Pope is the sovereign.

  APPENDIX C

  HOW A NEW POPE IS MADE

  The papacy can be vacated only by the resignation or the death of a reigning pope: there is no provision in canon law for the deposition of a pope, even in the event of lunacy or incapacity. No pope has voluntarily resigned since St Celestine V in 1294, although in resolving the Great Schism by deposing all three claimants to the papacy, the Council of Constance in 1415 permitted the ‘real’ (Roman) Pope Gregory XII the face-saving fiction of resignation. The provisions for the election of 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 of the pope all the heads of the various Vatican Congregations are immediately suspended from their offices: only the Cardinal Camerlengo (Chamberlain, the head of the Papal household), the Cardinal Major Penitentiary (responsible for the adjudication of grave cases of conscience), the Cardinal Vicar of Rome (who administers the diocese) and the Cardinal Archpriest of St Peter’s (where the Pope will be buried) remain in office. If there is no Camerlengo at the time of the pope’s death, the Cardinals present in Rome elect one. The Camerlengo is responsible for ascertaining and certifying 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 Ring, 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 of cardinals, and all the routine powers of the papacy are exercised in the vacancy by them collectively, meeting daily in the Vatican in General Congregations. The curial departments continue their ordinary business under their deputy prefects or secretaries.

  Nine days of mourning are observed for the pope, whose funeral is held in St Peters. Popes are traditionally buried in a triple coffin, the inner shell of cypress, the next of lead and the outer one of plain elm. Not sooner than fifteen days, nor later than twenty, after the announcement of the pope’s death the cardinals must assemble in conclave to elect a successor. In preparation for the conclave the cardinals are addressed by two preachers, chosen for their orthodoxy and wisdom, who reflect on the Church’s needs and the considerations which the cardinals should bear in mind in making their choice. The conclave begins with a solemn mass invoking the aid of 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 of adequate 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 comfortable hostel in the Vatican grounds, the Domus S Marthae (the House of St Martha), opened by John Paul II in May 1996. The Domus S Marthae normally serves as a conference centre and residence for selected Vatican 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 of the cardinals – and two medical doctors, together with the catering staff needed to feed them. The number of cardinal electors was set at 120 by Pope Paul VI, 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 of eighty. However, restricting the number of electors to 120 is likely to prove impossible in practice, since the pope’s concern to make the College of Cardinals as inclusive and representative as possible of a world Church has inexorably inflated numbers. The consistory of February 2001, at which 37 new cardinals were created (the largest number ever announced at a single consitory), took the total number of cardinals at that time to 178, and the number of qualified electors to 128. There is no procedure in place for selecting the 120 entitled to vote, nor, if these numbers are maintained or increased, is it at all clear where the extra numbers would be accommodated during 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 of secrecy about the proceedings of the conclave. Conclave 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 if the conclave has already begun its work (before the days of 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 of election of 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 of 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 provided, and folds the form once length-ways so as to conceal their choice. Cardinals are also encouraged if possible to disguise their handwriting. Taking the folded form between thumb and index finger of the right hand, the cardinals then approach the altar of the Sistine Chapel in order of 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 illness 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.