Benedict and the Wolves

TIred and emotional

In his very first sermon as Pope, Benedict XVI asked the faithful to pray for their new shepherd “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.” The wolves, it would seem, have proved too numerous and too strong. He has become the first Pope to step down from the throne of Saint Peter since Gregory XII in 1415.


Who are the wolves, you might wonder? The first thing anyone looking at Vatican politics should be aware of is that it is the last Byzantine Court in Europe, surviving all others by several centuries. It combines, as did its long dead predecessors, an outward and divinely sanctioned autocracy with internal politics of bewildering complexity.

The resignation of Benedict, which a great many are refusing to accept at face value, namely that it was for health reasons, has led to levels of speculation and conspiracy theories that even Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, could would find implausible and fanciful. I’m no wiser than anyone else but I think it reasonable to suggest that the Pope’s loss of vocation, if that’s the right word, has as much to do with the back-stabbing politics of the Curia as anything else. If he wasn’t exhausted already the poison here would certainly have seriously weakened his system.

If one really wants to understand the Curia then one could do no better to turn to John Cornwall, an expert on papal history and author of the controversial Hitler’s Pope, who aptly described it as a “palace of gossipy eunuchs.” I would simply add treachery and back-stabbing to the gossip, the speciality of eunuchs throughout history.

Apparently Benedict is suffering from a terminal illness; either that or the head injury he suffered on a visit to Mexico last March convinced him it was time to abdicate. The fact that it took him almost a year to make up his mind suggests that it also reduced his decision-making process to glacial slowness. Then there is the Renaissance-style drama: he is being forced out after a recent acrimonious exchange with senior cardinals, or he faces disgrace over the shady dealings of the Vatican Bank. Add to that even more venomous accusations: his fall is attributable to past cover ups over paedophile priests.

There is a lot of tut-tutting disapproval among some of the faithful. In his blog, Marco Ventura, professor of law and religion at Siena University, wrote that “The theologian who held relativism as the worst foe of the church will be the pope who relativised the papacy.” That’s nothing. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the late John Paul II’s secretary, is a wolf closer to home. According him “one does not come down from the cross”, a rather interesting interpretation of the papal office. Ignore this; the words were taken ‘out of context’, the Vatican later said, the usual thing when the context, and the intent, is blindingly obvious. Anyway, it seems only fair to note that there is a wider ‘context’ that the Cardinal appears to have forgotten: John Paul twice prepared letters of resignation in case he became incapable. The Pope may be the Vicar of Christ but he is still only human.

I’m not a Catholic; I’m not even a Christian, so why do I feel the need to speak out here? Why? Simply because I hate to see this occasion being turned in to a cudgel with which to beat Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. I may not be a Christian but I grew up in the time-worn Anglo-Catholic tradition, one for which I still retain considerable respect. What I hate with a passion, as I wrote elsewhere, is ignorance and prejudice and ignorance born of prejudice. I fully agree with John O’Sullivan, who wrote in this weeks Spectator;

...Benedict dealt with the problems he inherited with courage, honesty and surprising dispatch, but often in the face of resistance. That was especially true of the child sex abuse scandals. After an investigation that left him horrified, Benedict not only offered victims and their families sincere apologies; he strengthened canon law to compel Church authorities to inform the police of abuse accusations; and he investigated and condemned powerful figures who had managed to escape censure. But though his zeal never weakened, his energy and ability to pursue crime and the criminals through the ecclesiastical machine did.

Ah, yes, the machine, the Curia, the Court, the Bureaucracy, worse than anything ever faced by a Byzantine Emperor. In his Ash Wednesday mass in Saint Peter’s Benedict appealed to the Church to move beyond “individualism and rivalry.” Aye, there’s the rub.

There is no reason to suppose that Benedict’s resignation was not brought on by declining powers; and there is no reason to suppose that the powers made the decline all the more inevitable. Last year’s revelations by Pablo Gabriele, the Pope’s former butler, showed a culture of vicious infighting and character assassination. You see: it’s all those gossipy eunuchs.

Benedict never wanted to be Pope; he was his predecessor’s choice-in-waiting. His talents are those of the scholar and the theologian, not the politician. Benedict is no Borgia. Come to think of it, perhaps that what the Vatican needs, a Borgia for the twenty-first century, one who can master the Curia and ensure the continuing relevance of the Church in an ever more complex and fractious world.

It seems to me that the Vatican has returned to the Middle Ages, the time when Popes were the playthings of the Roman nobility, when pontiffs like John XVIII and Benedict IX were forced to resign by a mixture of political intimidation and personal bullying. The nobility is long gone. No, it has not. Families like the Crescentii have long gone; in their place has come the College of Cardinals, the new aristocracy, as treacherous and often as self-serving as the old. Benedict retired simply because his health was no longer equal to the politics. The wolves ate him alive.

Papal Bull

The Pope has written a book.  There is probably nothing unusual in that.  I feel sure lots of past popes have written books, and the present pontiff is noted for his love of the pen, along with just a soupcon of theological controversy.

I rather thought Catholicism was all dogma.  “Oh, don’t be so dogmatic”, I can hear Pope Benedict say in my mind’s ear, “there is always room for a little flexibility in faith.”  There seems to be more than a little room when it comes to aspects of the Nativity. 

Christmas approaches with alarming speed.  But Christmas may not be Christmas at all, at least according to Jesus of Nazareth: the Infancy Narratives, a new addition to the Papal back catalogue published last week.  Never mind the season, never mind the month, never mind the day: Jesus was born years earlier than is commonly supposed.  The accepted date was based on a miscalculation by Dionysus Exiguus – also known as Dennis the Small –, a sixth century Eastern European monk. 

Dionysus is now best known for the concept of Anno Domini (AD) – in the year of our Lord.  I remember once in a religious studies class, after we had already established what BC meant, we were asked if any of us would care to hazard a guess at AD.  Without pause for thought I replied “After Death.”  “I’ll give you after death”, the teacher said.  I was a bit of a minx, you see. 

According to Benny, Dennis was a bit of a menace when it came to dating. We do not know how he calculated the year of Christ’s birth but he got it wrong, perhaps by as many as several years.  Jesus, you see, was born BC; born, in other words, before Christ!  The contention isn’t new; other scholars have made such a claim, now weighted with a papal imprimatur. 

My goodness, here is the head of the Catholic Church dealing in doubt.  What next, I wonder?  I’ll tell you what next: the Infancy Narratives has no room in the inn for cattle and donkeys.  The ox and ass did not keep time as the drummer boy played because they were not there.  It’s all a myth, the Pope says.  “There is no mention of animals in the Gospels”, he writes, in what is the third and last part of his biography of Jesus.  The inclusion of domestic animals in the Nativity scene was most likely inspired by pre-Christian traditions. 

Not to worry, boys and girls; there will be no Papal Bull ejecting the menagerie, even that set up every year in Saint Peter’s Square.  Even so, it’s as well to remember that it’s just a lot of bull.  So, too, apparently is the singing heavenly host greeting the birth of Christ.  His Holiness writes that the angels did not sing Hark!; they only spoke the words.  Maybe they were crooning. 

But when it comes to the really important stuff, when it comes to the Virgin Birth, there is no room for doubt or papal equivocation: this is the literal truth, the dogma upon which the faith stands or falls.  The Pope is insisting on the word of the Gospels and only the Gospels, which ironically aligns him with seventeenth century English Puritans, who, in their own literal way, literally dispensed with Christmas altogether, a pagan festival unsanctioned by scripture.

It seems to me that there is a kind of naïve purity or theological blindness here in an argument that is too subtle by half, and that half concerns the element of myth from which all belief takes succour.  When one removes the myth one removes the magic.  It is the need for this sort of primitive reassurance that moves mountains, not Papal monographs.  

Dead Pope on Trial

You might think that the dead are beyond all human judgement. Now they are, by and large, at least physically; reputations are still subject to posthumous scurrility. But in the past even one’s physical remains could not always escape some form of earthly reprisal, often in a kind of symbolic act.

I can think of several examples from English history. John Wycliffe, a medieval theologian and reformer, was burned as a heretic forty-five years after his death. The remains of Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton, who formed part of the court that sentenced Charles I to death in 1649, were exhumed when the monarchy was restored in 1660. They were then hanged, drawn and quartered, the punishment for treason.

I suppose these examples – and there are others – are bizarre enough. They are not nearly as bizarre, though, as putting the dead on trial. Yes, it has happened. And I don’t mean that the deceased was subject to judicial process in absentia, so to speak. No; I mean when the person in question, or what was left of them, was taken from the grave so they could be physically present in court.

It couldn’t happen in English law because the dead can’t plead, retaining not a right to silence, just silence. But it has happened and happened right in the heart of Christendom. So, let me introduce to you Pope Formosus and the Synodus Horrenda – the Cadaver Synod or Trial – an episode I think I can safely say is without parallel in the history of the church.

Formosus was Pope from 891 to 896, during a particularly troublesome period for the Catholic Church. Prior to his elevation he had been Bishop of Porto, during which time he was pursued by ecclesiastical and political controversy, even being excommunicated at one point by Pope John VIII, who accused him, amongst other things, of attempting to seize the papal throne.

Although the interdict was finally lifted and Formosus acquired sufficient authority to be elected Pope in his own right, his already dubious background was made ever murkier by the politics of the day, when rival candidates competed for the honour of the Imperial throne. In the end the Pope seems to have been little more than a victim of circumstances, taking the wrong political side.

The Cadaver Synod, ordered by Pope Stephen VI, his successor but one, opened sometime in the course of 897, months after Formosus’ death. The whole thing seems to have had a clear political purpose though why things proceeded in such a macabre way is difficult to say, when simple condemnation for past misdeeds would have sufficed. Instead the corpse was disinterred, dressed in papal vestments, brought into the papal court where it was seated on a throne, there to face a trail on the basis of the charges once lodged by John VIII, the prosecution being lead by Pope Stephen in person. At one point he even asked the cadaver why he “usurped the universal Roman See in such a spirit of ambition.” Needless to say no answer is recorded.

In the end it was declared that Formosus had been unworthy of the papal honour. After being stripped, literally, of the papal vestments and condemned to damnatio memorie – damnation of memory, a custom once practiced by the ancient Roman Senate – he was finally cast into the Tiber, another ancient custom inflicted on disgraced emperors.

The whole thing was just too absurdly gruesome even for those days, turning public opinion against Stephen, who was deposed and strangled in prison. Formosus himself was fished out of the Tiber and reputed to be the cause of miracles.

But matters did not rest there. The unfortunate Formosus, who travelled as much in death as in life, was reputedly disinterred for a second time in the early tenth century during the pontificate of Sergius III, an ally of Stephen, who had taken part in the first Cadaver Synod. Once again he was tried and found guilty, this time his head being cut off. It’s as well to remember that the history of the papacy was as colourful, as brutal, as fascinating and as decadent as the history of the emperors who preceded them in the eternal city.

Papal Fallibility

One of the history journals I take has a regular monthly feature on historical anniversaries. The piece that caught my eye in the latest issue is that on the election of John XXIII to the papacy; and, no, this is not the twentieth century John XXIII, rather a predecessor who has been rather air-brushed out of history by the Vatican as something of an embarrassment, the reason why John, one of the most popular titles in the papal succession, disappeared for several hundred years.

In 1378 the Catholic world was divided by the Great Schism, with one pope in Rome and another in Avignon, both claiming legitimacy. In an attempt to resolve the problem cardinals from the rival camps met at the Council of Pisa in 1409. Here the dominating influence was Baldassare Cossa, an able man but one with a notorious reputation. According to rumour he had had sexual relations with hundreds of women.

In the course of its deliberations the Council deposed both of the contending popes and replaced them with Alexander V as a unity candidate, but he was short-reigned, dying the following year. The Pisan camp replaced him on May 17, 1410 with Cossa, who took the title of John XXIII, but this just added to the overall confusion in the Catholic world, which now had three popes: John, Gregory XII in Rome and Benedict XIII in Avignon. In an attempt to cut the Gordian Knot, Sigismund, King of the Romans and heir to the Holy Roman Empire, compelled the new pope to convene the Council of Constance.

No sooner had the prelates met than John's reputation finally caught up with him. He was accused of a whole range of quite unbelievable offences, of which simony, a fairly widespread clerical practice, was probably the least malign! The others included piracy, incest, rape, sodomy and murder. It's almost certain that this was a deliberate attempt to ruin his standing, an attempt given verisimilitude by his past reputation, though gothic in its excesses. Cossa tried to play for time, promising to resign; but when he tried to withdraw his promise he was deposed by the Council. Of his rivals Pope Benedict, the last of the Avignon popes, was also deposed and excommunicated, while Pope Gregory in Rome simple abdicated. All were replaced in 1417 by Martin V.

Cossa was kept as a prisoner in Germany until such time as he accepted the new pope. He was eventually allowed to return to his native Italy, where he died in Florence in 1419, a city that had backed his papacy. In a mark of its former loyalty it gave him a magnificent tomb, designed by Donatello and Michelozzo.


In 1958 Cardinal Roncalli was elected pope as John XXIII, a clear indication that his predecessor was not considered to be a true heir of Saint Peter.

I have one small additional point to make about Pope Benedict, whose name was Pedro de Luna. During the Great Schism, Scotland was one of the last countries to continue to recognise his authority. It was he who was responsibly for the endowment of Saint Andrew's, the country's first university. I'm told by friends who attend that it is still possible to see half-moons on some of the town's oldest stones, a reference to de Luna. I've never been to Saint Andrew's, so I can't vouch for this, and they may just be pulling my leg. Still, it's a jolly good story!

Aimless Absolution

I know the papacy is going through something of a rough patch at the moment. Even so, is it right and proper, I have to ask, to extend the inquisition (oops!) back through history? I ask this because I was surprised to see a small portrait of Jacques de Molay, the grand master of the Knights Templar, in the present issue of the BBC History Magazine, carrying the caption “Jacques de Molay was tortured and killed by the pope.” Fortunately the accompanying piece, an answer to a question about the Chinon parchment, makes no such contention.

De Molay was, of course, tortured and killed on the orders of King Philip IV of France. Not only was it a convenient way of wiping out his debts with the Crusading order, who also acted as his personal bankers, but it was a wonderful opportunity for the impecunious monarch to get his hands on their loot. The master was arrested along with over six hundred fellow members of the order on a charge of all sorts of heretical and blasphemous crimes, the kind of acts that would have kept tabloid journalists busy for weeks.

Submitting to pressure from Philip, Pope Clement V banned the Templar Order. De Molay himself was burned in March 1314 as a relapsed heretic, on the orders of the King, I stress once again, and not the Pope. The pressure Clement was under at the time was confirmed when Dr Barbara Frale found a copy of the so-called Chinon parchment in the Vatican Secret Archives, confirming that he absolved de Molay and other leading members of the Order in 1308, subsequent publishing her findings in The Journal of Medieval History. The purpose of this particular inquisition was to show that the Templers were not irremediably immersed in sin but were capable of reform under the guidance of the church. In the face of Philip’s determination it was a wasted effort.

The parchment is notable in one other regard: it might be said to mark the point when the state began its ascent and the universal church its decline, its decline from a position of almost absolute political power that had been such a feature of the papacy of Innocent III, only a century before.