Pope Gregory XIII

“ V. Hus Again Rector. Since 1378, there were two sets of rival popes most lustily pelting one another with papal curses. The Council of Pisa in 1409 deposed popes Benedict XIII and Gregory XII as heretics and schismatics and then elected Alexander V, who died on May 11, 1410, most probably poisoned by "Diavolo Cardinale" Cossa, who then became Pope John XXIII. Now there were three popes and a three-cornered fight. To make the good old times still more interesting, three rivals struggled for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. ”

“ I interested Don Andrea by telling him that Gregory XIII. (reformer of the Julian Calendar and builder of the Quirinal) was probably the last Pope officially prayed for at Oxford, and that in his own college chapel. Mass certainly continued to be celebrated in Merton Chapel well into the Pontificate of Gregory XIII.
[5] The possession of the Evil Eye has never been considered incompatible with the highest moral excellence. Pius IX., who was venerated by his people as a saint, was nevertheless regarded by many of them as an undoubted jettatore. ”

“ On the 29th of June 1408 he and seven of his colleagues broke away from Gregory XII., and together with six cardinals of the obedience of Avignon, who had in like manner separated from Benedict XIII., they agreed to aim at the assembling of a general council, setting aside the two rival pontiffs, an expedient which they considered would put an end to the great schism of the Western Church, but which resulted in the election of yet a third pope. ”

“ On the seventeenth day before the Kalends of November [i.e. 16 October] , which shall be the day next following, there shall be celebrated the feast of St Callistus, pope and martyr. Then on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of November [i.e. 17 October] , the Dominical Letter shall be changed from G to C, and the office and Mass shall be those of the 18th Sunday after Pentecost. ”

“ The love and care of the Roman Pontiffs for England has been traditional from the days of Our holy predecessor Gregory the Great. Religion and humanity generally, and especially the English nation, owe him a deep debt of gratitude. ”

“ A man of heart, power, and lofty purpose—a ruler who saw the opportunity and need of the Christian Church in Western Europe, who felt her new impulses, and who could guide her through a crucial period to a great and useful career—such a man the Roman senate, clergy, and people believed that they had found in the monk Gregory. He alone could save them from Teutonic anarchy, on the one hand, and from Roman decay on the other.
Although elected Pope unanimously by the senate, clergy, and people of Rome, Gregory did not want the office. ”

“ Gregory does not stop with asserting the pope's complete supremacy over the Church; he goes still further and claims for him the right to restrain the civil government when it seems necessary in the cause of righteousness. He says that "the Pope is the only person whose feet are kissed by all princes"; that he may depose emperors and "absolve subjects from allegiance to an unjust ruler." No one shall dare to condemn one who appeals to the pope. No one may annul a decree of the pope, though the pope may declare null and void the decrees of all other earthly powers ”

“ Gregory the Great, "let him see that he hide it not; he that hath abundance, let him quicken himself to mercy and generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best to share the use and the utility thereof with his neighbor." ”

“ The church was half filled with soldiers armed to the teeth, and drawn up on either side, and his body-guard of Roman nobles, stood even within the railing of the altar, capped and motionless, conveying, as everything else does, the irresistible impression that it was the worship of the Pope, not of God.
Gregory the sixteenth, is a small old man, with a large heavy nose, eyes buried in sluggish wrinkles, and a flushed, apoplectic complexion. He sits, or is borne about with his eyes shut, looking quite asleep, even his limbs hanging lifelessly. ”

“ A Roman pope, at least an Italian pope, was the universal outcry. The conclave must be overawed; the hateful domination of a foreign, a French pontiff, must be broken up, and forever. This was not unforeseen. Before his death Gregory XI had issued a bull conferring the amplest powers on the cardinals to choose, according to their wisdom, the time and the place for the election. It manifestly contemplated their retreat from the turbulent streets of Rome to some place where their deliberations would not be overborne, and the predominant French interest would maintain its superiority. ”

“ For a time, he devoted himself to preaching the Crusade; and later, at the request of Pope Gregory X, caused the studies which the late wars had practically suspended to be resumed in the Dominican convent at Rome. After the death of Pope Gregory X he retired to one of the convents of his order, whence he was summoned by Innocent V and sent as papal legate to Tuscany. He restored peace between Venice and Genoa and also between Florence and Pisa. His name was inserted in the Roman Martyrology in 1577. His biographers exhibit his life as one of perfect humility. ”

“ S. Gregory II. was ordained sub-deacon by pope Sergius I., and under the four succeeding popes he acted as treasurer and librarian to the Church in Rome. When elected pope, he signalized himself by his unwearied zeal in defending the pure faith against heresy, and in combating the Iconoclasts who, protected by the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, waged war against sacred pictures and images. ”

“ In such a state of things Pope Gregory the Great raised the Papacy [A. D. 590] to a position of decisive eminence, and marked out the course of its future policy. The piety of emperors and nobles had conferred lands on the Roman Church, not only in Italy, but in Sicily, Corsica, Gaul, and even in Asia and Africa, until the Bishop of Rome had become the largest landholder in Italy. To defend his Italian lands against the incursions of the Lombards was a course suggested to Gregory by self-interest ”

“ The bishops of Rome had for some time meditated the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. Pope Gregory, who is surnamed the Great, affected that pious design with an uncommon zeal; and he at length found a circumstance highly favorable to it in the marriage of a daughter of Charibert, a king of the Franks, to the reigning monarch of Kent. This opportunity induced Pope Gregory to commission Augustin, a monk of Rheims, and a man of distinguished piety, to undertake this arduous enterprise. ”

“ And so why do you show such blind and foolish hatred of those Jesuits, who, politically, are your friends? Why don’t you employ their intelligent zeal, which is ready to serve you, so that you may assure yourselves the help of the next, the coming pope? It is necessary for you that he should be on your side, that he should continue the work of Leo XIII, which is so badly judged and so much opposed, but which cares little for the petty results of to-day, since its purpose lies in the future, in the union of all the nations under their holy mother the Church. ”

“ Of all the early Popes, save Leo I and Gregory I, it is true that we may be tolerably at home in the history of their times without knowing much about them. No Pope is ranked among the leading Western Fathers. The only considerable theologian who occupied the Holy See, before the year 1000, is Gregory I ”

“ There is a famous manoeuvre in the Spanish bull-fights, which may prove successful once, but which means death to the torreador should he attempt to repeat it. The result of Gregory's second bann was not unlike it. A storm of indignation rose against the pope, and the Lombard and German bishops rallied to Henry. First in Bamberg, then in Mainz, and finally in Brixen (see No. 13) , Gregory was declared deposed. Wibert of Ravenna was made pope in his stead. Gregory's letter of justification, written to Bishop Herrmann of Metz (see No. 14) , shows a power of reasoning worthy of the Jesuits. ”

“ In contrast to this, the distant Emperor was too feeble to send any effective help against the Lombards, while the fiscal oppression of his representatives added to the miseries of the starving people. The practical wisdom, administrative capacity, and Christian zeal of Gregory I. led the people of Rome and the neighbouring regions to look upon the Pope as their head in temporal as well as in spiritual matters. The Papacy became a national centre to the Italians, and the attitude of the Popes towards the Emperor showed a spirit of independence which rapidly passed into antagonism and revolt. ”

“ We have, therefore, now presented in a general view the history of the rise and consolidation of the temporal sovereignty of the Popes between the two great eras of St. Gregory I. and St. Gregory VII. From that time forward the political history of the Papacy relates chiefly to the rise and subsequent decline of the temporal power of the Pope over all Christendom, until at last, in the disruption of political unity among European states, the Holy See is once more subject to the same struggle for independence in its immediate patrimony which preceded the period of its mediæval power. ”

“ Gregory to do it!
In every public or private trouble or upheaval, as well as in every effort to reorganise and restore, his name, his presence is dominant. After becoming Pope, he lived chiefly at the Lateran palace, then the official Papal residence, and they still keep there the narrow pallet that served him for a bed, and—mark this, ye modern schoolboys!—the little rod which he had to use to keep his dark-eyed, rampageous young choristers in order!
The men who can govern others with the most unerring wisdom are often entirely mistaken in their appreciation of themselves. ”

“ It would seem that in all the tumultuous and factious city there was but one thought of horror at the 249 sacrilege, and determination to save the Pope if it were still possible. Gregory was not, like his great predecessor the first of that name, the idol of his people. He had not the wealth with which many great ecclesiastics had secured the homage of the often famished crowd; and a stern man, with no special geniality of nature, and views that went so far beyond the local interests of Rome, he does not seem the kind of ruler to have secured popular favour. ”

“ Pope Gregory, clothed in vestments of cloth of gold embroidered with precious stones, his tiara "almost as an aureole of sanctity about his head," sat stiffly on his pontifical throne like some carved image, surrounded by cardinals in crimson garments and bishops in white stoles. All eyes were fixed upon this splendid group, and it is not improbable that among the spectators stood Pietro Bernardone and Madonna Pica, and many who had reviled Francis in his early days of sanctity, and now, within two years of his death, witnessed him placed among the greatest of the saints. ”

“ At last, after six years of what must have been the most anxious work, requiring all that the great man had of wisdom and firmness and tact, he returned to Italy—to find his beloved Rome in terrible distress from a visitation of the pestilence. Gregory at once devoted himself to the care of the sick and dying, and one can fancy how the poor people’s eyes lighted up when he appeared among them again. Then the good Pope Pelagius succumbed to the disease, and at once all eyes turned to Gregory, who was unanimously elected as his successor. ”

“ An eastern Council, at his prompting, strives to make that bishop the second bishop of the whole Church on a false foundation, because Constantinople is Nova Roma. Every Byzantine monarch adds his stone to the Byzantine bishop's pillar of pride. St. Leo exposes and censures the assumption. Pope Gelasius does not reckon him among the patriarchs. Justinian enacts him to be ecumenical patriarch, which St. Gregory pronounces to be a title of diabolical pride: being, in fact, the building of spiritual power on temporal lordship. ”

“ John XXIII., having succeeded to the claims of Alexander in 1410, concluded a treaty with Ladislaus, by which Gregory was banished from Naples on the 31st of October 1411. The pope then took refuge with Carlo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, through whom he presented his resignation to the council of Constance on the 4th of July 1415. A weak and easily-influenced old man, his resignation was the noblest act of his pontificate. The rest of his life was spent in peaceful obscurity as cardinal-bishop of Porto and legate of the mark of Ancona. ”

“ He may depose emperors. He may be judged by no one. He may absolve from their allegiance the subjects of the wicked. The Roman Church never has erred, and never can err, as the Scriptures testify." Gregory did not originate these doctrines, but he was the first pope who ventured to make a practical application of them.
DECREE AGAINST LAY INVESTITURE, 1075 A.D. Two years after Gregory became pope he issued a decree against lay investiture. It declared that no emperor, king, duke, marquis, count, or any other lay person should presume to grant investiture, under pain of excommunication. ”

“ This time the cry of sorrow and indignation was uttered by Pope Gregory VII., that illustrious pontiff whose ardent and resolute nature, in the midst of the universal disorder and disorganization of government and society, seemed to have a divine mission to fulfil in settling upon an indestructible basis the supreme authority of the Church. “The miseries suffered by the Eastern Christians,” he wrote, “have so stirred up my heart that I almost long for death, and I would rather expose my life in delivering the holy places than reign over the universe. ”