Pope Gregory XVI

“ In a few days he assists at the ordination of the present Bishop of Northampton, the Right Rev. Dr. Amherst. A number of converts received orders at the same time, and Father Spencer had the pleasure of assisting at the ceremony. He resumes his Journal in May, 1846, and we find these two entries in it:
"Tuesday, June 9.— We had news to-day of the death of Pope Gregory XVI. on the 1st of June, after fifteen years and four months' pontificate. God grant a holy successor, full of fortitude and love, especially for England." ”

“ Other pastors were doing all they could for their own flocks, but Monsignor Mastai’s zeal and charity were so conspicuous as to draw down the special and enthusiastic commendation of Gregory XVI, who immediately promoted him to the Archbishopric of Imola, a far more important see than that of Spoleto. Naturally the Spoleto people were frantic at the idea of losing him, and sent a deputation of their most notable citizens to Rome to beg the Pope to change his mind. ”

“ Gregory XVI. (Bartolommeo Alberto Cappellari) , pope from 1831 to 1846, was born at Belluno on the 18th of September 1765, and at an early age entered the order of the Camaldoli, among whom he rapidly gained distinction for his theological and linguistic acquirements. His first appearance before a wider public was in 1799, when he published against the Italian Jansenists a controversial work entitled Il Trionfo della Santa Sede, which, besides passing through several editions in Italy, has been translated into several European languages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the years of conflict that followed Gregory looked far beyond this point; he set his aim ever higher; until, in the end, his idea was to concentrate all ecclesiastical power in the hands of the pope, and to raise the papacy to the dominion of the world. Thus was to be realized the old dream of Augustine: that of a Kingdom of God on earth under the rule of the Church. But it was not given to Gregory to reach this goal, and his successors had to return again to the strife over investiture. ”

“ And I say that there is far more ingratitude in the English Parliament refusing to acknowledge the authority and spiritual supremacy of the pope than there would be in a child refusing to obey its father; because it is to Pope St. Gregory that we are indebted for the knowledge of the Holy Gospel; it is he who regenerated us—a heritage richer and more desirable than that which any father according to the flesh can bequeath to his children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ What we say they never have admitted is, that which has really worked the disunion of the Universal Church, as St. Gregory foretold it would, the doctrine which is the centre of the present Papal system, which alone makes all its parts cohere, and justifies all its acts, and triumphs over all appeal to argument, and all testimonies of antiquity, viz., that, "the Pope is set over the whole Christian world, and possesses in its completeness and plenitude that power which Christ left on earth for the good of the Church." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thessalonica, enjoining them to have no society, agreement, or connection with such a man.
Thus, in the case of any diocese, whether that of a simple bishop, or a primate, or a patriarch, the Pope does not hesitate to tell their several diocesans that they are set free from all duty of obedience to one condemned by him. No act can show the superior authority of the universal Primate more strongly than this. St. Gregory the Great had said that all bishops were equal when performing their respective work in their own diocese ”

“ No pope was more capable than Gregory the Great (590–604) of uniting the different and scattered elements of which the liturgy was composed. [220] To him is due the merit of having been the first to put forth a revised issue of the books of religious service, and who impressed the stamp of his genius on the Roman Catholic ceremonial. Before him, however, Pope Gelasius had collected the prayers used in the administration of the sacraments, and had prepared the first missal or book of masses. The latter was remodelled and corrected by Gregory. ”

“ Saint Gregory, the first Benedictine to be elected Pope, was the creator of the Liturgy, the master of plain-song. He was alike devoted to justice and to charity, and a passionate patron of art; and this admirable Pope, with his broad and comprehensive spirit, regarded it as a temptation of the Devil that made the bigots, the Pharisees of his day, proclaim their determination not to read profane literature; for, said he, it helps us to understand that which is sacred. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For if there is any one principle which seems to serve as the favourite maxim of his whole pontificate, it is that expressed in a letter to the bishop of Syracuse. That bishop had been speaking of an African primate who had professed that he was subject to the Apostolic See. St. Gregory's comment is: "If a bishop is in any fault, I know not any bishop who is not subject to it. But when no fault requires it, all are equal according to the estimation of humility." [196] Natalis, archbishop of Salona, in Dalmatia, had given the Pope much trouble. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have to call to mind that, at the time of which we are now speaking, the papal pretentions were more fully developed than at the time when Gregory sent his missionaries to England. Several of the objectionable doctrines of Roman Catholicism were now coming into prominence. Such as the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy, and transubstantiation. The Pope of Rome then, unlike the Bishops of our days or even Bishops of England at that time, maintained a Court not equalled in splendour and magnificence by any other Court of Europe. The Pope was a king. Yea, more powerful than a king. ”

“ He completed his commentary on Job, and collected endless stories of devils and angels, saints and sinners, visions and miracles; until one day, in 590, the Romans broke into the austere monastery with the news that Pelagius was dead and Gregory was to be his successor. He fled from Rome in horror, but he was the ablest man in Italy, and all united to make him Pope.
If these things do not suffice to show that Gregory was the first mediæval Pope, read his Dialogues, completed a few years later; no theologian in the world to-day would accept that phantasmagoria of devils and angels and miracles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”