Pope Urban II

“ Local English feeling might indeed set little store by one who simply “hight Pope, though he nothing had of the settle at Rome;” [1421] but Urban was plainly the stronger Pope, the Pope acknowledged by all who were not in the immediate interest of the Emperor. And, what was more, Urban was the only Pope who could carry out William’s purpose. A censure from Urban would be a real blow to Anselm and to Anselm’s partisans; a censure from Clement would in their eyes go for nothing, or rather it would be reckoned as another witness in their favour. ”

“ The essential reason of Urban II.’s action, and consequently the true cause of the crusade, was the ambition of the pope to unite with Rome and the Roman Church the Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and even Constantinople, which the Greek schism had rendered independent. This thought had already crossed the minds of Leo IX. and Gregory VII, but circumstances had never allowed them to put it into execution. Armed by the reformation with a moral authority which made it possible to concentrate the forces of the West under the supreme direction of the Church and its leaders. ”

“ Urban was the last pope to practise nepotism on a grand scale. He failed to found a princely house; but he enriched his family to an extent that astonished even the Romans. Urban bore a hand in the condemnation of Galileo. ”

“ The Pope asked whether the King had any other charge against Anselm. “None,” answered the envoy. Urban had gained an advantage. Urban’s answer. He poured forth his wonder at a thing so unheard of in all time as that a king should spoil the primate of his kingdom of all his goods merely because he would not refrain from visiting the Roman Church, the mother of all churches. [1672] Excommunication threatened. William of Warelwast might go back to his master, and might tell him that the Pope meant to hold a council at Rome in the April 12, 1099. ”

“ To the Queen of Naples, as chief supporter of Clement (whom she presently received as Sovereign Pontiff on his way to Avignon) , she pleads Urban’s cause with calm reason, turning off the arrows of her words to strike the hostile Cardinals; and in like manner to Onorato Gaetani, Count of Fondi, who had protected the schismatic conclave with his hired troops. “Where is the just man that they have elected for Antipope,” she writes again to the Queen of Naples, “if in very sooth our supreme pontiff, Pope Urban VI., were not true Vicar of Christ? What man have they chosen? ”

“ So that though in Urban’s time many Princes treated of a League with the Church and the Pope himself, nevertheless there was not any considerable one concluded in a Reign of twenty three years; during which time divers Princes concluded a League offensive and defensive against the Barbarini.
The reason of this was, for that the Pope was too hard towards others, and too soft towards his own Relations; Cardinal Francesco too soft towards others, (but dissemblingly) and hard towards his Uncle; Cardinal Antonio hard towards Francesco, and soft towards the Pope ”

“ After the death of Pope Gregory XI (1378) the cardinals had elected as Pope Bartolomeo Prignani, Archbishop of Bari, who assumed the title of Urban VI; but some of their numbers, probably influenced by the French court, which desired the return of the Popes to Avignon, disputed the validity of the election of Urban VI, as having been forced on the cardinals by the menacing attitude of the Roman people. ”

“ The greatest of them Le Poussin and Claude died in Rome. Painters, engravers, sculptors, and architects came to these terraces to worship and to work, and to this day the galleries and palaces of northern Europe cherish the pictures planned or sketched abdut the Fountain of the Brimming Bowl.
Pope Urban VIII, who died in i644, was himself half French, not only by virtue of his temperament and genius, but also by the trend of his sympathies and his foreign policy. Under his enlightened patronage, the artists of France found a congenial home in the Eternal City. ”

“ Peter's, where they were replaced with mosaics by Urban VIII. Below are other frescoes by Pietro da Cortona, a portrait of Urban VIII., and some tapestries illustrative of the events of his reign and of his own intense self-esteem—thus the Virgin and Angels are represented bringing in the ornaments of the papacy at his coronation, &c. But the conceit of Pope Urban reaches its climax in a room at the top of the house, which exhibits a number of the Barberini bees (the family crest) flocking against the sun, and eclipsing it—to typify the splendour of the family. ”

“ Beust in Vienna, Hohenlohe in Munich, Ollivier in Paris, were not tranquil like the priest in Rome. Sooner or later they would all be engulfed in the stormy sea of revolution—all but the Church and the Pope. The Syllabus would abide for ever, and with it the Canons of the Vatican Council.... The Pope has proved by facts that he knows how to govern better than any other sovereign. We defy any emperor whatever to govern a country fourteen years as Pope Pius IX has governed Rome. ”

“ Meantime in the Vatican sits a king calling himself a prisoner, though he is free to go where he will; and in the Quirinal, a king calling himself a good Catholic, though he is a rebel against the Vicar of God. If the wisdom of Italy in allowing to the Pope unlimited personal freedom has been great, the want of wisdom in professing to exalt his spiritual authority, and in giving in to [Pg 687] his sole hand the ancient powers of both the crown and the people in the election of bishops and clergy, amounts perhaps to the grossest political folly of our age. ”

“ All society needed a saviour, as every rational creature knew. "The Pontiff is now almost alone in the world, the representative of truth, justice, and good sense." And hence, the poor world, swimming in error, fraud and absurdity—"the world sees in Pius IX a true master, a true judge, a true sovereign, and it cleaves to him as the bulwark of society." The Syllabus suffices to prove that the Pope alone declares the truth: "the Syllabus which burst like a thunderbolt out of a serene sky, both illuminated and blasted." ”

“ He has only as much infallibility as she has: that is a clumsy admission just before the assertion that he is infallible without her consent. However, wherever the power resides, or springs from, it is a power over all pastors and all believers, and extends, as we have said, not only to faith and morals, but to all things which affect the government of the Church. Thus it includes every mixed question whatsoever, and all things of any kind which in the estimation of the Pope of Rome may relate to the interests of that kingdom of which he is the king. ”

“ Most humorous of all is the fact that all this pagan world lives in the shadow of the Papal throne. In the eyes of Romans, however, the Pope has never been the High-Priest of Christ on earth. He is simply the Pontifex Maximus, and does not even wish anyone to regard him in any other light. ”

“ Will personal and independent infallibility raise again from the grave the extinct Churches on the African shores? or will it awake out of sleep that East which once bloomed with so many talents and virtues? Will it be easier for our brethren, the Vicars Apostolic, to bring back Pagans, Mohammedans, and Schismatics, to the Catholic faith, if they teach them that the Pope is infallible by himself? Will the definition encourage and animate Protestants, and other heretics, to draw near to the Roman Church, laying aside all their prejudices and animosities? ”

“ Were kings excepted when the Lord said, Thou art Peter? [293] Nay; the salvation of souls demands that the Pope shall have full authority in terra to suppress the waves of pride with the arms of humility. The dictatus papae of the year 1075 make the Pope the head of the Christian world: the Roman Church was founded by God alone; the Roman pontiff alone by right is called universal; he alone may use the imperial insignia; his feet alone shall be kissed by all princes; he may depose emperors and release subjects from fealty; and he can be judged by no man. ”

“ It was the pride of the clergy to cite the fact that the rulers of England and Prussia had co-operated in that restoration, as proof that the Papal throne was even in Protestant eyes the central point of order. Now a third restoration was to be effected—one which would do all that had been left undone by the other two. The Pope's throne was not only to be reared up again in Rome, but was to be gradually elevated to a spiritual supremacy equal to the highest claimed in former Bulls, and to a temporal supremacy as complete as when Hildebrand triumphed at Canossa. ”

“ Meantime, without his seven hundred bishops, without his adoring crowds, without the glitter of fallen royalties and of quasi-civic dignitaries, without his beloved zouaves, yet still guarded by his stalwart and fantastic Swiss—for at that Court it is ever foreign steel that is true—the Pope, sitting in a palace of eleven thousand apartments, rich as any king, and free as any bishop in the [Pg 665] world, yet felt and called himself a prisoner. Therefore when the day of exciting memories came, it was, says the Civiltá, spent in mourning and desolation. ”

“ He describes his entrance into the Vatican, his finding the Swiss guards and the manners of another age, and proceeds: "Pius IX is still a king, even in the eyes of his enemies and of his spoilers. They are obliged to admit that the unity of Italy is not effected, that the temporal power is to be re-established, and that after some profound commotions which, it may be, will entomb many an army and many a crown, there will be heard among the nations, from one end of Europe to the other, a single cry, Restore Rome to its ancient lords; Rome belongs to the Pope, Rome belongs to God." ”

“ Notwithstanding the method adopted in the True Story, the fact crops out at every turn that the modern strife of the Papacy is not to make men and women, as such, godly and peaceable, but to bring kings as kings, and legislatures as legislatures, and nations as nations, into subjection to the Pope. It crops out sufficiently, at least, to be obvious to all who know the difference, in the Cardinal's phraseology, between the two sets of terms employed to indicate those two distinct objects. ”

“ No recalcitrating bishop now; or if a few worn-out men are still secretly of the old inclining, they are rapidly dying off. The list of the eighty-eight is already a short one. No bishop is now installed who to the old oath which already made him a vassal of the Pope does not add the new articles of the Vatican Decrees. No seminaries are now training priests to deny the infallibility of the Pope, or his ordinary, immediate, and omnipresent authority. In most the Jesuit text-books are adopted. No catechisms are now teaching against Papal infallibility, or teaching ambiguously. ”

“ He forbade the priests to marry, and demanded that all bishops, who at that time were also temporal princes, should receive their office and their possessions, even their temporal power, not from their worldly overlords, but from his hands. He asserted: "As the moon receives its light from the sun, so emperors and princes receive their power from the Pope. The Pope is the viceregent of Christ upon earth, where the mighty of this world owe him obedience; he alone has the right and the power to appoint them to office, or to depose them." ”

“ How can he govern an empire, and at the same time preach, pray, study, and take care of the poor? Jesus Christ forbade his disciples to carry with them gold or clothes, because the office of the ministry cannot be performed without freedom from every other care; yet the pope would govern the empire, and at the same time remain pope."...
THE POPE. CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY.
Luther continues to strip the sovereign pontiff of his spoils. "Let the pope renounce every species of title to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. He has no more right to it than I have. ”

“ If Pius IX and Leo XIII had resolved to imprison themselves in the Vatican, it was because necessity bound them to Rome. A pope is not free to leave the city, to be the head of the Church elsewhere; and in the same way a pope, however well he may understand the modern world, has not the right to relinquish the temporal power. ”

“ The fundamental reason for this growth in modern times of what is properly called Popery -- not the growth of Romanism in the world, for there is no such growth, but of the cult of the Pope in the Catholic Church -- is just that spread of democracy which Rome hates so much. The Pope is the figure-head of the Italian hierarchy, which shares the vast wealth and prestige that the new Popery brings to Rome. ”

“ But it has never yet happened that the same Secretary of State has reigned under two Popes. Such an event never will occur, because it never has occurred. We are in a land where the future is the very humble servant of the past. Tradition absolutely requires that a new Pope should disgrace the favourite of his predecessor, by way of initiating his Papacy with a stroke of popularity. ”

“ He is rarely very capable or very highly educated: but as the statue of the Commendatore said, "He who is enlightened by Heaven wants no other light." Unfortunately the White Pope transfers his political functions to a Red Pope, that is to say, an omnipotent and irresponsible Cardinal, under the name of a Secretary of State. This one man represents the sovereign within and without,—speaks for him, acts for him, replies to foreigners, commands his subjects, expresses the Pope's will, and not unfrequently imposes his own upon him. ”