Pope Urban VIII

“ 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. ”

“ Urban VI. (Bartolommeo Prignano) , pope from the 8th of April 1378 to the 15th of October 1389, was born at Naples in 1318. He was made bishop of Acerenza in 1364, and in 1377 was translated to the archiepiscopal see of Bari and placed in charge of the papal chancery. On the death of Gregory XI., who had finally returned to Rome from Avignon, he was elected pope in a conclave held under circumstances of great excitement, owing to popular apprehension of an intention of the French cardinals to elect a French pope and again abandon 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. ”

“ Never throughout the middle ages was pope more energetic, impetuous or uncompromising. His inflexible will informed the movement directed against the enemy within, against the simoniacal prelate and the princely usurper of the rights of the Church, and prescribed the movement against the enemy without, against the infidel who held the Holy Sepulchre. Urban set his hand to reforms from which his predecessor Gregory had recoiled. He simultaneously excommunicated several sovereigns and mercilessly persecuted the archbishops and bishops who were hostile to reform. ”

“ The successor of Pius VIII was Gregory XVI, who became pope in 1831. His election was not calculated to pacify the people or lessen the general excitement. On the contrary, he fully committed his pontificate to the policy of retrogression, and this was so well understood that he had to prepare at once to grapple with the revolution, so near the Vatican that he could witness the surgings of the enraged populations. The Italian people assumed the attitude of defiance ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The next power with which Charles VIII had to deal was represented by a person in every way the opposite of the Dominican monk—Pope Alexander VI. After the troubles of the Great Schism and the councils, the popes had set to work to organize their possessions in central Italy into a compact principality. For a time they seemed to be little more than Italian princes. But they did not make rapid progress in their political enterprises because, in the first place, they were usually advanced in years before they came to power and so had little time to carry out their projects ”

“ 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. ”

“ France and Italy were at strife for the popedom. The Ultramontane cardinals would not tamely abandon a power which had given them rank, wealth, luxury, virtually the spiritual supremacy of the world, for seventy years. Italy, Rome, would not forego the golden opportunity of resuming the long-lost authority. On the 9th of August the cardinals at Anagni publicly declared, they announced in encyclic letters addressed to the faithful in all Christendom, that the election of Urban VI was carried by force and the fear of death ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thousands who are inclined to acknowledge the pope's authority over their consciences, within the proper circle of his spiritual domain, would prize an encyclical to that effect, as if each letter were of gold or precious stones, because it would prove to the world that Pius IX was moved only by his own impulsive nature and excited imagination when he declared that the papacy could not become reconciled to, "and agree with, progress, liberalism, and civilization" as they prevail among the modern nations. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then came the first popes, mere heads of burial associations, the slow rise of the all-powerful papacy ever struggling to conquer the world, unremittingly seeking to realise its dream of universal domination. At the time of the great popes of the middle ages it thought for a moment that it had attained its goal, that it was the sovereign master of the nations. Would not absolute truth and right consist in the pope being both pontiff and ruler of the world, reigning over both the souls and the bodies of all men, even like the Deity whose vicar he is? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leo XII. is forgotten; I have begun again to transact affairs with the new Secretary of State, Albani; everything is going on as though nothing had happened, and I do not even know whether you in Paris know that there is a new Pontiff! How beautiful that ceremony of the papal benediction is! The Sabine Range on the horizon, then the deserted Roman Campagna, then Rome itself, then the Piazza San Pietro and the whole people falling on its knees under an old man's hand: the Pope is the only prince who blesses his subjects. ”

“ That a Church should be a bishop is certainly new; and that a truly episcopal power should reside in a Church which is not a bishop, is one of the many mysteries created by the Vatican Council. But that the source of the Pontiff's authority should in this very Decree be sought in the Church, is a proof how hard a task is theirs who determine to make dogma conquer history. In the very language of the Decree, history conquers the dogma.
If the document contains this one taint of dualism as between Church and Pope, it is clear of all reproach of dualism as between the Pope and Princes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the death of Pius IX he left to whosoever should succeed him, as an official inheritance, the decision of the question whether or no the Church should acquiesce in and become reconciled to the abolition of the temporal power of the pope, or be agitated and possibly further disrupted by the demand for its restoration. In the meantime Italy had become an organized nation, and was so recognized throughout the world. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”