Pope Vigilius

“ The Empress at once took him under her personal protection, and gave him private apartments in the Palace. [637] At the same time she began to intrigue for his restoration, and the course of events seemed to shape itself very fortunately in her favour. The Pope died in the spring of the same year before he could set out on his return journey; and concomitantly Belisarius was making brilliant {672} progress in his invasion of Italy. Vigilius was a recognized candidate for the see of Rome, and had, in fact, been irregularly nominated before the consecration of Agapetus. ”

“ He opposed the restoration of the patriarch Anthimus, whom Agapetus had deposed, and thus brought upon himself the hatred of Theodora, who desired to see Vigilius made pope. He was deposed accordingly by Belisarius in March 537 on a charge of treasonable correspondence with the Goths, and degraded to the rank of monk. He went to Constantinople, and Justinian, who entertained his complaint, sent him back to Rome, but Vigilius was ultimately able to banish his rival to Pandataria, where the rest of his life was spent in obscurity. ”

“ All his work of this kind was given to Ravenna. From this time forth every new building in Rome is due to the Popes.
Small reason had the Popes to rejoice that the rule of an orthodox emperor had followed at Rome that of an Arian king. Three months after the death of Vigilius at Syracuse Justinian caused the deacon Pelagius to be elected: he had difficulty in obtaining his recognition until he had cleared himself by oath in St. Peter's of an accusation that he had hastened his predecessor's death. The confirmation of the Pope's election remained with the emperor. ”

“ Italy has given only room enough for the Papal throne to be established, robbing the Pope's entire splendour and dominion; between the King of Italy and the Pope of Rome there is no love lost, they cannot bear each other's sight. Rome, the capital of the Pope, is now the capital of Italy. The King lives in the Pope's ancient palace which he has seized, and the ancient Italian kingdom of the Pope is now confined within the precincts of the Vatican. But the Pope has still great influence in religious matters — and the chief supporter of this is Austria. ”

“ To the Karolingian age it was the Emperor who was the Vicar of God. The Church reformers, while attacking this title, do not seem to have claimed in words for the Pope a higher title than Vicar of St. Peter. Innocent, however, more than once asserts that he is the representative "not of mere man, but of very God." In fact, such development as is to be found in the papal office during the twelfth century consists merely in making rather more explicit positions which have already been asserted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What, then, is the real doctrine of Infallibility? It simply means that the Pope, as successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, by virtue of the promises of Jesus Christ, is preserved from error of judgment when he promulgates to the Church a decision on faith or morals.
The Pope, therefore, be it known, is not the [pg 124] maker of the Divine law; he is only its expounder. He is not the author of revelation, but only its interpreter. All revelation came from God alone through His inspired ministers, and it was complete in the beginning of the Church. ”

“ At the Quirinal, which was fitted up for the King of Rome and inhabited by the Emperor of Austria, we saw everything but the Pope’s apartments. It is a delightful house, and commands a charming view of Rome. The Pope always goes there the last day of the Holy Week, and stays there all the summer. Nothing can be more melancholy than his life as described by the custode; he gets up very early, lives entirely alone and with the greatest simplicity. In short, it shows what a strange thing ambition is, which will sacrifice the substantial pleasures of life for the miserable shadow of grandeur. ”

“ He was not ignorant of the dignity and importance of the Roman pontiff, to whom the venerable name of Pope was now appropriated. The peace or the revolt of Italy might depend on the character of a wealthy and popular bishop, who claimed such ample dominion both in heaven and earth; who had been declared in a numerous synod to be pure from all sin, and exempt from all judgment. When the chair of St. Peter was disputed by Symmachus and Laurence, they appeared at his summons before the tribunal of an Arian monarch, and he confirmed the election of the most worthy or the most obsequious candidate. ”

“ In this transaction, the ambition and avarice of the popes have been severely condemned. Perhaps the humility of a Christian priest should have rejected an earthly kingdom, which it was not easy for him to govern without renouncing the virtues of his profession. Perhaps a faithful subject, or even a generous enemy, would have been less impatient to divide the spoils of the Barbarian; and if the emperor had intrusted Stephen to solicit in his name the restitution of the Exarchate, I will not absolve the pope from the reproach of treachery and falsehood. ”

“ But outside of all this depression and subordination, among tribes of half-barbaric blood, among dreamy enthusiasts contemplating what seemed to them the simple and natural scheme of an earthly judge infallible in wisdom and divinely inspired; among bewildered and trampled ecclesiastics, looking forth into the night, and seeing, far above all the storms and darkness that surrounded them in their own distracted land, a star by which they might steer their course, undimmed and unalterable—the Pope of Rome was the highest and holiest of created men. ”

“ In the wild days of the tenth century, when the world was boiling with faction, and trembling at the prospect of the Last Judgment, clearly predicted to overtake mankind in the thousandth year of the Christian era, the whole Roman people, without sanction of the Emperor and without precedent, chose John the Thirteenth to be their Pope. ”

“ Florry, the trite adage, 'Truth is the hardest of all to bear,' is applicable to these prelates of papacy; who, knowing their danger, are fully resolved to guard the avenues of light and knowledge. The Pope of imperial Rome, surrounded as he is with luxury, magnificence, and hosts of scarlet-liveried cardinals, who stand in readiness to convey his mandates to the remotest corners of the earth, has been made to tremble on his throne by the pen of feeble woman. ”

“ Pius the Fifth, who was very lean, was used to say, That it was impossible that the Popes should ever grow fat, for that Nature in them was never supplied but in fear. And yet this Pope was one of the holiest and best; though it is true, That Holiness is subject to Envy, and therefore obliged to preserve it self against the malignity of its Enemies. ”

“ It was John Wicliffe, an Oxford Doctor of Divinity, and sometime master of Balliol College, who gave voice to the popular discontent with the state of the Papacy and the national Church. He taught that the Pope's claim to be God's vicegerent on earth and to guide the consciences of all men was a blasphemous usurpation, because each individual was responsible to Heaven for his own acts and thoughts. ”

“ In vain you will tell me that the See of Rome is called Sancta Sedes, and its bishop entitled Sanctissimus Papa: the pope's holiness is but a holiness in name. [171] Vain-glory, worldly pomp, unrestrained lust, and vices innumerable prevail in Rome. I have seen it with my own eyes. The pope claims by his ceremonies to forgive men their sins: it is a serious error. One work only blots them out, namely, the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. So long as the See of Rome endures, there will be no remedy for the evils which overwhelm us. ”

“ The popularity of Wickliffe was such, that this step was considered dangerous; and we find that nothing further was done to this eminently pious man, than banishing him from the university of Oxford into private life, where he died in peace, and went to his grave with the blessings of the good and the virtuous. But this did not satisfy the Pope, nor the infallible church. O, no. The holy mother never forgives a heretic, dead or alive. As soon as Wickliffe departed this life, in the sixty-first year of his age, the church and Papists exhibited the wildest symptoms of joy. ”

“ I confess and believe, that the Pope is Christ’s vicar, and has full power to forgive the sins of all mankind, according to his own will and pleasure, either to save, to let them perish, or to excommunicate them, if he thinks fit. ”

“ The solution so often sought amidst such long wars surely lies in this: Either give the Pope the temporal sovereignty of the world, or leave him only the spiritual sovereignty. Vicar of the Deity, absolute and infallible sovereign by divine delegation, he can but remain in the sanctuary if, ruler already of the human soul, he is not recognised by every nation as the one master of the body also—the king of kings. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Ah! that Pope whom you no longer meet or see, that Pope hidden from the common of mankind like some terrible divinity whom the priests alone dare to approach! It is in that sumptuous Vatican which his forerunners of the Renascence built and adorned for giant festivities that he has secluded himself; it is there he lives, far from the crowd, in prison with the handsome men and the lovely women of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, with the gods and goddesses of marble, with the whole of resplendent Olympus celebrating around him the religion of life and light. ”

“ Being under a vow to go to convert the infidels in the Holy Land, he gave out that to this work alone were the lives of himself and his companions to be devoted. Accordingly, as soon as they arrived in Venice, he sent them to Rome to beg the Pope’s blessing on their enterprise, as he said; and also, no doubt, to exhibit them to the Roman court as the embryo of a new religious order. The reason assigned by his [26] historians for his not going to Rome along with them, is, that he feared that his presence there might be prejudicial to them. ”

“ Here is the toleration which the Pope grants us in Rome. There are from six hundred to a thousand English subjects resident in Rome every winter; but they dare not meet within the walls to open the Bible, or to worship God as his Word enjoins. They must go out without the gate, as if they were evil-doers; they must climb the stairs of this granary, as if they meditated some deed of darkness; and only when they have got into this garret are they at liberty to worship God. ”

“ Yesterday Vigilius sent Servus Dei, a most reverend Subdeacon of the Roman Church, and invited Belisarius, [2] Cethegus, as also Justinus and Constantine the most glorious consuls, as well as bishops Theodore, Ascidas, Benignus, and Phocas, to come to him as he wished to give through them an answer to the Emperor. They came, but speedily returned and informed the most pious lord, that we had visited Vigilius, the most religious bishop, and that he had said to us: “We have called you for this reason, that you may know what things have been done in the past days. ”

“ All that is the Vatican, and inside is the Pope. He is seventy years old, frail, an invalid. Death is at his pillow, but what does that matter? He is strong. How many believe in him, stretch out their hands to him, bow down before him, pray in his name, die in his name! We triumphantly count our array of atheists and sceptics. Who can count the believers? ”

“ Paul the fourth, standing one day in a great musing in the presence of Cardinal Campeggio, was ask’d by him, Why he stood so pensive? The Pope answer’d, I am thinking whether you (who perhaps may be my Successour) are likely to be richer than my self.
Sixtus Quintus, who was one of the greatest Popes that the Vatican ever saw, had no other fault, but that he spent most hours of the day in devising what might be done to bring money into his Chests. ”

“ The ideal of the Papacy was perhaps the noblest which has ever entered into the heart of man to conceive. According to it, the Pope was to be the High Priest of God and Vicar of Christ, higher than the kings of the earth. ”

“ It is plain even from so slight a sketch as this that the common conception of Pope as "the wicked wasp of Twickenham," a bitter, jealous, and malignant spirit, is utterly out of accord with the facts of his life. Pope's faults of character lie on the surface, and the most perceptible is that which has done him most harm in the eyes of English-speaking men. ”

“ But whatever be the fate of the Pope's temporalities, we have no fears for the spiritual throne of the Papacy. The Pontiffs have received their earthly dominion from man, and what man gives man may take away. But the spiritual supremacy the Bishops of Rome have from God, and no man can destroy it. That Divine charter [pg 151] of their prerogatives, “Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,”191 will ever shine forth as brightly as the sun, and it is as far as the sun above the reach of human aggression. ”