John Julius Nowrich, “Absolute Monarchs:A History of
the Papacy ”, 2011, Random House, 512 pp. (Read Kindle version).
“Absolute
Monarchs” is a history of Western Europe beginning with the first popes and
continues up to today’s Pope Benedict—265 popes along with some
anti-popes. This book will most likely
disturb those raised as Catholic and unaware of the less than religious
orientation most popes brought to the job, and how most popes primary interest
was in their own power along with enriching their relatives. However, in recent times the popes have had
no civil power outside the 110 acres of Vatican City.
Norwich does admire the popes who were effective
statesmen including Leo I, who protected Rome from the Huns; Benedict XIV, who
kept the peace and instituted financial and liturgical reforms, allowing Rome
to become the religious and cultural capital of Catholic Europe; and Leo XIII,
who steered the Church into the industrial age. However, the great one’s were vastly outnumbered
by the corrupt, the inept, the lecherous, the ruthless, the mediocre and those
who didn’t last long enough to make a mark. The bishops who recently blamed the
scourge of pedophile priests on the culture of the 1960s should read this book for
evidence that clerical abuses are not a current historical phenomenon.
Siricius (384-399) was the first to call himself
“Pope”.
Innocent III (1198 - 1216) was the greatest of the medieval popes, a man
of extraordinary self-confidence who consolidated the Papal States. But he
also initiated the Fourth Crusade, which led to the wild sacking of
Constantinople, “the most unspeakable of the many outrages in the whole hideous
history of the Crusades.”
Clement (1305 – 1314): the first Pope who decided to
settle in Avignon. It became the seat of
the Papacy for the next sixty-eight years.
Sixtus IV (1471 - 1484) sold indulgences and church
offices “on a scale previously unparalleled,” made an 8-year-old boy the
archbishop of Lisbon and began the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. But he
also commissioned the Sistine Chapel.
Alexander VI (1492- 1503; a Borgia), who by the time
he bribed his way into office had fathered eight children by at least three
women, is credited with keeping the imperiled papacy alive by capable
administration and astute diplomacy, “however questionable his means of doing
so.”
Paul IV (1555 - 1559) “directed the most savage
campaign in papal history against the Jews,” forcing them into ghettos and
destroying synagogues. He published the bull Cum Nimis Absurdum in 1555 which
made it forbidden for them to trade in any commodity except food and secondhand
clothing, permitted only a single synagogue in each city, and obliged them to
wear yellow hats in the street. They
were rounded up into ghettos. This bull remained in force for the next three
centuries.
Urban VIII (1623 - 1644) imprisoned Galileo and
banned all his works.
Pius IX (1846-78):
Regarded by many as having inaugurated the modern Catholic Church, Pius
IX is also noted for his reaction against many basic trends in modernity. Of
particular note was his creation of the Syllabus of Errors which listed 80
ideas that Catholics were forbidden to accept. Among the list were such nasty
things like rationalism, communism, liberalism, freedom of speech, freedom of
worship/religion, national churches without papal authority, recognition of
religions other than Catholicism, democracy, marriage as a civil institution,
and secular schools run by the state. The Syllabus also specifically rejected
the idea that the papacy and, by extension, the Roman Catholic Church, could
even be reconciled with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization. It was during his reign that Vatican I (1869)
declared Papal Infallibility when speaking ex cathedra on matters of faith and
morals.
Leo XIII (1878 – 1903): Leo XIII was the first pope to make an effort
to bring the Roman Catholic Church into harmony with the modern world. He
issued the encyclical Rerum Novarum
("Of New Things") which supported the rights of workers and of the
poor; it was a belated response to Das
Kapital and The Socialist Manifesto.
20th century: Pius XI (1922 - 1939) and
Pius XII (1939 - 1958), whose fear of Communism (along with the church’s long
streak of anti-Semitism) made them enablers of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco.
Pius XI, in Norwich’s view, redeemed himself by his belated but unflinching
hostility to the Fascists and Nazis. But his indictment of Pius XII — who
resisted every entreaty to speak out against mass murder, even as the trucks
were transporting the Jews of Rome to Auschwitz. “It is painful to have to
record,” Norwich concludes, “that, on the orders of his successor, the process
of his canonization has already begun. Suffice it to say here that the current
fashion for canonizing all popes on principle will, if continued, make a
mockery of sainthood.”
Addenda:
In 1453 the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II
conquered Constantinople and put an end to the Christian Empire of the
East. It had lasted 1,123 years.
Few years in all history have proved
to be more fateful than the year 1492.
In that year the Spanish conquest of Granada occurred, ending the
Moorish kingdom and consolidating the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella; the Jews
in Spain were given three months to accept Christianity or leave. Christopher Columbus unwittingly discovered
the New World. When he returned to Spain
in 1493 he brought with him the first cases of syphilis known to the Old World.
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