4. Quoted in various media, including the Telegraph (London), February 8, 2005.
5. In fact, this is the short statement that exists today in the Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church about the possibility of papal resignation: “If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone” (332 §2). The complete Canons are available on the Vatican’s website: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_P16.HTM.
6. John of Paris, from the treatise De potestate regia et papale, quoted in Edward Peters, The Shadow King: Rex Inutilis in Medieval Law and Literature 751–1327 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), 227–28.
CHAPTER 17
1. This is my rendering. The original Latin text appears in the classic, Annales Ecclesiastici, compiled by Odoricus Rainaldi, for the year 1294, number 20.
2. T. S. R. Boase, Boniface VIII (Toronto: Macmillan, 1933), 55.
3. John Eastman, “Holy Man of the Abruzzi and the Limitations of Papal Power,” Catholic Historical Review 91, no. 4: 763.
4. Peter Barnes, Sunsets and Glories (London: Methuen Drama, 1990), 2.7.66.
CHAPTER 18
1. G. Geltner, The Medieval Prison: A Social History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 86–87.
2. T. S. R. Boase, Boniface VIII (Toronto: Macmillan, 1933), 14–15.
3. Castle Fumone would haunt Boniface VIII long after the death of Peter Morrone. It was from Ferentino that William of Nogaret and fellow conspirators set out on September 6, 1303, to attack Boniface in Anagni on the following day. They held and abused him for two days before escaping with their lives, leaving the pope to return to the relative safety of Rome.
4. This is suggested by David Burr in Catholic Historical Review 70 (April 1984): 297–98.
5. Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, 2d ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 104.
6. Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 104.
7. John Cornwell, A Thief in the Night: The Mysterious Death of Pope John Paul I (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 47.
8. Peter Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes (New York: Collins, 1979), 139. See also chapter 9, “The Thirty-three Day Pope,” pp. 114–29.
9. For conspiracy theories see David Yallop’s bestseller, In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I (New York: Basic Books, 2007). For a scholar’s perspective see John Cornwell’s A Thief in the Night.
10. Rainer Decker, Witchcraft and the Papacy: An Account Drawing on the Formerly Secret Records of the Roman Inquisition, trans. H. C. Erik Midelfort (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 28. Pope Leo X (1513–21) was also plotted against—in this case by some of his cardinals. They attempted to poison him while treating him for an illness, but they were unsuccessful.
11. Biondo Flavio, Italy Illuminated, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Jeffrey A. White (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 161.
12. As reported by the Associated Press, “Monk Contends 13th-Century Pope Was Murdered with Nail,” on August 20, 1998. As of March 1, 2011, large portions of Padre Quirino’s work were available in English translation on his website: www.padrequirino.org/INTRO.PDF.
13. T. S. R. Boase, Boniface VIII, 369.
14. Much of the following discussion of poisons has been aided by Martin Levy’s classic article, “Medieval Arabic Toxicology: The Book on Poisons of ibn Wahshiya and Its Relation to Early Indian and Greek Texts,” Journal of the American Philosophical Society 56, part 7 (1966): 5–130.
15. “Many positively asserted that by Nero’s order his throat was smeared with some poisonous drug under the pretence of the application of a remedy, and that Burrus [the victim], who saw through the crime, when the emperor paid him a visit, recoiled with horror from his gaze, and merely replied to his question, ‘I indeed am well.’ ” (Complete Works of Tacitus, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, ed. Moses Hadas [New York: Modern Library, 1942], 347.)
16. Levy, “Medieval Arabic Toxicology,” 15.
17. Quoted in Brian Tierney, ed., The Crisis of Church and State 1050–1300 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 176–77.
18. T. S. R. Boase, Boniface VIII, 171.
19. Edward Peters, The Shadow King: Rex Inutilis in Medieval Law and Literature 751–1327 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), 226.
20. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieaval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 215n61.
21. Quoted in Charles T. Wood, ed., Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII: State vs. Papacy, 2d ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 65.
CHAPTER 19
1. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1976), 412.
2. Angelo Clareno: A Chronicle or History of the Seven Tribulations of the Order of Brothers Minor, trans. David Burr and Emmett Randolph Daniel (Saint Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005), 157.
3. Jacopone of Todi, Laude 35.
4. After Celestine V came Boniface VIII, and then Clement V in 1305. Like Celestine, Clement was lenient with the Spirituals and pleaded with them to find monasteries in which to reside, wanting to bring a peaceful end to the controversies surrounding observance. As a result, three Franciscan monasteries saw an influx of Spirituals return, all in the Languedoc region of France. But within a few years, when both Clement and a sympathetic Franciscan minister-general (Alexander of Alexandria) had died, Conventual superiors were again appointed at these convents, and the conflict really heated up. The Spirituals were booted from the three monasteries, and they responded by attempting to take two of them by force. This won them quick, fresh excommunications, but the Spirituals persisted, this time by peaceful means, taking their appeal to yet another general chapter meeting of the order, in Naples in 1316. In the year following, Pope John XXII, at the urging of minister-general Michael of Cesena, brought a number of the Spirituals’ leaders, including Angelo Clareno and Ubertino of Casale, to appear before him in Avignon for a doctrinal trial. They were ordered to submit to authority or be excommunicated and burned at the stake. “Great is poverty, but greater is obedience,” Pope John infamously said. Twenty-five of these Spirituals were given over to an inquisitor, who, according to the euphemistic language of the Catholic Encyclopedia, “succeeded in converting twenty-one of them,” which means they were tortured. The remaining four refused to acknowledge a religious authority higher than the original Rule of Saint Francis. These four were burned at the stake in Marseilles on May 7, 1318. The two most prominent Spirituals were spared: Ubertino of Casale, because he was defended in Avignon before the papal court by a sympathetic cardinal; and Angelo Clareno, because he fled for his life.
5. William J. Irons, trans., Hymns Ancient and Modern, Standard Edition (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1922), 459.
6. Jacopone of Todi, Laude 25.
7. Defenders and Critics of Franciscan Life: Essays in Honor of John V. Fleming, ed. Michael F. Cusato and G. Geltner (Boston: Brill, 2009), 134.
8. Bernard Guenee, Between Church and State: The Lives of Four French Prelates in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 216.
9. Paul Johnson, The Renaissance: A Short History (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 3.
10. Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, trans. Brian Tierney in The Crisis of Church and State 1050–1300 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 188.
11. Boniface, Unam Sanctam.
12. This translation is my own. For another, see Bernard of Clairvaux: Five Books on Consideration—Advice to a Pope, trans. John D. Anderson and Elizabeth T. Kennan (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1976), book 4, p. 3.
13. Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III concerning England (1198-1216), trans. C. R. Cheney and ed. C. R.
Cheney and W. H. Semple (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1953), 177, no. 67.
14. Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III, 188–89.
15. All extracts are from Saint Bridget of Sweden, Liber Celestis, book 3, ch. 27; the translations are mine.
CHAPTER 20
1. Francesco Petrarch, De vita solitaria, 2, 8.
2. Leonida Giardini et al., Celestino V: e la sua Basilica (Milan: Silvana Editoriale Spa, 2006), 56.
3. Michael Goodich, “The Politics of Canonization in the Thirteenth Century: Lay and Mendicant Saints,” in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History, ed. Stephen Wilson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 181.
4. Sophia Menache, Clement V (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 203.
5. Herbert J. Thurston and Donald Attwater, eds., Butler’s Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition, vol. 2 (London: Burns & Oates, 1956), 345.
6. Peter Barnes, Sunsets and Glories (London: Methuen Drama, 1990), 1.7.24.
7. Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, 2d ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 159.
8. T. S. R. Boase, Boniface VIII (Toronto: Macmillan, 1933), 45.
9. John R. H. Moorman, The Sources for the Life of S. Francis of Assisi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1940), 155.
10. John-Peter Pham, Heirs of the Fisherman: Behind the Scenes of Papal Death and Succession (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 72.
11. G. A. Holmes, review of the German edition of Peter Herde’s biography of Celestine V, English Historical Review 97 (1982): 839.
12. Edward Armstrong, The Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 7, Decline of Empire and Papacy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 4.
13. A. N. Wilson, “Best Pope: The Pontiff Who Quit,” New York Times, April 18, 1999.
14. Sir Maurice Powicke, The Christian Life in the Middle Ages: And Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935), 51.
15. Dante, Inferno, canto 3, lines 55–60.
16. Peter Herde, “Celestine V, Pope,” in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing (New York: Routledge, 2010), 152.
17. Herde, “Celestine V, Pope.”
18. Daniel J. Wakin, “Do Popes Quit?” New York Times, April 10, 2010.
19. The speech is available on the Vatican website, but only in Italian: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/speeches/1966/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19660901_s-celestino-v_it.html. One example of the media speculation regarding Paul VI may be seen in this story from Time, September, 30, 1966: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,836464,00.html.
20. Colm Toibin, “Among the Flutterers,” London Review of Books 32, no. 16, August 19, 2010, 3–9.
21. George Weigel, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 2.
22. A. C. Flick, quoted in Charles T. Wood, ed., Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII: State vs. Papacy, 2d ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 11.
23. Lisa Wangsness and Matt Rocheleau, “Amid Furor, Priest Gets Support,” Boston Globe, April 13, 2010, A1.
24. Sergio Luzzatto, Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age, trans. Frederika Randall (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), 4.
25. Ignazio Silone, The Story of a Humble Christian, trans. William Weaver (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 18.
26. One recalls the prophetic words of Albino Luciani, the future Pope Paul I, on August 26, 1978, to the cardinals who elected him: “May God forgive you for what you have done to me.” (Quoted in David Gibson’s The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World [New York: HarperOne, 2007], 225.)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have many people to thank. My agent and friend, Greg Daniel, continues to be a sensitive ear and eye for all of my work, and for that I am grateful. My editor at Image Books, Gary Jansen, offered excellent vision and helpful coaching along the way. My wife, Michal, inspires me.
Many thanks, as well, to my friend and fellow traveler Brendan Walsh, who joined me in May 2009 to visit several locations in Assisi, Rome, and Naples relevant to this story. Thank you to the good people of Dartmouth College libraries in Hanover, New Hampshire, who so willingly and ably make their time and resources available to our local community.
This book has been the work, off and on, of the last three years, but most of it has been written in what Pope Benedict XVI declared to be the year of Saint Celestine, marking the eight-hundredth anniversary of Peter Morrone’s birth in 1209. Thank you to the many friends who have endured breakfast and dinner conversations about Celestine V over the last year. Perhaps you wondered if the book would ever be finished and I would ever stop talking about “the pope who quit.” From Steve Swayne many mornings at Lou’s to Christina Brannock-Wanter at Stella’s to Marjorie and Molly in Montpelier on Rosh Hashanah, thank you all for your indulgence, advice, and encouragement.
A note about some of the sources that are frequently quoted throughout the book: The selections from the Laude of the Franciscan friar Jacopone of Todi are my own renderings. The first translations of these verses into English were done by Jessie Beck and published in Evelyn Underhill’s classic, Jacopone of Todi: Poet and Mystic (London and Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1919). Other translations are my own, as well, including those from Petrarch’s “On the Solitary Life,” and those from Boccaccio’s Decameron. The endnotes indicate which translations are mine, and where to go to compare mine to others. The English quotations from Dante’s Divine Comedy all come from the legendary translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Quotations from the Holy Scriptures are taken from the translation of the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition, used with permission.
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