The Great Apostasy, Considered in the Light of Scriptural and Secular History

by James E. Talmage

"On the death of Pope Paul I, who had attained the pontificate A. D. 757, the Duke of Nepi compelled some bishops to consecrate Constantine, one of his brothers, as pope; but more legitimate electors subsequently, A. D. 768, choosing Stephen IV, the usurper and his adherents were severely punished; the eyes of Constantine were put out; the tongue of the Bishop Theodoras was amputated, and he was left in a dungeon to expire in the agonies of thirst. The nephews of Pope Adrian seized his successor, Pope Leo III, A. D. 79, in the street, and, forcing him into a neighboring church, attempted to put out his eyes and cut out his tongue; at a later period, this pontiff, trying to suppress a conspiracy to depose him, Rome became the scene of rebellion, murder and conflagration. His successor, Stephen V, A. D. 816, was ignominiously driven from the city: his successor, Paschal I, was accused of blinding and murdering two ecclesiastics in the Lateran Palace; it was necessary that imperial commissioners should investigate the matter, but the pope died, after having exculpated himself by oath before thirty bishops. John VIII, A. D. 872, unable to resist the Mohammedans, was compelled to pay them tribute; the Bishop of Naples, maintaining a secret alliance with them, received his share of the plunder they collected. Him John excommunicated, nor would he give him absolution unless he would betray the chief Mohammedans and assassinate others himself. There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to murder the pope; some of the treasures of the church were seized; and the gate of St. Pancrazia was opened with false keys, to admit the Saracens into the city. Formosus, who had been engaged in these transactions, and excommunicated as a conspirator for the murder of John, was subsequently elected pope, A. D. 891; he was succeeded by Boniface VI, A. D. 896, who had been deposed from the diaconate, and again from the priesthood, for his immoral and lewd life. By Stephen VII, who followed, the dead body of Formosus was taken from the grave, clothed in the papal habilaments, propped in a chair, tried before a council, and the preposterous and indecent scene completed by cutting off three of the fingers of the corpse and casting it into the Tiber; but Stephen himself was destined to exemplify how low the papacy had fallen: he was thrown into prison and strangled. In the course of five years, from A. D. 896 to A. D. 900, five popes were consecrated. Leo V, who succeeded in A. D. 904, was in less than two months thrown into prison by Christopher, one of his chaplains, who usurped his place, and who, in his turn, was shortly expelled from Rome by Sergius III, who, by the aid of a military force, seized the pontificate, A. D. 905. This man, according to the testimony of the times, lived in criminal intercourse with the celebrated prostitute Theodora, who, with her daughters Marozia and Theodora, also prostitutes, exercised an extraordinary control over him. The love of Theodora was also shared by John X: she gave him first the archbishopric of Ravenna, and then translated him to Rome, A. D. 915, as pope. John was not unsuited to the times; he organized a confederacy which perhaps prevented Rome from being captured by the Saracens, and the world was astonished and edified by the appearance of this warlike pontiff at the head of his troops. By the love of Theodora, as was said, he had maintained himself in the papacy for fourteen years; by the intrigues and hatred of her daughter Marozia he was overthrown. She surprised him in the Lateran Palace; killed his brother Peter before his face; threw him into prison, where he soon died, smothered, as was asserted, with a pillow. After a short interval Marozia made her own son pope as John XI, A. D. 931. Many affirmed that Pope Sergius was his father, but she herself inclined to attribute him to her husband, Alberic, whose brother Guido she subsequently married. Another of her sons, Alberic, so called from his supposed father, jealous of his brother John, cast him and their mother Marozia into prison. After a time Alberic's son was elected pope, A. D. 956; he assumed the title of John XII, the amorous Marozia thus having given a son and a grandson to the papacy. John was only nineteen years old when he thus became the head of Christendom. His reign was characterized by the most shocking immoralities, so that the Emperor Otho I was compelled by the German clergy to interfere. A synod was summoned for his trial in the Church of St. Peter, before which it appeared that John had received bribes for the consecration of bishops; that he had ordained one who was but ten years old, and had performed that ceremony over another in a stable; he was charged with incest with one of his father's concubines, and with so many adulteries that the Lateran Palace had become a brothel; he put out the eyes of one ecclesiastic, and castrated another, both dying in consequence of their injuries; he was given to drunkenness, gambling and the invocation of Jupiter and Venus. When cited to appear before the council, he sent word that 'he had gone out hunting;' and to the fathers who remonstrated with him, he threateningly remarked 'that Judas, as well as the other disciples, received from his Master the power of binding and loosing, but that as soon as he proved a traitor to the common cause, the only power he retained was that of binding his own neck.' Hereupon he was deposed, and Leo VIII elected in his stead, A. D. 963; but subsequently getting the upper hand, he seized his antagonists, cut off the hand of one, the nose, finger, tongue of others. His life was eventually brought to an end by the vengeance of a man whose wife he had seduced.

"After such details it is almost needless to allude to the annals of succeeding popes: to relate that John XIII was strangled in prison; that Boniface VII imprisoned Benedict VII and killed him by starvation; that John XIV was secretly put to death in the dungeons of the Castle of St. Angelo; that the corpse of Boniface was dragged by the populace through the streets. The sentiment of reverence for the sovereign pontiff, nay, even of respect, had become extinct in Rome; throughout Europe the clergy were so shocked at the state of things, that, in their indignation, they began to look with approbation on the intention of the Emperor Otho to take from the Italians their privilege of appointing the successor of St. Peter, and confine it to his own family. But his kinsman Gregory V, whom he placed on the pontifical throne, was very soon compelled by the Romans to fly; his excommunications and religious thunders were turned into derision by them; they were too well acquainted with the true nature of those terrors; they were living behind the scenes. A terrible punishment awaited the Anti-Pope John XVI. Otho returned into Italy, seized him, put out his eyes, cut off his nose and tongue, and sent him through the streets mounted on an ass, with his face to the tail, and a winebladder on his head. It seemed impossible that things could become worse, yet Rome had still to see Benedict IX, A. D. 1033, a boy of less than twelve years, raised to the apostolic throne. Of this pontiff, one of his successors, Victor III, declared that his life was so shameful, so foul, so execrable, that he shuddered to describe it. He ruled like a captain of banditti rather than a prelate. The people at last, unable to bear his adulteries, homicides, and abominations any longer, rose against him. In despair of maintaining his position, he put the papacy up at auction. It was bought by a presbyter named John, who became Gregory VI, A. D. 1045."—(J. W. Draper, "Intellectual Development of Europe," Vol. 1, ch. XII, pp. 378-381.)

4. Commentary on the Passage from II Thess. 2:3, 4. It should be remembered that the application of Paul's declaration as to the apostasy made in the text, is the one generally made by theologians of Protestant denominations. It is in no way peculiar to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Let us read the passage again: "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day [the day of Christ's promised advent] shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God."

In his Bible Commentary, Dr. Adam Clarke says of this scripture: "The general run of Protestant writers understand the whole as referring to the popes and church of Rome, or the whole system of the papacy. * * * Bishop Newton has examined the whole prophecy with his usual skill and judgment. * * * The principal part of modern commentators follow his steps. He applies the whole to the Romish church: the apostasy, its defection from the pure doctrines of Christianity; and the 'man of sin,' etc., the general succession of the popes of Rome." An abridgment of Bishop Newton's interpretation is then added; this, in part, is as follows:

"For that day shall not come except, etc.—The day of Christ shall not come except there come the apostasy first. The apostasy here described is plainly not of a civil, but of a religious nature; not a revolt from the government, but a defection from the true religion and worship. * * *

"So that he as God sitteth in the temple, etc.—By the temple of God the apostle could not well mean the temple of Jerusalem, because that, he knew, would be destroyed within a few years. After the death of Christ, the temple of Jerusalem is never called the temple of God; and if, at any time, they make mention of the house or temple of God, they mean the church in general or every particular believer. Whoever will consult I Cor. 3:16, 17; II Cor. 6:16; I Tim. 3:15; Rev. 3:12, will want no examples to prove that under the gospel dispensation, the temple of God is the Church of Christ; and the man of sin's sitting implies his ruling and presiding there. * * *

"Upon this survey, there appears little room to doubt of the general sense and meaning of the passage. The Thessalonians, (as we have seen from some expressions in the former epistle,) were alarmed as if the end of the world was at hand. The apostle, to correct their mistake and dissipate their fears, assures them that a great apostasy or defection of the Christians from the true faith and worship must happen before the coming of Christ. This apostasy, all the concurrent marks and characters will justify us in charging upon the church of Rome. The true Christian worship is the worship of the only true God, through the one only Mediator, the man Jesus Christ, and from this worship the church of Rome has most notoriously departed, by substituting other mediators, and invoking and adoring saints and angels; nothing is apostasy if idolatry be not. * * * If the apostasy be rightly charged upon the church of Rome, it follows, of consequence, that the 'man of sin' is the pope, not meaning any pope in particular, but the pope in general, as the chief head and supporter of this apostasy."

The opinion of Dr. MacKnight is also cited with approval by Clarke. In his "Commentary and Notes"—(Vol. III, p. 100, etc.) MacKnight says: "As it is said, the man of sin was to be revealed in his season, there can be little doubt that the dark ages, in which all learning was overturned by the irruption of the northern barbarians, were the season allotted to the man of sin for revealing himself. Accordingly we know, that in these ages, the corruptions of Christianity, and the usurpations of the clergy, were carried to the greatest height. In short, the annals of the world cannot produce persons and events to which the things written in this passage can be applied with so much fitness as to the bishops of Rome."

CHAPTER X.

**Results of the Apostasy.—Its Sequel**.