No branch of history affords such a significant illustration of human craft and human weakness as the story of the ambition, the intrigues, and the vices of the Popes. In its consideration, the fact must never be lost sight of that the Holy Father was, as a necessary consequence of his creed, the earthly embodiment of spiritual perfection,—the vicegerent of Almighty God. Either the admission of a single error of judgment, or a controversy involving the most insignificant tenet sustained by one pope and disputed by his successor, was fatal to the claim of infallibility, which was the foundation of the entire ecclesiastical system. The omniscience conferred by the apostolic succession, which traced its origin to the Saviour Himself, could never be mistaken. The example of the Supreme Pontiff, the relations he sustained to the great officials of his court, his occupations, his diversions, his tastes, his habits, his conversation, were of far greater importance in the eyes of the meanest peasant of some remote kingdom who acknowledged his mission than were the most glorious achievements of any temporal sovereign. The possibilities for the attainment to positions of such authority and influence as were offered by the Roman Catholic hierarchy had been unknown to Paganism. These opportunities enabled men of base origin, but of extraordinary talents, to reach the chair of St. Peter, men whose faults were overlooked or palliated by the indulgent spirit of the age on account of the successful prosecution of their schemes and the veneration which attached to their calling.
Thus, among the powers of the earth, highest in rank, greatest in renown, supreme in influence, pre-eminent in infamy, was the Papacy of Rome. The maintenance of an uniform standard of orthodoxy was little considered by the spiritual potentate whose will was the law of Christendom. It is well known to every student of Church history that Jewish doctrines predominated in the early days of Christianity and controlled the policy of its priesthood. The Pagan ideas and ceremonies inherited from the Roman pontiffs it never laid aside. Every form of heterodox belief was entertained at different periods by the incumbents of the Holy See. St. Clement was an Arian; Anastasius a Nestorian; Honorius a Monothelite; John XXII. an unconcealed atheist. The contradictory dogmas, the acrimonious disputes, the frightful anathemas, that resulted from the adoption of these heretical principles of doctrine were the public reproach of the Christian world. As the power of the Papacy increased, its possession became more and more an object to ambitious and unscrupulous adventurers. It was sought and obtained by arts countenanced only by the vilest of demagogues. It was sold by one Pope to another; and, like the imperial laurel appropriated by the Pretorian Guards, it was put up at auction by cardinals and became the property of the most wealthy purchaser. Some of the Holy Fathers had not taken orders; others had not even received the sacraments of baptism and communion before being invested with the pontifical dignity. In some instances the tiara and the mitre were placed upon the brows of children. Neither John XII. nor Benedict IX. had attained the age of thirteen years when intrusted with the direction of the spiritual affairs of Christendom. An infant of five years was consecrated Archbishop of Rheims. Another who was only ten was placed upon the episcopal throne of Narbonne. Alonso of Aragon, the natural son of Ferdinand the Catholic, was made Archbishop of Saragossa at the age of six. The origin of the vicars of Christ was sometimes of the most obscure and often of the most disgraceful character. Stephen VII., John X., John XI., John XII., Boniface VII., Gregory VII., were the sons of courtesans. In some instances the infamy was further increased by the additional stigma attaching to the crime of incest. The famous courtesan Marozia, who for the greater part of her life disposed of the Papacy at her will, is credited with the installation of eight Popes, all her lovers or her children, one of whom was at once her son and grandson. The empire she acquired by her talents and her beauty lasted almost a quarter of a century. To that epoch is ascribed an occurrence that many writers have designated as fabulous, but which is established by evidence far more convincing than many events that have successfully withstood the most formidable assaults of hostile criticism. It was long asserted by chroniclers of the orthodox faith, and universally credited, that in the capital of Christianity, hallowed by the glorious deaths of countless martyrs, linked with the proud associations of the rise and progress of the spiritual power of the Papacy, and ennobled by the most signal victories of the Church, a monstrous prodigy had occurred. It was said that Pope John VIII., whose sex had hitherto been unsuspected save by those favored with her intimacy, while returning from the celebration of a solemn festival, at the head of a procession of cardinals and bishops and surrounded with the glittering emblems of pontifical power and majesty, had been seized with the throes of parturition in one of the most public thoroughfares of Rome.
The original acceptance of and belief in this portentous catastrophe, and its subsequent denial, form one of the most curious episodes in the annals of the Church. For five centuries it was implicitly received as historic truth. The life of Pope Joan long occupied a prominent place in the biographies of the successors of St. Peter, dedicated to eminent prelates, often to the Pontiffs themselves. The occurrence—whose locality was marked by the statue of a woman wearing the Papal insignia and holding a child in her arms—was minutely described in the works of learned and respectable historians. This memorial was thrown into the Tiber by the order of Sixtus V. Her bust, destroyed by Charles VIII. during the French invasion of Italy, was long an ornament of one of the churches of Sienna. Until the time of Leo X. certain ceremonies, which cannot be described, were publicly instituted at the election of every Pope to determine his sex. To these even the licentious Borgia was forced to conform. John Huss, when arraigned before the Council of Constance, amidst an unbroken silence, reproached the ecclesiastical dignitaries assembled to condemn him, and whom the slightest heretical assertion roused to tumultuous fury, with the imposture which had so signally demonstrated the weakness of the vaunted inspiration of the Papacy. More than five hundred writers, whose interests were identical with those of the Vatican—among them chroniclers, polemic divines, authorities on the history of the Church and its discipline, all enthusiastic members of the Roman Catholic communion—have confirmed the existence of a female Pope.
But, whether true or false, the disgrace consequent upon this gigantic scandal was insignificant when compared with the moral effect of the long series of crimes which disfigure the annals of Papal Rome. The shameless venality of the Princes of the Church had from the most remote times disgraced the proceedings by which was elevated to the throne of the apostles the immaculate Vicar of God. So corrupt was the ecclesiastical society of the capital that no Pontiff who endeavored to live a moral life was secure for a single hour. Celestine was poisoned at the instance of the cardinals eighteen days after receiving the tiara. Adrian V. was poisoned in the conclave itself before his election. The partisans of antagonistic claimants of the Papacy pursued each other with a vindictiveness scarcely equalled by the most intense bitterness of political faction. Each aspirant to the pontifical dignity denounced his opponent as an anti-pope, and exhausted the rich vocabulary of clerical invective in consigning him to the vengeance of Heaven. The defeated candidate was subjected to every variety of torture; to the deprivation of his nose, his eyes, his tongue; to the suffering of confinement in noisome dungeons; to the pangs of prolonged starvation. The temporal enemies of the Holy Father fared even worse than his rivals for spiritual supremacy. No deed was considered too flagitious for the removal of a dangerous and obstinate adversary. Innocent IV. employed the trusted physician and friend of the Emperor Frederick II. to compass his destruction. The Emperor Henry VII. was poisoned by order of Clement V. The assassination of the Medici under Sixtus IV. was planned by that Pope, and carried out before the altar, the signal for attack being the elevation of the Host by the celebrant, an archbishop. Half of the population of Rome was sacrificed to gratify the malignity of Formosus, whose quarrels long survived him and desolated the fairest provinces of Italy. Three years after the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain by Gregory IX. its victims already numbered tens of thousands.
In the variety and shrewdness of schemes for procuring money the statesmen of no government have ever equalled the astute financiers of the Apostolic See. In addition to the infinite number of vexatious and cruel expedients suggested by the possession and exercise of irresponsible power, the Popes employed means which violated every precept of morality, but whose successful issue demonstrated the practical wisdom which had inspired them. Simony was invariably practised, and not infrequently defended, even by those whose manifest duty it was to suppress it. The wealthiest candidate for the Papacy, whose physical infirmities indicated a speedy demise, had the best prospect for the realization of his ambition. The price of a cardinal’s hat varied from one thousand to ten thousand florins; the pallium of an archbishop was rated still higher in the ecclesiastical market, for the dignity of which it was the symbol usually brought thirty thousand ducats in gold. To meet this tax demanded at the death of every metropolitan, the new incumbent was sometimes reduced to pledge the furniture of the altar as security to Jewish usurers, who alone were able to raise such exorbitant amounts; and it was a source of complaint among the devout that Hebrew children had been seen to amuse themselves with the utensils consecrated to pious uses, and that in the unhallowed orgies of their fathers sacred vessels were habitually profaned which had originally been destined to receive the body and blood of Christ. When the exigencies of the Pontiff required it, the sacrifice of a few cardinals afforded a safe and easy means of replenishing the Papal treasury by the sale of the vacant dignities and by the reversion of the estates of the victims to the domain of the Holy See. It is a well-known fact that Alexander VI. died from drinking poisoned wine intended for certain princes of the Church whom he had invited to share his treacherous hospitality. Great wealth was obtained by the sale of absolutions granted by one Pope from the anathemas of his predecessor. This device suggested the traffic in indulgences, promising immunity from all punishment for crime. The avarice of John XXII. prompted him to draw up and promulgate a schedule of fines, so that by the payment of trifling sums the culprit was completely absolved from the moral and secular consequences of the most atrocious offences in the criminal calendar.
In their relations with foreign courts the Popes brought to bear every source of corruption and violence for the accomplishment of their ends. They availed themselves of the prestige attaching to their sacred office for the encouragement of insurrection and parricide. They openly sold the investitures of distant kingdoms. They armed the servant against his master, the vassal against his lord, the subject against his king. They prohibited the education of children as inimical to the interests of the clergy, who alone were declared worthy to enjoy the benefits of learning. When an obnoxious enemy was to be removed, they did not shrink from selecting instruments at whose employment honor and piety alike revolt,—the envenomed poniard, the sacramental elements mingled with deadly poisons and yet blessed by the ceremonies of the officiating prelate, whose instructions impressed the unsuspicious victim with the belief that he knelt in the very presence of God. According to Montaigne, the Holy Father was accustomed to use during the pontifical mass a contrivance which counteracted the effects of a consecrated draught which might otherwise be a messenger of death. From having been the vassals of the Emperor, the tributaries of the Saracen Emirs, and the tools of the Kings of France, the Popes in time arrogated to themselves imperial prerogatives; and his title to the crown was not considered as vested in a sovereign until it had been placed upon his brow by an ecclesiastic duly commissioned by the Successor of St. Peter. Through the insidious influence of a superstition, fostered by the ignorance of the time, the authority of powerful monarchs was disputed in their capitals. Degrading penances were imposed upon and performed by them without remonstrance. The humiliation of the prince in the eyes of his people increased, in a corresponding degree, the importance of the spiritual ruler who could inflict such punishments.
By excommunication and interdict—the one cutting off an individual from the fellowship of believers, the other aimed at an entire community or kingdom and involving the innocent with the guilty—the vengeance of the Church was visited upon all, of whatever rank, who had violated her canons or interfered with her projects of ambition. It is difficult in our age to appreciate the grave effects of ecclesiastical fulminations which the progress of intelligence and the development of civilization have long since deprived of their terrors. Of excommunication, anything besides a human being might be the subject, from a comet to rats, worms, and every kind of vermin. The interdict was equivalent to a dreadful curse inflicted by the vicegerent of God. With awe-inspiring ceremonies, usually performed at midnight to increase their impressive effect, the decree of the Holy See was solemnly proclaimed. In gloomy silence, occasionally broken by sobs and half-stifled lamentations, the terror-stricken multitude listened to a sentence which, in their eyes, exceeded, through the direful consequences it entailed, the severest penalty that any earthly tribunal could inflict. The churches were closed. The bells were silent. The tapers burning on the altars were extinguished. The relics were concealed. Before every house of worship where the Host was enshrined the consecrated wafer was publicly committed to the flames. The crucifixes of chapel and cathedral alike, enveloped in folds of black cloth, were hidden from the reverential gaze of those on whose heads had fallen the censure of the Almighty. All religious ceremonies were suspended save the aspersion, which secured for the Church the hope of another devotee, the solemnization of marriage, and the final rites which dismissed the passing soul on the threshold of eternity. The endearments of conjugal affection, the last blessing of the parent, the diversions of youth, the familiar greetings of friendship and esteem, were all prohibited. Surrounded by black-garbed priests bearing torches, an officiating cardinal, robed in violet,—the mourning of his order,—read the fatal edict which cut off absolutely the only medium of communication between the sinner and his God. From that moment the people were deprived of those welcome ministrations which had been their pleasure and consolation from infancy; which had directed their footsteps; which had confirmed their wavering resolution in many an emergency; which had relieved their sufferings; which had enhanced their happiness and furnished almost their sole amusements. No opportunity was neglected to impress the offending children of Rome with the awful consequences of the malediction which the perversity of their rulers had inflicted upon them. Subjects were absolved from their allegiance. The channels of commerce were closed. Trade of every kind was suspended. Worshippers, whose piety urged them, in spite of ecclesiastical menace, to frequent the portals of the church, were rudely driven back. The use of meat was forbidden, as in Lent; the familiar objects connected with the service of religion disappeared; the bells, deprived of their clappers, were taken down from the steeples; the sacred effigies of the saints were laid upon the ground and sedulously concealed from the profane gaze of an accursed people; the rich trappings of the shrines, the utensils of the mass, the vestments of the priests, were collected and carried away. The festivals which stimulated the devotion and amused the leisure of the gay and careless multitude were discontinued; the procession, which impressed all classes with its solemnity and magnificence, no longer moved with barbaric pomp through the crowded streets lined with long rows of kneeling worshippers; the voice of prayer was unheard; marriages were celebrated in church-yards; the bodies of the dead, denied a resting-place in consecrated ground and deprived even of the ordinary rites of sepulture, were cast unceremoniously beyond the walls of cities, to be devoured by unclean beasts and to poison the air with noxious odors.
When the ban was removed, the purification of every edifice, altar, and vessel, the reconsecration of every relic and image,—rites which demanded heavy contributions,—evinced the foresight and thrift of the priesthood.
Such were the frightful methods by which the Papacy, in an age of ignorance, punished a nation for the offences of a sovereign who had thwarted its schemes, defied its power, or incurred its enmity. In the estimation of the credulous—and in those days all were credulous—the interdict was not only a general curse enforced by every circumstance which could appeal to the prejudices of the devout; it was the sudden intercepting of the means of salvation, only attainable through the agency of the servants of the Church. Mediæval writers have left us affecting accounts of the universal wretchedness which the use of this instrument of ecclesiastical tyranny produced. It rarely failed of success, for no monarch, however bold or arbitrary, could long withstand its power; and the mere threat of its exercise was often sufficient to strike terror into a whole people and to peremptorily check the well-conceived designs of ambitious royalty. The interdict only fell into disuse after the foundation of the Inquisition, the most effective and formidable weapon ever devised by the merciless spirit of Papal despotism.
With the financial exhaustion induced by profuse expenditure in every species of luxury and vice, new and ingenious expedients were invented for the relief of the pressing necessities of the Vatican. The institution and frequent recurrence of the Jubilee, with its concourse of millions of fanatics, each bearing his offering to the insatiable genius of Rome; the Crusades, which acquired for the Papacy incalculable wealth by the conveyance of lands for a nominal consideration and the generous contributions of pilgrims; the Constitutions of Leo, which declared the real property of ecclesiastical foundations to be inalienable; the Inquisition, whose origin was more political than moral, and by whose rules one-half of the property of the condemned was forfeited to the sovereign and one-half to the Church, are prominent examples of the financial ability of the Popes.