Many people are not aware of the various intrigues and outright manipulations that went on in Rome. They are possibly aware of some of the more infamous popes like the Borgias through the popular media, but in reality, the Church of Rome was rife with such things and still is. The Papacy is not, as they would have you believe, infallible.
Pope Innocent III held various ecclesiastical positions through the short reigns of four different popes before he became a Cardinal-Deacon in 1190. That is to say that he was well acquainted with how things worked from within the Church. As Pope, he played a major role in shaping canonical laws. He did this through the issuance of conciliar canons and decretal letters. Whatever he, as the Pope, said was the law. It is said that he believed fervently in the supremacy of the Church and its universal authority to rule the empire, but in retrospect it might be more properly said that he was an over-zealous control freak who put his position to good use. He became increasingly involved in imperial/royal elections. I have no doubt that he felt justified in doing so by the Donation of Constantine.
The Donation of Constantine is a forged Roman imperial decree by which the emperor Constantine I supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the pope. During the Middle Ages, the document was often cited in support of the Church of Rome’s claims to spiritual and earthly authority over the right of kings. The Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla is credited with first exposing the forgery with solid philological arguments. Doubts on the document's authenticity had already been cast by the time Valla exposed it. Scholars have since dated the forgery between the eighth and ninth centuries.
Purportedly issued by the fourth century Roman Emperor Constantine I, the Donation grants Pope Sylvester I and his successors, as inheritors of St. Peter, dominion over lands in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, and Africa as well as the city of Rome with Italy and the entire Western Roman Empire, while Constantine would retain imperial authority in the Eastern Roman Empire from his new imperial capital of Constantinople. The text claims that the Donation was Constantine's gift to Sylvester for instructing him in the Christian faith, baptizing him, and miraculously curing him of leprosy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine]
Keep in mind that this is a forgery – one of many that is included amongst the collection of documents known as “The False Derectals of Isisdore”. Constantine’s leprosy and miraculous cure are a fiction, as most likely is his vision that caused him to convert. Constantine was in fact baptized only on his death-bed, and by an unorthodox bishop at that. This completely undermined the authority of the Papacy as far as the Latin Rite Catholics were concerned. Something needed to be done about it. That something was the Donation of Constantine and the lies that went with it. The dating of the Donation seems to have appeared during the pontificate of Pope Stephen II between 752 and 757 CE. Constantine died in the year 377 CE. Given that there is a collection of these false derectals, it would seem that the Church was at this point in time doing any and everything conceivable to consolidate its authority over the known world.
Constantine did not ever in his life give Rome the right to choose kings. Rome gave itself that right, so it could control the masses through the kings it chose that would be more amenable and agreeable to its purpose. This fact becomes evident, when one puts the history of the Church and the nobility of Europe and Asia under the microscope.
As an example of Innocent’s involvement in the election of Kings and a matter of public notice, I provide for you here his papal decree known as “Papal Decree on the choice of a German King, 1201”. There were three men vying for the emperor of Germany. They are named in the document:
“It is the business of the pope to look after the interests of the Roman empire, since the empire derives its origin and its final authority from the papacy; its origin, because it was originally transferred from Greece by and for the sake of the papacy...its final authority, because the emperor is raised to his position by the pope who blesses him, crowns him and invests him with the empire....Therefore, since three persons have lately been elected king by different parties, namely the youth [Frederick, son of Henry VI], Philip [of Hohenstaufen, brother of Henry VI], and Otto [of Brunswick, of the Welf family], so also three things must be taken into account in regard to each one, namely: the legality, the suitability and the expediency of his election......Far be it from us that we should defer to man rather than to God, or that we should fear the countenance of the powerful....On the foregoing grounds, then, we decide that the youth should not at present be given the empire; we utterly reject Philip for his manifest unfitness and we order his usurpation to be resisted by all....since Otto is not only himself devoted to the church, but comes from devout ancestors on both sides.....therefore we decree that he ought to be accepted and supported as king, and ought to be given the crown of empire, after the rights of the Roman church have been secured.” (from Medieval Sourcebook: Innocent III: Letters on Papal Policies)
Pope Innocent III was fond of using derectals himself. A derectal is a pontifical decision on matters of discipline, or a papal exegis or interpretation of what should be done in the case of an apparent violation or transgression of the general laws of the Church. This allowed for a great deal of leeway for the pope who authored the derectal to put his personal spin on canonical law. The recipient of his letter, usually a bishop, was expected to communicate the papal answer to the authorities in the district to which he belonged. These authorities were expected to act in conformity with that decree when these analogous cases arose. Innocent III in this fashion became one of the great legislators of papal law in his time.
Innocent III was also fond of writing letters to powerful people. While he never came out and stated his intentions or agendas directly, the overall intent is contained within the gist of the letter. Let me provide you with an example here:
“Just as the founder of the universe established two great lights in the firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, so too He set two great dignities in the firmament of the universal church..., the greater one to rule the day, that is, souls, and the lesser to rule the night, that is, bodies. These dignities are the papal authority and the royal power. Now just as the moon derives its light from the sun and is indeed lower than it in quantity and quality, in position and in power, so too the royal power derives the splendor of its dignity from the pontifical authority....” (from Medieval Sourcebook: Innocent III: Letters on Papal Policies)
He most definitely had a way with words.
Perhaps now you can better understand the mind of this man and the circumstances of the age in which we find him zealously rooting out heresies and in particular this one known as Catharism. It would seem he was so intent upon quashing the Cathars that he was even willing to throw one of his most devoted archdeacons Pierre de Castelnau under the proverbial bus to accomplish this. When we look at Innocent’s intellect, mind-set and the information he had at hand, he must have known what would happen – that is, if he did not make it happen himself in the name of expedience.
Until next time my friends, be well and take care.
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