Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes; Fourth Edition (78 page)

L
EGATE
: clerical representative of the Pope, exercising extensive papal powers.

L
EGATIONS
: the prosperous parts of the Papal States in the north west of Italy and the Adriatic coast, governed by cardinal legates.

M
AGISTERIUM
: Latin for ‘teaching’. Term currently used to signify the official teaching, and the teaching office, of the Catholic Church, and especially of the Pope and bishops. In the Middle Ages theologians were widely thought of as exercising a parallel and complementary magisterium – hence Henry VIII consulted the theological faculties of the European universities when refused a divorce by the Pope.

M
ETROPOLITAN
: title given to senior bishop (always an archbishop) possessing authority over the other bishops of a region. From the early Church down to the early nineteenth century metropolitan and papal authority frequently came into conflict. In the Roman Catholic Church, no metropolitan can function without the bestowal of the
PALLIUM
by the Pope.

M
ONOPHYSITISM
: from the Greek words for ‘only one nature’: the teaching that in Jesus Christ there was only one nature, which was divine, or an amalgam of divine and human exactly corresponding to neither. Orthodox Christianity insisted that Jesus Christ was a single person composed of two natures, human and divine. In him these two natures were united but not confused. Monophysitism, which was rejected as a heresy, was an attempt to protect the divine nature from suggestions of change or limitati on in the I
NCARNATION
.

M
ONOTHELITISM
: a Greek word for the teaching that there was in Jesus Christ only one will: it arose from the dangerous religious divisions of the Byzantine empire in the seventh century, and was a politically inspired attempt to win over monophysite Christians by softening the teaching that Christ had two natures.

N
ESTORIANISM
: the teaching that in Jesus Christ there were two distinct persons, the God and the man, and not merely two natures. The doctrine takes its name from Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who died c. 451, though it is now believed that he did not himself hold this teaching, which was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon, 451.

N
UNCIO
: permanent diplomatic representative of the Pope to a sovereign state, who is also an instrument of papal authority over the local church.

P
ALLIUM
: circular white stole of lamb’s wool, embroidered with crosses, given by the popes to other bishops, originally as a special mark of honour and communion, now as a formal sign of metropolitan
authority in their region. Since the papal reform era, successive popes have summoned archbishops to Rome to receive the pallium, as a sign of papal sovereignty over them.

P
APAL
S
TATES
: the areas of Italy and southern France which acknowledged the Pope as sovereign. Also known as the Patrimony of St Peter, or the States of the Church. Derived originally from the gifts of Constantine, the Roman imperial family and aristocratic converts to Christianity, they were formally recognised by Pepin and Charlemagne, who undertook to protect them on behalf of St Peter, and were finally abolished in 1870, when Italy confiscated the last of the papal territories.

P
ATRIARCH
: from the fifth century, title given to the bishops of the five senior sees of the universal Church – Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Rome. The Patriarch exercised authority over his whole region and had the right to ordain the metropolitans; from the Middle Ages the title has been extended to other bishops in East and West – e.g. Venice – though without the powers originally associated with the title.

P
ATRIMONY OF
S
T
P
ETER
:
see
P
APAL
S
TATES
.

P
ENTAPOLIS
: the area of the Papal States in Italy containing the ‘five cities’ of Rimini, Pissaro, Fano, Senigallia and Ancona.

P
ONTIFF
, S
UPREME
P
ONTIFF
: Latin pagan title (
pontifex
= a bridge-builder) for priests and the supreme priest of the Roman religion, the Emperor, eventually taken over by bishops and by the Pope.

P
OPE
: Latin term of endearment and respect, ‘papa’, meaning ‘daddy’. Widely applied in the early Church to bishops (the Bishop of Carthage was called ‘pope’), and in the Orthodox churches of the East given to parish priests, from the early Middle Ages in the West its use was restricted to the Bishop of Rome.

P
URGATORY
: in Western Catholic theology, the place or state of cleansing in which redeemed but imperfect souls are believed to await after death the beatific Vision of God. It is believed that the prayers of the living, and the ecclesiastical privileges known as
INDULGENCES
, can assist the souls in purgatory through this process of cleansing.

S
ACRED
C
OLLEGE
: the collective body of the
CARDINALS
.

S
CHISM
: Greek word meaning tear: applied to formal divisions within the Church for doctrinal or other causes.

S
IMONY
: from Simon Magus, a magician who attempted to buy magical powers from the Apostles. The name given to the sin of paying or receiving money or favours in return for spiritual office or promotion. In the period of the reform papacy it was thought of as a heresy.

S
UBARBICARIAN BISHOPRICS
: the seven ancient dioceses round Rome whose bishops were senior members of the College of Cardinals.

S
YNOD
: a local assembly of clergy under their bishop, or of a number of local bishops, and possessing less authority than a
GENERAL COUNCIL
.

U
LTRAMONTANISM
: Latin term meaning ‘the other side of the mountains’, i.e. the Alps, hence the doctrine that lays great emphasis on the supreme authority of the Pope on the Church as a whole outside his own diocese: the opposite of G
ALLICANISM
. By extension, the style of piety and churchmanship associated with the nineteenth-century papacy and Italian church.

V
ATICAN
: the modern centre of the papacy, made up of the basilica church of St Peter and the buildings round it, occupying the ancient Roman
mons Vaticanus
, Vatican Hill. Outside the ancient city of Rome, the Vatican was not the original papal residence, and St John Lateran not St Peter’s is the cathedral church of Rome. Since the annexation of Rome to the state of Italy in 1870, however, the Vatican has been the Pope’s main residence and the administrative centre of the Church. By the Lateran Treaty of 1929 the Vatican City was recognised as an independent state, of which the Pope is the sovereign.

APPENDIX C

HOW A NEW POPE IS MADE

The papacy can be vacated only by the resignation or the death of a reigning pope: there is no provision in canon law for the deposition of a pope, even in the event of lunacy or incapacity. No pope has voluntarily resigned since St Celestine V in 1294, although in resolving the Great Schism by deposing all three claimants to the papacy, the Council of Constance in 1415 permitted the ‘real’ (Roman) Pope Gregory XII the face-saving fiction of resignation. The provisions for the election of a new pope were last revised in February 1996 by Pope John Paul II, in the Apostolic Constitution
Universi Dominici Gregis
, which introduced some revolutionary changes into a process which in essentials had been standardised for centuries.

On the death of the pope all the heads of the various Vatican Congregations are immediately suspended from their offices: only the Cardinal Camerlengo (Chamberlain, the head of the Papal household), the Cardinal Major Penitentiary (responsible for the adjudication of grave cases of conscience), the Cardinal Vicar of Rome (who administers the diocese) and the Cardinal Archpriest of St Peter’s (where the Pope will be buried) remain in office. If there is no Camerlengo at the time of the pope’s death, the Cardinals present in Rome elect one. The Camerlengo is responsible for ascertaining and certifying that the pope is in fact dead (traditionally this was done in a ritual in which he tapped on the dead pope’s forehead with a small ivory mallet, calling him three times by his baptismal name, but this custom has now lapsed). The Camerlengo also ritually smashes the Fisherman’s Ring, the gold signet-ring with which papal documents were once sealed, and which is made fresh for each pope and engraved with his name. The Cardinal Dean (the senior cardinal) then summons the whole college of cardinals, and all the routine powers of the papacy are
exercised in the vacancy by them collectively, meeting daily in the Vatican in General Congregations. The curial departments continue their ordinary business under their deputy prefects or secretaries.

Nine days of mourning are observed for the pope, whose funeral is held in St Peters. Popes are traditionally buried in a triple coffin, the inner shell of cypress, the next of lead and the outer one of plain elm. Not sooner than fifteen days, nor later than twenty, after the announcement of the pope’s death the cardinals must assemble in conclave to elect a successor. In preparation for the conclave the cardinals are addressed by two preachers, chosen for their orthodoxy and wisdom, who reflect on the Church’s needs and the considerations which the cardinals should bear in mind in making their choice. The conclave begins with a solemn mass invoking the aid of the Holy Spirit in St Peter’s, and takes place in the Sistine Chapel within the Vatican Palace itself, into which the cardinals process while a hymn to the Holy Spirit is sung. In the past, provision of adequate accommodation in the Vatican for the cardinals and their staff during the conclave has been a recurrent problem, and conditions have often been primitive in the extreme. For the future, cardinals will live during the conclaves in a specially constructed and comfortable hostel in the Vatican grounds, the Domus S Marthae (the House of St Martha), opened by John Paul II in May 1996. The Domus S Marthae normally serves as a conference centre and residence for selected Vatican officials, but it was built with conclaves specifically in mind. It has 130 suites and single rooms for the cardinal electors and their attendants – who include priests from the religious orders able to hear confessions in all the languages of the cardinals – and two medical doctors, together with the catering staff needed to feed them. The number of cardinal electors was set at 120 by Pope Paul VI, and this number was confirmed by John Paul II in 1996, cardinals losing the right to take vote in a papal election when they reach the age of eighty. However, restricting the number of electors to 120 is likely to prove impossible in practice, since the pope’s concern to make the College of Cardinals as inclusive and representative as possible of a world Church has inexorably inflated numbers. The consistory of February 2001, at which 37 new cardinals were created (the largest number ever announced at a single consitory), took the total number of cardinals at that time to 178, and the number of qualified electors to 128. There is no procedure in place for selecting the 120
entitled to vote, nor, if these numbers are maintained or increased, is it at all clear where the extra numbers would be accommodated during the conclave.

Once the cardinals have entered the conclave, the Domus S Marthae and the Sistine Chapel are sealed off, all contact with the outer world is forbidden, and the cardinals and their assistant staff take an oath of secrecy about the proceedings of the conclave. Conclave means ‘with a key’, and they have always been surrounded with rules designed to ensure that external pressure is not brought to bear on the cardinals as they make their choice. Under the current rules, however, electors who unavoidably turn up late have to be admitted, even if the conclave has already begun its work (before the days of air travel, American and other non-European cardinals often arrived too late to exercise their rights as electors, a matter which caused immense and understandable resentment).

For more than 800 years the normal mode of election of a pope has been by secret written ballot. Nowadays the election takes place in the Sistine Chapel, from which all assistants are excluded during voting, leaving only the cardinals. Three ‘scrutineers’ are chosen at random from the cardinals to oversee the voting. The cardinals are given a small supply of rectangular voting forms which say in Latin ‘I elect to the Supreme Pontificate’, below which is a blank space in which to write a name. Each elector writes a name in the space provided, and folds the form once length-ways so as to conceal their choice. Cardinals are also encouraged if possible to disguise their handwriting. Taking the folded form between thumb and index finger of the right hand, the cardinals then approach the altar of the Sistine Chapel in order of seniority, each one announcing in a clear voice ‘I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one whom, before God, I think ought to be elected.’ On the altar is a large chalice covered with a metal plate or paten. The cardinal places his ballot paper on the paten, and tips it into the chalice, watched by the other electors. He then returns to his place. Elderly or infirm cardinals have their votes collected from their places by a scrutineer. Cardinals confined to their rooms by illness place their votes in a sealed ballot box, carried to their room by three randomly chosen ‘Cardinal Infirmarians’, who ensure that no malpractice takes place during this procedure.

In theory the cardinals may vote for any adult male Catholic, and
need not confine their choice to a member of the College of Cardinals. In practice, every pope since 1389 has already been a cardinal and the election of a non-cardinal is nowadays almost unimaginable.

When each round of voting is complete, the three scrutineers count the ballot papers into another chalice. If there is a discrepancy between the number of papers and the number of electors, all the ballots are burned unopened and the whole procedure is repeated. If however all is in order, counting begins. Each of the three scrutineers in turn looks at each ballot paper and records the name there in writing: the third scrutineer calls out the names so that all the cardinals can make their own record. The votes are totalled for each person nominated, and each bundle is sown together with a thread through the word ‘eligo’, ‘I elect’. The outcome is announced formally, and then checked by three ‘cardinal revisers’, again randomly chosen at the outset of the conclave. Since the eighteenth century, if the outcome has been indecisive the bundles of votes are taken to a specially constructed stove with a chimney visible in St Peters Square, and burned along with a chemical which turns the smoke a dense black. This is a signal to the outside world that the vote has not produced a pope. If the vote has been successful, the chemical is omitted and the smoke is white.