Pius VI, who died in exile from Rome<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\u201cHow heavy the papal mantle weighs,\u201d wrote Dante in his Divine Comedy<\/em>.\u00a0 The shepherding of some 1 billion Catholics is no simple business, so one cannot begrudge the frail Pope Benedict for stepping down.\u00a0 Given the rarity of such an event, the recent media frenzy is understandable.\u00a0 Much commentary has and will focused on Benedict\u2019s legacy and the next papal election. \u00a0But given that traditionally only death separates a pope from office, the moment also calls for remembrance of those popes who finished their office under, well, grimmer circumstances.<\/p>\nThe Apostle Peter, according to Catholics, was the first pope. Tradition claims he was crucified upside down in Rome because he felt unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as Christ.\u00a0 Peter was the first of fourteen popes who are known or believed to have been martyred between the first and seventh centuries, the last being Martin I in 655.\u00a0 In light of the expansion of Christianity during this time, the church father Tertullian\u2019s famous line that the \u201cblood of martyrs is the seed of the church\u201d is not beside the point.<\/p>\n
Things get shady from the ninth to the eleventh century.\u00a0 At this time, the papal office became an object of contention among wealthy, feuding Roman families. \u00a0No less than about a third of the popes from 872 and 1012 died under mysterious, often macabre circumstances.\u00a0 John VIII (872-82) was bludgeoned to death by members of his own entourage.\u00a0 Stephen VI (896-97) was strangled.\u00a0 Leo V (903) was deposed and likely murdered by order of his successor, Sergius (904-11).\u00a0 John X (914-28) died from suffocation.\u00a0 Because of popular distrust of Pope John XIV (983-84), the Antipope Boniface VII (974, 984-85) arrested him and placed him in the Rome\u2019s Castel Sant\u2019Angelo, where he died either from poison or starvation, depending on one\u2019s sources.\u00a0 (\u201cAntipope\u201d is a term used by the Church to speak of papal claimants of questionable legitimacy.)<\/p>\n
Incidentally, the first German Pope Gregory V (996-99) died under suspicious circumstances, likely poisoning.<\/p>\n
So not all popes have enjoyed longevity in office. Many pontificates have been much shorter than Benedict\u2019s eight years.\u00a0 In the history of the papacy, there have been numerous so-called \u201cyear of three popes,\u201d when one pope died within a year of holding office, occasioning another papal election.\u00a0 Sometimes, it has been a matter of days; John Paul I, for instance, died after only thirty-three days in office in 1978\u2014a death that still stokes conspiracy theories.\u00a0 And one year, 1276, was actually a year of four popes: Gregory X, Innocent V, Adrian V, and John XXI, who died tragically in office in 1277 when his study collapsed on him.<\/p>\n
Some of the longest reigning popes have met vexing ends.\u00a0 Pope Pius VI (1775-99) witnessed the desecrations of the French Revolution, including the burning of his effigy in Paris and the turning of Notre Dame briefly into the \u201cTemple of Reason.\u201d\u00a0 When French forces captured Rome in 1798, he was kidnapped with the idea of hauling him back to Paris.\u00a0 In 1799, he died en route in Valence in a dilapidated hotel, purportedly praying for his enemies.\u00a0 When he had earlier pled to finish his days in Rome, the French general Berthier shot back: \u201cOne can die anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
The longest reigning pope Pius IX (1846-78) died a distraught \u201cprisoner of the Vatican\u201d after nationalists unified Italy by confiscating the last remnant of the Papal States in 1870, ending about a millennium and half of papal temporal rule in Rome.\u00a0 During the funeral procession in 1878, Pius\u2019 corpse had to endure the ignominy of some hoodlums who almost succeeded in throwing the casket into the Tiber.<\/p>\n
As has been pointed out many times now, the last pope to resign from office prior to Benedict was Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415 to end a feud within the church over rival claimants to the papacy.\u00a0 Since then (and largely before then) the tie between a pope and his office has been one of \u201ctill death do us part.\u201d<\/p>\n
Has Pope Benedict broken with tradition or allowed for a new one?\u00a0 Time will tell.\u00a0 But given the fate of some of his predecessors, the least one might do is hope that this aging pope might look forward to a retirement as restful as his death is peaceful.<\/p>\n
*This post originally appeared as a Faith+Ideas Column at Gordon College.\u00a0 I am grateful to be able to re-post it here.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cHow heavy the papal mantle weighs,\u201d wrote Dante in his Divine Comedy.\u00a0 The shepherding of some 1 billion Catholics is no simple business, so one cannot begrudge the frail Pope Benedict for stepping down.\u00a0 Given the rarity of such an event, the recent media frenzy is understandable.\u00a0 Much commentary has and will focused on Benedict\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1189,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,305],"tags":[739,741,695,742,740,743],"class_list":["post-3319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roman-catholic-church","category-tal-howard","tag-benedict-xvi","tag-catholic-church","tag-papacy","tag-pius-ix","tag-pope","tag-vatican"],"yoast_head":"\n
The Agony of Papal Exits<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cHow heavy the papal mantle weighs,\u201d wrote Dante in his Divine Comedy.\u00a0 The shepherding of some 1 billion Catholics is no simple business, so one cannot\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/03\/the-agony-of-papal-exits\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Agony of Papal Exits\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cHow heavy the papal mantle weighs,\u201d wrote Dante in his Divine Comedy.\u00a0 The shepherding of some 1 billion Catholics is no simple business, so one cannot\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/03\/the-agony-of-papal-exits\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Anxious Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-03-04T05:37:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-03-01T21:38:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/files\/2013\/03\/Pius-VI-225x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Thomas Albert Howard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Thomas Albert Howard\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/03\/the-agony-of-papal-exits\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/03\/the-agony-of-papal-exits\/\",\"name\":\"The Agony of Papal Exits\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-03-04T05:37:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-03-01T21:38:38+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/fc69e5b65a13ea30a509aff04ab68c24\"},\"description\":\"\u201cHow heavy the papal mantle weighs,\u201d wrote Dante in his Divine Comedy.\u00a0 The shepherding of some 1 billion Catholics is no simple business, so one cannot\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/03\/the-agony-of-papal-exits\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/03\/the-agony-of-papal-exits\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/03\/the-agony-of-papal-exits\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Agony of Papal Exits\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/\",\"name\":\"Anxious Bench\",\"description\":\"The Relevance of Religious History for Today\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/fc69e5b65a13ea30a509aff04ab68c24\",\"name\":\"Thomas Albert Howard\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9f6ab4fc83ab6e12341cf551c3446b78?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9f6ab4fc83ab6e12341cf551c3446b78?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Thomas Albert Howard\"},\"description\":\"Thomas Albert (Tal) Howard is Professor of Humanities and History in Christ College, the honors of college of Valparaiso University, where he holds the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics. 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