The Reform of Papal Elections--part I

Santa Maria in Cosmedin, one of

the seven ancient diaconal Churches

that served as a food distribution

station for Rome's poor in the ealry

and central Middle Ages

Let’s take a look at papal elections as the eleventh century reforms in this procedure are essential to the Gregorian Reform.  You may recall from a wide number of previous entries that one of the chief problems facing the Church in the ninth and tenth centuries was the unstable manner the Romans had of selecting a bishop for themselves.  The process had degenerated into mob violence with the various factions of the Roman mob controlled by any one of several Roman families, most notably the Theophylact clan who were Dukes of Spoleto and Counts of Tusculum and the Crescentii—an ancient Roman family.  For the most part it didn’t matter which family won out in the struggle—the papacy and the Church suffered either way.  The great Roman families all wanted control of the papacy in order to control the vast wealth that had come to the Roman Church and the political power—since the Pope was (usually) not only the spiritual leader of the Roman Diocese but the temporal ruler of much of central Italy. 
     Ever since the earliest days of the Church, not only at Rome but throughout Christendom, bishops were elected by the clergy and faithful of their diocese and then confirmed by the bishops of the surrounding Churches who gathered to consecrate the new bishop through the laying-on-of-hands and the invocation of the Holy Spirit.  As the centuries went on this process often degenerated into mob activity.  One of the most famous examples was the election of a bishop in Milan in 374 when competing factions—one Arian, the other orthodox, were fighting in the streets and the civil magistrate sent to put down the disturbance, a catechumen named Ambrose, ended up being chosen despite the fact that not only was he not a priest but he was not even yet baptized.  It was, of course, a great choice—Saint Ambrose is one of the great bishops of the Church.  Most of the time, and especially in Rome, the outcome was not so fortunate.  Part of this was that the electoral process was out of control.  The clergy numbered in the hundreds and the faithful of the Roman Church was nothing more than a mob. Changes had to be made.
    By the early Middle Ages, the seventh or eighth centuries, in Rome the election devolved on the priests in charge of the principle churches of the city as well as the seven deacons attached to the papal household, and the deacons who headed up the seven diaconal churches.  These diaconal churches were not parish churches, or even primarily worship sites; they were  centers where relief was given to the poor—like Catholic Charities centers today.  One of their most important functions was distribution of grain to the poor—grain from the vast papal estates in Sicily and southern Italy was brought to Rome for poor-relief.  In addition to the principle priests and deacons—there were many more priests and deacons in the city other than these ones who had greater responsibility—the bishops of Rome’s seven suburbican (adjoining) sees formed part of the electoral process.  It fell to them to ordain the new pope if he were not a priest and to consecrate him a bishop if and when he was.  It was very rare in the early Middle Ages for the new pope to be a bishop as there were canons which forbad a bishop to move from one diocese to another—even to Rome and the papacy.  A bishop was considered “married” to the Church of which he was bishop and being consecrated a bishop was a life-long commitment.  This helped avoid some of the ambitious ladder-climbing that too often mars the hierarchy today.  Sometimes, but in those early years, not often, this canon was overlooked.  Election of the Roman bishop by the city’s principal priests, deacons, and the suburbican bishops was not sufficient however.  Before the candidate could be consecrated and enthroned, he had to be presented to the faithful for their acclamation.  This is where the mob violence often came in.   
There had been an attempt in the fifth century to replace the popular election process by having a pope appoint his successor.  Anastasius II who reigned from 496-498 prohibited this practice and insisted that the pope, like other bishops, had to be elected by the clergy and people.  In the seventh an d eighth centuries The Emperors at Constantinople claimed the right to confirm the papal election but this practice fell into disuse after Zachary I in 741.  Emperors also claimed the right to depose popes and while a number were forced to resign,  by the end of the eighth century the actual power of the Byzantine Emperors to enforce their decrees in central or Northern Italy was nil.  (Southern Italy was a different story and remained under Greek control into the tenth century.)  As the Constantinople emperors lost control of Italy and Rome, it created a power vacuum that the Roman mobs filled.  We saw what happened at the end of the ninth and into the early tenth centuries when the papacy went through what was probably its absolute low-point with the “pornacracy” of the Theophylact family controlling the papacy through the machinations of the mother-daughter team of papal mistresses, mothers, grandmothers of Theodora and Marozia. 
     Stephen III was the pope (768-772) who first used the term “cardinal” to describe the priests and deacons who appointment to the principal churches gave them voice in selecting the new pope.  It came from the Latin, cardo, for hinge or pivot—the idea being that the priests of the principal churches and the deacons in charge of the seven diaconal charity stations were the operational pieces of the administrative machinery of the Roman Church that held it together. From the fifth century onwards, Rome had seen a surplus of churches being built as monastic foundations were made inside the city, as prominent citizens decided to build family churches for their special events—especially for burial, and as various civic organizations built churches in which their members could gather for prayers.  Wealthy individuals whose petitions had been answered through the invocation of a particular martyr or saint often built a church as a thank-offering to their heavenly patron.  In the same way, the number of clergy was growing fast as the elaborate papal ceremonial developed and as these various new churches needed clergy to carry on the services.  Many of these clergy came to Rome from all over Europe and had no history with the Roman Church.  Morevover, it became impractical to allow a clergy numbering in the hundreds, between priests and deacons, to have a voice in selecting the papal candidate to present to the faithful for acclamation.   (The lesser clergy—subdeacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, etc. never had a voice in the selection process.)  Thus by designating certain churches, the older and more important, as cardinal churches and their clergy as cardinal priests or cardinal deacons to whom the right of nomination was reserved a more manageable system was devised.  But it would still be almost three centuries before the right was exclusively theirs.  It still resided with the Roman faithful—or as we have seen, the Roman mob—to accept the candidate offered.   Further changes were still needed if Rome was to have decent popes. 

Celibacy--Or Why Father Gets Cranky

Saint Jerome, an early propoinent of clerical
celibacy.  This statute stands in front
of St Catherine's Church, Bethlehem

Before we proceed to the Gregorian Reformation, we need to take a diversion on the topic of celibacy.  Our most recent entry spoke of Sylvester II attempting to impose celibacy on the Catholic clergy, and the idea of a celibate clergy go much further back, but it will become a central issue in the Church only at the time of the Gregorian Reform. 

     In the Apostolic and sub-apostlic eras (33 AD-100 AD) celibacy was a  highly admired but not required virtue for Christians of whatever status or ministry in the Church.  This was rooted in several saying of Jesus recorded in the Gospels and in the writings of the apostles, most notably Paul.  We do not know the marital status of any of the apostles except Peter who had been married, though as it is his mother-in-law and not his wife who is mentioned (and she is never mentioned) in the text whether he was married or a widower at the time of his encounter with Christ is not known.  It is generally taken from his writings in favor of remaining unmarried that Paul was not a married man, though there is a tradition going back as far as Eusebius that he was married but did not bring his wife with him on his missionary journeys.  The author of 1 Timothy says that a bishop should be married but once and have control over his children.  This text would indicate that married men became priests and bishops (in the sub-apostolic Church the distinction between these two ministries was not as precise as it is today).  However, by the fourth century Church fathers such as Jerome and Ambrose—neither of whom were married and Ambrose was a bishop, Jerome was not) were claiming that while married men had become bishops in the early Church they were obligated to refrain from conjugal intimacy (aka sex) with their wives once having assumed the office.  This is not anywhere in the scriptural text or any other source I know of from the first century so I am not inclined to think it holds up historically.  On the other hand, the oral tradition could have conveyed this condition through the two centuries separating these Fathers of the Church from the authorship of 1 Timothy.

      More likely an explanation for this interpretation, however, is the fact that in those two intervening centuries a very negative attitude towards human sexuality had begun to develop in the Christian community.  Tertullian (160-220), though himself married, wrote against sexual relations, and Origen (184-253) went so far as to castrate himself taking the admonition of Jesus that should an organ of the body be an occasion of sin, it should be cut away and cast off.  We also get in this period, the 3^rd and 4^th centuries, the rise of monasticism and its discipline of celibacy.  Indeed the number of men (and to a far lesser extent, women) who embraced the monastic life in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in the late third and throughout the fourth centuries cannot be over estimated; certainly fourth century monastics in the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa would number over a hundred thousand and possibly three or four times that number.  As Christianity spread and monasticism spread from the deserts of Egypt and Syria-Palestine to the metropolitan centers of the Empire and westwards as far as Iberia and even Ireland, celibacy became linked with holiness in the Christian mind.  It became a frequent, but not universal, practice to choose a bishop from among the monks, and thus the celibates.   Nevertheless, the vast majority of clergy and even bishops were married men throughout this period. 

      Sometime in the first decade of the fourth century (probably in 306 AD) nineteen bishops and  twenty-four priests along with an unknown number of deacons and laity gathered at Elivra (modern day Granada) in southern Spain to discuss needed legislation for the Church in Baetica (modern day southern Spain).  They passed legislation prohibiting Christians from marrying Jews or pagans socializing with Jews as an attempt to keep the Christians apart and distinct from non-Christians.  They also forbad a bishop to reconcile to the Church a person who had been excommunicated by another bishop.  Also it was forbidden to give communion to those who had lapsed from the faith during the recent persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, even when the lapsed person was dying.  The Council forbad the use of images in churches.  And finally it declared that bishops, preists, and deacons, even those married, were to abstain from sexual relations under threat of being deposed from their ministries. 

      At the very end of the fourth century a Council of North African bishops meeting at Carthage made the same ruling for the North African Church.  In 385 Pope Siricius responded to those who claimed that since the priests of the Old Law had been permitted marriage and having children, priests of the New Covenant also had this right by reminding those critics of celibacy that because the Priesthood of the Old Law depended on being a descendent of Aaron, it was necessary for priests to beget children in their bloodline, but that the Priesthood of Christ demanded continence. 

      Hilary of Arles convoked the Synod of Orange (France) in 441 and like the Elivra Synod it dealt with a wide variety of ecclesiastical issues including unction of the sick, right of asylum and, once again—celibacy which it mandated for all the higher clergy (bishops, priests, and deacons).  It also cited a synod of bishops at Turin in Northern Italy which had apparently mandated celibacy in 401. 

      These various synods were all local and did not have universal jurisdiction.  There was a proposal for clerical celibacy at the Council of Nicea (325), the first Ecumencial Council, but it was rejected at the insistence of one Paphnutius who himself was celibate but who felt that mandatory celibacy would place too heavy a burden on many priests and be an occasion for them to fall into sin.  Nevertheless many of those at the Council felt that once a man had assumed the duties of the altar, married or not, he should practice continence and one of the canons implies that the clergy, married or single, should live celibate lives.

       In the end, all this legislation had little effect.  Priests and even bishops were still chosen from among the married and had families.  In the Eastern reaches of the Empire, it was the norm for parish priests to be married and have a family, though they were expected to refrain from sexual intimacy with their wives for a period of time, usually one to three days, before celebrating the Eucharist.  In the West—especially in the reaches of northern Europe where rural clergy were normal farmers Monday through Saturday and assumed the vestments for Mass on Sundays before heading back to the plow on Monday, marriage and family were almost as much an economic necessity for the priest as for any other man whose farming demanded help in the fields at sowing and harvest.  The monks practiced celibacy—and hopefully (at least for the most part) chastity as well—but there was a radical division between the monastic clergy in their abbeys among their books and long ceremonies and the parish clergy whose life was not so different from their parishioners .
More to come on this topic.