Whys and Wherefores

Been there, done that, not going back

I do get asked from time to time why I do this blog.  It is time consuming and I have a fairly heavy set of responsibilities as it is.  I do enjoy the research and the thought processes preparing the blog entails.  It keeps me learning new things and finding new perspectives.  But the primary reason that I do it is that I had been finding over the past several years that the understanding of the Church was, for many Catholics, growing more and more narrow because of a lack of historical perspective that was letting them drink the Kool-Aid of the Catholic religious right. 
I am a child of Vatican II.  I was born and mostly raised before the Council.  I remember the Traditional Latin Mass well.  I was an altar server.   Being both the altar boy MC for Solemn Masses and a weird kid, I knew the rubrics and ceremonial in great detail. Moreover, I have had six years of Latin in school (and later became a Latin teacher) and always liked the Latin stuff.  Pius XII was the pope of my childhood and I remember the October night when they broke into the television shows to tell us that he had died.  I remember the meatless Fridays, the Ember Days, the Lenten fast.  When I made my first communion there was nothing to eat or drink ( but water—I am not that old) from midnight.  Nuns were dressed in yards of black serge and heavily veiled.  We had may-crowning every May, Benediction every Wednesday, Stations of the Cross every Friday in Lent.  We stood when Father came in, knelt for Holy Communion, and learned to genuflect on the left knee to kiss the Bishop’s ring. It was Full Monty Catholicism. 
Moreover we were a very religious household.  My Dad was for many years a daily mass-goer as was his father.  Mom went to Mass on Sundays.  We said the rosary after dinner during Lent and whenever else it would strike my parents that we should do so.  We had grace at table.  There was a crucifix in every room but the bathroom.   The Infant of Prague presided over the living room, the Sacred Heart in the foyer.  Various other images and pictures could be found elsewhere around the house. Dad’s sister was a nun, his aunt a Reverend Mother.  Masses were said regularly for deceased relatives.  Candles were lit in Church.  And there were always priest friends in the house.
Maybe it was the priest-friends but ours was not a thoughtless Catholicism.   Religion was discussed and argued.  We had books and magazines about our faith.  My parents belonged to CFM (Christian Family Movement) and several couples would gather monthly in our house with one of the parish priests to study their faith. Dad would ask us at dinner what we had learned in school that day and paid particular attention to religion.  God help the nun who was tinged with Feeneyism.   When priests were over—which was often several times a week—we kids could listen to the conversations and we could ask questions.  Our religion was not something hard and fast, something embalmed or mummified, but something alive and vital.  It certainly wasn’t something somber or joyless.  And it was never above questioning.  You followed the rules—especially Sunday Mass and frequent confession—but you could question anything and anyone.
I remember when Vatican II was announced.  I had no idea what an Ecumenical Council was—who did?  There hadn’t been one in our lifetimes.  We were fascinated by this opening the door to our Protestant neighbors.  (There were, in my family, no Protestant relatives.)   After all these years of cold shoulder, they were now  to be “separated brothers?”   I remember first hearing “A Mighty Fortress” being belted out on the pipe organ in our Church—it was a postlude after Benediction one Wednesday evening and it was Art Smith, a seminarian from our parish at the keyboard.  I knew Luther had composed it; but then I always knew things I wasn’t supposed to know.  I told  you I was a weird kid who had a lot of useless information.  And I knew hearing it that a new day was dawning for me and my Catholic faith.  I have never lost the thrill of that dawn and for me Catholicism represents a continuous dawn.
I began to panic about twenty years ago that the sun that had been so long dawning was now beginning to set.  I could see the slow but steady shutting down of the optimism generated by the Council.  The windows once opened were now being closed and locked.  I was willing to allow the changes to come progressively—not all at once; the slow pace of change made that dawn last.  But now changes were not only coming more slowly, they were being reversed.  I saw things creeping back into the liturgy.  Some priests were refusing to give people communion in the hand.  Others were banning women from serving as lectors or Eucharistic ministers.  Churches where communion had been given under both species were now backtracking on that.  Under the banner of “dignity” the liturgy was being reduced to rubricism in some places.   I was in the diocese of Arlington Virginia at the time and that diocese is particularly weird, or I should say has more than its fair share of abnormal clergy, but there was Father Fessio and Adoremus and there was Mother Angelica and EWTN and there was the Diocese of Lincoln and the Diocese of Peoria and I saw the seeds of this (what one colleague of mine calls) “Mordor Catholicism” starting to propagate like dandelion fluff on a summer breeze. Were we going to lose the Council and the Church of the ordinary folk?
It was at this time that I was offered an editorial position in Rome.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with the Vatican, of course, but it was Rome and it put me into the stream of international Catholicism.  I had lived in Rome before—while doing my graduate work—and was a frequent visitor to the city, but living there deepened my experience of a genuinely Catholic culture that is far richer and more diverse than the ultramontane knock-off Catholicism some people were trying to push as “authentic” Catholicism back in the States.   I saw that the parishes of Rome had altar girls and Eucharistic ministers and women lectors and contemporary music choirs.  I saw that they not only stood for communion but for the consecration at Mass. Italian priests wore regular clothes.  (We always said that if you saw a priest on the street in Rome in a cassock, nine times out of ten he was American, and eight times out of that nine he was an American on vacation in Rome.)  Most of the religious sisters in Rome wear regular clothes. 
Modern religious art is highly valued in Rome—and one of the best collections is in the Vatican museum. 
Coming back Stateside I grew more and more concerned that an unhealthy distortion of Catholicism was being pushed by certain segments of the Church in this country as somehow or other “more Catholic” than mainline Catholicism.  In my work as an academic I have been able to travel extensively and I saw that the Church through most of the world was still alive and vibrant.  I was puzzeled that it was easier to find a Tridentine Mass in Washington DC or New York than it was in Rome and yet this revival of the TLM was allegedly at the desire of the Pope.  I was puzzled to see priests wearing things here (birettas, fiddle-back chasubles, ferraiolos) that you weren’t seeing in Rome.  And prelates in the cappa magna and with the winter cappa of fur—which had been banned by Paul VI—but there were prelates like Cardinal Burke sashaying into TLM’s like the Queen Mother going to the opera.  What was this all about??? 
I don’t make any claim to be any more authentic than anyone else’s blog or that my Catholicism is any  more orthodox than the next Catholic’s.  But I do want to look at our history—both accomplished and in the making—as a voice that sometimes seems to cry in the wilderness to look to draw from the past but to trust the future rather than to build a future on a poorly thought-out appreciation for a distorted past.    More to come. 

Roots of the Reformation XVI: Charlemagne the Usurper

The French Royal Tombs
in the former Abbey Church of Saint Denis  

OK, vacation is over and I need to refocus.   I want to get back to our “Roots of the Reformation series”  and go back—waaaaay back—to Charlmagne and his heritage.  As I had been writing more than a month ago, there is a long history of Reformations.  It does not begin with Martin Luther—far from it.   Some Reformations have happened within the unity of the Church and some have fractured the unity of the Church.  Charlemagne’s Reformation was one of those that happened within the unity of the Church—indeed fortified the unity of the Western Church.  (It would, however, have repercussions that were partially responsible for the schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople).

For those who think linearly—and most people interested in history do—I owe an apology regarding my postings on Charlemagne.  In the first place I should have kept them together and not interspersed them among the postings on clericalism that I had been doing before I went to Prague—though I have to say those postings got much more attention than these on Charlemagne.  In the second place, I should have posted them in a different order—and begun with this one which explains how Charlemagne got to  be king (and emperor) in the first place as neither did he nor his father come from the French royal line but where members of a family of hereditary civil servants.  After explaining the ascension of his family to the throne, I should have posted the entry on the Carolingian Reformation: Roots of the Reformation VIII: Reformation or Reformations, and then Roots of the Reformation XI: Crown Control of the Church, but as Pontius Pilate used to say: Quod scripsi, scripsi. 

We think of the Popes as having governed the Church continuously from Peter down to the present day but history tells us a very different story.  There were times that the popes had great influence over the Church, even times when it did make its power felt beyond Rome and the towns and cities of central Italy and there were times where the bishop of Rome had now power and little influence beyond his own diocese. For example, at the time of Pope St Gregory the Great (590-604) papal influence (“power” is too strong a word for papal authority at the time) was felt in England and much of what is today France as well as throughout Italy.  On the other hand, a century later, that influence was waning and the pope was little more than a name that was mentioned in the prayers of the Mass.  Of course just that mention was not insignificant as he reminded people that Peter’s successor still governed the Church at Rome and Peter’s mystique was strong throughout the Church.  In practical matters however, the Pope was pretty powerless. There were no papal writs authorizing the consecration of bishops; such decisions were entirely local.   Bishops were pretty much supreme in their dioceses except where a strong Archbishop could—usually with royal backing—convince the bishops of his province to conform to his ideas.  Bishops were chosen by the clergy of their dioceses—usually with the confirmation and blessing of the King or the local nobility. 

In the eighth century papal power received an important boost due to a dynastic change in France.  The Kings of the Franks were sacred persons—heirs of the great Clovis who had converted to Christianity in 496 and brought his people with him.  Saint Remi had anointed Clovis with a heaven-sent chrism (or so the story goes) and thus he and his line, the Merovingian Kings of the Franks, were a God-chosen line to govern.  As time passed, however, the Merovingians began to enjoy the kingship too much and allowed their prime ministers, the “Mayors of the Palace” to assume actual power.  This office, like the kingship, became hereditary in the Pippinid family.  The power and esteem of the Pippinds soon matched that of the royal house.  In fact, because they were actually the holders of power, the popularity of the mayors of the palace exceeded that of the kings and when Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel drove the Muslim armies back across the Pyrenees after the Battle of Tours in 732, thus guaranteeing the independence of the French and the survival of the Christian faith, the Mayors of the Palace established themselves as the de facto rulers of France and the populace saw that the Merovingian Kings were redundant. 

This provided too strong a temptation for the Mayors of the Palace and Charles Martel’s son, Pepin the Short.  He was determined to take the crown for himself.  Of course, Pepin needed some legitimacy to take the throne and not be seen as a mere usurper.  Enter the pope.  Pepin petitioned Pope Zachary asking whether a king who had no power was king at all?  The answer came back that the one who held the power, not necessarily the one who had the lineage, was true king.  This is a revolutionary doctrine and has implications for modern politics.  On the pope’s word, Pepin deposed Childeric III, the last of the  Merovingian kings.  Childeric and his son were forced into the monastic life, ending the dynasty.  Zachary’s successor, Stephen II, came to France and anointed and crowed Pepin in the royal necropolis at the Abbey Church of Saint Denis just north of Paris.  Anointing and coronation in the burial church of the Frankish royalty gave Pepin a share in the legitimacy which had heretofore belonged to the Merovingian kings.  Stephen also conferred on Pepin the title “Patrician (a nobleman) of the Romans” giving him a tie to Rome and its imperial heritage. 

Of course the popes had some political motives for sponsoring a change of dynasty.  History will show you that popes act from political expediency far more than from theological purism.  Their own power in Italy was being challenged by the Lombards, a Germanic tribe who had invaded northern Italy and were threatening Rome.  The popes looked to the new dynasty to protect papal power in Italy; Pepin’s son, Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great) defeated the Lombards in 774 and absorbed them into the empire he was building. 

Charlemagne would not only defend the papacy from the Lombards but would again become involved in defending a pope from the Roman nobility.  The old and noble families of Rome were appalled when in 795 a commoner was chosen pope as Leo III.  The nobility had seen that this office belonged by right to one of them.  The nobility charged the pope with adultery and perjury.  In 799, a gang of thugs, at the behest of the nobility, kidnapped Leo, and when the nobility declared him deposed, attempted to blind him and to cut out his tongue.  He escaped them and fled to Paderborn where Charlemagne met him.  Charlemagne investigated the charges against Leo.  He then returned Leo to Rome for a formal hearing where the pope cleared himself by an oath and Charlemagne reinstated him.  (Today we would never accept a person’s word, even a pope’s, that he was innocent but those were far more generous times. Or may just more naive. )  Two days later, on Christmas day 800, Leo, in turn, then crowned Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans. 

Charlemagne had a clear understanding of the role of the Pope and the Role of the Emperor.  The Emperor was to protect the Church and manage its external affairs—which in Charlemagne’s eyes also meant to appoint bishops and other prelates.  The Pope’s duty was to define the doctrines that united Christianity and to pray for the Emperor and the army whose task it was to protect the Church.

Who's buried in Peter's Tomb?

There are a variety of strings I am anxious to pick up—especially the one on the American Nuns’ investigation—which isn’t about the American nuns at all but about the religious sisters in the States. But give me a day or two and I will come back to that. Right now, I am going to do a little more on the Vatican, specifically the Vatican Basilica.
Everybody knows that St. Peter was buried in Peter’s tomb, but he wasn’t—at least not for long. Granted, when the tomb—or more properly, grave—was excavated in the 1940’s, skeletal remains had been found in it, but it turns out they were an odd assortment of various bones from several individuals, including an older woman and a young man, as well as several animals. Obviously they were not Peter’s bones. Hmmm. What is that all about?
Of course the first problem is there is no definite evidence that Peter had ever been to Rome, alive or dead. There is an ancient tradition (note the small “t”) to that effect, but no contemporary text relates the information. (The Acts of the Apostles tells us that Paul was at Rome, though it doesn’t mention his death there.) There were counter-claims about Peter. A first-century ossuary (a box used to hold the bones of a person who had died, had been entombed, and then when the only the bones were left, whose bones had been put in this “ossuary” so that the tomb could be used again) that had the name “Simon bar Jonah” engraved on it had been found in the 1950’s in the Kidron valley, the great burial field between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives to the east. On the other hand the name Simon bar Jonah would be no more rare in first century Palestine than say “Mike Johnson” might be in twenty-first century ‘merica today. The tradition of Peter dying at Rome—going back to the end of the first century, and the lack of any significant counter-claims, gives plausible weight to the argument that Peter went to Rome and was put to death there under the emperor Nero circa the year 64.
As for the bones in the grave not matching Peter’s age or sex, it turns out, the archeologists excavating the site had overlooked a second set of bones. These bones were not in the grave but had been concealed in a niche in the buttressing wall that supported the monument of “trophy” that had been built over Peter’s grave in the mid second century. This monument is called the “trophy of Gaius” because a Roman presbyter named Gaius left a description of this monument in the final decade of the second century. The bones in this niche had originally been thought to be insignificant as they were not where Peter’s bones were supposed to be—in the grave beneath the monument. The curious thing about this second set of bones is that they are all from one person, they are from a man between sixty and seventy years of age (Peter’s probable age if he died in 64 AD), and they had been disinterred from a previous grave and located in this niche after the flesh had decayed. Moreover, the soil samples clinging to these bones matched the soil in the grave beneath the monument—in other words, the soil of Peter’s grave. Hmmm. So these bones had once been buried in Peter’s grave.
But wait—there is more. Bits of purple thread and golden thread indicated that the bones, at the time of their being immured in the niche, had been wrapped in a very precious fabric, indeed (because of the purple) a fabric which would have been reserved to the use of the Imperial family, or at least the very highest of the Emperor’s household. The story grows more curious.
If you have ever been to the Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican, you have seen in the “confessio”—the open well immediately in front of the papal altar that leads down to the crypt—the “niche of the pallia.” The pallia are woolen scarves that the pope gives to newly named residential archbishops each year as a sign of their communion with him in the unity of the universal Church. This niche holds a silver coffer (they say it is silver but they had better get some polish and a little elbow grease, it looks to me like bronze) in which the pallia are stored until the day they are bestowed on the prelates—the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, June 29—each year. The niche is decorated with an ancient mosaic of Christ. The only problem is that the niche is slightly off center. One would expect it to be directly under the center of the altar which itself stands directly over the presumed site of the tomb of the apostle? Why is the niche off center? Again, hmmm.
The niche is not new. It is original to the basilica which Constantine constructed in 325. It is also directly over—not Peter’s grave, but the recess in that buttressing wall which held the bones of the sixty-something year old man that had been wrapped in the imperial cloth after they had been taken from Peter’s grave. In other words, the architects of the basilica seem to have known the true location of the bones presumed to be Peter’s when Constantine built his basilica. So what is the story?
The most probable story is this. Peter was martyred in the circus of Nero, a large amphitheater built by Caligula and Nero across the Tiber from Rome. The tradition is that he was crucified upside down—probably one of dozens or even hundreds crucified that night for a variety of reason ranging from being persecuted Christians to rebellious slaves to common criminals. There are stories that they were not only crucified but covered in pitch and set alight as sort of living (or actually dying) torches to illumine the stadium. It is possible; I don’t think there is historical data one way or the other. After the crowds emptied out of the spectacle, disciples probably came and claimed the body or perhaps just rushed off with it in the confusion. (There are some indications of the body just being carried off—namely the absences of any bones from the feet—the Christians having just quickly cut the body down and abducted it.) Peter's body was then taken to a necropolis (a pagan cemetery) across the via Cornelia from the amphitheater and buried in a simple earthen grave less than 500 feet from where he died. Once the body was buried it was left undisturbed in its grave, but the grave itself underwent a series of improvements to protect it against erosion. Then almost a century after Peter’s martyrdom, the Christian community in Rome built a monument over the grave. It was a simple monument—a brick wall faced in red plaster with a white marble pillared canopy over it, the canopy itself surmounted by a marble framed recess. The pillared canopy is about four feet tall, too high to have been meant as an “altar” as some suppose. This monument is the “trophy” mentioned by Gaius. In 258, during the persecution of Valerian, the bones were exhumed and brought for safe-keeping to the catacomb of Saint Sebastian on the Via Appia. Meanwhile “decoy” bones were placed in the traditional grave to mislead any who wished to violate the grave. At a later date, the authentic bones were returned but placed in a concealed aedicule (recess) in the wall supporting the monument so they could be venerated in the traditional spot but not exposed to being stolen or desecrated. When Constantine was building his basilica in 325, he had the bones wrapped in precious cloth, and returned to their aedicule. In building the basilica he constructed a window-like opening over the aedicule through which pilgrims could lower bits of cloth or other souvenirs to touch the tomb (the aedicule which held the bones) and then take home again as relics of their visit. This opening is what became the niche of the pallia and explains why it is off center.
More on the building of the basilicas in a future posting.

There is a variety of images today. The first is a sketch of the "Trophy of Gaius" that was constructed over Peter's grave c. 160 AD. The second is a map of the relationship between the circus of Nero (see third image), the ancient necropolis in which Peter was buried (depicted in blue) and the Constantinian basilica--depicted in yellow--built over the necropolis in 325.

Election of bishops

John Carroll, the United States’ first Catholic bishop, was elected bishop by the clergy of his new diocese in April 1789. Twenty-six priests cast the electing ballots, Carroll received 24 of the votes. His election was confirmed seven months later by Pope Pius VI. Carroll favored the idea that his successor(s) would also be elected. This was not as radical an idea in 1789 as it would be today. In fact, until the French Revolution most Catholic bishops were elected rather than appointed by the Pope. The right of election generally belonged to the canons of the Cathedral Church and the “chapter” of canons, in turn, was most often comprised of the rectors of the principal churches of the See City of the Diocese. More precisely the canons of the Cathedral generally held “prebends” (an endowed “stall” or seat in the chancel of the cathedral) whose endowments consisted of the title (the rectorship) of the principle churches of the Diocese and thus were often called "prebendaries." The French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic conquest of Europe deprived the Church of most of its endowments, including the prebendaries, as the vast land-wealth which the Church had acquired over centuries was secularized (confiscated by the State). The Chapter of Notre Dame in Paris, for example, was allegedly so impoverished that it could barely afford to buy a broom for cleaning the Cathedral when Divine Worship was reestablished there 1802.
During and after the Napoleonic era the Holy See through a system of concordats (treaties made with the Holy See) with the various courts of Europe was able to bypass the newly reconstituted chapters and arrogate to itself the right to appoint bishops, though in a number of dioceses, particularly in Switzerland and in the old Austrian Empire, cathedral chapters often still have the right of election today. Generally this is worked out in such a way that a candidate favored by the Holy See is chosen by the canon-electors but on a number of occasions in the past three decades the Holy See has sought, if not to usurp the chapter’s rights, at least to appoint bishops to the respective dioceses before the chapter can exercise its traditional prerogative. The election of the pope by the Cardinals who are nominally the deacons of the diaconal churches and parish priests of the principle parishes (along with the seven Cardinal bishops of the seven ancient suburbican sees, and since 1965 those among the Eastern Catholics partriarchs who have been named to the College of Cardinals) is a surviving remnant of the election of bishops by the clergy of the diocese.
In the early Church the laity participated with the clergy in the process of electing the bishop. This was not always a tranquil procedure. In 374 the Christians of Milan were on the verge of riot as the Catholics and the Arians were in a bitter dispute over who the new bishop should be. Ambrose, as the governor of the region, a political post responsible for—among other things—the good civil order of the citizenry, arrived to quell the disturbance. An immensely popular governor the had the respect and trust of all. Someone in the crowd shouted “Ambrose for Bishop.” The crowd took up the cry. Ambrose insisted on declining—he was not even baptized much less a priest. But the crowd—and then the Imperial Court—would not hear of his refusal and he eventually was baptized, ordained and consecrated bishop. His disciple Augustine was elected bishop by the Christian community of Hippo Regius at the request of his predecessor who wanted a coadjutor to help him while he was still alive. Martin of Tours was elected by acclamation of the people of that city to be their bishop in 371. Lay participation in the election of bishops survived in many places of the Western Church, including Rome itself, until the Gregorian Reform in the eleventh century when the right of election was generally restricted to the clergy. At the same time, however these elections were rarely free. Political pressure by the Emperor, various kings, or powerful nobles was often applied to the clerical electors to choose the candidate that was the Imperial or Royal choice. While some advocate a return to the election of bishops in the contemporary Church, the experience of Protestant denominations which elect their bishops should give us some caution about politicizing Church leadership and about how such politics can be manipulated for doctrinal matters.
The image today is Francisco de Zurbarán's "Saint Ambrose"

Papal Elections

Yesterday I wrote about the Sistine Chapel and other sites of papal conclaves because many people think that the Sistine Chapel has “always” been the site of papal elections. Part of the problem here is that moderns, and especially Americans, have no sense of history. If something has been done twice in the last fifty years, it is a “tradition” and one presumes that it comes directly from Jesus to the Apostles. We need to develop some good historical sense.
Let’s talk today a bit about papal elections because you may be a bit surprised about how that procedure has evolved and also because it ties into the issue of electing bishops which is something else I would really like to explore. When St. Peter was martyred in 64 AD, the Cardinals did not gather and lock themselves into the Sistine Chapel and then proceed to dump their ballots into a golden chalice placed on the altar from which they would then be counted until one had enough votes for white smoke to signal the waiting crowds that “habemus papam” we had a pope. Indeed, there were no cardinals, no Sistine Chapel, probably no golden chalice, and really not even a “pope.” As for the crowds—hey, this was a time of persecution and the small Christian community in Rome was hiding out to protect their lives. In the early centuries, Rome chose its bishop like other local Churches. The clergy met with neighboring bishops and an assembly of the faithful to elect the bishop. They usually elected one of the principle deacons of the Church, or on occasion a priest. The neighboring bishops would then lay hands on the bishop-elect, consecrating him to his new office. They did not elect a bishop to the post as through most of the early history of the Church, once a man was made bishop of a diocese he could not transfer to another diocese. A bishop was considered “married” to his diocese. This prevented the sort of ambition and careerism which has often been a problem in the Church. As American monsignori joke “no one want to be buried in the Cathedral of Peoria” meaning that many bishops always have their eye on a more important diocese.
It was Pope Nicholas II who at a synod of bishops in 1059 mandated the election of the Pope would be limited to the cardinals. It really wasn’t a departure from the practice of the time when popes were elected by the principal clergy of the diocese of Rome and the bishops of the seven suburbican dioceses. The Cardinal Deacons were the 14 principal deacons of the City of Rome—deacons of churches whose primary function was not a parish but a food distribution point for the needy or, in times of famine, for the general population. The major role of a deacon was not liturgical, but rather care for the poor and the suffering. The Cardinal priests were the parish priests (pastors) of the principal Roman Churches. The Cardinal bishops were (and are) the bishops of those seven sees that surround Rome. Up to this point an important (and actually essential) part of the election of the bishop of Rome was not only the election by the priests and deacons of the diocese, and the confirmation of the surrounding bishops, but the assent of the faithful. The clergy would meet, choose their candidate and receive the approval of the bishops and then present the newly elected bishop for the assent of the faithful. Crowds are fickle, however, and were often manipulated by the various factions—rival family/political groups vying for power—which would sway the election. This left the papacy at the mercy either of the Imperial faction (later called the Ghibellines) or what might be termed the “nationalist” party of the Counts of Tusculum or other local nobility (later called the Guelfs). Nicholas’s reform was primarily to eliminate the influence of the Roman rabble in order to bring stability and good decision making to the process—and it worked. He also wanted, as far as possible, to keep the influence of the Emperor to a minimum. This was part of what historians call the “Gregorian Reform” (after Pope Gregory VII, elected 1073 and the successor but one to Nicholas). By the twelfth century good order had been restored to the papacy and indeed the Gregorian Reform would see some of the best popes in the history of the Church, culminating with Innocent III who, in some respects, may have been the greatest pope in the history of the Church, and certainly one of the most significant.

The image today is the 13th century statue of Saint Peter attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio in Saint Peter's Basilica. It is usually dressed in Pontifical Robes twice a year June 29 the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (with the triregnum tiara) and February 22 (Hey, George Washington's birthday, what a coincidence) the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter (usually without the triregnum)