The Immaculate Conception

Mary and Jesus, from an altarpiece in

the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine

Florence, Italy

Well, triggered by the word “prevenient” in the new translation for the feast of the Immaculate Conception, we have been looking at original sin in order to better understand how the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception developed.  It is a fairly late doctrine and despite its being infallibly defined we will see that it cannot claim, at least historically, to have been part of the Tradition handed down from the Apostles.  
     As I mentioned in my previous post, while the idea of original sin can be traced back through Augustine to even earlier patristic sources, it is a theological concept that never developed in the Christian East and is unknown in Orthodox and Eastern Catholic sources.  Without a concept of original sin, there is no doctrine of the Immaculate Conception because the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is that Mary was conceived in her mother’s womb without the original sin that has affected the rest of the human family.  Mary is unique in this regard.  The Church says that she was saved from original sin through the merits of the death and resurrection of her Divine son even though that passion, death, and resurrection had not yet taken place in time: hence “prevenient.”  Although the Eastern Churches did not celebrate Mary’s Immaculate Conception they did celebrate her conception, affixing the date  (originally) to December 9—nine months (minus one day) before the feast of her birth.  In the same way the Church celebrated the conception of her Son nine months before the Church celebrates his birth.  (March 25^th is nine months before December 25^th.)  These are the only two “conceptions” I know of being celebrated in the Church calendar.  The feast of Mary’s Conception originated in the Church of Syria (which included the Holy Land) in about the sixth century but soon was celebrated throughout Eastern Christianity. 
       How did the feast come to the West?  Scholars agree that it was the Normans who introduced the feast to the Western Church.  In the eleventh century Normans conquered Sicily and Southern Italy where the Church, at that time,  followed the Greek Rite rather than the Western Latin Rites.  It was probably at this time that the Normans became familiar with the feast of the Conception of Mary.  There was a problem though in the west.  Western theologians, including Augustine, saw that Mary was, like the rest of us, conceived in original sin.  How can we celebrate a sinful conception?  (Remember the East, not believing in original sin, saw no sin in the conception.)  Immediately a theological debate broke out.  Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a great devotee of the Blessed Virgin insisted that she, like us, was conceived in original sin.  Saint Thomas would pick this up and affirm that Mary was conceived in sin.  The Franciscans and Carmelites however, came to Mary’s defense and insisted that she had been spared original sin in order to prepare her for being the Mother of Jesus.  The debate raged through the Middle Ages.  When Pope Sixtus IV put the feast of Mary’s Conception on the universal calendar in the fifteenth century it was simply called the Conception of the Virgin.  The Dominican Pope, Saint Pius V, in revising the Roman Calendar also simply called it “The Conception of the Virgin.”  In Franciscan and Carmelite Churches, and several dioceses, however, it was called “The Immaculate Conception.” 
       The doctrine remained an open question for centuries with Catholics free to believe that Mary suffered the consequences of original sin or that she had been preserved from it by a special dispensation of “prevenient” grace.  In much the same way, while Catholics today must believe that Mary was assumed body and soul at the end of her earthly life, we are free to believe that she died or that she did not die before her assumption.  The matter is undefined.  In regard to the Immaculate Conception,  however, Pope Pius IX closed the issue in 1854 by defining the doctrine that Mary was conceived without sin through a dispensation on the merits of her Son’s passion, death, and Resurrection.  Thus today this is a defined dogma for the Church, though the Eastern Churches—the various rites that comprise the Eastern Churches in union with Rome as well as the Orthodox Churches, sort of nod their heads in ambiguous assent and go on their way thinking that we westerners argue over the darnedest things.  And perhaps we do. 

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Julius II

Well Popes may  be infallible at times but they are never immortal.  (The “t” is crucial in that word, they are often, as we have seen, immoral.)  Julius died in 1513.  It was only at the very end of his life, in those last few days, that he thought to ask the members of his household for their prayers for his soul.  Better late than never.  And Julius, though not a good man, was a good pope—in fact a great pope.  That is how it often is.  Saints almost invariably make bad kings, presidents, rulers-for-life, and popes.  And they are, of course, absolute failures at being despots.   Nevertheless, Julius went off to his reward, whatever it may have been (and would, of course, still be).  Personally, I am inclined to trust in the mercy of God even for someone like Julius, but the Dutch humanist Erasmus wasn’t.  He wrote a scathing essay: Julius Exclusus de Caelis (Julius kicked out of heaven) a biting satirical dialogue between an adamant Peter and a Julius bewildered that with all his power and wealth Peter won’t admit him to paradise.  After all what is a little pederasty (and a lot of simony) compared to all the art he sponsored, the battles won, the wealth accumulated for the Church.  (Boy it sounds like Bernie Cardinal Law, doesn’t it???   Of course Bernie’s battles were with people like Cardinal Bernadin and Joan Chittister and I don’t recall any art. Well, moving on--)    
     Julius died and he left Michelangelo 10,000 ducats (approximately 450,000.00 in toda’s money).  The tomb was never built.  But the Basilica would continue.  Julius was interred in the vault of his uncle, Sixtus IV.  The arrangement was meant to be temporary and in a certain way it was.  About fifteen years later, during the sack of Rome, the tomb was violated and the graves desecrated.  The elegant bronze tomb of Sixtus IV was  displaced (it is now in the museum of the Treasury in Saint Peter’s Basilica) and replaced--a cenutry anhd a half later--by stone slab marking the vault as the grave of Clement X who died in 1676.  The three popes are jammed in the vault like the poor three to a bed.  Sic transit gloria mundi. 
      Julius died leaving the Church quite secure financially—with the equivalent of about  18,000,000 USD in the treasury—half in gold the other in jewels and ornaments.  It wouldn’t go far in the Vatican today but was a lot in those days.  Nevertheless, Julius was anxious to provide a steady flow of income for his basilica and so only a few months before he died he approved his banker, Agostino Chigi’s, scheme of selling indulgences.  Julius didn’t know it, but it was an unfortunate note to go out on.    On the brighter side he also called a Council—Lateran V—for the reform of the Church.  It was not totally a noble gesture; it was meant to ward off the threat from calls for Reform coming from papal enemies such as Louis XII of France, but better to do the right thing for the wrong reason than not to do the right thing.  We’ll talk more about Lateran V when our blog entries on Reformations catches up to this point.  In the meantime stay tuned. 

History of St. Peter's Basilica: neglectful popes

Vlad Dracula, pen pal of Pius II

Yesterday we talked about Nicholas V and his plans to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica on a vast new scale.  Alas, it never happened—with his death in 1455, the project came to a sudden halt and the old church tottered on—one minor earthquake (and Rome has its share of them) away from becoming a pile of rubble.  The apse of the projected basilica stood behind the Constantinian church to a height of seven feet as a reminder that there was a need to address the problem of the structural instability of the 1100 year old structure. (Think about it: have you ever seen a building that is 1100 years old?) but the succession of fifteenth century popes never addressed the issue.  O they built a buttress here, a loggia there and put up a tomb or two, but there was no progress on what to do with the basilica itself.  Sixtus IV della Rovere built the Sistine Chapel—but that was connected with the Vatican Palace, not the Basilica.  (The Sistine Chapel is not part of the basilica, but is one of the chapels of the adjoining Vatican Palace.)  In fact, the palace was growing expedientially  as various popes added apartments for their use, preferring not to live in the suites of their predecessors.  Popes were busy people.  Nicholas had made the basilica a priority, but his successor Callistus III was busy writing bulls authorizing the Portuguese to enslave Africans and giving the impetus to the West African Slave Trade.  (Actually Nicholas had found time away from his basilica project to do the same.)  Callistus also was trying—unsuccessfully—to organize a crusade against the Turks who had captured Constantinople in 1453.  To his credit he ordered a retrial of Joan of Arc in which she was found innocent of all charges—a bit too late, however, to be of much help.  Callistus was succeeded as pope by Pius II who, under the name Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini had been a brilliant Renaissance scholar.  As pope he busied himself writing Count Dracula (the real one—Vlad III of Wallachia, aka Vlad the Impaler) encouraging him to fight against the Turks; Vlad was only too happy to find some Turks or anyone else who might help him earn his moniker.   Pius—who would have rather sat down with a glass of wine and some ancient Roman inscriptions, found himself very busy trying to organize the crusade envisioned by Callistus.  He called a Council for Mantua to get a Crusade going and in the end determined to lead it himself, but died before he could set out.  He did rebuild his home town, renamed in his honor (and well worth the visit, especially if you like Italian delis) renamed after him: Pienza (in the province of Siena in Tuscany).  And he was anxious for Church Reform, employing Nicholas of Cusa, as had Nicholas V, in making significant progress in addressing problems in the Church in the Netherlands and Rhineland.  The Basilica remained overlooked.  Nicholas of Cusa should have tried to clean up problems closer to home: just wait and see how    bad things get,  After Pius II, the next pope was Paul II—a paranoid Venetian who used excommunication of opponents—political, religious, or administrative—like other people send Christmas cards. Furthermore, he reveled in ignorance and as much a humanist as had been Pius II, Paul II was opposed to the Renaissance and its scholarship.  He much preferred eating melon and being sodomized by papal pages, one or the other (depending on whom you read) caused a fatal heart attack.  (Of course, it might have been both/and rather than either/or.)  No progress on the Basilica.  His successor, Sixtus IV, spent his time trying to murder the Medici and making his nephews cardinals.  He also had a reputation for making handsome young men cardinals (fact), supposedly in return for certain, hmmm, “favors” (allegation).  Well, I suppose it is better than pages and at least today a requisite for membership in the Sacred College is somewhat advanced age and withered looks.  Basilica status: unchanged.  But he did build the Sistine Chapel.  Sixtus was succeeded by Innocent VIII.  He was preoccupied by the problem of witches and magicians in Germany. 

"It has recently come to our attention—and not without great pain—that in some parts of Germany…Mainz, Koln, Trier, Salzburg and Bremen, many persons of both sexes, heedless of their own salvation and forsaking the Catholic faith, give themselves over to devils male and female, and by their incantations, charms, spells, and other abominable superstitions, foolish beliefs, offences, crimes, and misdeed cause the ruin and loss of offspring of women, the offspring of animals, the fruits of the earth, the grapes on the vine, the fruit of tress, as well as men and women, oxen, sheep, goats and cattle  and render men sterile."   ok--maybe there was a problem with witches in Germany but it sure sounds to me like this guy's reality coordinates could have used some realigning.  Also, I think he could have taken a bit better care of his own issues rather than worry about what was happening north of the Alps.   Innocent, (rather unusual name for such a man) himself had as many as sixteen illegitimate children.  He like hunting.  He built the “Belvedere” in the Vatican as a summer house.  He appointed Tomas de Torquemada as the Grand Inquisitor of Spain and gave Ferdinand of Aragon the sobriquet of “Catholic Majesty” long used by the Spanish Monarchs. He introduced simony in the Curia by putting up Church offices for auction.  He called for a Crusade against the Waldensians (Italian proto-Protestants in the Italian Piedmont.)  Pope Innocent was a busy boy—but as for the Basilica, well, he obviously had other things to do. 

To be continued with even worse popes.  Where did we find these guys?