Monday, March 05, 2012

Cardinals asked hermit to become pope

In 1294, during a crisis in the papacy, Vatican cardinals sent a parchment letter with wax seals to a bedraggled hermit living in the mountains of the Apennines. 

It informed Pietro del Morrone, a bearded holy man in his eighties who lived in rags, that they wanted him to become Pope.

The office had been vacant for more than two years, amid faction-fighting, doctrinal clashes between Dominicans and Franciscans and political machinations.

The letter was delivered to him by four cardinals and two lesser officials.

It survives today in a remarkably good state of preservation – the elaborate Latin writing in black ink is still clear, and fine details can be made out in the blood-red wax seals.

The hermit was appalled by the appointment. “Who am I to take up such a heavy burden, so much power?” he said. “I cannot save myself, how can I save the whole world?”

Despite deep misgivings, he reluctantly agreed to travel to Perugia, Umbria, where he was crowned Celestine V.

But he hated the role so much that he abdicated after just five months and nine days.

He remains the only Pope in history to step down from the office voluntarily.

Things went from bad to worse for ex-pontiff – he was locked up by his successor, Pope Boniface VIII, and died in 1296.

The holy man's selection as the next Pope was part of murky machinations by Charles II of Anjou to regain Sicily from the Aragonese - for which he needed a compliant pontiff.

It was also influenced by a vision experienced by a powerful Vatican cardinal.

Del Morrone's decision to abdicate was scathingly referred to by Dante in his Inferno, in the lines "I saw and I knew the soul of him, who cowardly made the great refusal."