"Peter, This Is the Lord Himself! Abandon the Position!" When a Future Pope Pretended to Be God to Get a Current Pope to Resign

Mahound relates the story of St Celestine's abdication with some thoughts on the current situation. For the record, I believe that Benedict's abdication was perfectly valid.

From Mahound's Paradise

Benedict attending the remains of Pope Celestine V

Before Benedict XVI, in the almost 2,000 year history of the papacy, as many as ten popes may have abdicated or resigned. I say "may have" because most of the "resignations" are historically uncertain. What is known is that, assuming the truth of each resignation account, all but one occurred due to circumstances of violence or political necessity or pressure.

The only "peaceful" resignation was that which has the least attestation - John XVIII (1004-1009), who according to one (and only one) source voluntarily chose to end his life as a monk.

Pontian (230-235) and Marcellinus (296-304) were arrested, tortured and executed by Roman authorities, possibly abdicating before the end. If Liberius (352-355 or 352-366) resigned (which the Church itself and most historians now dispute) it was due to being exiled by the Arian emperor Constantius II. The unfortunate Benedict V (964, 1 month) was deposed by Emperor Otto. Sylvester III (1045, 1 month), Gregory VI (1045-1046) and Benedict IX (three non-consecutive reigns from 1032-1048 involving at least two abdications) all resigned due to the complex and violent political and family rivalries of the time. Gregory XII (1406-1415) resigned to end the Western Schism.

Arrest, torture, banishment, Italians fighting, schism.

Benedict XVI claimed that he resigned partly because he didn't feel up to attending World Youth Day. This is one reason why some people are a bit put off by the whole thing.

But I digress. 

Perhaps the most interesting confirmed papal resignation story is that of Celestine V (1294, 161 days), the reluctant hermit pope.

"Peter of Murrone" was a celebrated monk who had founded a new Benedictine order that would later take his papal name.

In 1294 he was 79 years old and living in a hut on top of a mountain in Abruzzo.

In the meantime, the cardinals in Rome had been deadlocked for two years on electing a new pope after the death of Nicholas IV in 1292. It is recorded that Peter himself had warned them that Christ would take vengeance if they didn't quickly come to a decision.

This may have been a mistake.

The cardinals chose Peter.

In one of his popular histories of the Church, Malachi Martin colorfully describes the cardinals and others scrambling up to reach Peter and inform him of their decision. May I be forgiven for observing that it reads like something out of Monty Python:

One fine day in the year 1294, Peter had some visitors. Climbing laboriously up his mountain came three bishops, a Roman senator, a cardinal with his retinue, a group of noblemen and knights, and several thousand people. They suddenly invaded the mountainside clamoring for his approval, begging him in the name of Jesus to utter the magic words: "I accept the grade of Pope."

...A young monk rushed in whispering that the "Saracens were invading the monastery." Up the mountainside outside Peter's tiny hut about 7,000 people were led by mounted knights, the three bishops, and the cardinal, all at the end of their tether, each one intent on being the first to reach the pope-elect. Peter's hut was obvious to them. The oldest of the bishops advanced, peered in through the little opening and found himself looking at the haggard face and timid gaze of a very old man. "Peter, our beloved brother, it has seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit to choose your Excellency as successor of Peter the Apostle, Rector of the Universal Church, and Father of all mankind. Do you accept?" A shout went up from the 7,000: "Long live Pope Peter, our Father. Long live the Bishop of Rome! Long live Peter!"

It took Peter only a few minutes. His monks, now free of their initial fright, ran from their hiding places, shouting: "The Call! The Call! The Prophetic Kingdom is here! The Call! The Call!"

The waiting cardinal and bishops saw Peter's eyes gazing meditatively on the crowds, then up over their heads to the surrounding mountains and the skies. Certainly there was peace in his hermitage, the face of the sweet-smelling earth and shining skies, the nights alone with the stars and the whispering winds, his colloquies with streams and flowers. Could it be that the Lord wanted him to leave? The cardinal and bishops who were nearly beside themselves with worry that he would not talk, much less leave his hut, finally heard the long-desired words: "I accept the grade of Pope."

...The monks all ran about in a veritable ecstasy, chanting: "Paradiso! Paradiso! Come all ye Turks and Jews! Believe in Jesus Christ. Rise, Christian soldiers! Kill all infidels!"

The crowds knelt down, extending their hands and shouting: "Blessing! Blessing! Holy Father! Blessing!"

At length, Peter appeared around the corner of his hut. He raised his hand and blessed them in an immense silence.

Then they placed him on a donkey and the procession set out.

Peter was duly crowned. It soon became clear however that while he was a good and holy man (he would later be proclaimed a saint), Celestine, as he had named himself, was completely unprepared to be a pope, unable to deal with the worldly machinations of his court, to say nothing of actually reforming (as he had originally very much desired) the papal bureaucracy.

King Charles of Naples installed him in his own castle and, there, built him a special hermit's cell. Charles attempted to control him but also had a favorite, Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani, waiting in the wings to replace him. Here is Martin again:

But there was no peace for Peter. They extracted him from his cell periodically, set him on a throne, surrounded him with clerics, quick witted, wily, smiling, obsequious, whispering, always whispering. The people who came to see him never got to him. The clerics were always talking monies or politics or plots. Between him and the people there was woven a labyrinthine web—a wall—of intrigue, of lies, of servitude, of deceit. And always Gaetani in the background. Gaetani whispering, eyeing him sideways, never smiling, bowing his head at everything Peter said.

Perhaps he should resign? Martin narrates another Monty Pythonesque scene:

He now saw himself trapped. All he could achieve would be silent heroism of a particular kind: to be plotted against, to be laughed at, to be held a fool, to be deceived, to be treated like an idiot by the great and the mighty. Even to be done to death. Could that be what Jesus wanted?

Late one night in that November of 1294 when he was still pope, Peter was wakened by a sepulchral voice talking in the darkness of his papal hermit's cell. "Peter! Peter! My servant! Peter!"

Automatically, Peter said: "Yes, my Lord." Then he began to realize the pit of insane foolishness into which they intended to shove him. "Peter!" the voice went on, "this is the Lord himself!"

The undertones of that voice began to strike an eerie note of familiarity in Peter's consciousness. "Arise, Peter! Abandon this position! Retire to Murrone! Pray! Peter! Pray! Pray! Pray!"

There was much more of the same. Peter could not mistake those accents after a few moments. Gaetani had never been able to pronounce the "t;" it always came out sounding like a "d." He even called himself "Gaedani."

Peter was not fooled, but Gaetani's trick worked to the extent that by the following morning, Peter had made up his mind. He would abdicate.

Did this actually happen?

Malachi Martin, a learned but colorful figure himself, presumably sourced this from John Gower's Confessio Amantis, though as far as I know Gower, a friend of Chaucer, did not allege that it was Gaetani himself who pretended to be God but rather that it was a confederate.

Regardless, the record is clear that Celestine did resign. And Gaetani succeeded him, becoming Pope Boniface VIII. Ex-pope Celestine would soon be captured and imprisoned by Boniface and would die in custody. Some say he was smothered with a pillow on the pope's orders, though this is disputed.

The papacy enjoys supernatural protection. Or so Catholics believe. But the actual history is, shall we say, rough. To say nothing of the men who occupied the throne.

What will future historians say of our own period?

Will it be banal:

The annoyances of World Youth Day in Rio, to be replaced by writing, prayer and the occasional tall beer.

Or is there something more going on?

Who is the Bishop in white?