Showing posts with label Catherine of Siena. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catherine of Siena. Show all posts

Friday, September 29, 2023

The Pope and Dracula

Pope Pius II (18 October 1405 - 14 August 1464) was very busy, looking for political alliances and ways to expand his authority.

It wasn't all politics: in 1461 he canonized Saint Catherine of Siena. Much of the rest of his energy was put into more worldly actions, however, even if they had religious goals.

One of his first actions in 1458 was to make an alliance with Ferdinand II of Aragon who was pressing a claim to Naples (Naples was being contested between the House of Aragon and the House of Anjou.) In 1461, however, he persuaded King Louis XI of France to abolish something called the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, established in 1438 that required a Church Council every ten years that had power to overrule the papacy in France. Louis thought that, in turn, Pius would support him in the Naples question, but Pius stood by his alliance with Ferdinand and Louis reinstated the Pragmatic Sanction again.

He tried to mediate between the two sides of the Thirteen Years' War between Poland and the Teutonic Knights. Failing to bring them to agreement, he declared both groups anathema.

When Duke Sigismund arrested Nicholas of Cusa (when he was bishop of Brixen) for attempting reforms and reclaiming lost diocesan revenue, Pius excommunicated Sigismund.

He was very concerned about the Turks, who had come as far west as they ever had in 1453 with the taking of Constantinople. He convened a congress in Mantua in 1459 to arrange a new Crusade against the Turks. The attempt failed; Christendom did not rise to the occasion. He did, however, inspire a prince of Wallachia, a province in Romania, to mount a war against Sultan Mehmed II of Turkey. That prince was named Vlad Tsepes, also known as Vlad III, or Vlad the Impaler, but whose other nickname came down to modern times as a famous literary figure: Dracula.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about how Dracula tried to save Christendom from infidels.

Monday, September 19, 2022

Catherine in the World

Catherine of Siena (25 March 1347 - 29 April 1380) wanted to join the Dominicans and retire from the world. This was not only discouraged by her mother, but a vision Catherine had of being married to Christ included the injunction to go out into the world to do good works.

During a 1374 visit to Florence, she made the acquaintance of Raymond of Capua, chaplain of a second order monastery of Dominican nuns. While nursing plague victims, he became ill; Catherine sat by his side during his recovery, which he attributed to her prayers.

They began a close relationship, and he became her confessor and spiritual advisor, traveling with and advising her. Catherine traveled around northern and central Italy, urging reform of the clergy. She convinced the cities of Pisa and Lucca to avoid an alliance with an anti-papal movement. She wrote to John Hawkwood, trying to persuade him to turn his energy to supporting God.

She had a long correspondence with Pope Gregory XI, which included urging him to return the papal headquarters from Avignon back to Rome, which he eventually did. Not all cardinals approved of the return, and when Gregory died a few years later, two competing groups of cardinals—in in Rome, one still in Avignon—each elected a pope, resulting in what is called the Western Schism. Such was her perceived influence that Catherine went to Rome at the request of Pope Urban VI to support his legitimacy. Unfortunately for Urban, her support was not sufficient.

Catherine's habit of extreme fasting was very unhealthy, and Raymond admonished her to eat more, but she refused. In 1380 she lost the ability to swallow easily. She suffered a stroke and lost the use of the lower half of her body. She died on 29 April 1380.

Although she was buried in Rome, her head was placed in a bronze bust and taken to Siena. It was carried through the city in a procession to the Basilica of San Domenico, accompanied by her then 89-year-old mother. Her mother and Raymond of Capua collaborated on her biography. She was named a Doctor of the Church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI in recognition of her pious example and her treatise The Dialogue of Divine Providence.

About this Western Schism, during which she was unsuccessful in convincing everyone to accept Urban as the legitimate pope: his opponent didn't succeed either. I should say opponents, because Avignon and Rome weren't the only cities to name a pope. That story is for next time.

Sunday, September 18, 2022

Catherine of Siena

Catherine of Siena is an example of how one can be connected to a religious order and still influence events "in the world."

She was born on 25 March 1347 as Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa, and survived the imminent Black Death that was about to ravage Europe. A happy child, she had a vision of Christ with Peter, Paul, and John when she was only five or six, and decided shortly after  to devote herself to God.

This was not her parents' plan for her, however, and at 16 they wanted her to marry the widower of a sister who had died in childbirth. Catherine cut off her hair and started fasting to show her opposition to this plan and to make herself less attractive to a husband.

Quiet rebellion won out, and eventually her father relented and allowed her to choose her own life's path. She would later advise Raymond of Capua how to manage adversity: "Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee." In her imagination, she pictured her father as Christ, her mother as Mary, her siblings as apostles. She treated them with respect and used this approach as a path to spiritual growth.

After she had a vision of St. Dominic she expressed a desire to join the Dominicans; this upset her mother, who tried ways to change her mind, but eventually allowed her to join a local group of devout laywomen, the Mantellate Sisters, a third order devoted to the education of youth and caring for the ill and poor. They taught Catherine to read. She still lived with her family, but seemed to have taken a personal vow of silence. Also, she would give away food and clothing, upsetting her family.

At 21, she had a vision which she described as a mystical marriage to Christ (pictured above by Giovanni di Paolo, 1400s). She claimed that she received a wedding ring during this vision, but not a typical ring, rather Christ's foreskin from the time of his circumcison when he was eight days old. (She would claim that she wore this ring, but it was invisible.) During this vision, Christ told her to give up her quiet life at home and go into the world. She became more active in her charity, helping the ill or poor in hospitals or homes.

Eventually, Siena became too small a venue for her desire to do good works, and she started getting involved in much larger issues. What she did, and how she even fixed a "problem" with the papacy, we will talk about tomorrow.

Saturday, September 17, 2022

Third Orders

While explaining oblates I mentioned that there was a group called "Third Orders."

"Third Order" signifies a lay member of a Christian religious order; that is, a person who wishes to be a member of a religious order and follow certain rules and lifestyle options, but does not live in a monastery or nunnery. Even today, people who fall into this category—sharing in the spirit of a religious order but living a secular life—can be found in Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Anglicanism.

Originally, these tertiaries (Latin tertiarii, "third") began in the 12th century. If there is a third, then what are the first and second? First denotes the male order, since the male monastic version was usually the first founded. Second was when women wished to participate in the same order. For example: St. Francis, after being credited with establishing the Friars Minor, then established the Poor Clares, and afterward the Third Order of St. Francis. The Rule of the Third Order of St. Francis has become the standard for other third orders.

Those wishing to follow a third order often gathered in communities, called confraternities. There exists a Durham Liber Vitae, the Durham "Book of Lives," which is a confraternity book with a list of about 20,000 names (from the 9th century to about 1300) of those who were visited and supported the church in Durham. Donors to churches were often called confraters, a nice honorary title in exchange for their patronage. Groups like the Templars also had systems by which lay people could be confraters and support their mission.

The Second Vatican Council codified the "lay vocation" of the third orders, distinguishing it from a consecrated state. The various third orders had to revise their rules and submit them to the Vatican for approval. The term "third order" began to be replace by "secular order" to indicate that they were living "in the world" as opposed to cloistered.

An example of a third order religious who was active and influential in the secular world was Catherine of Siena, briefly mentioned here but sorely deserving of more attention, which I will give her next time. Until then...

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

The Avignon Papacy

I like to link items in each post to previous posts that offer more info on those items. I have frequently referred to the time when the popes were not in Rome, but in Avignon; I have, however, not yet produced a post that explains the geographical shift.

The Avignon Papal Palace (It's no Vatican, but it'll do)
I suppose it might have started with conflict between King Philip IV of France, who was taxing the clergy to finance his ongoing wars, and Pope Boniface VIII, whose bull Clericis laicos forbade taxation of clergy with papal approval. After the death of Boniface and the death of his successor, Benedict XI, after only eight months, a Frenchman was elected, Clement V.

Clement V decided he did not want to live in Rome, and moved the papal court to Avignon, which is now in France but was then in the Kingdom of Arles. The French Clement was very friendly to the King of France, pretty much revoking Clerics laicos and beginning a string of seven popes, all French, who more and more came under the influence of the French crown.

The Avignon Papacy lasted from 1309 until January 1377. Pope Urban V wanted to move to Rome, but it was hindered by the War of the Eight Saints. His successor, Gregory XI, finally returned to Rome after (supposedly) being inspired to do so by Catherine of Siena.

The Avignon Papacy was sometimes referred to as the Babylonian Captivity, but worse was to follow.

After Gregory's death in 1378, conflict between his successor, Urban VI, and the cardinals created the Western Schism (1378 - 1417), when a series of rival popes were elected by renegade cardinals and took up residence in Avignon. The Avignon popes during this time are considered antipopes.