A True Pope CANNOT be Deposed: Reply to Br. Alexis Bugnolo

And since the Roman Pontiff is at the head of the universal Church by the divine right of apostolic primacy, We teach and declare also that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all cases pertaining to ecclesiastical examination recourse can be had to his judgment; moreover, that the judgment of the Apostolic See, whose authority is not surpassed, is to be disclaimed by no one, nor is anyone permitted to pass judgment on its judgment. Therefore, they stray from the straight path of truth who affirm that it is permitted to appeal from the judgments of the Roman Pontiffs to an ecumenical Council, as to an authority higher than the Roman Pontiff.

(First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, Ch. 3; Denz. 1830; underlining added. - Novus Ordo Watch)

The first or primatial see is subject to no one’s judgment. This proposition must be taken in the fullest extent, not only with regard to the object of infallibility. For in matters of faith and morals it was always customary to receive the final sentence from the Apostolic See, whose judgment no one dared to dispute, as the tradition of the Fathers demonstrates. Neither was it ever allowed to reconsider questions or controversies once settled by the Holy See. But even the person of the Supreme Pontiff was ever considered as unamenable to human judgment, he being responsible and answerable to God alone, even though accused of personal misdeeds and crimes. A remarkable instance is that of Pope Symmachus (498-514). He, indeed, submitted to the convocation of a council (the Synodus Palmaris, 502), because he deemed it his duty to see to it that no stain was inflicted upon his character, but that synod itself is a splendid vindication of our canon. The synod adopted the Apology of Ennodius of Pavia, in which occurs the noteworthy sentence: “God wished the causes of other men to be decided by men; but He has reserved to His own tribunal, without question, the ruler of this see.” No further argument for the traditional view is required. A general council could not judge the Pope, because, unless convoked or ratified by him, it could not render a valid sentence. Hence nothing is left but an appeal to God, who will take care of His Church and its head.

(Rev. Charles Augustine, A Commentary on the New Code of Canon Law, Vol. VII [St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1921], pp. 11-12; italics given; underlining added - Novus Ordo Watch)

The Primatial See can be judged by no one (Canon 1556). The Supreme Pontiff has the highest legislative, administrative and judicial power in the Church. The Code states that the Roman Pontiff cannot be brought to trial by anyone. The very idea of the trial of a person supposes that the court conducting the trial has jurisdiction over the person, but the Pope has no superior, wherefore no court has power to subject him to judicial trial.

(Rev. Stanislaus Woywod, A Practical Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, rev. by Rev. Callistus Smith [New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1952], n. 1549, p. 225; underlining added - Novus Ordo Watch)

The dignity of the supreme power did not alter the morals of the newly elected Pope. In his private life the pursuit of pleasures and the love of wealth remained his great passions; in his public life he became the willing tool of his family’s greed and the Emperor’s despotism. But, as in the case of John XII, we should observe that Benedict IX never tried to give doctrinal approval to his conduct. His official teaching was the condemnation of his life. God, to make conspicuously clear that sinister consequences follow when the civil power interferes in the choice of His pontiffs, allowed corruption to reach even to the throne of St. Peter in the person of an unworthy pope. But He did not permit that a single line of such a pope’s bullarium should bring the least discredit upon the Church.

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Twice (in 1036 and 1044) he was driven from Rome by popular uprisings; he returned at the head of the vassals of Tusculum. The second time he barricaded himself and his followers in Trastevere, while the city was in the power of the rebels. The old dissensions, which formerly had led to clashes between the house of the Crescentii and the house of Tusculum, were revived. The resort to arms at first favored Benedict. But his foes, by their profuse gifts of money, succeeded in having an antipope elected, Bishop John of Sabina, who took the name of Sylvester III. Benedict’s party then invested Rome on all sides and, on April 10, 1044, forcibly reinstated him in the Lateran Palace. Sylvester, after forty-nine days of ephemeral power, returned vanquished to his diocese of Sabina.

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A year later (May 1, 1045) Benedict IX, fearing a fresh revolt, abdicated in favor of his godfather, the archpriest John Gratian, who is spoken of by all contemporaries as commendable. He was accepted by the clergy and people and took the name of Gregory VI. Benedict, however, withdrew only after stipulating with his successor that he should receive a large sum of money by way of indemnity, which Gregory, to avoid excessive evils and to end the shame of the Church, agreed to pay. This simoniacal contract did not prevent Benedict, two years later, after the death of [Pope] Clement II [1046-1047], from again seizing the power and holding it from November, 1047, to July 16, 1048, when Emperor Henry III drove him from Rome by force. The circumstances of his death are clouded in mystery. Some writers hold that he was moved by repentance and took the religious habit in the Abbey of Grottaferrata, where he died shortly afterward; others think that he died impenitent and that his premature end was a consequence of his dissolute life.

(Rev. Fernand Mourret, A History of the Catholic Church, vol. IV [St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1947], pp. 122-124)

A short time after this, King Henry III and Pope Gregory VI held a conference at Piacenza. Together they went to Sutri, eight leagues from Rome, and there, in conformity with the King’s desire, Gregory convoked a new council, over which he presided in person, on December 30, 1046. This wish of the King was a trap, which neither the Pope nor his confidential secretary Hildebrand was able to discern at the very first. Only later, through the experience of life, did Hildebrand learn to mistrust men’s words, and even then excessive confidence in his enemies always remained the noble weakness of this grand character. The King’s purpose in having this council assembled was to have it pass judgment, according to his own views, upon the question of the lawfulness of Gregory’s election and to place Gregory, in the assembly over which he would officially preside, in the position of one accused.

First, the election of Sylvester III was declared null. The case of Benedict IX, who had refused to attend the council, was reserved. Then they came to the election of Gregory VI. Says the chronicler Bonizo:
After such a sentence, Henry III should have been satisfied. This pretended defender of the canons and of morals, who for seven years had remained silent in the presence of the scandals of Benedict IX, at length broke the power of a pope who was animated by the purest intentions; but Henry had imposed his wishes in the matter of a papal election. In an assembly held at Rome on December 23 and 24, 1046, Benedict IX was also deposed. On December 24, Henry informed the Roman clergy and people of the candidate of his choice, Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who was consecrated the next day under the name of Clement II. That same day the new Pope at Rome crowned Emperor Henry III and Empress Agnes. The German monarch also received the title of Roman patrician. Gregory was sent to Germany with his chaplain Hildebrand and was treated as a state prisoner in the custody of the Archbishop of Cologne.

Henry had accomplished his purpose: he took the place of the counts of Tusculum and was ready to play the part which that family had so long filled in the elections to the papacy. We shall see four transalpine popes, one after the other, imposed on Rome: the bishops of Bamberg, of Brixen, of Toul, and of Eichstatt: Clement II, Damasus II, Leo IX, and Victor II. But in all truth we must say that none of these popes repeated the scandal of the popes that sprang from Tusculum; on the contrary, more or less effectively, all labored for reform. But the principle of the imperial supremacy remained a danger which the sharp mind of a Hildebrand did not lose sight of and from which he later attempted to free the Church of God. When, on April 22, 1073, Hildebrand was raised to the supreme pontificate, he took the name Gregory VII as a protest against the removal of Gregory VI from the list of the popes and against the decision of the Council of Sutri.

(Mourret, A History of the Catholic Church, vol. IV, pp. 131-133.)

104. Jaffé, Monumenta gregoriana, pp. 626 f. A sharp controversy has arisen among historians over the question whether Gregory VI was deposed at the Council of Sutri or whether he abdicated. Bonizo’s simple account seems to furnish the solution. Gregory abdicated, as in the course of the ages many kings have abdicated, bowing before a successful rebellion. In this sense we can understand the words of St. Peter Damian, who was present at the council, and who, thinking of the substance of things rather than the form, says that Gregory “was deposed.”

(Mourret, A History of the Catholic Church, vol. IV, p. 132, fn. 104; italics given.)

In the fall of 1044 Pope Benedict IX was driven from Rome, for reasons which are lost in the obscurity of those ill-recorded times. It might have been, as many writers suggest, because of the scandal given by his notoriously immoral life; but far better Popes than Benedict IX have also been expelled for [sic — should be from] Rome, and the cause might just as well have been a desire to overthrow the Theophylact [i.e. Benedict’s] family so that others could gain control of the city. The Romans, holding the city itself, elected an antipope, Sylvester; outside the walls the Theophylacts prevailed, and in March 1045 they restored Benedict IX. But he felt very insecure after what had happened; according to a widely circulated report, he wished to marry; therefore, almost immediately after his restoration, he began trying to work out an arrangement whereby the burdens and dangers of the Papacy would be transferred to another in return for full reimbursement of the money he had originally spent to secure the Papal office. His godfather, a much older man of unsullied reputation named John Gratian, head of the house of priests associated with the Church of St. John at the Latin Gate, agreed to find the requested money in order to bring about the removal of his godson from the place of Vicar of Christ for which he was so evidently unfitted. The money — a very large sum — seems to have been obtained from the Pierleoni family, converts from Judaism, of which John Gratian was later said to have been a member. The evidence is spotty and puzzling, but there is substantial agreement that John Gratian was a man of high character and motivation who nevertheless obtained the Papacy in a morally questionable manner when Benedict IX resigned May 1, 1045. As Pope Gregory VI, John Gratian was accepted by the reforming party in the Church, until the story of his financial arrangement with Benedict IX came out.

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[Emperor] Henry III received Pope Gregory VI with full honors at Piacenza, which certainly shows that at that point Henry recognized him as the valid Pope. Indeed there is no clear evidence that anyone else was claiming to be Pope at that time. Antipope Sylvester had not been heard from since Benedict IX’s return to Rome in March 1045, a year and a half before; and Benedict had made as yet no attempt to repudiate his resignation. A synod of bishops met at Pavia, with both Pope and Emperor present. Henry III addressed them. He spoke bluntly, and from the heart:
From this point on, it seems to have been assumed that Pope Gregory VI would step down. On his way to Rome for the crisis, Abbot St. Odilo of Cluny wrote Henry III urging him, in this event, not to restore the corrupt Benedict IX. It is impossible to believe, however, that the canon lawyers of the Church had forgotten the long tradition, going all the way back to Pope Liberius in the Arian crisis of 356-362, that a Pope could not be judged and deposed by any temporal authority, even an Emperor. Indeed, Bishop Wazo of Liège, one of the most famous canonists of his day, had already declared earlier that year at an imperial assembly at Aachen, where he was serving as an episcopal judge, that the Emperor has no right to depose any Italian bishop without the Pope’s consent — to say nothing of deposing the Pope himself. Pope Gregory VI had to consent to leave office; no power on earth could lawfully remove him. He did consent, at a synod at Sutri in December 1046, for the good of the Church, having come to a belated realization that the good end of persuading a bad Pope to resign does not justify the evil means of simony to attain it. Any claims that Benedict IX or Sylvester might make to the Papacy were rejected in advance by the synod.

The later legend that the Holy Roman Emperor deposed three Popes at Sutri in 1046 presents such a striking image and has been so attractive to enemies of the Papacy and the Church and champions of the secular state that it lives on in many histories, despite having almost no connection with historical reality. Nobody but Gregory VI claimed to be Pope in December 1046, when the synod of Sutri was held. The declarations regarding the resigned Pope [Benedict IX] and the antipope [Sylvester III] were strictly precautionary measures against the assertion of Papal claims by either man in the future — a concern which was to prove well founded. The fact that Gregory VI resigned under pressure does not make his action any less a resignation. He attached no conditions to it and never made any attempt to withdraw it as given under duress.

The decisive proof that Gregory VI resigned and was not deposed lies in the later silence of Hildebrand [the future Pope St. Gregory VII] on the matter. Hildebrand actually accompanied ex-Pope Gregory into exile in Germany and, as already mentioned, was to take Gregory’s name when he himself later became Pope. No pontiff in the history of the Church was more zealous in defense and advocacy of Papal prerogatives than Hildebrand as Gregory VII; none held more resolutely that the Pope was independent of all human authority. As Pope, Hildebrand was to be exiled from Rome by a Holy Roman Emperor [Henry IV]; he had no reason whatever to cover up, protect, or justify an illegitimate exercise of imperial authority. Yet he never claimed or hinted that Gregory VI had been wrongfully or invalidly removed from the See of Peter by Emperor Henry III, or that Gregory VI had remained the true Pope until his death in Germany in October 1047. Bishop Wazo of Liège, far away from Belgium and evidently unaware of all the facts, did make this claim for Gregory VI. But neither Gregory himself, nor Hildebrand who was at his side throughout, ever did.

On Christmas Eve 1046 the German Bishop Suidger of Bamberg was nominated for Pope by Henry III. It is very significant that even in his now completely dominant position in Rome, Henry III took care to have Suidger duly elected by the clergy and acclaimed by the people, then still the established Papal election procedure — often and blatantly violated though it had been. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that, weary of feudal anarchy, the clergy and people of Rome would then have accepted any suitable nominee of Henry’s in an entirely free election. Suidger took the Papal name of Clement II. The next day, Christmas, he was consecrated, with Abbot St. Odilo of Cluny beside him. He then crowned Henry III Holy Roman Emperor, as Charlemagne had been crowned on Christmas day 800. Knowing the fickleness of the clergy and people of Rome, Henry called upon them formally to grant him the power to nominate Popes and invest bishops, so that he might better reform the Church. This dangerous power was extended to him as he asked; the grant was even praised by the zealous reformer St. Peter Damian. There is every reason to presume that it was duly confirmed by new Pope Clement II.

Once again it must be remembered that no canon law binds the Pope unless he chooses to be so bound, since he is absolutely sovereign. He may set up any procedure for determining the Papal succession that seems good to him, even nomination by a single individual — himself or another. But, as both Henry III and Clement II should have realized, this system was much too open to abuse to be retained. Thirteen years later it was supplanted by the College of Cardinals, first established by Pope Nicholas II.

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Henry’s nominee for Clement II’s successor was Bishop Poppo of Brixen in Bavaria, who took the name Damasus II. Before the imperial nomination was made, former Pope Benedict IX reappeared on the scene with the support of Marquis Boniface of Tuscany and lavish outlays of gold — presumably the equivalent of what he had paid for the Papacy in the first place and then been recompensed for by Gregory VI. But his status as an ex-Pope gave Benedict no advantage; the law of succession as it then stood required Henry III’s nomination. Hence Benedict was not validly re-elected Pope.

Henry III’s letter carried to Marquis Boniface by the new Pope Damasus II suggested that the Emperor was no longer drawing — if he had ever drawn — the careful distinctions which properly pertained to his relations with the See of Peter: “Learn, you who have restored a Pope who was canonically deposed, and who have been led by love of lucre to despise my commands, learn that, if you do not amend your ways, I will soon come and make you.” The Emperor was arrogating too much ecclesiastical power to himself; but his demeanor was sufficiently formidable to cause Marquis Boniface to back down in a hurry. He expelled the feckless Benedict (who was maintaining his renewed claim to the Papacy) from Rome before the imperial army arrived. Pope Damasus II was consecrated in St. Peter’s July 17, 1048, only to die less than a month later.

(Warren H. Carroll, The Building of Christendom [Front Royal, VA: Christendom College Press, 1987], pp. 462-466; underlining added by Novus Ordo Watch.)