Papal Resignation

Pope Celestine V

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Popes in the Middle Ages were fond of abdication, particularly during scandal or political intrigue—here are the stories of three pontiffs:

1045: The godfather of Benedict IX persuaded the controversial pope to resign his role as leader of the Catholic Church in exchange for an undisclosed sum—the only time in recorded history in which money changed hands over the papacy. Benedict, born Theophylactus of Tusculum, had already abdicated and returned to the papacy twice, once in 1036 and again in 1044. He had ascended to the highest ranks of the Church while still a teenager, and Benedict IX’s historical reputation is one filled with scandal and licentiousness. Pope Victor III, in a volume of his Dialogues, referred to Benedict’s “rapes, murders and other unspeakable acts. His life as a pope so vile, so foul, so execrable, that I shudder to think of it.”

1294: Celestine V’s abdication decree expressed “the desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquility of his former life.” Renouncing all luxury, Celestine intended to live out his days in a quiet mountain monastery. Alas, his successor, Boniface VIII, had Celestine arrested on an unknown charge, and the former pope died in custody shortly thereafter. Boniface VIII was a hated enemy of Dante Alighieri, and many believe the lines “I saw and recognized the shade of him, Who by his cowardice made the great refusal,” from Inferno III, 59-60, refer to Celestine.

1415: Gregory XII , the most recent pope to resign before Benedict XVI, did so amidst dizzying political maneuvering meant to end the Western Schism, a decades-long battle between Roman clergy and a rebel clergy based in Avignon. After a series of stalled negotiations in which Gregory XII and his rival, Antipope Benedict XIII, each feared being abducted by supporters of the other, a 1409 council of cardinals attempted to depose both popes as “schismatical, heretical, perjured, and scandalous.” Gregory XII resisted and compromise was finally reached by the 1415 Council of Constance, during which Gregory was allowed to create a group of new cardinals and then resign. During a seventeenth century restoration of the cathedral in which Gregory’s tomb lay, the pope’s remains, which some sources claim were “perfectly preserved,” were reclothed in traditional papal vestments.