Death Of Pope Research Articles

Constructing Papal Identity during the Great Western Schism (1378-1417): Pierre Ameil and Papal Funerals

This essay argues that liturgists responded to the Great Western Schism (1378-1417), with liturgical rubrics. During this period, authors were essentially motivated with the recovery of ecclesiastical unity. I will analyze how Pierre Ameil, a contemporary of the Schism and the author of a ceremonial book or ordo attempted to reconstruct unity by developing a new rubric centered on the rituals surrounding the pope's death. By keeping the papal body one, both natural and institutional, Ameil responded to the College of Cardinals whom he knew was responsible for the initiation of the crisis. Contrary to current historiography that sees liturgists building institutional continuity during the Vacant See on the college of Cardinals, the essay proposes that Ameil built continuity on the embalmed papal corpse presenting it as both natural and institutional, at once finite and eternal.
 Keywords: Great Western Schism, liturgy, body, Papal funerals, senses, Pierre Ameil. 
 On cover:Monks singing the Office and decorated initial A[sperges me.]. Gradual Olivetan Master (Use of the Olivetan Benedictines), illuminated manuscript on parchment ca. 1430-1439. Italy, Monastero di Santa Maria di Baggio near Milan, Ca 1400-1775.Beinecke Ms1184: The olivetan Gradual. Gradual. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Pope, Bathurst, and the Duchess of Buckingham

This essay contends that Alexander Pope wrote the short prose work The Character of Katharine, Duchess of Buckingham , published two years after Pope's death in 1746 but absent from modern editions. External and internal evidence is marshalled to illustrate how Pope wrote the Character in 1729 from materials supplied by the Duchess of Buckingham, including a recently discovered scribal copy of the Character among the duchess's papers, which preserves significant textual variants. Pope and the duchess later quarrelled after she tried to pay him for writing the Character , as though he was a hireling writer. This prompted Pope to write a new and hostile character of the duchess in An Epistle to a Lady and, after the duchess's death in 1743, to disown the Character as an original composition. A collated edition of the text is provided as an appendix.

Godność osoby ludzkiej podstawą prawa do wolności religijnej

Autor w swoim opracowaniu przedstawił sytuację wakatu Stolicy Apostolskiej spowodowaną śmiercią papieża lub jego rezygnacją do momentu wyboru nowego papieża. Zobrazował omawiany okres poprzez analizę najważniejszych dokumentów papieskich: papieża Pisa XII, Pawła VI i obecnie obowiązującej Konstytucji Jana Pawła II, regulującej kwestię wakatu w sposób aktualny i kompleksowy. Poruszył też kwestię uprawnień kolegium kardynałów w zakresie kierowania Kościołem powszechnym podczas wakatu. Przedstawił również funkcjonowanie poszczególnych urzędów Kurii Rzymskiej, z rozróżnieniem na te, które pomimo wakatu funkcjonują nadal i na te, które w tym okresie przestają działać. Analiza porównawcza poszczególnych dokumentów papieskich doprowadziła do następujących wniosków: 1) wakat Stolicy Apostolskiej może nastąpić w wyniku śmierci papieża lub rezygnacji z pełnionego urzędu. Nie może on być pozbawiony urzędu ani z niego usunięty. Wynika to z faktu, że papież pełni w Kościele najwyższy urząd i że nie ma nad papieżem innej kompetentnej osoby lub urzędu. 2) W czasie wakatu kolegium kardynalskie wykonuje swoją władzę na dwojakiego rodzaju zebraniach: ogólnych i partykularnych. 3) Nowością reformy Jana Pawła II jest rotacja kardynałów asystentów wchodzących w skład zebrania partykularnego. 4) Należy też dodać, że chociaż reforma Jana Pawła II unormowana w konstytucji Universi Dominici gregis utrzymuje większość postanowień wydanych przez poprzedników to zarazem kontynuuje dzieło reformy centralnych instytucji Kościoła zarysowane w konstytucji Pastor Bonus i w nowym Kodeksie Prawa Kanonicznego.

Book Reviews

For some decades now, our society has debated the moral and legal issues that concern the use of—and withholding of or withdrawal from—various forms of life-sustaining treatment or care, especially for patients in a so-called persistent vegetative state (PVS). For instance, the Karen Ann Quinlan case played itself out in the courts in 1975–1976, though after her 1976 removal from mechanical ventilation, she lived for another nine years with the help of artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH). ANH itself was the issue in the Terri Schiavo case, beginning in the 1990s and continuing until her death on March 31, 2005—two days before the death of Pope (now Saint) John Paul II. During this time period, Catholic theologians, and sometimes bishops, were debating the underlying issue of the provision of ANH to those in a PVS. While the Schiavo case was receiving considerable attention, on March 20, 2004, Pope John Paul gave an address “to the participants in the international congress on ‘Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas,’ ” in which he taught that ANH for PVS patients is “in principle ordinary and proportionate, and hence obligatory.” Subsequently (on August 1, 2007), in a response (with accompanying commentary)1 to questions submitted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) underscored this teaching (with some further clarification).

Type or dimension? A taxometric investigation of flashbulb memories

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) have been defined as vivid and detailed memory of a reception context under which one first heard of a public and unexpected emotional event. One of the issues still open for research on FBMs is to understand whether this latent construct has to be conceptualised as a continuum with other autobiographical memories, or whether it represents a special cluster of memories. This theoretical distinction has some implications for the measurement of the phenomenon, that could be assessed by a dimensional or categorical (taxonic) model. The current study attempted to provide an empirical answer to the problem of FBM measurement, by adopting a taxometric analysis. The main strength of these analyses is to treat taxonic and dimensional models as two competing hypotheses and to evaluate the relative support for each of them. Taxometric analyses were applied to FBM data for the Pope's death, and results supported the taxonic structure of FBMs.

Seven last medical bulletins: The public death of a Pontiff

The death of Pope John Paul II was one of the most significant events of 2005. It was also one of the most public manifestations of suffering and death in recent times. In this review, the very public death of Karol Wojtyla and its place within the context of death through the ages in Western Christendom is discussed. The review will discuss the spirituality and pastoral theology of death and dying in Catholicism. The nature of the medical bulletins issued by the Holy See relating to the Pope's death are examined as a very public medicalization of the Pontiff's end while at the same time outlining the very inadequacy of such medicalized language in communicating the fact that the Pope was dying.

Pope and Prior Park: A study in landscape and literature

Introduction Prior Park is an important and early example of a surviving, small-scale, eighteenth-century landscape, the seat at Bath of Ralph Allen (1693-1764), owner of the stone quarries from which Bath was built. It reflects the hand of Alexander Pope (1688-1744), and later Sanderson Miller (1716-1780) and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-1783). This paper exarnines Alexander Pope's involvement at Prior Park, and in doing so reassesses the garden as of national importance. Completed around 1742, approximately one year before Pope's death, it was the last garden that he was involved with, and it is here that he put into practice his theories on gardening from 1713, the summation of his experience. The thesis is that Prior Park, whilst containing emblematic and iconographic meaning, expresses at the same time a Romantic character that was not fulfJled to such an extent elsewhere by this date and as a consequence it is also argued that Pope's theories, as expressed at his own garden at Twickenham (with Sherborne Castle landscape as the catalyst), were inmlensely influential on the work of William Kent and that Kent developed no theories of his own — that is to say, the influence is from Pope to Kent and not vice versa as convention maintains.

THE EFFECTS OF RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT ON SHORT – TERM PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTIONS TO THE DEATH OF POPE JOHN PAUL II: A STUDY ON AN ITALIAN SAMPLE

The short-term psychological reactions to the death of Pope John Paul II were investigated. Between 1 to 6 days after this event, 526 Catholic and atheist Italian adults took part in a questionnaire study. Participants were asked to report the personal circumstances in which they first learned about the Pope's death, their emotional reactions, and their appraisal of the event's importance and consequentiality. Other questions assessed immediate memory for the original event, surprise-expectedness, exposure to mass media, and religious involvement. Results showed that the news of the Pope's death, although widely expected, had a strong cognitive and emotional impact. Almost all the participants were able to recall the personal circumstances in which they heard the news. A positive relation was observed between the degree of religious involvement and appraisal of importance and consequentiality, intensity of emotion, memory for event-related details, and frequency of exposure to mass media. Effects related to the age of the participants were also found.

Gregor VII. Papst zwischen Canossa und Kirchenreform (review)

Reviewed by: Gregor VII. Papst zwischen Canossa und Kirchenreform John J. Contreni Gregor VII. Papst zwischen Canossa und Kirchenreform. By Uta-Renate Blumenthal. [Gestalten des Mittelalters und der Renaissance.] (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag. 2001. Pp. xiii, 376; 8 illus. DM 59.) Modern examinations of Gregory's skeletal remains put him at about 160 cm. or five feet, two and a half inches tall. As any student of church history or of the Middle Ages knows, Gregory stood much taller than that. Uta-Renate Blumenthal, who has written extensively on the papacy, canon law, and the eleventh-century reform movement, offers in this new book a wide-ranging synthesis of contemporary scholarship anchored in more than 500 titles by German, Italian, French, British, and North American scholars. Blumenthal also has something new of her own to contribute to the rich legacy of Gregorian scholarship. Of the book's 338 pages of text, the first 136 focus on Hildebrand and provide a rich account of Gregory's pre-papal years including his birth probably in Sovana, his family background, his youth in Rome, his activities as subdeacon, legate, and archdeacon, and his participation in the Lateran Council of 1059. Blumenthal observes that birthplace and family meant nothing to Hildebrand, who counted himself a son of the ecclesia romana, nurtured in the bosom of St. Peter (p. 43). More specifically Blumenthal argues that Hildebrand began his ecclesiastical career not as a monk, as conventional wisdom has it, but as a regular canon. Without diminishing the significance of his confrontation with Emperor Henry IV, Blumenthal refreshingly resists the temptation to organize the book around that epochal struggle. What readers might lose in dramatic build-up is more than compensated for by a rounded, comprehensive portrait of the pontificate. The longest chapter in the book reviews Gregory's councils, an important tool employed by all eleventh-century reforming popes. But, in contrast to his predecessors, Gregory sited his councils in Rome and, exceptionally, once in Salerno during his exile in 1084. A following chapter sheds light on Gregory's use of legates, important agents for centralizing the Church and for broadcasting papal reform initiatives. Gregory's policy of centralization also extended to the ecclesiastical hierarchy.In his relations with patriarchs, primates, and bishops, he proceeded from the principles sketched out in the Dictatus papae (of which a color illustration is provided), which quite explicitly staked out the supremacy of the Roman church. Blumenthal's chapter on Gregory's monastic policy is particularly interesting, if only because the topic has not heretofore been treated so thoroughly. Gregory was an avid defender of monastic liberty and of the canonical elections of abbots. After the monastic world, the book explores [End Page 526] Gregory's relations with the emperor, nobles, and other laymen. A final short chapter treats the pope's death and canonization. Blumenthal succeeds admirably in making the case that Gregory should be remembered for more than Canossa and his confrontations with kings and the emperor.Although billed by Peter Herde as the first book in German on Gregory VII in more than a century, this book has much to teach an English-reading audience. Like the author's The Investiture Controversy (1988), which first appeared in German in 1982, Gregor VII. also deserves translation and a wider audience. John J. Contreni Purdue University Copyright © 2004 The Catholic University of America Press

Civic politics in the Rome of Urban VIII

In this depiction of daily political life in Baroque Rome, Laurie Nussdorfer argues that lay persons managed to sustain a civic government under the increased papal absolutism of Urban VIII (1623-1644), who oversaw both sacred and secular life. Focusing on the SPQR (the Senate and Roman People), which was administered from the Capitoline Hill, she shows that it provided political representation for lay members of the urban elite, carried out the work of local government, and served as a symbol of the Roman voice in public life. Through a detailed study of how civic authorities derived their sense of legitimacy and how lay subjects manoeuvered in informal and disguised ways to block or criticize the papal regime, the author advances a new way of conceiving politics under an absolute ruler. As Nussdorfer analyzes the complex interactions between the lay administration and Urban VIII and his family, the papal administration, and Romans of the upper and lower classes, she also provides fresh insights into the actual practice of early modern government. She takes the plague threat of the early 1630s, the War of Castro (1641-1644), and the interregnum following the Pope's death as important test cases of the state's power in times of crisis.

Sterne, Warburton, and the Burden of Exuberant Wit

VICTIMIZED BY OUR OWN TAXONOMIES, we have grown accustomed to notion that with Pope's death in 1744 and Swift's year after, Samuel Johnson took center stage and Age of Johnson, as we label it in our literary histories and course catalogues, was suddenly at hand. Thus, were we to guess whose career in center of century Edward Gibbon had in mind when he wrote: the learning and abilities of author had raised him to a just eminence; but he reigned and tyrant of World of Litterature,' we would in all likelihood guess Johnson. But Gibbon and Johnson and Laurence Sterne all knew otherwise. The reigning monarch of English letters during middle years of eighteenth century was William Warburton, very learned, very disputatious bishop of Gloucester. It was Pope, of course, who provided Warburton bridge he needed between Divine Legation of Moses (1738-41) and literary reputation. The Legation established Warburton as perhaps leading polemical divine in an age of polemical divinity; but it was primarily Pope who established Dictator and tyrant, first by blessing him with his friendship and circle of friends, then by entering into collaborations with him on new editions of poetry, and finally by encouraging him to see himself as a literary arbiter, person responsible for establishing and annotating both Shake-

Lines on the death of pope

Lines on the death of pope