The text of d’Ailly’s Vita

Around 1408 the Parisian Celestines provided d’Ailly with what they claimed was Pietro Morrone’s autobiography.Footnote ² There was already a connection: d’Ailly’s friend and protégé from the University of Paris’s Collège de Navarre, Jean Gerson (1363–1429), was quite close to the Celestines and had two brothers in the order. In his De iurisdictione spirituali (1392), Gerson had noted that Celestine v garnered praise for his humility and not blame for his resignation.Footnote ³ But this alleged autobiography was incomplete: Pietro, or whoever the author was, had not described his papacy. D’Ailly completed the story by retelling Pietro’s account of his childhood and asceticism, then adding a narrative and commentary on his brief reign as Celestine v as well as on its aftermath.

One may wonder about the authenticity of what the Celestines claimed was Pietro’s autobiography, especially since it is incomplete and quite hagiographical. Robert Nixon provisionally concluded that the text handed by the Celestines to d’Ailly is authentic and even autograph while noting that d’Ailly’s pen offered a fresh version that was ‘distinctly more polished and elegant’.Footnote ⁴ Although Nixon refers to the text as a papal autobiography, it is not clear whether it was written before or after Celestine v’s short papacy, but before seems likely since there are no direct references to the events of 1294 and afterwards. D’Ailly finished the job: he doubled the length of the Celestine text by recounting the official foundation of the Celestines, which, curiously, does not appear there, and continued with an account of Celestine’s papacy and resignation, post-papal life and death in exile.Footnote ⁵

D’Ailly’s first part is hagiography like the purported memoir, but the second part concerning his papacy, albeit praiseworthy, is more than that standard genre – although it includes accounts of miracles such as a lame boy enabled to walk by touching Celestine’s donkey after his entry into Rome.Footnote ⁶ The first part of d’Ailly’s Vita is slightly shorter than the second. He begins with a typical encomium declaring that he is unworthy of the task he has accepted since he himself falls short of his subject’s virtue. There follows a reading through of Pietro’s life before his papacy, including his childhood, and his establishment of an austere community of monks. D’Ailly traces closely the Celestine text in his own part i, including the young Pietro’s frequent statement that he wanted to serve God. He was the eleventh of a dozen sons of generous, humble and hard-working peasant parents, Angelerio and Maria. Once ordained, he himself was so humble that he feared saying mass because of his unworthiness.Footnote ⁷ Nixon noticed that d’Ailly seems to have decorously omitted some fractious and salacious details and episodes. First, Pietro’s account tells us that Maria marked him out for study after the death of an earlier son who had been so chosen. Pietro’s brothers, it seems, were annoyed that he was set aside from manual labour. Second, Nixon noticed that d’Ailly did not include Pietro’s relating how he was tempted at night by visions of two beautiful, naked women lying beside him.Footnote ⁸

Both the Celestine text and d’Ailly’s account offer what can be read as prophecies of the future monk’s (if not explicitly pope’s) service to his Church. The Celestine text recounts that Pietro’s mother told him she imagined her son dressed in religious garments at his birth, thus destined from the first for divine service. Elsewhere, Maria describes her dream in which Pietro, aged twelve at the time, was shepherding a flock of sheep. She was saddened because she interpreted the dream as a sign he would not rise higher than a mere shepherd. She fibbed a bit and told Pietro she had dreamed of ‘a certain cleric’. When he heard about the dream, Pietro told his mother he took it a different way: this certain cleric would shepherd souls. At this, Maria confessed that it was Pietro she had seen in the dream.Footnote ⁹ A pope is the supreme shepherd of souls and it could be that the Celestine text was implicitly indicating Pietro’s papal election. Again, while we cannot establish whether the Celestine text was composed before his papal election, it seems likely given the total silence on the subject – unless Maria’s dreams are oblique references to 1294 or d’Ailly took them as such.

Oddly, there is another possible prophecy of Pietro’s papal election and resignation in the Celestine text that d’Ailly omitted. D’Ailly could easily have read these few sentences as a portent of Pietro’s papal election and subsequent resignation. The Celestine text and d’Ailly’s Vita agree up to a certain point in relating the anecdote. Near the end of the Celestine text and therefore of d’Ailly’s first part, both authors describe an episode in which Pietro is sitting in his cell reading by a window. He then sees a vision of glorious beings praying the office of dedication outside his cell. The Celestine text, but not d’Ailly’s Vita, continues:

D’Ailly clearly omitted these sentences deliberately: the Celestine text and d’Ailly’s Vita mirror each other before and after them.Footnote ¹⁰ Why d’Ailly omitted this text, which seems to indicate Pietro’s papal election and resignation, is puzzling. The passage would have made stronger d’Ailly’s case that this saintly man was destined for high service beyond his life as a monk and founder of a congregation.

D’Ailly’s focus on Celestine’s election and his subsequent resignation is the core of his part ii as he considers events not found in the Celestine text. He relates how the Holy Spirit inflamed a divided Church with the divine choice of the poor hermit as pope. D’Ailly notes how Pietro resisted and tried to flee his election, but submitted to God’s will. The monk believed he was unworthy, but d’Ailly comments that this very sentiment proves just how worthy he actually was. Surrounded, and with no hope of escaping, he obeyed:

Faced with Rome’s pomp, he tried to enter the city on a donkey and to live as pope with his customary internal restraint, simplicity and humility. D’Ailly insulates Celestine from criticism that he acceded to a certain level of customary regalia because this had been done by major and minor bishops dating back to Pope Sylvester, whom d’Ailly does not explain was endowed by the emperor Constantine, not for their own glory but for Christ’s. To bear such ceremony with inner fortitude was not vanity or vice but virtue and merit.Footnote ¹²

D’Ailly says almost nothing of Celestine’s papacy except that he named twelve cardinals, including two brothers of his own order, and tried to live austerely. Within months, he decided to resign and after ascertaining that this was possible, he called a consistory to lay aside the burdens and honours of the papacy. The event was not unprecedented but still rare.Footnote ¹³ Celestine depicted himself in his resignation statement as a weary man who, through humble self-reflection, came to realise that he was no longer capable of fulfilling the obligations of the papacy. He asserted that he was freely renouncing the papacy (‘sponte ac libere cedo papatui’); d’Ailly reiterated this important fact (‘libere cessit Papatus oneri et honori’).Footnote ¹⁴ He showers Celestine with praise for his unique humility and notes an immediate miracle just like the one from the beginning of his papacy: a lame person is made to walk. Nevertheless, within twenty years Dante would dramatically place Celestine just inside hell’s doorway for his great refusal (‘il gran rifiuto’) of the papal office, attributing it to cowardice.Footnote ¹⁵

D’Ailly chastises Celestine’s critics who say he resigned not because of virtue but an impaired soul.

It is noteworthy that d’Ailly immediately suggests Celestine’s action as a model for the two stubborn popes of the current schism.

D’Ailly then continues the fairly standard tale of a peaceful and worn-out old man, the once-pope Pietro Morrone, hunted across the Italian countryside by henchmen of the threatened and paranoid Boniface viii, who was Celestine v’s successor. D’Ailly invokes the image of Herod pursuing the holy family to Egypt. He contrasts Pietro in flight, leaving examples of humility and healing miracles as he runs, with Boniface’s men racing after him in a spirit of dishonour and insult until they finally imprisoned him:

D’Ailly concludes with the scene of Pietro’s peaceful death and a list of further miracles. In a final sentiment, comprising the last sentences of this Vita, d’Ailly asserts that, in the end, Pietro Morrone preferred a life in the mode of Mary rather than Martha, but that his life’s efforts taken together still benefitted the whole Church.Footnote ¹⁹

Contexts of d’Ailly’s Vita

D’Ailly’s Vita does not exist in a vacuum. His interest in 1408 in Celestine v’s resignation as pope was predated by his efforts, along with many colleagues, starting more than a decade earlier, to encourage the Avignon popes, first Clement vii and then Benedict xiii, to resign. Also, d’Ailly wrote letters directly to the competing popes urging resignation, and around the same time he composed his Vita of Celestine v.

Taking these two contexts in sequence: the first was that by the 1390s, after more than a dozen years of schism, the Paris university community, working sometimes in tandem with French princes and prelates of varying commitment to the effort, became the nexus of discussions about how to end the schism.Footnote ²⁰ Increasingly, the French spheres of power and authority turned to the strategy of withholding obedience and taxes from Avignon’s Benedict xiii. Confusion was compounded by the fact that members of the Valois court were fighting their own internal conflicts in trying to control the unstable French king Charles vi. Like many in university, royal and papal circles, d’Ailly found himself balancing a number of loyalties: to the university community where he was chancellor, as well as to the Valois court he served as royal chaplain – both from 1389 – and all parties’ wavering levels of support for the Avignon papacy. It became clear during the several councils held in Paris in the mid-1390s that a consensus was emerging among most academics and royals: it was best to force Benedict xiii’s resignation. This was known as the via cessionis, albeit an enforced one rather than d’Ailly’s preferred voluntary stepping down, which was one of three viae the university community proposed formally after lengthy deliberations in 1394. The other two were the via concilii (a conciliar resolution) and the via compromissi (negotiated settlement), both of which would also have entailed resignation. A fourth way, the via facti or way of force, violence and military action had created death and danger but no good result and was no longer seen as the right way to proceed, though all along this path fell far behind the other three as desirable. A pope in place because of a victory on the battlefield could certainly not sit securely on the papal throne as the vicar of the prince of peace.Footnote ²¹

As early as February 1395, d’Ailly spoke in favour of voluntary abdication as the most expedient solution to the schism.Footnote ²² D’Ailly stood against forced abdication, which he saw as impractical and counter-productive. His assessment proved to be correct: that same month, when a Council of Paris voted to withdraw obedience to force Benedict xiii to step down, the Avignon pope’s response was simply to refuse to do so and the matter fell to one side for a few years. As these debates were taking place at Paris, the Avignon pope had made d’Ailly diocesan bishop of Puy in 1395 after the University of Paris forced him out as chancellor, and then moved him to the diocese of Cambrai in 1397, which opened d’Ailly to the charge of favouring his patron.Footnote ²³ The Valois court and the university community moved more firmly to force Benedict xiii’s abdication through a second attempt at a withdrawal of obedience, which took effect in 1398. D’Ailly was again proved right. Although France did indeed stop paying papal taxes and obeying the Avignon pope, Benedict xiii did not resign. When the French saw that their action was ineffective and restored obedience in 1403, matters stood essentially as they had in 1398. Five years has passed fruitlessly.

D’Ailly’s progression embraced a growing comfort with papal resignation that he came to see as a sine qua non to ending the schism. His hope for the via cessionis as early as 1395 is one example, but then and subsequently he continued against others to support a mediated resolution and therefore a voluntary, not forced, resignation. In 1403, once France and Benedict xiii had reached a rapprochement and papal taxes flowed again to Avignon, d’Ailly began his Tractatus brevis de varietate viarum ad unionem Ecclesiae with a plea for moderation that would avoid stubbornness. He states clearly his continuing desire for a voluntary abdication: ‘Nevertheless, there is no doubt that such a voluntary and free surrender would be very useful for the arrangement and preparation for ecclesiastical union.’ He still hoped, perhaps too optimistically, that the Roman and Avignon contenders would both give up their seats in good faith. He also suggested that, should this scenario actually happen, before abdicating both popes should acknowledge the validity of each other’s college of cardinals so that a unifying election could occur expeditiously.Footnote ²⁴

The second context for d’Ailly’s Vita is that it was not the only document he wrote at the time. In addition to the earlier writings, around 1408, the same year as the Vita, d’Ailly wrote to the contending popes and then in 1409 to the Council of Pisa called by cardinals of both obediences. Notably, his language was getting stronger: it was clear by then that neither of the popes would freely resign. The Roman and Avignon popes had occasionally raised the notion that they would resign if both of them did so simultaneously, but their actions belied their sincerity. Benedict xiii wanted this mutual resignation to occur through a joint negotiation, which was supposed to occur at Savona but did not, while Gregory xii twice named cardinals (in May and September 1408), which was certainly not an indication that he was ready to cede his place on the papal throne.Footnote ²⁵ This might also have been Gregory’s attempt to pack a future conclave with his supporters so that, having resigned the papacy (forcibly or voluntarily), he might be re-elected.

Probably with some reluctance, d’Ailly joined his colleagues in raising the possibility of a forced resignation or even a deposition given the length and uniqueness of the split. On 28 July 1407, he said as much to the Roman Pope Gregory xii, concluding that the Church might have no a choice but to act in this manner: ‘In absolute terms this way may not be in compliance with the law, but the present circumstances are such that this expedient ought to be used.’ He followed with another letter to the Roman pope on 15 September 1407, almost pleading with him to be true to his prior openness to abdication: ‘Be for us an angel of peace. Save yourself and us with you by restoring unity to the church as you so often promised in our presence, shedding tears. May the words that then fell from your mouth not be rendered useless.’Footnote ²⁶

Two letters to Benedict xiii followed. In the first, on 26 January 1408, d’Ailly laments that Gregory xii had not resigned as he had promised. He mentions three ways to resolve the schism: that there be an agreement of union if one of the contenders should die, a general council that Benedict should convene, and a third way that he does not wish to mention and that needed conciliar approval.Footnote ²⁷ Bernard Guenee interprets this third remedy to mean abdication or deposition. He also colourfully contends that while d’Ailly still held a measure of loyalty to the Avignon pope, he ‘nevertheless had begun to admit to himself that he might not follow the pontiff all the way to the end of his rope’.Footnote ²⁸

In his second letter to Benedict xiii, sometime in 1409, d’Ailly definitively and finally broke with his patron, despite the fact that he owed his episcopal ordination and appointments to him. There is a tone of sadness, disappointment and indeed anger. He chastises the Avignon pope at the beginning of the letter and at its end for having said repeatedly that he would resign for the sake of church unity, but then always failing to do so:

Now, he says, the Church is in the hands of two liars (clearly Gregory and Benedict) who have lost sight of God and who have no fears of the danger into which they put their souls. Truly, the blind have led the blind into the pit they created. In familiar language, he declares that a body cannot have two heads and scorns Benedict for not doing anything to alleviate the situation when he could have done so. D’Ailly directly tells the Avignon pope he had supported for more than a decade that he used to be a lawful man, but now, drunk with power, he seeks neither peace nor unity. We read next what surely is an implicit comparison with Celestine v, since just the prior year d’Ailly had written his Vita of him: ‘Why, good father did you affirm that to renounce the papacy was a mortal sin? Have you not heard with your ears and read with your eyes [that] the holy fathers do this very thing, the sacred canons and words of the saints approving the same thing? Why are you mad?’ As a final warning, d’Ailly repeats an opening statement: that Europe’s princes are now aligned against him.Footnote ²⁹

D’Ailly was now firmly on the side of a conciliar solution. In a short letter of 1 January 1409 that he attached to his Propositiones utiles, he again grieves that the Roman and Avignon popes had not resigned voluntarily. There he once more mentions resignation as being in line with ancient and approved precepts.Footnote ³⁰ Since the actions he had long hoped for – the mutual and voluntary abdication of all papal claimants – had not occurred, it was time for the Church to act. In fact five more years would pass before the general council of Constance began to resolve the Great Western Schism.

Coda

In his surprise 2013 resignation, Pope Benedict xvi twice echoed Celestine v’s resignation statement, although he did not invoke him explicitly. First, Benedict xvi stressed that he was laying down the papacy with full freedom (‘plena libertate’); second, he declared that, after much reflection, he judged that he was no longer up to the papacy’s burdens physically and spiritually.Footnote ³¹ He had also visited Celestine v’s tomb in L’Aquila in 2009, where he laid a pallium on the glass coffin. This might have been an indication that he foresaw a situation in which he, too, would choose to resign.

Questions remain unresolved in the modern papacy about the efficacy and process of a papal resignation or removal in the case of physical or mental incapacity, especially concerning its validity and freedom.Footnote ³² The quality of medical care makes it quite possible that there could be a future pope who was physically well but mentally incapacitated or vice-versa. In that case, there would be a need for a process whereby an incapacitated pope who could not freely resign could be removed from office. No such protocols currently exist.Footnote ³³ These facts, along with the possibility of future papal resignations now that Benedict xvi has revived the discussion, make historical considerations of past papal resignations and removals all the more relevant.