Papal resignation
history from the Washington Post. Only Gregory did coins, albeit very
scarce, but it's possible to get "restitution" medals from them all. Looks like I've got a new collecting theme!
Pope Benedict IX, in 1045: At age 33 and about 10 years into
his tumultuous term, the Rome-born pope resigned so that he could get married – and to collect some cash from
his godfather, also
Roman, who paid Benedict IX to step down so that he might replace him, according to British historian Reginald L. Poole’s definitive and much-cited
history of the 11th century.
Pope Gregory VI, in 1046: The same
man who
had bribed and replaced
his godson ended up leaving the office himself only a year later, according to Poole’s account. The trouble began when Benedict IX failed to secure the bride he’d resigned for, leading him to change
his mind and return to the
Vatican. Both popes remained in the city, both claiming to rule the Catholic
church, for several months. That fall, the increasingly despondent clergy called on the
German Emperor
Henry III, of the Holy
Roman Empire, to invade
Rome and remove them both. When
Henry III arrived, he treated Gregory VI as the rightful pope but urged him to stand before a council of fellow
church leaders. The bishops urged Gregory VI to resign for bribing
his way into office. Though the fresh new pope argued that he
had done nothing wrong in
buying the papacy, he stepped down anyway.
Pope Celestine V, in 1294: After only five months in office, the somber Sicilian pope formally decreed that popes now
had the right to resign, which he immediately used. according to a report in the Guardian. He wrote, referring to himself in the third person, that he
had resigned out of “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.” He became a hermit, but two years later was dragged out of solitude by
his successor, who locked him up in an
Italian castle. Celestine died 10 months later.
Pope Gregory
XII, in 1415: The elderly Venetian
had held the office for 10 years, but he was not the only pope. For decades, the Western Schism
had left Europe with two popes, one in
Rome and one in the
French city of Avignon, according to Britannica. The schism’s causes were political rather than theological: the pope
had tremendous power over European politics, which
had led its kings to become gradually more aggressive in manipulating the
church’s leaders. Gregory
XII resigned so that a special council in Constance, which is today a
German city, could excommunicate the Avignon-based pope and start fresh with a new, single leader of the Catholic
church.