Friday, February 04, 2005

Could the frail pope John Paul II abdicate?

The last one who did so, Celestine V, who abdicated after a reign of few months in 1294, got arrested by his successor Boniface VIII(1294-1303) and died imprisoned in 1296. Of course there were later several popes during the Great Schism of 1378-1417 who were deposed by Church councils and not all of them fared badly afterwards, as a cardinal etc. For a pope that abdicated by his own free will and remained a free man we must go to the 11th century.

There has been popes that have lasted to their nineties and have had little to do with the actual running of the Church, but that was in the past when the heavy-weights of the Papal court could run things in the pope´s name. Nowadays the pope is truly a public figure in a way unimagined in those days and it would be hard for the Catholic Church to have a totally incapacitated leader who could linger on for several years or maybe even a decade.

One reason for the pope to not to abdicate would be the question of a successor. Celestine III, who became a pope in the age of 85 in 1191 and reigned until 1198 wanted to abdicate, but could not get the cardinals to accept his choice of successor and so remained on the papal throne until his death - afterwards which the cardinals elected the great (and like many great men and women, a creator of much suffering) Innocent III(1198-1216) as pope. Who was then a relatively young man of 36-38 years.

But the medieval age was a time when the rulers were usually relatively young men, who died in their middle-age; for example, the age of death of the kings of England between 1035 and 1547:
- Canute the Great 39 years.
- Harold I 24 years.
- Hardecanute 23 years.
- Edward the Confessor 63 years.
- Harold II Godwinsson 46 years. Died in battle.
- William I the Conqueror 60 years.
- William II Rufus 44 years. Murdered.
- Henry I 67 years.
- Stephen 57 years.
- Henry II FitzEmpress 56 years.
- Richard I Coeur de Lion 42 years. Mortally wounded in a battle.
- John the Landless 49 years.
- Henry III 65 or 66 years.
- Edvard I 68 years.
- Edward II 43 years. Murdered.
- Edward III 65 years.
- Richard II 33 years. Murdered.
- Henry IV 46 years.
- Henry V 35 years.
- Henry VI 50 years. Murdered.
- Edward IV 41 years.
- Edward V 13 years. Murdered.
- Richard III 33 years. Died in battle.
- Henry VII 52 years.
- Henry VIII 56 years.

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