Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes; Fourth Edition (77 page)

APPENDIX B

GLOSSARY

A
D
L
IMINA
: Latin for ‘to the threshold’, meaning a visit to the house of the Apostle Peter, i.e. Rome or St Peter’s Basilica. The phrase applied originally to all pilgrimage to the shrine of the Apostle. In modern usage it applies especially to the five-yearly visits bishops are required to make to Rome to give an account of their dioceses to the Pope. Currently seen as an expression of the
COLLEGIAL
responsibility of the bishops with the Pope, historically it has been a way of enforcing and underlining papal authority.

A
NTIPOPE
: rival claimant to the papacy, elected or appointed in opposition to the incumbent subsequently recognised officially as the ‘true’ Pope. A complete list will be found in Appendix A.

A
POCRISIARY
: papal ambassador to the Byzantine Emperor.

A
RCHBISHOP
: the senior bishop of a region. Since the early Middle Ages the authority of the Archbishop over the subordinate or ‘suffragan’ bishops has been symbolised by the gift of the
PALLIUM
from the Pope.

A
RIANISM
: Christian heresy preached originally by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius (died 336), denying the full divinity of Jesus Christ, and teaching that as ‘Son of God’ Christ was subordinate to God the Father, by whom he had been created before the beginning of the world. The teaching seems to have sprung from a concern to protect the sovereignty and unchanging nature of God from the limitations implied in the doctrine of the I
NCARNATION
.

B
EATIFICATION
: the solemn papal authorisation of religious cult in honour of a dead Christian; a step on the way to full
CANONISATION
or declaration that the canonised person is a saint.

B
ISHOP
: from Greek
episcopos
(‘overseer’); the senior pastor (‘shepherd’)
and focus of unity within a Christian church: probably originally indistinguishable from the ‘elders’ (Greek ‘presbyter’, from which the word ‘priest’ is derived). Within the first hundred years of Christianity the bishops emerged as the chief ministers, to whom the government of the churches, and the right to ordain other ministers, was confined. The territory over which bishops rule is called a
DIOCESE
, though early bishops probably presided over the church in a single town. The Pope is Bishop of Rome.

B
RIEF
: an official papal letter, less solemn than a papal bull.

B
ULL
: solemn papal document or mandate announcing a binding decision, and carrying a formal seal.

B
YZANTIUM
, B
YZANTINE
: Byzantium was the Greek town on the Bosphorous where Constantine established the new capital of the Roman empire in 330, when it became Constantinople. It gave its name to the empire as a whole, to the state Church and to the distinctive liturgy of the Church. In contrast to the Latin Church, where the Pope’s authority came to be seen as supreme, the Byzantine Church paid special reverence to the Christian authority of the Emperor. After the Turkish conquest of 1453 Byzantium was renamed Istanbul.

C
ANON
: C
ANON LAW
: (i) Formal item of Church law. (ii) A decree of a council or synod.

C
ANONISATION
: solemn declaration that a deceased Christian is a saint, to whom prayers and other religious honours may be paid. Originally canonisation was a matter for the local church, and was usually signalled and formalised by the ‘translation’ (transfer) by the bishop of the relics of the saint to a visible shrine, and the insertion of their feast day into the calendar of the local church. The first known papal canonisation was of Ulrich of Augsburg in 993; since the late twelfth century the power of canonisation has been reserved to the Pope alone.

C
ARDINAL
: from the Latin word
cardo
, a hinge. At first, any priest attached to a major church, later restricted to the parish clergy of Rome, the bishops of the
SUBARBICARIAN DIOCESES
, and the district
DEACONS
of Rome. The special advisers and helpers of the Pope and, since 1179, the exclusive electors of a new pope. Since 1970 they have been excluded from voting in a
CONCLAVE
after the age of eighty.
Since the pontificate of Paul VI all cardinals have had to be ordained bishop, but historically they needed only to be in ‘minor orders’, and many of the most famous cardinals of history were never priests.

C
OLLEGIALITY
: the co-responsibility of all bishops, in communion with the Pope and with each other, for the whole Church. Emphasised in the teaching of early theologians like Cyprian of Carthage, it was obscured by the growth of the papal monarchy, but re-emphasised at the Second Vatican Council.

C
ONCILIARISM
, C
ONCILIAR THEORY
: the doctrine that supreme authority in the Church lies with a
GENERAL COUNCIL
, rather than with the Pope: Conciliar theory had widespread support during the period of the Great Schism, and was only finally rejected by the definition of papal
INFALLIBILITY
in 1870.

C
ONCLAVE
: from the Latin
con clave
, ‘with a key’. Since 1271, the closed place into which the assembly of cardinals is locked to elect a new pope and, by extension, the assembly of cardinals themselves. Regulations until recently emphasised the need to make conditions in the Conclave as uncomfortable as possible, to speed the process of election.

C
ONCORDAT
: an agreement between the Church and a civil government to regulate religious affairs.

C
ONSISTORY
: the assembly of cardinals, convoked by the Pope and presided over by him, to advise the Pope or witness solemn papal acts.

C
OUNCIL
, E
CUMENICAL
C
OUNCIL
, G
ENERAL
C
OUNCIL
: a solemn assembly of bishops to determine matters of doctrine or discipline for the Church. Councils called for the whole empire, the
Oecumene
, were called ‘ecumenical’ or general councils, and their solemn teaching was believed to be
INFALLIBLE
. The first of these general councils was Nicaea, called by the Emperor Constantine in 325 to settle the Arian controversy. In Catholic theology, no general council can meet without papal agreement.

C
URIA
: Latin for ‘court’: the papal court and central administration of the Roman Catholic Church, organised in a number of separate congregations each presided over by a cardinal known as the ‘Prefect’.

D
EACON
: Christian minister appointed to assist the Bishop in the liturgy, and in Church administration and especially charitable activity.
Often considered the most junior of the three traditional grades of ministry, in antiquity and the Middle Ages the deacons of Rome were often more powerful than any of the city’s priests or assistant bishops. Because of their administrative experience and close association with papal government, the Pope was often chosen from among the deacons.

D
ECRETALS
: papal letters, usually in response to requests for guidance or rulings. Collected in the Middle Ages as the basis for
CANON LAW
.

D
ICASTERY
: Vatican department.

D
IOCESE
: the district governed by a bishop. The word, and the areas covered, were originally taken over from units of Roman civil government.

D
ONATISM
: schismatic puritanical African movement in the fourth century and afterwards, which rejected the ministration of any clergy who had lapsed under persecution, and which taught that the sacraments of such clergy contaminated the churches within which they were performed. It took its name from the third-century Numidian Bishop Donatus.

E
NCYCLICAL
: a solemn letter addressed by the Pope to the bishops, the clergy, the whole Christian people or, more recently, to ‘all people of goodwill’. Encyclicals came into use under Benedict XIV, and have become the favoured form of papal teaching since the early nineteenth century. Individual encyclicals are known by the first two or three words of their opening paragraph – normally in Latin.

E
XARCH
: the representative or ‘viceroy’ of the Byzantine Emperor in Italy and in Africa.

E
XCOMMUNICATION
: the sentence by which a bishop or pope excludes an individual or group from a share in the sacraments and prayers of the Church. In the Middle Ages excommunication effectively deprived an individual of all civil rights.

F
ILIOQUE
: Latin word meaning ‘and from the Son’: a clause inserted into the Nicene Creed in sixth-century Spain, and later adopted throughout the Western Church. It is part of the Western version of the doctrine of the Trinity, and it teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father. The Eastern Churches reject the formula, and it was one of the principle reasons for the breaking off of communion between East and West in the Middle Ages. Some
Eastern theologians, however, agree that, although the inclusion of the word in the Creed is illicit, the teaching contained in the
Filioque
is acceptable if rightly interpreted.

G
ALLICANISM
: from the Latin name for France, Gallia: the teaching, current especially in France from the later Middle Ages, that local or national churches have independence from papal control.

G
NOSTIC
, G
NOSTICISM
: from the Greek word
gnosis
, knowledge. Blanket term for widely differing forms of heretical Christian teaching, current from the second century onwards, making a sharp distinction between spirit and matter, and claiming that only spirit can be redeemed.

H
ERESY
: from the Greek word
haeresis
, choice or thing chosen: the formal denial or doubt of Catholic doctrine; a term of disapproval for religious error.

I
CONOCLASM
: Greek term meaning ‘image-breaking’: applied especially to the reaction against religious images in the Eastern Church in the seventh and eighth centuries.

I
NCARNATION
: the teaching that in the life of the man Jesus of Nazareth, the second person of the Trinity, God himself, took human flesh (Latin
carnis
) and became a human being.

I
NDULGENCE
: the remission by the Church, and especially the Pope, of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven. In medieval Western theology, sin was conceived of as leaving behind it a temporal ‘debt’ or scar, even when it had been confessed and forgiven. This ‘debt’ could be wiped away by acts of penance such as fasting or pilgrimage. As part of the ‘power of the keys’ to bind and loose in matters of sin and forgiveness, bishops had the power to remit the need to perform such acts. Theologians explained this by interpreting ‘indulgences’ as the dispensing to sinners of a ‘treasure of merits’ acquired by Christ and the saints, on the analogy of transfers from a full bank account to an overdrawn one. In the late Middle Ages, it was believed that these indulgences could be extended to the souls suffering in
PURGATORY
, and so could hasten their translation to heaven. Indulgences could be partial, i.e. equivalent to a fixed period of penance, such as forty days or a year, or ‘plenary’, i.e. unlimited, and remitting all the temporal punishment due to sin.

I
NFALLIBLE
, I
NFALLIBILITY
: Latin word meaning free from error. From
early times it was believed that the Church could not fall into error about the fundamental truths of the faith. A negative concept, this infallibility does not mean that the Church or any of its teachers are inspired, but that in certain circumstances they will be protected from fundamental error. Infallibility was attributed from earliest times to the collective teaching of the Church, and hence to the decrees of general councils. In 1870 the First Vatican Council in its decree
Pastor Aeternus
laid down that the
ex cathedra
or most solemn teaching of the Pope possessed the infallibility which Christ had willed for the Church.

I
NTERDICT
: solemn ecclesiastical sentence cutting off a whole community or country from the sacraments of the Church.

J
ANSENISM
: named after Cornelius Jansen, its founder: a religious and doctrinal-movement within the Catholic Church from the seventeenth century onwards, which emphasised human sinfulness, the doctrine of predestination and the sovereign grace of God. Because of successive papal condemnations and the interest it took in the early history of the Church, Jansenism became associated with anti-papalism and an emphasis on the independent authority of the bishops; it was therefore often allied with G
ALLICANISM
and J
OSEPHINISM
.

J
OSEPHINISM
: named after the Emperor Joseph II of Austria: a form of Gallicanism, which emphasised the independence of local churches and bishops from papal control. Josephinism was a doctrine propagated by secular rulers anxious to control the church in their territories, and keen therefore to restrict the supranational influence of the popes.

J
UBILEE OR
H
OLY
Y
EAR
: a year during which the Pope grants a plenary Indulgence to all who visit Rome on pilgrimage and fulfil certain conditions. Instituted in 1300 by Boniface VIII, it was originally intended to occur once a century. The interval was reduced to fifty years by Clement VI, to thirty-three (the supposed age of Christ at the Crucifixion) by Urban VI, and to twenty-five by Paul II. The most important ceremony associated with the Jubilee is the opening of the Holy Door into St Peters, which is bricked up between Jubilees.