St. Celestine V

St. Celestine V (born 1215?, Isernia?, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies—died May 19, 1296, near Ferentino, Papal States; canonized May 5, 1313; feast day May 19) was the pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, from July 5 to December 13, 1294. He famously rejected the papal crown in favor of a life as a hermit, resigning from the papacy after only five months. Although Celestine V was not the first (or last) pontiff to abdicate, his action was viewed as a cowardly act of treason by the 14th-century Italian poet Dante, who placed the reluctant pope at the gates of Hell in his poem Inferno. Other medieval writers, in particular Petrarch, viewed him more kindly. Celestine V was canonized in 1313 by Pope Clement V and is venerated as the patron saint of bookbinders.

Life as a hermit

Pietro da Morrone (or Angelerio) was born in southern Italy to a peasant family. Having become a Benedictine monk in his youth, he soon retreated to a hermit’s life in the Abruzzi Mountains, near Sulmona. His rigorous asceticism and reputation as a miracle worker attracted followers, and he became the head of a group of hermits (c. 1260) who were later called Celestines and incorporated into the Benedictine order. Pietro founded dozens of monasteries throughout Italy, establishing the order’s seat at the abbey of Santo Spirito del Morrone. True to his ascetic nature, he lived in a cave in a mountain overlooking the abbey.

Election to the papacy

Pietro was about 80 when he was elected pope on July 5, 1294. He accepted only because of the perilous situation of the church: The papacy had been vacant for two years, since the death of Nicholas IV in 1292. The conclave, comprised of 12 cardinals, had been unable to agree on a successor because of a rivalry between two powerful Roman factions, the Orsini and Colonna families. According to some historians, during the stalemate Pietro had attracted the conclave’s attention by writing a letter to the dean of the College of Cardinals, admonishing the cardinals for having not yet chosen a successor and predicting God’s vengeance upon them. The cardinals then decided to elect him as pope, and several bishops were tasked with retrieving Pietro from his hermitage. Allegedly, he initially attempted to run away when they came for him.

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Rather than live in Rome or Perugia (where the conclave had partly taken place), Celestine was crowned pope in L’Aquila and based his papacy in Naples, in the Castel Nuovo. He insisted that the Roman Curia, the group of various Vatican offices that assist the pope in the day-to-day affairs of the church, also move to Naples.

Though a holy man, he lacked administrative ability and considered the papacy a distraction from his ascetic struggle for salvation. He distrusted the cardinals and became dependent on King Charles II of Naples, with whose supporters he filled the Curia. In the long run, this helped shift the balance of power between the church and the emerging European monarchs, which would have disastrous effects in the 14th and 15th centuries. Further, Celestine favored his own hermits and the Spiritual Franciscans, whom he permitted to secede from the main part of their order, a solution that was much later made permanent after a long struggle.

Resignation as pope

By Advent, the period of preparation for the celebration of Jesus’ birth at Christmas, Celestine had built a monk’s cell inside the papal apartment in the Castel Nuovo. After encountering great difficulty in his role, he realized it would be dangerous for the church and for his soul if he continued as pope. Hence he consulted the cardinals and issued a papal bull that affirmed the pope’s right to abdicate. He resigned on December 13, 1294.

However, after Cardinal Benedict Caetani became his successor as Boniface VIII, some claimed Celestine’s resignation was unlawful. Thus, the majority of the cardinals found it advisable to keep Celestine under supervision, and he was not allowed to return to his hermitage. On the verge of escaping via the Adriatic Sea, he was captured and sent back to Boniface, who kept him interned in Fumone Castle, where he died.

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Legacy

Although Celestine had the courage to terminate an impossible situation, in the Inferno of The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–21) Dante places him at the entrance of Hell for his abdication and alludes to the pope as “him who made, through cowardice, the great refusal.” In De vita solitaria (1346; The Life of Solitude), however, Petrarch praises Celestine’s abdication as a courageous act that proved his humility and his quest for spiritual perfection.

Celestine’s successor, Boniface VIII, fared little better as pope, although for different reasons. His conflicts with the French king Philip IV (culminating in a kidnapping plot) further destabilized the church and paved the way for major power shifts—specifically, the Avignon papacy, the Western Schism, and weakening church-state relations.

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