Stephen DiJulius 2/15/24 Stephen DiJulius 2/15/24

Rome Has Spoken

A geopolitical history of the cataclysmic events that shaped the First Vatican Council and the Dogma of Papal Infallibly.

Sources:

De Cesare Raffaele and George Macaulay Trevelyan. 1909. The Last Days of Papal Rome 1850-1870. London: A. Constable.
Vatican I : The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church. 2018. Cambridge Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Eno Robert B. 2008. The Rise of the Papacy. Eugene Or: Wipf & Stock.
Page John R. 1994. What Will Dr. Newman Do? : John Henry Newman and Papal Infallibility 1865-1875. Collegeville Minn: Liturgical Press.
Certain Sainthood : Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church. 2015. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kertzer David I. 2004. Prisoner of the Vatican : The Popes’ Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the New Italian State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
The Pope Who Would Be King : The Exile of Pius Ix and the Emergence of Modern Europe. 2018 First ed. New York: Random House.

Prologue

Sausage is one of the best foods devised by man - breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, German brats, sausage pizza, even those chicken sausages with pockets of cheese in them. Everyone loves sausage. But you know what no one loves? Watching sausage get made.

As Catholics, we love the doctrines of the faith handed down to us by the Church fathers. They reveal more to us about God and His relationship with us. They gives is a better understanding in the Faith and assist us in working out our salvation. Everyone loves the Faith. But you know what no one loves? Ecumenical council proceedings.

This really bad analogy I’ve just given you has been helpful for me at least in understanding that being a little too familiar with the sausage factory can affect my appetite for the end product. Vatican I may as well be the sausage factory from Upton Sinclaire’s “The Jungle”. So, are we examining it?

For return listeners you know this podcast examines those moments in Church history when it seems the Gates of Hell come awfully close to prevailing. A dogmatic ecumenical council seems an unlikely place to find one of those moments. But then consider the gravity of an ecumenical council – it produces dogma and doctrine that the faithful are bound to ascent to and believe. A public refutation of the results of Church councils often leads to one being excommunicated. Let him be anathema. These men, these bishops, the living fathers of the Church are understood to be fallible, and capable of sin just like the rest of us. However, it to be believed that the Holy Spirit will not let these councils lead the faithful into error. That’s a reassuring belief.

The answer the question, why we are examining a church council, is Papal Infallibility – declared a dogma of the faith during the first Vatican council. What might surprise you, and what certainly surprised me, was how controversial this dogma was – and always had been. In fact, many of the world’s most prominent theologians, almost all of the Catholic princes, and at least 25% of the Church bishops felt the Gates of Hell had either prevailed or come dangerously close at Vatican I. It also – and there’s no getting around this – changed the trajectory of the Church Hierarchy in ways that no one ever expected, and in ways we take for granted today. This appears to be mostly forgotten history, and the perfect type of subject for this podcast.

To be crystal clear – this is not a theology podcast. It is a history podcast. The merits of, or apologetics for theological concepts, including doctrine, dogma, and articles of the faith are not analyzed here. I say this because for some people, the very nature of looking at the history of the first Vatican Council and calling its results controversial, can be a little to spicy for some people. That’s fine. For those interested in a sober and thoughtful examination of this critical pivot in Church History – grab a seat.

St. Augustine is credited with originating the phrase, Roma locuta; causa finita est. Rome has spoken – the case is closed. I shall most unworthily borrow from that great doctor of the church and use part of that phrase for the title of this series: Rome Has Spoken.

Part 1 – Plenitude of Power

A mob, some ten thousand strong, had gathered around the Quirinal Palace in Rome. The pope had no choice but to barricade himself and his closest advisors inside. The mob had sent their pleas to the Vicar of Christ – they demanded a liberal government. The pope had again refused. In response the mob set the palace gates on fire. The flames took and began to rise – it looked as if the whole palace might go up in flames. The pope’s servants managed to douse the fires from above – buying more time. When the mob attempted to reignite it, the Swiss Guard opened fire on them.

Some of the more daring Romans outside the gate, armed with rifles, climbed a bell tower, others perched on roofs, looking for movement within the palace windows. Monsignor Palma – Latin text preparer for the pope, glanced out into the piazza below, when a bullet zipped through the window, striking the Monsignor in the chest. He fell dead upon the cold marble floor. The lonely pontiff lamented:

“This is the second victim who dies for my cause.”

The first victim was the pope’s Minister of the Interior, Pelligrino Rossi. Just days earlier, as Rossi was walking from his carriage to parliament, he was stabbed in the neck by an assassin. That night a group of protesters had gathered outside the home of Rossi and chanted: Blessed is the hand that stabbed Rossi.

Back outside the pope’s palace, the crowd was now overturning carts, creating barricading at the entrances to the piazza that lead to the palace. They were preparing for a siege. If they could not enter the Quirinal Palace, they would starve out the pope-king. Somehow, the crowd acquired a canon. They rolled the piece of artillery to the front of their barricade and aimed it directly at the palace gates.

Seeing the strengthening position of the roman mob, the pope’s advisors urged him to at last give in, to appoint new government ministers favorable to the people, to allow the people to form a liberal government. The pope replied:

"Hope of resisting, none. Here in my own royal palace, a prelate has been killed. Shots are fired at us, cannons are aimed at us. Encircled, besieged by the rebels. We give in to avoid useless shedding of blood and even worse crimes, but only to force. You see, signori, we give in, but under protest. We give in only under threat of violence, and every concession we make is invalid, it is null and void."

So little was left in the pope’s control that this was less a concession of authority, and more an acknowledgement of reality. There was no one in Rome who desired to come to his defense. No one in Rome desired his rule – at least publicly. The Swiss Guard was rendered impotent by the Civic Guard – who had aligned themselves with the mob and taken control of the Quirinal Palace. The streets of Rome were no longer the pope’s. The soldiers in the army of his Papal States’ territory had also abandoned him, joining the mob. Roman aristocrats, who had long profited from this monarchy were nowhere to be found. Most of the roman curia – the cardinals, were hiding in the shadows.

When news of the pope’s capitulation reached the streets of Rome, the mobs fired rifles in the air in celebration of their victory. This was jarring news for the French, Spanish, and British governments – who each held uneasy control of their nations in this post enlightenment new-world. All three had warships docked on the Italian coast, ready to deliver the pope to safety – if he could make it out of Rome.

At 5pm, on November 24th, 1848, the French Ambassador, Duke Harcourt, stepped out of his carriage and entered the palace - the Civic Guard let him pass, not willing to deny entry to such a high ranking foreign visitor. Duke Harcourt was a realist. Just a week earlier he had advised his government that: The pope’s authority exists in name only.

The ambassador entered the papal apartment high up in the palace, where he found Pius IX waiting for him. From another door, the papal steward, Count Benedetto Filippani entered. The steward escorted Pius to his bedroom where he helped the pope disrobe himself of the iconic snow white robes and red shoes. Pius then lowered himself to his knees and began to pray: Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness. ... In your compassion blot out my offense.

His steward interrupted the pontiff’s prayers, reminding him that time was of the essence. To which Pius responded in Latin with: The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.

The new clothes laid out for the pope were those of the common cleric: a black cassock, black socks, black shoes, and black wide brimmed floppy hat. He rubbed powder in his hair to whiten it, and then placed tinted glasses upon the bridge of his nose. As Pius turned toward his mirror to review his new garb, he said: I look like a country priest.

Back in the receiving room, the French ambassador sat alone, talking to himself, in case anyone was listening, hoping to give off the impression that he and the pope were engaged in diplomatic discussions. Meanwhile, Pius IX and his steward lit a single candle and made their escape through a side door of the bedroom, and then passing through the papal throne room. Reaching the end of a hall, they were supposed to meet a papal servant with a key to a secret exit from the palace. But the servant was not there. "My God," muttered the pope, "this begins badly."

Steward Filippani left to find the servant and returned with the key in hand. Both men passed then through another dark hall and then down a stairway. At the base of the stairs was an exterior door to the palace. The keys to this door (like all exterior doors to the palace) were held by the Civic Guardsmen. Yet this particular door was discovered to have a faulty lock. It could be opened if at the same time one person pushed and one person on the opposite side lifted. Another papal servant was supposed to be waiting on the outside to do precisely that. The papal steward knocked to alert the servant that they had arrived. Three knocks in reply would have meant the coast was clear. But they received two knocks – meaning the Civic Guard was present. After what must have been an eternity, three knocks finally came in reply. The door was lifted and pushed open, revealing Pius IX dressed as a common priest. The papal servants awaiting him fell to their knees to receive his blessing.

Filippani and the unrecognizable country priest with him then made their way to the steward’s carriage. Loudly, for all to hear he commanded the diver to take them to his house. Passing by the courtyard guards Filippani leaned out the window waving them good night. Pius IX held a handkerchief to his face, pretending to sneeze. After a few more midnight carriage transfers, Pius made his way safely to Gaeta, near the tip of the Italian boot, under the direct protection of King Ferdinand of Naples. The eternal city had kicked out the pope. Its citizens had rejected him, and his priestly government. Rome had spoken.

This event did not lead to the downfall of Pius IX; rather, it defined him. It was the pivotal moment when various threads of Catholic Church history converged into a single significant result. While it undoubtedly was the beginning of the end of the decline of the papal states – the pope's earthly kingdom that had endured for a millennium – and the fading of papal temporal power, it also created an opportunity for papal reformers. The centralizing of all church governance under the authority of the Chair of Peter was nigh – something that was not always a given in the first millennium of the church.

Pope Pius IX would later preside over the first Vatican Council, introducing the dogma of Papal Infallibility. It is this Vatican Council that is the subject of this series, not necessarily Pius IX or the dogma of papal infallibility specifically. Yet both must inevitably play an oversized part in our conversation, and one or the other – Vatican I would either never happened or produced nothing remarkable. Therefore, both must be examined if we are to properly understand Vatican I. There is one more critical element to understanding this council – and that is geopolitics. Leading up to the council, the Papal monarchy is rightly regarded as a failed state. The first men to recognize this fact this was the European aristocracy. The last man to discover it was Pius IX.

To truly comprehend how and why the first Vatican Council came to be we must, of course look at the historical contextual evolution of theory and thought on papal infallibility – and for any repeat listeners you know in most cases this means we need to go back a long way, nearly back to Christ himself – and all the while we need to keep one eye on the city of Rome itself.

Author Raffaele De Cesare in his incredibly informative and detailed work: The Last Days of Papal Rome, describe the city in 1870 as having changed so much as to:

“…render the reconstruction of her past most difficult, a past complicated by historical circumstances and by reason of its geography; a city not really in the centre of Italy, the political capital of a small Italian State and the religious capital of the Catholic world, girdled by a desert and marshes, almost skirting the sea, yet not a maritime city; subject to the enervating sirocco [dustrorms], enclosed within walls, of which two-thirds surrounded villas, vine-yards, meadows, malarial cane fields and ruins.”

De Cesare goes on to marvel at the speed at which Rome changed when he was writing his history in 1909:

Still more is this the case in dealing with contemporary history and with the extraordinary events by means of which the political unity of a country, never before united, was achieved and a thousand-year-old power, which seemed immortal, was brought to an end. The events accomplished in twenty years prove to be the natural consequence of those historic laws from which the political Papacy flattered itself it was to be exempt.”

The last thing the papacy did, mere moments before its fall, was to declare itself infallible. Infallibility is a funny thing. And at the time De Cesare was writing his history – acceptance of infallibility by the common laity was far from universal. As late as the early 20t century there was enough of a public debate that well know Anglican historian and priest Sparrow Simpson noted that Catholics were still altering all their works to conform to a new dogma that previously few had heard of.

Just nine years prior to the declaration of papal infallibility Reverand Stephen Keenan published a Catechism to combat protestant heresies that was distributed to Catholic schools in England, Wales, and Scotland. On the subject of papal infallibility, it reduced it to protestant slander:

(Q.) Must not Catholics believe the Pope himself to be infallible?

(A.) This is a Protestant invention: it is no article of the Catholic faith: no decision of his can oblige under pain of heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body, that is by the bishops of the Church.

This catechism wasn’t revised until 30 years after the dogma was declared.

Jesuit historian and author Klaus Schatz tells us that:

"If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no."

Schatz has made a career on this subject and puts forward the case that papal primacy was an evolution of an office, not a fundamental theological given, let alone an article of faith. For many Catholics today it is still not a given. In 1992 a survey of young Christians was conduct on this very topic. 81 % of the respondents were Catholic. Less than 37 percent said they believed in the dogma. The exact same proportion outright denied it, with around 26 percent saying they didn’t know.

Roman Catholic author, trained classicist, rosary devotee and church historian, Garry Wills to this day outright rejects the dogma. Author, theologian, Catholic priest, and theological advisor to the Second Vatican Council Hans Kung, wrote an entire book condemning the dogma of papal infallibility. He wasn’t declared a heretic but was stripped of his license to teach as a Catholic theologian. A thousand students in Germany held a candlelit vigil in protest. Followed by sixty American and Canadian theologians publishing a statement directly rebuffing the Vatican’s decision:

"We publicly affirm our recognition that he is indeed a Roman Catholic theologian."

Pope Benedict XVI, who himself in his own words did not believe the papacy was an absolute monarchy, apparently did not see Kung’s the denial of infallibility as much of a scandal, inviting him to the Vatican as a dinner guest.

Brian Tierney, famed medievalist, church historian and former professor at the Catholic University of America wrote:

"There is no convincing evidence that papal infallibility formed any part of the theological or canonical tradition of the church before the thirteenth century; the doctrine was invented in the first place by a few dissident Franciscans because it suited their convenience to invent it; eventually, but only after much initial reluctance, it was accepted by the papacy because it suited the convenience of the popes to accept it."

Father Robert Eno, theologian and professor of Church history at the Catholic University of America, in his book The Rise of the Papacy, illustrates how well the results of infallibility, that is centralizing the authority of the papal office, has paired well with modern technology:

“The years following the council have shown that the problem of papal-episcopal relations is far from resolved. In fact, some would argue that after a brief and modest experiment with decentralization, centralizing tendencies have returned with a vengeance. Rome can be consulted now almost in a matter of minutes from any part of the world. Bishops and others can and do go to Rome in person, frequently with a journey of only a few hours. And now, if you cannot go to Rome, the Pope will come to you. In other words, modern means of communication and travel have made centralization easier than ever.”

We now arrive back at a historical thread that I spent some time on in my first series on the crusade – papal ascendency.

It’s not lost on me that the theological case for papal authority is sourced from the same gospel verses where I derived the title for this entire podcast: The Petrine texts. Christ gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter, the rock, on which His Church would be built. The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, from there says Peter holds the first place among the twelve (CCC 552) Peter is to feed Christ’s sheep, and, along with the other bishops, has the power to bind and loose.

Most church historians acknowledge early church juridic primacy being the see of Jerusalem, where James the lesser was bishop, while Peter was bishop of Rome, often citing the council of Jerusalem in the New Testament where after Peter spoke, James gave his final judgement. It’s important to remember that this is a part of history that we have very little information on. Generally, it is agreed that the shift in juridic primacy to Rome occurred after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the martyrdom of Peter and Paul in Rome. Yet it all remains speculation at best.

Father Eno goes on:

“No one has ever offered the definitive answer to the question: When and where did the various structural configurations emerge? … Indeed, the closest thing one finds to a monarchical bishop in the first century is precisely the role of James in the Jewish Christian community of Jerusalem.”

A watershed moment for papal authority came from the Donation of Constatine – a document claiming that after Constantine was miraculously cured of leprosy by being baptized by Pope Sylvester, the emperor gave the see of peter the governance of Rome and the western empire. The problem is that the Vatican itself, and nearly every historian unanimously agree that the entire thing is a 6th century forgery by Pope Symmachus, who was looking for reasons why he should not be subjected to ecclesiastical tribunals – or the judgments of other bishops. The Catholic Encyclopedia further refers to these texts the Symmachian forgeries.

In the medieval church, the donation was believed to be authentic, however. But this explosion of papal power was held as a good thing by all. From Dante’s Inferno:

“Ah, Constantine, how much evil was born, not from your conversion, but from that donation that the first wealthy Pope received from you!”

But how could the papacy centralize its power based on something that never happened. The answer is it didn’t. According to author and professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, Donald Prudlo, the papacy’s path for primacy was the canonization process. Prudlo’s book, Certain Sainthood, explores this historical development in detail:

“The cult of the saints is one of the oldest manifestations of orthodox Christianity. From the early days of the Christian martyrs to the transition to monastic confessors and then to the geographical extension of new cults in recently Christianized areas, sainthood was an essential correlative to the spread of the Gospel. Even today, in spite of grave challenges from the Protestant Reformation, it still plays a dominant role in the Christian churches most attached to their historical pedigrees: in Roman Catholicism and in Eastern Orthodoxy and, to a lesser extent, among certain high-church Protestants. Such practices had deep roots in popular consciousness and were ubiquitous in first-millennium Christianity.”

By the fourth and fifth centuries the local bishops had asserted control over the recognition of sainthood. We can’t call it canonization because that wasn’t a thing yet. Between 6th and 8th centuries the increasingly hegemonic Roman Church was looking for ways to break its subordination to the Emperors of Constantinople –shockingly evident by the papal forgeries of the time. The time was ripe for the papacy. Not only had it, by necessity, taken over governance of the Roman empire but the Byzantine empire was being ravaged by the rise of Islam. To solidify its military strength and gain sway over the east, the papacy aligned itself with the rising Franks, who were busily unifying into an enormous power. In homage to the new alliance, the Franks gave the Pope large swathes of the Italian peninsula to govern as he would. In return the pope crowned the Frankish King Charlemagne. And thus, was born the Papal states, the papal monarchy, and the Holy Roman Empire.

With the unification of politics came the unification of worship, i.e. the Roman liturgy. The word canonization begins to appear as the millennium approaches, literally meaning the enrollment of men and women into the canon for authorized public and liturgical veneration. Enter Gregory VII and the investiture contest, followed immediately by Urban II’s unleashing of the crusades. The culmination of these events brought the papacy worldwide prestige and interest it had yet to enjoy in its thousand-year history. The Bishopric of Rome was now, by a long shot, the most powerful office on the planet and had proven its ability to not only bring the western aristocracy to heel, but also marshal them to launch intercontinental wars.

This Gregorian-style reformed papacy matured in the 13th century – a big century for the office. It is during this century that discussion emerged about the bishop of Rome having a special charism – that of infallibility. But before we follow those breadcrumbs, we need to go back to the canonization process.

The authority for approving saints was quickly recognized as a tool for doctrinal control. As already mentioned, up to this point the local bishops had taken up the jurisdiction of the veneration of local saints. With the increasing prominence of Rome, it became popular for cults of these regional saints to go on pilgrimage to Rome, to visit the chief bishop of Christendom and receive his recognition of their saint. As more and more pilgrim cults came and went, questions naturally arose over the quality of some of these saints. Doubt and suspicion grew over these locally venerated saints, as well as the motives behind their veneration. For some saints, it was evident that their lives were less than holy.

Challenges to venerations were officially raised, resulting in canonical and theological examinations. These investigations naturally landed in the lap of the papacy. Prudlo reminds us that this was a several hundred-year evolution. The earliest evidence we have of a pope’s involvement in a canonization didn’t occur until 993 at a council in Rome. A bishop read aloud the life and miracles of Bishop Ulrich – who died 20 years prior. Pope John XV issued a document asserting his approval, using the words: “by the authority of Blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles.” John XV then threatened anyone who might disagree with his declaration with anathema. Under apparent threat of excommunication, all the attending bishops signed the document. From this event comes the form for future papal canonizations: collegiality, universality, and testimony of virtues and miracles. This was the beginning of the transformation of canonization of saints from a local liturgical matter, to a universal juridic one.

A hundred years later popes are declaring new saints using language like: “We establish and decree”, “Apostolic authority”, and as it was in the case of a canonization by Benedict IX, the pope for the first time demanded veneration for a saint by all the Christian people and clergy – a new and innovative departure from prior language issued by the bishop of Rome. It should be no surprise then that 30 years after this event, Pope Gregory VII famously declared that the Bishop of Rome is subject to no authority and cannot be judged. That the Roman Church specifically has never erred and will never err. Papal infallibility is, by extensions, a natural and reasonable gravitational outcome of this reckoning.

In 1139 at the Second Lateran Council, pope Innocent II canonized a new saint, Sturm of Fulda. What stood out about Sturn was that he had lived in the 8th century. So why after 400 years now encourage a cult of veneration? The answer was politics. According to the local cult of Sturn, he was in life a stout partisan of the bishop of Rome against political opponents in Germany. This was a saint made for Gregorian-style pontiffs. The year following Sturn’s canonization, canon law was at last organized into a stable, cohesive body that contained within it, according to Donald Prudlo:

“a very high theory of the papal monarchy through the employment of texts, both authentic and otherwise, from the Christian tradition.”

By the end of the 13th century, the Bishop of Rome had total control over canonizations, replete with courts, lawyers, appellate courts, until at the end it would be declared: Rome has spoken, the case is closed.

Pope Innocent then pushed the canonization process into the terms of undeniable infallibility, from Prudlo:

“Innocent used the strongest language to date regarding the pope’s authority to canonize. He speaks with authority as the “successor of blessed Peter and the Vicar of Jesus Christ.” This is one of the first examples of the stabilization of the term Vicarius Christi, which would become a commonplace title for the popes. What is significant here is that Innocent describes the desire of the canonization petitioners for recognition because as “Vicar of Christ” he employs the “plenitude of power.” Aside from the constitutional innovations that Innocent is surely making here, he firmly situates canonization in terms of the fullness of power that “Christ conceded to blessed Peter.” Papal canonization, then, was no simple act of recognition, no permission to translate, no bare juridical edict or liturgical addendum. No, canonization was a reserved and special case (one of the earliest and most explicit reservations in the history of the papacy). It was to be interpreted through the lens of the pope’s supreme authority, granted by Christ Himself. It was to be an extraordinary act, requiring extraordinary process and extraordinary proof. When all of these issues—rigorous public and legal examination, validation by tested miracles, anti-heretical orientation, and the fullness of papal power became joined, Innocent had finally gathered together all the components for the historical unfolding of the process by which infallibility would be claimed regarding canonization, which in the future would stir up strident opposition.”

Innocent’s “plenitude of power” was deployed as a cudgel of teaching authority, mobilizing canonization bulls as papal instructions on faith and morals – what Prudlo calls the proving ground for papal authority. Critics of this new plenitude of power arose immediately – many of them canon lawyers. How could these decisions be infallible if a person were later to be discovered unsaintly? Further, dogmas and morals are clearly found in scripture – but not so with canonized saints. By virtue of this newly defined authority, the pope was taking it upon himself and himself only, to present a member of the church as definitively in Heaven, the lack of divine revelation notwithstanding. Pope Innocent IV responded to challenges by canonists and theologians by declaring that God will sort out the bad saints:

“If the Church might err in such a canonization, which nevertheless is not to be believed, although it may happen… God will accept prayers offered in such good faith, for all things are cleansed in the faith of Christ and though it might be that the truth of canonization might be wanting, nevertheless the faith of those [who believe in the canonization] is not wanting.”

This is a brilliant response by the papacy. The pope’s infallibility and authority is preserved in canonization. But if his infallible declaration ends up indeed being fallible – it’s not his fault.

Innocent IV’s canonizations were all controversial. One of the most divisive was Peter of Verona – who holds title to the fasted canonization in history – one year after his death. In life, he was an inquisitor, and enemy of the Cathars, a politically powerful yet heretical sect. Adding Peter of Verona to the canon of saints was the method by which Innocent would solidify the errors of Catharism. But was this the proper use of the canonization process? Should canonizations have contemporary political ends? Many thought not, believing the canonization of Peter undermined the entire canon. It was not Peter’s piety in question, just the use of this papal authority against an opponent. To further incite critics against the papacy, Peter was a In response to the challenges of the canonization of Peter, theologians, the papacy, and the Dominicans all needed to lawyer up, as it were. Their arguments were sloppy. From Peter’s canonization was birthed saintly legal precision. From Donald Prudlo:

“Papal canonization by the middle of the thirteenth century had become one of the most professional endeavors ever devised. It had explicit, streamlined processes, checks and balances, a diversity of legal explanations and defenses, and growing prestige among the membership of the church. It began to be what it had never been before: a tool that the papal curia could use to reward devoted subjects, a method of elevating and underscoring certain types of piety and holiness, and a way to stress certain currents in papal policy. The honing of this process into a precision tool made canonizations a key weapon in the papal arsenal of the 1200s. Canonized saints could also be explicitly deployed against heresy and heretics. This raised the stakes in the medieval battle between heterodoxy and orthodoxy.”

By 1634, under Pope Urban VIII, the bishops were entirely removed from participation of this ancient right with the wholesale abolition of episcopal canonization.

With increasing status and power of the Dominicans and Franciscans, the mendicant orders became obsessed with canonization. A contest doesn’t even begin to describe the tenor of the competition among the orders. Each canonization from a particular order was further evidence of their validity. To this end, papal infallibility with regards to canonizations was critical. Error was not an option. Enter Saint Bonaventure who laid the theological substrate for infallibility by arguing that for the pope to error in canonization would be throwing the entire church and faithful into error. Such a thing would not be permissible by God. Brian Teirney and Donald Prudlo, both of whom have written extensively on this history, while disagreeing about particulars, both point to Saint Bonaventure as initiating the theological case of papal infallibility.

Contemporary of Bonaventure and fellow a teacher in Paris was Saint Thomas Aquinas. During their tenure, the questions surrounding the infallibility of canonizations were becoming hot. There was growing opposition among the mendicant saints, increasingly seen as self-interested, and promoting unsound doctrine towards political ends. Thomas aimed to take on the issue directly. In his work Quodlibet IX, question 8, he asks: whether all saints who are canonized by the church, are in glory, or if any of them might be in hell.

Being the good scholastic that he was, he first presents two difficult questions that would seem to refute infallibly. First, since no person can be sure of their own salvation, how can the pope be so sure of another’s? The canon legal response is that the pope is presented with witnesses that allow him to assess the candidate. But this leads directly to the second objection. If the pope is relying on fallible people, then the pope must be able to error. Further, as was brought up earlier – none of this is derived from divine revelation. For a resolution to an unanswerable question, Thomas brings an X factor into the argument - The Holy Ghost. For St. Thomas, the Holy Ghost leads the pope and therefore the pope cannot error in canonizations as this would introduce a damnable error in the church and undermine the entire thing.

With the help of St. Thomas, by the 14th century, the process of canonization is fixed, and inquisitors begin using belief in certain mendicant saints as evidence of one’s orthodox faith. A new heresy is born. By denying a certain person is in heaven, thou art denying the infallibility of the pope.

And yet, as we see in the marry-go-round of popes today, things can change drastically from one pope to the next. Just 20 years after St. Thomas weighed in, Pope John XXII condemned the doctrine of papal infallibility as the work of the devil. He called it “pestiferous doctrine” and “pernicious audacity”. But John was treading against the marches of history. Nonetheless, by 1600, papal infallibility in canonizations was largely accepted but it wasn’t universal. In Germany, professors and theologians published their own catechisms that, citing no clear mandate in scripture for such a believe, outright denied it. In England and Ireland in the in the late 18th century, any Catholic who wished to serve in official office had to take an oath denying papal infallibility.

The specter of a doctrine of papal infallibly left the international world uneasy. Kings wondered to which monarch their subjects were loyal. If one was infallible and another was not, well, that made the pope an inherent threat to one’s sovereignty. European sovereigns, who retained the right to appoint bishops, rarely appointed a prelate who leaned towards infallibility. France in particular was particularly hostile to this doctrine.

Gallicanism had been a political faction of the French clergy for a few hundred years. It sprang from a feud between the French king and the pope. An formal agreement was reached between both acknowledging that the pope only has authority over spiritual matters – not temporal ones, that the kings had the right to rule their own lands, and the bishops their own sees. The liberty of the French church codified, legally. To quote Charlie Brown – if you have a signed document in your hands, you can’t go wrong. Self-determining customs and liturgies were, per the agreement, to be respected and regarded as inviolable. And lasty, while it allowed for the primacy of the judgement of the pope, it included a caveat that the pope’s judgments are subject to the consent of the whole church.

The rise in popular papal infallibility as we have been discussing was on an inevitable crash course with Gallicanism – the two world views just would never be able to coexist. In 1763, when the French bishop of Trier felt the papal nuncios were being too heavy handed, he published a book called “On the constitution of the church and the legitimate power of the Roman pontiff.” The book was immediately put on the Index of Forbidden Books by Rome – which of course caused it to be an international best seller in multiple languages. Who doesn’t want to read a forbidden book?

Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II of Austria, was outspoken against the bishop of Rome’s international exercises of authority, and so he eliminated the papacy’s involvement inside his borders, taking control of the administration of clergy and seminaries himself. Amidst these dueling forces, Gallicanism and other flavors of nationalism vs the papacy, an disrupting factor was introduced by the enlightenment – the French Revolution.

When the revolutionary French government confiscated all church property, it also gave the Gallican bishops what they desired: episcopal elections at the local diocesan level and a dispensation of papal approval for episcopal nominations. However, it also required the episcopate to swear allegiance to the state over the pope. More than half of the clergy agreed.

Pius VI condemned and nullified all these actions with papal bulls. He declared the French government at war with the church. He was more correct than he anticipated. In 1796 French troops invaded the papal states, defeated the pope’s army, and forced him to sign a humiliating peace treaty that lifted from him certain papal territories, allowed the French access to papal ports, and granted them possession of priceless works of art.

Pius VI was eventually deposed by the French and brought back to France as a prisoner. When he died a month later, thirty-four bishops in Venice elected a new pope, Pius VII. External factors then forced the French to leave Rome, allowing the pope to return to Rome.

Napolean Bonaparte struck a deal that allowed the Church to remain in France. In this agreement, Napolean required that the pope replace all the old bishops with younger ones – in this the emperor thought he would be doing away with the old Catholics loyal to the papacy and installing younger prelates more caught up in revolutionary fervor. He could not have been more mistaken. The old bishops were Gallican, French nationalists. These newer bishops now owed their careers to a pope who was going toe to toe with Napoleon Boneparte. It was magnetic papal supremacy on display.

There was another cultural movement that must be acknowledged, as it is critical to the rise in popular concepts of infallibility. French romanticism had emerged. Whereas the enlightenment caused the French to rid themselves of the customs of the od, it was suddenly popular for the people of France to remember who they were and where they came from. The spiritual mysteries of the Faith, the smells and bells of the Mass, the rhythmic patter of the liturgy became a renewed symbol of national pride. The Middle Ages existed now as a paradigm of perfect theocracy. Gothic architecture and scholasticism had unexpectedly unseated the reason and efficiency of the revolution.

With the enlightenment and the French revolution now in the rear view mirror, this an up-and-coming generation of priests, bishops, laity and theologians, influenced by a burgeoning romanticism, a yearning for the past, saw the papacy as an institution of stability and tradition, power and majesty.

After Napoleon’s downfall, at the congress of Viena, the papal states on the Italian peninsula were reconfigured and reinstated. Austria control over the former republic of Venice. Yet there were now whispers of an Italian nationalism. And this horse-trading of their homelands began to fuel clandestine nationalism.

Such was the cultural and geopolitical condition of Europe and the Italian peninsula that the main character of this narrative was coming of age. Before he was Pius IX, Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti was born to a family of minor nobility in the norther reaches of the papal states. However, it’s not time to tell his story yet.

We must now discuss the word “Ultramontanism.” It is a medieval word that was originally used to describe a pope who was not Italian – a pope who was from over the mountains, which is what ultramontane means – meaning the other side of the Alps, like France and Germany. Over the years France and Germany began using the term to describe people who favored international papal authority – they supported the power over the mountains – they were ultramontanes. This pejorative meaning stuck and is how it has come down to us through the centuries.

You will have to forgive the admittedly oversimplification for the sake of time: European Catholics at the dawn of the 19th century could be, and often were, put into one of two parties: The Ultramontanes and the Gallicans. As mentioned, the Gallicans cherished their liturgical traditions and independence from the bishop of Rome – and they had a contractual agreement to authenticate their position. The Ultramontanes, however, were younger, former revolutionaries, romantics, poets, artists. They were vibrant and enthusiastic, and believed that the only way to defeat the enlightenment and prevent another bloodbath was not just a centralized papacy with sweeping international authority, but also, supreme, and irreformable theological powers - papal infallibility. The pope as they saw it these powers and he needed them now. To this movement the pope wasn’t the primary teacher if the faith, as had been previously developed – he was more than that. He was the exclusive teacher.

Catholic Jesuit priest and historian John William O'Malley, in his book on Vatican I tells us:

“The transformation of social consciousness that the rise of Ultramontanism effected occurred rapidly and dramatically, particularly in France. Within two generations the French Catholic Church, which had long prided itself on its “liberties and privileges” in the face of papal authority, became the crusader for an exaltation of that authority.”

A strange phenomenon of the Ultramontanism movement was that its leaders were largely made up of very recent converts to the faith – many were previously agnostic or came from different creeds, particularly drawing from the Anglicans. Of the Anglican converts, two of the most significant were Felicite de Lamennais from France and Henry Edward Manning of England, both being ordained became priests.

When Lamennais and Manning describe papal infallibility, they do not frame it as an abstract doctrine needing defining, they describe it as a contemporary innovation that can be wound up an released. Modern problems require modern solutions. They argued that subordinate to the pope in every detail was both the political and episcopal. Whether they knew it or not, they were progenies of Gregorian reforms. For a time, they were seen as extremist, occupying a small but loud minority.

A change in he winds for Ultramontanism occurred in 1819 when Count Joseph Marie de Maistre, French lawyer and member of the Scottish Rite Masonic lodge published a book called Du Pape, where he delegitimized the temporal authority of nations and prostrated them before an exalted international papal office. For de Maistre, the papacy as an infallible and sovereign office could by bring the unwieldy European kingdoms to heel. Naturally, Gallicanism was a decided aberration that must be destroyed, along with its emphasis on the authority of councils, the need for consensus, and the respect for episcopal collegiality. These were new anathemas, new heresies. Du Pape was a new call to Ultramontanism that invigorated the groundwork already laid by de Lamennais and Mannig.

From father O'Malley:

“With Du Pape he summoned infallibility out of its repose in the cloisters of academic theology and sent it, ready for battle, into the public square. Du Pape was the first work to do so and therefore was crucially important.”

Du Pape was widely read in Europe and when opening it, the first thing one would read was: There can be no human society without government, no government without sovereignty, no sovereignty without infallibility.

Despite the vigor of De Maistre’s pen, he was no theologian or historian, and therefore his case for infallibility was never intended to be based on tradition or scripture. It was put forward as an antidote to the contemporary ills plaguing society at that moment. To Catholics who survived the French revolution – is was an medicine they ingested without question.

The political dichotomy of Ultramontanes vs Gallican materialized in the press and public square as liberals vs conservatives. Ironically, the Ultramontanes, taking the role as the conservatives found all sorts of enlightenment idealists on their side, eager to coopt a movement bent on ushering in an absolute power to unilaterally effect society. This alliance of revolutionaries and Ultramontanes alarmed Pope Gregory XVI to the point where he penned an encyclical titled Mirari Vos, condemning de Lamennais’ movement. The pope called de Lamennais’ works small in size, but enormous in wickedness. After this repudiation by the office he wished to exalt above all else, de Lamennais disavowed his Catholic faith and shed himself of his priestly vestments. Before long he would end up in debtors’ prison and become an early advocate for socialism.

De Lamennais may have lost influence, but his movement did not.

The Romantic movement of the 19th century gave the Ultramontanes a crutch for papal infallibility they badly needed, since history and theology were not their areas of expertise. A book that attempted to rationalize de Lamennais’ ethos used romanticism quite effectively:

“Rome! Serene amidst the tempests of Europe, thou hast not doubted thyself, thou hast not felt fatigue. Thy glance, turned to the four quarters of the world, followed with sublime penetration the development of human affairs in their relation to the Divine. ... I did not fail to recognize thee when I saw no kings prostrate at thy gates. I kiss thy dust with unspeakable joy and respect. Thou art the benefactress of the human race, the hope of its future, the sole grandeur now existing in Europe, the Queen of the world.”

Ultramontane zeal spread from France into the Rhineland and Germany. Popular political activist and former advocate of the French Revolution, Joseph Gorres discovered Ultramontanism through German romanticism and became one of its strongest activists. Like so many of these Ultramontanes, he had a complex relationship with his faith. Raised Catholic, he became a ruthless anti-Catholic, before publicly returning to the faith and declaring himself an ultramontane. Gorre’s version of Ultramontanism took a flavor different from de Lamennais and le Maistre. His was almost more mystical – focusing on pilgrimages, supernatural visions, and cults of relics.

This international movement was gaining not only supporters, but also detractors. A new Catechism edition called Berrington Kirks Faith of Catholics outright denied that Catholics are bound to proclamation of the pope. Catholic theologians lined up against ultramontanism. A Catholic professor from the seminary of Maynooth of Ireland asserted that Catholics who deny infallibility are not alien to the Church. The episcopacy of Ireland went even further, warning that the papacy may in fact be teaching error in an 1826 pastoral address to the clergy:

“The Catholics of Ireland not only do not believe, but they declare upon oath [...] that it is not an article of the Catholic faith, neither are they required to believe, that the Pope is infallible, and that they do not hold themselves 'bound to obey any order in its own nature immoral', though the Pope or any ecclesiastical power should issue or direct such an order; but, on the contrary, that it would be sinful in them to pay any respect or obedience thereto.”

Bishop Baines of England declared that no Catholics in Ireland or England believes in papal infallibility.

We can briefly return now to the star of this opera, young Giovanni Maria, who was in his twenties during this time. After several religious retreats, the young man had decide he was being called to the priesthood. His theological training and religious studies were negligible, with the young man was ordained in three years. He gained recognition by the papacy fast. In 1823 he accompanied Pope Leo XII for a diplomatic mission to Chile. After three years he returned and was given some administrative duties, which he proved quite effective at. By 1827 Giovanni was ordained bishop of Spoleto and then moved to be bishop of Imola in 1832.

In this post enlightenment world, the papal states were regarded as a broken, failed, corrupt backward nation by serious diplomats of the world. Pope Leo XII proved them right with his exploitive and repressive approach to governing his subjects – his was a police state. The pope employed countless spies and informers to gather information on enemies of the government. Anyone suspected of attempting political unrest was thrown in prison. The Jews were forced into a ghetto and locked behind gates. It was under this pontificate that an antisocial political movement arose aiming to rid Rome of “the government of priests.”

Leo looked on infallibility favorably and even met with de Lamennais when he visited Rome. Side note, it is from his pontificate that we get the tradition of unending encyclicals from our popes. The pope before Leo XII issues one encyclical. A couple of popes later and you have Leo XIII issuing eighty-five encyclicals.

Leo XII was succeeded by a moderate, Pius VIII, who died a little over a year after taking office. After his death, the hardline faction won out, electing Gregory XVI. Gregory hated all things modern. And I don’t mean this in some social-philosophical way. He literally banned the introduction of railroads and light poles in the papal states. Before becoming pope, Gregory had written a book called the Triumph of the Holy See and the Church over the attacks of Innovators. Otherwise known as Trionfo for short. Trionfo was ahead of its time. But now that its author was pope, Trionfo was translated into French and reprinted. In it Gregory argues that the pope was undoubtedly infallible, and even more extreme, he was infallible independent of the Church, that the Church is dependent on the pope – not vice versa. It instantly became the manifesto of the Ultramontanes. Pope Gregory was their man.

But grumpy old Gregory had little time to actually do anything about papal infallibility. His papal states were in rebellion against the luddite pope. The papal army was overwhelmed. Gregory reached out to Austria for aid. When the Austrian Empire came to help – they stayed. France, not to be outdone, did the same. Pope Gregory, ardent proclaimer of infallibly was now a monarch of an occupied state in rebellion. Yet Gregory welcomed the occupation, as he thought he would not have time to shore up his shaky throne – but to no avail. His own papal police despised him and were largely on the side of his subjects. In 1845, another rebellion broke out, putting further stress on the papal kingdom. The next year – Gregory was dead, to the grief of almost no one.

During all this, Italian nationalism had been gaining significant ground. The peninsula had for so long been a patchwork of states, duchies and outposts of foreign armies. These nationalists had their sights set on Rome. They knew if they took Rome, all the various little kingdoms were vulnerable and would fall – this was demonstrated recently by Napoleon. Post revolution France, they calculated was so weak that they would not devote the men needed to withstand an national movement.

While the Italians were calculating nationalism, a student of de Lamennais rose to prominence – and you might have heard of him. Dom Gueranger was a Benedictine monk and priest and was inspired by de Lamennais to study liturgical history. His subsequent volumes on the history of the liturgy shot him up to international fame. For Dom Geuranger, the history of the liturgy meant exclusively the Roman liturgy. He vigorously attacked French liturgical traditions and venerations of regional saints – those unapproved of by the bishop of Rome. The Gallican liturgies according to Dom Gueranger lacked the universality of the Roman rite.

The French episcopacy saw their independence under threat. The Archbishop of Tours reminded Geuranger that their liturgy could be traced back to Saint Gregory of Tours from the 6th century. At first, sixty of the 80 French bishops publicly opposed Geuranger. But as we have already seen, those marching against papal centralization are marching against the tides of history. One by one, due to Dom Geuranger’s fame and influence, each bishopric adopted the Roman liturgy.

Dom Geuranger was obviously a sincere Ultramontane. Thus, his popularity and influence was aided by the rabid Ultramontane journal, L’Univers. This journal will continue to come up in this series. It argued that Ultramontanism was the only way to save Catholicism in the world and in France. Yet statistically the Faith was in remarkable shape, especially in France, considering recent history. In the middle of the 19th century, it boasted two hundred million Catholics. Three quarters lived in Europe. France had a population of thirty-eight million at the time. 37.5 million were Catholic. Two thirds of all missionaries came from France. There was one nun for every 350 people.

After Gregory XVI died, the aristocracy of Europe convened to pressure the college of cardinals to ensure the next pope is an inexperienced liberal, someone who can be told what to do, that the fate of European monarchies hung in the balance. Another backward troglodyte would surely invoke revolution. This message was primarily delivered and enforced by Prince Metternich of Austria. For Metternich, Giovanni Maria, who was now a cardinal, was the ideal candidate. He was well liked by both clergy and laity. He wasn’t a monk, like Gregory. They did not want that again. He was a bishop of a small town and had no experience with the intrigues and politics of the Roman curia. The conservatives found him favorable as well, as they saw him as manageable.

Sunday June 14th, at 6pm, magnificent carriages pulled up to the San Silvestro Church in Rome – each bearing a cardinal. After mass they walked the couple blocks to the Quirinal palace, flanked by papal soldiers. Each cardinal had two rooms, one for himself, and the other for his attendants. The windows were shuttered to prevent outside communication. Swiss guardsmen cleared the streets of onlookers, fearing mob of violence.

The next morning in the Pauline Chapel the cardinals each sat under individual canopied thrones behind desks furnished with goose-quilled pens, ink and paper. Three cardinals sat at the front of the chapel, nominated to read the votes. Giovani Maria was one of those three. By the fourth vote, as Giovanni read the ballots, his voice failed him as he kept reading his own name. He asked to be excused, allowing another cardinal to take his place. When the votes for Giovanni tallied over two thirds of the vote, the presiding cardinal rang a bell and formally asked Giovanni if he would accept his election. Giovanni walked to the altar, fell to his knees, said a private prayer, then stood and turned to the cardinals, and replied in Latin, “Accepto”. When asked what name he would take, he responded, Pius IX.

Part Two: No One is Amnestied

This new pope, Pius IX, immediately displayed the qualities the power brokers of Europe, both lay and ecclesiastic, had hoped for. He was young and affable, conciliatory and responsive to modern sensibilities. He was popular among the local Italian citizenry, spoke to their interests and gained a reputation for being an Italian patriot. He demonstrated a willingness to implement parliamentary reforms in the Papal government. He was a welcomed liberal. Some Italians thought he would be the man who unifies Italy. In a way, he would be.

Every good tale of a king’s court has a dark, brooding, menacing character lurking in the shadows, pulling strings. Pius IX’s pontificate was no exception to this trope. This malevolent person to the pope-king was Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli. He would eventually become Pius’ Secretary of State and remain at the pope’s side for his entire pontificate.

Antonelli was everything Pius wasn’t. Where the new pope was friendly, devout, and affectionate, Antonelli was cold, calculating, and suspecting. While he was also sharp as a whip, Pius was politically inept. Antonelli was a diplomatic mastermind. As the two men drew closer – wherever Pius was, in the background was Antonelli. His strange hold over the pope wasn’t the only fascinating characteristic of Antonelli. Though he was a cardinal, he never ordained a priest – not technically a requirement at this time. Antonelli had zero interest in theology or any religious questions. He was a miser, concerned only with the financial order of the papal states. At the death of pope Gregory – Antonelli was the kingdom’s treasurer.

Books on the Pius IX pontificate spend entire chapters on the nefarious character of Antonelli – a contemporary observer called him a bird of prey, a disturbing, diabolical person. Rumors circled all over Rome of him using his position to enrich himself and his friends. His home was described as frequented by female visitors, leaving many to lament the scandal he brought to the college of cardinals.

At one of their meetings, Pius IX lit a cigarette and offered one to Antonelli. Antonelli replied that he did not have that vice. Pius replied, if it were a vice, you would have it.

For all of Pius’ charm, he still inherited a nightmare of a kingdom. The Papal states as we’ve said were considered a broken, backward European kingdom. Calls for reform were everywhere, filling the streets and cafes. On January 9th, in Palermo, Sicily, outside of the pope’s kingdom, a manifesto appeared on the walls that sparked riots against the King, Fernando II of Naples. By the end of the month – Fernando caved to public pressure and granted the people a constitution. Within a few weeks the rulers of Sardinia and Tuscany granted constitutions as well.

The public demonstrations in Rome were putting pressure on the pope to do the same. A roman senator appeased a particularly hostile crowd and staved off a full-on riot by promising that he would bring their demands to the pope. Two days later, Pius IX responded with a proclamation letting them know that the pontiff is not deaf to their desires. While he promised nothing, he blessed them as Italians – a loaded label. Some took this to mean papal support for a unified Italian peninsula. The early days of Pius’ pontificate are marked by these political vacillations. Every speech sent mixed messages, tacitly supporting Italian unification but always saying there were things he could not do. His advisors saw disaster ahead, warning him of the similarities with how the French revolution started. A British foreign minister noted: As to the poor Pope, events have gone too fast for such a slow sailor as he is.

The people wanted more from their pope-king. Within weeks demonstrators filled nearly every piazza of Rome. They demanded the pope give them the same rights enjoyed by the other European nations They wanted the brutal foreign papal mercenary militias disbanded. They wanted the priests removed from their roles of government officers. They wanted freedom of the press. They wanted a united Italy. They wanted foreign armies off the peninsula. Those last two demands were particularly difficult for Pio Nono – they meant war against France and Austria – against the guarantors of the pope’s temporal power.

Roman aristocrats were wallowing in genuine fear that these demonstrations were nearing a fever pitch that would soon boil over into violence. They advised Pius to do something to lower the temperature. They convinced him to replace the foreign mercenaries with a citizen’s police force – dubbed the Civic Guard. The pope’s first Secretary of State, Cardinal Tommaso Pasquale Gizzi was horrified by the move. He warned the pope that arming the people would invite disaster:

"You will be chased out of Rome with those same rifles that you are now giving them for your defense.”

Pio Nono replied to his secretary of state that he had nothing to fear from his own people. Cardinal Gizzo was so upset by the decision that he resigned, wanting no further part in this pontificate.

In March of 1848 he notified his new secretary of state, Cardinal Bofondi that he would give his subjects a constitution – something deemed anathema by his predecessors. Cardinal Bofondi responded with his resignation, explaining that he be part of dismantling church authority in Rome.

The romans were ecstatic at the news and tens of thousands of people poured into Quirinal square to thank the Vicar of Christ for this gift. The pope, hearing their cries of thanksgiving stepped out onto a balcony to greet his subjects. As he raised his arms for a blessing as the crowd fell to its knees. Parades were had all over Rome under the soft glow of oil lit lamps for the glory of the Pope.

It was now time to find a new secretary of state – the fourth in 2 years. At last he turned to the aforementioned, and controversial, Giacamo Antonelli. Further, he formed a new government of nine laymen and only three prelates – acquiescing again to the demands of his subjects to reduce the footprint of priestly officers.

In 1848, Italy and Sicily were not the only places to experience government shaking mobs and revolts. The Austrian Empire seemed ready to collapse. Hungarians were demanding representative government. There was revolution in Berlin. In France, the monarchy was overthrown again, and again, a republic was instituted.

The Italians saw these weakened empires as their moment to kick their armies off the peninsula - particularly Austria’s. Italian liberators attacked the Austrian embassy and removed the imperial coat of arms with an axe. They attached the standard – a double headed eagle, to a the tail of a donkey and sent it running through the streets while the people flung mud at it. Makes you feel bad for the donkey.

King Charles Albert of Sardinia, who ruled the largest and most powerful Italian state, was very much on board with this populism against the Austrians, as he shared a long border with Austrian occupied Lombardy. This was an opportunity to expand his kingdom. Pius too, something of an Italian nationalist sympathizer, and fearful of the wrath of his subjects, sent the papal army north to the border of Lombardy – but under strict orders to hold there – and not cross the border. It was another mixed signal. At their leaving they sang a hymn to the pontiff:

The arms are ready

At Pius's signal

Sent by God

To save Italy

Viva Pio Nono!

Viva l'Italia!

Viva l'unionel

Libertà

The Roman Club was a private meetingplace of roman businessmen and professions – but they also were a mix of nationalists and ultramontanes, and principal source for much of the anti-Austrian agitation. Pope Pius had no idea he had become their puppet. After he sent his army north, the Roman Club sent him a plea for him to take his rightful place in the earthy hierarchy:

"Blessed Father, in this time in which all the powers of the earth are failing, in this sublime reordering of European nationalities, only one power survives. New splendor [can be brought] to the papacy and to religion... giving back to Rome its moral and civil primacy not only in Italy, but in Europe and the world.”

From Milan, his subjects expected an attack from Austria, they pleaded to Pio Nono:

"The great cause of Italian independence, which Your Holiness has blessed, has triumphed in our city as well. ... In your Name, Most Blessed Father, we prepare to fight. We have written your Name on our flags and on our barricades."

The pope was at a loss and lamented:

"If I could still sign my name as 'Mastai,' I would take a pen, and in a few minutes it would all be done, because I too am an Italian. But I must sign as Pius IX, and this name obliges me to bow down before God and beg for his infinite Divine wisdom to guide me."

David Kertzer, anthropologist, authority on papal history and often granted access to Vatican archives, sums up the position of Pius IX well:

“What could he do? He was not one to spend much time reflecting on history or on questions of political philosophy. He had never had much of an intellectual inclination, and his seminary education- not in any case geared to critical examination of the church's guiding assumptions had been limited. It would not occur to him that there was a fundamental incompatibility between his role as spiritual leader and his role as king. For Pius, the pope-king was a position created by God, so such a question could not even be posed. That modern times would undermine rule from on high, that people would no longer be happy being told to leave government to the priests, were questions that he did not think deeply about. He had gone long past the point at which he thought the concessions he'd granted were wise. Fearful that bowing to the latest popular demands would only further undermine the church's authority, he did his best to hold out against them, but he was fighting a losing battle.”

Pius’ allies that guaranteed his earthy power seemed to be all but gone. France was now an irreligious republic, and Austria’s king was feeble, and the empire was being driven out of Italy. His position was oriented now only to keep himself from being hung in his own streets.

The people of Rome were in near total revolt against the government of priests, thinking that Pio Nono supported them. Austrian ambassadors desperate for the pope to exercise his authority were rebuffed by the pope, told that if he comes out publicly against the war with Austria: You cannot imagine without feeling a chill of horror what reactions, what disorders would occur.

He told them his authority grows weaker every day.

Finally on Saturday, April 29th, he published his official statement on the war in a Roman newspaper. He declared engaging in war against the Austrians would be abhorrent, and that he would not be presiding over some new republic of the people, reminding them that they should remain loyal to their sovereigns.

Pius had finally picked a side. To his subjects, he was now a traitor, a phony. He was not their liberator. He was not a patriot. What they did not know was that the original text for the papal pronouncement contained far more endearing language for the Italian nationalists. It was Cardinal Antonelli who rewrote it into a condemnation of the people and a strict alliance to the aristocracy. Pius IX’s biographer, Jesuit Giacamo Martina observed Antonelli’s acumen for this double game, as he called it. In meetings with Pius, he was his advisor, in meetings with civil authorities – he blamed Pius’ inability as a ruler that had created this whole mess.

Margaret Fuller, an American newspaper correspondent in Rome, once wrote of the love and affection mutually held between pontiff and people. Not anymore: But it is all over. He is the modern Lot's wife and now no more a living soul, but cold pillar of the Past.

Things began moving faster now. When the people elected lay ministers to government, the pope rejected their authority. By June, Pius had transferred all government duties to Cardinal Antonelli. In August, a civil body voted to grant the Jewish ghettos full civil rights – a bellwether in the power of any European monarchy.

In September, Pius turned to a man who he thought could keep both the aristocracy and the people happy. He promoted the French ambassadors, Pellegrino Rossi to minister of the interior. Rossi immediately tried to implement policies of moderate liberalism and limited voting rights. Much of this was stymied by the clerical party in Rome. For the cardinals despised having a lay ma in charge of government, but Rossi pressed forward, nonetheless. The people quickly labelled him the pope’s lacky, viewed as a heavy-handed autocratic foreigner who used the military against the people. Rossi told a Bavarian minister that if the people wanted to destroy the pope’s authority, they would have to do it over his dead body.

Days later he was stabbed to death in the neck by an angry Italian nationalist – kicking off the story of the pope’s escape from the eternal city at the beginning of this narrative.

Pope Pius IX was now an exile of his own kingdom, under the care of King Ferdinand of Naples. Cardinal Antonelli had masterminded the entire escape, who was likewise blamed by the pope’s advisors for creating the antagonistic relationship with the Roman citizens. They tried to encourage the pope to return to Rome and adopt a more consolatory attitude with the people, but Pius was done with compromise. His flight out of from Rome had created a new man, a more bitter pope. He began reasoning that the pope leaving Rome was God the Father’s punishment upon the ingratitude of the children. He was burned by the reality that no roman lifted a finger to save him, and none seemed distressed at his departure. He felt betrayed and alone.

The pope gave a new year address denouncing the mob in Rome as lunatics and called the new roman citizen state as detestable, declaring those involved to be in a condition of grave sin. Many bishops in Italy considered it the better part of prudence not to publish the message – fearing violent reactions.

Every diplomat trying to help the pope stabilize the situation gave a collective eyeroll to the popes address as well. The American consul in Rome sent an abridged version of the statement back to Washington, explaining that it: …could hardly do justice to its imbecility.

The French aristocracy was still hopeful that Pio Nono would return to being the liberal pope they had managed to get elected. But his response to the constitutional assembly in Rome dashed those hopes, calling it deplorable, invoking the Lord to intervene. Cardinal Antonelli was also exasperating the diplomatic distress by issuing his own denunciations of the sacrilegious government occupying Rome, calling them fatal to religion and the church.

Despite the apocalyptic warnings of Pius and Antonelli, Romans were largely going about their business in the eternal city as normal. Priests were performing marriages. The government was functioning. The opera houses were playing. The American consul in Rome reported back:

Whatever malevolence ... may insinuate, order & peace never reigned more profoundly within her ancient walls.

All of the bluster from Antonelli was cover for what he was really doing behind the scenes, negotiating for the Austrian Army to liberate Rome and reinstitute the pope in his proper seat of earthy power. The Austrian ambassador, Moritz Esterhazy remembered he was greeted by the pope in Gaeta, southern Italy, as the messiah. The pope repented to the ambassador of his recent unfriendly language about the Catholic Empire. Still the diplomat required that, since there had been so much public antagonism from the pontiff towards Austria of late, if the pope requested their help, he must ask for it publicly:

"Pius IX . . . is throwing himself in the arms of Austria! I believe his conversion to be sincere. ... I would not say that it is deep, because I fear that there is nothing very deep to be found in this Prince."

In Rome, the pope was missed by some. The economy was dependent on Rome being the center of the Chrisitan world and was in financial turmoil from the sudden vacuum. Thus, the new Roman Government voted on a compromise to allow the pope to return, and enshrined it in their government:

1. The papacy no longer exercises temporal power over the Roman State either in fact or in law.

2. The Roman pontiff will have all the guarantees necessary to freely exercise his spiritual authority.

3. The form that the Government of the Roman State will have is pure democracy, and it will take the glorious name of the Roman Republic.

4. The Roman Republic will have with the rest of Italy those relations required by their common nationality.

This was declared by the roman government in February of 1849. Yet at the same time, the Austrians were obliterating the revolutionary military in northern Italy, reclaiming their old domains on the peninsula. The Austrian army had the former papal states in its sights and could take them back on whim. This geopolitical development brought the French to the table. The French, adversaries of Austria, saw it as beneficial to their position if they were the ones who reinstated the pope to Rome – Antonelli very much playing the part of power broker here too. He convinced the French president to tell a grand lie before the French general assembly, that an expeditionary force was needed to ensure the liberal policies of Pius IX were put back in place, that they would not impose a government. A British envoy in Italy reported back to London that:

“the Pope had come to the determination to be for the future entirely guided by the advice of Cardinal Antonelli.”

A Sardinian envoy piled on:

“The Pontiff is weak, and easily impressionable. Taking advantage of the right moment, one can get him to do things that don't seem to be in his nature."

By April, three French infantry brigades totaling 12,000 men complete with horses, cannons and a corps of engineers landed on the northern coastal town of Civitavecchia. From the ships, a French diplomat and two senior officers rowed to the shore to meet the Roman Republican Governor:

"Animated always by a very liberal spirit, the government of the French Republic declares its desire to respect the view of the majority of the Roman population, and comes on their land in friendship. … It is committed to not imposing on these people any form of government that they would not choose for themselves."

The French then asked permission to come to shore. Permission was granted out of fear of the overwhelming force. The Roman governor was then imprisoned by the French – out of friendship of course, and the French flag was hoisted up alongside the Italian flag.

Austria then crossed the Po River and invaded the new Roman Republic from the north. Antonelli, naturally playing both sides now urged haste on the part of Austria, trying to stoke their fears of anti-Catholic French forces on the precipice of liberating Rome. He further declared the Roman government was stealing and destroying priceless relics and works of art. The Roman government denied the charges and warned the citizens, out of caution, to respect the clergy and church property, which they mostly did. Yet many of the church palaces were declared property of the state, such as the grand Quirinal Palace. Catholic hospitals, charities, and orphanages were also taken over.

Thus, the Austrian pressed southward from Lombardy. Spanish troops too landed on the coast and joined them. Even King Ferdinand of Naples, who was in possession of the pope sent 5000 troops to march north to ensure his name was recorded in the history of this grand reinstitution of the papacy.

Giuseppe Mazzini, de facto leader of the Roman Republic was in a panic, calling all Italians to him to join the fight in the defense of the eternal city from foreign conquerors. Mazzini, in the face of a 4-pronged invasion had no choice but to call out of retirement an old guerrilla warrior for Italina unification - Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi is one of those guys that was just born to be a revolutionary. His name alone invoked fear in his enemies and resolve amongst his soldiers. He was called the hero of two worlds for fighting in a revolution in South America as well Italy. Mazzini didn’t have an experienced fighting force. Garibaldi’s legion had experience all over the world, but he was a loose cannon that could not be controlled. But Mazzini had no choice.

The French for their part were not interested in cannonading their way to Rome. They assumed that if Pio Nono publicly declared that he would at least be open to liberal government, then they may be able to reinstate him without a shot being fired. Pius refused, urging them to blast into Rome if need be.

Marching south towards Rome, the French soldiers noticed handwritten signs posted to trees lining the roadway that repeated article 5 of the French constitution:

"The French Republic respects foreign nations, as it expects others to respect its own, not initiating any war of conquest, and never employing its forces against the freedom of any people."

Nearing the eternal city, a roman assembly arrived at the French camp to meet with General Oudinot, leading the campaign. They warned him that if he attacked, he would be met with fierce resistance. General Oudinot replied:

"Nonsense, The Italians do not fight. I have ordered dinner at the Hôtel de Minerve, and I shall be there to eat it."

Now, I have read plenty of battle accounts in the 10 years or so that I’ve been doing history podcasts and I find the general’s confidence a bit perplexing – though I suppose I find anyone’s confidence in war perplexing. The good general should know that no battle plan extends beyond the first shot. Rome was surrounded by a 26-foot wall built in the 17th century. Though he had some cannons, they were not really of siege caliber, and he had no ladders for scaling. Nonetheless at five am on April 30th, he ordered his men to break camp and march on the eternal city.

On the way, the French general was met with a fork in the road before the city gates. He took the bulk of the army left and ordered a smaller troop to the right to guard his flank.

Mazzini, while preparing the city for assault, also prepared it spiritually. There was a mandate for public prayer with church bells peeling all over the city air. It was further decreed that: The Holy Sacrament will be exposed in all of the principal churches to pray for Rome's safety and victory of its good cause.

When the main French force came within a quarter mile of the city walls, two roman cannon opened fire, raining grape shot down upon the advance guard. Oudinot ordered the retreat of the advance guard but kept his main army on the attack. He was searching for the gate designated as the easiest point of entry, the Porta Pertusa at the northwester part of the wall. He brought with him bags of gunpower to blow thing open. But there was one problem. The Porta Pertusa didn’t exist anymore. It was walled up decades early. French intelligence was outdated – by a lot.

Fumbling in a mire of confusion, the French troops were being blown apart by grape shot and musket fire from the parapets. They rolled forward two cannons to return fire but couldn’t reach the Romans well-guarded positions. Oudinot ordered them to march another half mile under fire to the next gate, the Porta Cavalleggieri. They quickly discovered that if they continued that march – there wouldn’t be any French army left. So Oudinot sent another contingent around to another gate, the Porta Angelica. The French artillery captain was killed instantly as they approached. Other attempts at reaching other gates ended in similar disaster. The smaller French contingent that initially broke off from the main body attempted to gain cover in the aristocratic villas outside the city gates to use as a beachhead. But Garibaldi was already there waiting for them. As the French approached Garibaldi launched his attack astride his white horse swinging his saber high in the air and lead his motley crew legion into battle, right into the heart of the French infantry. Many of the untrained Romans fell dead, but Garibaldi legionnaires, with bayonets fixed skewered the French. A French bullet pierced the stomach of Garibaldi, but he stayed in the fight.

By 5pm, the battle was over. General Oudinet realized he would not make his dinner appointment in Rome. A US diplomat present in Rome for the battle recalled the transformation of the Roman army of the Republic:

"The appearance of a foreign enemy has accomplished for the republic what its own measures, papal abuses and the cause of liberty have hitherto failed to effect. It has converted thousands, who were indifferent as to its existence, into warm and strong supporters.”

Mazzini, however, knew he had only won the battle. The outcome of the war was all but certain. The French would not leave. King Ferdinand was invading from the south. The Austrians were invading from the north.

With the initial defeat the French were even more motivated to convince the pope to take the road of appeasement toward the romans. The French foreign ministers for their part, were furious. If it was not for the threat of Austria taking Rome, they wouldn’t even be on the Italian peninsula. How could the Republic of France justify spilling French blood to reinstate a dictatorship of priests?

Foreign press of course was quick to take notice of the duplicity of the French government. Some papers theorized that the Parisians may revolt yet again at the news.

Not making any headway with Antonelli or Pius toward a policy of reconciliation, French foreign minister Alphonse de Rayneval went to the battle front to meet with Oudinot. The two agreed that bombarding the eternal city and destroying the churches and monuments was not an option, nor could they engage in street-to-street barricade fighting. The death toll would be enormous. They settled on bringing up more reinforcements, to create an overwhelming show of force, blow a hole in the city wall and hope the Romans surrender.

The next night a new French diplomat arrived, sent by the president of France, Louis Napoleon, nephew of Bonepart. General Oudinot was informed via letter written personally by the president that there would now always be a diplomat at his side to oversee the interest of the French presidency, and further, that he expected him to take the city, and would have all the reinforcements he needed toward that end. This was, in no uncertain terms, an illegal act by the French president, and a flagrant contrast to what the French general assembly was told.

Inexorably, French reinforcements began pouring in and plans for a siege commenced. Siege, as you students of history know can be just as deadly for the besiegers as the besieged. An army sitting still gets restless and sick. A reporter in the French camp noted that as the days were warming up:

"Already the heat is great. . .. Even within the walls of Rome, sickness and fever fall to the lot of every stranger, but without, the effects of malaria are so severe that no one can sleep abroad with impunity. What, then, is to become of the 20,000 men now encamped within a mile of Rome? … One hundred men swollen with the malaria fever came in here yesterday, and in another week the hospitals will not contain the number of sick who will claim admittance. Will the General-in-Chief, under such circumstances, hesitate any longer? For my part, I think not."

On May 5th, the Neapolitans entered Albano, coming within 15 miles of Rome. Garibaldi had already beaten back the French and was now ready to face king Ferdinand. King Ferdinand had 16,000 highly decorative troops under his command, with a large cavalry and a significant artillery corps. But Garibaldi’s uninformed brigands had experience. They wore no emblems of rank, the rode their horses bareback, and for provisions they hunted sheep to roast over a fire.

King Ferdinand, hearing that the “red devil” was marching towards his force, he moved his army into defensive positions. They were terrified of Garibaldi, some believing that any army he controlled was invincible. As soon as the red devil attacked, the Neapolitan army melted away with little resistance. King Ferdinand was forced to abandon his invasion, and return to Gaeta, back to the pope.

France decided they would try to force the pope’s hand. On May 18th diplomat Comte de Lesseps negotiated his way into Rome and secured a meeting with the intellectual and political leader of the Italina Republic, Mazzini. He made his way to the Palace of the Consulta, where Mazzini officed. Arriving there at 1am, he asked where he could find the Italian prophet. He was told to walk to the far side of the second floor. When Lesseps reached the top of the stairs, he removed his shoes so he would not alert Mazzini. He found him asleep on a simple iron bed. Lesseps pulled the room’s only chair to the bedside and sat down. Lesseps then began whispering Mazzini’s name, quiet at first, but he did not stir. So then louder, an louder until the republican leader awoke. Mazzini, quite rationally thought Lesseps was there to assassinate him. It was the strangest of diplomatic meetings, but at least it began the dialogue that the French had hoped for.

When Pius learned that the French were negotiating with the romans, he was furious and threatened to throw his lot in completely with the Austrians. The French held their ground, knowing the pope had little to bargain with – Afterall, it was the French on the doorsteps of Rome, not the Austrians. Though the Austrians were getting closer, taking city after city, and as they drew nearer, General Oudinot was losing patience, wanting to redeem himself and take the city now.

After Lesseps failed to find a solution, an American diplomat arrived to the French camp, named Lewis Cass Jr, son of senator, and offered to act as an unofficial mediator. Inside Rome, Cass found himself negotiating with Charle Bonaparte, another nephew of the former emperor of France, who had taken up the cause of Italian unification. The American soon emerged with a deal. The Roman Republic would accept France’s offer to protect it from outside forces and Rome would welcome the French as republican brothers, but must exists as guests of the Romans only – meaning they could be kicked out.

While the French contemplated this proposal, Antonelli and Pius notified the Austrian diplomats that there were going to issue a public protest against France for negotiating with the Romans. The Austrian ambassador, Esterhazy, sternly warned them about the foolishness if this idea. He reminded them that France was a republic and had to keep up appearances. If they pressed too hard, the French assembly may recall the army, or worse, the French army may switch sides, and actually defend Rome against the pontiff. What the Austrians did not let onto was that they were perfectly happy to have France take Rome, they only cared about increasing their holdings to the north. Esterhazy convinced Antonelli to let the Austrians handle the communication with France. It was evident to all that Austria controlled Antonelli, who controlled the pope. The Sardinian envoy noted that without passing through these men, the pope would do nothing.

The French, for their part refused to enter Rome as a guest. Cass warned them that the city is resolute, that they will not surrender easily. That the women of the city had donated all their jewelry for the cause. The monastery gardens were in full bloom, filling the roman bellies with artichokes, bread, salami, and wine. From outside the walls the French could hear the operas and the nightlife of the city.

Meanwhile in Paris, an election took place. A more conservative majority took power. As a result, the diplomatic mission of negotiating an entry to Rome was recalled, and a direct order was given to General Oudinot: attack.

Then, in a truly bizarre twist of history, President Louis Napoleon appoint Alexis de Tocqueville as foreign minister and charged with crushing the Roman Republic and reinstituting rule by the church. If you know your American history, you know Tocqueville was so impressed with post-independence United States that he became one of Europe’s leading theorists on constitutional rights.

With the news of the renewed support from Paris for the campaign against Rome, French diplomats now urgently pressed the pope for comprise, to spare filling the roman streets with blood. Cardinal Antonelli kept compromise as far from the pope as he could. They complained that Antonelli had poisoned Pius’ mind against the French, lamenting:

“…there is such a cardinal-heavy atmosphere of purely mundane interests, dissimulation, petty intrigues, and absence of any higher sentiments that one cannot hope that the pope can pierce it, even should he wish to. … this self-interested, corrupt, unenlightened entourage who surround the pope… their worldly privileges… the only political program consists of trying to get people to believe that in attacking their privileges one is attacking the true interests of the church and of the religion that they themselves do so little to honor.”

Pius now spoke openly of constitutions, freedom of the press, and freedom of association being inherently evil. A well-known and well-like abbot, Antonio Rosmini came to visit the pope and tried to further convince the pope not to spill Roman blood. The pope, even though he respected Rosmini, rebuffed his efforts. A man like Rosmini speaking with the pope could not be tolerated by Antonelli. And so, the cardinal ordered the Gaeta police to Rosmini’s room just as he was preparing to go to sleep. They demanded to see his passport. Upon review they declared that he lacked the necessary documentation to be in Naples. Rosmini protested that he was invited to the country by the pope himself. The police didn’t budge and dragged him to a boat waiting in the harbor. There was to be no peace with Rome.

Oudinot now had 30,000 soldiers ready to attack. Many of them were experienced and battle hardened from fighting a colonial war in Algeria. The Roman Republican soldiers were probably around 18,000 strong with limited ammunition, and beside Garibaldi’s forces, they had little combat experience.

At 2:30 in the morning on June 3rd, the French began blasting their way through a weaker wall of the city protecting a villa. After four hours of battle, they took the villa and 200 prisoners. Eighteen hours of hard battle then commenced with Garibaldi’s forces leading the defense. Streams of stretchers were racing through the roman streets carrying the wounded and dead amid the crying and tears of the inhabitants. During the battle, Mazzini received news that the Neapolitans were again advancing and taking cities, and now nine thousand Spanish troops were marching north toward Rome planting the papal flag on rooftops as they went.

Charles Bonaparte presented the roman constituent assembly with an unexploded bomb that was found rolling down the city streets, catapulted in by the French. He proposed they place it in the city archives and engrave it with: In perpetual memory of a Pope who ordered the bombing of the Capital of his faithful subjects and children.

As the endless bombs rained down on the city, the roman citizens, adopted a gallows humor, naming the bombs, Pio Nonos. There goes another Pio Nono they would cry. Cloistered nuns at the Trasteveres Convent had to flea for their lives. Children and families were burning to death in fires now ravaging the city. Those who could, managed to turn carts and wagons into makeshift barricades for when the gates were finally breached. Margaret Fuller, the American journalist, recounted one scene:

“Many of these young men, students from Pisa, Pavia, Padua and the Roman University lie wounded in the hospitals, for naturally they rushed first in the combat. One kissed an arm which was cut off, another preserves pieces of bone which are being painfully extracted from his wound, as reliques of the best days of his life.”

The initial French assault failed again, but they quickly renewed the effort. Waiting for the second attack, an American diplomat recounted the state of the city:

From dawn to the close of the day, the domes, cathedrals and parapets, are crowded with spectators, whose acclamation at every gallant action incites to deeds of most extraordinary daring. … The roads leading from the gates are planted with iron spears, rendering the movements of cavalry impossible. ... The gates themselves are mined. ... Every house in the streets through which the enemy must pass, after having forced the outworks, is provided with oil and stones, the former of which is directed to be kept boiling hot, to be cast from the windows.

Food was scarce. The French had cut off the ancient aqueducts bringing the city fresh water. Another American diplomat recorded:

The contest is no longer between one army and another... but it is a struggle that embraces a whole moral world of ideas, hopes and faith, that may have an echo in the most distant generations. The actual object of the intervention is shaking the edifice of the Catholic religion to its very foundations, crushing that faith in thousands of hearts. ... The consequence, naturally, is that many are now asking themselves whether he who represents a religion of peace has a right to reassert temporal power by force of arms; and ... not a few begin to doubt of the truth of the Catholic religion, in consequence of the acts of its head. They cannot conceive how a religion ... is now changed into a weapon intended to transform free men into slaves.

Oudinot was weary of the mounting body count among the French. He requested to speak with one of the young captains of the Roman barricades. He urged the young man, Enricho, to allow the French to pass through peacefully to avoid bloodshed. Enricho replied:

In Rome, we produce tragedies, we do not produce comedies.... If we cannot save Italy, we at least want to save the memory of Italy. Italy is not going to end as a vaudeville show.

As the women marched to St Peter’s Basilica to pray for the men at the front, one young soldiers touched a woman on her shoulder and said, "Mamma," he said, "say three Ave Marias for me so that the Madonna sees that this all ends soon, because we can't go on like this anymore.”

A young volunteer wrote in his journal:

You get used to anything with time. So that now we see the transport of the wounded, immersed in blood, almost with indifference, and we eat bread and salami without being bothered by the stench of over twenty cadavers that for the past sixteen days lie in the garden of Villa Corsini, unburied and unbandaged, as black as coal, and swollen as if they had been drowned.

By June 20th, Oudinot had his large siege cannons within shot of the city walls. Those walls, being already weakened from the cannonading, crumbled apart, opening three breaches in Roman defenses. Oudinot renewed the bombardment again, and now with the city walls down, he could strike deeper. Bombs fell on some of the city’s most famous piazzas.

From Paris, Tocqueville was trying to stave off political disaster, writing to his envoy at Oudinet’s side, he said:

You can be sure that the noise of our bombs will be heard in all of Europe and that nothing will be more harmful for our expedition's honor than the explosion of these projectiles in Rome… Rome, is not like any other city.

Reaching one of the breaches, with Poi Nonos flying overhead, the French took up positions and dug in.

On June 29th, the romans would not be kept from celebrating the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, both martyred in that very city. At 8pm a thunderstorm ripped through. The thunder was so loud that many of the citizens thought a renewed bombardment had commenced. When the rains ended, the feasting got underway. Fireworks were shot above St. Peters Basilica, torches and candles adorned what was left of the city’s windows. Bands played in the streets. Yet on the far side of the city, where the French pressed their attack, Roman soldiers were falling in droves to French bullets.

With bayonets fix, the French attacked the Roman defenses beyond the breaches. Garibaldi was there to meet them, saber in hand. Explosions from guns and cannons sent smoke swirling through the city streets. Ancient building walls finally gave out, collapsing and crushing roman volunteers. Garibaldi led one last charge, and though he survived, his legionnaires were beaten back. As the sun rose, the two armies declared a truce so that both sides could collect their dead. The Roman assembly then posted a notice to the public – they would not surrender, but they would no longer resist the French with arms.

There’s no reliable count of the dead and wounded. The Italians wanted to maximize the loss, the French minimize, but its likely thousands on each side.

With the French army readying to enter the city American diplomat Lewis Cass told Garibaldi that he had an American ship at his disposal in the harbor, and that the leaders of the republic could find passage with him. Garibaldi refused. Instead, the hero of two worlds he drew his remaining legions to him and marched to St Peter’s Square. Astride his white horse and with thousands watching he stood before the obelisk shouting:

To those who follow me, I demand great love for the fatherland. . .. I can promise no pay but only hardship, hunger, thirst, and all the dangers of war.

In response, those hardened veterans of his, along with old and young patriots responded:

We'll all come! You are Italy! Long live Garibaldi!

He then disappeared into the hills with four thousand men behind him. Margaret Fuller recounted the moment:

Never have I seen a sight so beautiful, so romantic, and so sad. The sun was setting, the crescent moon rising, the flower of the Italian youth were marshalling in that solemn place. They had been driven from every other spot where they had offered their hearts as bulwarks of Italian independence. ... They must now go or remain prisoners and slaves, ... I saw the wounded, all that could go, laden upon their baggage cars. . . . I saw many youths, born to rich inheritance, carrying in a handkerchief all their worldly goods.

At noon on July 3rd, as the French army was literally marching into the city streets the constituent assembly of the Roman Republic was ratifying its last official act – their constitution. Amid hundreds of supporters in a piazza designed by Michealangelo, the new document was read out loud. The people removed their hats from their heads. It guaranteed the rights of all individuals, it guaranteed free speech, it eliminated class or caste systems, and in the end, it guaranteed that the pope would enjoy: all the guarantees necessary for the independent exercise of his spiritual power.

Moving through the roman streets the French marching band at the head of Oudinot’s column began playing military songs but seeing the dower mood of the inhabitants, and the deadly glare occupying soldiers often get from an occupied people, they gave up playing, and marched in silence. It was replaced by cries from all corners of Rome:

“Long live the Roman Republic! Death to Pio Nono”

On the fourth of July, the very next day, General Oudinot sent his personal envoy to Gaeta, carrying with him the keys to the gates of Rome and delivered them to Pius IX.

To the frustration of the pope, the French refused to hoist the papal flag over any buildings. The French didn’t dare. A painter was hired to paint over the Italian tri color decorations that adorned the roman streets. But before he could finish his work his head was smashed in with a piece of cobblestone. Any priest or aristocrat who spoke well of the French found themselves violently attacked. The French, intent on simply maintain order, captured these assailants, lined them up against a wall, and had them shot.

Pius fumed that the French had allowed Garibaldi to escape, that Mazzini was allowed to travel in Rome as a free man, that nowhere was the papal flag flying. Cardinal Antonelli complained further that the penalties for the revolutionaries were not harsh enough. He demanded that anyone who served on the public councils or in government be rounded up and arrested. The cardinal didn’t stop there. When French diplomats began discussing the institution of the new government, Antonelli made two things clear: that only cardinals, not lay men would be heading up the government, and that ecclesiastical tribunals would be set up to deal out justice in the aftermath of the rebellion. The London Times noted that:

"Pio Nono, is surrounded by persons ... who have no other remedy to offer than the old ones, the dungeon and banishment."

Alexis de Tocqueville was at his wits end. These pronouncements by marginalized aging men clinging to old ways was tone deaf to the point of being suicidal. The post enlightenment world had created a new kind of citizen and if the papal government wished to survive, it had better learn that lesson – and if it didn’t – the French republic had needlessly spilled blood. Tocqueville warned those in Gaeta that he was prepared to speak publicly against the pope and his priestly government. The threat did nothing.

On August 1st, 1849, the Quirinal Palace was once again the seat of papal power – though the pope was safely miles away in Gaeta. Proclamations of the return of the new government were posted all over Rome, yet within hours all copied posted were ripped from wherever they were posted.

A commission of three cardinals was put in charge of the government and dubbed the “red triumvirate” by the romans. The triumvirate’s first official act was to lead a solemn procession to St. Peter’s Basilica. But the French killed the proposal, gob smacked by their stupidity. It was suicidal.

The next day the commission released a rash of acts. They nullified all laws made since secretary Rossi’s assassination. They reinstituted the ecclesiastical tribunals for priests to oversee, all government employees hired by the revolutionary government were fired, and the currency of the roman republic was declared worthless.

Of all these items it was the Vicariate Ecclesiastical Tribunal of the pope that most terrified the civilians. It was an all-powerful governing body that held the power of life and death over everyone. Its enforcers were the papal police – and now the French army. Its spies were the same people these Roman were expected to confess their sins to – the low-level clergy. Nothing, from the people’s perspective, was private.

The London Time reported that:

If the Quirinal was not guarded by French soldiers, it would not be safe for one hour. That unpopularity will be increased a hundredfold for all that may emanate from Gaeta, when it is seen that nothing in the shape of a benevolent promise can be extracted from the Pope.

Before long, the people began to perceive the tensions between the papal government and the French army, sensing the unease at the retrograde despotism. The French, as many Romans began to see it, were the only thing standing between them and the vengeance of the cardinals. They were right. Everyday Antonelli demanded rounding up the former government officials and everyday Alexis de Tocqueville prevented it. General Oudinot was under direct orders to not let a single trial against former government officials happen.

“Who needs trials?”, thought the cardinals. In the middle of the night on August 8th, papal police smashed into the home of Pietro Ripari, a doctor who oversaw medical relief for a military division of the Republican Army. He was thrown in prison without a hearing. From prison he demanded to know what his crime was. He was told he was discovered to have written critically of the pope. After two years of languishing in prison he was finally sentenced – his punishment for writing poorly of Pio Nono was 20 years behind bars. The pope’s roman dungeons were full of souls just like poor Pietro. Tocqueville knew these injustices were occurring and was furious that General Oudinot was not doing enough to prevent them. Finally, Tocqueville declared to President Louis Napolean that he would have to accept either his resignation, or Oudinot’s. Napoleon chose to fire Oudinot.

Far up in the Apennine Mountains near Venice, Garibaldi and his men were under hot pursuit by the Austrian army. Knowing he was close to capture; Garibaldi relieved his soldiers of their duty. 900 soldiers left, while 300 soldiers refused to abandon Garibaldi. So, these men, along with his Brazilian-born pregnant wife made their escape. The Austrians however had caught up with the nine hundred men that Garibaldi released. They guaranteed that the rebels’ lives would be sparred if they put down their arms and peacefully surrender. Trusting in Austrian honor, they agreed. A contemporary keeping a diary of the events recalled:

At noon today, the sixth, in the midst of a troop of infantry and cavalry, the unfortunates who were part of Garibaldi's militia began to arrive. . . . The poor men are all torn up, shoeless and reduced to such a state as to move even the most unfeeling to compassion. ... No one knows what their fate will be.

One among them was singled out – Catholic priest and Barnabite monk Ugo Bassi, Garibaldi’s personal military chaplain. He was a prize catch. On August 8th the monk was manacled to a military wagon and lead down the road with a drummer pounding out a funeral march. Reaching the site of his execution, Bassi fell to his knees and began to pray. A soldier came to the monk to place a blindfold over him. But the monk asked that another priest put the blindfold upon him instead, so that another priest’s touch would be the last he would feel. The request was granted. The officer in charge raised his sword towards the riflemen. Bassi raised his voice in prayer. The officer lowered his sword and gunfire rang out, crumpling the monk to the ground.

The Austrians did not stop there. Another Garibaldini priest was executed shortly after. Then an Italian nationalist Ciceruachio and his two sons, Lorenzo and Luigi, were caught. The father and two sons were tied to each other. Ciceruachio pleaded with the officer to spare his younger son, for he was only 13 years old – just a child. At the father’s pleading, the office smiled, and ordered the firing squad to shoot the boy first.

Garibaldi was still on the run and under hot pursuit. He and his wife, Anita, were heading towards Ravenna. Anita, now seven months pregnant, developed a fever and died the next day with their fourth child in her womb. Garibaldi, being the sort he was, pushed on. With the help of Italian nationalists along the way to the Tuscan coast, he found sanctuary in Genoa.

The papal triumvirate in Rome was busy, despite French protests. Father Dominic Savelli, who bore the nickname Monsignor Bulldog was reinstated as head of police. He was a despised man, called vindictive and hard by one historian. The French called him an unfortunate choice.

A special commission was set up under Monsignor Bulldog to directly oversee crimes against the Catholic religion. The number of arrests exploded. The French again protested. Pius IX responded that it still wasn’t enough:

Crimes remain unpunished. The men who have acted most openly against me walk freely through the streets of Rome.

By now, French President Louis Napoleon had grown tired of this petulant, bitter, unhelpful, ungrateful pope, who still had not returned to take up the seat he reinstituted. He was sick of poisonous lurch, cardinal Antonelli. The president, in what was described as a dramatic cabinet meeting, penned a letter to be delivered to his aid de camp in Rome:

The French Republic did not send an army to Rome to extinguish Italian freedom but, on the contrary, to regulate it in order to preserve it from its excesses, and to give it a solid basis in returning to the pontifical throne the prince who first boldly placed himself at the head of all useful reforms. ... It pains me to learn that the benevolent intentions of the Holy Father, as well as our own action, have been thwarted by the presence of hostile passions and influences of those who would instead like to make banishment and tyranny the basis for his return. ... Make clear to the general (Rostolan] on my behalf that in no case can he allow any act to take place under the shadow of our flag that can alter the character of our intervention. I would have the pope's temporal power resume in this way: general amnesty, secularization of the administration, and a liberal government… When our armies made their way through Europe, they left everywhere, in their wake, the destruction of the abuses of feudalism and the seeds of freedom. It will not be said that, in 1849, a French army could act in a different direction and lead to different results.

The letter was officially intended to be private. It was however, copied and posted all over Italy. The papal police had their work cut out for them in suppressing it. They raided cafes and wineries, looking for illicit printers producing copies of the French president’s letter. Ambassador Rayneval was summoned to Gaeta, and simply informed that the letter offended the dignity of the pope. The diplomat was then ordered to convey the condition of the papacy back to Paris:

Experience has counted for nothing. The real needs of society have counted for nothing. France's advice has counted for nothing. ... The men the cardinals surround themselves with would render the most perfect institutions fruitless. ... In Rome, where prominent, well-educated, distinguished lawyers are to be found in large numbers, they went and found a perfect unknown to be Minister of Justice. For Minister of Public Works, they chose a contractor who had built a bridge, for Minister of Finance an accountant. This is what they have in mind by putting laymen in government… Repression, that is the key word for the Roman policy. ... They are persuaded here that everything is going badly because they have not executed enough people, nor imprisoned enough, nor punished enough.

As the French pressed the pope to return to Rome he intead moved farther away to Naples, finding it more comfortable. Back in Rome, a leading colonel reported the troubles with the new government back to Paris:

This swarm of idle priests that one runs into at every step, and who exploit the country, is an evil that is difficult to destroy. This is a population of sycophants and mendicants, who lack the habit of supporting themselves by their own work. But how could all this be reconciled with the authority of a pope who tends increasingly to give everything to the priests?"

On September 17th, Pius IX issued a motu proprio long awaited by the French and the romans. It would lay out the official structure of the new government. He began by praising the catholic powers for saving Rome from tyranny and restoring papal power. He then listed a litany of new councils, the bodies of which he would nominate personally. Then he came to the much-awaited question of amnesty. Amnesty would at last be granted – although it would exclude anyone who took part in the republican government, aided the constituent assembly, partook in military units, along with all political prisoners and already declared exiles.

Luigi Carlo Farini, former public health officer under the papal government remembered:

In the whole history of amnesties, one does not find a document like this, which can only jokingly be called by that name. Consider its terms, and you will see no one is amnestied.

There were now officially and publicly two sides in a grand geopolitical contest, between the Rome and France, between Napoleon and Pius, between Tocqueville and Cardinal Antonelli. Astute roman citizens knew Antonelli’s pope and government would prevail, for he was too shrewd a player at this game. Prime Minister of Sardinia recounted:

I continue to doubt that French influence will prove a match against priestly cunning.

The ambassador from France, Rayneval too lamented the regrettable situation:

Pius IX is a blind man who is bringing the temporal power to its ruin.

Rayneval visited Antonelli, begging why the pope will not return to Rome as he promised. Antonelli laid some of his cards on the table. The papacy was flat broke. If he returned, government employees would suddenly start demanding paychecks. Infrastructure improvements, especially with the recent battles, would be required. Charity organizations were withering away, desperately needing operating funds. There were also papal debts needing serviced – before Pius IX, Gregory had indebted the papacy to the Rothchilds, who underwrote his pontificate. Antonelli was urging Pope Pius IX to do the same. He readily took his cardinal’s advice. The sad irony of this history is that while Pio Nono was forcing the swaths of Jews back behind gates of the ghettos, he was waiting on the delivery of a loan from Europe’s most prominent Jewish family for sustenance. Until the cash from the Jews was in his pocket, the pope would not be returning to Rome.

On the streets of Rome, monsignor bulldog was carrying out the pope’s orders mercilessly, arresting all those excluded in the amnesty proclamation. Two weeks later, a board of censures was created to identify and process teachers and professors with republican sympathies.

A police captain complained to the French that the priests were now so distrusted that many roman citizens desired to convert to Protestantism. A British envoy reported back to London that:

The greatest discontent prevails in Rome. Every act of theirs has shown the strongest tendency to retrograde principles and to the adoption of the abuses of the old priestly rule. . .. The Pope is now undoubtedly swayed by entirely opposite principles to those formerly entertained by him.

A British naval captain wrote:

I am again the witness of horrors. … A reign of terror exists. No one on going to bed feels sure that he will not be in prison before morning.

The French ambassador agreed:

The terror is always at a fever pitch. Everyone feels threatened, pursued. They are living in a state of siege, war councils, and bloody executions. The police and courts display the most uncontrollable zeal and strike ... at the most honorable of men. One is always struck by how little enthusiasm, how little sign of veneration one finds [of the pope] along the way.

In mid-October, President Louis Napoleon was forced to ask the general assembly for more cash to fund the occupation of Rome. The debate was fierce. Victor Hugo was one of the men to speak against the measure. Hugo called out the hypocrisy of the pope’s actions in the face of the president’s now famous letter:

A huge distance separates them. The one says yes, the other says no! It is impossible to escape the dilemma posed by these things. You absolutely have to say that one of them is wrong. If you approve the letter, you disapprove the motu proprio. If you accept the motu proprio, you disavow the letter. You have, on one side, the president of the Republic, calling for freedom for the Roman people, in the name of a great nation that, for three centuries has brought enlightenment . .. to the civilized world. On the other side, you have Cardinal Antonelli, refusing, in the name of the clerical government. Choose!”

President Louis Napoleon then enacted coup de tate of the French republic. He fired all the operatives he deemed disloyal and aligned himself with men of a more monarchist outlook – a sign of things to come. Since Napoleon was now focused on consolidating his power at home, and since the French general assembly was too impotent to stop him, he ceased caring about what the pope did. Yet the new French diplomatic corps was still charged with urging the pope to return to Rome. Again, they were told that the pope was waiting on the payment of the loan from the Rothchilds. The Rothchilds, for their part were delaying things in hopes of getting the pope to abolish the Jewish ghettos. The pope responded that it was for the protection of the Jews that they were locked in the ghettos.

Both the French and the Austrians were fed up with the popes delays. Even the pope’s nephew, when asked about why his uncle wouldn’t return to Rome, said:

Every day another mushroom sprouts up.

Both French and Austrian nations pressured the Rothchilds to drop the demands about the ghettos and give the pope his damn bailout money. The Rothchilds finally agreed, securing only a vague promise of repayment and better treatment of the Jews, not from the pope, but from the French.

Finally, now out of excuses and allies, Cardinal Antonelli announced that the pope would return to Rome, a week after Easter. The pope-king – the last pope-king was coming home – a home of enemies.

Before returning, back in Gaeta, French diplomats delivered a scathing letter from Tocqueville of the pope’s behavior, of his repugnant conduct towards his subjects, and warning him that French aid had its limits. The pope exploded at Rayneval, the French diplomat, accusing the French of not trusting in the papacy. Rayneval replied that France has yet to see any results from his holiness. All the old laws have been reestablished to the destruction of everyone’s trust and affection towards the papacy. The pope responded that Spain, Austria and Naples had no issues with his action. Rayneval reminded the pope that France is the only government that risked its existence for the pope. To whom did the king of Naples, or the emperor of Austria have to answer? All in good time responded the pope.

Part Three: Rejoice, o Pope, You Are King

Rome was once again rule by the clergy. Priestly rule wasn’t the only factor that made the city distinct from other overcrowded 19th century European metropolises. Among the 170,000 inhabitants, the city had over 400 Churches, 3500 priests and monks, 1500 cloistered nuns. In the streets, the beggars and the mendicants were indistinguishable. The princes of Rome were the Cardinals. The cardinals hailed from ancient families who were in the business of supplying the Church with popes. These cardinals were usually younger sons of the aristocracy, those who never had a chance at their father’s inheritance. They held the highest positions in government. They oversaw the public treasury, which despite its name, was not public at all, but property of the church. All administration, all education, all courts and all police, rolled up to the Cardinals. Amid the poverty-stricken countryside, they possessed the best farmland and the richest comforts – these cardinal owned plantations produced half of the agricultural wealth of the Papal states and paid no taxes.

The parish priests were somewhere in between the lower clergy and the cardinal-princes. They had some status due to their governance over marriages. They presided over local governance. They might enter the home of a parish member unannounced to ensure church precepts were being obeyed. They hired spies, and ordered police raids in search of contraband, or a particular enemy of the state. They were the key masters of the local dungeon. But they also were the gatekeepers of the sacraments – and for this, they were revered. In their presence men removed their hats, women and children would kiss their hands.

After an arrest was made at the order of a priest, when the accused was brought to trial, the judges were also priests. If a witness against the alleged criminal was a priest, the testimony was as good as gospel. Criminal charges could be brought up on any sin, ranging from adultery, to swearing, to eating meat on Fridays during lent. When the romans complained of priestly rule, this is what they meant.

This old order of priestly rule in the papal states was guaranteed so long as everyone played by the same rules, rules based on the divine rights of kings. But the Enlightenment brought that system to its knees. A king, let alone a pope-king wielding absolute, uncontestable, and infallible power was now seen as a vestige of the Middle Ages. This was the rub – these two forces were pulling each other apart at the seams. But now, as we’ve seen in the last episode, a new and grotesquely powerful social concept had emerged that was quickly gobbling up both doctrines – nationalism. For many, and the Italians were no different, the cure to these societal upheavals was a united nation. For the papacy, whether Pius knew it or not, nationalism was a far greater threat to the temporal power of the papacy than freedom and liberal government, for they were willing to tolerate the papacy. But for the nationalists, the papal states, occupying a massive swath of the middle of the Italian peninsula, the pope was merely in the way.

At the announcement that he would return to Rome, the French offered Pius passage by ship. He declined, preferring instead to travel by land through the rural landscape of southern Italy. As his procession travelled from rural town to rural town, the pope was greeted with choirs, decorations, and prayers. Local bishops and dignitaries came out to kiss his shoes. One hastily painted mural he passed by read: Pio Nono, immortal, immortal, immortal.

Despite the praise, the closer the procession inched towards Rome, the more alert the French guard became. Rumors swirled of various plots ranging from embarrassment to assassination. Now, for the first time since Pius left Rome in disguise, he found himself again before a Roman city gate. It was Friday, April 12th, 1850. Now as he passed through the gate, church bells rang all over the city mixed with cannonades welcoming the pope-king home. The procession made its way to the piazza in front of the church of St. John Lateran. When the pope stepped off his carriage, the crowd waved their handkerchiefs in praise. A London Times reporter was skeptical of the display of pageantry. Where is the devout laity that should be kneeling at a moment like this, he wondered.

As Pius entered the cathedral, the cardinals who had been governing Rome prostrated themselves before him. The foreign diplomatic corps kissed his hand. The pope then made his way to the knave and knelt in prayer.

Then they were off to the other side of the city. Flanked by the French cavalry and marching amid decorative tapestries and ornate garlands displayed for the occasion, they crossed the Tiber and turned to St. Peter’s Basilica where the other cardinals were waiting. After hearing Mass, Pius retired to his apartment in the Vatican Palace.

A few weeks after the pope’s return, on April 30th, the first anniversary of Roman Republic’s first victory over the French, plastered throughout the city was a leaflet reading:

Rejoice o Pope, you are in Rome, you are on the throne, you are king . .. your hands are soiled with blood. ..So Rejoice o Pope, you are king. Like all the other Popes, you have betrayed the fatherland, handing it over to foreigners...You have called for war and carnage. . .. You have given your blessing to a massacre! ... So rejoice, o Pope, you are king!

Most of the pent-up anger stemmed from the tens of thousands of relatives of the 3000 souls languishing in prison. The cells were not made to handle this capacity. 6 prisoners were stuffed into quarters meant for one. They were deprived of blankets and the air was diseased from the open latrines. They were fed stale bread for food. Many were succumbing to disease. Stories of injustices against the prisoners were tearing through Rome. A priest, Monsignor Gazzola was given a life sentence for “injuries to the person of the pope”, apparently stemming from articles he wrote. A life sentence for criticizing the pope. One man was put in prison for allegedly blackening the nose of a statue of a cardinal. He had been in prison for two years and still had not seen his trial. As the pope reentered Rome, this prisoner was on his deathbed, coughing up blood from tuberculosis contracted in prison. Nearing the pitiful end of his life, he petitioned the Vicar of Christ to be released, so that he may die in the care of his family. His request was denied.

Cardinal Antonelli, on behalf of Pius, relieved the commissions of cardinals from their operational duties and took the reins himself. A secretary of the city government came to the pope to beg for his job back, but Pius had noted that the man did not quit his job when the papacy left Rome – like a good subject should have done. He denied the man a return to his post, telling him: The time for mercy is over, it is now the time for justice."

Many who had known Pius before he left now marked that he had returned a different man. He was no longer jovial, and affable, but was now suspicious, prone to fits of anger and rage. His violent outbursts were becoming famous. When he wasn’t losing his temper, he was sullen, and destructively melancholic.

Cardinal Antonelli, for his part, was laser focused on the consolidation of power. A critical stopgap for maintaining control was being the gatekeeper for access to Pius. Without scheduling an appointment through him first, the pope would see no one. Of this, a Neapolitan envoy said:

The Sacred College, already not well disposed to Cardinal Antonelli would with this new measure be even less well disposed. However, this shows that he feels strong and secure in his Sovereign's favor.

Now that Antonelli had successfully isolated Pio Nono and neutered French influence in governance, he ramped up arrests and executions. Guillotines were placed in the middle of piazzas, more than just a symbol of papal justice, they were frequently used before the crowds of horrified onlookers. It was a show of papal justice designed personally by Antonelli. One man, a 35-year-old hat maker was so angry with the carnage being done by the Cardinal that he attempted to attack him with a pitchfork. Guards subdued the angry man before he could do any harm. Antonelli ordered the man be put to the guillotine immediately. The hatmaker complied with his sentence and kissed his executioner before laying his head down to be cut.

In October, six men were found guilty of a murder allegedly committed during the time of the Roman Republic. They were taken to the piazza in front of the Church of Santa Maria, known for the sculpture mask, Bocca della Verita, the Mouth of Truth.

The men appealed to the pope for leniency. Pio Nono refused. After the crowd had gathered for the execution, the signal was given, and the papal soldiers opened fire. But papal soldiers are apparently terrible marksmen and missed the men. One among the prisoners said, “Grazie,” thanking the executioners for their aim. A second round of fire was ordered, but again, they missed most of their targets. On the third round, all the men at last were dead.

A duke of Rome admitted to a British visitor that ten people a day are whisked away for criticizing the pope – never to be seen again.

Pius then randomly and oddly began a crusade against marble genitalia throughout the city – marble genitalia is everywhere in Rome. Pants and tunics were painted all over the city’s statues. One ridiculous example was a statue of a woman nursing an infant. The bare breast was covered up. The head of the child was cut off and fastened back on facing the opposite directly of the mother.

Americans in Rome were particularly horrified by the state of the eternal city. Lewis Cass, diplomat from Washington reported back the despotic power of the pope had reach such heights that it would not be tolerated for much longer – predicting that a second revolution was at hand. American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote:

I look out of the window this gray, rainy day, and see the streets all mud and the roofs all green mould, and the mist lying like a pall over the lower town, and Rome seems to me like king Lear staggering in the storm and crowned with weeds.

The poet was afforded a meeting with Cardinal Antonelli, where he told him the city had become beleaguered and depressing. The cardinal, as he pinched snuff up his nose replied, yes, and thank God. Antonelli himself knew the damage being wrought. He admitted to his nuncio in Vienna that if the French ever abandoned their posts in Rome, he and the rest of the government would all be hung in the streets.

In the middle of 1851, the heavens displayed ominous signs in the skies above Rome. A Solar eclipse on July 28th, followed by meteors and an aurora borealis left Romans uneasy. Thunderstorms too ravaged the city, darkening the skies so much that the streetlamps had to be lit during the day. By November, huge portions of the city remained flooded from the unusual weather.

Such was the state of Rome when Pio Nono returned. But now we must now reach all the way back into the first episode to bring the aforementioned Dom Gueranger back into this tale. Dom Gueranger was the benedictine monk we sort of left the thread of papal infallibility at. Remember he was also an Ultramontane – believing in the boundless authority of the pope, as well as a roman liturgy war hawk, mobilizing all he could against Gallicanism and the French episcopate. Pio Nono invited Dom Gueranger to Rome and appointed him as a consultant to the Congregation of Rites, which had policing authority over liturgical practices, and the Congregation of the Index, which had policing authority over publications. A writing place on the index was forbidden to be read by Catholics. The monk’s appointment to these congregations would reignite the Gallican - Ultramontane battles.

An Ultramontane Church instantly became a cause for the papacy. Pius threw his weight in on the issue, choosing sides where previous popes declined to get involved. Gueranger, doing the bidding of Pius, went for the low hanging fruit first, he attacked the hymns of the French liturgy were written in the 17th and 18th centuries that lacked the weight of tradition behind them, otherwise known as Mozart masses. His reasoning was that Mozart was a mason, Bach was a protestant.

Gueranger’s liturgical crusade thankfully revived one the most timeless and beautiful traditions the Roman Catholics have – Gregorian chant, which at this time nearly extinct. Gueranger literally wrote the teaching manuals for its practice. He also convinced priests in French diocese to write to the Congregation on the Rites, prompting them to clarify questions regarding the Gallican liturgy. One such petition was:

Q. May, however, the priests of this diocese continue with a clear conscience to use this liturgy, which is sanctified by age and custom?

R. Negative.

The type of central intervention by Rome in the liturgy, especially in France became a unifying ultramontane dog whistle for papalists to rally around. But there was another significant event in the middle of the 19th century that would affect these historical trajectories, and it came to be called the Oxford movement.

England had a small Catholic population, and yet some of the top Anglican thinkers, particularly those associated with Oxford, began converting back to the Catholic Faith. Three of them would have major implications on the eventual definition and interpretation of papal infallibility. Most critically, in April of 1851 was Henry Manning, who after becoming Catholic and was ordained a priest two months later, eventually being elevated to Bishop of Westminster by Pius IX.

Henry Manning was following in the footsteps of Englishmen William Ward, an Anglican thinker converting to Roman Catholicism. Ward was an early and very loud voice for the promulgation of a doctrine of papal infallibility. What he lacked in theological soundness was made up for by Manning, who became arguably the most significant instigator for the doctrine of infallibility. Without Manning, it’s hard to see the first Vatican council happening at all. Between Manning and Ward, there would have been a sense that England Catholics were almost entirely Ultramontanes – I say almost, because the third Oxford movement conversion of significance was one who opposed papal infallibility from the beginning and remained something of an apologist for dissenters after the dogma. He is also regarded as the greatest theologian of the 19th century – St. John Henry Newman.

Unlike Newman, Ward was a blustering dunce. When asked if he was concerned that papal infallibility would turn the papacy into some sort of papal bull factory, he replied that he desired a new papal bull every morning with his breakfast and newspaper. Edward Manning, for his part saw papal infallibility as not a theological concept, but a silver bullet against nationalism and national churches. He despised Gallicanism.

Prominent Anglican converts like Manning and Ward, building on the groundwork already laid by the Masons and apostates like de Maistre, Lamennais, easily aligned infallibility with the liturgical and censorship powers of ultramontane Dom Guerenger. This alliance created a momentum and means to begin consolidating a doctrine.

In 1853, Pope Pius IX published his encyclical Inter Multiplices. It reneged on the two-hundred-year-old agreement guaranteeing an independent French church, declaring their liturgical liberties and their ecclesiastical authority null, void, and therefor, invalid. With so much of the French clergy dismantled and replaced with the more progressive ultramontanes – albeit accidentally by Napoleon, there were few bishops with the clout to stand against the new Rome. One by one, the French episcopate Romanized their liturgy.

Meanwhile in the streets of the papal kingdom, government workers were being assassinated by, followed up by arrests and executions of alleged perpetrators who rarely saw trial. The chaos in Rome was increasing, not decreasing. The French were under extreme pressure from Paris and the Pope to restore moral order. General Baraguay – leader of the French issued an extreme order:

Any person found wearing knives, daggers, stilettos, or any other kind of lethal weapon, shall be instantly shot.

The result of course left bodies lying in the street, shot dead for things they may or may not have had in their pockets. The poor classes of the city were so affected by this new edict and by the midnight arrests, that voluntary exile became the norm. Many who stayed, stayed out of vengeance. There were so many people who either lost a loved one at the hands of the French, or at the hands of the pope. Their payback would be sabotage, violence, assassination. As this resistance inevitably organized, it began looking for external aid. The growing nationalist movement outside Rome, began paying attention to the resistance inside Rome.

Cardinal Antonelli had a financial problem. Due to the loan, he negotiated from the Rothchilds, the Pius pontificate had a massive note to service. They simply didn’t have the money to pay it back. To make up the difference, they did what financially insolvent government always do – raise taxes. A flurry of new tax increases came from the Vicar of Christ - property taxes, levies on civil entities, import taxes on salt, coffee, cocoa, and sugar. All taxes were naturally promised to last only a year. And predictably, after the year was up, the taxes were renewed and raised. And so, to make up for oppressive taxes, the people did what a republican minded people always do. They smuggled.

Against smuggling the papal police were worthless, partly because everyone enjoyed cheaper goods, including the police, and partly because there was far more pressure on arresting enemies of the state. The French didn’t have the bandwidth to stop the smuggling because they were the only ones doing the actual police work of the state.

To make up for the lost tax revenue on imported goods, the papal government tried to get creative with taxing commercial activities. Merchandise was taxed as it transferred from factory to a warehouse, then taxed again from a warehouse to a store, then taxed again from the store hawker to the customer – creating even higher prices – giving smuggling a further boon. The smuggling was fragrant, even creeping up the Tiber to the very seat of government, as some of their best customers were Cardinals, who were of course immune from prosecution of contraband. Afterall, cardinals must eat too.

When the government of Pio Nono wasn’t vacillating between predatory taxation and complicit criminal activity, its more reasonable attempts at governance were dashed by incompetence. Government minted stamps were produced to raise revenue. The stamps were generally welcomed by the people as a useful employment of government resources, but because the Pope was dead set on priestly supervision of government bureaucracy, management of these efforts was lacking. They never implemented a system for removing the stamps from circulation. Postal workers would pocket once and twice used stamps to sell on the black market. Other postal workers simply printed for themselves whole sheets of freshly minted stamps. It took three years to get the process under control.

Another money pit for the government was the Papal State Bank - it was failing, partly from mismanagement, partly because no one who lived in Rome would ever trust it to hold their counterfeit stamps, let alone their money. To encourage business, it gave easy loans against bad credit, ending in disaster. Many of the loans were to shell companies created by professional grifters. Coming under fire for its misappropriation of state funds, Cardinal Antonelli stepped into its defense – for his own brother was the banks director. The good cardinal proclaimed that to question the integrity of the bank was to question the integrity of the state – meaning the pope. The bank and the state are one, he said. Case closed; Rome has spoken.

The state then began concocting public commissions for the most minute matters of life, publishing “notifications” on matters such as the proper color of butter that’s sold in the markets.

All this government intervention was mostly the work of Antonelli. Pio Nono was bored with it. His days were spent on horseback travelling in the countryside, visiting convents and monasteries and ancient church sites. He loved it. This was his joy, not the cares of governance. Antonelli, it is said by this time had already calculated the demise of the temporal power of the papacy. He was not a believer in divine protection as Pius was. Seeing the pope was enamored with the Ultramontanes, he regarded a doctrine of papal infallibility to be ludicrous and diplomatically catastrophic. But there was little he could do to swing the momentum, as most of it was coming from outside the curia, not within.

Pius, for his part did have a genuine interest in theological affairs, though he was far from a theologian. He deemed the issue of the immaculate conception of Mary, the mother of God, ready to be resolved. The year after he declared the Gallican liturgy invalid, he released a dogmatic pronouncement on his own volition, answering once and for all that the belief in the immaculate conception is to be a required belief for all Catholics.

It was a dogma long in the works, debated since the early Church. In 1830, the virgin Mary was alleged to appear to Catherine Laboure, and gave her instructions on the design of the now famous miraculous medal, with the words “O Mary, conceived without sin” imprinted upon them. Enthusiasm for the doctrine was universal and uncontroversial. The laity had already accepted it before it was defined. “Mary, conceived without sin” had already be declared the patroness of America by the bishops in Baltimore.

Prior to the papal proclamation of the dogma, the Ultramontanes took up the cause of the Immaculate Conception. For them, whether the mother of God was born with original sin was irrelevant. What was relevant was the way it could be defined. When it was at last defined by Pius, it marked the first time in the history of the church that a pope had unilaterally defined a dogma of the faith. In doing so he invoked the words, divinely revealed by God. In other words, something that is irreversible, irrefutable, infallible. And even though he consulted the bishops and referred to himself as we, he never acknowledged or referred to having or needing the consent of the bishops. It was a papal act of dogmatic consequence. It was also a contextual ultramontane victory.

This is not to suggest one should question the holy devotion of the pope to the immaculate conception, or any ultramontane for that matter. The method is the point here.

Credit needs to be given to Pio Nono for infrastructure improvements in the eternal city. Where his predecessor, Gregory feared trains and lamps, Pius embraced them. In the same year as the new Marian dogma came telegraph and railway lines in and out of Rome. Yet the economy was floundering in Rome and beyond. Romans found unity with the rest of their papal state brothers and sisters in poverty and oppression with those under Austrian occupation.

This anger against the state, which had now publicly chosen sides in the Ultramontanism debate, began to be directed at that concept. Ultramontanism was tied now to heavy handed, oppressive, antiquated regimes – despite it being a novel concept compared to ecclesiastical independence. Polarizing these schools of thought in the public sector was a new polemist for the Ultramontane cause.

Louis Veuillot, standing on the shoulders of de Maister had no theological acumen aim. He was a radical antisemite, publicly promoting the blood libel conspiracy theories – that the Jews use Christian blood for ritualistic rites. His writing was accusatory, egregious, and slanderous – landing him in at least two duels. He was also the most passionate ultramontane to date. He founded a newspaper called L’Univers whose sole purpose was to function as an ultramontane propaganda machine. American Catholic Labor Activist, Orestes Brownson Remembers that Veuillot:

Manifests the temper and breeding of a fanatic, and seems to act on the principle that whoever differs on any important point in history, politics, or philosophy, from himself, must needs be a bad Catholic, or no Catholic at all. We question not his sincerity, we question not his personal piety; but we do question his qualification to be a Catholic leader. His mind is too narrow and one-sided for that, and his leadership, with the best intentions on his part, is fitted only to bring about the very results he most deprecates.

Pope Pius IX liked Veuillot immediately. This new friendship caused problems for Louis Napoleon as the common French laity despised him. Louis Napoleon reenters this tale not as a president, but now as an emperor. He was now Napoleon III, but despite his new power of office, the papacy publicly supporting a radical political rag sheet caused the emperor’s advisors to rethink the alliance with Pio Nono.

Another incident drove the pontiff and French emperor further apart. In 1858, a Catholic servant to a Jewish family had reportedly secretly baptized the families six-year-old son. Roman law dictated that a baptized person must be raised in the faith. Therefore, Papal police forcibly removed the child from his parents, tearing the family asunder. The boy was re-baptized, just in case, and eventually grew up to become a priest. But the story was an international PR disaster for the papal states. The New York times published a twenty-article series on the event. The British Spectator labeled the papal states:

"The worst government in the world--the most insolvent and the most arrogant, the cruelest and the meanest."

The lingering Italian nationalist sympathies that I keep alluding to were able to coalesce around this crime against the family unit. The Frech laity, already having little respect for Pio Nono and the company he kept, put more pressure on Louis Napoleon, who was now decidedly more Gallican in world view, growing suspicious of the Ultramontane cause and the type of papal monarch it would produce.

This event, while tragic for the family, who never saw their son again, still seems like a small event in this vast geopolitical web we’ve traced over the past few hours. Yet, it was the catalyst for a change in the way the world viewed the papal government. With its rumors of purges, executions, festering prison dungeons, all at the hands of a government that couldn’t self-sustain itself without the imperial powers, it seemed there was very little actually legitimate about it. The kidnapping of a six-year-old boy gave the international community something to talk about.

The very next month, seizing on this story, Napoleon III met with the prime minister of Sardinia for a secret meeting. He told the prime minister to let the King of Sardinia know that he wanted him to aid France in kicking the Austrians off the Italian peninsula. Napoleon knew King Victor Emmanuel II hated the Austrians. The French emperor would then use his army to rip control of the temporal kingdom from the pope, leaving him only Rome. Victor Emanual agreed to the plan, but also had his own designs. He saw the popular calls for Italian unity and thought he could be the guy to do it.

Six months later, revolts broke out in the papal states. The leaders were demanding Italian unity with the Kingdom of Sardinia. There for it all was Garibaldi and his legionaries. Responding to Sicilian calls for unification, the hero of two worlds landed a thousand of his men and conquered the island with remarkable and embarrassing ease. They then hopped onto the Italian boot and turned north towards Rome.

Garibaldi may have well taken Rome, but Victor Emanuel’s plan was for himself to be the king of Italy, not Garibaldi, and so he stationed his army in Naples, essentially cutting off the revolutionary hero. Victor Emmanuel was now solidly in possession of Sardinia, Sicily, and southern Italy. In mere days Naples and swaths of the papal states were conquered. The cardinals who ruled these territories fled to Rome. The romans were ecstatic at the sweeping and breakneck pace of unification, eagerly waiting for the revolution to make its way to Rome. They decorated their shops and houses with the red, green and white of the Italian flag.

Napoleon III attacked the Austrians in Lombardy, crushing them and sending them packing. The Neapolitan army crumpled in the south against Victor Emanuel. Events were moving way too fast for Pio Nono. His allies, Naples, and Austria were gone. France, once his benefactor was now his prison warden. His only weapons were spiritual ones, threats of excommunications, encyclicals, political letters – but they all fell flat. In diplomatic exchanges between the Pius and Napoleon, the pope told the emperor he refused to accept the new geopolitical map – the loss of the papal states. The emperor admonished him for his obstinance and refusal to accept the inevitable – temporal papal power was gone. It was gone at the whim of couple lay Catholics. And there was nothing the pope could do about it.

The emperor recommended Pio Nono thank him instead of complaining, thanked him for allowing Pius to exist this long. He further rebuked the pope for squandering the time allotted to him, for not using it to install good, lasting government, but choosing instead the petty persecutions of his political adversaries. He also warned the pope:

The government, which re-established the sovereign Pontiff, tenders advice, inspired by respectful and sincere devotion; but it feels anxious in view of the day, that is not far distant, when the French troops will evacuate Rome, for Europe cannot permit an indefinite occupation. And when the troops are withdrawn, will they leave anarchy and terror or peace behind them? These are the questions which must be solved.

With Rome and the immediate regions around it being all that was left of the papal states, Pius IXs only recourse was to excommunicate Napoleon III, Victor Emanuel II, and all who had participated in his ruin.

Despite the swift and enormous victories for Italian unification, the nationalists were unsatisfied – Rome was the historic capital of the peninsula. It was the most important city in the world. Italian unification would not be complete without Rome. Garibaldi agreed, and he gathered his legionaries to march on Rome. Victor Emanuel was in a predicament. He knew this would force him into war with France – that cannot be allowed to happen. So, he sent troops to intercept Garibaldi. Garibaldi thought the Italian troops had come to talk, and so he ordered his men not to shoot. He was mistaken. The Italian troops opened fire and decimated Garibaldi’s men. Garibaldi again escaped death but had his foot shattered by a bullet and was taken prisoner.

Garibaldi was correct in that he knew Italian unification, now called the Risorgimento was the ultimate and only acceptable goal for the Italians. Victor Emanuel knew popular support from his people would not last long while the French still occupied Rome. On September 15th, 1864, Victor Emanuel and Napoleon III came to an agreement. In exchange for the French leaving Rome in 2 years, the Italians would make Florence their capital, would pledge not to attack Rome, nor let any other Italian army take it.

That same year, on the feast of the immaculate conception, set by himself, Pope Pius IX published a document called Quanta cura. It was a statement of opposition to the realigning of the world. This document would become famous for its index, The Syllabus of Errors – which explicitly named and condemned 80 modern errors or heresies – although it didn’t specifically say why it condemned them. Antonelli advised against its publishing, worrying that it would further antagonize the Catholic powers. He was right. As for the average cleric and layman, the document was largely panned. Only the theologians bothered to examine it. John Newman did his best to defend it – offering that the pope was misunderstood. No one quite understood what a list of “isms” Pio Nono didn’t like would accomplish. It certainly added nothing to the deposit of faith, to the frustration of the pope.

In the Vatican palace, Pius IX and Antonelli were reaching for anything that would save Rome and regain the lost papal territory. In mid-January 1865, British envoy Odo Russel was in a meeting with the Cardinal and the pope. They proposed to him a frightening idea, yet one that might their skins, a great European war. Tensions between Austria and Prussia were high, and both hated France. If they could be drawn into a war, then Italy would be pulled in as an ally of France, and would surely be destroyed by Austria, allowing the papal lands to be conquered. Russel, shaken by the Machiavellian policies of the Vicar if Christ, immediately sent his report back to London:

Like the Pope, Antonelli hopes in a European war to set matters right again in the Holy See!

Despite the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of deaths, and unmeasurable ruination of innocent lives such a colossally wicked gamble would have produced, it was a creative solution. Russel added in his report that Pio Nono:

Bore the unmistakable signs of the approach of second childhood.

Russel then spoke of the handlers of the pope saying:

He seems to inspire them with unreasonable apprehension and inexplicable terror.

By June of 1866, combat among these European empires finally broke out. Austria and Prussia were at war. Italy joined in with the Prussians. Pius IX was thrilled. Russel described he an Antonelli as experiencing “unbounded joy”, believing that the Austrians would easily prevail.

Yet within weeks the Austrians were having their lunch eaten by the Prussians, and from the south, Garibaldi was on the march again, beating back the Italian army, laser focused on Rome. And worse, the deadline for French withdrawal was only months away. From Odo Russel:

I called again on Cardinal Antonelli this morning and found His Eminence looking painfully ill and unusually excited. ‘Good God’, he exclaimed and struck his forehead with the palms of his hands, 'what is to become of us.

By December of that year, 1866, the French lowered their flags over Rome and boarded their ships. Pius’ advisors urged him to flee to Austria or Spain – the chances of being hung in the streets or thrown in prison were very real. Victor Emanuel was in a tough spot too. He promised the French that he would not invade Rome after they left. Yet that’s exactly what his subject expected of him. And never had such a monumental city been such low hanging fruit as Rome was after the French left. Everyone knew the Romans hated the pope, his government, and his papal troops made up of foreign mercenaries. It was nearly guaranteed that anyone who stepped in afterwards would be hailed as a welcomed ruler, especially an Italian army.

If only a spontaneous rebellion could ignite in Rome that Victor Emanuel could, out of the necessity of security of course, march in to put down – that would certainly be construed as an ethical invasion. To that end, King Victor Emanuel began pouring money into the eternal city, funding whatever agitators could be found, hoping something would catch. Yet to show that the king of Italy was holding up his bargain, he had Garibaldi arrested again and placed on house arrest. But you can’t keep a guy like Garibaldi under house arrest. He immediately escaped, made his way to Florance, raised another army and began marching on Rome again.

Napoleon, from his high tower in Paris knew exactly what Victor Emanuel was doing and he ordered the French troops back into Rome to protect the pope. They also beat back Garibaldi while they were at it, handing him over to the Italians, who put him on house arrest again, this time keeping him locked up for 3 years. The French were back ruling the streets of Rome, they hadn’t even been gone a year.

Odo Russel reported back to London that the renewed French presence makes:

Rome a fortified city and of the Pope a military despot.

Pius then bragged to the British envoy that, based on population, he now had the largest army in the world and that:

If the interests of the Church ever required it, he would even buckle on a sword, mount a horse, and take command of his army himself like Julius II.

Pius probably would not have been a good Risk player. His city was surrounded by the Italians. All they needed was a reason to enter. Yet such a violation was unimaginable to Pio Nono – God was surely on his side; he was the pope after all. Soon his enemies would be punished, soon order would be restored.

In the middle of 1868, Pope Pius IX had an idea, it was an idea that was long discussed among the ultramontanes. It was an idea that could allow the pope to reassert and centralize his importance and authority over a church that seemed unsure of what to make of all the commotion coming from Rome. It was an idea that could force the princes of Europe to take him seriously. He decided that he would convoke an ecumenical council – the first in 300 years, since Trent. The date for this grand council was set for December 8th, 1869, a year and a half out.

Papal infallibility was the predetermined reason for the council. Everyone knew it. The ultramontanes had a direct line with the pope, and they knew they had his support. After the council was announced the Civilta Cattolica, a magazine published by the Jesuits in Rome, outright named infallibility to be put on the agenda. This magazine, The Civilta Cattolica was a very special journalism, for the secretary of state of Rome had final editing authority.

The European governments were uncomfortable at all this. Infallibly was nonsense to them and would nullify hundreds of years of national concordats. They knew this was Pio Nono’s goal, this was simply a repeat of what he did to the Gallicans. They also knew that anyone who disagreed with him was subject to being declared a heretic and excommunicated.

Many questioned the need for a council. The only turmoil in the catholic world was the pope’s temporal kingdoms slipping though his fingers, while Rome rotted away. In 1869 Europe, the damage from the enlightenment had at last subsided. The churches were full. Public processions and pilgrimages were growing in popularity. The seminaries and convents were full. Foreign missionary work was expanding rapidly.

Yet for over a decade now all the previously mentioned Ultramontane advocates had each opened their own journals and magazine and been trumpeting the infallibly cause. Rome itself was doing the same with the Civilta.

In response to the propaganda, many bishops especially in France, founded their own magazine to counter the arguments for papal infallibility. It was an all-out propaganda war. Bishops on one side, and a motley crew of former masons, Anglicans, revolutionaries – turned rag sheet journalist on the other – none of whom, surprisingly, were theologians. The moral, ecclesiastic authority, and high-minded theology put forward by the bishops, was so match for calculating demagoguery. Leading up to the council, to show his obstinance to ecclesiastic authority and his loyalty to Pius, Louis Veuillot, editor of L’Univers substituted the pope in the place of the Holy Ghost in the liturgy of the feast of Pentecost:

To Pius IX, Pontiff King

Father of the poor,

Giver of gifts,

Light of hearts,

Send forth thy beam

Of heavenly light!

In another edition, he scandalized theologians by declaring:

Just as the Father begets the Son and from them comes forth the Holy Spirit, so does the pope beget the bishops and likewise from them comes the Holy Spirit.

For Archbishop Marie Sibour defaming the Holy Trinity crossed a line, and issued a pastoral letter reminding his flock that these magazines are damaging to their faith, specifically calling out L’Univers. Veuillot, already had gushing papal support. And so, he appealed to Rome that he was unjustly attacked by a bishop who does not respect papal authority.

Veuillot had challenged an archbishop, a member of the hierarchy of the church and was not rebuked for it, in fact he was rewarded by Pius with influenced on the Congregation of the Index. Now publications that challenged infallibility, or even dared to rebut articles published by L’Univers or Veuillot, began leading to investigations by the Congregation of the Index. The message was clear from the pope - from archbishop, to theologian, to lay person – writings denying the merits of papal infallibility, or critiques of ultramontanes are banned.

Archbishop Sibour was not going to take the affront to ecclesiastical authority lying down. He published a memoir titled: On the present situation of the Gallican Church in relationship to customary law [of the Church|: A memoir addressed to the episcopacy. It analyzed recent cases opened by the Index of the Church and found their judgement partisan, prejudiced, predetermined, and unorthodox. Gallicans welcomed it as a manifesto in their defense. Ultramontanes blasted it as a direct attack on the authority the pope should be demanding.

But Veuillot doubled down. He blamed bishops like Sibour on their classical education, calling it a pagan education. This tactic oddly sent L’Univers on a campaign of encouraging the pope to ban Latin and Greek literature of antiquity. He declared it would have been better that the Persians won the Battle of Marathon, saving the world from the influence of Plato, Aristotle and the like. Historian Father O’Malley tells us that, to the horror of educators and theologians: No controversy better revealed the extremism and the cultural agenda of some ultramontane enthusiasts.

Pio Nono’s resolution was to place the archbishop’s memoir on the index for banned books.

In preparation for the coming council, Pius established a commission of ultramontane cardinals, headed up by a close friend, cardinal Patrizi. The only non-Italian member was a German ultramontane, Cardinal Reisach.

The commission made two immediate recommendations to the pope that, if implemented would significantly break with council tradition and norms. The first was to not invite Christian princes of the world, and second was to not let the bishops set the agenda – leaving it exclusively to the Roman curia under the direct supervision of the pope. These innovations applied to the coming council represent two contextual changes for the papacy, with relation to episcopal authority and autonomy. They eliminated reason popes often feared convoking councils int the first place, that is that the bishops may effect changes unwanted by the pope. Secondly, they demonstrated the central teaching and juridic power by which the papacy now regarded itself.

Bishops were nonetheless asked to submit issues to be addressed. Most requested by the church fathers were calls to reform and improve priestly formation and church state relations. Only eight bishops specifically asked for papal infallibility. The previously mentioned Anglican convert turned Archbishop of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning, was one of them. Despite all the noise from the ultramontane press, infallibility didn’t even rank.

Yet the entire reason Pius convoked the council was for this issue specifically – everything else was secondary. He knew he couldn’t be seen as forcing something no one was asking for. So he demurred when he released his public address on what the purpose of the council would be, vaguely proclaiming that it would be to solve problems in the church.

A committee of bishops was assembled that would offer the official response to the pope’s address. Bishop Manning was of course on the committee and attempted to insert call for papal infallibility but ran into resistance from another bishop, bishop Dupanloup of Orleans, de facto leader of what was left of the Gallicans in France, and already a vocal opponent of any notion of a doctrine of infallibility for the papacy. In the end, Dupanloup managed to water down the episcopal response to the pope. It proclaimed only their desire to believe and teach, what the pope believes and teaches. That was it.

In a public response to the bishops, Pius called for the intercession of the immaculate conception that feast day proclaimed by him, was also the date of the release of his syllabus of errors, and now the date the council would begin. He begged the mother of God to “extirpate all heresy”. The dog whistle to the ultramontanes was noticed.

Decisions then had to be made as to who had a right to participate in the council. Christian secular leaders were already ruled out - which Cardinal Antonelli warned was a horrible idea, knowing the council would lack credibility without them. But Pius went even further. He presented the committee with a list of Gallican bishops he thought should not be invited. But the committee pushed back, telling the pope that he risked schism with that sort of behavior, and so he backed down.

Thus, when Pius issues his bull detailing the council, it created the first council in history without lay participation. French politician and future prime minister Emile Olivier was appalled and declared:

For the first time in history, the church, through a document of its supreme pastor, says to the lay world, to lay society, and to lay authorities: It is apart from you and without you that I want to exist, to take action, to make decisions, and to develop, affirm, and understand myself.

With the list of invitees complete, planning turned to procedural details. For those of you who have ever served on a committee or deliberative body, you know that he who determines the procedure also determines the outcome. The clerics in charge of smoothing out these details had zero experience in this sort of work and inevitable left much of it to the whims of the curia and the pope.

At Trent, there were two bodies set up for the review of pronouncements, the bishops, and the theologians, who would communicate back and forth, one body to one another as unified groups, hashing out theological topics, ultimately distilling out doctrine. Vatican I would be much different. In this council the groups, or deputations for compiling teachings was headed by cardinals appointed directly by the pope. That cardinals then had the option, if it pleased them, to summon a theologian on a case-by-case basis. And so, unlike Trent where the canonist and theologians constituted a deliberative body, at Vatican I, they were distributed amongst the various group, reduced to ceremonial supplementary role, and as such, prevented from acting in uniformity. At Trent, the theologians were appointed by the bishops of the world. At Vatican one, all the theologians were appointed by Pope Pius.

Everyone involved in the council was sworn to oaths of secrecy which no one kept. Officially, if a bishop desired to speak before the body on a specific issue, he was required to submit his request a day in advance. That bishop was then placed on a list in a predetermined order set by the presiding cardinals. This procedural rule affected two goals for the pontiff in how the council would proceed – there would be no opportunity for spontaneous debate and unwelcome opinions could be pushed to the end of the day.

With procedures in place, the official schedule for the council was released. It had 6 sections:

1. Church and State

2. The Hierarchical Structure of the Church, Its Infallibility, and Papal Primacy

3. The Papal States

4. Faith and Revelation

5. The Sacrament of Matrimony

6. Miscellany (such as secret societies, socialism, communism, and so on)

Item number 2, despite its mentioning of infallibility was understood to be referring to the church’s hierarchy having an infallible nature to it, which would include the bishops.

The most prominent theologian of the day was also the most prominent theologian not invited: Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger, priest and church historian. He was hated by ultramontanes for his refutations of any historical support for a doctrine of infallibility, and equally hated by liberals for his strict adherence to church tradition. In his younger days, Dollinger was an ultramontane. His hyper-papalism was shattered when he visited Rome, shaken by the low academic quality narrow perspectives of the curia. He was further disturbed in his audience with Pius IX, when it was demanded of him that he kneel three times and then kiss the pope’s foot. Lord Acton, contemporary Catholic historian recalled this papal audience as an Dollinger’s emancipation from ultramontanism.

Lord Acton, it should be mentioned, is famous for his quote: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The full quote is often ignored:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Lord Acton was warning specifically of Pius IX.

Dollinger was already on Pius’ hit list, for whenever the pope issues an encyclical, there was Dollinger with a fraternal correction. When Pius published an encyclical insisting that the temporal authority was necessary to the papacy, Dollinger refuted the pope with historical and theological evidence to the contrary. Thus, the crusade of affirming and defending the liberty of theologians in the face of papal suppression of thought fell to Dollinger.

Dollinger called it like he saw it. On February 6th, 1869, Pius ordered Antonelli to publish an article in the Civilta, drawing a line between real Catholics and phony Catholics. Real Catholics reported the magazine, wanted the dogma of papal infallibility to be pronounced immediately as a unanimous outburst of the Holy Ghost, and to proceed in haste because any clash of opinion would cause grave scandal. That the Civilta had editorial control by the Vatican was well known, and therefore left contemporaries, both pro and anti-infallibility to conclude that the outcome of the council was predetermined before it even began.

Antonelli’s article polarized an already polarizing and controversial subject. The Jesuits and mendicant orders, along with magazine editors went to war with Dollinger, who found civil governments and catholic theologians rallying behind him. Realizing he was occupying the role of resistance leader, he set out to formulate his argument in a book he titled The Pope and the Council. From Father O’Malley:

In the book Dollinger expanded his argument, which was fundamentally historical. His grievance was not against the primacy, which as a believing Catholic he certainly accepted, but against the political papacy in which the primacy had developed in the Middle Ages and against the papacy’s infallibility, which rested on forged canonical texts. The Jesuits were the chief manufacturers and propagators of infallibility. The book, whose purpose was to rally public opinion to forestall the definition, created a sensation and quickly appeared in French, Italian, and English translations.

Dollinger’s book was put on the Index of forbidden books two weeks before the commencement of Vatican I.

Dollinger’s supporters in Germany published a manifesto, echoing his fears of the coming council and what defining infallibly would produce. It was addressed to the bishop of Trier. Another group of theologians wrote to the bishop of Berlin. Before long bishops in Germany, England, Ireland, the United States, Spain, France and Italy had all received manifestos, anonymously signed by theologians and each in its native tongue citing grave concern at the prospects of defining papal infallibly.

In response to the groundswell of opposition, fourteen bishops penned a letter of concern to Pio Nono, advising him not to proceed with infallibility. They were followed by bishops from Hungary and Bohemia, along with the Archbishop of Prague – same message, this is a bad idea, no one is asking for this. Lay groups throughout Europe, anticipating schism, began drafting language in preparation of national churches, independent from Rome.

Bishop Maret of France, who was very moderate in the debate, and also dubbed the council historian, published a two-volume book on the history of ecumenical councils and their relationship to the church, the pope and dogma. It was a comprehensive historical rebuttal of Pio Nono’s pontificate. Napoleon III paid for the printing costs. The book was then translated into German and Italian. From O’Malley:

Maret argued, especially from historical precedents, that the church is a constitutional monarchy composed of two essential elements, one of which is principal, the papacy, the other subordinate, the episcopacy. The two elements must work together to achieve an absolute rule of faith (an infallible definition), as happens in a general council. It is therefore in the cooperation of the two elements that spiritual sovereignty is exercised. In the correlation of sovereignty with infallibility, Maret followed de Maistre, but he arrived at a different conclusion.

Although Maret held that the pope alone never had full jurisdictional and dogmatic sovereignty over the church, he denied that councils were superior to the pope. In fact, the bishops' college, according to him, was inferior but essential for defining a dogma infallibly. For the pope validly to proclaim he was speaking ex cathedra, that is, solemnly in an infallibly binding manner, he absolutely had to have the consensus of the worldwide episcopacy.

Bishop Maret was innocent and genuine in that his book was written as a way to find a middle ground that would appease all parties and bring peace to the debate leading up to the council. He couldn’t have miscalculated more. The book enraged the ultramontanes. Pius IX had convinced himself that Bishop Maret was a heretic. With in two weeks of the book arriving in on the streets of Rome, it was placed on the index for banned books. L’Univers, receiving its marching orders from Pius, went on the attack against Maret. Even Dom Gueranger entered the fray against Maret and made public his own extreme ultramontane opinion of the papacy:

The pope receives nothing from the church, just as Peter received nothing from the apostles. The pope stands in the place of Jesus Christ and the bishops in that of the apostles."

Pius sent him a letter thanking him for the support. Guerenger then published the letter as an introduction to the second edition of one of his books on the subject. Bishop Manning ridiculed Maret in a letter, which was then published in the ultramontane echo chamber of Vieulot’s, L’Univers.

Seeing the chaos being wrought by the Ultramontane press, Bishop Felix Dupanloup published a brochure for the souls in his care titled: Observations on the controversy concerning the definition of infallibility at the coming council. Dupanloup was significant because he himself shared some of the original ultramontane positions on the papacy, but he deplored the cannibalistic tenor of its pushers. O’malley tells us:

Dupanloup’s Observations included the following arguments: a definition is unnecessary; it will raise fresh barriers against reunion with the Orthodox churches and rapprochement with Protestant bodies; it will antagonize governments; and its theological and historical basis is still disputed. He ended with a strong statement of papal prerogatives but coupled it with a similarly strong statement about bishops’ status as successors of the apostle, “placed by the Holy Spirit to govern the church of Christ.”

He labeled the ultramontane thinkers imprudent and provocative. He mentioned L’Univers and Civilta by name. He accused them of attempting to create a new and separate sensu fidelum by which one must pass through to be considered Catholic. Veullot of course published articles attacking the character of Bishop Duopanlop. The bishop then published a public warning to Veullot: "The moment has come to defend ourselves against you."

He accused Veullot of fomenting discord in the Church and among the bishops. He said vitriolic ragsheet editor was agitating infallibility with amateur and ill formed arguments, and equating reasonable opinions with heresy, and for elevating the papacy to divinity:

"Above all I reproach you for making the church participate in your violence, by giving as its doctrine your own ideas, which you do with the greatest audacity."

These controversies were playing themselves out as the bishops began arriving in Rome for Pius’ grand council - all bishops who neither ask for nor wanted to discuss papal infallibility. It was a topic never mentioned in any official communication about the purpose of the council. And yet, they all knew what they were there to rubber stamp a new doctrine of the Faith.

Part 4: I Am Tradition, I Am the Church

All the world’s bishops were on their way to Rome for the council - the council the ultramontanes hoped would be the council to end all councils - for once the pope was infallible, any subsequent councils would be superfluous. There were two distinct, adversarial groups among the bishops – the Gallicans and the Ultramontanes. Between them were bishops with varying alliances and prejudices, adding an element of unpredictable fluidity between the two camps. Within each camp there was significant division. For those who wanted a definition of infallibility, there was no consensus on the scope. Nor was there agreement about who exactly was infallible, the office or the man? What were its limits? Did it even have limits? Many thought not. What about the bishops? If the pope makes unilateral judgements on faith and morals, what remaining role do the bishops play in the church?

Among the Gallicans – they had a liberal faction that leaned toward the Enlightenment values of self-governance. Increasingly centralized authority in the church was something they were naturally opposed to. But for the purist Gallicans, opposing infallibility was a matter of principle, a matter of custom – they were trying to preserve the traditional understanding of the relationship between the bishop of Rome and the rest, and more importantly, the relationship between the bishops and their flocks.

Saint John Henry Newman, famed Oxford movement convert declined the invitation to the council but nonetheless questioned the wisdom of calling this council:

When has definition of doctrine of fiith been a luxury of devotion, and not a stern painful necessity?

Modern liturgical scholar Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, and author of several books and published lectures on this subject, tells us that Newman was hesitant about a definition of infallibility not because:

he did not accept the pope as the God-given pastor of Christians and the final court of appeal, but because he knew that a party of "ultramontanes" was busy pushing a theologically unsound, philosophically unreasonable, historically untenable, and ecclesiastically damaging version of papal inerrancy that threatened to confuse the pope's office with divine revelation itself, rather than seeing him more modestly as the guardian of Tradition and the arbiter of controversy.

Many bishops were just simply skeptical of anything Pius IX was up to, from Bishop Freppel of Anger, France:

The Council is being held either too soon or too late. Too late, because we are at the end of the pontificate of a tired and discouraged old man who views everything through the misfortunes he has suffered. For him, everything that takes place in the modern world is, and must by necessity be, an 'abomination’. It is too soon, because it is clear that the situation in Europe is not yet settled.

The American Bishops for their part were largely left out of all the commotion of the Pius pontificate. During the Risorgimento and the Italian wars for independence, they preoccupied with the American Civil War. They further, being good old fashioned Americans were largely unimpressed by the pope’s Syllabus of Errors, which fell on nearly unanimous deaf ears across the Atlantic. After arriving in Europe, Bishop McQuaid of Rochester New York wrote back home:

Since coming to Europe, I have heard much of the question of the infallibility of the Pope, which with us in America was scarcely talked of. The feeling is very strong, pro and con. It seems that the Jesuits have been at the bottom of it, and have been preparing the public mind for it for the past two years. They have not made friends for themselves by the course they have followed, and if in any way the harmony of the Council is disturbed, it will be by the introduction of this most unnecessary question. There is no telling what the Jesuits will do, and from the manner in which they are sounding out the Bishops, I am inclined to think that they will succeed in having the question forced upon us. In my humble opinion, and almost every American Bishop whose opinion I have heard agrees with me, it will be a great calamity for the Church.

The bishop of Pittsburg, hearing that infallibility was the reason he’d been dragged to Europe said: It will kill us . .. we shall have to swallow what we have vomited up.

With the bishops arriving in Rome, Dollinger used his pen to go on a final offensive against the Ultramontanes, accusing them of attempting a papal seizure of power. The bishop’s authority would be undermined, replaced by a papal dictatorship, calling the thousand-year effort of the popes to centralize power a: a tumor that is disfiguring the Church and causing it to suffocate.

Bishop Dupanloup agreed and published a pamphlet that was handed out before the opening ceremonies.

In the middle of November 1869, because of new industrial transportation, bishops from far corners of the world could now attend and were attending the first ecumenical council in over 300 years. The French government offered its navy to transport any bishop from anywhere. Some 700 bishops of the thousand or so around the world had come. Such an attendance would not last for long – as we’ll see. Nonetheless even with the bishops of the world in Rome, Europe was wildly overly represented making up two thirds of the prelates. Britain had 34 bishops, 20 of which were from Ireland. German lands had 18 of its 20 present. 49 represented the Austro-Hungarian empire. Both France and Spain had over 80 apiece. Italy was way overrepresented with 117 prelates, with about half of them coming from the Roman Curia. America had its first opportunity to participate in a council and sent nearly 50 prelates from the United States, 18 from Canada, and another 50 from Latin America. 61 bishops represented the Eastern Rite churches from the Ottoman Empire, along with 41 coming from China and India. One came from the Philippines and one from Australia, and 8 came from all of Africa.

The first thing these old men had to do when arriving in Rome was secure lodging. Many of the European bishops had plenty of money and thus were able to lock down comfortable apartments and private carriages to cart them around. Those coming from outside Europe were more cash strapped and had to find lodging in seminaries or religious houses, often in unheated and unwindowed quarters. Unable to afford carriages, they had to make their daily trips on foot.

In the 19th century, before microphones, audio equipment and ted talks, acoustics for large gatherings was a critical concern. The council was originally supposed to take place the church of Sant Apollinare, because it was known for good acoustics. Pio Nono overruled the decision and demanded it occur in St. Peter’s Basilica. The acoustic problem was hoisted upon a roman architect to figure out a solution for. His solution was to build an enormous wooden box or shell, painted to look like marble, blocking out the echo from the cavernous basilica. For a bunch of grumpy old men hard of hearing anyway – this really didn’t help any.

At 9am on December 8th, church bells throughout Rome began ringing to call the bishops to the council. As a procession of the gilded clergy began making their way to the basilica, the skies opened into torrential rainfall. Getting soaked to their bones were 49 cardinals, 11 patriarchs, 6 prince-bishops, 680 archbishops and bishops, 28 abbots, 29 superiors general and over 250 resident roman clergy. The Knights of Malta and the Swiss guard awaited the procession at the basilica. Behind them was Pius IX, being carried on a portable throne by his attendants. At the church entrance, he dismounted and walked into the hall. With all members now present, the dean of the college of cardinals presided at a solemn high mass, followed by a sermon. After Mass, the entire congregation fell in line to pay homage to the pope. The cardinals kissed his hand, the bishops his knee, everyone else, his foot. Pius then stood before his clerics and reminded them they had important business before them, and to not fear, that the church would triumph. He then quoted scripture, exclaiming:

Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Gallicans bristled, believe it to be a nod to the ultramontanes.

When the pope was done speaking, the MC asked the congregation:

Most Reverend Fathers, does it please you, for the praise and glory of the Holy and Undivided Trinity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the increase and exaltation of the Catholic faith and religion, for the uprooting of current errors, for the reform of the clergy and Christian people, for the common peace and concord of all, that the sacred ecumenical Vatican Council begin and be declared already to have begun?

The response was a resounding agreement. With that, the first Vatican Council commenced and was entered into the pages of history. Rome’s naturally superstitious populace marveled at the unrelenting rain, fearing it was a bad omen for things to come.

It was at least an omen of how uncomfortable the council would be. The first day of the council was taken up with administrative affairs. The clerics immediately began complaining of the lack of heat in their sleeping quarters, the horrible weather, the inability to hear any of the speakers, and boredom. Making it through some of the meetings when Cardinal Manning was asked what they had been discussing, he responded:

"Well, we meet, and we look at one another, and then we talk a little, but when we want to know what we have been doing, we read The Times."

So many of the bishops were infirm, and after the initial opening of each session, they were carried off, back to their quarters for comfort. The clerics from non-European countries had another problem, even if they could hear what was being discussed, all the speeches were in Latin, which they hardly spoke. One of the first suggestions made by the clerics was to move the location of the council so they could hear whatever it was they were supposed to be voting on – the request went nowhere. Instead, to ease their discomfort, in an adjoining chapel to the basilica a lounge was set up, carpeted and fitted with cozy chairs, and a bar that served wine. This helped to ease the daily torture somewhat.

Patience and manners of all the bishops began wearing down quickly, and soon they found themselves faced with a terrifying thought: No end date for the interminable council was given. They began to wonder how long they were expected to stay. Many began making arrangements to leave in their own time. Bishop McQuade wrote home:

"Unless an escape is found from the present way of getting on, the council will not be over for years. I would not like to say how many.

Many of these bishops had pressing matters in their own diocese that need attending to. The European bishops were particularly anxious as war between France and Prussia seemed imminent – and Rome they guessed would be caught up in it. Many prayed that something would make them adjourn before they were forced to vote on infallibility. Despite the marketing material, they knew that’s why they were there, and knew their clerical careers hung on how they voted.

Outside the council the streets of Rome were swollen with journalists and the generally curious. Despite the rules on secrecy, the roman streets were abuzz with rumor mills of infallibility – this thing that was too delicate to mention at the council was the most talked about issue in the cafes. German historian, Ferdinand Gregorovius doing research for a multivolume history of Rome wrote of the convening bishops:

Rome presents the spectacle of the deification, amounting to insanity, of despotism. If the movement is really carried: if the bishops, in fear and fanaticism, yield submission to the will of the pope: it is to be hoped that the unity of Germany will quickly bring to pass a second reformation.

The Hungarian episcopacy showed up to the council resolutely and almost unanimously opposed to infallibility. Croatian bishop Josip Strossmayer arrived as one of the doctrine’s loudest opponents. Strossmeyer’s see was within the Ottoman Empire at the time and his life’s work had been the reconciliation of the Slavic Orthodox communities to communion with Rome. He warned papal infallibility would undo everything he had had labored for. Pius IX would come to despise Strossmeyer, for as he was regarded as warm hearted, and affectionate by all, he was also eloquent and effective in his opposition to the pope.

Out of the 700 or so clerics who attended the council, its estimate that about 150 were publicly against defining the doctrine. Knowing infallibly would be forced into the schedule at some point, they knew they would need to form a voting block of coherence, which they did quite well. But the true strength of the minority was that they hailed from the most influential and important sees in Europe: Paris, Mainz, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Turin and Milan. These were not novice clerics. They also loved their flocks, loved the Church and loved the papacy – despite the toxicity of the current pope. They were not revolutionaries, but counterrevolutionaries, attempting to hang on to the reigns of episcopal authority that was all but gone – you could say these 150 bishops represented the last resistance against a continuous juridic and pastoral ossification of the papacy in the works since Gregory VII – 800 years ago. The simplest distillation of their argument was that defining a dogma of infallibility now was at best inopportune, and thus, this minority opposition came to be called the inopportunists.

Pius IX did not view these clerics as his brothers, or even some sort of intellectual opponent. To him, they were debauched enemies of the Faith. A note, handwritten by Pio Nono himself was found in the Vatican archives that shed light on where his head was at the commencement of the council:

Some leaders among the opposing bishops are effeminate, and others are sophistical, or frivolous, or heretical. They are all ambitious, boastful, and obstinately attached to their own opinion.

Among the majority, the Spanish Americans, seeing the Spaniards favoring a definition, joined in with them. The Italians were almost universally in favor of infallibility, with only the archbishops of Milan and Turin. The Irish were led by a very vocal pro-definition archbishop and therefore bent that way. The French episcopacy was shattered into several different groups, with a sizable middle group supporting some sort of limited definition. The English and Scots were split evenly, though tended to support the minority, largely because of Bishop Mannings aggressive ultramontanism that seemed deify Pius IX.

The Americans, thinking they were called across the pond for wildly different reasons, and having only recently become familiar with the debate, likewise didn’t arrive with strong opinions. Yet as they sank their teeth into the debate, about half of them opposed a definition, arguing it would hamper conversions among the significant protestant populations back home, complicate their relationship with constitutionally secular government, and worse, foment discord between the pope and American Catholics, who as a rule, viewed centralized authority with little trust.

It would be fair to say the Americans, despite technical division, didn’t have their heart in the debate. Only 8 American bishops elected to even speak at the council – infallible for them was a minor issue. Instead, they put their efforts into convening with one another twice a week to discuss pastoral issues in the United States that they deemed way more pressing.

As we’ve already mentioned, Council members were strictly forbidden from leaking anything to the press or discussing matters with the public. What happens at Vatican I stays at Vatican I – unless you know the pope. Owner and editor of L’Univers, Louis Veuillot, had significant access to confidential information via regular meetings with Pius. Pius fed Veuillot propaganda that went straight to print, which was the major source of council news for the French laity. Other frequent guests of the pope during the council were the editors of the Civilta Cattolica – that semiofficial yet claimed to be independent Catholic journal whose final edit must be approved by the secretary of state of Rome. Pius directly oversaw, edited and approved the articles published by that paper, while all the while maintaining plausible deniability about how it sourced its confidential information on council proceedings. Yet the propaganda flowed into the papal apartment too. The ultramontane radicals used their access to Pius’ ears, especially via Cardinal Manning, pope ear to influence him, aligning him into more to the limitless expectations of infallibility.

The theological opposition outside the walls of the council was doing what it could. Joseph Dollinger took up an apartment in Rome and remained on the offensive in the publish intellectual sphere. Lord Acton wrote to him daily on how the definition might be stalled. Papal police knew Dollinger was receiving aid from outside Rome and were on the hunt for correspondence they could intercept. Acton, knowing Dollinger was being watched by Pius sent his dispatch to Munich, under the care of the Bavarian ambassador to Rome. Acton’s brother-in-law worked at the embassy and facilitated the correspondence. Lord Acton was well connected among the European aristocracy and had full resources of the Bavarian embassy at his disposal. When European leaders wanted to get a message to the opposition within the council, they would contact Acton, who would contact Dollinger, who would then meet with bishop Dupanloup or Strossmeyer.

British diplomat to the Holy See, Odo Russel reflects on how pivotal Acton was for the opposition:

Both Dupanloup and Strossmayer admit that the opposition could not have been organized without Lord Acton, whose marvelous knowledge, honesty of purpose, clearness of mind, and powers of organization have rendered possible what appeared at first impossible. The party he has so powerfully helped to create is filled with respect and admiration for him.

European governments had existential reason for influencing the council. They were loath to see the syllabus of errors codified – the upshot of the Enlightenment bloodbath was that the European princes had found relative middle ground for freedom of press and religion. They feared a declaration of the pope’s temporal authority – knowing that they would then be forced to choose sides in a debate none of them wanted to have. The pope fought a war for land and lost, this was how the game was played, welcome to Europe. Many still had existing concordats with the Holy See – a declaration of papal infallibly would constitute a fundamental change in the kind of authority with which they negotiated, rendering them all null. Despite Pius’ insistence on not inviting the princes of Europe –their governments had full diplomatic, surveillant, and reconnaissance networks on the ground. With regards to information flowing in and out of the council - the apartments of Acton and Dollinger were just as active as Veuillot’s and Pius’. Napoleon III held no punches and spoke directly, warning cardinal Antonelli that if Papal Infallibility succeeds, he will pull all French troops out of Rome, and they would be on their own.

One of the early meetings of the council was set to determine how amendments to proposals would be processed and presented to the bishops for voting. The panels to process these amendments were called deputations. If Vatican I is game of chess, this is where the minority bishops lost their queen early. Cardinal Manning, along with another ultramontane, Cardinal Senestry realized that he who controls the amendments, controls the outcome. They began compiling a list of bishops that would be voted upon to sit on these deputations. There were three criteria for making Manning’s list: They must be of course pro infallibility, they must be from a variety of countries different countries, and Cardinal Manning gets final approval. With the list complete, Cardinal Senestry had ordered it lithographed and distributed it to trusted ultramontane members of the council.

When Pius IX saw the list, he suggested to Manning that perhaps he should include at least one from the monitory to show some sense of fairness. To which Manning replied: Heretics do not come to a council to help in formulating doctrine but to be heard and condemned.

The minority, not grasping the importance of these deputations and not comprehending the extent to which the majority stuffed the ballot, found out what had happened way too late. When voting on the members of the deputation, most of the bishops simply cast votes reflecting Manning’s lithographed list. Now, absolute control of the deputations, no proposal by the majority could be amended by the minority. And no proposal by the minority stood a chance of making it into a final draft without consent of the majority. The council had already been disparaged by some as being oriented towards a predetermined outcome. Those allegations were now codified. Common clerics on both sides were appalled at the deception. They found the whole process detestable, taking what should have been an honest vote on procedural integrity, providing for the fairness of all voices was reduced to a ballot stuffing campaign.

Cardinal Schwarzenberg complained to one of the council presidents: We have been made a laughingstock to our people and made out to be a disgrace in the church.

Veuillot, voice for the ultramontanes was giddy, declaring the council already over. Some bishops regretted their involvement in the affair, acknowledging they had rigged the system. Everything was now tainted, and bitter. Middle of the road clerics who held both sides in charity now became hardened against the ultramontanes. An English historian of the council, one who took no position on infallibly recounted:

After going through the proceedings of the entire council, I have to say that this appears to me as the most serious blot on its doings.

It wasn’t until December 28th that substantive theological discussion began taking place. The first was on a draft titled the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism. It had 18 enormous sections with tons of notes attached. The bishops who scheduled their time to speak on it complained it was way too long, too wordy, too academic, and that none of the laity would read it – binding or not. Archbishop Halifax accused the council of departing from the precise language of previous councils, calling the document so bad that it defied revision and should be decently buried.

Then came the criticism of how the opening text of the document read: Pius, bishop, servant of the servants of God, with the approval of the council…

Bishop Strossmayer strongly objected, and with much support to the opening text, arguing that dogmatic decrees should be promulgated in the name of the council, as was tradition, and not in the name of the pope. This afront to Pio Nono would not be tolerated, and so the council president interrupted Strossmayer, and admonished him to stick only to the substance of the decree only. To which Strossmayer replied: I will say no more on a forbidden subject but turn now to one that is allowed.

Discussions continued for weeks and months. On February 22, some of the proposals were sent to the deputations to process all the amendments and notes. The council then went into recess for a month to give the deputations time to sift through everything. One of the documents received by the deputations was called Supremi Pastoris, or Of the Supreme Shepard. When it was previously submitted to the Church fathers by the presidents, they were told the document was not available for debate, but that they could only submit comments and that the deputations may revise it based on comments received. It contained a preamble, fifteen chapters and twenty-one canons – which are new official rules associated with the document. One chapter dealt specifically with the infallibility of the church but failed to explicitly mention papal infallibility. The minority thought a doctrinal bullet had been dodged.

The recess was very much welcomed by all sides. Father O’Malley in his history of the council described the feelings during the break:

Well before the recess, the bishops had grown increasingly frustrated at the slow pace, at the excruciating tedium of endless speeches repeating points that had already been made countless times, and at acoustics that distorted or muffled the words of speakers on those seemingly rare occasions when they made a new or particularly important point. Ahead of them lay, they feared, perhaps three or four years of such torture if they were to complete the program prepared for them and creep along at the same pace.

In response to the bishop’s frustration Pope Pius released a new rule for the council – that the president, if the majority agreed, could now have the authority to cut short the list of speakers on presented documents. While shortening the process, it manifested yet another regulation that favored the majority.

And there was another new rule introduced under the guise of efficiency – where at previous council unanimity, consensuses or significant majorities were required to promulgate doctrine or dogma, now, only a simple majority was needed. One bishop noted this event as a great turning point in Church history.

When the deputations came back with revisions of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism, it was hoped their amendments were heard and the document was made less academic. Instead, the document stood as is, being told that since academia was one of the principal sources of rationalism, it would remain styled for an academic audience. It was also declared that German academia was primarily to blame. And so, the deputation handed to document to a team of bishops to rewrite it, leaving the academic tone, but inserting the Germans as a party to blame. These were revisions that no one asked for – and none of the German bishops were going to assist with a revision. So to help with the revision they called up a German Jesuit and ultramontane who was well connected In Rome, named Father Joseph Kleutgen. Kleutgen was henceforth established as a major academic in the council, serving at the request of these deputations and becoming an elected passthrough for drafting documents.

Kleutgen being given such a prominent role at the council is a truly bizarre development. First, he was a revolutionary in his youth, circa 1830 – though many of the ultramontanes were, so that was far from a disqualifier. Second, despite being a priest, he was well known to be living in an apartment with a woman in the late 1840s in Rome, and publicly admitted to having a sexual relationship with her. In light of all this he was still promoted to the substitute secretary of the Superior General of the Jesuits and Consultant of the Congregation of the Index. But here’s where things with father Kleutgen get really weird. In 1856 he was appointed confessor to the Franciscan Convent of St Ambrose in Rome. This little convent had major problems. They defied the Holy Office of Rome by venerating their founding abbess as a saint. Father Kleutgen apparently encouraged them to do so. Two years later, a German princess, recently widowed, joined the convent to become a nun. The mistress of novices for the convent, Maria Luisa, this German princess discovered, claimed to be receiving message from the mother of God and was performing rituals reserved only for priests. To add another layer to this cake – she was also sleeping with several of the novices. Father Kleutgen, being confessor for the convent knew about all this, and instead of reporting the convent to the powers that be, he began a sexual relationship with the mistress, Maria Luisa – whom he defended as a saintly person receiving divine revelations. When the German princess got word out to the outside of what was going on in the convent, Kleutgen and Maria Luisa allegedly poisoned her. She survived the attempted murder. Her family came to her aid, removed her from the convent and reported the incident to the holy see. The result for Father Kleutgen was his conviction as a heretic for promoting the cult of the founder of the convent. He was sentenced to three years of house arrest. Pope Pius IX, for reason that defy all prudence, justice, and good governance, reduced his sentence by a year and allowed him to relocate to a shrine in Rome where the Jesuit could work on publishing his theological works. Seeing the council in need of a German authority, Pope Pius removed all ecclesiastical censures on Father Kleutgen and put him to work on the theology of infallibility.

Getting back to the council proceedings on the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism. Bishop Strossmayer stood up with several challenges. He again disputed the opening lines, that this document seems to come from the mouth of the pope, and not the council. He stressed to the council that they remind themselves of the "divine and inviolable rights of bishops".

Second, he called the preamble foolish for ascribing all modern errors to Protestantism. He reminded the audience that Voltaire was a baptized Catholic. The president of the council once again interrupted Strossmayer, asking him to refrain from words that scandalized those present. Some bishops began shouting at Strossmayer to step down. Strossmayer refused to yield the podium, violating the rules of the council by debating his critics point by point. The entire body of bishops – these grumpy, tired old men who were by now, thoroughly sick and tires of being in Rome – devolved into an absolute shouting match. When things calmed down, Strossmayer declared he had another point to make. He challenged the new rule that a simple majority was all that was needed to ratify dogma – he demanded to know why they had done away with the ancient rule of unanimity. But Strossmayer was immediately interrupted by the president again: That is irrelevant to the subject under discussion.

But Strossmayer shouted over the president, demanding the "the eternal and immutable rule of moral unanimity,” be put back in place. The ultramontanes in the audience then began calling him names like Lucifer, and Luther. The president clanged his bell to demand order to the hall, but no one could hear him. Sick of the mayhem and hungry for dinner, one by one bishops began leaving the basilica, bringing to an end, congregation number 31, of the first Vatican council.

A majority of bishops were now offended by the behavior of the ultramontanes and weren’t afraid to leak their misgiving to the media that night over wine. The international press went to print with stories of Strossmayer being shouted down, bullied, and unfairly vilified. The council was described as a narrow-minded circus, intolerant of freedom of thoughts and opinions that differ from the pope-king.

Nonetheless after the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism sent to the deputations for final revision, and returned, the body of the language generally acceptable, even to opposition, exceot the last paragraph, which contained a vague threat of heresy against those who oppose future legislation:

But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those are carefully shunned whose positions approach it in greater or lesser degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this Holy See.

It was easy to read between the lines – don’t you dare oppose papal infallibility when it’s presented to you.

44 bishops officially requested that the last paragraph be suppressed from the document. The deputations refused. The minority met and considered voting against the document. Yet in the end, they decided if the coming fight, the real fight was to be about infallibility, then they would only hurt their standing in voting against a document that they generally agreed with. Strossmayer abstained from the vote, thus allowing the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith against the Manifold Errors of Rationalism (which thankfully was shortened to Dei Filius) passed unanimously.

In the end, Dei Filius was an affirmation of Church beliefs in the face of the Enlightenment and modernism. It affirmed there is a God and He can be known. That reason and divine revelation cannot be at odds. It fell short of what Pius wanted – he desired codification of his Syllabus of Errors. But it also was something the world needed at a time when secular sciences and modernist philosophers had significant influence viz a viz the Catholic Church, which under the Pius pontificate seemed hell-bent on medieval paradigms of the social order. From O’Malley:

Dei Filius was a proclamation of the reality of the transcendent. It was an affirmation of a reality beyond the visible and material, of a reality beyond the rationally demonstrable. As it did so, it taught that in the human person the material and the transcendent met and interacted. There is One beyond the senses who nonetheless can be known by beings of flesh and blood. Traditional though the statement was, it was not for that reason insignificant. The situation required that the church, if it were to remain true to itself, reaffirm such basic beliefs.

Outside the walls of St. Peter’s Basilica, no one cared about Dei Filius, this tragically forgotten document of Vatican I. The propaganda journals for and against infallibility ignored it, focused solely on the infallibility debate.

The ultramontane bishops petitioned the pope to at last introduce a document on papal infallibility to the council – thinking they had the minority on their heels. Pius gave them what they wanted and produced a document already prepared, presumably penned by Bishop Glasser, under the theological advice of the previously mentioned Father Kleutgen. Since papal infallibility wasn’t on the official schedule, the ultramontanes attempted to declare the Holy Spirit will the discussion since its proposal had come from the pope. Some Cardinals threatened to leave the council considering the ridiculous facade. Strossmayer compared the council to an ancient Rome – calling it a servile senate to an emperor-god.

The original plan by the ultramontanes for papal infallibility was to insert it in a much larger and vast document on church authority called Supremi Pastoris. Chapter 11 of Supremi Pastoris was to detail the pope’s primacy of jurisdiction – as preapproved and predesigned addendum, papal infallibility was designed to be inserted here in chapter 11. Yet the minority bishops had time on their hands. At the speed this council was moving, it would be many months to years before they got to chapter 11. But then everything changed.

On April 29th, the presidents of the council announced that chapters 1-10 would be tabled, and the discussion would move immediately on to chapter 11 – papal primacy and infallibility. The minority was furious. Even the moderate bishops had problems with the theological implications of removing a discussion on papal primacy and infallibly outside of the larger context of church authority, where it was intended to be enshrined. They denounced it as severing the head from the body.

What we know now, what the bishops did not know then, was that the agenda was scrapped, and infallibility rushed forward because the invasion of the city of Rome was a very real and imminent possibility. Napoleon was not impressed by Pius’ manipulation of the direction of the council. And the Italian king was running out of reasons not to conquer the eternal city and establish it as its capital. Had the schedule remained the same – papal infallibility would never have happened. What was rumored to be the real reason for the council had been confirmed.

The change of the schedule almost didn’t happen. 3 of the 5 presidents refused to change the schedule, knowing the public scandal they would be part of – they were right. But Pius IX threatening the full punitive weight of his office demanded they change it, proving true Strossmayer’s admonition of a servile senate. The pope, feeling the pressure of external forces bearing down, and his own machinations facing imminent failure, had significantly hardened his heart against the bishops in the minority.

Birhsop Ullathorne described the change in the outward attitude of the bishop of Rome:

The pope takes every opportunity of expressing his views on the infallibility, both in audiences and in letters that at once get into the papers. He has quite changed his old policy on our arrival, when he professed neutrality before the council.

What bishop Ullathorne did not know was that the “neutrality” pope Pius demonstrated was a lie. Merely weeks after the council had first convened, Pius was presented with the disappointing news by his theologians that the history of the church did not really present a clear case for defining papal infallibility, and thus, would be a difficult thing to do. His response was:

I am so determined to go forward with this matter that if I knew the council was going to be silent on it, I would dissolve it and define it myself.

Bishop Ullathorne had drastically miscalculated his opponent.

With the opposition hardening, Pius’ famous flash attacks of uncontrollable anger became even more pronounced. His fuse had grown short. When diplomates or press asked about certain minority bishops, he lashed out, happy to see the names of the heretics smeared in the press and on the world stage. Bishop Maret, he dubbed a cold soul, a snake. Bishop Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, he said was wrong thinking, and a bad bishop. Bishop Darboy, the very next year would be murdered in the streets by revolutionaries.

By April 19th, bishops from France, America and even Italy (many of them ultramontanes) pleaded with the pope to keep the original schedule, that the integrity of the council was at stake. Even his Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli warned Pio Nono that forcing infallibility this way would destroy its credibility as a free council in the court of public opinion and among the world governments.

In response to the groups of bishops petitioning Pius to revert to the original schedule, Cardinal Manning quickly organized a group of bishops to plead with Pius to continue with the schedule change. Pius assured Manning that he would do the right thing.

Then Bishop Dupanloup of France wrote a letter to Pius invoking a spirit of fraternal love with bishop of Rome:

Most Holy Father, My name is not pleasing to you. I know it, and it is my sorrow. But, for all that, I feel myself authorized and obliged, in the profound and inviolable devotion of which I have given so many proofs to Your Holiness, to open my heart to you at this moment. The report is confirmed that many are soliciting your Holiness to suspend suddenly our important work and invert the order of the discussions. ... Allow me, Most Holy Father, to say to Your Holiness: Nothing could be more dangerous.

The bishops’ heartfelt letter was of no avail. Six days later, Pope Pius IX announced that papal infallibility would be the next item of business.

The minority, during these days, is described as despondent. The Bishop of Luca wrote in his diary:

Will this be for the good? Will it not be bad to have moved this issue ahead? I feel a deep fear. . .. The question of infallibility would have come before us in its own time, in a sober and dignified way, but now it comes at us out of the blue in an atmosphere of great agitation.

On May 9th, the new document was distributed. It was called Pastor Aeternus. It had a preamble, three chapters on papal primacy, and one on papal infallibility – with three canons at the end. The chapters on primacy can be seen as the full blooming flower of Gregorian reforms – giving the office of the papacy full jurisdictional authority not just of faith and morals, but also of discipline and government – using the words, one flock, one shepherd.

The minority went to work to make sure an amendment made it into the final copy, that this power which was, in the document’s words “promulgated anew” included that this power of the pope:

by no means detracts from that ordinary and immediate power of the episcopal jurisdiction by which bishops tend and govern their flocks… in the place of the apostles by appointment of the Holy Spirit.

In the original draft of Paster Aeternus, it specifically labelled the pope as a superior authority to a council and not answerable to it. History disagreed. Thus, the minority succeeded again in softening the language to:

There is no appeal and no recourse to another authority because no authority is higher.

The fourth chapter on infallibility was attacked immediately because of its title: On the infallibility of the Roman pontiff.

The minority again succeeded in having it changed to a more limiting scope of: Infallible Teaching Authority of the Roman Pontiff. Implying that the pope himself is not infallible, only certain teachings that come from the office.

The text of the document would be debated for two whole months. All of the bishops agreed that the Church was infallible. But in the history of the church, infallible teaching was the province of councils, not popes. The principal question was then, could the pope exercise supreme teaching authority apart from the church, i.e. without the consensus of the episcopate? For the minority the answer was definitely no. The majority made no argument of the necessity of efficiency – councils took too long, and were too cumbersome, which in their defense was on remarkable display in Rome in the spring of 1870.

Another question debated was whether the pope himself was infallible, or only his acts? And then, what would constitute an infallible act? How far did his infallibly extend? And are his statements absolute? What if a council later disagrees with the whims of a pope? Using history as a judgement, many popes have refused the idea that their acts are irreformable. One pope even signed a document with the Gallican’s saying as much.

Almost no bishop at the council was prepared to defend an absolutist concept of infallibility, most agreeing that he still needed to consult the church, yet this was not the weak-sauce infallibility the ultramontanes envisioned. They argued way back to Pope Boniface’s VIII’s bull Unam Sanctum, in the 14th century, which tried to assert papal infallibility back then. The minority reminded the majority that Unam Sanctum was resoundingly rejected by bishops, archbishops, medieval princes and theologians. The minority then reminded the majority of the case of Pope Honorius, who was posthumously declared a heretic and anatomized by an ecumenical council for teaching heresy - the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and the Third Council of Constantinople, to be specific.

Yet in the formal argument for infallibly submitted with the text, called the relatio, it was declared that:

The infallibility of the Roman pontiffs is a truth divinely revealed. Therefore, it is impossible that it can ever be proved false by any historical facts. If, however, such facts are brought forward to oppose it, they must themselves be deemed false insofar as they seem opposed.

History, being a human construct, was not an impediment. From O’Malley:

The most basic problem with Pastor Aeternus was its historical naivete. It took the present situation as the norm for interpreting the past and projected present practice and understanding onto it. Since it ignored differentiation between past and present, it lacked a sense of development from past to present, even though Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine was by then twenty-five years old.

The minority was extremely sensitive to deviations from prior council rubrics. It also saw tradition and history as inseparable and intimately related. Tradition included more than verses from scripture and pronouncements by councils and popes, which in any case had to be interpreted in context and according to how they were received and put into practice. Tradition included liturgical practices, the history of the reception of papal and conciliar decisions, and especially the customary ways the church had proceeded in the course of its history. Some argued the laity would not take infallibility seriously, that it lacked context in their lives. Anther bishops wondered why the pope did not avail himself of the historical use of councils for dogmatic authority – why does the pope require this doctrine? Why now? Bishop Hefele, a historian on church council, reminded the majority that they were simply wrong by denouncing history as a man-made construct - that history was a theological source, that they were one shaky ground in insisting it wasn’t. He went on to cite previous councils in history where the bishops operated as a safety check for pronouncements from pope that may have otherwise issued heresy.

As these arguments heated up, so did the weather. A heat wave soaring above 90 degrees stuck Rome, making the council not just intellectually unbearable but now physically exhausting. There was no air conditioning – and windows had to be kept shut to keep out mosquitoes. Some bishops proposed a recess until the fall, allowing nerves and thermometers to cool. The motion was denied. Further, news of movements outside Rome were making all these foreign bishops nervous. They feared being caught in a revolution.

Being forced back into the basilica, Bishop Darboy stood up and gave his objections – infallibly had been thrust upon them, when no one asked for it or saw its necessity. He called its proponents demagogues from outside the faith looking to ruin it from within. He denounced how it had been ripped from its proper place in a larger contextual document of church authority and made a separate issue. He deemed the language vague and uncertain, and further saying this decree would only make the problems of combating modernism worse.

Bishop Ketteler then stood up:

Everybody today deplores that all authority, both secular and spiritual, has collapsed, and all persons of good will want us to defend and give witness to authority as a necessity in society. Yet at the same time everybody today detests all forms of absolutism, from which so many evils have come upon the human race. Absolutism corrupts us and renders us vile. Proclaim, reverend fathers, proclaim to the whole world the church’s authority, the mildest yet most basic. But also show forth that there is in the church no arbitrary, lawless, and absolute authority. Show that in her there is only one Lord and absolute monarch, Jesus Christ.

Kettelers speech was met with audible disapproval.

The next day, after Bishop Ketteler being shouted down for saying Christ is the absolute monarch of the Church, seven bishops abandoned the council, citing matters at home that needed attending to.

Bishop Verot of the United States then stood up, and asked whether the Irish believed pope Hadrian IV was infallible when he gave the English moral authority to invade and conquer Ireland – a shrewd zinger. He then ended his speech by declaring that a vote for infallibility was a vote for a sacrilege. The president of the council forced him to step down, which he did, no doubt with some satisfaction.

Finally, Old bishop Maret of France, who was mostly deaf, got up to speak. He told the majority that while they saw the church as an absolute monarchy, he and his companions saw it as a limited monarchy. The council president interrupted Maret several times, attempting to prevent him from speaking, but being deaf, he passively ignored the council president.

There were still 50 more bishops who had signed up to speak against defining infallibility, yet by a vote of a simple majority, the debate was brought to a close, leaving most of these voices unheard. Those remaining saw themselves and their rights violated by a gang, to which there was no appeal. The reality was there was nothing they could do. There was no consensus on the historical merit of the document. There was no census on the theological merit of the document. And now owing to the previous change of rules, a consensus was not needed, and any proposed amendments were dead on arrival when submitted to the deputations handpicked by Manning and Pius. Even among the ultramontanes, there was no consensus on which questions were being answered by the document. Each bishop had his own interpretation of the text. A dogma is supposed to divinely reveal truths of the Faith – those truths were never settled upon during the council. Since further discussion was forbidden and denied, the current most common interpretation was that infallibility was personal to the pope, absolute to his proclamations, and separate from the church – this directly contradicted what the council president said the document would contain when it was first presented. And yet, here they were.

On June 6th, the council reconvened to debate the deputation’s revisions of the text. Few points were scored by the minority and almost no changes were made. Bishop Connoly implicitly accused the majority of heresy, subscribing to biblical fundamentalism. They weren’t swayed.

Days later, on June 17th, Pope Pius IX celebrated the 24th anniversary of his election. He used it as an opportunity to publicly malign the minority bishops, accusing them of laying aside their episcopal garb in the evening, implying sinful lifestyles. He then dubbed the majority as the good sentinels who never leave their guard.

The very next day, the most famous incident of the council occurred. Cardinal Filippo Guidi, being a Dominican, naturally sided with the majority, but was nonetheless uncomfortable by the comportment of the bishops on his side. Many of the minority bishops were his friends that he had known for years. He knew them to be true pious men, and men who loved the papacy. He had kept a low profile at the council and hoped that a compromise between the two sides could be found – for the good of the Church. Guidi decided to take it upon himself to find that middle ground.

He gave a speech asserting that it is the office of the pope that is infallible, not the person. He used the metaphor of a person who once or twice had too much to drink, though is not called a drunk. Divine assistance, he said, is promised to the act – not the person. He then suggested the title of the document be called: The Infallibility of the Roman pontiff in Defining Dogma – a reflection of the acts of the pope, and not the pope himself. Guidi then agreed partly with the minority that it is reasonable, based on history, that the bishops must be consulted before the pope may makes an infallible statement, yet agreed with the majority that when the pope makes such a statement, it was then beyond the councils’ authority to reform it.

The ultramontanes were unsatisfied with the compromise and booed Guidi off the stage. Bishop Manning denounced Guidi as confused. Bishop Strossmayer kissed his hand and thanked him. Moderates on both sides seem appeased, praising Guidi for his bridge to unity. Bishop Dabroy cautioned that while reaching a consensus was vitality important, and praised Guidi’s attempts, the actual text of the decree needed to be changed, not just its interpretation. To the horror of the hard-core ultramontanes – a coalition of moderates was achieved.

Pio Nono was furious. There was to be no moderate coalition. Later that day he summoned Guidi to the papal apartment. He shouted at Cardinal Guidi, accusing him of befriending the heretics and enemies of the church. He accused him of trying to ingratiate himself with the Italian government to gain their favor when they conquered Rome. He reminded Guidi that it was he, Pope Pius IX who had appointed him to be a cardinal, that the cardinal was his creature, that he owed his career to the pope only. How dare he act in such an unfriendly way towards his benefactor. Guidi, a bit overwhelmed by the admonitions of the Vicar of Christ, attempted to calmy ask his holiness to investigate history before making a declaration on infallibility, urging the pontiff to consult the traditions of the Faith, and that he was prepared to defend what he said, because it was in conformity with the doctors of the Church, such as St. Thomas.

The pope responded with wrath:

I, I am tradition! I, I am the church!

Pope Pius IX dismissed the cardinal and ordered his doctor to bring him a laxative to calm his blood.

That evening, minority and majority bishops sought out Cardinal Guido to thank him for his bridge to moderation, totally unaware of what had just happened. When he told them of the rebuke, they were speechless – it was unvarnished megalomania on display. Some bishops opted to leave Rome in despondency. Dominican historian and senior professor at the University of Munich, Ulrich Horst wrote a book on medieval papal teaching authority, published by Notre Dame University, put this Guidi affair as a thousand-year watershed moment:

The intervention of the Dominican cardinal Filippo Maria Guidi, who criticized papal infallibility without certain conditions, was the last attempt to orient the discussion to the late-medieval and early modern theologians of the cardinal's order. The rejection of his proposal by the majority of the fathers and by Pope Pius IX showed that a long and complex history of papal teaching authority had definitively come to an end.

There was to be no more debate. There was never supposed to be a debate. Papal Infallibility meant whatever Pius IX said it did.

The next day, the majority went on a counteroffensive. Cardinal D’Avanzo, who also was one of the deputations gave a speech proclaiming that when the pope speaks on an article of faith, he is at that point:

…an incarnation of the supernatural order and of Christ within it, who therefore in all things and for all things is in the pope, with the pope, and [speaks] through the pope."

The minority bishops were already so disheartened by this point that borderline sacrilegious statements like these failed to excite them anymore. They submitted their petitions for amendments to the deputations knowing full well they wouldn’t even be read – what else could they do?

Before there was any confirmation that an agreement on the text had been reached, Pope Pius set the date for the public promulgation of the text for July 18th – two weeks away. The deputation had their work cut out for them. In their haste, they left more than half the document unamended. Cardinal Spalding, who though a supporter of the document, was also a moderate – and succeeded in convincing the deputation to partially reassert the authority of the bishops in the final text – a welcomed change for the minority.

But Pius was still not satisfied with the text. It was the deputation’s job to process amendments raised by church fathers – not invent new ones. The Pope ordered them to do just that in the final version. They were ordered to add a canon to the document aimed specifically against Bishop Maret’s thesis of papal infallibility – for months he had argued that history and tradition showed the papacy occupied only the principal part and not the full part of church authority. The pope wanted the exact opposite in writing in the final document. Some members of the deputation felt reluctant to draft language that so specifically targeted a member of the council, i.e. Bishop Maret. They were perhaps even more uncomfortable in taking upon themselves authority which the council did not grant them. To add language to a document not introduced or presented by the church fathers would be an egregious and illegal violation of not only what credibility was left in the execution of their office, but also a direct subversive act against what is supposed to be a holy ecumenical council. And yet, the pope, who was about to be declared infallible in a matter of days demanded they do just that. So, they did.

A great many of the minority bishops had packed up and left Rome by this point that Pius and Manning knew there really wasn’t anyone else left to constitute a significant opposition anyway. They had gone home humiliated and dejected.

On July 9th, 5 days before its promulgation, the council received back the revisions on Pastor Aeternus. Neither side was fully happy with the text. Chapter 4 was changed to the title that appeased the minority and suggested by Cardinal Guido: ON THE INFALLIBLE TEACHING OF THE ROMAN PONTIFF. Cardinal Manning was disappointed that they did not have an unequivocal document on limitless papal authority. The minority had successfully worked in the limiting phrase, “ex cathedra” – meaning that the pope was only infallible when speaking from the chair of Peter, rendering most as what the pope says as fallible.

Yet discovering the fabricated canon aimed at Maret and the Gallicans were incensed. How could the deputation introduce a text into the document that the council never saw, never considered, never proposed, never voted on, and never asked for?

The ultramontanes were frustrated too by the weakness of the document, but Manning nonetheless urged his underlings to vote, placet, meaning affirmative, not because he was happy with the text, but because he feared the political situation in Europe was explosive. The Italians may invade in a matter of days.

On July 13th, the revisions were put to a vote. When pope Pius was asked how many votes against the document he would receive, he estimated less than 10. The tally was 451 for, 62 for but with revisions, and 88 against. The strong showing of disapproval inspired the minority to conclude that with so many church fathers against the vote, the majority would have to listen to them now. They again underestimated Pio Nono.

Veuillot went on the attack: Now we see how stubborn they are in their heresy, and how useless is any concession to them.

Pius wasn’t done inserting his own words into the text independent of the council. He loathed any notion of accountability to the church fathers, and thus ordered the deputations to insert the following words at the end of the decree:

Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not by the consent of the church, immune from reform.

The minority bishops still in Rome were just beginning to realize they were dealing with a tyrant with zero respect for ecumenical proceedings. The pope was going to proclaim himself infallible with or without them. So instead of continuing to block Paster Aeternus, they hoped that in exchange for voting in favor of it, they could force some amendments. They secured an audience with Pio Nono. A five-man delegation of the minority was sent and presented the pope with an offer. If he removed the language aimed at the Gallicans in chapter 3, and in chapter 4 inserted language that the pope’s decisions must be supported by the Church fathers, they could guarantee 100 more votes in favor.

The pope brushed them off – telling them that he did not interfere in the working of the council – a brazen lie since that’s exactly what he had been busy doing not only the previous day but every day since the idea for a council first entered his consciousness. He demanded that they put their requests in an official memo, and he would consider it. The minority delegates left, thinking they had made some headway. Yet the very next day, July 16th, the deputations announced the final version of the decree had been completed – none of the minority bishop’s changes were made. Cardinal Gasser, one of the presidents of the council and likely the principal author of Paster Aeternus, gave a speech reminding the minority bishops of their responsibly to the world:

It is clear that human society has arrived at the point where its very foundations have been shaken. The church was the only means to remedy the situation because in it alone was an infallible authority against which the gates of hell would not prevail. For that reason God had willed that the doctrine come before the council.

This was the final insult to the minority and even moderate minded bishops. They never approved the final version and never knew the pope had made changes in the first place. The presidents had lost control of the assembly. Shouts rang out from the bishops, condemning the council as rigged, accusing the pope and its leaders of a coup. The ultramontanes shouted back praising the coup for what it was.

Then, in a truly tone-deaf move, the council presidents presented the bishops with a list of books critical of the council that had been published since it began. The bishops were asked to sign their names to a document condemning these books – thereby having those opinions and authors officially condemned by the council. The bishops again shouted in protest that they were being asking to sign against things they never ready. With that, most of the congregation turned and headed for the door. Many were done with what they saw as a sham.

The next day, July 17th, a significant bulk of the minority bishops decided they had had enough, and boarded a train out of Rome, to begin their journey home. Another group of minority bishops, about 60 met in an apartment to decide if they should stay and vote or abstain in protest and leave. They decided that they would act as a body and take a vote to decide: the majority came back in favor of abstaining and going home. They wrote a short letter to the pope – giving him their reasons, and fears. And then left Rome. They also expressed fear of the political situation Rome faced – for just the day before war was declared between France and Prussia.

On July 18th, 1870, the day of the promulgation had at last arrived. It was a day that felt ominous – even Veuillot admitted that everyone feared a schism that would be caused by infallibility, and the coming war. Only 535 prelates were present at St. Peter’s Basilica – a reduction of 25% from when the council started. No one was surprised by the absence of the minority – but what struck those who remained was the absence of the diplomatic Corp to the papacy, manifesting the prediction of Secretary of State Cardinal Antonelli had about the decree – that it would digitize the papacy in the eyes of the world government. These Catholic nations, France, Austria, Spain, and Portugal – wanted nothing to do with it. Bishop Passavalli – who gave the opening sermon of the council back in December had opted not to be present, along with other members of the Roman curia. As one author puts it, these clouds over the council were not only metaphorical. The heavens opened in drenching rain, along with alarming displays of lightning and thunder – eerily similar weather to the opening day of the council.

The local, historically superstitious Roman population again took note. The pope had ordered his subject to light up their homes in celebration of the event. None dared and left their houses dark. Even the pope’s own entourage was nervous – with good reason. A quarter of the church fathers left Rome in disgust, the Catholic allies of Europe have abandoned them, the people of Rome shut themselves up in their home, and even God himself saw it fitting to bless the day with terrifying lightning. Pius reminded them, did not God choose to give Moses the tablets on Mount Sinai amid just such a celestial firework show?

With the ratification of Pastor Aeternus, codifying the infallible papacy and attaining the long climb of Gregory VII’s vision for this office, cries amid the bishops rang out: “Long live the infallible pope!

Pius gave a short address in response, praying that the Lord enlighten the hearts of those who do not accept the doctrine. Veuillot wrote in L’Univers, reiterating Pius’ reference to himself as a new Moses:

We have been led out of Egypt and Pharaoh has been driven from the land. We have a Moses indeed, a greater than Moses!"

This new Moses amid the fireworks of Heaven present his decree to the world:

We teach and define that it is a divinely-revealed dogma: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex Cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals: and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church. But if anyone -- God forbid -- should presume to contradict this Our definition; let him be anathema.

Pope Pius had done the main thing. He had achieved the hopes and dreams of papal supremacists, papal primacists and ultramontanes – he had made himself infallible. He had separated the office from the authority of history, traditions, and church councils. In the immediate, he believed this would give him the temporal authority he needed to wrest back control of the lost papal states, to reassert himself as a political power broker, and to bring the European princes to heel. Satisfied that all this would soon come to pass, and since the charade of all the other reasons for a assembling the bishops were now not needed, Pius gave them permission to leave Rome and return home – although he did not consider the council technically adjourned. The bishops were relieved. Relieved in part because Rome had become an unfriendly and hostile place to be – but more importantly, war was on their doorsteps.

Around a hundred bishops stayed to carry out more congregations of the council, but little came of those. Pius, for his part resting on what he considered new found authority – immediately set to unleash this authority in civil rule among the roman citizens.

Previously cited Italina Historian, Raffaele De Cesare compiled contemporaneous eyewitness accounts from those who lived through these days. He recounts the immediate exertion of Pius’s interpretation of his infallible authority upon the citizenry:

Impossible to enumerate all the contradictions, apprehensions, and sophistries. …Terror reigned. The bishops, contrary to Infallibility were unpopular, and avoided as though plague-struck. Never had the Congregation of the Index been so severe as during these months until September 1870, making almost a holocaust of prohibited books…. No Council was ever poorer in practical and positive results; in none did political sentiments predominate more completely over religious interests; in none, perhaps, had the Pope taken so direct a part in favour of a thesis which interested him personally.

And yet, the dogmatic high of infallibility wore off quickly. A week after the promulgation, seeing his power and influence waning at an increasing speed, Pius wrote to his nephew: The things of this world grow ever more disturbed. God alone can extract from this chaos a new order of things.

As promised, Napoleon III prepared to pull his troops out of Rome. An infallible pope needs not the army of another nation – and he had need of them against Prussia. Odo Russel, British diplomat sent word back to London that the French were actively pulling out. The British foreign minister wrote back that the recent council was a monstrous assault on the reason of mankind, and that this sort of church despotism would just lead Catholics away from their church, predicting that Catholic government would rue the day they let the pope usurp their authority. German historian Gregorovius who was documenting the council while he was in Rome, noted in his diary that:

Many seriously believe that the Pope is out of his mind. He has entered with fanaticism into these things and has acquired votes for his own deification.

In the streets of Rome, a poem was printed and circulated:

When Eve bit the apple, and told Adam he can

Jesus, to save mankind, made himself a man;

But the Vicar of Christ, Pius number nine

To make man a slave, wants to make himself divine.

With in days of the promulgation of Pastor Aeternus, the Austrian empire voted to annul its concordat with the Vatican. The Swiss and other nations took steps to limit the influence of the pope within their borders, for now the local priests were viewed as his direct spies. Otto Von Bismark, that most consequential German politician couldn’t have been happier with the declaration – nothing would unify Germany under one banner more than the decree. He used what he labelled the absolutism of Rome to begin his kulturkampf movement – but that’s a tale foe another podcast. Bismark began forming a coalition of European government opposed this declared exactly what the minority bishops feared:

In principle, he has taken the place of each individual bishop, and, in practice, at every single moment, it is up to him alone to put himself in the former's position in relation to the governments. Further the bishops are only his tools, his officials without responsibility. In relation to the governments, they have become officials of a foreign sovereign, and, to be sure, a sovereign who, by virtue of his infallibility, is a completely absolute one – more so than any absolute monarch in the world.

As was feared, a schism did happen, though much smaller than anticipated. Groups of Catholics, particularly German, Swiss and Austrian, broke away and called themselves The Old Catholic Church – they still exist today.

British Prime Minister Edward Gladstone stood out as one of the most vocal critics of the decree, accusing Roman Catholics of forfeiting their moral and mental freedom. He called the church a monarchy, giddy at the height of despotism, saying the pope wanted to destroy the rule of law and replace it with arbitrary tyranny, and then hide his violent crimes in a suffocating cloud of incense.

St. John Henry Newman, privately revealed his disdain for the majority, and made some sharp predictions while writing to a friend:

I have various things to say about the Definition... to me the serious thing is this, that, whereas it has not been usual to pass definition except in case of urgent and definite necessity, this definition, while it gives the Pope power, creates for him, in the very act of doing so, a precedent and a suggestion to use his power without necessity, whenever he will, when not called on to do so. I am telling people who write to me to have confidence-but I don't know what I shall say to them, if the Pope did so act. And I am afraid moreover, that the tyrant majority is still aiming at enlarging the province of Infallibility. I can only say if all this takes place, we shall in matter of fact be under a new dispensation. But we must hope, for one is obliged to hope it, that the Pope will be driven from Rome, and will not continue the Council, or that there will be another Pope. It is sad he should force us to such wishes.

Newman later famously argued that one’s conscience is supreme to infallibility, telling a friend:

I shall drink to the Pope if you please – still, to conscience first and to the Pope afterwards.

While Newman mourned the state of the Church, he was also one of the first (perhaps second only to Pio Nono himself) to recognize how inconsequential the doctrine it actually was, saying that in the end the council had left the pope just as it had found him.

Newman was right, for just as Pius IX owed his entire office to French and Austrian military generosity prior to infallible – now with infallibility, he will owe the loss of the greatest city in the world to the vacuum of their power.

Part Five: It Is Impossible to Govern the Church

The alliance between the Italians, the French, and the Austrians, made two years before the council, never fully played out. Though Italy was united, by the designs of the French as an ally against Prussia – this Italian creature demanded Rome. Napoleon would never give it to them. The immutable reality that he ruled over a Catholic people was always at the forefront of his mind. Allowing Rome to be conquered by an ally would be unforgivable treachery. Yet papal infallibly enormous ripple effects on European Geopolitics. Gone were the days when the nations of Europe could look to the bishop of Rome as an arbiter of justice – for he was now to invested within himself. As we’ve discussed at length, this result wasn’t just that of Pastor Aeternus, infallibility was just the coup de grace, following the Enlightenment, the revolutions and modernism. The pope, for Europe was now just another monarch with worldly territorial ambitions.

The declaration of war between France and Prussia gave Napoleon a timely excuse to pull his troops out of Rome without upsetting his subjects. Yet before he left, he procured a written promise from Victor Emanuel that the Italian armies would not invade the eternal city. This was his CYA document.

On July 27th the announcement was made. The pope was now alone. The French ambassador met with Antonelli, asking him what the pope’s response was to the news. Antonelli told the ambassador that Pius simply shrugged his shoulders and said that he hoped this time the French would never return. The feeling was mutual. As the French were boarding their ships in the ports they were shouting: Down with the pope! Down with the government of the priests! Vive l'Italie!

Napoleon III was once a whip smart, and extremely competent ruler. His ability to negotiate the republic back into a monarchy and empire is demonstrative of his talents. But he was now over 60. His left arm was paralyzed, and he was taking multiple medications for multiple afflictions. He could barely walk and many often thought his eyes seemed glazed over. Moreover, his Spanish wife, 18 years younger than him, despised the Prussians, especially Otto von Bismark, and used her position in the French royal court to instigate the Franco-Prussian war.

On August 3rd, an Italian military attaches offered its support to France against Prussia if it green lights the Italian invasion of Rome. Napoleon turned them down. Telling him the French Catholics would rather see Prussians in Paris than Italians in Rome. Two days later, the last French boot stepped off the shores of Italy.

By August 6th, the lack of French preparations for war were obvious as she was being defeated across the front. Seeing the writing on the wall, Cardinal Antonelli summoned the Roman military leadership. He knew if France began losing this war, the Italians would take the opportunity to seize Rome. The Roman military leaders told Antonelli that the only reasonable plan in the face of invasion would be to put up minor resistance and prepare for organized withdrawal – it was a fight that they would never win.

Among the Italians, pretty much every political group despised the idea of allying itself with France – who they saw as historic marauders of their homeland. Antonelli knew and predicted all of this. He considered himself a master diplomat – and while he may lurch the halls of the Roman Curia like count Dracula, it he, and he alone that the pope could personally thank for the reinstitution of his papacy. Now he was watching it all fall apart. He blamed these current misfortunes on infallibility. It had created exactly what he said it would, only enemies:

They want to have me take the blame for things that I not only didn't do, but that I opposed with all my might. You will see that they will say that it is I who will have wrecked the papacy.

Rome was devolving into chaos. Its citizens were assuming Italian invasion was only days away. Rumors were spreading that the pope was preparing to flee again. Some of his advisors told him to beg the English for sanctuary on the isle of Malta. Others begged the pontiff to enter into negotiations with the Italians and find a political solution that would allow him to stay – Cardinal Antonelli was open to any of these, yet even he could not sway Pope Pius.

Pius IX had absolutely convinced himself of several delusions. First, he thought the Italians would honor the agreement not to invade Rome. Second, he believed the French were going to win this war. Third, he believed divine providence was on his side.

On August 20th, Swiss general Hermann Kanzler, the commander of the papal army met with the Pius. He warned him that Italian troops were massing on the borders of Rome. Pius told him to remain calm, that such an attack is simply impossible. God would not allow it.

No one inside the ternal city shared this infallible optimism. The pleas and urgings for Pio Nono to flee the city were gnawing at him. His police commissioner, monsignor Randi ask what his officers should do when the Italians invade. Pius jumped out of his seat and began shouting at the monsignor:

Can't you understand that I have formal assurances that the Italians will not set foot in Rome? How many times must I keep repeating myself?

The Italians by now had long been funding various efforts inside Rome to create some public disturbance that they would have to quell – so far this had not paid off and they were growing anxious. The Italian Prime Minister then had a brilliant idea – bribe the papal officers. They are mercenaries from all different countries with no loyalty to Rome or the papacy.

On August 29th, the Italian diplomat Emilio Visconti sent his ambassadors a confidential message throughout Europe that it was now considering its agreement with France null and void – due to the upheavals on the European continent. With this confidential notice it was asserted that Romans would have the right to determine their own future, and second that the pope would maintain his independence, freedom, and religious authority. He intentionally said nothing of his temporal authority. Visconti was crystal clear in calling out the papacy as:

an enemy Government established as an enclave within the Kingdom, seeking in the confusions sweeping Europe to trigger new military intervention. The Roman territory is the nerve center for the party that plots foreign intervention aimed at restoring another political order on the peninsula.

By August 30th, the papal government had the state newspapers publish assurances that the troops massing on the border were not meant for invasion, that they would never violate the agreement made with France.

That was the month of August, barely a month since the promulgation of infallibility. Now, with the papacy operating at the height of willful ignorance – September of 1870 begins.

The very first day of the month was one of the worst military defeats in French history – the battle of Sedan. It was classic Prussian military superiority on display. They outmaneuvered and out gunned the French with Prussian field canons proving pivotal. I could easily nerd out on this battle, but I won’t. What was most significant was the capture of Napoleon III – precipitating the collapse of the second Napoleonic empire and fueling the rise of the German empire, the Prussian born creature of Otto von Bismark. A mighty Catholic empire had fallen to a protestant one.

When news reached Italy, the nationalists were ecstatic, celebrating in the streets. Prime Minister Lanza called for the immediate invasion of Rome. Foreign minister, Visconti argued against it, worried they were still bound by the agreement with France. De Cesare’s Last Days of Papal Rome:

For twenty years Napoleon III had been the true sovereign of Rome, where he had many friends and relations who remembered him as a student and a fugitive, and whom at the climax of his power he had never forgotten. In Rome he had been with equal intensity loved and hated, feared, and regarded as a sphinx. Without him the temporal power would never have been reconstituted, nor, being reconstituted, would have endured.

By September 4th, the French government, with its emperor in captivity, dissolved the monarchy and established another republic. The agreement to not invade Rome was now truly void. The Holy See had no more defenders. At its disposal was the poorly trained pontifical army of around 13,000 troops whose loyalty was questionable at best.

On September 6th, King Victor Emanuel formally approved sending troops into Rome – yet he held out one last olive branch to the pope-king. He wanted to give Pius the chance to come to the bargaining table and find a peaceful solution.

Pope Pius IX was faced with a choice. The papal army could not be relied on. The city was protected only by ancient walls that would surely crumble against modern artillery. To send soldiers out to fight in that environment was the equivalent of a death sentence with gain no strategic upshot. And yet he couldn’t personally accept the thought of letting Rome be taken without a fight.

On September 7th – the pope called in his military generals. He ordered them to put up resistance, just enough to show that the city was taken by force. Once that show of victimhood was made, they should surrender.

On September 8th, the Italian king’s messenger arrived in Rome to deliver the last plea of Victor Emanuel III. Reading the letter, Pius slammed the document on the table and unleashed his famous temper. He raged at the Italian diplomat, calling his countrymen a set of vipers, whited sepulchers, and wanting in faith. Then he made a strange divination:

I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I tell you, you will never enter Rome!

In retrospect the offer letter was quite conciliatory. It proposed that Rome would go to Italy, but the pope would be allowed to occupy the Leonine city – Vatican City – which would remain under his full jurisdiction and sovereignty. The Italian state would guarantee the pope’s freedom to communicate with the Catholic world and well as grant diplomatic immunity for his envoys. The Italian government would further grant a permanent annual stipend for the pope and cardinals, equal to what they were getting paid now. All papal civil servants would be put on the state payroll, with full pensions, as long as they were Italian. Finally, it was added that this agreement would be governed as an international treaty and thus inviolable.

Pope Pius rejected it all, and then was said to have grieved deeply – knowing he was living the last days as a pope-king.

On September 10th, Pope Pius walked the streets of Rome. As he passed, he was greeted by shouts of Viva Pio Nono! Flowers were thrown at his feet. He was observed to be in good spirits. The next day he penned an official response to the king of Italy:

SIRE, - Count Ponza di San Martino has delivered to me a letter which Your Majesty was pleased to send me; but it is unworthy of an affectionate son who boasts of professing the Catholic faith and glories in his kingly loyalty. I will not enter into the particulars of the letter to avoid renewing the pain which its first perusal occasioned me. I bless God, Who has suffered that Your Majesty should fill the last years of my life with bitterness. For the rest I cannot admit the requests contained in your letter nor give my adhesion to the principles propounded therein. I once more turn to God and place my cause, which is His, in His Hands. I pray Him to grant to Your Majesty abundant grace to preserve you from every peril and to render you a participant in the mercies of which you have such need.

On September 11th, Italian troops crossed the borders of what remained of the papal state. The day had finally come which Pius believed God would never permit. The Italians closed in on Rome from the north and the south. The pope frantically reached out to the European powers for help – but there was no one on the other line. France was still at war with Prussia. Its capital, surrounded. It’s former monarch in captivity. Prussia had no love for the office nor the person of the pope. Austria had been handedly defeated by Prussia just four years early and would never recover.

With Austria’s refusal of aid, the Vatican accused the Catholic empire of patricide – the murder of its parents. The impotent rage of course got the pope nothing. Papal diplomats asked if the Austrian emperor would at least announce publicly that It was displeased with the Italian invasion. The response to the infallible pope was simply, no, it would not.

The French response to calls for aid was even more severe, with its foreign minister writing:

You know our opinion. . . The temporal power has been a scourge to the world, it is prostrate, we will not resurrect it...

At these refusals, the military defense of Rome commenced. The gates to the city were barricaded. Observation stations were set up upon the walls connected to telegraph wires. The citizens shut themselves up. The streets turned gloomy. Only soldiers and police were about. Pope Pius, reverted inward, back to his deep faith that had once guided him so many years earlier. He said his last pontifical mass in Rome, and then spent time in prayer, adoring a miraculous image of the virgin.

On the eve of the invasion, even the Italians were fearful of its potential cosmological consequences. Italian patriot Michele Amari said:

Tell me what you think of this cataclysm, this eruption, this deluge in which we try to lay hold of the patrimony of the Infallible One? From what I gather, we shall fall upon the city of Rome if the devil wishes the doors to be opened. And this is probable. We will go in for the enterprise, blind to its enormous cost, to the danger of the future and to the many disorders both physical and moral, which we shall encounter amid the Seven Hills. But what-ever may be, to go to Rome is now an indisputable necessity.

By September 16th Italian forces had control of the pope’s sea port, Civitavecchia. All that was left was one last sweep into the city. The Italians sent word again, pleading, for the pope to surrender. The thought of leveling ancient Rome and spilling clerical blood in the streets appalled the Italian politicians. They needed a plan of restraint.

On September 18th the Italian government gave word to its generals – the plan for attack is yours, however the Vatican City must be sparred. It shall be treated as property of the pope. They admonished the generals that this invasion called for the utmost prudence and moderation.

On September 19th, Pius, having nothing left to do before losing his temporal power, walked through the city to the scala santa, the holy steps, across from the Lateran Basilica. These steps were believed to have been the steps to the palace of Pontius Pilate - meaning these were the steps climbed by Jesus Christ during His passion. They were relocated to Rome by St Helen, the mother of Constantine. Pius, who was nearly 80 by this time, began climbing these 28 seps on his knees. After finally reaching the top, before the crucifix, and in a trembling voice, he asked God to watch over his people. Those around him were brought to tears. He then made his way to the nearby piazza and blessed the papal troops. Then he turned, waived, and boarded his red carriage. On his way back to the Vatican, people in the streets were heard to beg him not to abandon them a second time.

For the citizens of Rome, no one quite knew the sort of conquerors the Italians would be. If the papal government was to be believed, which it often wasn’t – the Italians were barbarians. And so, provisions were stored. Diplomats flew their various national flags high so as not to be missed. Convents barricaded their entrances. Roman palaces and churches did the same.

It is to the benefit of posterity that American consul David Armstrong was in Rome for the following events and documented them well – also, side note, he was an extremely talented stained-glass artist. Armstrong had arrived in Rome just a few days ago. He entered the city through the porta pia – the same gate the Italians would soon invade from. He described the piles of sandbags and earthworks and trenches. He said the streets were barren. The postal service and telegraph service were cut off. No shops were open. The walls of the city were plastered with various military proclamations and curfews. Assemblies were banned. No one was allowed to leave the city. He noted the people’s lack of enthusiasm for the continuation of papal rule. When Pio Nono called for volunteers, only 200 men from all of Rome showed up to defend the papacy. Unsavory men, he said, who had previously served the papal authorities as spies were now given uniforms and patrolled the streets, fueling popular resentment.

On September 20th, at 5 in the morning, the Italians reach the porta pia and commenced their attack. The military front arched across a third of the city’s perimeter. Cannons hammered the walls at a rate of forty shots a minute, shaking the foundations of the old churches. The ancient walls of the eternal city crumbled to dust in just a few hours, with some sections being entirely swept from the face off the earth. The gate of the porta pia was now a cavernous 50-foot-wide breech. When the cannonading ceased, the Italian troops marched in, filling the city streets. The papal troops fired off a few Parthian shots before retreating. Then the watch stations reported the Italians assaulting the porta San Giovanni, the Tre Archi, the porta Maggiore, the Villa Pamphili and the porta San Pancrazio.

For the first hour and a half, Pius was described as strangely calm. His calm was broken at about 6:30 am when the Janiculum, one of the hills of Rome was began to be cannonaded, just south of where he sat. The military defied the pope’s orders to not shoot back and began cannonading their own city, hoping to hit some Italians, yet putting the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica at risk of friendly fire.

The papal diplomatic corps dressed in full regalia began arriving at the Vatican knowing the formal surrender would soon be coming. The diplomats were invited to the pope’s private chapel, and asked to assist at Mass. During the mass, cannon fire and grenades shook the building so fiercely the glass was rattling in the sashes. Pius was unmoved.

When the mass was over, Pius invited the diplomats to his private library. His diplomatic corps told him that at this moment they considered it their sacred duty to protect the pontiff with their own persons at this pivotal hour. The pope thanked them, but his mood turned sour, and he launched into an angry tirade against the sacrilegious action against him, blaming the entire world for the offense.

Hearing his own cannons returning fire, he asked why his orders had been disobeyed. None could answer. Realizing he wasn’t even in control of his own military; Pius ordered a white flag be raised above St Peter’s Basilica at once. Within minutes, the firing stopped. It was ten AM.

The pope and cardinal Antonelli prepared a capitation agreement and dispatch one of their diplomats to see that it was signed by the Italian, it began with:

The sacred person of the Holy Father shall be treated with the greatest respect; the Sacred College and the clergy shall not only be respected, but all religious Congregations of either sex shall be maintained, including those abolished by the laws of the kingdom of Italy.

The subsequent sections dealt with military capitulation and demanded the pope with his private Swiss guard be allowed to retreat within the Leonine city – to the Vatican – essential the same peace terms offered to him by the king of Italy.

On September 21st, early in the morning, Pius IX was informed that his troops had been disarmed, the papal flags throughout Rome had been lowered and replaced with Italian flags. The temporal power was at last gone, his state no longer existed. Later that day, Pius wrote letter to his nephew:

Dear Nephew, -All is over! Without liberty it is impossible to govern the Church. Pray for me, all of you.

David Armstrong noted that during the attack the Italians did their best to avoid unnecessary bloodshed or destruction – only shooting at the walls of the city. The firing into the city mostly came from papal friendly fire. Yet stray shots happened. A bullet passed through his own window.

Armstrong said the papal troops were more than happy to surrender, noting that they defended the city against invaders that were happily welcomed by the citizens: no private citizens made the least effort or demonstration in favor of the Papal Government.

It was a far cry from the defense of the Roman republic against the French, 20 years ago. Armstrong goes on:

it was an easy victory for the Italians, and the loss, in killed and wounded, on both sides, was not great, they were in over-whelming force, with very heavy artillery and they knew that the mass of Romans were their friends; the Zouaves [the papal troops], on the other hand, although they never could have imagined how much they were detested, must have, at heart, feared the people, and could not fight their best; they were a fine looking body of men, many of them, even the common soldiers, of superior education and refinement, some of them undoubtedly served the Pope from religious feeling, many for the sake of the romance and adventure of the thing, very few for pay, as it was ridiculously small.

With dissolution of the Pope’s government, the dream of Italian unification had come to pass – it was a dream once held in esteem by Pio Nono himself – now the victim of his own dream.

On September 23rd, the first uncensored newspapers were allowed to publish. One of them opened with:

After fifteen centuries of darkness, of mourning, of misery and pain, Rome, once the queen of all the world, has again become the metropolis of a great State. Today, for us Romans, is a day of indescribable joy. Today in Rome freedom of thought is no longer a crime, and free speech can be heard within its walls without fear of the Inquisition, of burnings at the stake, of the gallows. The light of civil liberty that, arising in France in 1789, has brightened all Europe now shines as well on the eternal city. For Rome it is only today that the Middle Ages are over.

For those defeated, they knew felt that it was only a matter of time before they papal government would return, explicitly threatening the Italian government with as much. Those who knew pope Pius well, knew that the chances of him accepted the geopolitical reality around him were never very high. Yet his despondency was now bordering on delusion. A few weeks after his defeat, it was noted in small circles that the pope had been trying to produce miracles of various types. He claimed he would receive fits of vitality which he discerned to be visits from the Holy Spirit. At one of those times, he commanded a cripple to arise and walk. The poor man made the attempt and collapsed in the effort. Pius’ handlers did their best to hush up the episode.

King Victor Emanuel took up his place in the Quirinal Palace – the same palace where this story started. Pius held up in the Vatican and declared himself a prisoner. The Italian government was quick to remind the world that no one was preventing the pope from traveling in or out of the Vatican. He was only a prisoner of his own mind.

On October 20th, Pope Pius officially adjourned the Vatican council – which was due to reconvene in a few weeks, citing that it would not be able to act in freedom. Again, the Italians protested, and in fact guaranteed the councils ability to act on its own. Pius refused the offer.

The Archbishop of Baltimore suggested the council be moved to Belgium – a neutral state in the European wars. Pius refused this as well. For him, despite the obliviousness of his bishops, there was no reason to continue. The entire council was about papal infallibly – which he had achieved. What was there else to discuss? Further, he had declared himself a prisoner – a most unique prisoner he would be if he can cross international borders at will. Thus, the council slipped into indefinite adjournment. For many of the ultramontanes, this was the goal of infallibility anyway. From their perspective, there was no need for another council ever again. Pastor Aeternus had rendered them obsolete.

As the Italian peninsula settled down, the bishops of the world returned to affairs in their own localities. Nothing of any practical necessity changed in how they governed their sees – much as John Newman had foretold. With Pius styling himself as a prisoner, centralized command of the episcopate waned. Pius personally fumed over his lack of authoritative control of church affairs in the wake of infallibility. His curia however was all too aware of their weakened image with both the bishops and civil governments. So they opted for a more tolerant and patient attitude - generally ignored the pontiffs pontificating on authority. Ironically, this tolerant attitude contributed to a reduction in resistance to Pastor Aeternus. No minority bishop wanted to fight anymore or kick the hornet’s nest again. When the bishops wrote to their flocks about infallibility to Catholics on a practical level, their opinions were vague, casual, and varied widely. Between both minority and majority bishops there was no cohesive instruction to the faithful.

Yet academics, especially in Germany did respond with anger at the perceived novelties contained in the decree. Some went so far as to declared Pius IX a heretic and destroyer of the church. Some dioceses, led by their bishops publically refused to accept the doctrine. Dollinger emerged, quite naturally, as their leader. The archbishop of Munich met with Dollinger asking that they work together for the holy church. Dollinger responded that he wanted to do that as well, for the church of old. The archbishop retorted that there is only one church, and it is neither old nor new. Dollinger responded that they have made a new church.

A meeting of academics, organized by Dollinger published a statement claiming the new decree was not valid and not to be followed because it was a: a new doctrine that the church has never before recognized, wrought from a council that was not free.

They concluded that it would lead to only suspicion of the papacy instead of love for it. The bishop of Munich appealed to the Vatican for guidance. Rumors of an excommunication abounded. The king of Bavaria sent Dillinger a birthday letter, encouraging him to stand firm.

Finally, the archbishop gave Dollinger an ultimatum. Accept Paster Aeternus or be excommunicated. Dollinger responded with a letter, stating his refusal to submit to a decree which lacked theological, historical, or scriptural evidence, that it was contrary to the traditions of the church and to his conscience. He echoed Saint John Newman’s remark in a letter he wrote after Pastor Aeternus:

I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please,—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

Dollinger was excommunicated, but he was viewed by many as a martyred hero. He was almost unanimously elected as rector of the University of Munich and then given honorary degrees from the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, Marburg, and Vienna. The Old Catholic Church, that previously mentioned schismatic sect reached out to Dollinger and offered to consecrate him as a bishop of their church. Dollinger refused.

Had he done so, with how popular he was among governments, academics, and princes of the world – he likely would have precipitated a European-wide schismatic movement. Yet with Dollinger, in his own sad words acknowledging isolation, the crisis was contained to Germany only.

One by one, the bishops of the church began publicly accepting Pastor Aeternus – these acceptances were dutifully monitors by the Curia. The minority bishops went through various mental gymnastics to find ways to satisfy their consciences and at the same time accept the doctrine. But Pio Nono wanted more. From Bishop Maret, after he finally accepted the doctrine, Pius demanded that he renounce his book on church councils from the previous year. Maret refused. After going toe to toe with the papal Curia, Pius backed down. The last French bishop accepted the doctrine on June 2nd, 1871.

The official historian of the council, Bishop Hefele had long refused to accept papal infallibility. After threats of excommunication, he hobbled together his own limiting interpretation of the doctrine and said he would accept that one. The Papal Curia again said sure, fine, good enough, and happily dropped the matter.

The Austrian and Hungarian Bishops were long hold outs. Some of them, including Bishop Strossmayer issued statements that make it difficult to discern exactly when and where they officially accepted the new dogma. The curia again was happy to get what it could and moved on.

To battle the German kulturkampf against Catholic by Bismark, and the counter the accusations of creating a papal deity, even Pius found himself approving interpretations of the decree offering more limiting paradigms that horrified the ultramontanes.

With national governments like England and Germany condemning the papacy, and with more and more limiting and contradictory interpretations being officially allowed or otherwise sanctioned by the curia, this allowed Lord Acton and St John Newman to defend the church’s position, defining the limiting interpretations against attacks from the secular world. Both Acton and Newman held interpretations of the doctrine that should have left them anathematized – and yet they weren’t.

While the minority had lost the battle of the council, they were winning the battle of clarification – largely due to the reputation of Pio Nono, the ultramontanes, and the difficult to chew language of the decree. In the end, the fallout from the council and the loss of the papal temporal power, effected no change in the lives of everyday Catholic. The debates happened mostly in academic circles – and in academic circles, the ultramontanes had zero credibility.

The real victory of the ultramontanes played out not with infallibility, but with primacy. The church had become ruled by the ultramontane party, and as a result, juridical power shifted forever and anon to the Vatican. For the first time in history the pope now had unfettered and uncontested authority in nominating bishops. Up until Pius IX, the ancient tradition of secular episcopal nomination was still a thing. Immediately following the council, Pius personally picked 102 new bishops that filled half the diocese in Italy. No pope, in the entire history of the church ever had anything remotely close to that opportunity to stack an episcopacy.

As the years progressed, Pius IX never reconciled himself to his situation. His angry outbursts became worse. In 1877 he gave a speech that some viewed as an Urban-esq calling for a crusade against the Italians. The Cattolica summed up his pronouncement with: he declared that in Rome the Head of the Church must either be ruler or prisoner.

Up to his last days Pius fought for what he saw as his divine right to temporal authority. Renowned Jesuit scholar and journalist Carlo Maria, one of the founders of Civilta Cattolica, and longtime friend to Pius, wrote a public appeal for the papacy to make amends with the Italian government and normalize relations – to cease being a prisoner. This was blasphemy to Pio Nono and in response he suspended his old friend from the Jesuit order.

I said the dogma of papal infallibility had little effect on the daily lives of ordinary Catholics. Yet, you could say the spirit of papal infallibility, more than the text of Pastor Aeternus itself, had historical ramifications both geopolitical and, personally for Catholics.

In 1905 the French government ripped up its old concordat with the church. Pope Pius X denounced the move – and yet, this gave him the freedom promised to him by his predecessor. With the concordat gone – an agreement that allowed the French government to nominate bishops, Pope Pius X was now free to nominate whatever bishop he liked in France. Father O’Malley calls this loss of Rome and the papal states the fruitful tragedy of the papacy. By the late 20th century, the papacy had attained unlimited authority in episcopal nominations throughout the world.

The cult of the papacy was born. Technology played a huge part. The transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1866, allowing Catholics for the first time to follow live updates about the plight of the Vicar of Christ. Photography allowed average Catholics to hang photographs of the succeeding popes in their living rooms. Whereas before many Catholics didn’t even know the pope’s name, and certainly never read anything he wrote. Now they could recognize his face, and soon, his voice. A new catholic virtue was invented – devotion to the pope. Loyalty to the papacy grew exponentially and reached levels never seen before or even dreamed of by Gregorian reformers.

Then, there was another historically important phenomenon. You may recall that way at the beginning of this series, we discussed how canonizations were used by popes to establish various devotions that they deemed expedient. It is said that history often rhymes. Since the death of Pio Nono, ten popes have died. Three of them have been canonized with more having their cause for canonization introduced. Prior to Pio Nono, the last pope to be canonized was Pius V in 1712, and before that, Gregory VII in 1605 – both dead hundreds of years before they were canonized.

Popes are now international jet-setting celebrities. You don’t visit the pope; the pope visits you. The largest cities in the world would slide to a stop when the pope graced them with their presence. If you couldn’t make it to a papal ceremony – you could watch it on TV – and now, via live stream. Today, every Wednesday, thousands of pilgrims eagerly wait outside St Peter’s square to hear the pope speak.

Despite losing Rome in 1870 to the Italians, when one visits Rome, the most significant presence that permeates the city is not the prime minister of the government, or the president of the republic – it’s the prisoner of the Vatican.

This newfound prominence as the most direct and immediate spiritual authority of Catholics turned the Roman Curia into a prolific printing press, issuing innumerable documents, teachings, regulations, and warnings of everything and every part of everyday life. Encyclicals became the primary tool for the papacy. While officially and legally non-binding, coming from the modern papacy they nonetheless possess a mystical obligatory influence. In the early nineteenth century, Pope Pius VII issued one encyclical in his 20-year reign. Pius IX issued 38. Pius’ successor Leo XIII issued 75. The encyclicals and speeches to the world made by Pius XI fill six volumes at four hundred pages each. Pius XII, not to be outdone, tripled that number with twenty volumes. Father O’Malley expands on this phenomenon:

The definitions of primacy and Infallibility at Vatican I provided the momentum for the making of the ultramontane church of contemporary Roman Catholicism. Indeed, they now quite properly serve as icons for the phenomenon. Nonetheless, they are only one factor- though the crucial one- in a convergence of factors that resulted in the current situation. After all, the genesis and the ultimate success of the ultramontane movement were also the result of a convergence of factors. That is how history works.

The younger sister of Vatican one is Vatican II. Vatican I existed in church council limbo since it was never officially closed – until Pope John XXIII officially closed it and opened the second Vatican council.

As I said, while the minority lost Vatican I, they won the battle of interpretations, and oddly, also saw their victory come to fruition at Vatican II in some meaningful ways. For one thing, it officially allowed for local liturgical variations – something anathema to the ultramontanes. In a document called Lumen Gentium it scored a victory for the minority bishops in Vatican I that the bishops acted most effectively for the universal church when they acted collegially – something the ultramontanes had declared obsolete. Further, while Pastor Aeternus presented a papacy that was apart from the church, Vatican II seemed to bring the office back into the college of bishops. It made crystal clear that the bishops are not a branch office of the papacy – saying directly that they are Vicars of Christ, not of the pope. See Lumen Gentium, chapter 3, section 27.

In Vatican I, the majority was largely self-referential. When it needed historical affirmation for tis positions would reference the New Testament primarily. The minority on the other hand believed that tradition, including customs, practices, modes and procedures through the centuries could not be ignored. Vatican II was far more a reflection of those positions held by the minority than the majority. Concepts of perfect society, divine kings, and other medieval socio-political assumptions that permeated Vatican I are gone at Vatican II. One author called this corporate memory loss – but another, Patrick Granfield, author of the Limits of the Papacy wrote:

Emphasis has shifted dramatically from the sociological to the biblical, from the jurisdictional to the sacramental, from the sectarian to the ecumenical, from the papal to the episcopal, from the hierarchical to the collegial

Father Omalley says that Vatican I was a statement against the world while Vatican II was reconciliation with it. He goes on:

The long-term reception of a council is an essential part of any council's history. The Council of Chalcedon is thus an essential part of the history of the Council of Nicaea. So far, the most important and authoritative moment in the history of the reception of Vatican Council I is Vatican II. A full understanding of the former depends on an understanding of the latter. And vice versa. Much of Vatican II can be understood as an implicit reaction to what the bishops saw as the excesses of the ultramontane movement, especially as the impulses of the movement continued to gain strength after 1870.

When the king of Italy, Victor Emanuel II died in 1878, Pius IX had been so sick that he hadn’t celebrated mass in over a month. Yet he did manage to say Mass on the 75th anniversary of his first holy communion. Immediately afterward his health turned. The doctors warned him that the end was near. Pius was under no illusions and asked for the last rites. David Kertzer, author of the prisoner of the Vatican recounts these moments:

Dressed in white nightclothes and propped up on his bed by pillows, he alternately rested, prayed, and talked with one or another of the cardinals who came to comfort him. Just before noon, the man whom he had recently appointed as his chamberlain, Cardinal Gioacchino Pecci, asked Pius to bless all the cardinals. “Yes,” the failing pontiff replied, “I bless the Sacred College, and pray that God will enlighten you to make a good choice.” Grasping the small wooden cross that he always carried with him, he held it up and added, “I bless the whole Catholic world.

The prime minister of Italy had hoped the funeral procession of Pio Nono would be small and discrete. Afterall, the pope had been dead now for three years. His remains were being transferred from St. Peters Basilica to their final resting place. Yet a political disaster was unfolding. 100,000 people had swarmed St Peter’s Square and overflowed into the surrounding streets – it was near midnight. A time set to deter visitors. In the dark, with their faces glowing in the flickering torch light was a hundred thousand rosary carrying, prayer chanting devotees of the last pope-king. He was, to the Italian government a deposed ruler – this crowd was inherently an existential threat.

Police swarmed the carriage carrying the pope’s remains to prevent it from being overrun. Two hundred more carriages of the wealthiest Catholic’s formed a line behind them. Thousands of anti-clerics came out and tried to shout down the prayers of the faithful. Long live Garibaldi they cried, while the faithful replied long live the pope!

As the carriage procession turned to pass over the Tiber, the anti-clerics yelled out, into the river with the pope. A Catholic newspaper said it was only by the grace of God his venerate bones did not end up in Tiber.

As the procession moved to the center of Rome, its citizens placed lit lantern in their windows in homage to the pope-king. The anti-clerics smashed them with stone. Then the stones began finding human targets. With a full-on riot developing, the police begged the funeral carriages to abandon the mourning pace and speed up. They complied and went into a half trot. The carriages finally outpaced the assailants, and at 3am arrived at the church of San Lorenzo. The praying procession was left behind, bloodied, burned, exhausted, and battling with rioters and the police.

At his death, he was the longest reigning pope in history – even longer than Peter himself.

The great irony of Pius’ council is that the council itself exalted an office, the papacy to heights never before seen – so high in fact that it placed it above the church itself – the church that makes it what it is. It allowed the papacy to break the bonds of the traditions of its predecessors and reduce the God-given office of the bishops to vicars of himself. And yet, the papal office’s ability to teach and instruct the faithful has been so diluted by floods of excessive and seemingly trivial encyclicals and speeches, printed, repointed, televised, livestreamed and tweeted 24/7. The pope is expected to comment on everything.

The council was an overreaction. It needed to validate a monarchy in a time when monarchies were failing. It tried to place guarantees in a world where there no longer were any. The world the papacy had taken for granted for a thousand years had died, and Vatican I tried to raise it from the dead.

This overreaction coincided with the industrial revolution. Both ultramontanism and industrial society called people out of their provincialism and nationalism and beckoned them to become members of the world – and yet in doing so added to the decay of the temporal authority of the papacy. In these ways the first Vatican council was a creature of modernity, but in others also. It was greatly influenced, swayed, directed, and admonished with great success by the world’s press corps – without de Maistre, Veuillot, le Univers, and the Cattolica – not even Pius IX would have heard of papal infallibility.

The council’s method of debate left behind the older, scholastic form of reasoning. And as proof texts only sought to refer to the New Testament much as fundamentalist Christian puritans do, leaving the teaching authority of the doctors of the church on the cutting room floor. Further, the council embraced the in vogue totalitarian leanings of society, using parliamentary manipulation against its opponents, leaving them voiceless.

The minority, mired in the slow methods of tradition, preferred to be historical and empirical. Scholastics couldn’t keep up with the wheels of industry.

The majority also had a pope on its side who embraced a novel approach to the papacy, whereas he was a political liberal before fleeing Rome, he returned a totalitarian despot – from his perspective, out of necessity. Theologian Roger Aubert says:

the determining factor . . . is to be found in the personality of the pope, Pius IX, to the point that it is possible to say that it was the victory of a man as much as the victory of a doctrine."

The character and involvement of Pius IX leaves an ongoing asterisk next to the first Vatican council that has been debated ever since by theologians and canon lawyers. Question: was the council actually free? Answer: depends on who you ask. There are undoubtedly two facts: the bishops were under substantial pressure to vote a certain way by the pontifical government, and the papal office manipulated and violated the council rules to produce a desired outcome. No serious historian disagrees with that. To what degree then do those realities equate to a servile senate?

I’ve read authors that argue both free and unfree – every decade or so the debate swings one way or the other among historians. Father O’Malley, who I found to be extremely balanced in his approach argues that in the history of deliberative bodies, none are perfect, and Vatican I certainly was one of the farthest from perfection. In his words, on a scale of free and less free councils, it might fall on the less free side. But he stops short of saying it was definitely declaring it not free.

In the end, infallibility was not the lasting impact of the council. Infallibility by a pope has officially only been invoked once, to declare the assumption of Mary. Infallible statements promulgated by the Church prior to Pius IX were reserved to councils. Ask your average Catholic today if they believe in papal infallibility, and you’ve got about a 70% chance of them saying no or I don’t know. And yet, there is virtually no admonishment or concern from the pulpit or the Vatican on this apparent overwhelming disbelief in dogma.

What does this mean for the ultramontanes? Does this mean they failed? Or did they succeed? While very few Catholics believe that the pope is infallibly, he is yet more than ever in the entire 2000-year history of the Church, the magnetic center of Catholic thought.

Brian Tierney from the Catholic University of America says:

There is no convincing evidence that papal infallibility formed any part of the theological or canonical tradition of the church before the thirteenth century; the doctrine was invented in the first place by a few dissident Franciscans because it suited their convenience to invent it; eventually, but only after much initial reluctance, it was accepted by the papacy because it suited the convenience of the popes to accept it… the dogma of infallibility is neither true nor false but meaningless; in practice… the dogma seems to have no practical use and to have succumbed to the sense that it is irrelevant.

Margaret Hebblethwaite, Catholic missionary, writer, and acquaintance of Pope Francis makes a topical prediction:

If no one pays much attention when Rome bangs its fist and says, "This is infallible", then what can we conclude? We can conclude that we are witnessing what may be the biggest decline of papal authority in real terms ever seen in history.

Stephen DiJulius 7/29/23 Stephen DiJulius 7/29/23

The Christ-Nation

The story of this Christ-nation begins over a thousand years ago with the conversion of this agrarian people and ends in the offices of the most powerful people in the world. The pope, representing a Vatican at peak world-wide influence, and the president of the United States, at peak geopolitical consequence, when at any moment the world might well end in nuclear war – the central, significant, centrifugal, geopolitical, spiritual focus of all these energies lay withing the meager borders and daily struggles of this eastern European nation that sought, century after century to simply be itself. To exist according to its designs. To be free. To be Catholic. To be Poland.

Sources:

Ramet Sabrina P. 2017. The Catholic Church in Polish History : From 966 to the Present. London: This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature.
Kengor Paul. 2017. A Pope and a President : John Paul II Ronald Reagan and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century. Wilmington Delaware: ISI Books.
Felak James Ramon. 2020. The Pope in Poland: The Pilgrimages of John Paul Ii 1979-1991. Pittsburgh Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/89904/.
Mazgaj Marian S. 2010. Church and State in Communist Poland : A History 1944-1989. Jefferson N.C: McFarland.
Brien Bernard Charles Wright and Michael J Miller. 2018. Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko : Truth Versus Totalitarianism. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
Kunicki Mikołaj Stanisław. 2012. Between the Brown and the Red : Nationalism Catholicism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Poland : The Politics of Bolesław Piasecki. Athens: Ohio University Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10611347.
Knab Sophie Hodorowicz. 19961993. Polish Customs Traditions and Folklore Rev. ed. New York: Hippocrene Books.

Prologue:

I don’t have a clear memory of when I decided I had questions about Poland. I’ve always had a fascination with the Cold War era, and Poland, increasingly stood out as an anomaly. Statistically, today, Catholics remain around 90% of the Polish population. In comparison with other nations, when you remove smaller outliers (like Vatican City at 100% Catholic with a population of less than a thousand people), Poland is arguably the most Catholic nation in the world. There are a few surprising things about that statistic in the context of its history as an eastern European people – the Orthodox Churches have left virtually no lasting mark on the Poles, which being Slavic, is remarkable. But even more remarkable is that after five decades of forced atheist indoctrination and Soviet oppression, Poland stands today as the most Catholic country in the worlds? Why? That makes no sense on face value. Hungary is just due south, shares a nearly identical history of Soviet oppression, and since they aren’t a Slavic people, they should naturally be oriented toward Rome. And yet less than 40% of Hungarians call themselves as Catholic, with almost 50% claiming to be irreligious or outright atheist. I’m not knocking Hungary, but I am using it to highlight the genuine uniqueness of Poland.

In researching Polish history, I decided to focus on the Soviet era for a couple reasons. It still exists in living memory and therefore can be a tangible, easy-to-grasp, and somewhat relatable story, despite its over thousand-year dance with its faith. For guides through these five decades, we have at hand a cast of characters that ranges from local hardline communists and atheist to the common priest, and all the way up to the pope himself. But first, before we can discuss what Poland was from the end of World War II to the fall of the Soviet Union, we must understand how it got there, for before it earned the reputation as the lynchpin of the Soviet Union, it was known as the Bulwark of Christendom.

Part One: Antemurale Christianitatis

I’d like to begin with a tale. Long ago, in agrarian Poland, the first mechanical alarm clocks were brought into the markets. A certain farmer, who, coming off a fruitful harvest decided his expendable income now allowed him to purchase one of these novelties from a traveling salesman. That evening, the farmer, his wife, and his children invited their neighbors over for an impromptu party to view this new contraption. They marveled at its design, its mechanics, its precision, its discipline, its… perfection. This newest invention of man allowed the farmer’s family to measure with precision that which before was never measured by the second: their time.

As the evening wore on the novelty of the bells and gears wore off. The neighbors went home, and the farmer and his family prepared for bed, yet not before setting their new alarm clock to awaken them in the morning to begin their daily work – that was its purpose, after all. The next morning as the barely perceivable soft, blue glow of daylight crept over the horizon, the birds awoke first and began their day. This ruckus, as it had for time immemorial, awakened the mother of the house. She stepped into the kitchen and began mixing the rye flour for the day – the loafs she prepared would sustain the family as they toiled in the field. The smell of the rising bread wafted its way towards the sleeping father, beckoning him from his slumber. He then, in turn, awoke his beloved children. One by one the family members stepped groggily toward the kitchen table just in time to behold the splendid sight of freshly cut bread and warm butter made from milk from their own cow. As they sat and gave thanks to God for their bounty, the jarring noise of bells filled their home. It was the farmer’s alarm clock. The oldest daughter rushed to disarm the thing interrupting the most important part of the day. By the time she returned to the table, the sun’s golden rays had breached the rolling rye fields and flooded the humble kitchen with its morning light. The father then began to laugh. His family looked at him, puzzled at his amusement. Through his laughter, he asked, “Who will wake us up tomorrow, the clock or the sun?”

The measure of time by mechanical precision was a novelty to all people at some point in history. Yet in this tale of a poor agrarian Polish family, this novelty was not to be regarded seriously, laughed at as superfluous. For they did not need it. They, like their neighbors, measured time by the changing of the season, by the position of the sun and moon, by height of the crops and the blowing of the wind. The winter they knew would bring long nights, the summer: hard work. They measured the passing of time in their households by the hunger felt in their bellies, by the growing anxieties of a woman with child, by the deaths of grandparents. The year was measured by the liturgy. Each week had its day of “un-work” as the Polish called it, or niedziela. Each month had its holy days, or swieta. These holy days of course carried with them specific venerations prescribed by the Church, but also gave bearings on the harvest – one holy may have meant it was time to harvest the beets or another, to sow the grain. Along with these holy days were feasts and festivals. Each feast had its favorite song, food, and superstition. Weddings were always the biggest feasts. After the beeswax candles would be blown out, young women would pay attention to which way the smoke travelled to see who was the next to be married. At Christmas, hay was placed under the tablecloth to herald the next harvest. The coming of easter meant a suitor could expect the gift of a dyed egg from the young girl who captured his heart. When the skies darkened and grew violent, it was time for the thunder candle, a blessed sacramental lit during storms to beg the Lord to spare them his wrath.

From these blended customs of the Christian and the pagan, and amidst the never-ending and ever-present cycle of life and death, the Pole would pass through each of these events transformed spiritually and emotionally, drawing from the past the healing salve of the rugged enduring truth of their ancestors. Time, for agrarian Poland was not linear. It was measured in meaning, not a commodity of seconds to be bought or sold.

I don’t have a drop of Polish blood in me, and as such my genealogical research has never directed me to Polish history – to my detriment. Yet I find through my Irish ancestry kindred spirits. If I were to tell you of a nation with a several hundred year history of domination by a large imperial, once Catholic nation intentionally impoverishing a people into submission, creating artificial partitions, liquidating monasteries and churches, making the ancient local language illegal, opening fire on liturgical processions, executing priests, forcing the conversion of Catholics to schismatic and heretical doctrine, you would be forgiven if you thought I was describing Ireland’s history with England. In fact, during World War II when Polish pilots proved themselves invaluable assets to the RAF, Winston Churchill asked what the Polish were like. He was told, they are like the Irish, but even more so.

By the first half of the 10th century almost all of Europe had been Christianized. There were three main hold outs: the Nordic nations, the Baltic nations, and the Slavs in Poland. These pagans, occupying now a lower stratum of European class were thus subjected to raids, pillaging, killing and enslavement. A few hundred year prior, this behavior was more mutual, but not anymore now that the Christians had come to dominate the continent. The inevitable political nature of religion eventually achieved influence in the Polish aristocracy. Duke Mieszko, who ruled Poland in the late 10th century had decided that converting to Christianity would be expedient for his dynasty. In 966, he along with his subjects allowed themselves to be baptized in the Faith.

Catholic missionaries had been working on Poland for some time already. Bohemian, German, and Irish monks and priests had been pressing to finally bring Poland across the baptismal finish line. Poland could have gone Orthodox easily, but existing political entanglements with Germany influenced its orientation toward Rome. As a result of Mieszko’s decision, 966 is recognized in Poland as its baptism in Roman Catholicism.

The establishment of Christianity got underway quickly. An archbishop of Poland was established in Gniezno – the residence of all the future primates of Poland. More bishoprics were set up in Krakow, Wroclaw (VRAHTS-lahf), Kolobrzeg (kolobshreg), and Pomerania. Yet converting a nation isn’t as simple as installing a diocese. In 944 while Bishop Adalbert was baptizing pagans in a traditional location for polytheistic worship, he was beheaded. By 999 Adalbert was canonized as Poland’s first saint. Monks who followed Adelbert in setting up monasteries were also killed. Yet monasticism eventually spread throughout the land of the Poles, converting each hill and valley one by one. By the end of the 12th century, paganism was mostly gone.

Pagan assaults on churches were regular. Strangely, relics were a prime target of these raids, like those of St. Adalbert. Then a Polish ruler named Kazimierz the Restorer lead the country through a rebuilding phase and elevated the Polish church up to the heights of the great powers of western Europe. He founded abbeys across the nation and funded evangelization among the remaining pockets of pagans. His son Boleslaw II donated huge properties and castles to the church to make it financially viable and independent, invigorated the local ecclesiastical hierarchy.

Boleslaw was a complex figure, however. He famously ordered the execution of Bishop Stanislaus of Krakow on the charge of treason, having the bishop killed while he celebrated Mass. In response, the Poles erupted in anger. How dare the king kill one of their bishops. Such was the public outcry that Boleslaw was forced to leave his own kingdom. And Stanislaus was canonized as a martyr of the Church.

During the years of papal reformers like Gregory VII and Urban II, which we covered extensively in the previous episodes on the Crusades, Poland had trouble deciding on how on board it was with papal ascendancy. Yet eventually, like all the Latin church, it acquiesced and stayed in the holy father’s good graces. In 1140, the Cistercians arrived on the scene bringing with them western educated bishops and improved agricultural practices. The reward for this increase in Church competence was juridic immunity from the governing kings and dukes, a welcomed evolution by the likes of Pope Innocent III who was busily consolidating the international bureaucracy of the Church, of which Poland would now be in communion with.

By the 13th century Europe was suffering a full-scale invasion from the east. In 1241, the Tatars, built from remnants of Turks and Mongols, under the leadership of Genghis Khans grandson, Batu Khan, had completely overrun Hungary. Simultaneously, his uncle, Chagatai Khan had swept into Poland burning, pillaging, and plundering along the way. He took control of Krakow and Wroclaw (VRAHTS-lahf) and massacred its inhabitants. On April 9th, 1241, a Catholic army of Poles, Czechs, and Teutonic Knights assembled to protect the lands of their fathers and the fates of their families. They were annihilated by the Tatars. Duke Henry the Pius, of Poland who commanded the army was found bleeding to death on the battlefield. As he died, he was quoted to utter, “Misery has befallen us.” This moment introduced for the first time a nationalistic sense of martyrdom into the Polish consciousness.

In 1337, the enemy from the East returned to ravage Poland once again. King Kazimierz III assembled an army and gave battle to the Tatars. He turned back their campaign and kept the horde from crossing the Vistula River, vital artery of Poland. He then handed them a decisive defeat at Lublin. Western Europe was not only stunned by the longshot victory, but also indebted to the martyr-land. Poland itself then added another epitaph to its national image, that of protector and defender of Europe against the terrors of the east. Poland came to be called the bulwark of Christianity, the antemurale Christianitatis.

This identity of Christianity’s bulwark lasted hundreds of years. In the 17th century an emissary from the King of Poland stood before the pope and reminded the holy father of the unique historical position Poland played in the defense of western Europe:

“…For centuries Poland had protected Europe against wild and terrible enemies of the name of Christ. Poles with their bare breasts are holding back the Ottoman Crescent.”

Nearly 50 years to the day this boast was made, the Ottomans returned to lay siege to western Europe in July of 1683. The target was Vienna, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Christendom recognized the geopolitical and moral disaster the fall of Vienna would have been, and so a grand alliance of eastern European armies was formed, dubbed the Holy League. Poland’s King Sobieski was already a well know military commander and a respected tactician. His Poles were critical in this alliance – made apparent the location of the treaty: Warsaw. On July 25th, 1683, the King visited the monastery at Jasna Gora, which translates to “bright hill”. Housed in that monastery is the single most important national treasure the Polish have, the Black Madonna of Czestochowa – an icon that, if you believe the legends, was painted by Luke the Evangelist himself. This image of the Blessed Virgin was a perpetual comfort for the Polish, especially in times of need. After praying before the blessed icon, King Sobieski received Holy Communion, and then marshalled his forces against the Ottomans laying siege to Vienna.

The King arrived at the battle as the highest-ranking military commander and added his 25,000 Poles to the Holy League, bringing the total force to around 80,000. At the front of his army were his Winged Hussars. And if you’ve never seen what these guys look like, I highly recommend googling them. Apart from their glittering plated armor and bright red tunics, they bore upon their backs two enormous wings of ostrich and eagle feathers that shot up straight above their helms. The Hussars were known for having a devastating cavalry charge, and rarely lost battles.

The accounts say that when the Winged Hussars arrived at the battle of Vienna, emerging from the woods overlooking Ottomans laying siege to the city, the other European armies cheered with relief and joy, that Poland, the antemurale Christianitatis had arrived. King Sobieski recognized the vulnerability of the Ottomans and decided to attack at once. He quickly assembled the other European cavalry units together – 15,000 of them and put his 3000 Winged Hussars at the front. The king led the charge himself, smashing into the Ottoman lines, driving them from the battlefield. It was the largest cavalry charge in military history. As the enemy fled the field, King Sobieski was recorded paraphrasing Julius Caesar’s famous “veni, vedi, vici” to “Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit”. We came, we saw, God conquered.

Sobieski’s renowned charge and liberation of Vienna earned him a hallowed place in Polish history and further added to the national cult of veneration that surrounded the Icon of the Black Madonna. The Polish people too felt they too had achieved their place among the great European Kingdoms. Just a few years earlier a professor in Krakow had predicted this status when he proclaimed Poland to be a:

“Gem of Catholic kingdoms, a temple of freedom, a bastion of the true faith, the most faithful pupil of the Roman Church, the strongest defender, the most devoted propagator, the rampart of the Christian states (antemurale Christianorum imperiorum), the seat of justice, power, prudence, immortality, fame of its citizens.”

It’s worth discussing that it’s borderline miraculous that King Sobieski fostered a Marion devotion at all. The protestant reformation had gotten under way more than a century earlier, sweeping up much of the Polish gentry and nobility. While the intellectual class in the towns and cities devoured and dissected the writings of Luther with great interest, the illiterate peasant farmers found the entire movement… irrelevant. Roman Catholicism was now half a millennium entrenched in their psyche and blended with their agrarian customs and superstitions. The salt of the earth cares not for novelty, as we have already discussed.

By 1540, Calvinism arrived in Poland, capturing more of the upper class than Lutheranism. As Polish society became increasingly fractured between Catholics and Protestants, both groups looked to influence the Polish crown for protection. The Catholic Church meanwhile naturally pushed for a blanket ban on populist heresy. The kings of Poland during this time largely opted for toleration of religious plurality in society. This tolerance had, of course, political ramifications. After a short while the Protestants had gained near parity with the Catholics in the governing body of Poland, the Sejm.

By the time confessional equality in Poland had been achieved in 1573, Protestantism was already on its way out. The reason, first and foremost, was due to the peasantry never converting, leaving enormous blocks of the population remaining stubborn Roman Catholics. Secondly, the moral and theological fissures that erupted between all the various protestant sects created serious political disunity. The reformation, no longer the new shiny object, had ceased to be attractive.

There was another reformation underway, though its origins were hundreds of years before the protestant reformation. Ironically labelled the “counter reformation” of the Catholic Church, this counter reformation began with the papacy of Innocent III and his codification of papal supremacy. Over the subsequent decades and centuries, papal supremacy of both the spiritual and political brought tremendous organization strength to the Church that manifested most consequentially in the establishment of Catholic Universities. The graduates of these universities ushered in the era of scholasticism in Europe, unifying Catholic philosophical thought and apologetics. The maturation of this intellectual percolation produced a Church hierarchy with the will and skill to dismantle the various theologies of the reformation. With more educated bishops came greater pastoral care for the laity, more scrutiny for seminarians, more rigorous and theologically sound sermons, and most significantly, an increase in devotion towards and promotion of the cult of the Blessed Virgin – a movement that had great appeal with the agrarian Polish.

Just as Catholic hegemony in Poland was on its way to being restored, conquest by the Russians and Swedes commenced fueled both by religious differences and financial gain. These conquests taking place in the middle of the 17th century are collectively known to Poles as “the deluge”. During these wars, the Polish commonwealth, lost a third of its population and its entire military.

In the winter of 1655, a Swedish army, along with German mercenaries totaling about 3000 strong arrived at the monastery of Jasna Gora, that same monastery where King Sobieski had prayed for victory against the Ottomans before the sacred Icon of the Black Madonna. The holy icon was still there, along with other relics of Polish-Catholic heritage. Held up at the monastery were about 70 monks and 250 poor agrarian farmers who had bravely turned up to defend to the death their beloved relic of the Queen of Poland. Amazingly, the monastery had a small arsenal of cannons and muskets but were nonetheless vastly outnumbered. Yet every time the Swedes and Germans attacked, the monks and farmers repelled them. Finally, two days after Christmas, the attackers abandoned the siege of Jasna Gora. For the Poles, they believed the cause of their victory was obvious, the intervention of the Blessed Mother, their Queen. Despite this unlikely victory, by the end of the deluge period, Poland remained, but both the nation and the Church hierarchy therein were shadows of their former selves.

The commonwealth of Poland lay at the crossroads of Europe like injured prey. Russia was the first to recognize the easy pickings on its doorstep. Catherine the Great, empress of Russia had infiltrated both the ruling monarchy of Poland and the Sejm - the governing body, bending both to her will. Next to have their eye on Poland was Frederick the Great of Prussia. Frederick described Poland as “an artichoke, ready to be consumed leaf by leaf.” The third nation to desire a piece of Poland was Austria, currently run by Empress Maria Theresa. By 1772, these three great European powers had reached an agreement detailing a complete partition of Poland, redistributing its lands amongst themselves. King Stanislaus Augustus of Poland didn’t have the sinew to fight all three powers and was told by Russian emissaries that if he resisted, Warsaw would be leveled. His acquiescence to the overwhelming union against him marks the beginning of the partition era when Poland ceased to exist on any map of the world.

For the first time now we see underground independence movements arise in Poland, particularly in the Russian Partition, where religious persecution at the hands of the Russian orthodox was violent. Whie Catholicism suffered a form of persecution in the Prussian Partition by Calvinists and other protestants, the Faith was largely left alone in the Austrian partition, since those monarchs were Roman Catholic. The Russians on the other hand were out to eliminate the Roman Catholic faith in Poland and replace it with the Orthodox Church. In defiance, the Polish Sejm convened and declared Roman Catholicism their official religion. They pushed the envelope even further and drafted their very own constitution, asserting their right to exist as an independent nation - remember, this is the height of enlightenment. These moves of autonomy infuriated Catherine the Great, but being tied up in a war with Turkey, she had to postpone dealing with Polish independence.

Eventually Russia signed a treaty with Turkey, and on May 18th, 1792, 100,000 Russian troops crossed into Poland. Poland mustered its forces, but the Polish King waffled, and refused to resist the Russian force. And at the point of a 100,000 Russian bayonets, the Polish Sejm annulled their recent constitution and ratified the Russian partition.

Two years later, a polish veteran of the American revolution, Tadeusz Kosciuszko helped kick off a new revolution against Russian rule. He was surprisingly successful at first, liberating Warsaw and Krakow. But the Russians would not give in so easily. With overwhelming might they crushed the Polish rebellion and upon entering Warsaw massacred its civilians as punishment. The short-lived rebellion was over. During these years of Russian occupation, persecution, and oppression, six million acres of Polish Church property was seized and handed over the Russian Orthodox. Forced conversion to Orthodoxy was implemented and Roman Catholic clergy was put under government surveillance. The Polish language and Polish education were outlawed.

In 1825 Tsar Nicholas I ascended to the Russian throne and threw all eastern Europe into chaos. He was completely insane, and the entire Russian government fell into corruption and arbitrary brutality. Russian contemporaries recall that during the reign of Nicholas, on the streets of Russa only silence could be heard.

Eventually the combination of revolutionary spirit sweeping through Europe and the weakness of Nicholas gave the Poles their moment to rise. Revolutionaries in Warsaw seized 30,000 rifles and began handing them out to the citizenry. Soon they had 200,000 Poles joining in on the fight. Bishops began lending their support to the cause as well, signing a manifesto declaring Nicholas their illegitimate ruler. But Russia’s key strength had always been its massive numbers. They will simply throw bodies at any problem that arises under its dominion. Their offensive against this Polish revolution commenced on February 5th, 1831, eventually dismantling Polish military resistance. Polish soldiers and officers instead of surrendering went into exile. The semi-autonomous Polish government was disbanded, and 100,000 Russian troops were permanently installed in Poland. Secret police and surveillance forces were introduced. Authentic Polish institutions were replaced with Russian bureaucracy. Poles in civil leadership positions were replaced with loyal Russians. The Church feared that its revolutionary sympathies were now a liability to its position in Poland. To rectify the situation, Pope Gregory XVI quickly issued an encyclical on civil obedience, declaring the Tsar “Appointed by God” to rule over the Poles. Then martial law was imposed and would not be lifted for another 25 years.

During martial law, two thirds of Catholic monasteries were liquidated. Hundreds of Polish Catholic schools, hospitals, and philanthropic institutions were shut down. The Catholic Church, so desperate to stay in the good graces of the Russians even went so far as to sign a Concordat with the Tsar, giving him discretion over the appointment of bishops, now doubt causing the medieval papal reformers to roll over in their graves. To the Poles, these most loyal of Roman Catholics, the pope was now a traitor.

During these dark days for Poland, many abandoned their beloved fatherland altogether. 1.25 million Poles emigrated from the Russian partition alone, with the bulk of them going to the United States. Millions more from the Austrian and Prussian partitions followed them to the land of the free. Chicago quickly became the Polish capital of the New World. By World War I, there were 3 million Poles living in America, establishing ethnic neighborhoods, ministered by Polish priests, preserving their folk culture and customs as best they could in the new world.

Those who remained in Poland, feeling neglected by the Holy Father, and seeing their lamentations ignored for political expediency, abandoned the ultra-montane flavor of their Roman Catholic discipline and replaced it with internal patriotism. The next generation, imbued now with this patriotic Polish Catholicism ignited a religious revival. Monks and missionaries labored to remind the Poles of their spiritual and cultural heritage and to take pride and solace in its richness. The Polish Church too embraced more nationalistic, more anti-Russian sentiments. And patriotic hymns filled the churches of Poland.

In April of 1861 a crowd of nationalist Polish Catholics assembled in Warsaw to pray for the independence of both faith and country. As they knelt in prayer Russian troops opened fire in cold blood, killing more than 100 unarmed citizens. Martial law was declared again, giving the Russians cause to kick open the doors of the Catholic churches and arrest the faithful by the thousands. Now to be Catholic was to be an enemy of the state.

Over a thousand Polish Priest were exiled to the frozen hellscape of Siberia. Poles were prevented from occupying any teaching positions in their own country. Their national language was still illegal. Monastic orders were completely dissolved and whatever property the church still owned in Russian occupied Poland was now gone.

By the late 19th century, the concealed illegal Faith in Poland was its people’s unifying identity, sustained with the pride of hundreds of years of national martyrdom. Once again, Poland was on its knees as a sacrificial offering to an enemy to the east. This collective sentiment manifested itself in processions, pilgrimages, retreats, and the underground celebrations of Roman Catholic feast days. Reports of apparitions by the Blessed Virgin were everywhere. Sanctuaries housing old forgotten holy relics of Poland drew pilgrims from its four corners with Jasna Gora being the busiest – in a span of 30 years during this period of oppression the number of pilgrims to Jasna Gora rose from 46,000 annually to 200,000.

Many Poles during the late partition period began turning to political solutions to their misery. There was a brand-new ideology making its way into the town squares and cafes that promised a utopia of sorts for the poor. Socialism had gained its first beachhead.

At the onset of World War I, the Poles had been partitioned and occupied for nearly 150 years. Through these partitions they largely maintained their cultural distinctness and spirit, but politically now, many had conflicting allegiances. In exchange for support against the new German empire, formerly Prussia, the Russians dangled the carrot of greater political autonomy before the Poles, once the war was over. Other Poles, however, saw German allegiance as the best path towards independence. The Polish Socialists, now a formidable political organization sided with Austria and the Hapsburgs. This alliance with the Catholic empire was entirely parasitic, and a means to an end for a larger socialist goal. Leader of the Polish Socialist, Jozef Pilsudski spoke of his justifications for such an alliance:

“When the war broke out, I asked myself what Partition offered this possibility of creating an armed force, which would count when all, both conquerors and conquered, were weakened under the destiny of war. I saw immediately that the only country where it was possible to begin and carry through such work was Austria. I reckoned that Germany with her iron state organization and her machine would at once put in every man capable of fighting. Russia was of no use – she was too confident in her own strength and in her policy of force in dealing with her subjects. Austria remained the weakest state, maintaining herself alive as a type of political tight-rope walker, dependent on her subjects. Austria was the easiest to talk to.”

The Holy See, when prognosticating on the fortunes of this new war looked very closely at Poland. There were two sides to the Poland question for them. On one hand the Church would willingly support an overwhelmingly Catholic nation’s independence. On the other, since such independence required the return of vast stolen lands by Austria-Hungary, it was doubtful that that empire would survive Polish independence. When an advocate of Polish independence sought support from the Vatican, he was rebuffed by the pope’s secretary of state as a dreamer and was told his future lies with Austria. But by 1917, it was clear Austria-Hungary was sliding towards collapse, and Pope Benedict XV issued a statement calling for Polish Independence. The very next year with the Catholic empire in its death throws, it transferred autonomous power of its partition of Poland back to the Poles and gave ruling authority to the socialist Jozef Pilsudski – mission accomplished. Europe and the Vatican quickly and officially acknowledged the autonomy. And Poland was suddenly back on the map.

1917 was an eerie year for all the world. Empires that should have lasted a thousand years came crashing down. Nations, like Poland, that had no chance of existing, suddenly existed again. Then rumors sprang up from Portugal that three small children had been seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Fatima. The apparition warned of future and worse cataclysms to come, particularly from Russia. These apparitions culminated in tens of thousands of people witnessing a still inexplicable event known as the Miracle of the Sun. The specifics of Fatima are a bit outside the scope of this narrative, but it is such a strange, alleged event to occur at such a pivotal year in human history. And its mentioning is relevant to the discussion, as you’ll see.

World War I brought the old powers of Europe to their knees, and everything had now changed. Germany was no longer an empire. Austria was no longer an empire. Russia was no longer an empire. These former slave masters of Poland were unrecognizable. The biggest change was Russia. The Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin has successfully thrown down the empire and converted Russia to Communism. As Lenin looked west for fertile revolutionary ground to spread the doctrine of Marx, he saw Poland as it had been seen by conquerors from the east for a thousand years now – the bridge to western Europe. The shortest route from Moscow to Berlin and Parish was through Warsaw.

Pilsudski, despite being a socialist, was a Pole first. He quickly formed an alliance with Ukraine and assisted them in liberating Kyiv from Lenin. In response the Red Army went on the march and steamrolled Ukraine, forcing the Polish to retreat across their borders. After Kyiv, the red army pushed on towards Warsaw.

As the Russians approached Poland in August of 1920, the Polish army mustered and prepared to fight for their newly won independence. There is an account called the Miracle on the Vistula, the main river in Poland. It is said that prior to the battle, the Blessed Virgin appeared in the sky assuring the Poles of their victory. After the battle, the result for the Red Army, in Lenin’s own words, was “an enormous defeat”. Polish casualties were around 40,000 while Russian casualties reached over 100,000. Many of the historians were quick to point out that this battle was critical for all western Europe because at this time Lenin had serious communist strongholds in Germany, Romania, Hungary and Italy. His strategy of taking Warsaw was meant to eliminate the only bump in the road toward military communist overthrows of those governments. The road to the west would have been wide opened had Warsaw fallen. Poland again added another notch in its belt of antemural christianatitus.

Peacetime allowed this resurrected nation to focus on building its government. Pilsudski abdicated his authority to the new Polish Sejm, allowing for a new Polish constitution to be adopted. By 1925, the Church had negotiated a fresh concordat with the new government. A concordat for the Vatican was always the goal with any nation – it was a political agreement of legal operation withing a country. It set aside official functions for the Church vis-a-vis the state and granted the Church unique status therein. For us Americans, if this type of arrangement makes you shift in your seat a bit, that’s ok. That’s not the type of society we have. But for Poland, they historically cherished this legal bond with Rome as a matter of national pride.

In the early 20th century apart from being a constitutionally Catholic nation there were a range of competing visions for the political direction Poland should go. National ethnic purity was very cutting edge and attractive at the time. The National Democrats of Poland were actively pushing this agenda. In practice, this meant two things needed to happen: Non-Polish Slavs must be assimilated into a Polish society, and Germans and Jews must either self-emigrate, or face forcible removal. As often happens when a country leans into ethnic nationalism, the Jews are the first to suffer. Over the course of three years, mobs aligned with the National Democrats arose and murdered around 2000 Jews in the streets and levelled three synagogues.

Another vision for Poland was Pilsudski’s socialism, which took marching orders from the influences of the international socialist movement. To socialists, a nation’s borders meant little. Pilsudski saw Poland’s future as a grand commonwealth, encompassing diverse nationalities and creeds. His relationship with the Church was complicated. He was born and raised Catholic, converted to Protestantism so that he could divorce and remarry, and the reverted back to the Faith after his second wife died. People who knew him best described him, enigmatically as a typical Pole, that is, having considerable doubts about the existence of God, and yet was fervently devoted to Mary the mother of God. For the nationalists, Pilsudski’s vision of Poland was too anti-Catholic, too pro-Jewish, and just overall soft, especially in the context of the trending dictatorships of the 20th century.

A third vision for the future of Poland belonged to the Catholic hierarchy – already wildly successful toward their goals. Catholicism was the state religion, religious education was mandatory in the schools and subsidized by the new government. Businesses were not allowed to be opened on Sundays, and most recently, the Church successfully negotiated their concordat with the Holy See. The particulars of the head of state and legislature weren’t important, so long as the government was informed by the See of Warsaw.

Despite the best efforts of what we can simplistically refer as left vs right political factions, it was the Church-lead vision that most Poles, especially rural Poles, saw most authentic to Poland. With popular support, the infrastructure of the Polish clergy expanded and solidified. By 1939 there were over 10,000 diocesan priests, 7000 monks, 22,000 nuns, and an additional 1200 churches and priestly residences under construction. A Polish Youth Association, baptized by the Polish Hierarchy, quickly grew, drawing in over 500,000 members immediately and rising to 700,000 by 1939. 228 Catholic periodicals were in production with some have a circulation of 10,000 readers per issue. Catholic schoolchildren were required by law to go to confession at least three times a year, and the clergy was immune from civil prosecution, subject only to the international laws of the Church.

Yet below the surface, Polish politics, succumbing to the trend of greater European politics, was turning violent. In eight years, there were 14 different governments in Poland, multiple assassinations, endless economic and political crises, recurring labor strikes, and even a three-day civil war. Socialists, atheist, and freemasons were fighting in the streets for political hegemony, while the ethnic purists were pressuring the Church to condemn the Jews and secular government. On the eve of World War II, the Polish question was multiple choice one: The primacy of the state, vs the primacy of the nation, vs the primacy of the Church.

The Jews in Poland were now under serious scrutiny, not because of anything they were doing but largely because of the European political movements across Europe, led now by the Nazi party next door in Germany. Many now branded the Jews as politically and ethnically problematic to the causes of nationalism. Cardinal Hlond, primate of Poland wrote a letter to his flock declaring: “a Jewish problem exists and will exist so long as Jews remain Jews.” The fear was a that Poland’s 3.5 million Jews were keeping the nation from its purer destiny as a Catholic nation.

Radicalism, antisemitism, and street-level militancy had manifested itself upon the Polish political landscape. “Collective thinking” and “national purity” were the buzz phrases of the day – phrases I like to call red meat for dogs. Tell the mob what they want to hear, and the mob will vote for anything.

The first character who will begin escorting us through the main narrative of this podcast is a fascinating product of this volatile political landscape. His name is Boleslaw Piasecki. He was a radical, a revolutionary, a nationalist, a militant, and a devout Roman Catholic. Piasecki came of age during a Polish youth movement in the early 20th century that desired Poland to not only be ethnically pure but also exist under the banner of the papacy. He and his generation generally leaned away from socialism and leaned into fascism.

One of the reasons early 20th century Polish Catholics were skeptical of communism went beyond the recent history of Lenin’s attempted invasion and came straight from the chair of Peter itself. As early as 1846, two years before Karl Marx would release his Communist Manifesto, Pope Pius IX condemned communism as a “unspeakable doctrine,” and “opposed to natural law”, that it would lead to “the complete destruction of everyone’s laws, government, property, and even of human society itself would follow.” He forecasted a dark future to the doctrine, calling it:

“The most dark designs of men in the clothing of sheep, while inwardly ravening wolves… by means of a feigned and deceitful appearance of a purer piety, a stricter virtue and discipline; after taking their captives gently, they mildly blind them, and then kill them in secret. They make men fly in terror from all practice of religion, and they cut down and dismember the sheep of the Lord… filled with deceit and cunning… spread pestilential doctrines everywhere and deprave the minds especially of the imprudent, occasioning great losses for religion.”

It’s worth noting that Pius IX’s warnings come before anyone had yet died at the hands of a communist government. He goes on:

“As a result of this filthy medley of errors which creeps in from every side, and as a result of the unbridled license to think, speak and write, we see the following: morals deteriorated, Christ’s most holy religion despised, the majesty of divine worship rejected. The power of the Apostolic See plundered, the authority of the Church attacked and reduced to base slavery, the rights of bishops trampled on, the sanctity of marriage infringed, the rule of every government violently shaken and many other losses for both the Christian and the civil commonwealth.”

Pius IX’s immediate successor, Leo XIII went after communism immediately. He called it a “fatal plague which insinuates itself into the very marrow of human society only to bring about its ruin.”

Leo didn’t stop there:

“That sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names are called socialists, communists, or nihilists… they leave nothing untouched or whole which by both human and divine laws has been widely decreed for the health and beauty of life. They refuse obedience to the higher powers, to whom, according to the admonition of the Apostle, every soul ought to be subject, and who derive the right of governing from God.”

The successive popes of the church went on year after year, ringing this bell, crying out from atop the walls of the looming horrors of communism. Reaching the era we are dealing with now, Pope Pius XI declared that “Socialism is irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.” In 1937 on the solemnity of St. Joseph, Pius XI released an intense attack on communism called Divini Redemptoris, calling communism a “collective terrorism”, “savage barbarity”, “a plague promulgated by the powers of darkness”, “a satanic scourge”. He warned further that it would lead to:

“a class-warfare which causes rivers of blood to flow… The evil we must combat is at its origin primarily an evil of the spiritual order. From this polluted source the monstrous emanations of the communistic system flow with satanic logic.”

Toward the end of 1930s, looking ahead to the coming cataclysm of a second world war and the onset of international communism, Pope Pius XII looked for the Church’s future allies in this spiritual warfare. Surprisingly, he looked across the Atlantic Ocean. It was an ally he himself predicted Europe would have to turn to years earlier as a bishop when he toured America, saying: “Into the hands of America, God has placed an afflicted mankind.”

Later, Pius XII would call before him American Bishop Fulton Sheen and give him a specific mission to ring the alarm of Marxist ideology, telling him to take: “every opportunity warn the Americans of its dangers.” Bishop Sheen took his orders seriously and went on to be one of the most recognizable bishops in the world and used every available media to denounce an economic model he declared “inspired by the serpent of the spirit… the Mystical Body of the Anti-Christ.”

Back in Poland, the spirit of fascism had declared victory over socialism. Its bishops had proclaimed in April of 1939 that they had:

“Pushed godless communism away from the borders of Poland and prevented it from taking refuge in Polish society under the pretense of non-Christian culture. We are casting away godlessness, freethinking, and positivism. We are recovering from laicism, materialism, and religious indifference. We are successfully defending ourselves from out neighbors’ neo-paganism.”

What they did not know… what they could not know… was that this was the last year of existence for the new Polish republic. Poland’s fate again as a sacrificial victim of European conquest was sealed on the night of August 23rd, 1939, when Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR signed a pact that would allow the Nazis and Soviets to invade and partition Poland. Hitler knew this pact was critical to his idealized version of Germany. Poland, despite all the political novelty of the age was still a geopolitical key to controlling Europe. Hitler himself awaited news of the signing of this pact at his Berghof residence, surrounded by his entourage. But the tone was far from triumphant, for what was probably the northern lights, the sky seemed to be displaying terrifying omens over the mountains. Hitler’s housekeeper, Herbet Doring recorded:

“The entire sky was in turmoil. It was blood-red, green, sulfur grey, black as the night, a jagged yellow… Everyone was watching.”

A woman in the group approached Hitler and said:

“My Fuhrer, this augurs nothing good. It means blood, blood, and again blood.”

Doring recalled that Hitler was nearly shaking with fear.

One week later, Hitler invaded Poland from the west, followed by Stalin from the east. The Catholic Poles were violently pinched between the legions of neo-pagan Nazis, and atheist communists, both hell-bent on the conquest. The Poles were woefully outnumbered and yet against Germany they killed or captured 50,000 soldiers, shot down 500 German aircraft, and destroyed over 1000 armored vehicles of the Wehrmacht. In their vigorous defense, 200,000 polish soldiers were killed or captured in the first month alone and God knows how many civilians died from ariel the bombings. The city of Warsaw held out against air raids and panzer divisions for four weeks, knowing that the French and British had promised to attack Germany if Poland was attacked. But any allied mobilizations were at best months away. The Poles denounced the nonexistent assistance from the allies as the Phony War. With the capital 40% destroyed by the Nazis, it finally surrendered on September 27th, 1939. With the capitulation of Warsaw, the Soviets quickly annexed the eastern portions of the country. After a mere 20 years of self-governance as an independent Catholic nation, Poland once again ceased to exist.

The collective manifestation of early 20th century hatred for the Jews and desires of national purity found its man of action in Adolf Hitler. By February of 1940, in Poland, a million Jews and Poles were forcibly deported from the newly conquered German territory. Another 2.8 million were sent to German labor camps for the coming war effort.

For the Soviet’s part, the first thing they did in their new Polish territory was abolish religious instruction in schools and prayers in public, such things were not befitting of good communists. Further, students were forbidden from attending Sunday Mass, as Sunday was now declared an official working day. An eyewitness to this Soviet takeover recounts:

“The league of the Godless arrived with the Government grant of three million rubles with which to start its program. Special commissions were appointed for the propagation of atheistic doctrine in the schools. The whole story of schools, the ordeal of the school children generally, and of the immense fortitude and determination of those children displayed in their resistance to the new teaching, must be told elsewhere. I have no space here to do more than record the fact.”

I spoke earlier of Boleslaw Piasecki – that radical polish nationalist youth who wanted the Catholic Church to claim its rightful ruling place in Poland. He like the rest of his generation took up arms against the Nazi invaders. It was brave, but hopeless, and Piasecki, along with hundreds of thousands of other patriots, were captured.

Hitler utterly rejected any idea of a collaboration government in Poland, he famously despised the Slavic peoples, considering them racially inferior, and opted instead for complete occupation. The Poles rejected Germany’s proposal and offered armed resistance in return, going underground. This underground Polish resistance was of no small matter. During the war they were responsible for massive rail disruptions for the Nazis and provided the allies with nearly half of their intelligence on Nazi occupied territories. At its peak, the various resistance groups could count around 650,000 members.

The Nazis understood that during the partition period the Catholic clergy supported the oppressed people and blessed at least two insurrections against Imperial Russia. Thus, patriotic priests stirring up nationalistic sentiment was verboten. So, the arrests of priests began. Seminaries were shut down, along with all the various religious weekly publications. Polish songs and hymns, the very fiber of the Polish culture was outlawed. National monuments were destroyed. Hearing confession in the Polish language was illegal. The Gestapo entered the Catholic University of Lublin and arrested whatever professors and clergy they could find – all sent to concentration camps in Germany. Before the end of 1940 in Poland, over a thousand Catholic priests were either arrested or shot. To continue the Faith in Poland, the bishop’s seminaries were likewise forced underground.

The Soviets on the other hand had no shortage of labor and as such, had no use for labor camps. Captured soldiers and troublesome clergy dealt with more efficiently than their Nazi counterparts. One particularly grizzly memorial of Soviet cruelty is in the woods of Katyn, just across the border into Russia. Over the course of two months 22,000 young men were shot, stacked into trucks, and driven to a mass grave. Before long, in similar fashion the Russians would execute around 100,000 Polish men. Many of the young Russian soldiers, acting under orders and unable to cope with their own evil, shot themselves.

Back in America, Bishop Fulton Sheen would not have been surprised by these atrocities on both sides of re-partitioned Poland:

“There is not a vast difference between them. What is class to Russia is race to Germany.”

For some Catholic nationalists, what was being done in Poland was not all that undesired. Bishop Kaczmarek of Kielce published a shockingly tone-deaf pastoral letter in 1941, still warning of the potential corruption the Jews might have on Catholic children, and further, preached loyalty to the new occupiers. Remember Bishop Kaczmarek, he comes up later.

The Polish government now in exile, not to be outdone in irrationality by Bishop Kaczmarek, had the gall to put out the following statement in 1941:

“As far as the Jewish question is concerned, it must be viewed as a special sign of Divine Providence that the Germans, regardless of the many injustices they have inflicted and continue to inflict upon our country, did well to demonstrate that it is possible to liberate Polish society from the Jewish plague and to show us the path that we should follow unrelentingly, albeit in a less cruel and brutal fashion. It is clearly God’s will that the occupiers themselves have contributed to the solution of this burning question, because the Polish nation itself, weak and unsystematic, would never have taken the energetic steps that this matter demands.”

Fortunately, many of the Polish-Catholic citizenry ignored the councils of their clergy and political leaders in that well-planned path to hell, and instead risked their lives to save Jews under persecution. Between the nuns, priests and average citizens in Poland, its estimate up to 35,000 Jews’ lives were saved during this time.

By 1944, the Red Army of the Soviets had “liberated” all of Poland from the Nazis and installed a national communist government. With the sudden change of institutional ideology and the waning youthful vigor of Catholic nationalism, former fascists now willingly accepted academic theories of Catholic national communism. Boleslaw Piasecki was one of these. Russia, being intimately familiar with Poland, knew that nationalism was an easy inroad to win over the citizenry and so they experimented with a uniquely patriotic form of communism that appealed to guys like Piasecki. Piasecki, once in Nazi custody and now is in Soviet custody was about to directly benefit from this new policy. He knew the Soviets weren’t going anywhere any time soon and that political realities would be shaped by them for the foreseeable future. Most of his countrymen were not so lucky, however.

In the wake of World War II, approximately 20 percent the Polish priesthood was dead or missing. 15 percent of Polish teachers were dead. 45 percent of its physicians, 50 percent of its engineers, and 57 percent of its lawyers were all dead. In all, 6.3 million Poles were gone. The bloodletting had been horrific. From Auschwitz, nearby Poles could still smell the ovens on a windy day.

When I contemplated the subtitle for this podcast, The Gates of Hell, I toyed with the phrase Dante placed above his gates of hell: “abandon hope all ye who enter here”, but I thought that might dissuade listeners. Yet I can’t think of a more fitting subtitle for the gates of Auschwitz. It would be gratuitous and off topic to detail the horrors of what went on there, but it is tremendously relevant to discuss one Polish prisoner.

When Maximillian Kolbe was 12 years old, after an argument with his mother, in which she cried, “what would become of you”, young Maximillian went searching for the answer to her cry at the local church where he sought out the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. According to Kolbe’s account the Virgin Mary, protectress of Poland, appeared to him. He asked her, “what will become of me?” And in her hands, she held out two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked if Maximillian would accept one of these crowns. He perceived the white crown meant that he would preserve his purity. The red meant that he would become a martyr for the Faith. The 12-year-old boy accepted both crowns.

On February 17th, 1941, the Nazis arrested Father Maximilian Kolbe and sent him to Auschwitz where he became prisoner #16670. His Franciscan habit was replaced with a striped uniform. He was ridiculed, beaten, worked to exhaustion, and targeted for humiliation. In July a prisoner had escaped. In response to the breech the prison warden declared that ten prisoners would be sent into an underground cell, deprived of air and starved to death. The cell was known as Death Block 13. One the ten selected for death was a young father named Francis Gajowniczek, who pleaded with the Germans for mercy. He pleaded for the guards to spare him so that his wife and children could see him again. Father Maximilian Kolbe calmly stepped forward and declared that he was a priest and would like to die in place of the young father.

In Death Block 13 Father Kolbe continued his priestly duties, saying Mass for his fellow inmates and leading prayers and hymns. After two weeks of no food and no water, Father Kolbe remained the only one still alive. This was problematic for the Nazi prison guards as they needed the space for further liquidation. And so, they decided it was time to terminate the problem. They brought in a syringe loaded with carbolic acid. Father Kolbe lifted his left arm in compliance, accepting his fate. Knowing he had already attained the white crown given to him by Our Lady, he was now ready to don the red crown of martyrdom. A fellow prisoner ordered to assist with the execution, Bruno Borgowiec could not stomach the sight of Father Kolbe offering his own arm up to his executioners:

“Unable to watch I left under the pretext of work to be done… Immediately after the S.S. men with the executioner had left, I returned to the cell, where I found Father Kolbe leaning in a sitting position against the back wall with his eyes open and his head drooping sideways. His face was calm and radiant.”

The next day, Father Maximilian Kolbe’s remains were cast into the ovens of Auschwitz. It was August 15th, the Feats of the Assumption of Mary. Four decades later this Polish martyr would be canonized by a Polish pope. Present for that ceremony would be Francis Gajowniczek, the young father saved by the saint.

Post World War II Poland is called by historian Timothy Snyder, “the Bloodlands” - that is, the land between Hitler and Stalin. In these bloodlands the Polish citizenry and Church hierarchy were obliterated. Whatever was left of this once great nation was now under the occupation of the largest military industrial machine mankind had yet conceived. Poland, in both nation and church had yet another shared experience of martyrdom. With the approaching peacetime many might have thought the gates of hell had finally passed. For the most part, the war of guns and borders was over, but the war for the soul of Poland was just beginning.

Part Two: Church or State?

With World War II behind them, both the Polish hierarchy and the Soviet government could now focus on reconstruction. Cardinal-Primate Hlond returned to his See to organize the Church’s efforts. The Krakow curia immediately launched a new weekly periodical called Tygodnik Powszechny, which translates to, The Common Weekly. It commanded a large audience right away.

Pope Pius XII granted the Cardinal Hlond the title of papal legate which gave the primate special powers to operate on behalf of the pope himself and represent the Vatican before whatever government the Soviets intended to impose. Hlond had his work cut out for him. The Polish church was literally in rubble with much of the clergy dead or missing. He also now had new, formerly German bishoprics under his control – and with Soviet-fueled hatred towards anything German, the Cardinal had to tread carefully.

In these early years of Russian occupation, the Church was left mostly to its own devices to rebuild as it saw fit. This latitude for the church to operate existed nowhere else in the Soviet Union. Recognizing this rare and no doubt fleeting window of opportunity, Primate Hlond quickly consecrated 10 new bishops to assist him. Among them was a priest name Stefan Wyszynski, who will come up again in a big way. With this new class of bishops, the important work of administering the sacraments and rebuilding the Church in Poland could begin in earnest.

The Soviets were not idle for long, however. On September 12th, 1945, the 1925 concordat with the Vatican was declared null and void. They then declared that a referendum would be held to determine if Poland would continue with its historical bicameral legislature (meaning two chamber) or switch to the typical Soviet model of unicameral. After the referendum, the Soviets, overseeing the electoral commissions, declared that an overwhelming majority had voted in favor of the unicameral model. Decades later when the archives were opened and the ballots could be recounted, it turns out, of course that unicameral legislature lost 3 to 1.

With control of the legislature, the real work for the Soviets could begin. Ecclesiastical marriages were made illegal, only state sponsored unions were officially recognized. Then the regime reduced the age of consent for marriage age, incorporating highschoolers: the goal was to dissuade higher education. A new cause for divorce was added to the law – the practice of religion by one’s spouse. Catholic printing presses were nationalized and turned into propaganda machines. Catholic books were removed from the libraries. Childrens prayers before the school day were outlawed and crucifixes were removed from the classrooms. Liturgical feast days were replaced by Soviet military holidays. Catholic lay organizations were dissolved. And nearly a million acres of Church owned property was seized - does any of this sound familiar?

In September of 1948 the bishops of Poland published a strongly worded, yet impotent protest. And this is where we can come back to Bishop Wyszynski. The very next month after this letter of protest was issued from the Polish See, Cardinal Hlond died of pneumonia. His successor as the Primate of Poland was Wyszynski. Wyszynski was a very different type of primate. He was a journalist in his youth and raised among the peasantry, yet familiar with the gentry - his father was nobleman who lost his property. Wyszynski‘s dissertation at the Catholic University of Lublin was titled “The Right of the Family, the Church and the State to Education.” He believed strongly in supporting and ministering to the working class of Poland. Also worth noting, during World War II Cardinal Hlond left Poland, but Wyszynski stayed behind to suffer its fate in solidarity. During that time, he did what he could to aid the various underground resistance movements against the Nazis. He is described as patriotic, principled, organized, courageous, and wise. He was a natural leader.

The emerging de facto leader of the Polish government underwritten by Russia was a man named Wladyslaw Gomulka. Gomulka was a plumber at the age of fourteen, then he turned radical, becoming an organizer of the early 20th century Polish trade unions. During the war he was a resistance organizer against the Nazis. Now in the late 40s, he was Prime Minister of Poland and helped the Soviets obtain their fraudulent election results.

And so, it was these two men, Wyszynski and Gomulka who would represent the front lines of a new yet long forecasted confrontation: Communism VS Roman Catholicism. Prior to occupying Poland, the Soviets had a relatively easy time of taking over state churches. The Orthodox disciplines of the east were already highly nationalistic with few, if any, external allegiances. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, was highly centralized and historically resistant to nationalistic flavors of the faith – this can be traced back to the investiture contest a thousand years ago with Pope Gregry VII. For Russian communism, the attempted conversion of Poland to atheism would be new territory.

These first few years of communist Poland demonstrate clearly for the Soviets that their usual tactics were failing to create atheists. Even Stalin was remembered to say that communism fit on Poland as well as a fine horse’s saddle fits on a cow. Yet where Stalin was surprised, former Polish nationalists now cooperating with the Soviets, men like Gomulka, were not surprised. They knew the sinew of their countrymen.

Another man who, like Gomulka knew these typical Soviet tactics would fail was the previously mentioned Catholic nationalist Boleslaw Piasecki – who had now decided to play the part of a cooperator. Like Gomulka, Piasecki was an active leader in the underground resistance during the Nazi occupation. After the war he found himself in the Red Army’s custody. In their interrogation of this radical, the Soviets were trying to figure out just what sort of radical he was, and if his radicalism could be useful. Piasecki for his part was determined to be useful. He knew the way to the Poles’ hearts was through the Roman Catholic Faith. He further knew the Soviets refused to comprehend this simple reality. He also calculated that they were the most expedient vehicle for him to realize his dream of a Catholic Totalitarian state. Thus, Piasecki sought to convince his inquisitors of his value to their cause. He convinced them that he could convert Poland to Marxism through Catholic Social Teaching. The Soviets were intrigued, and having nothing to lose, they released him. Piasecki went to work immediately and founded the lay organization and newspaper PAX that would serve as the megaphone of his mission.

Through PAX, Piasecki was able to run dual narratives: one of Polish manifest destiny to be a great Catholic nation, all while linking their future success to Soviet communism. He began declaring Marxist-Leninist ideology as the avant-garde of thought, progress, and charity, that would be the groundwork for Catholic totalitarianism. He claimed these dual paths worked for the good of humanity. Communism protected the material needs of the poor and downtrodden, while the Church cared for their spiritual needs. Author Mikolaj Stanislaw Kunicki, who document Piasecki’s rise to political prominence says he was aiming for nothing short of an ideological trinity of Marxism, Catholicism, and Nationalism. As the communists further secured their rule, Piasecki argued that the Catholics should share in that power and enrich Marxism spiritually, and eventually, the nationalists would convert the communists into Polish patriots.

On the international stage, the western world was watching eastern Europe slip into darkness behind what Winston Churchill dubbed the iron curtain. It was the end of a process that had begun before World War II ended, at the Yalta conference when millions of eastern Europeans were handed over to soviet control, by the west, beguiled with pledges from Stalin to hold free and fair elections of self-governance. A military advisor to Churchill and Roosevelt argued that the agreement the president signed at Yalta with Stalin is so elastic that it can be stretched from Yalta to DC without breaking it. All Roosevelt said in response was that it was the best he could do. Fulton Sheen, ever increasing his mission against communist ideology said of this agreement:

“At Yalta, three men with a stroke of a pen delivered the eastern part of Europe up to a Godless nation.”

For Bishop Wyszynski, all he could do was deal with political realties given to him locally. Right now, he needed to continue rebuilding of the Polish Church. He proposed to the communist regime and joint commission between church and state to achieve an operating agreement between the two entities. After some back and forth the government agreed to not interfere in church affairs so long as the clergy kept out of anti-state politics. Most importantly for Wyszynski, he secured the continuation of religious education in schools.

Wyszynski’s real politik strategies at home were not met with enthusiasm by the Vatican, particularly by Pope Pius XII. Four months after Wyszynski’s church-state agreement the Vatican issued Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which threatened all Catholics with excommunication for defending or advocating communist ideas. The Soviet Union was furious with the Church. In Poland, retribution came two months later when the regime nationalized Church hospitals. The Pope and the primate of Poland had very different goals. The Pope wanted to contain the spread of communism to other countries, while the primate had to find a working relationship with which he could minister to his flock. Likewise, Gomulka and Stalin had very different goals. Stalin was hoping the Faith in Poland would die of suffocation. Gomulka on the other hand new that overreaching against the thing held nearest and dearest to his fellow Poles could turn very violent, very fast.

Gomulka was a pragmatist as much as he was an atheist. He paid several visits to the Polish clergy, enlisting them to help spur construction in new government residential projects. He needed the support of the clergy for these developments to be successful. Without the sacraments one would liver in these communities. Nonetheless, the goal was pure communism. Toward that end Gomulka himself promoted the efforts of Boleslaw Piasecki and his progressive brainchild, Pax. Gomulka was outspoke against the Faith but was careful to only aim his critiques at Rome, rarely rebuking his fellow Poles. His pragmatism, for a time at least successfully convinced Moscow that an all-out war on religion would not be necessary. This idea came to be referred to as the Polish path to socialism.

Gomulka could not sideline the Church and Wyszynski could not mobilize meaningful resistance to the regime, while both had mutual gains to be made in reconstruction. This reality led to a semi-official attitude of cooperation between the Church and the communist state, contradicting the public posturing of Pope Pius XII.

Since the communist regime tossed out the concordat with Rome, the legal and bureaucratic cooperation between the Polish episcopate and the Vatican drew farther apart, leading to a more independent Polish Church. This was a calculated divide and conquer strategy by Soviets. And yet, it soon turned into a strength for the Polish Church. The lack of a concordat had zero effect on the faithful who remained ardent Roman Catholics, devoted to the papacy. The episcopate, however, now had room to maneuver. The result was a flexible Polish Church that remained always a step ahead of the Soviets.

Blinded by their hated Pius XII, the Soviets failed to see the growing strength of the Polish hierarchy. Pius XII was always seen by them as a way too friendly with the Germans – this was made worse after the war when he seemed overly eager to appoint German bishops in Polish episcopates, forcing the Polish Church into constant damage control efforts.

One thing to keep in mind with Pius XII was his encounters with communism thus far in his life. He knew their street level tactics from his day as Bishop of Munich, Germany. One day, as bishop, he discovered his nunciature was riddled with bullets intended for him by communist revolutionaries. He then found himself surrounded by a mob wielding butcher’s knives and handguns. The future pope was not deterred and walked towards them. He was tall, dressed in black with a violet sash, with a glistening cross dangling across his chest. He demanded they leave immediately as they were trespassing on the property of the Holy See. One among the group said that they don’t care about the Holy See. They further demanded that he show them where his hidden money and food is. He replied that he had given it all to the poor in Munich. This enraged the crowd. But instead of shooting the bishop one of them threw his pistol at him, denting the cross on his chest. The bishop stood his ground, and one by one the mob slinked away.

A few days later, on his way home, being driven by his valet at twilight, the mob once again appeared. The valet had no choice but to stop. They surrounded the vehicle and began shaking it violently. The future pope ordered his driver to put the top down. The valet refused. “Do as I say,” he repeated. “Put the top down.” The driver at last relented, and the bishop stood up on the back seat of the car for all to see. If anyone would have dared to shoot him, they would have had a clear target.

“My mission is peace,” he announced to them. “The only weapon that I carry is this holy cross. I do no harm to you, but only good things. Why should you harm me?” He then raised his right hand and blessed them all, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The crowd went silent. As Pius XII sat back down, a lane opened before him. Idealism, not pragmatism in the face of radicalism, was the only way Pius XII knew how to deal with communists, and it had worked for him in the past.

On All Saints Day, 1946, another future pope was learning the street realities of communism. At 26 years old Karol Wojtyla knelt before a Polish cardinal in an illegal underground seminary. He was the only priest being ordained on that day. With a white candle in his hands, Wojtyla was admonished to be perfect in faith and actions, and well-grounded in virtue. He then laid himself down on the floor, as those around him chanted the litany of the saints. Wojtyla then knelt before his bishop who laid his hands on the young man’s head, as those present sang Veni, Sancte, Spiritus.

As the 1950s dawned there was a change in the air across the Soviet sphere. Communism was now less an ideological product of Marx, but more an extension of the will of Stalin. In Czechoslovakia, Primate Josepf Beran was detained in a monastery. In Hungary, Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty was arrested and convicted of espionage, sentenced to life in prison. Primate Wyszynski was shrewder than both those men. He saw little good to be done from prison. Instead, he aimed to thread a needle between cooperation and resistance, making the two hard to tell apart for the Soviets, by design. When thinking of his counterparts languishing in prison in the other blocs, Wyszynski said:

“Martyrdom is undoubtedly an honorable thing, but God leads His Church not only along an extraordinary way, that of martyrdom, but also along an ordinary one, that of apostolic work.”

Wyszynski’s public policy was manifested in limited appeasement. He travelled the country often and steered the faithful away from revolutionary and violent directions. He exhorted them to spiritual goals, not revolutionary ones, guiding their thoughts upwards, towards God, towards the salvation of their own souls. His priests were strictly forbidden from political involvement, and he constantly engaged in communication with the local regime. Yet for all of Wyszynski’s pragmatism vis-à-vis communism, he had no answer for Stalinism.

The Polish minister of education soon announced the full removal of religion in school, proclaiming:

“The youth must be educated not only according to the wishes of the government but must become communists as well. I am aiming at this and will do this. If I will not succeed, I will call for the help of the security police.”

Kindergarten was especially targeted, for they were the most malleable, and next generation must be Godless. Parents then took it upon themselves to create underground religious schools, which subjected them to investigations by the security police.

The Polish regime then cut off communication with Wyszynski and seized the nation’s largest Catholic charity organization, Caritas, under the pretext of misused funds, handing over its control to none other than Pax, Boleslaw Piasecki. Caritas was a goldmine, briming with stockpiles of medicine and provisions meant for the poor, but now free to sell on the black market. The public face of Caritas attempted to keep up appearances as the same old charity organization to rake in donations from the Catholic laity. But with zero public trust the jig was up almost immediately. As Caritas collapsed, so did the orphanages and hospitals it supported.

Primate Wyszynski found himself in a desperate position. All the work of reconstruction after World War II was being cannibalized by Stalin. Boleslaw Piasecki found himself in a newfound position of prominence. But remember, he wasn’t a true communist. He considered himself a Catholic first, and still aimed to have this vehicle of communism usher in a Catholic dictatorship. Sensing the weakened position of Cardinal Wyszynski, Piasecki shrewdly stepped in to mediate negotiations between the hierarchy on its heels and the ascending state. His mediation worked, and on April 14th, 1950, the first accord between a hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and a communist government was singed. The agreement was simple: the regime would promise to respect ecclesiastical rights of the Church, which in turn would respect the regime’s secular authority. The church was required to support the government’s economic policies, condemn any anti-state activities, resist the political use of religion, and only recognize the Vatican’s authority within a doctrinal and canonical context.

For its part, the state would guarantee religious freedom, permit religious instruction in schools, allow Catholic educational institutions, and refrain from interfering with monastic orders, Catholic publications, or charity organizations. The problem of course was that much of this damage had already been done, and by definition communism is not restrained by the rule of law anyway. An agreement signed could easily be broken for any pretext. Wyszynski no doubt was aware of this reality. He was simply buying time.

Within two years of signing this agreement the regime began shutting down seminaries. In 1953, they demanded the control of ecclesiastical appointments at all ranks – both open violations of the recent accord. Wyszynski publicly rejected these decrees threatening to leave these positions vacant rather than let the communist have a hand in them. The regime responded by nationalizing whatever remaining church hospitals still existed.

Despite the betrayal of the agreement the hierarchy made with the regime, the clergy’s command of the faithful in Poland did not weaken. It increased. This Church suffering resurrected that martyrological residual self-image of Poland for the Poles. The perseverance of the clergy in keeping their flock’s eyes on heaven only strengthened this culture. This vigor once again confounded the Soviets. To them, the source of their strength seemed to rest in a single boundlessly energetic man, Cardinal Wyszynski, who commanded the undying loyalty of the faithful.

Then there was a watershed moment. On March 5th, 1953, Stalin died. The state-run newspapers in Poland of course ran glowing sentimental obituaries. But the previously mentioned Tygodnik Powszenchny, that ecclesiastical weekly publication started immediately after World War II, refused to publish the tyrant’s obituary or even mention his name at all. And so, the diocesan weekly journal was nationalized, with control given over Boleslaw Piasecki’s Pax organization again, who was over the moon to be in control of the bishop’s magazine, a competitor to his own.

Later that same year, the regime brought forward the trial of a bishop they had arrested, Bishop Kaczmarek, our old friend who suffered from Jewish paranoia as his country was being rolled over by Nazi and Soviet tanks. In communist custody a confession was beaten out of him. He declared he had been Nazi collaborator and named Cardinal Wyszynski as a co-conspirator. The energetic Primate of Poland was immediately arrested and held without trial. The Russians had finally gotten their man. Along with the primate, other priests and bishops loyal to the Church suffered the same fate, all with bogus charges of espionage, sabotage, hiding arms and foreign currencies, and being in service to the United States.

During these waves of arrests, the remaining bishops of Poland publicly called out the signs of the times:

“Poland, which for a thousand years has been a Catholic country, where more than 90 percent of the people are Catholics, strongly attached to their faith, the children of Catholics are educated and trained, contrary to the wishes of their parents, in the Marxist spirit and in an atmosphere, which is not only indifferent to religion, but is directly anti-religious and anti-Christian… Through the application of diversified methods, the present school policy in Poland encroaches upon the freedom of conscience of the younger generation; destroys in the young people all the values implanted in them by home and church education; and teaches them to lie and to foreswear the most sublime ideas and principles. There is no need to explain that such educational policies, despite the formal guarantees contained in the Agreement, are in glaring contradiction to natural law, to universal human laws, to rights guaranteed in the Constitution of the Peoples’ Republic, and to the Decree on the Freedom of Conscience and Religion.”

Piasecki’s Pax organization was on the ascendency, doing its part in chipping away at Catholic intellectual opposition to communism. It had established a new organization called the Progressive Catholic Movement, which in 1955 could claim 5000 priests and 2500 lay Catholics, pushed apologetics for a kinder, gentler communism based on Catholic principles. Piasecki could feel his moment was nigh and published a book called Vital Issues codifying his position, and put forward his argument for his end goal of a totalitarian Catholic state.

With the wave of Stalinism, the arrest of Cardinal Wyszynski, and the subversive growth of Piasecki’s Pax organization, what remained of the Polish Church was brought to its knees, and on December 17th, 1953, the bishops that still enjoyed freedom took an oath of allegiance to the Polish People’s Republic.

Now, with the bishops finally neutered in Poland, Piasecki and Pax ceased to be useful to the communist regime. Soon gone were his high-ranking political invitations to dinner parties and lucrative handouts of seized Church property. Piasecki was also weakened by the receding wave of Stalinism. Nikita Khrushchev was now in charge of the Soviet Union and was hellbent on de-Stalinization. Then the Vatican had its say on the progressive political junky and his dodgy patchwork of ideologies. He was found guilty by a Vatican commission of undermining Catholic doctrine and serving the enemies of the Church. His writings were placed on the index of forbidden readings. On June 8th, 1955, a public statement by the Vatican was put out:

“At a time when Cardinal Wyszynski and other Polish bishops remain in jail... we are witnessing a despicable initiative, which tries to present the communist regime as fully respectful of the freedom of the Roman Catholic Church. Writer Boleslaw Piasecki – a leading personality among Polish progressive Catholics – is among the staunchest advocates of this fallacy, which they also propagate on the eastern side of the iron curtain.”

Piasecki, though a radical idealist, was, as we’ve said a devout Catholic first, and to his credit, in the face of excommunication he withdrew his book from circulation and recanted his favorable opinions towards communism. There is no direct evidence of an official retaliation by the communist regime against Piasecki, but not long after his recantation, his teenage son was abducted by a man with a briefcase while walking home from school, never to be seen again.

From here, it is time to leave our very unfortunate friend Boleslaw Piasecki. Though he remained a public figure and Pax continued, his status as both a Catholic thinker and a good communist was diminished to the point of public irrelevance, proving true the admonishment of Pius XI, that one could not be a good Catholic and a true socialist at the same time.

In the mid-50s, Nikita Khruschev was looking for a reasonable place to land the Soviet Union from the terrors of Stalin. However, atheism as a means to breaking down the strength and structure of the family unit was still very much a real effort, especially under the guise of progress. On April 27th, 1956, the Council of the State made abortion legal in Poland. Yet without Cardinal Wyszynski, there was no formidable leadership in the Polish hierarchy to combat these assaults on the family, in this case morally, but also financially. The economy was a mess. Food was scarce. Housing options were dreadful. In June, in the city of Poznan an insurrection began. When the government stepped in to crush the uprising, as many as 78 striking workers were killed, including a 13-year-old boy. Hundreds more were wounded and arrested. Going into fall, more protest erupted across the country. Police headquarters and state-run radio stations were broken into and vandalized. Red Army monuments were destroyed. Among many of the demands of the protesters was the removal of Russian language from the curriculum of their schools, and an explanation of the mass execution sites of Poles at the hands of the Russians, like the Katyn forest. These street protests and clashes with police now suddenly threatened the stability of the entire nation. Poland appeared to be taking steps down the bloody path of armed revolution against the largest army in the world. Nikita Khrushchev responded decisively. The red army crossed into Poland and halted just outside Warsaw. Khrushchev himself arrived at the capital to take control of the situation. He immediately brought Wladislaw Gomulka back from retirement and put him in charge of Poland. Gomulka had been forced out of office a few years back as he was not a loyal Stalinist. Khrushchev knew Gomulka had the confidence of the average Pole and was a man who knew how to reach agreements. The first thing Gomulka did was warn Khruschev that the Poles were so fed up with Russian communism that if those tanks continued into the capital streets, they would be met with popular armed resistance.

Gomulka reminded the Soviet Premier that Poland was on its own road toward communism, and that if it was to succeed it must be more Polish and less Russian by necessity, due to Poland’s complicated history with Russia. In the end, Gomulka secured not only the withdrawal of most of the Red Army, but also won significant economic relief from the Soviet Union. He further secured permission to ease persecution of the Church and to abandon collectivized farming, which was literally starving people. This emotional prudence and faith in negotiation allowed Poland to enter what period historians call the thaw, where things for the faithful looked up. The flare up and success of Polish worker strikes and protests spurred on similar actions by the workers in Hungary, sparking a hot revolution in the same year, leaving thousands dead, flattened by the Red Army.

Within two years after Poland’s frozen revolution (as it came to be called), hundreds of new seminaries were established. With this growth in freedom of the Church, thousands of young Poles now saw a real future in the priesthood. Despite the thaw, this growth in the priesthood was still very much an ideological to the diehard communists. One priest, Father Mazgaj, author of Church and State in Communist Poland, a principal source for this podcast, went into personal accounts of the regime hiring prostitutes to go to churches and confessionals to compromise the integrity of the Polish priesthood.

Cardinal Wyszynski had now been under house arrest for three years at a convent with Franciscan sisters. In the wake of the Frozen Revolution, Gomulka released him to bring calm to the people. During his captivity Wyszynski read a historical novel called “The Deluge”, published in 1886. The Deluge told the story of the wars against the Swedes under the same name when a weakened Poland was invaded 300 years prior. The book recounted that Poland was saved through the intercession of the woman enshrined in the icon of the Black Madonna at Jansa Gora, the mother of God. Cardinal Wyszynski, inspired by this book decided that his country would indeed turn to the Queen of Poland again, and the time was nearly perfect to do so. For as he finished this book, Poland was just 10 years away from the 1000-year anniversary of its baptism.

On May 3rd, 1957, the Primate announced a Great Novena would commence, lasting 9 years, ushering in the new millennium of Polish Catholicism. With his novena, he aimed to direct all the prayers and intentions of his flock, of Poland, to the renewal of their Christian society, and beg for Our Lady’s intercession in their great struggle to keep the faith. The Polish clergy and faithful, already steeped in Marian devotions took up Wyszynski’s Great Novena with a zeal that truly frightened the regime. Sermons calling for the renewal of faith, the renewal of marriage, the defense of the unborn, the renewal of true education exploded from the pulpits across Poland. Gomulka freaked out. He comprehended the enormity of this call to prayer for better than his Soviet overlords. He felt betrayed by the Primate. He released Wyszynski to calm the people, to reinstitute a working relationship between Church and government, not to launch a crusade. This was not what he released the Primate of Poland to do. Gomulka’s previous attitude of ambivalence toward the Church and its faithful was now soured. The monastery at Jansa Gora was raided and ransacked by police forces. Religious education, where it had been reimplemented, was once again removed. And when religious instruction was moved to parishes and chapels to make up for the lack of instruction in the schools, this too was made illegal and shut down.

Gomulka had other problems on his hands as well. The Soviet Union was unhappy with the statistical growth of Poland’s population. Of all the nations behind the iron curtain, Poland was the last one the Soviets wanted to see be fruitful and multiply. Poland, a country of 30 million plus, and already proven to immune to atheism, and influential enough in the Soviet block to spark revolutions among its neighbors, was going through a population boom. In December of 1959, the laws concerning abortion were amended from limited legalization in 1956 to virtually no restrictions. Contraception was encouraged at doctor visits. Physicians were required to hand out birth control along with maps to abortion facilities. And of all the western institutions the Soviet Union refused to allow within its borders, an exception was made for Planned Parenthood, which was permitted to advertise its services schools.

In response to these attacks on the family, Wyszynski began upping his rhetoric. While he called for the Poles to exercise “peace and patience”, he also reminded them they were in the midst of a battle between “God’s empire and the Devil’s empire.” Since the government now was aiming for the utter destruction of the family itself, the Primate pushed his faithful to take responsibility for their children’s religious education – the regime was furious with these calls to throw education underground.

As the 1950’s was drawing to a close, and with both Church and state hardening in their position, reversing the thaw from a few years ago, Cardinal Wyszynski called Father Wojtyla into his office in Warsaw. He told the 38-year-old priest that the holy father has decided to elevate him to be a bishop of the Church. Wojtyla was stunned. When he left the Primate’s office, he knew not where to go, so he sought out the presence of the Lord. He went to the closest convent he could find where he knew the Blessed Sacrament would be exposed. The sisters there did not recognize him, but since he was a priest, they let him in, and escorted him to their private chapel, where they left him alone to pray.

Hours later the nuns, somewhat concerned that they had not heard from the windswept priest peaked into the chapel to check on him. They found him lying face down in front of the tabernacle. One of the sisters carefully approached the priest saying, “Perhaps father would like to come in for supper?” But the priest only answered, “My train doesn’t leave for Krakow until after midnight. Please let me stay here. I have a lot to talk about with the Lord.”

To deal with the rising authority of the Polish priesthood, Gomulka determined the best path was still indirect mitigation, especially towards Wyszynski. One of those methods was to circumvent the primate entirely and negotiate directly with the Vatican, for at this time John XXIII and his successor, Paul VI were far more open minded and less hardened against communism than Pius XII and his predecessors. The post-Pius XII Vatican had leaned into a policy called Ostpolitik, or open communication with the Soviets. Yet due to the autonomy Wyszynski enjoyed, these attempts failed to launch.

Gomulka’s pragmatic atheism was failing him. He was losing control of his own fate. He knew if he was too lenient, Russia would eventually roll in with tanks like they did with Hungary. Yet if he amped up persecution of the clergy, he may have a revolution on his hands – and Russia would roll in with tanks anyway. In 1961 he proclaimed to the press that the conversion of the Polish people to communism is illogical. He warned his colleague, Fidel Castro in Cuba, to not underestimate the power of the Church. When the east German communist leaders encouraged him to simply crush the bishops with imprisonment and violence, Gomulka told them that here in Poland:

“…Things are not so simple. Religious fanaticism is very powerful in this country. Many religious people even refuse to debate the subject as the very idea is taboo for them. And the only words that they have for those who do not share their beliefs are curses.”

Finally, in 1966, Gomulka had to contend with the culmination of Poland’s Jubilee, the anniversary of its baptism, and the crescendo of Cardinal Wyszynski’s Great Novena. To combat this dangerous spiritual initiative the regime launched a massive propaganda campaign of distraction. New secular holidays were announced reminiscing famous Polish battles in history – especially those that were victories over the Germans. In the stadium of Katowice (ka·tuh·veet·suh), new sporting events were scheduled. The Hungarian soccer team was brought in to play against the Polish soccer team. Military parades, with tanks and goosestepping soldiers were put on display. Socialist agitators were bussed in from God knows where and dispensed into the streets of Warsaw. Once outlawed American western films were suddenly screened in public to draw people away from the Masses being celebrated in communion with the Great Novena. One contemporary Pole for these events remembered that these events were the greatest concentrations of secret agents and informants for the Soviet Union in Poland.

The Polish Catholic celebrations began on April 14th, in Gniezno. Where now Archbishop Karol Wojtyla began preaching, yet was interrupted by a 21-gun salute by the regime to honor the minister of defense of Poland. The archbishop waited patiently for the noise to stop, before continuing his sermon. On May 7th, at the Jasna Gora monastery, more than a million people turned up for the Mass to venerate the image of the Black Madonna. Wojtyla spoke there too and gave what witnesses called an unforgettable defense of religious freedom, directly incriminating the regime’s persecution of life and faith.

Behind closed doors, Gomulka was under intense pressure from the Soviets to crush this Great Novena. These peaceful yet powerful spiritual events were undermining 20 years of communist blood, sweat, and bullets in Poland, and putting the gospels of Marx and Lenin under direct assault. In hopes of sabotaging the Great Novena, a secretive quasi-government militia unit was dispatched to capture the Black Madonna but failed. When copies of the Black Madonna began popping up everywhere in windows and street corners, the image was made illegal, banned from display anywhere. And so, in brilliant protest, Poles hung empty frames in place of the sacred image, making more impact than the image itself.

On June 20th, a replica of the Black Madonna was supposed to arrive at the head of a procession in Warsaw, completing the jubilee festival. The communist authorities were hellbent on preventing this. The police came out in force and blocked off the route the procession was scheduled to take, forming a barricade of men. Approaching the police was the procession of the faithful, carrying before them an empty frame of what should have been a blessed icon of the Queen of Heaven. Now, they were denied entrance to the summit of their pilgrimage after nine years of the Great Novena. And after seeing a thousand years of Christian culture systematically stripped from their very lives, these faithful had at last reached a boiling point. The space between the two armies was full of violent, pent-up energy, a small spark might literally ignite a full-on riot. Shouts could be heard among the faithful crying “down with communists” and “Long live Cardinal Wyszynski”. Cardinal Wyszynski himself recognized the tinder box was ready to blow, and so to calm the people he broke the law and gave them what they desired. The Primate had a replica of the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa displayed in a window overlooking the crowd. The mere sight of this image before the procession of Polish Catholics cooled tempers for the moment and saved Warsaw from what could have been a deadly day.

Wladyslaw Gomulka, that pragmatic atheist who devised the Polish path towards socialism was losing control of his position and his temper. His aids note during the period of the Great Novena the very mention of Cardinal Wyszynski would arouse violent reactions.

Cardinal Wyszynski on the other hand was deftly tightening the chess board against the regime. Before closing the jubilee celebrations, he told his fellow Poles:

“In the face of a totalitarian threat to the Nation… in the face of an atheistic program… in the face of biological destruction, a great supernatural current is needed, so that the Nation can consciously draw from the Church the divine strength that will fortify its religious and national life. Nowhere else is the union of Church and nation as strong as in Poland, which is in absolute danger. Our “temporal theology” demands that we dedicate ourselves into the hands of the Holy Mother, so that we may live up to our task.”

Wyszynski had proven to be a formidable foe against Gomulka. And though Gomulka had the regime’s resources on his side and the backing of the Soviet Union, Wyszynski was smarter, and more patient. Over 20 years into domination by the largest military force on the face of the earth, it was the Church hierarchy who held the initiative in the battle for Poland’s soul. And there was another enemy the Soviets had to contend with now – this new, young, charismatic archbishop, Wojtyla. His sermons had earned a reputation for popularity beyond the Primates. On the surface he seemed to speak in an innocuous conciliatory tone yet woven into his words were razor sharp condemnations of not only the current regime, but the entire philosophy of Marx. Subtle attacks are the most difficult ones to counter.

Like Wyszynski, Carol Wojtyla had lived through the Nazi years and saw firsthand the onset of communism in his beloved nation. He had no living family left on earth, his father being the last, dying when Wojtyla was away at college. He studied polish literature and language. He had a sense of the ordinary Pole and grasped agrarian spiritual patriotism, history and culture. He performed in plays and was naturally charismatic. He had an actor’s timing for wit and humor. He treaty rural piety and culture with admiration yet knew how to work a room of intellectuals. He was affable and athletic – a natural leader. The KGB was watching Wojtyla. Some felt that the archbishop was going to be their most significant adversary in the coming years for control of Poland, but not with their greatest imaginations, or darkest nightmares could they have predicted how powerful a force he would become for Poland.

Part Three:

In 1947, on the Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross, September 14th, was born a boy in a remote hamlet of northeast Poland. The boy’s name was Jerzy Popieluszko. His family had lived in this same hamlet for generations, raising grains, potatoes and poultry. He was the fourth child to his parents. The small church where he was baptized was also where he would eventually learn his catechism as he advanced in age. Though as he aged it became clear to his parents that Jerzy was destined to be a frail man, for he was always so weak and sickly that helping with farmyard chores was out of the question. Despite this frailness, so strong was little Jerzy’s desire to be in the presence of the Lord that he would walk three miles every day for Mass. The priest who catechized Jerzy recounted:

“You had the impression that he wanted to swallow in one gulp all degrees of holiness. The boy was religiously insatiable and appreciated the value of the interior life.”

When he was 8 years old, he made himself his own alter and mimicked the gestures of the priests during Mass. When he announced to his parents that he believed he had a vocation for the priesthood, no one was surprised. As a teenager in boarding school, Jerzy kept his nose in books about Polish history, the lives of the saints, especially Maximillian Kolbe. He earned the nickname, the philosopher among his friends. At the age of 17, Jerzy decide it was time to join the seminary, but instead of staying close to home, he opted for Warsaw, to be nearer to Cardinal Wyszynski, the great Primate of Poland who defended the Church from the atheists and communists.

Jerzy’s fellow seminarians recall that because he was constantly sick and weak, he possessed a special charism to care for the sick and weak, and in post WWII Warsaw, there were plenty of those around. In October of 1966, a few months after the Great Novena, Jerzy received the cassock of a seminarian, only to be called a few days later to put on another uniform. The regime had a special military unit for seminarians, in which they were required by law to serve in. The goal was of course to break the young men, to make them cast off their black robes and drive away the idea of vocation. The regime force fed them Marxist and Lenin philosophy and paraded young pretty girls around them, hoping that if they couldn’t appeal to their intellects, perhaps they would give in to their lower appetites. They were bullied and threatened with being shot on sight. Jerzy recounted in a letter to his parents:

“They try to break us with fatigue, they drive us relentlessly and hound me, but I am very tough; they will not ruin my vocation either by threats or torture.”

One day an army officer asked Jerzy whose face was on the medal that he wore. It is the Queen of Poland, the Blessed Virgin Mary, he said. The soldier ordered that Jerzy take off the medal, throw it to the ground and trample upon it, and if he didn’t comply, he would be beaten. When Jerzy refused to obey, the officer grabbed the medal, giving it a yank to rip it from the chain, but neither the medal nor chain broke. Jerzy was then beaten to a pulp and thrown into solitary confinement. For two years he endured this suffering, and his health never fully recovered from this time.

For Cardinal Wyszynski, relations with the regime were at an all-time low. A year after Jerzy received his cassock, the Primate was denied permission to leave the country to attend a synod in Rome. It was a petty punishment for the Vatican not inviting Pax or any of the socialist Christian groups to the synod.

Since the Great Novena the Soviets had only doubled down on their insistence of an atheist Poland. They had just finished construction of an entire new city called Nowa Huta. Nowa Huta was designed to facilitate the utopian labor lifestyle of the proletariat workers of the enormous Nowa Huta steelworks facility. It was advertised as cutting-edge communists society. And most importantly, it was the only city in Poland without a single church. The planners designed it specifically to not have one. The residents of Nowa Huta however were of course your average Polish laborer, not atheists, and quickly demanded a church. Repeated requests to build one were naturally met with repeated denial. Finally, the citizens took it upon themselves to build thier church. When they settled on location, they erected a huge cross marking the future place of their worship. And they had a significant ally on their side. The brand-new city of Nowa Huta was built in the canonical territory of Krakow. And the bishop of Krakow was now Karol Wojtyla, who had just been elevated to Cardinal. He took up their cause and began prodding the regime to approve the proposed building site. When they refused again, the archbishop began celebrating outdoors masses at the site, rain or shine. The regime was checked. Nowa Huta was built by atheists for atheists. But no one who lived there was an atheist. And now not only did a huge cross stand tall in defiance against their best laid plans, but the second most powerful bishop in Poland was acting as if a church was already there. Their reaction was predictable. In 1967, police tied a noose around the cross. They attached the other end to a tractor and brought the symbol of faith down to the ground. There was to be no church in Nowa Huta.

Wojtyla continued to leverage the full apostolic and political weight of his office and popularity that the regime had no choice but to respect on some level. And over the course of the year, Cardinal Wojtyla wore down the regime, securing a permit for the people of Nowa Huta to build their church. He himself broke the ground with the first shovel of dirt. Father Dziwisz, friend and aid to Wojtyla recalled that this victory at Nowa Huta was the beginning of a new forward-facing posture of the Polish hierarchy against the regime. They had the initiative, and they knew it. The workers of Poland, seeing their bishops now stand up to the regime, stand up and win, were also emboldened.

Other than the undeniable rise in the hegemony of the Church in Poland, Secretary Gomulka had another issue to contend with - The economy. For decades, to maintain calm he had been keeping prices artificially low - remember in communism prices and wages are not dictated by supply and demand, but by machinations of party officials. On December 12th, 1970, an economic crisis could be delayed no longer, and decisions had to be made. Food and fuel were suddenly raised 30%. In response, the workers across the nation took to the streets in protests. Gomulka ordered the army out. 40 workers were shot and killed, over a thousand injured. This violence finished Gomulka. Both the people of Poland and their Soviet overlords had lost faith in their pragmatic man, and just eight days later, he was forced into retirement, replaced by a rising star and political opponent of Gomulka, Edward Gierek.

Gomulka’s time in power had effectively terminated attempts at actual Marxism in Poland. As Stalin himself predicted, the saddle simply didn’t fit the cow. Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski observed that the great experiment and moral bankruptcy of Marxism had caused it to be a problem for more than just intellectuals. The rural salt of the earth farmers didn’t want it, didn’t ask for it, weren’t curious about it, and had no use for it. So, now without the urgency of implementing Marxism, what was Edward Gierek’s role for the Soviet Union?

Well, the Soviet Union still pulled the strings of the Polish regime, and the organizational structure of the communist single party system still functioned to one degree or another, if only as a means to hold on to power. The party, like in Poland had at the dawn of the 70’s abandoned much of the purist ideals of Marx and Lenin at the dawn of the 70s, and pivoted towards the larger geopolitical goal of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. The revolution was over. For some of the Soviet bloc countries, this shift meant relying on internal authoritarian nationalism. Poland was no exception.

The first thing Secretary Gierek did was pledge better relations with the Church. His prime minister put out a shocking statement within days of Gierek taking over the government, saying:

“We will work for full normalization in church-state relations, with the expectation that the government efforts will meet with true understanding on the part of the Catholic clergy and the lay Catholic circles.”

Gierek efforts were real too. His legislature authorized the return of some of the confiscated church property from the 40s. Several pending permits for church construction were allowed to commence. In 1971 thousands of Poles were allowed to travel to Rome for the beatification of St. Maximilian Kolbe. With Marxists idealism out of the way, Gierek exercised this freedom to the fullest to increase economic stability in Poland by opening trade with the West, in particular, with the United States.

On May 28th, 1972, Jerzy Popieluscko and 30 other seminarians processed through St. John the Baptist’s Church in Warsaw. Jerzy was 25 years old. As he approached, standing before the altar was his hero, Cardinal Wyszynski. The primate placed upon the young man the stole and chasable and anointed his palms with sacred chrism. Jerzy was now a priest. For his first Mass, Father Jerzy’s handed out commemorative cards that read: “God sends me to preach the Gospel and to bind up the brokenhearted.”

His health was still declining. He was anemic, and subject to feinting. During one of his early Masses, he feinted and cut himself as he fell, hemorrhaging so badly that he needed to spend weeks in the hospital. Despite his illnesses Father Jerzy’s flock grew accustomed to frequent personal visits by their pastor, who they came to love.

Secretary Edward Gierek, like Gomulka before him, had two main political lightning rods to… handle with care – the Church and the economy. Both could go hot at any moment and either bring in Soviet tanks or fill his streets with blood. For the Church, through liaisons, he maintained a close working relationship with Cardinal Wyszynski’s office, giving the primate tacit approval to tend to his flock without restrictions. Wyszynski in turn commanded the Poles to keep civil, and not protest the regime for the time being. As for the economy, it was a simple equation, keep wages high and prices low. The problem was how. The Polish economy, even with support from the Soviet Union could not accomplish this on its own, forcing Gierek to borrow money from the West, allowing him to raise wages 40% from 1971 to 1975, and keep food prices frozen.

But by the end of 75 and into 76, this whole scheme was failing, and again like Gomulka before him, Gierek had to act to keep the economy from crashing. The freeze on food prices was lifted. Meat went up 70%, butter 50%, sugar 100%. The protests again began in Poznan. The police came out in force and began arresting the protestors. Who were subjected to what the regime officers called “paths to health”, which meant they were forced to run through two lines of club wielding police officers.

Wyszynski, smelling weakness, went on the spiritual offense, telling his country:

“Man has a right to engage in economic activity… to be paid according to the dictates of justice, and to have his family provided for… and from the nature of man flows the right to possess private property in such measure as to ensure the freedom and dignity of the human person.”

He wrote to Gierek, personally insisting that Poles have a right to protest a government that would suppress its faith and its wages, insisting that a nation without God will never survive. Wyszynski then fully flexed his status by demanding the release of and amnesty for all the protestors arrested. Both requests were granted.

During this time, Cardinal Wojtyla was touring America on a mission to remind the American Catholics of the spiritual warfare being waged across the Atlantic. In Philadelphia, he said:

“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine Providence; it is a trial which the whole Church, and the Polish Church in particular, must take up. It is a trial of not only our nation and the Church, but in a sense a test of 2000 years of culture and Christian civilization with all of its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights, and the rights of nations.”

It’s important to examine these words in the cultural context of the 1970s. The western world’s general attitudes towards communism to a large degree could be summed up as “apathetic”. None one could predict the future, and the Soviet Union appeared to be quite stable. Thus far the cold war hadn’t gone hot. Western intelligentsia was promoting moral relativism. We have our truths, and they have their truths. Yet Cardinal Wojtyla came to the United States and presented the conflict in Poland against the rest of the soviet bloc in terms of clear good, and clear evil, evoking cosmological magnitude to the present circumstances. There was no middle ground for the Cardinal. No lukewarmness. It was a message that, for the time, was socially and politically out of step with mainstream western discourse.

Less than a year after Wojtyla’s remarks in Philadelphia, there was another future player on the world stage who shared a nearly identical ideological attitude toward the Soviet Union. In 1977 Ronald Reagan was licking his wounds from a primary defeat by Gerald Ford. He was in his private office with foreign policy guru Richard Allen discussing a strategy for his next potential run for the White House. When the conversation came to a future policy towards the Soviet Union, Reagan told Allen that his policy was simple: we win, and they lose.

Richard Allen was shocked. For all his tenure in DC serving presidents committed to detente policies, he had never heard cold war policies put into a context of winning and losing anything. Allen told Reagan that if he decided to run again for president, he would be there for him.

A thousand years before to the Jimmy Carter Presidency, Pope Sylvester had fashioned for King Stephen of Hungary a crown, that would become a symbol of Hungarian Independence. During WWII this crown was smuggled out of Hungary to keep it out of the hands the Nazis. The relic made its way to the United States where it was placed in Fort Knox with the intention of one day returning it to an independent Hungarian nation. Jimmy Carter had decided that the puppet government in Hungary under Soviet domination was close enough. In reality, he hoped it would be a foot in the door for some sort of meaningful negotiation on human rights. Hungarians on both sides of the Atlantic were furious.

After the olive branch to Hungary, the President flew to Poland. On December 29th, 1977, Carter stepped off his plane and declared to the Polish audience that “old ideological labels have lost their meaning” - a surprising statement no doubt for both Catholics and communists alike. After a Potemkin village tour of Poland, Carter praised Edward Geirek and the Soviet installed regime, saying:

“I think that our concept of human rights is preserved in Poland… There is a substantial degree of freedom of the press… and a substantial degree of freedom of religion demonstrated by the fact that approximately 90 percent of the Polish people profess faith in Christ.”

The collective Polish eyerolling must have been extreme.

After promising a gift of 200 million dollars of food and imports to the Gierek regime, Carter was invited for a sumptuous dinner at a 17th century Polish palace with the communist leadership. Outside, a crowd of protestors gathered, pushing closer and closer to the windows shouting towards the America president: Carter, save us.

The political ineptitude of the Polish-Russian regime towards the working class, the erratic and desperate tug of war against the church hierarchy, the brainless economic policies, and the brutal, criminal beatdowns of protestors was inadvertently forcing the people of Poland into an increasingly singular residence movement. Cardinal Wyszynski was now not just a religious leader, but also a labor leader and political leader. The détente presidents of the west had zero sway on his flock and the Vatican’s friendly overtures towards the Soviet Union had zero effect on his status. Poland belonged to Cardinal Wyszynski. Aware of this ultra unique status for a people behind the iron curtain, Wyszynski’s episcopate dared to state:

“We all know the spirit of freedom is the proper climate for the full development of a person. Without freedom, a person is stunned, and all progress dies. Not to allow people with a different social and political ideology to speak, as is the practice of the state is unjust. State censorship has always been and remains a weapon of totalitarian systems. With the aid of censorship, the aim is not only to guide the mental life of society and public opinion but even to paralyze the cultural and religious life of the whole people.”

The hierarchy’s attacks on censorship and use of the word freedom, infuriated Gierek, and would have elicited demands from Moscow to tighten the screws on the loudmouth bishops, but they were distracted by another group of bishops. A few weeks before this statement was published, a new pope was elected, cardinal Albino Luciani. Luciani styled himself Pope John Paul the first. When told that he could not be called ‘the first’ until there was a second, he reassured his critics that soon he would go, and another would come. A few weeks later, Pope John Paul I was dead.

On October 14th, 1978, the enclave of cardinals met again. Two Italian archbishops were favored early, of course, but soon there was murmur of a Wojtyla papacy. When Cardinal Wyszynski caught wind of this, he urged his padawan to accept if chosen, that Poland would need him. After several rounds of voting Cardinal Wojtyla was elected pope – the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. At 58 years old, he was the youngest pope in over a century, and the first Slavic pope ever. As we all know, he took the name John Paull II. When Wojtyla heard the news for himself, he leaned in close to is aid, Father Dziwisz and whispered, “What have they done?”

In the battle for the soul of Poland it’s not hard to imagine how the charismatic Polish cardinal’s elevation to the papacy would be alarming for the communist regime in Poland specifically, but a little harder to comprehend is why this news shook the Soviet Union to its core. The Polish path towards communism was already an elusive enigma. Despite their best-efforts Poland remained a bastion of Roman Catholicism. Religious vocations were off the charts – tens of thousands of priests walked the streets with over 5000 seminarians getting ready to join their ranks. And these priests were some of the best and brightest Poland had to offer – from the communist perspective, educated people were not supposed to believe in superstitions. What if this trend spread beyond Poland?

Karol Wojtyla was already a known quantity – the Soviets had been monitoring him for years. He had at least three illegal homilies on his official record. His entire residence was bugged with listening devices. Father Stanislaw Dziwisz recalls finding them in the study, the dining room, the parlor, and even the bedroom, behind wall coverings, in the telephones, and under furniture. The aid to the cardinal remembered the communists’ spies being outrageously incompetent. A group of “workers” would suddenly show up and declare that the house had an electrical problem that needed fixing. When Wojtyla wanted them to hear something, he would speak loudly. But when the issue was more sensitive – he would leave for the mountains. They knew he was an ardent anticommunist and had victories against them under his belt, Nowa Huta being the most public.

Poles heard of the news from illegal radio broadcasts being sent eastward from Radio Free Europe, the BBC, and Voice of America. Some Poles couldn’t believe it and wanted more verification. They got it when state-controlled newscasts couldn’t ignore reality any longer. A Polish physicist recounted:

“An announcer came on with a very, very sad face and said a new pope had been elected, and that it was Cardinal Wojtyla. That was it. Nothing else. Then the announcer switched quickly to the harvest figures or whatever, the potato crop. It was absolutely amazing.”

Bells, from all the church steeples of Poland rang out in a singular voce of thanksgiving to Heaven. Together the Poles gathered for vigils, singing hymns of praise before the Blessed Sacrament. For the Polish regime and communist governments in eastern Europe, their silence was as loud as the church bells. No official comments, no public statements until three days after the election, when TASS, the official Soviet news agency put out a single announcement:

“Rome, Oct. 16 (TASS) – The election of the new head of the Roman Catholic Church was announced here. He is a Polish Cardinal, Archbishop of Krakow Wojtyla. He took the name John Paul II.”

Russian fears were, however, betrayed privately. Both the Soviet ambassador in Warsaw and the head of the KGB in Warsaw independently warned Moscow that the new pope held extreme anticommunist views. The KGB further put out a report noting that Wojtyla was often highly critical of the state’s agencies and administrators, proclaiming that they had committed violations against basic human rights and unlawfully restricted activities of the Catholic Church, that Soviet policy was an extensive campaign to convert society to atheism and impose an alien ideology upon the people. The KGB was correct. He did say all those things.

The head of the KGB in Moscow, Yuri Andropov, telephoned the KGB office in Warsaw and demanded to know how they could possibly let this happen. They responded that Mr. Andropov should direct his questions to Rome, not Warsaw. When Polish communist politician Stanislaw Kania read the news that Wojtyla had been elected pope, he uttered under his breath: Holy Mother of God. In his shock it seems Comrade Kania had forgotten he was officially an atheist.

Back in Rome, Monsignor Jarek Ceilecki recalled:

“There, on Saint Peter’s Square, when Wojtyla came out on that balcony – that was the end of communism.”

On that balcony, the first public words of the Polish pope to the world were:

“Be not afraid! Open the doors to Christ, open them wide! Open the borders of states, economic and political systems, the vast domains of culture, civilization, and development – open them to His saving power.”

Mere weeks after his election, the new pope was unhappy with the episcopate in Hungary, feeling they had not done enough to resist the regime there after the arrest of Cardinal Mindszenty. The Hungarian bishops had buckled under the oppression of the Soviet puppets and the faithful waned as a result. He wrote a letter to those bishops reminding them of the people’s need to be catechized. Later, when asked if he would visit Hungary, pope John Paul II responded that the pope will visit Hungary when its cardinal learned how to bang his fists on the table.

Around him, John Paul dislodged from the Vatican any administrators interested offering olive branches beyond the iron curtain and replaced them with ardent anticommunist like himself. The post-Pius XII policy of Ostpolitik was gone. Vatican radio was broadened and expanded further into Soviet countries where strong blocks of Catholic lived: Belarus, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, and especially Ukraine where anti-Soviet sentiment was higher than anywhere else. Alex Alexiev, contemporary Russian specialist noted at this time:

“It has now become clear that in the person of the Polish Pope the long-suffering Soviet Catholics have found a determined champion.”

Poland was leading the fight against communism for the world – it was again, as it was before, Antemurale Christianitatis. Across Soviet bloc countries Catholic intellectual resistance groups sprang into existence, making public protests of the abuses against the believers by the unbelievers. The new pope then declared Saint’s Cyril and Methodius co-patrons of Europe alongside Saint Benedict. The brothers Cyril and Methodius were responsible for preaching the gospels to the Slavs and creating the Cyrillic alphabet, reminding the Slavic peoples that their language, literacy, and ultimately their culture is inseparable from the Faith of their fathers.

These pseudo-patriotic statements, Vatican appointments, and radio broadcast were damaging enough for the Russians, but the new pope decided to push the envelope even further. He decided that he would return to his homeland.

This fear was already on the minds of the communist authorities in Poland. Leonid Brezhnev, who took over the Soviet Union after Khrushchev, already made up his mind that the pope should not be allowed to return home. He personally called Edward Gierek to tell him as much. Gierek told Brezhnev it would be impossible, legally speaking, to prevent a native Pole from returning to his country. Brezhnev suggested that Gierek tell the pope to announce that he has taken ill and cannot visit. Gierek explained the futility of that, rather rediculous lie since the pope would naturally get well and reschedule. And further, he reminded Brezhnev that most Poles are Catholic – how could he not allow them to receive a visit from the pope? Brezhnev was incensed, shouting that Gierek can do whatever he wants but he’ll regret it later, and ended the phone call by telling him that Gomulka was a better communist.

Pope John Paull II was granted nine days to return to Poland in June of 1979. Gierek and Wyszynski met at the beginning of that year to begin coordinating the details of the trip between Church and state. Gierek was hopeful that by facilitating the visit the position of his regime would be legitimized in the eyes of the Poles. And further, it would show the West that he was allowing for religious freedom in Poland, which he knew was the best way to open western wallets, something he desperately needed to keep his nation’s food prices from doubling.

As Poland was preparing for the new pope’s visit, father Jerzy Popiełuszko now 32 years old was preparing for his new role as the chaplain for the hospital in Warsaw. There he was able to focus on catechesis for the medical students but also care for the sick and dying, he recalled:

“The medical milieu deserves more pastoral care. The professions of nurse and physician are a true vocation, the ones closest to the priesthood in fact; they bring mercy to those who need it the most: the sick and the suffering. The latter are the most valiant part of the Church: through their sufferings and crosses, they are the closest to Christ.”

When news of the upcoming papal visit hit Warsaw, Father Jerzy was no doubt ecstatic and wanted to assist in whatever way he could. Cardinal Wyszynski put the young priest in charge of organizing all the first aid stations for the millions of pilgrims that would follow the holy father along the nine-day route.

On the morning of Saturday, June 2nd, 1979, the pope’s plane touched down in Poland. As the Pontiff stepped off the stairs, he knelt and kissed the ground of his homeland as church bells rang across the nation. Cardinal Wyszynski was there to greet him along with high level government officials, whom he reassured that his business in his homeland was strictly religious in nature.

The pope’s motorcade left the airport for an 8-mile trip to the older parts of Warsaw. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets the entire way, cheering, singing, laying down flowers, carrying both Polish and Papal flags, and waving banners welcoming the pope home.

The motorcade’s destination was a meeting with Edward Gierek. Gierek treated the pope like an old friend and spoke about the progress of communisms throughout the world, how Poland has benefited from its 35 years of utopia. John Paul reminded Gierek that genuine peace can only be built upon the rights of nations, such as the right to existence, to freedom, and to their own culture and civilization. He went on to recount what he called the bitterness of the partition period for Poland, but also the bitterness they still felt for not being spared from the ravages of WWII.

To a modern listener, those comments may seem benign, but to a Pole in 1979, they knew he was implicating Russia in both events – its persecution of Catholics by the Tsars, its cooperation with the Nazis: its massacres in the forests of Katyn, and its forced deportations of hundreds of thousands of citizens. To say there was tension in this meeting was an understatement.

The popes first public event was a Mass at Victory Square in Warsaw before a huge 36-foot wooden plywood cross. It’s estimated that a million people were present at this mass, which is simply impossible to even comprehend. The photo of John Paul II standing before this cross with outstretched arms toward his countrymen and fellow Catholics is iconic. During the Mass, many in the crowd openly wept. He reminded the people that his trip coincided with the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Stanislaus, who he said purchased his mission of the see of Krakow with his blood – a Polish Catholic bishop murdered by the government of Poland. These were specifically the types of remarks the communists were hoping he would avoid. He continued:

“After so many centuries of a well-established tradition in this field, a son of a Polish nation, of the land of Poland, was called to the chair of Saint Peter. Christ demanded of Peter and of the other apostles that they should be witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. Have we not the right, with reference to these words of Christ, to think that Poland had become nowadays the land of particularly responsible witness?”

He then turned his attention back to the historical atrocities mentioned earlier with Gierek. He placed the blame of not aiding the Warsaw uprising against the Nazis squarely on the Russians, who after making a deal with the devil, decided not to interfere. He then asked the crowd to consider how there could be justice in Europe without a free and independent Poland. He criticized the emphasis that communism puts on man in a material sense, telling his flock that “it is impossible to understand the human person fully without Christ.”

He told the people of Poland to remember their saints, Stanislaus, Wojciech, Maximilian Kolbe, and to:

“Give honor to each seed that, falling in the ground and dying, in it bears fruit. Whether this be the seed of the soldier’s blood spilled on the field of battle or the martyr’s sacrifice in camps and prisons. Whether this be the seed of heavy, daily work in the sweat of one’s brow in the fields, in the workshops, in mines, in foundries and factories. Whether this be the seed of family love, which does not shrink before the gift of life of a new person and takes up the whole labor of upbringing. Whether this be the seed of creative work in the schools, institutions, libraries, in the workshops of national culture. Whether this be the seed of prayer and service to the sick, suffering, abandoned. Whether this be the seed of suffering itself in hospital beds, in clinics, in sanatoria, in homes; in everything that constitutes Poland.”

John Paul II was reaching deep down into the soul of Poland and beckoning it to arise again and remember itself, to remember its own greatness that lie not in grand armies or violent conquest, but in its goodness, its simpleness, its faithfulness to the Truth. This dramatic sermon being delivered on the eve of Pentecost gave the pope cause to remember that just a decade ago this nation celebrated the thousand-year anniversary of its baptism with their Great Novena to Our Lady. Invoking the liturgy for Pentecost, the pope directly appealed to the Third Person in the Holy Trinity, that being already baptized, Poland should now be confirmed in the Faith:

“Let your spirit come down! Let your spirit come down! And renew the face of the earth and of this land.”

The crowd broke out into roaring applause. The chant grew into a unified call among the people. “We want God” they cried.

The communist authorities were beside themselves with anger, but they were also afraid. What was he doing? This had all the marks of an anticommunist political rally. They accused the pope of invoking a “exclusivist Christology”, creating an “us vs them” dynamic, and perpetuating the stereotypical Polish Catholic caricature that the Soviets had been trying to destroy for so many decades now. The regime’s official report of the sermon written up immediately afterwards deemed it “inappropriate”.

Later that same evening John Paul met Cardinal Wyszynski at his private residence for a dinner with Polish intelligentsia. He recalled his own remarks:

“Everything that lies on my heart I said at Victory Square. We said it together – me and you; the people of Warsaw said it. Perhaps I said a little too much, or said it too sharply, but one must stand up for what one believes.”

The next day, Pentecost, the pope spoke at Gniezno, where he recounted all the historical mass conversions of all the Slavic peoples and demanded the spiritual unity of Christian Europe. Then he went to a farm community where still half a million Poles turned out to see their pope. After addressing the farmers, he went to the Polish youth, reminding them of the words of Polish writer Adam Mickiewicz, that a civilization, genuinely worthy of man, must be Christian.

The regime kept up its reporting on John Paul’s words, accusing him of trying to establish a Christian pan-slavish state. They said it smacked of imperialism and had the flavor of a crusade. The concerns were serious enough that the regime officially presented the Polish hierarchy with a list of transgressions that they demanded be stopped. In response, the hierarchy reminded the regime that so far, the Polish crowds have been disciplined and peaceful. When the regime insisted on knowing the text of the pope’s future speeches, the hierarchy assured them that they are, “not bad”.

John Paul then made his way to Czestochowa, the sight of the Jasna Gora monastery that housed the icon of the Black Madonna. He planned to stay there for three full days with over 20 speaking engagements. Half a million poles were there waiting for him. Polish Catholic pageantry, as one author puts it, was on full display: Red and white polish flags, yellow and white Vatican flags, alongside blue flags for Marian devotions. Flowers were everywhere and the children came out dressed in their traditional provincial feasting costumes. Giving a speech under a red and gold canopy the pope joked with the crowd and encourage them to sing hymns and folksongs. Despite all the singing and merriment, one observer remembered that in typical Catholic fashion, when the pope commanded that they pray, the entire crowd fell to their knees like “instantly scythed wheat”. After saying Mass, the pope entered the crowd, blessing them individually, shaking their hands. Long live the pope, they cheered.

Speaking again, he reminded them that the mother of God, whose shrine they were gathered round, has maternal concern over Poland, and in their distress, they must bring their troubles to her and lay them at her feet. That their greatest freedom was their servitude to Mary. At Jasna Gora, the pope said, we are always free. That here a Pole could:

“Feel how the heart of the nation beats in the heart of the mother… how many times it beats with the groans of the historical Polish suffering. But also, with shouts of joy and victory!”

Days later the Pope addressed the workers of Poland. He received sustained applause when he demanded that prayer be a part of the daily toil of labor. He praised the industrial developments of Poland yet gave credit not to the regime, but to the faithful workers who strong hands wrought these improvements.

Then the pope was off to his old episcopate, Krakow. There he told the million-person crowd that:

“You must be strong with the strength of faith. You must be faithful, today more than in any other age you need this strength. So, before going away, I beg you once again to accept the whole of the spiritual legacy which goes by the name of Poland. Never lose your trust, do not be defeated, do not be discouraged. I beg you, always seek spiritual power from Him from whom countless generations of our fathers and mothers have found it. Never detach yourselves from Him, never lose your spiritual freedom, with which he makes a human being free.”

The next stop for the pope in Poland was his nation’s own hell on Earth – Auschwitz. John Paul walked through that infamous, ghastly gate bearing the words, “work sets you free”. He went directly to the cell where Saint Maximilian Kolbe offered up his life for a stranger. The pope knelt to the ground and kissed the cold prison floor. In it he left behind a bouquet of red and white flowers - red for martyrdom, white for purity. Leaving that hallowed dungeon, the pope walked to the wall of death – a placed remembered for the execution of some 20,000 prisoners. Accompanying the pope for this visit was Franciszek Gajowniczek, former inmate of Auschwitz, who was alive for this moment because it was he who’s life Maximilian Kolbe saved. Upon meeting the 78-year-old holocaust survivor, the pope embraced him as a father embraces a child.

Leaving the deathcamp section of Auschwitz, the pope moved to the concentration camp side where he was to offer public Mass. The altar was built upon the terminus of the railroad tracks entering the camp. Above the altar was a large cross ringed with barbed wire at its center, evoking the crown of thorns. Hanging from the cross was a piece of cloth that resembled a prisoner’s uniform bearing a red triangle identifying its owner as Polish. It was inscribed with Kolbe’s number – 16670. Camp survivors who attended the Mass were given a place of honor, wearing replicas of their prison uniforms. They received Holy Communion directly from the pope – some two hundred of these former prisoners were priests. The crowd for this solemn celebration again could easily have been up to a million. The pope told them all that this place was built for hatred and for the contempt for man. A place built for cruelty. He likened Kolbe’s spiritual victory over the Nazis to that of Christ’s victory upon the cross. And how in the grimmest of circumstances, martyrdom bears fruit.

“Once again,” he began “a stage of the age-old struggle of this nation, my nation, for its fundamental rights among the nations of Europe. Once again, a loud shout for the right to its own place on the map of Europe.”

The Polish communist regime was done with this pope’s pilgrimage and began putting up literal roadblocks to his plans. He was prevented from entering Nowa Huta, where he himself had established the new church for the workers. So, he flew over in his helicopter and dropped flowers down below.

His final public Mass was at the Commons in Krakow on Trinity Sunday. Estimates put the crowd between 2 and 3 million. He told the crowd that though they lived in a “difficult epoch” they must still “pray for the victory of moral order.” Twice he demanded that, by necessity, Poland’s borders must be opened to allow solidarity with the other Slavs. He then again as he did when he arrived reminded them of their spiritual baptism a thousand years prior and again offered them a spiritual confirmation, reaching out he performed a symbolic laying of hands. He called Polish history a spiritual treasure, a fund, a great common good confirmed by each choice, each noble deed, each life lived in an authentic Christian way. That this Polish Catholic identify is what had sustained them for centuries and that they reject it at their own peril.

The feelings permeating Poland after the holy father left his homeland was that of extreme patriotic and spiritual unity. A group of psychology professors who wanted to study the effects of the papal visit beyond the iron curtain collected hundreds of personal accounts from attendees. The participants used phrases like “feeling part of a greater whole” and “not being lost among the multitudes” or “not feeling anonymous” and sharing similar values, such as Polish, Christian, Western. Their experience was described as divine euphoria, especially during the waves of clapping, cheering, and chanting, passing like a spirit through the millions.

The results of studying the events left researcher Josef Makselon to say a:

“Hitherto unprecedented explosion of positive feelings took place. Each site visited by the pope produced a unique psychological microclimate where feelings of security and mutual affinity dominated.”

Polish poet Anna Kamienska stated:

“We lived through some kind of great visitation. It was as if a perpetually open place of longing and loneliness became filled.”

She went on to lament the weeping upon his departure, but still calling the visit a necessary therapy of joy and love. Jan Jozef Lipski, renowned Warsaw uprising veteran said that everyone in Poland was impacted, even the atheists. That even they were left spellbound by the magnetic presence of Pope John Paull II, that every soul in the country comprehend the historical gravity of the moment they were living in. Early nay sayers to the pope’s visit acknowledge that all the logistical fears of food and transportation for the millions of pilgrims, vandalism, piles of liter and trash, violence, bigotry, and fanaticism – none of it came to pass.

It is estimated that a total of 12 million individual poles showed up to see the pope during his trip – one third of the entire population at the time. The communists, from Moscow to Warsaw were in full on damage control mode. The future of Poland now seemed completely up in the air. Some feared they were on the verge of watching a spiritual revolution convert into a political one – like the recent events in Iran led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. They first attempted to portray the visit as something small, and irrelevant, and just the pope authenticating their just overlordship of his homeland. But in secret they were cut to the quick. It was impossible for even the communists to deny, as papal biographer George Weigel put it, a dramatic pivot in history had just occurred, in these nine days the history of the 20th century turned in a fundamental way. He said the pope handed the poles the keys to their own liberation – the key of aroused consciousness.

Across the Atlantic, another man we discussed briefly felt the Pope was the key to the 20th century as well. Ronald Reagan and Richard Allen were together again watching the news feed of the Pope’s pilgrimage to the millions upon millions of Polish Catholics. Allen said:

“Reagan remained silent for the longest time… and then I glanced at him, saw that he was deeply moved, and noticed a tear in the corner of his eye… He then was overcome by the outpouring of emotion that emanated from the millions who came to see him… solidifying a deep and steadfast conviction that this pope would help change the world.”

Reagan took this energy and directed it towards his syndicated radio broadcasts:

“These young people of Poland who greeted the pope had been born and raised and spent their entire lives under communist atheism.”

Regan then recalled that moment when Stalin once contemptuously asked how many divisions the pope had… Reagan said that question has just been answered by John Paul II.

The future president went on:

“For 40 years the Polish people have lived under first the Nazis and then the Soviets. For 40 years they have been ringed by tanks and guns. The voices behind those tanks and guns have told them there is no God. Now with eyes of all the world on them they have looked past those menacing weapons and listened to the voice of one man who has told them there is a God and it is their inalienable right to freely worship that God. Will the Kremlin ever be the same again? Will any of us for that matter?”

After this, Reagans best friend and closest aide, Bill Clark recalled:

“He had a preoccupation with Poland. He had mentioned Yalta as far back as I go with him as being totally unfair and having to be undone someday… He had a tremendous interest in Poland and its strategic importance… He knew Poland would be the linchpin in the dissolution of the Soviet Empire.”

The Church in Poland, under the protection of John Paul II had shone a lamp upon the path of resistance, peaceful resistance to the communist state which was now totally discredited. The regime’s monopoly on public discourse was broken by the pope. The Poles had gotten a taste of freedom and self-governance – they ran their own rallies of millions of people, administered their own first aid, provided their own security, and did it successfully.

Jan Jozef Lipski remembered that:

“People acted differently: kinder to one another, disciplined yet free and relaxed, as if people had been transformed. The nation showed its other face. These were truly unusual and extraordinary days.”

Another politician recalled:

“Something very strange happened here. The same people who are so frustrated in everyday life, so angry and aggressive when queuing for goods, suddenly transformed themselves into a buoyant collective of dignified citizens. Discovering dignity within themselves, they became aware of their own power and strength. The Police vanished from the main streets of Warsaw as a result, exemplary order prevailed all around. A society deprived for so long of its rights suddenly recovered its ability to take care of itself. Such was the impact of Pope John Paul II’s pilgrimage to Poland.”

Lipski further said the visit left its mark upon the consciousness of the entire nation, above all the young. That spiritually Poland before June of 79 and Poland after June of 79 were two different countries.

Author James Felak, who documented John Paul’s speeches across his homeland sums up nicely the frame of mind he left Poles with:

“He presented an alternative worldview to the regime’s, speaking of concepts such as human rights, the dignity of the human person, and the dignity of labor in ways the political authorities did not and could not. He approached history and morality from a Polish Catholic point of view, challenging conventional communist understandings and breaking certain taboos. For example, he spoke of the “unbreakable” link between the Polish nation and Catholicism, the primacy of Jesus Christ for Poland’s history, the connection between the Blessed Virgin Mary and Poland, the European and Christian roots of Polish culture, and the unity of Europe based Christianity. As Jan Kubik notes, he reinvigorated national and religious symbols and demonstrated that social and political problems could be articulated within a non-Marxist discourse.”

Despite the post papal spiritual high Polish Catholics were riding on, the cold hard reality of communist domination and economic impotence still gnawed at the everyday life of the Pole. Huge foreign debt, extreme supply shortages, long lines at the grocery stores, all continued into the 80s. With foreign debt from the west mounting, and more money still needed, the regime could not afford bad international press – the police were neutered and violent tactics by the regime halted. This environment of totalitarian reluctance to act became the fertile ground with which opposition activity could sprout.

An underground Polish press association developed and quickly spread, ranging from intellectual editorials to farming digests. With the Polish citizens now connected by an secret information network, various resistance groups could now… communicate. Most significantly, labor unions. The tapestry of Churches across Poland became the meeting spaces for these underground labor unions who had an ally sitting in the chair of Peter.

Edward Gierek unwittingly lit the fuse that would demonstrate the latent power brewing among the Polish workers since the elevation of one of his own to the Papacy. On August 14th, 1980, Gierek raised food prices again. The workers across the country suddenly went on a highly organized nationwide and unified strike. Laborer and longtime political activist for workers’ rights, Lech Walesa, had organized one of these strikes at the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk. He quickly rose to the top of the strike movement nationwide and formed a strike committee to spearhead the inevitable negotiations with the government that would come.

As these workers put down their tools and walked out of their factories, they turned first to their eternal Father. A delegation of workers in Warsaw called the office of Cardinal Wyszynski and demanded a priest be sent to minister them. They didn’t ask for guns, or muscle, or picket signs – they asked for the Mass. The primate’s secretary canvassed several of the various pastors, looking for just one to these men. But none would dare. For all they knew the regime’s police would arrive at any moment to bust skulls or even open fire – it had happened before. And with the entire country now in on this worker’s strike, blood was sure to run in the streets.

At a local parish, St. Stanislaus, a young priest and assistant pastor, Father Jerzy Popieluszko volunteered. He timidly approached the factory gate, later remembering:

“I will never forget that day or the Mass that I said. I was terribly nervous; I had never been in a situation like that. What sort of atmosphere would I find? How would they receive me? Where would I celebrate the Mass? Who would read the reading, who would sing? Questions like that, which today appear naïve to me, tormented me then as I was heading toward the factory. At the doors of the steelworks, I had my first major shock. A dense crowd was waiting for me, smiling and in tears at the same time. They applauded me, and I thought for a moment that a celebrity was walking behind me. But no, the applause was actually meant for me, the first priest who had ever walked through the entrance of the steelworks. I told myself then that they were giving an ovation to the Church that for thirty years had been knocking on the doors of the factories. All my apprehension proved to be groundless: the altar had been prepared in the middle of the square as well as a cross that then was erected at the entrance and, after surviving the darkest days, still stands there, surrounded by flowers. Even a makeshift confessional had been set up. The lectors were there too. You had to listen to them, those hoarse voices accustomed to swear words, solemnly reading sacred texts. Then from thousands of mouths came a cry like thunder: “Thanks be to God.” I noticed also that they knew how to sing, and better than in the churches. Before beginning, they went to confession. I was sitting on a chair, with my back leaning against the heap of scrap iron, and these rough men in blue work clothes spotted with grease knelt down on the dirty, oil-stained floor.”

Edward Gierek had no choice but to negotiate with this movement. After two weeks Lech Walesa emerged from those meetings with a signed agreement between his labor movement and the communist regime that recognized the rights of the workers to form their own unions – something anathema to Marxism and destructive to the very pillars of communism. Walesa signed the papers with a souvenir pen bearing the image of John Paul II. At this signing the polish labor movement Solidarity was born. The triumphant and beaming Walesa told his workers:

“We got all we could in the present situation; and we will achieve the rest, because we now have the most important thing: Our independent self-governing trade unions. That is our guarantee for the future… I declare the strike ended.”

Edward Gierek had committed the principal sin against Marx – recognizing that any other legitimate workers movement could possibly exist, and worse, acknowledging that those living under communism could possibly want something other than what it offered. A week after the Gdansk accords were signed, Moscow stripped him of his party leadership and expelled him from the politburo. Gierek’s career was over. For his replacement, the Soviet Union would look to the military brass.

Shortly after the Pope’s visit to Poland, he travelled to the United States. In Washington DC, at a party he met Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. The ambassador knew that the pope spoke Russian and so he politely asked the pontiff if he preferred to convers in Russian or Polish. John Paul II suggested the ambassador speak Russian, while he would speak Polish. At some point during their conversation the Pope took the ambassador by surprise by asking him if he could bless him, suggesting that since he represented such a great country it might help expedite world peace. Dobrynin was startled, for being a good communist he was supposed to be atheist, and further this pontiff was quickly becoming public enemy number one for the Soviets. The ambassador recounted:

“I replied that I would be pleased to receive his blessing, especially in the great cause he mentioned. Thus, I believe I am the only Soviet ambassador throughout the history of our diplomatic service to have received a blessing from the pope.”

The very next month nine members of the Soviet Union’s Secretariat of the Central Committee assembled at their Moscow headquarters to discuss what was to be done about this Polish Pope. The speed at which he was unraveling the legitimacy of their power and ethos was breakneck. By the end of their meeting, they agreed upon an edict that would dictate their course of action:

“Use all possibilities available to the Soviet Union to prevent the new course of policies initiated by the Polish pope; if necessary, with additional measures beyond disinformation and discreditation.”

In case there’s any confusion about what this meant, John Koehler, a cold war journalist called this edict an order for assassination. The security service of Italy agreed with that assessment, labelling it Moscow’s plan for the “physical elimination of JP II”.

An enemy is most dangerous when it is cornered. The Soviet Union was watching its relevance in Poland wane, but they could not stand idly by and let Poland turn. Communism in Poland, a country forever the crossroads of Europe, was existential in nature for the Soviets. All measures were now on the table. And as we begin to look at the 1980s, it’s important to remember that all of us are armchair quarterbacks. We know the Soviets are in their death throws by this point – but almost no one else for saw the coming collapse, especially those living under Soviet domination. As Russia desperately clung to power in Poland it would turn up the pressure on the workers, the faithful, and the clergy. Yet all three were armed with a new ally in the office of the papacy, but another ally would soon join them, the office of the President of the United States.

After the Church and the Solidarity movement had beaten the Gierek regime into total submission, Lech Walesa was interviewed by an Italian Journalist about the recent victories. He told the newspaper man:

“If you choose the example of what we Poles have in our pockets and in our shops, then… communism has done very little for us. But if you choose the example of what is in our souls, I answer that communism has done very much for us. In fact, our souls contain exactly the opposite of what they wanted. They wanted us to not believe in God, and our churches are full. They wanted us to be materialistic and incapable of sacrifice. They wanted us to be afraid of the tanks, and guns, and instead we don’t fear them at all.”

Part Four: Solidarity

Solidarity had swept across the Polish nation, not only as a worker’s movement, but also as a movement of faith and freedom in opposition to communism. Outside the factories of the workers, one could see open air masses taking place. Over the entrances to their steel yards were images of Our Lady. The aging Cardinal Wyszynski praised the Solidarity movement, but also urged prudence. On his mind was the necklace of tanks and bombs that could strangle the country on a whim. His fear was well placed.

The news of Solidarity in Poland shocked the western world. Historian Arthur Rachwald said:

“The idea of an independent labor organization functioning freely is totally incompatible with the Soviet system.”

Pravda, the official newspaper of the Soviet Union objected entirely to the Gdansk accords, reminding its comrades that Lenin insisted the party remained in control of all unions. Yet Solidarity caught on fire. Within three months the movement went from zero to ten million members. We said a few episodes back that nothing like the status of the Catholic Church in Poland existed anywhere east of the iron curtain. The same could be said of Solidarity - It was officially anti-communist, pro-Roman Catholic, pro free speech. It pressed forward the freedom to practice one’s faith, argued for a free press and most critically, free elections. It was only a matter of time before the Soviets intervened.

As Ronald Reagan campaigned again for the Presidency, he privately told his advisors that if elected, he would do everything he could to keep Solidarity from being destroyed. Reagan knew a thing or two about unions and labor movements. He was once president of the Screen Actors Guild and fought to protect it from a hostile takeover by American communists. While campaigning, he told the Teamsters:

“Those of us who know what it is to belong to a union have a special bond with the workers of Poland.”

On November 4th, 1980, Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in one of the largest presidential landslide victories in American history. His election, on the heels of the election of a Polish Pope was a double whammy of unbelievable bad luck from the Soviet perspective. When Lech Walesa was asked what he thought of the results, standing on a windswept plain of Gdansk, he said:

“It was intuition perhaps, but one year ago I envisioned what would happen. Reagan was the only good candidate in your presidential campaign, and I knew he would win. Someday the West will wake up and you may find it too late, as Solzhenitsyn has written. Reagan will do it better. He will settle things in a more efficient way. He will make the U.S. strong and make it stand up.”

Lech Walesa, for his part, had risen to be a significant threat as well, as significant as John Paul the II, for the Soviets. On January 19th, 1981, the day before Reagan’s inauguration, Walesa was permitted an audience with the pope himself. Being brought to the presence of the holy father, Walesa reverently dropped to one knee, before John Paul lifted him back up. Walesa and his entourage then had the opportunity of celebrating Mass with the Pope in his private chapel. At one point the Pope said:

“I want to gather around this altar all working men, and all that their lives contain, all Polish labor.”

The Pope’s spiritual intervention may well have been lifesaving for Walesa personally. He didn’t know it but during his Italian trip he had a hit man on his heels the entire time, a young Islamic Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca who was paid $300,000 for the job. Agca was hired by a Bulgarian spy ring, operatives of the Soviets. The young assassin knew when Walesa would arrive, he knew where he was going, he knew where he was staying. He had with him a suitcase bomb that was kept in a car parked outside the hotel. When Walesa walked by, the hitman was supposed to detonate it with a radio signal. Not everything is entirely clear as to why the job didn’t proceed, but the young man did later admit that the Bulgarians called it off because the Italian police were picking up their trail.

As Ronald Reagan entered the White House, despite being raised protestant by his mother, he brought with him a team of Catholics. His closest friend and advisor was Bill Clark. Clark grew up on a ranch as a shepherd and slept under the stars. Unable to attend Mass in the wilderness of California he would recite the prayers of the Mass on days he guessed were Sundays. He attended seminary but ultimately went into law and politics. As for his views on communism, he considered himself a disciple of Bishop Fulton Sheen, who had carried out his mission well. For the Reagan administration Clark would eventually head the National Security Council.

To run the CIA, Reagan brought in another Irish Catholic, Bill Casey. Casey worked in intelligence during WWII and went on to become a successful corporate attorney and venture capitalist. Casey, a grumpy old, retired Irishman reluctantly took the job, but once in, he became a fierce advocate for the president’s vision. Casey often said the Soviet Union released the four horsemen of the apocalypse upon the world. When asked why he accepted the position, he claimed he felt God was giving him one final shot at the Soviets.

The emphasis on the religiosity of those Reagan surrounded himself with is important for us in this podcast for a couple reasons. It is first striking because Reagan himself was not Catholic. His father was, but it is difficult to discern what impression his father’s faith left on him. His father had terrible bouts with alcoholism that distanced him from his family. And yet the president was obsessed with the Catholic faith in Poland, and further knew the head of the Catholic faith was an important piece in resisting communism.

In Reagans estimation, when it came to Poland, there was a spiritual front to the battle. He surrounded himself with those who shared the same view as him, and the same faith as Poland. Remember, when the workers of Solidarity stood up to the Soviet machine the first thing they asked for was a Catholic priest. And in those darkened streets, ministering to them were fearless priests like Father Jerzy. Remembering those days in 80 and 81 Jerzy says:

“We were kneeling, rosary in hand, in front of makeshift altars, with patriotic and religious songs on our lips. Born of the patriotic surge of the workers, supported by the intellectuals and the cultural circles, Solidarity is a union of hearts, minds, and hands, rooted in ideals capable of transforming the world. It is the hope of millions of Poles, a hope that is much stronger because it flows from the source of all hope.”

Everyone sensed danger in Poland. How would the Soviet Union react to Solidarity? They certainly would not stay idle. Trying to get ahead of any violent response, Pope John Paul released a statement saying Poland had the moral right to be sovereign and independent, and prayed his country would not be the victim of any aggression from whatever source.

The first response came from the Polish Regime. The Soviets had a new man in charge. General Wojciech (voy-chek) Jaruzelski. Jaruzelski is an interesting man. As a teenager he was deported with his family to Siberian labor camps where he was indoctrinated in communism. He eventually returned to fight for the Soviets against the Nazi invasion. From the sun-bleached landscape of Siberia, he developed a lifelong ailment in his eyes that forced him to where these horribly thick coke bottle glasses. This, combined with a receding hairline, military uniform, and stiff apathetic demeanor made him a woefully unphotogenic character on television when addressing his people. He was however a military man, and a known quantity for the Soviets. They knew he would follow orders.

The Polish government publicly rejected the Gdansk accords. Rumors of arrests against Solidarity leaders began spreading. In response, work strikes resumed. In this environment Father Jerzy was officially appointed chaplain of the steelworks in Warsaw. Every morning he heard their confessions and offered them that little bit of faith they needed to just get through another day – another day of living in a country that was not their own, another day of being denied a fair wage to feed their families with, another day of Poland not being Poland. Author Fr. Bernard Brien, who wrote a biography on Father Jerzy, says the chaplain channeled their inclinations towards violence and purified their hatred, encouraging them never to give in to fear and anger, to remain as lambs in the face of persecution. He told them the only fear they should harbor is being cut off from God. If Lech Walesa was Solidarity’s leader, Father Jerzy emerged as its moral compass, a guide through the valley of persecution and a symbol of union between the Church and the workers of Poland.

The tension for the average pole in the early 80s was intense. They struggled to find bread on the store shelves, there were always rumors of war and arrests, and invasion by the Soviets increased every day. The state media broadcast videos of tanks rolling down the streets of Warsaw. Ammunition and supplies were being delivered to the Soviet troops surrounding the country’s borders. Political scientist Arthur Rachwald, who studied Poland tells us that plans were in fact being drawn up for a full-scale invasion by Soviet, East German, and Czech units. Russian reservists were called up and all military leave was suddenly canceled. The Soviet invasion plans assumed a fierce Polish defense of their homeland – half a million troops on either side fighting in urban centers. It was expected to be bloodier, and longer than the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

On December 5th, 1980, Soviet leaders met to discuss the Polish crisis. They agreed that an immediate crackdown was needed on both Solidarity and the Catholic Church. Soviet leadership was however split on the invasion plans. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was turning into a quagmire, making them reluctant to use force. Yet Poland, unlike Afghanistan, was an existential piece of the Soviet Union. The communists needed its trade, its industry, its workers, its territories, and perhaps most importantly, it needed to show the world that Poland would remain communist. If communism can be abandoned, then the whole thing comes crashing down.

Within the Polish military, the United States had a mole - Colonel Ryszard Kuklunski. He was a liaison between Moscow and Warsaw and was tasked with drawing up plans for a hot war with the west. Buried in these plans was a program to round up Solidarity leaders in the middle of the night and have them shot. The man in the White House who communicated with this Polish mole was Zbigniew Brzezinski – an ethnic Pole who also had connections to the Vatican. Colonel Kuklunski notified Brzezinski of the plans he was being asked to draw up. On December 7th, 1980, Brzezinski, acting on behalf of the White House personally called Pope John Paul to brief him on the apparent pending invasion and squashing of Solidarity. Pope John Paul then made a direct appeal to Chairmen Leonid Brezhnev, himself sending him a personal letter. The official text of the letter is not public, but people who read it say the John Paul II threatened to use all the moral power at his command to direct the world’s attention upon him, further, he threatened to publicly support solidarity, and offered to use his papacy as a mortal threat to the entire Soviet Union by aligning itself with the incumbent anti-communist Reagan administration in the United States.

As the Reagan administration took control of the White House, it had another native Pole briefing the president. Richard Pipes was appointed as NSC’s director of Eastern European and Soviet Affairs. He was Harvard’s leading Sovietologist for years, leaving to serve in the Reagan administration. By March of 1981, Pipe was absolutely convinced of a pending soviet invasion.

General Jaruzelski, Moscow’s man in charge of Poland, discussed the use of force against Solidarity with his general secretary, Stanislaw Kania. Kania, to his credit recognized that Solidarity was not just a few striking workers, that it had now grown to encompass most of the Polish population. At a Polish politburo meeting he responded to calls for military intervention by saying:

“In spite of the pressure from Moscow, I don’t want to use force against the opposition. I don’t want to go down in history as the butcher of the Polish people.”

On March 27th, Solidarity staged the largest workers strike since WWII. It lasted four hours and was nationwide. It was in protest of the regime’s continued beat downs of Solidarity members. The entire economy was brought to a grinding halt, and even though it was scheduled only for four hours, it showed Moscow the power and organization competence of the Polish citizenry. They declared that if the beatings did not stop, the strikes would continue indefinitely. The White House was on full alert, fearing a Soviet invasion was imminent. In public Reagan only confirmed that the situation in Poland was very serious.

Lech Walesa again went into talks with the regime and emerged with a temporary agreement to go back to work. While Warsaw had averted a strike, Moscow’s faith in the regimes ability to handle Poland was waning.

Just over the western border of Poland, across the city of Berlin, over the wall that divided the city, was a military field station facility run by the US government. It was the epicenter of western information- gathering on the Soviet Union and the best opportunity to pick up wayward intelligence via air traffic interception. The military personnel based at field station Berlin were called the eyes and ears of the West. For the moment these military personnel were monitoring necklace of tanks and artillery that ringed the Polish border – 18 divisions in all. The technicians who received this information were tasked with dissecting it, disregarding most, but sending up the chain anything that might be of interest. On March 29th, 1981, a Field Station Berlin technician intercepted communication that sent him running down the hall to his supervisor, shouting: you’ve got to hear this.

A conversation was recorded between two high ranking Soviet officials, one in the Kremlin and one on Poland’s border, discussing that these divisions were elevating to their highest state of combat readiness. World War III looked as if it would begin in Poland. All night on the 29th, and into the 30th, Soviet communication channels were buzzing with information. If the promised nuclear war commenced in Poland, Field Station Berlin would be ground zero for nuclear war. Thus, all non-essential personnel were evacuated from the facility.

The next morning, March 30th, 1981, as these remaining technicians nervously listened to the chatter of the impending invasion, they were left shocked when the radio transmission suddenly fell dead silent. All communication collapsed. The frequencies were quiet. Something had happened. Something had suddenly changed in the Soviet wargame. Something was now different.

On the other side of the world, that same day, in Washington DC, at 2:55 pm to be precise, President Reagan, some staffers, and his security detail were exiting a hotel through a side door after a speech delivered to the ALF-CIO. Lurking in the crowd outside was a mentally unstable man named John Hinkley, who was also carrying a gun. He was obsessed with actress Jodie Foster and thought that if he assassinated the President, he would gain her undying affection. As Reagan was entering his car, waiving off reporters, shots rang out, followed by screaming. Reagan’s press secretary James Brady was now face down on the pavement, bleeding from his skull. Secret service agent Jerry Parr shoved Reagan into the presidential limo and threw his own body on top of him. Parr noticed frothing blood oozing from the president’s mouth, and he ordered the driver to head straight to the nearest hospital.

Then a stroke of luck. The hospital they went to happened to be holding its monthly meeting of department heads. Its best and brightest were in town. But Reagan was losing a lot of blood fast. The chief surgeons rushed to intercept the president, who amazingly had the presence of mind to joke, telling them that he hoped they were republicans.

Yet underneath his cool actor’s confidence, the president was scared. He recalled in his diary:

“My fear was growing because no matter how hard I tried to breathe, it seemed I was getting less and less air… I focused on that tiled ceiling and prayed. But I realized I couldn’t ask for God’s help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed up young man who had shot me.”

While the president prayed to God and forgave his would-be assassin, the surgical team was preparing for the removal of a .22 caliber bullet from his lung, centimeters from his heart.

After his surgery, the recovering Reagan wrote:

“I know it’s going to be a long recovery. Whatever happens now, I owe my life to God and will try to serve him in every way I can.”

The president emerged from this ordeal believing that divine intervention had saved him. He told everyone around him, his family, his aides, and he would even bring it up in speeches. While waiting for the doctors’ orders to fully resume work, his thoughts turned increasingly towards Moscow and was determined to jumpstart the negotiation process with the Soviets:

“Perhaps having come so close to death made me feel I should do whatever I could in the years God had given me to reduce the threat of nuclear war; perhaps there was a reason I had been spared.”

He wrote a four-page letter to Leonid Brezhnev, and as was custom, sent it to the state department for review. It was returned completely rewritten. For a moment the president second guessed his new diplomacy. One of his aides reminded him that the American people had elected him, not some anonymous state department bureaucrat. In that moment, Reagan decided he would rely on his own instincts on geopolitics moving forward. A few weeks later, Reagan gave a speech to the US military academy, invoking words spoken by pope Pius XII during his visit to the United States after World War II:

“Into the hands of America, God has placed an afflicted mankind.”

While it’s easy for us the 21st century to wince at statements like this from a president, for the Soviets in 1981, this was exactly the type of crusader they feared Reagan would become. Kremlin news commentator Viktor Nikolayevich Levin accused the president of having the Catholic Church too close to his heart, saying:

“It is precisely this Pius XII postulate that he is attempting to pursue in the realm of practical politics. This is the origin of the problem that we are encountering.”

While appearing to have cooled a bit, thanks in part to the attempted assassination by a mad man, the threat of Soviet invasion into Poland still loomed. Both Reagan and Pope John Paul II were derided in Soviet news as “Nazi remnants”. They were called cunning and dangerous ideological enemies. The pope was deemed a toady of the Americans, and Reagan was called the pope’s new boss in the white house. Then, a direct result of Reagan quoting Pius XII, the Soviets launched a posthumous character assassination campaign against Pius XII, drawing on his German sympathies, labeling him a Nazi sympathizer and cooperator, ignoring the fact the Pope had intervened to save 700,000 Jews from concentration camps.

On May 13th, 1981, a few weeks after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II was riding through Saint Peter’s Square in his open-air vehicle greeting the crowds. It was the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima. In the crowd was Mehmet Ali Agca, that Muslim Turk, who, at the behest of the Bulgarian covert operatives, nearly took out Lech Walesa. Now he had a new mark. To help him, he had an accomplice, another Turk named Oral Celik. The Bulgarian spies gave the Turks two 9-millimeter handguns and a package with a bomb in it to send the crowd into a panic, allowing them to make their escape.

After 5pm, the Pope, in his vehicle was a few yards from Agca. At 5:13, the assassin raised his pistol and fired four shots. Two bullets hit the pope, one in the left hand and the other in the abdomen. As the pope collapsed backwards, he fell into the arms of his longtime and faithful aide Father Stanislaw Dziwisz.

In the embrace of his closest aide, the pope began reciting the Hail Mary. Later, John Paul would remember:

“At the very moment I fell, I had this vivid presentiment that I should be saved.”

As chaos exploded all around St. Peter’s Square, Father Dziwisz asked his friend, “Where?”

“In the stomach,” the pope replied.

“Does it hurt?” his friend asked.

“It does.”

The blood was pouring, and the pope’s consciousness was fading, now only muttering under his breath, “Jesus, Mother Mary,” Father Dziwisz then administered extreme unction to his friend.

As the surgeons got to work, they had much to do. Damage was done to the colon and small intestines. The pope lost six pints of blood and two feet of his intestines had to be removed during the long and intricate surgery.

The co-assassin, Oral Celik, never detonated the bomb and fled the scene. Mehmet Ali Agca tried to flee but was wrestled to the ground by a Franciscan nun. The nun it turns out saved his life, for the communist Bulgarians were planning to execute Agca once they had him back in their possession.

A few weeks earlier, President Reagan’s bullet missed his heart by centimeters. Pope John Paul’s missed his main abdominal artery by about the same distance. On the operating table, Reagan forgave his assailant. Arriving at the hospital in Rome, the Pope told father Dziwisz that he had forgiven his.

The first few days of his recovery were spent in miserable pain. It was made worse when the pope received news that Cardinal Wyszynski, that great hero of the Polish faithful, was dying. The two old friends were able to have one last phone call together, where the fading Wyszynski said:

“We’re united in suffering, but you will be ok… Holy Father, give me your blessing.” It is said that when the Primate of Poland heard that his former underling had been shot, the primate refused to die until he was sure the pope would survive. Father Dziwisz recounted:

“He closed his eyes for the last time only after receiving confirmation that the Pope was out of danger.”

Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski died on May 28th, 1981, two weeks after the pope’s attempted assassination.

The Italian police and the CIA independently traced the assassination order to the GRU, the military intelligence organization that survived the fall of the Soviet Union and still exists today. Reagan, who was still recovering from his own bullet wounds was continually worried about the well-being of the pope, asking for updates nonstop. A few days after the assassination attempt, the pope celebrated a birthday. Reagan had a note delivered to the pope personally:

“Happily, few leaders in the world today have the dubious distinction of knowing with some precision the kind of event you have just experienced. Fewer still can appreciate, as can I, the depth of courage and commitment on which you must have called, not only to survive that horrible event but to do so with such grace, nobility, and forgiveness. Your heroism, and the universal outpouring of love and concern which it evoked, is proof that a single irrational act cannot prevail against the basic human decency which continues to inspire most people in most places. The qualities you exemplify remain a precious asset as we confront the growing dangers of the moment – confront them with confidence and faith. My prayers, and those of all Americans, are with you as your recovery progresses and as you resume the passionate leadership which has given so many parts of the world a spirit of optimistic renewal.”

The pope however, was thinking little of his birthday, but was instead immersed in spiritual contemplation. Two May 13ths, he was heard to say again and again. Two May 13ths. One in 1917, the other in 1981. The Pope finally requested to see personally the third secret of Fatima, which remained sealed in the archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. On July 18th, a Cardinal delivered two envelopes, one containing Sister Lucias original Portuguese, and the other an Italian translation. From Dziwisz:

“When he was finished, all remaining doubts were gone. He recognized his own destiny.”

With firmness, Pope John Paul II believed his life had been spared by the Lady of Fatima, the Lady of the Rosary, the Mirror of Justice, the Queen of Poland, the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God. The third secret described a vision of a bishop dressed in white, killed by a group of soldiers firing arrows and bullets. For John Paull II, this was a symbolic vision (and nearly a literal one) of his crusade against communism.

The Pope emerged from his brush with death with a renewed confidence in the will of Heaven. Reagan too, had emerged with the same epiphany. For both, the Soviet Union was no longer a thing to be tolerated, but a thing to be defeated. The president’s first major speaking engagement after the attempted assassination was a commencement speech on May 17th, at Notre Dame University in South Bend Indiana. There he told those young graduates about to enter the real world:

“The years ahead are great ones for this country, for the cause of freedom and the spread of civilization. The West won’t contain communism, it will transcend communism… it will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written…. When great causes are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty… One who exemplifies those traits so well, Pope John Paull II, a man of peace and goodness, an inspiration to the world, would be struck by a bullet from a man towards whom he could only feel compassion and love…. It was John Paull II who warned in last year’s encyclical on mercy and justice against certain economic theories that use the rhetoric of class struggle to justify injustice… In the name of the alleged justice… the neighbor is sometimes destroyed, killed, deprived of liberty, or stripped of fundament human rights.”

The confidence of this papal encyclical-reading president in the fall of the Soviet Union struck everyone has overconfidence. Reporters seized on it and demanded he elaborate. The president answered:

“I just think it is impossible… for any form of government to completely deny freedom to people and have that go on interminably. There eventually comes and end to it. And I think the things were seeing, not only in Poland but the reports that are coming out of Russia itself about the younger generation and its resistance to long-time government controls, is an indication that communism is an aberration. It’s not a normal way of living for human beings, and I think we are seeing the first, beginning cracks, the beginning of the end.”

Back in Poland, the year 1981 the pressure cooker was ready to blow. In November, General Jaruzelski finally agreed to sit down and talk with Lech Walesa and the new Primate, Cardinal Glemp. The goal for them was an agreement that would allow the rights of the Church and the workers to exist in some meaningful way. But under pressure from Moscow, and more than likely with his own life on the line, Jaruzelski would agree to nothing accept unconditional surrender to the terms of their Russian overlords. They were at an impasse. Of those three men, only Jaruzelski knew what was going to happen next.

On the dark night of December 12th, as most Poles were preparing for the coming Christmas season, Operation Azalea commenced. Phone lines in Poland were suddenly cut. Radio and television stations were swarmed and commandeered by military police who came out of nowhere. At exactly midnight, military reserves loyal to Jaruzelski combined with Soviet forces began Operation Fir. The homes of Solidarity leaders were invaded. The targets were arrested in the dark of night and shuttled off to unknown detention facilities. Lech Walesa, their primary target, was among them. Over 100,000 soldiers, 1800 tanks, 2000 armored vehicles, along with thousands of military cars, trucks and helicopters doing the bidding of Soviet puppet Jaruzelski flooded Warsaw and other major cities. The Polish people awoke that morning to find their beloved country under complete military lockdown.

At 6 am, they tuned in their radios and televisions to hear the general explain the situation:

“Today I address myself to you as a soldier and as the head of the Polish government. I address you concerning extraordinarily important questions. Our homeland is at the edge of an abyss…”

He went on to discuss the terrible state of the economy and social politics of Poland which he linked indirectly to Solidarity. And that the only way to fix this problem was to put the country into a state of martial law for an indefinite amount of time. Curfew was imposed. All Schools and universities were closed. All trade unions, youth organizations, Catholic lay groups, and professional associations were now illegal. Oaths of loyalty were now required by state employees. Lech Walesa was moved to an undisclosed location. Solidarity’s funds were seized. Military checkpoints were established at major inroads. Civilian governors of regions were replaced by colonels and generals. All flights in or out of Poland were banned. All citizens were required to carry identification. A military committee of 15 generals would now run Poland, referring to themselves with a name straight out of Orwell: The Military Council of National Salvation.

Three days after martial law was instituted a group of Solidarity coal miners went on strike to protest Jaruzelski’s actions. The military reserves swept in and violently dispersed them. 21 were wounded, 8 were killed instantly, and one more died in the hospital.

Cardinal Glemp condemned the injustices against the Polish people but also urged the faithful not to engage in fratricidal conflict – to the cardinal and everyone watching, a bloody civil war seemed imminent. Father Dziwisz recalls the pope’s reaction at hearing the news of martial law:

“It was a real shock. The Holy father was anguished and surprised. It was a profound humiliation for Poland. After all that it had suffered throughout its history, Poland didn’t deserve this new martyrdom. It didn’t deserve to be punished so severely.”

The remaining underground leaders of Solidarity released a plea for help to two places, the White House and the Vatican:

“We appeal to you: help us in our struggle by mass protests and moral support. Do not watch passively at the attempts to strangle the beginnings of democracy in the heart of Europe. Be with us in these difficult moments. Solidarity with solidarity. Poland is not yet lost.”

Richard Pipes recalled Reagan being livid at the institution of martial law in Poland. He wanted to do something, but he had so few options available to him. His advisors recalled that he wanted to hit the Soviets hard, but any military action might trigger nuclear war, something the president had solemnly vowed to God that he would prevent. The more Reagan and his advisors discussed Poland, the more they took stock of its potential larger geopolitical role. We’ve already covered how before Reagan was even president, he felt Poland was the key to the Soviet Union. They began to devise plan to use that key, or as Richard Allen put it, they:

“Thought of Poland as a means to the disintegration and collapse of the main danger, the main adversary, the Soviet Union.”

The first thing Reagan did was pick up the phone and call the pope – which is a nice option to have. He assured the pontiff that American sympathies are with the people of Poland and not the Government, and that he looked forward to meeting the pope in person someday. The next day Reagan met with Cardinal Augustino, the Vatican’s secretary of state. The Cardinal delivered a letter from the Pope to the president. Today we still have no idea what it contained. When author Paul Kengor made a FOIA request for the letter – the body was redacted. Whatever the letter said, the discussion with the Pope’s secretary of state was disappointing. He found the Vatican official to be of the school of Ostpolitik, preferring a path of appeasement toward the Soviet Union. Reagan’s aided noted “strikingly different views”.

From then on communication between the pope and the president was kept as high level as possible. When Reagan would send a cable labeled “secret” to the Vatican, only father Dziwisz was allowed to receive the messages for the pontiff. The first of these cables has been declassified since:

“Your Holiness – I am following the fate of your countrymen in Poland with mounting concern…I strongly urge Your Holiness to draw on the great authority that you and the Church command in Poland and urge General Jaruzelski to agree to a conference involving himself, Archbishop Glemp, and Lech Walesa. The United States is prepared to support the search for peace in Poland in any way it can. With deep respect and high regards. Ronald Reagan.”

Later, another declassified cable assured the Pope that the United States would not let the Soviet Union dictate Poland’s future. The pope responded:

“The two planes (politics and morality) can be complementary when they have the same objective. In this case they are complimentary because both the Holy See and the United States have the same objective – the restoration of liberty in Poland.”

A flood of correspondence between the two leaders went on for some time: phone calls, letters, cables, diplomats, liaisons – most of these communications remain classified today, despite both men being dead and the Soviet Union nonexistent. Some of what has not been redacted reveals that the two were very much mystics, sharing deep beliefs in Divine Providence, and the will of Heavan guiding the affairs of the world. They exchanged thoughts on politics, liberty, freedom, and the fate of the billions of souls behind the iron curtain. In one memo written by Reagan for the pope he recounted all the terrible deeds committed by the communists against the faithful. This memo still bears a handwritten amendment by what is assumed to be Reagan’s own:

I tremble to think of God’s verdict on those who acquiesced in these deeds, as well as those who perpetrated them.”

On December 21st, Reagan held a private National Security Council meeting where he told his team that this is the first time in 60 years they have had an opportunity to strike a fatal blow against communism. And that the chance may not come again in their lifetime. For the many Catholics in the room, including Bill Casey and Bill Clark, as well as native Poles like Richard Pipes, Reagan was speaking their language. He then invoked our own nation’s Declaration of Independence, when in the course of human events. He said this is that moment the Poles have arrived at. Reagan then unveiled a plan of all out economic quarantine of the Soviet Union. He demanded that all of NATO join in on it and that for any who didn’t, their alliance with the United States would be subject to reevaluation. The next day Reagan reiterated his determination that Poland was the chance of a lifetime to go against that “damned force”. Then, the following morning Reagan cabled the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev directly:

“The recent events in Poland clearly are not an “internal matter” and in writing to you, as the head of the Soviet government, I am not misaddressing my communication. Your country has repeatedly intervened in Polish affairs during the months preceding the recent tragic events… Attempts to suppress the Polish people – either by the Polish army or police acting under soviet pressure, or through even more direct use of Soviet military force – certainly will not bring about long-term stability in Poland and could unleash a process which neither you nor we could fully control.”

The pope, for his part then publicly made two demands. He urged his countrymen to turn again to the Virgin of Jasna Gora as they always had, that the mother of God would not abandon them in their time of distress. To General Jaruzelski, he demanded that he ceased the shedding of Polish blood.

During these pivotal days in late December, Polish Ambassador to the United States Romuald Spasowski and his wife defected to America. Three days before Christmas, and the day before Reagan had sent his cable to Brezhnev, Reagan hosted the former ambassador and his wife in his office. The ambassador’s wife was grief stricken at leaving her beloved Poland behind. Her head remained in her hands as she wept as silently as she could, during the meeting. The former ambassador implored Reagan not to give up on Poland, to continue speaking directly to the Poles and to the faithful there and keep up the pressure on the Soviet Union. He then brought up Radio Free Europe, the anticommunist radio station broadcast over the Berlin Wall from the West. He said:

“You have no idea. Please Sir, do not ever underestimate how many millions of people still listen to that channel behind the Iron Curtain.”

The ambassador himself was then brought to tears. But went on:

“May I ask you a favor Mr. President? Would you light a candle and put it in the window tonight, for the people of Poland?”

Reagan’s aides recall that Reagan immediately rose and placed a lit candle in the window of the White House dining room. The next evening, December 23rd, Reagan addressed the nation:

VIDEO

The president had communicated to the world that economic warfare against the Polish regime would commence, and solidarity with the Polish people would begin.

Responding to the president’s message, by Christmas eve, the mayor of Chicago, home of the largest US Polish population, implored his residents to place candles in their windows in solidarity with their persecuted brothers and sisters. 3000 people turned out for midnight Mass in Pennsylvania at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, where the Christmas star in the nativity was replaced by a single candle. In Boston and Maine red and white ribbons bearing the name “solidarity” were handed out. In Colorado, a candle burned in the window of the governor’s mansion. In New York a procession from St. Patrick’s Cathedral to the Polish consulate bore black armbands of mourning.

Soviet press responded with rage:

“What honey-tongued speeches are now being made by figures in the American administration concerning God and His servants on earth. What verbal inventiveness they display in flattering the Catholic Church in Poland. Does true piety lie behind this?”

The Kremlin called it a “rather doubtful Christmas gift”. Polish military regime newspapers referred to Reagan’s speech as “blatant interference in the internal affairs of independent and sovereign Poland”. They called the former Polish ambassador a traitor, giving the Americans “impudent slanderous verbiage that testifies to that man’s moral degradation.” That former Ambassador, Spasowski, would eventually be baptized a Catholic by a Polish American Cardinal and join Reagan’s National Security Council.

It’s amazing to me that for all the bombs, guns, and military might wielded by the president of the United States, a single lit candle did more to enrage the communist regime more than any weapon of war could.

A polish woman who lived through these events later recalled that this Christmas event was the symbol the Poles needed to know that:

“Reagan was going to help us until we could be free like the United States. He was going to end this.”

In Rome, at the Vatican, another Pole felt the same way about this president. At 6 pm on Christmas Eve Pope John Paull II lit a candle for his homeland and placed it on the windowsill of the papal apartment overlooking Saint Peter’s Square.

Part Five: Whispers of Freedom

As 1982 dawned for Poland, thousands of workers were still imprisoned without trial. Anti-riot military units patrolled the streets. Sidewalks, bridges, and buildings bristled with that damned barbed wire. A casual stroll out in public subjected you to random searches. Your house could be raided on a whim – as a reminder – don’t you dare even have a thought about anything anti-state.

The armed takeover of the country by General Jaruzelski was a frightening success. Order was restored to Poland. The streets were quiet. The workers worked.

But there was resistance. It wasn’t underground or even clandestine, it was loud, public, and could be heard by anyone – all one had to do was go to Mass. Father Jerzy Popieluszko was still chaplain to the workers in the steelyard in Warsaw. And solidarity or no solidarity, martial law, or no martial law – he was determined to speak the truth. In his own words, he said:

“Truth is unchangeable. It cannot be destroyed by decrees.”

A priest and friend of Father Jerzy recounts that martial law effected a change in the chaplain:

“Thanks to the tragic events of December 1981, a timid, somewhat awkward young man became a confident, courageous leader, as though a new spirit had entered into him.”

Father Jerzy, at the direction of his superior, had decide to resurrect a liturgical tradition in Poland from the 19th century - during the time Poland ceased to exist on world maps. During that period certain Masses called Masses for the Fatherland would be celebrated. Under Russian occupation, the Roman Rite and Polish traditions were banned, so the masses were often celebrated in crypts. These Masses for the Fatherland were resurrected earlier in the 20th century, during the years of Nazi occupation.

Father Jerzy invoked in the Masses the intercession of the Queen of Poland:

Mother of those who hope in Solidarity, pray for us.

Mother of the deceived, pray for us.

Mother of those arrested in the night, pray for us.

Mother of prisoners, pray for us.

Queen of suffering Poland, pray for us.

Queen of fighting Poland, pray for us.

Queen of Independent Poland, pray for us.

Queen of always faithful Poland, pray for us.

We beseech you, Mother, who is the hope of millions, let us all live in freedom, truth, and every day faithful to You and Your Son. Amen.

Hundreds of workers would turn out to hear the sermons of Father Jerzy before beginning their faithless workday:

“A regime that needs weapons to stay in existence dies by itself. Its violence is the proof of its moral inferiority. If Solidarity won hearts, it was not by struggling with power but by offering resistance on its knees, with a rosary in hand. In front of outdoor altars, it demanded the dignity of human work, freedom of conscience, and respect for man. Solidarity is a mighty tree: its top has been removed, and its branches have been cut, but its roots are deeply rooted among us, and new branches will grow back.”

Father Jerzy new that with Solidarity outlawed, the hope of Poland was the Church through its priest and bishops. They had to minister to the lost, dreary, and hopeless faithful. Cardinal Glemp ordered his clergy to minister first to the destitute families of those imprisoned. Clothing, food, and supplies were taken up in collections. Remember, these are people who could not find what they themselves needed on the grocery store shelves and still gave to the poor. The bishop also urged caution in political activities, to not make the present situation any worse. Father Jerzy, while celebrating his masses for the father land did not get the memo:

“You can imprison the body but never the spirit! No, nobody can lock up lofty human thought, or the heart that suffers for its native land, or the faith of our ancestors, or the expectation of the children, or the feelings that weld together the unity of a people. May neither simple solidarity nor the faith ever be lacking! And the Lord will say: Let there be Poland!”

Often, Father Jerzy’s masses resembled history lessons, walking the faithful back through a thousand years of their heritage. Beside the altar would often be some artwork that depicted all the popular uprisings, reminding the Poles, we’ve been here before. “As children of God,” he said “we cannot be slaves. Our divine affiliation bears within it the heritage of freedom, especially freedom of conscience and of opinion.”

As word of these Masses for the Father land spread, informants and spies of the regime would slink the pews in to listen, and they would hear:

“It is impossible to speak about justice… where the word God has been officially eliminated from the life of the fatherland. Let us be aware of the unlawfulness and prejudice that are inflicted on our Christian nation when it is made atheistic by law, when they destroy in the souls of the children the Christian values that their parents have instilled in them from the cradle… the prevalent policy is an absurd stubborn attempt to take God away from people and to impose on them an ideology that has nothing in common with our Chrisitan tradition. This programmed atheism, this struggle against God and all that is holy, is at the same time a struggle against human greatness and dignity; for man is great because he bears within himself the dignity of the children of God… Truth contains within itself the ability to resist and to blossom in the light of day, even if they try very diligently and carefully to hide it. The men who proclaim truth do not need to be numerous. Christ incidentally surrounded himself with a small number of individuals. Falsehood is what requires a lot of people, because it always needs to be renewed and fed. Out of duty a Christian is always to abide in truth, even if it costs us dearly.”

Father Jerzy was quickly becoming a rockstar. Family members and friends of those imprisoned, who appeared to be hopelessly bent and broken by their oppressors found their faith and zeal renewed at his Masses. They said they came to these Masses because there, in front of the steelworks, they felt free, if but for a few fleeting moments. They prayed together with their fellow poles. They sang and cried out to the Lord that he would hear their lamentation. It was true solidarity.

Other priests, inspired by Father Jerzy began to follow in his example. Soon, from all the pulpits in Poland you could hear martial law along Jaruzelski himself being condemned as evil. The context was again shifted into black and white terms - good against evil, love against hate, truth against lies.

Back in DC, the president was espousing similar feelings. He kept the rhetoric against communist Poland a top priority. In April, of 82, he delivered a speech to the AFL-CIO saying:

“Poland’s government says it will crush democratic freedoms. Well, let us tell them, you can imprison your people. You can close their schools. You can take away their books, harass their priests, and smash their unions. You can never destroy the love of God and freedom that burns in their hearts. They will triumph over you.”

On the international stage, the Reagan administration took an unprecedented diplomatic step. They became the first administration in United States history to officially establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and exchange ambassadors. The cooperation between the two leaders, which had already been close, became closer. CIA director Bill Casey was now known to often commandeer a military aircraft and visit the pope personally to exchanging intelligence information. Once, as a gift, he gave the pope a satellite image of his visit to Poland in 79 – a small white speck amid a sea of faithful poles.

In actual strategy, Reagan’s National Security Director Bill Clark formulated a plan called National Security Decision Directive, or NSDD. Within it they codified NSDD 32, 54, 66, ad 75 - detailed plans for the complete liberation of eastern Europe from Russian influence and replace it with political pluralism. Further it explicitly detailed a full reversal of Soviet influence on a worldwide scale. This was far different from containment, or detente. Instead, these directives initiated a wholistic anti-Soviet foreign policy, officially authorizing clandestine financial, intelligence, material, and logistical support for the Polish Solidarity movement. The Pope was kept abreast of all these happenings through CIA director Bill Casey.

A month after Reagan’s speech to the AFL-CIO, the pope visited Fatima, Portugal on May 13th to thank Our Lady for sparing his life. He then crowned a statue of Our Lady and set within the crown the bullet which he believed her hand had guided.

On June 7th, 1982, pope and president would meet at last. Receiving the American president at the Vatican, the Pope spoke first:

“Mr. President, I am particularly pleased to welcome you today to the Vatican. Although we have already had many contacts, it is the first time that we have met personally.”

The pair then went behind closed doors in the Vatican library for 50 minutes. No aides, no translators. What has been gathered from staffers briefed on the meeting is that the two agreed that both men had been sparred by Heaven for some purpose. They reportedly talked about life and death and even prayed together. They discussed the scourge of atheistic communism, both agreeing the Soviet empire was not long for the world. They then agreed on certain actions that could expedite the end of this evil empire - actions that would begin in Poland. That if Poland could be broken out of the Soviet sphere of influence, then the whole damn thing would come crashing down. Poland would be a dagger to the heart of the Soviet empire. The liberation of Poland was the basis of a spiritual bond and cooperative mission forward.

At the end of their private meeting, the pair addressed the press corps. In sending the President off, the Pope reminded him:

“At this present moment in the history of the world, the United States is called, above all, to fulfill its mission in the service of world peace. America is in a splendid position to help all humanity enjoy what she herself is intent on possessing. With faith in God and belief in universal human solidarity may America step forward in this crucial moment in history to consolidate her rightful place at the service of world peace.”

From that day forward, for American and Vatican international policy, Poland was everything. Catholics Bill Clark and Bill Casey, when they couldn’t fly to Rome would engage in what they called “cappuccino diplomacy”. The local Italian cardinal, Casey and Clark said, made delicious authentic Italian cappuccino. Remember this was before Starbucks. And so, when there was an imminent matter of national security at hand, and fearing bugged phone lines to the Vatican embassy, Clark and Casey would phone the cardinal and ask him if they could come over for a cappuccino – where sensitive matters could be discussed.

Often, information was provided to the CIA from the Vatican ambassador. It has been said that the Vatican is unrivaled as a listening post. Without breaking the seal of confession, the clergy of Poland would report various upsurges in certain confessions from government employees that portended government operations. These were reported to the Polish Primate, who reported them to the Vatican, who reported them to the CIA.

In Poland in 1982 as the Masses for the fatherland gave the poles a small glimpse of freedom and hope amid a hopelessness, the Pope officially announced that he would be returning to his homeland, this time, during a state of martial law. Jaruzelski had no idea what to do. His generals were split. On the one hand, allowing the pope to visit his flock at peak tension and during martial law could cause even more unrest and lead to a full fledge uprising. On the other hand, the visit might add legitimacy to the extreme tactics, and calm the people. Further, if the regime demonstrated openness, the west might reopen its checkbook, end the sanctions crushing the Polish economy, and turn back on the flow of aid that Poland so desperately needed.

Jaruzelski first tried to delay to a future unknown date, but the Primate of Poland and the Vatican insisted on as soon as possible. The regime eventually relented and began drafting operational plans to deal with the millions upon millions of faithful Poles that would certainly turn out.

Jaruzelski was in over his head. He had a growing situation in the summer of 1982. Father Jerzy Popieluszcko was now nationally famous. His sermons were being recorded and transcribed in illegal newspapers throughout Poland. As many as 20,000 people were turning out in person for his Masses. Surrounding these crowds were police vehicles and military personnel, seething with hatred at these holy sacrifices that completely delegitimized anything and everything the regime was trying to do. A security officer, and card-carrying atheist for the regime confronted a laborer and admitted:

“For us communists, each of these Mass is like a lost battle, and if I could, I would kill you with one blow, you and your Father Popieluszko, and that would be the end of it.”

Father Jerzy had also recently made it a habit to show up at the kangaroo courts sending laborers to prison for opposing the regime. When the verdicts were read aloud, Father Jerzy would stand up, turn his back to the judge and begin singing the Polish national anthem. His parish at St. Stanislaus became a chief import/export hub in Warsaw for medications and supplies for these poor prisoner’s families. He was, as one laborer put it, helping the polish faithful discern the signs of the times. They knew they were suffering persecution and were called by Father Jerzy to be saints.

Father Jerzy was determined to keep his flock in active battle in the spiritual realm, not the worldly. When some of his parishioners would cry out in anger, or desire to lash out with violence that the regime so deservingly had coming its way, Father Jerzy would tell them:

“Go your separate ways in recollection; do not listen to the provocateurs who are trying to get you to demonstrate or to chant. Only one thing brought us here: the good of our fatherland and our common prayer for it.”

One of his parishioners at which father’s words were directed remembered:

“Sometimes we were aggressively, combatively standing up against the government. Then Father exhorted us to love our adversaries, and the people gave up their hatred. I personally was truly disarmed by that priest.”

After such astounding sermons of patriotic zeal for their beloved country, to follow them up with these appeals to love your enemy added insult to injury to the communist regime. A Solidarity laborer remembers:

“The regime detested these Masses because the people came to them to gain strength, like a man who comes to drink water at a well and leaves reassured and courageous.”

Every step of the young priest’s life was now under extreme surveillance. And then of course came the falsification of sermons, calling for violence and revolution, and attacks on his chastity and personal piety. And then worse things began happening. A government vehicle veered off the road while he was walking and tried to run him over. He learned General Jaruzelski was considering an arrest warrant. Despite being a hunted man, Father Jerzy reiterated his resolve in his private journal:

“They can imprison me, arrest me, and cause scandal, but I cannot stop my activity, which is a service rendered to the Church, the fatherland, and my people.”

One night, in December of 1982, while he was sleeping, a bomb was thrown through his window and detonated. Miraculously, the frail priest survived uninjured. One of his friends confronted him about taking more precautions for his safety. Father Jerzy only replied:

“If they want to kill me, they will kill me. On the way to church, or at the rectory, someone will jump out from behind a bush and stab me in the back. They will say that it was a madman. Believe me, if they want to kill me, nothing and no one will prevent them from doing so.”

The status of a living breathing martyr for the faith only increased his magnetism. Even atheist now sought him out and were converted by his presence and his stirring zeal for faith and country. At hearing of these conversions father Jerzy wrote in his journal:

“What great things you accomplish, O God, through the intervention of such an unworthy creature as I am. Thank you for making use of me this way.”

From D.C., the president had taken the plea of the former Polish ambassador about Radio Free Europe seriously. Everything about the broadcasts was being amped up during 1982. For the first time ever across the iron curtain, Church services were now being blasted into the airspace in places where religion was illegal.

To combat this, the Russians put the Polish regime in charge of concocting a disinformation campaign against the Polish pope. They forged a diary written by a dead woman that claimed a romantic relationship with John Paul while he was a bishop. Then four Polish secret police officers, led by Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski secretly planted the diary in the apartment of a local priest, where it would be “discovered” during a random search. However, after they planted the diary, Piotrowski went to the bar and got drunk, then he crashed his car on the way home and was arrested. At the police station, he bragged about the plot, spilling everything. Word quickly got out about the planted evidence. During all this the priest whose apartment the diary was planted discovered it prematurely and delivered it to his superiors, who quickly understood what was happening. The entire thing unraveled. I wish I could say that was the end of Piotrowski’s nefarious deeds, but it was just the beginning. He will come up again.

Reagan meanwhile was not only amping up Radio broadcasts, but also his rhetoric against the Soviets. In a now famous speech dubbed “the evil empire speech”, he declared Soviet Russia the “focus of evil in the moder world”.

Behind the scenes, with only a few key people in his cabinet privy, supplies and money were flowing into the underground Solidarity movement to Poland. In the summer of 1983 Reagan declared that Americans were bound to Poles and would never forget those brave people who have a spirit no one can crush. An index search of Reagans public documents puts Poland as the single most mentioned country –the Russians noticed this. One Kremlin newspaperman wrote:

“One has the impression that it will not take much more for Reagan to start speaking fluent Polish.”

In early 83, Cardinal Glemp was handed a list by the regime of 69 extremist priest. Father Jerzy was of course on this list. The Cardinal, who had more concerns for preservation of the sacraments, and too probably out of fear for the lives of his clergy, did what he could to reign them in. Some he transferred; some had their duties suspended. Father Jerzy was reprimanded for the political nature of his Masses. The regime had their own way of dealing with these priests as well. None on this list escaped beatings, torture, harassment, or attacks on their character in the press.

Everywhere Father Jerzy went, he was followed. He would be stopped and searched at random. Any of his friends or fellow priests that were with him would be subject to the same. As a torture tactic to keep the priest from sleeping, the regime would send a parade of vehicles to drive in circles around his apartment all night, honking their horns. It was all wearing on him. He began noting in his journal that the mental toll of no sleep at night and constant surveillance and harassment by day was deteriorating his spirit – it was by design.

He eventually got to the point where he would directly acknowledge the obvious government moles in his congregation:

“I address those who come to these Masses in obedience to orders issued to them. Have a little honesty with your superiors: inform them accurately about what you hear and see here, so that your superiors do not make themselves ridiculous by accusing us of false, fabricated things.”

Father Jersy was not only surrounded by spies, but also now, surrounded by a group of faithful laborers who formed a rotating guard to protect their priests. They installed grills on his windows to prevent any more bombing attempts and always posted at least one guard at his residence at night.

But Father Jerzy was deteriorating, nonetheless. His ceaseless work, the constant surveillance, and the weight of assassination at any moment caused him to write in his journal:

“I am at the limits of my physical and psychological resistance. I feel increasingly oppressed by them. But God is good: he gives me mental and physical strength, so much so that it astonishes me, even though I do spend tormented nights.”

Morale in Poland was at an all-time low. Martial law seemed as If it would never end. Father Jerzy sensed this and turned his sermons toward reviving his flock’s spirit:

“Jesus Christ is our companion in misfortune. He shows us how never to lose confidence. And as often happens, our hope, the hope of unions, of our fatherland, is weakened today. We need you, Lord, to strengthen our hope that victory always belongs to what is good, to what is great, to what is noble, to whatever lies in union with you.”

Shortly after this sermon, an 18-year-old cantor in Father Jery’s parish was assassinated by the regime. A mother was deprived of her only son. A shepherd had lost a sheep. In the young man’s memory Father Jersy set up a cross in the church garden.

The spirit of the polish people was nearly extinguished. The atheist communist regime after forty years was on the verge of total moral victory over Poland. It was in this gloomy, grey, and oppressive climate of submission that Pope John Paul II returned to his homeland on June 16th, 1983. General Jaruzelski received him at the presidential palace. At meeting this Polish successor to the chair of Peter, Jaruzelski himself later remembered:

“My legs were trembling, and my knees were knocking together. The pope, this figure in white, it all affected me emotionally. It was a feeling beyond all reason.”

The pope was calm, yet cold toward the dictator. Jaruzelski listened with clenched fists as the pope recounted that when he arrived, he had kissed the ground of his homeland again, and likened it to kissing the hand of his earthly mother. When it was Jaruzelki’s turn to speak his hands were visibly shaking. The political spin of the visit began immediately. A party leader praised the pope’s visit as “evidence of the far advanced normalization of the life of the country.” A laughable statement.

Like his first pilgrimage, John Paul traversed all of Poland, this time adding the grave of his mentor Cardinal Wyszynski to his stops. At Saint John’s Cathedral in Warsaw, the Pope looked out at his broken countrymen in despair. He told them he knew of their:

“Bitterness of disappointment, of humiliation, of suffering, of the loss of the freedom, and of human dignity being trampled underfoot.”

Days later, back at Jasna Gora, before the icon of the Black Madonna, Pope John Paul proclaimed:

“I want to stand before the mother of God. I want to bring her all the sufferings of my nation, and at the same time its desire for victory that does not abandon it.”

It was a healing balm the Poles needed to hear from their pope.

At a stadium before over a million people, the pope reminded his flock that 1983 was the 300th anniversary of King Sobieski’s victory over the Ottomans at Vienna, when the winged hussars arrived and preserved freedom for all of Europe, Antemurale Christianitatis. He recalled how after the victory the Poles and the Turks had become close allies, with Turkey joining NATO against Russia. During the partition period, when Poland did not exist, the Turks had such respect for Poland that when Russian envoys would arrive in Turkey, the Ottomans would ceremonially ask, is the envoy from Poland here? To which the Ottomans would reply, “not yet”.

The pope then spoke words anathema to Soviet geopolitical policy, that Poland has a:

“Right to a sovereign existence and normal cultural and socioeconomic development. The fate of Poland in 1983 cannot be a matter of indifference to the nations of the world – especially of Europe and America.”

In a speech to the Polish youth in Warsaw the pope urged them to be patient and vigilant, causing the regime to lodge an official complaint with the church hierarchy. What exactly were they to be patient for? The complaints were ignored. Further antagonizing the regime, the pope peppered all his speeches with the word “solidarity”, with a lowercase “s”, yet each time drawing thundering applause.

Next, the pope returned to Krakow, his old see, where he beatified two new saints who participated in an uprising against Tsarist Russia in 1863. Illegal solidarity banners were unfurled, and the crowd marched the seven miles to the next sight the pope was to visit, the consecration of the eighth church in Nowa Huta – that city that was specifically built to exclude churches, where the soil of its first was broken by John Paul himself.

The following day, the pope was scheduled to meet with the imprisoned Lech Walesa. The regime had tried numerus times to interfere with this meeting. When roadblocks were put up, the pope’s entourage insisted the Holy Father had the right to meet with whatever pole he wanted. The pope himself told the regime that he would promptly return to Rome if he were unable to visit the imprisoned.

Wherever the pope went, as before, the streets were lined with papal banners and polish flags, but now mixed in were signs bearing that banned word, Solidarity, and others that read, Free Lech Walesa.

Father Jerzy, who again had resumed his medical service for the visit, remembered:

“Despite the pitch-black night in which we were plunged, despite the fading hopes, despite our sufferings, a ray of God’s grace shone on our fatherland: the visit of our Holy Father John Paull II. Let us thank the Lord for having strengthened us, through him, in the assurance that we are on the right track.”

After the Pope had departed his homeland once more, he left the poles with a renewed sense of themselves. The underground press reported the pope arrived as a candle in the dark, calling on Poles to stand up tall and proud of how far they had come against the regime. That the barrier of hopelessness had been broken, allowing them to walk forward in martyrdom:

“For all the depression and repression, Poland may be said to be in a better condition than any of its neighbors – including even Hungary. This transformation of consciousness, this moral revolution, is a lasting achievement of the Pope and Solidarity. Whatever develops in Poland over the next few years, it will be different from anything we have seen before. Though the police rule the streets, the country cannot be normalized – i.e. returned to Soviet norms. Though the totalitarian Communist system remains in outward form, in reality it is still being dismantled from within.”

Prophetic words. One month after the Pope’s visit, martial law was lifted. Solidarity was still banned yet many of those imprisoned illegally… were released. Lech Walesa was allowed to return to the Gdansk shipyards as an electrician. But for Father Jerzy Popieluszko, life, however, would not go back to normal:

“It was becoming difficult for me to appear in public. Right away there are ovations: I have to autograph books and pictures. I would like to be alone, to be able to work in recollection, but now it is a steady grind from morning to evening.”

On December 12th, 1983, communist regime prosecutors had decided they had enough of a case to put Father Jerzy behind bars. They called him to police headquarters for several hours of interrogation. He was then escorted to his apartment for what the police said was a “routine search”. It was a trap. During his interrogation the police filled his apartment with an absurd number of explosives, ammunition, detonators, tear gas, Solidarity leaflets and illegal books. It was so over the top that Father Jerzy’s first instinct was to laugh. He turned to the police and said: “Gentlemen, you exaggerate.”

Despite the idiotic charges, Father Jerzy was subjected to a sham trial and thrown in jail. Cardinal Glemp, however, stepped in quickly for his priest and secured his release, a testament to the growth in authority of the Church hierarchy. Remembering his release, Father Jerzy said:

“The news was so important that radio and television reporters were waiting for me at the exit. I went right away to St. Stanislaus Church, where in my honor there was a large cross made of candles, topped with the V of victory. A crowd stood in front of the rectory, and at the window was Father Bogucki, who waved to me, tears in his eyes. My room was full of flowers.”

Yet, after his release, Cardinal Glemp, who had earned the nickname Comrade Glemp, strongly rebuked Father Jerzy for his propensity for politics. Jerzy was distraught, writing in his journal that the primate’s words hurt him more than the communists.

As 1984 got underway, the street level police gangsters of the regime were enraged at the failure to keep Father Jerzy behind bars. The threats amped up, the slander, the intimidation, all of it increased. He received dark phone calls at night, warning him that soon he would be hanged, thrown from a train, or crucified. One day, while sitting with a friend, an Ursuline nun, he confided:

“I have no strength left, physical, psychological, or spiritual.”

To help her friend, the nun invited the priest to visit their convent far up in the mountains. Father Jerzy accepted and spent 10 days in solitude, and silence:

“Today, before lunch, I went to the choir of the church to say my Rosary. A blessed silence. On the ambo was a gilded cross. From time to time a ray of sunlight got through, and the cross was illuminated as though it were made of gold. A divine warmth. Then dusk fell. My God, how that resembled everyday life: grey, heavy life, occasionally dismal and often unbearable. Fortunately, there are rays of joy, of Your presence, a sign that You are there, in the midst of us, always the same, good, and merciful… There my spiritual rebirth began.”

When Father Jerzy emerged from that convent, he walked now with the peace of knowing his life was entirely in God’s hands. His friends noted he was happy again, cheerful, radiating assurance, serenity, and calm strength. His presence was edifying to others. Capuchin father and friend of Father Jerzy Gabriel Bartoszewski remembered:

“We mentioned the possibility of him receiving a different pastoral assignment. Then, after a brief reflection, he uttered this decisive, poignant sentence: ‘I have dedicated myself, and I will not withdraw.’ Then a very long silence set in among us. His face, still calm and serene, had darkened momentarily. The words that he had uttered expressed profound determination. Personally, I felt something like an intense shudder. This event is engraved on my memory, and the recollection of that shudder is still with me.”

Over the next few months, he was arrested 13 more times and survived another assassination attempt: “Genuine oppression, but almighty God gives me spiritual fortitude. Psychologically I feel well. I no longer am afraid, I am ready for anything. The people are wonderful. Always flowers, always letters of solidarity.”

In this state of complete surrender to divine providence, Father Jerzy stood before his congregation at one of his Masses for the Fatherland, and looked upon the two eagles of the Polish flag, and invited those present to meditate upon them:

“You must fortify your soul and raise it very high so as to be able to fly above everything, like them. Only by resembling eagles will you brave the winds, the storms, and the tempests of history, without allowing yourselves to be enslaved to falsehood. The duty of a priest is to speak the truth, to suffer for the truth, and if he must, to give his life for the truth. Let us pray that our whole life may be permeated with truth.”

On October 19th, 1984, Father Jerzy was sick, aching from head to toe. He had a fever too, but he had promised to celebrate a Mass at a parish some distance away, 190 miles. He and his driver, Waldemar Chrostowski hopped in father’s Volkswagen and began their trip. They immediately noticed the tail. The car behind them had three men inside. Chrostowski, wisely made note of the make, model, and license plate number. The Fiat followed them for the entire trip.

Arriving at the Parish of the Holy Polish Martyrs, the pastor was nervous for Father Jerzy and asked him to lead a rosary amid the people, instead of saying Mass – as he would be a harder target that way. After leading the sorrowful mysteries for the huge crowd that turned up, he led another prayer:

“Mary, Mother of the land of the Poles, you are our hope; we kneel before you. Today we wish to take up our cross, the cross of our work, our sorrows, our problems, and to follow the way of your Son to His Calvary and His agony.”

In the back of the Church a man whose face was contorted with anger, furiously stamped his feet, disrupting the prayer. Father Jerzy recognized him as one of the men in the car tailing him. That man was in fact was Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski – the same man who botched the phony journal plot against Pope John Paull II.

Father Jerzy continued:

“Let us pray that we may be freed from fear and intimidation, but above all from the desire for revenge and violence.”

Those were the last words Father Jerzy Popieluszcko ever uttered in public.

The pastor at Holy Martyrs urged Father Jerzy to stay the night but he was determined to hit the road so that he could say Mass in Warsaw at 9am the next morning. Back now on the lonely road, Jerzy and his driver regained their tail. This time it aggressively tailgated them and flashed their high beams of and on. Then it passed alongside them and waived for them to stop. Chrostowski feared the worst and hit the gas, but Father Jerzy urged him to obey, saying that it was probably just another inspection. And so, both vehicles came to a stop in the middle of nowhere on a forest road.

The three men got out of their car. One was in a police uniform. He told Chrostowski to get out for a field sobriety test. As Chrostowski stepped out of the driver’s seat he was immediately seized, gagged, put in handcuffs and thrown into the front seat of the Fiat. One of them men pressed a revolver against his temple and threatened to kill him if he resisted. Chrostowski could not see what was happening, but he heard his priest beg the police why they were doing this? He then heard the distinct sounds of flesh being beaten. Chrostowski could only sit there and listen to blow after blow until the beating ceased. It ceased, because one of the blows from a night stick had hit Father Jerzy in the back of his head, knocking him out. Piotrowski and the other man then dragged Father Jerzy to the trunk of their fiat and slammed it shut. They then drove off, leaving the empty Volkswagen on the side of the road.

Chrostowski recalled:

First, I thought of grabbing the steering wheel to make the car roll over, but then I realized that the priest would not survive it. At all costs I had to appear calm so as not to draw attention of the attackers, but my mind was agitated, seeking a way to escape and to save Jerzy.”

Finally, when the car entered a well-lit part of town, Chrostowski, opened the passenger door and flung himself upon the pavement. The fall broke his handcuffs freeing him, but he was uninjured and ran for help. The men let him go, the priest was their quarry.

Meanwhile Father Jerzy had somehow loosened the ropes around his hands inside the trunk, and when he sensed the car slowing, he managed to open the trunk and make a break for it. Piotrowski ran down the injured and disoriented priest and smashed the back of his head again with the night stick, knocking him to the ground. Then another beating commenced. Blow after blow after blow, more unhinged this time. His accomplices looked on stunned, thinking the captain had gone mad. Once unconscious again, the three wrapped Father Jerzy’s bleeding nose and mouth in tape and threw him in the trunk again. Still Father Jerzy again managed to reopen it but didn’t have the strength to jump out. Piotrowski was wrathful now. He walked around the vehicle, shoved his revolver in the priest’s face and told him that if he made one more sound, he would strangle him with his bare hands. He then lifted his night stick into the air and smashed in the priest’s face, breaking through the cartilage and bone. It was the death blow.

Ten minutes before midnight the three men drove to the Vistula River, tied two bags of stones to the body of the priest and dropped it into the water. The other two men were police lieutenants, Pekala and Chmielewski. Pekala turned to the group and declared “Popieluszko is dead.” Chmielewski replied, “that’s right.” Pekala went home to drink, and remembered thinking to himself, “now we are murderers.”

When Captain Piotrowski was eventually arrested for his crime, he recalled beating the priest with an unnatural rage:

“I hit him near the head. He fell limp again. I think he must have been unconscious. And then I became – never mind, it doesn’t matter.”

This at least is the official story of the death of Father Jerzy. His torture wounds, and conflicting statements from the Soviets suggest much higher up involvement. I have found that historians seem to be trusting the official story less and less – but we can’t speculate on this podcast. We will have to make do with the best information we have.

When Father Jerzy did not show for Mass the next morning, everyone knew in their hearts what had happened. Within hours all of Poland was searching for their beloved priest. Masses at St Stanislaus were being said every hour. Then news of the abduction hit. A fellow parish priests of Father Jerzy recounted:

“What a shock that was. Then the information was broadcast on television. Immediately afterward, people converged on the church. They were weeping, reciting the rosary. The emotion was a tremendous pitch.”

Lech Walesa pressed everyone to remain calm, specifically telling his fellow laborers to not react with violence. General Jaruzelski had a nightmare scenario on his hands – his entire nation was on the verge of revolting against him in righteous anger. They demanded to know what he had done with their priest. The General immediately went before the press and said that the police were looking for him, and that everything would be brought to the light. Pope John Paul II sent a note to the regime – find Father Jerzy.

Finally on October 27th, a general for Jaruzelski went public and declared the arrest of the three men who committed that horrible crime. He also implication a senior officer to Piotrowski. The statement was one of embarrassment for Jaruzelski, who either had to now either admit complicity in the murder, or incompetence in his rule, that his underlings were operating without and beyond his control. Three days later, Father Jerzy’s body was recovered from the Vistula. It was so unrecognizable from decay and mutilation, that only the priestly clothes gave him away. The regime police who discovered the body searched for his ID. When they saw that the profession said “priest”, they laughed amongst themselves, amused that one could call the priesthood a profession.

Father Folejewski was directed to deliver the news to the parishioners of St Stanislaus:

“Right after Mass we announced Jerzy’s death to the faithful. The first reaction was tears, outbursts of emotion, cries of sorrow that still echo in my head. Then I went up to the microphone and started the prayer Our Father, which was immediately taken up by the crowd. I remember that we stumbled on the petition: ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ We needed to be disarmed, and so I asked the congregation to repeat that verse several times. But I sensed the effort that it cost us. The parishioners were so angry that if I had said, ‘let’s go into the streets and break up everything’, they would have done it.”

A solidarity member recalled:

“We naturally thought of revenge, but then Jerzy’s words calling us to overcome evil with good came to mind. If we resorted to violence, would it not contradict everything he had taught us and kill him a second time?”

The pope also cautioned his brothers:

“Let us pay our final respects to Father Popieluszko in Christian dignity and peace. May the great significance of this death not be troubled or darkened in any way.”

The mortician team did what they could with the remains. The Sisters of Charity clothed his body in a white shirt and cassock. He was then covered in a red chasuble. A cross and rosary given to him by the pope were placed in his hands. The casket was transported to a chapel where the archbishop blessed it with holy water. The pallbearers, all priests, then took up the coffin and brought it outside to the head of an awaiting procession. Outside the crowd was singing hymns and holding funeral candles and led the coffin to the hearse. The convoy then set out to the cemetery. Just as the Poles had come out to the streets to welcome their pope, they now came out dressed in black to mourn their priest. One of them remembers:

“Hundreds of taxis and automobiles followed the hearse to the city limits. It was a concert of horns. The procession moved slowly westward, so that the setting sun illuminated the way. I will never forget that red sun. At the village of Zoltki, the limit of the archdiocese… the convoy stopped. Everyone got out of the cars to recite the angelus with the inhabitants of the village who were waiting for us, kneeling on the roadway. Emotions were high. Even our driver was weeping.”

It was dusk when the convoy arrived at Jerzy’s beloved Saint Stanislaus. Tens of thousands of people awaited his arrival, as they had awaited his Masses for the Fatherland. The church bell was tolling the death knell. The laborers from the steelworks lifted the coffin bearing their chaplain upon their broad shoulders and carried him into the church. During the Mass, the congregation once again audibly stumbled at the Our Father verse commanding us to forgive. Father Jerzy’s mother then stood up and turned to face the congregation, saying, “I forgive”. She then approached the casket, and bent over it in grief saying:

“It is very emotional for the others, but for the mother it is lifelong suffering. I do not wish on those who persecuted him that they should suffer as they made him suffer. May Jesus forgive them, may they be converted, and may they realize against whom they were fighting: not against my son, but against God.”

The Primate of Poland, Cardinal Glemp presided over the official solemn funeral Mass. Half a million people turned up for this event. Numbers not seen since the pope was in Poland. Candles, flowers, crucifixes, and Solidarity banners waived amidst the sea of mourners. Lech Walesa, who was present for the first Mass Father Jerzy’s ever offered for the steelworkers now gave his final goodbye to his friend:

“We bid you adieu, Servant of God, while promising not to bow to violence. In solidarity in the service of our country, we will respond to falsehood with truth and to evil with good. Recollected and with dignity we say farewell to you with the hope of a just social peace in our country. Rest in peace. Solidarity lives, because you gave your life for it.”

The moment the coffin was lowered in the ground, Father Toefil, friend of Father Jerzy, proclaimed:

“The Polish ground has just received a new martyr.”

While he lived, steelworkers and parishioners guarded Father Jerzy from assassination attempts. They kept a nightly vigil at his residence. Now in death, they maintained that vigil. Today they take turns guarding the resting place of Father Jerzy, day or night, rain or shine. These simple guardians have seen the most powerful and most famous people in the world come to the grave of this simple priest, to pray.

President Reagan was outraged at the crime. The pope was heartbroken. The Soviet Union was indifferent. General Jaruzelski knew that Poland would never be the same again. Any command he thought he once had through threats of violence were now gone. The Poles had been pacified by truth, not by soviet tanks. To turn the barrels of guns towards these people would draw the ire of the entire world. The message was clear, the Polish people were unified in solidarity against their historic oppressors, against atheism, against communism, against violence, against statism, against anything and everything that would keep them from being Poland. The regime that oversaw these people had lost control. The destiny of Poland was no longer in the regime’s hands.

In November of 1984 Ronald Reagan was reelected in a larger landslide than four years earlier. After his reelection success he went on a massive tour of Europe. When it was time to visit Portugal, he called it “the journey of our time, the journey of the century”. It was an odd statement. The speech that included that line was written by his chief speechwriter Tony Dolan, Roman Catholic who had a personal devotion to Our Lady, had an interest in Marian apparitions and wholeheartedly believed in the messages of Fatima. It is noted by Reagan’s biographers that he often discussed Fatima with his closest advisors. Pope John Paul II allegedly personally gave the president books on the subject. Frank Shakespeare, ambassador to the Vatican spent an entire flight in a private meeting with Reagan, briefing him on the miracle of Fatima, for an hour and a half, commanding Reagan’s complete attention. While in Portugal, with the errors of Russia at the forefront of his mind, he said:

“When I met Pope John Paull II a year ago in Alaska, I thanked him for his life and his apostolate. And I dared suggest to him that in the example of men like himself and in the prayers of simple people everywhere, simple people like the children of Fatima, there resides more power than in all the great armies and statesmen in the world.”

As a Catholic, one is not required to believe in the apparitions of Fatima, the messages, or the miracle of the sun, but whether you believe them or not isn’t important in a historical context, what is important is that Reagan and John Paul both fervently believed in Fatima – that the hand of the Queen of Poland, at the bidding of Heaven was guiding geopolitical events on earth.

Reagan then had a chance to meet the pope again in Rome, where the pair privately spent over an hour together. Again, no witnesses, no notes. Afterwards, standing before the press Reagan drew attention to the pope’s intentions to return to Poland:

“As you embark on a pastoral visit to the land of your birth, Poland, be assured that the hearts of the American people are with you. Our prayers will go with you in profound hope that soon the hand of God will lighten the terrible burden of brave people everywhere who yearn for freedom, even as all men and women yearn for the freedom that God gave us all when he gave us free will. We see the power of the spiritual force in that troubled land, uniting a people in hope, just as we see the powerful stirrings to the east of a belief that will not die despite generations of oppression. Perhaps it’s not too much to hope that true change will come to all countries that now deny or hinder freedom to worship God… For despite all the attempts to extinguish it, the people’s faith burns with a passionate heat; once allowed to breathe free, that faith will burn so brightly it will light the world.”

After a revolving door of soviet leaders, there came a watershed moment in Soviet history – the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev was a reformer. He was determined to save communism from the parasitic economic policies of his predecessors and stop the senseless war on religion. Reagan and John Paul instantly recognized the opportunity, both engaging in diplomatic overtures.

Jaruzelski too recognized the winds of change and embraced Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost: progress and transparency. Jaruzelski desperately needed an off ramp from where he had taken Poland. After the kidnapping and murder of Father Jerzy, his regime was completely delegitimized, and only sustained itself by tanks and guns. So, he suddenly eased censorship, and allowed for new associations for artists and intellectuals. Hundreds of new churches were suddenly approved and began construction. Catholic activists were then invited to work with the regime to create an advisory council to the Council of State.

Despite these efforts, the self-sustaining momentum of the communist regime in Poland had finally run out. The economy spiraled – and now, there was no one left to blame. Prices skyrocketed. Store shelves were empty. Foreign debt was off the charts. The communist party began to fracture between hardliners, reformers, and those who wanted to pretend to be reformers.

Solidarity still existed underground, supported by the Vatican and America, and wielded massive influence – best estimates say solidarity connected around 200,000 Poles who actively engaged in coordinated political resistance. Jaruzelski resigned at last as Prime Minister in 1985 but moved over to Poland’s First Secretary of the Communist Party, thereby retaining decisive power.

As the economy continued to collapse, Gorbachev himself visited Poland in the summer of 1986. His advice to Poland sent a shudder through the whole world: Reform within Poland from within and improve relations with the United States. Congruently, the Reagan administration was little by little lifting sanctions and restrictions on Poland instituted at the onset of martial law. Jaruzelski himself was invited to Rome and given an audience before Pope John Paul.

The Communists regime in Poland now was forced to admit the obvious – it could not govern Poland without the Church. Pope John Paul was in a position of significant leverage – morally, ethically, economically, and of course spiritually. This was the context of the third papal visit by the pope to his homeland.

During the negotiations between the Polish regime and the Vatican for the papal visit, one of the sticking points was the visitation of the grave of Father Jerzy Popieluskco. In the end, the regime relented and allowed the pope to visit the hallowed grave, but insisted it remain an unofficial calendar event. Hearing of the pending visit, Lech Walesa sent a letter to the pope, telling him Poland needed bread and freedom.

On June 8th, 1987, General Jaruzelski found himself again welcoming the pope to Poland. In their public meeting, the general reviewed Polish history and even acknowledge that the Church did indeed have a special place there. Yet his remarks were of course calculated to promote the necessities of the martial law years.

The pope listened to the speech, while grimly staring upon the ground.

As he commenced his tour, he stuck largely to spiritual matters of faith and morals, he reminded Poles of their obligation to the Faith and to truth, in the event freedom soon comes. The pope mentioned the recent martyr of Poland, Father Jerzy, and even quoted his reflections on the cross in his homilies. He then went on to ordain 46 new priests and beatified two new Polish saints. When he went to the farmers, he referred to their pre communist period, a time when they sustained Poland and Poland sustained them. It harkened back to a past when no outside overlord was needed. The pope reminded the clergy in Poland to always remain close to the people, to the faithful, to share in their suffering, as Father Jerzy had done – third day in a row now recognizing the murdered priest, something he was not supposed to do.

Then to Krakow – his old bishopric. Among the millions that showed up were banners bearing a V for victory, and pro-solidarity slogans. He spoke to these Poles of their future, calling on them to: “write a new chapter, a new part of a fragment” in Polish history. He then invoked a prayer written by a Polish Jesuit in the 16th century, thanking God:

“That you have taken our fruits from the hands of oppressors, invaders, and enemies… that after years of bondage you have bestowed upon us once again freedom and peace…. Defend us from individual, familial, and social egoism. Do not allow the more powerful to despise the weak. Protect us from hatred and prejudice toward people of different convictions. Teach us to fight against evil, but to see a brother in the person who behaves evilly and not to take from him the right to conversion. Teach each one of us to perceive our own faults, so that we don’t begin the work of restoration with the removal of the mote from our brother’s eye.”

He then warned Poland of their coming freedom – that they had had freedom before, and it had turned out to be rotten. They must use their freedom to choose God above all else. Freedom for the Poles was a task, and responsibility, not a guarantee. He noted the growing sins in Poland, alcoholism, and drug abuse, and sins of commission with regard to suffering – help your brothers in their suffering he told them.

The regime was freaking out again and lodged official complaints. The pope, in their view had not acknowledged all the amazing progress they have accomplished in Poland. Martial law had been lifted, why was he not giving them public credit for that fact? And further, the pope kept referring to some imminent future existence in freedom. Why?

Finally, the pope reached Gdansk, where Solidarity was born. An alter 28 feet high and built to look like the prow of a ship with three crosses as its masts was erected. He spoke of the right of his people to chart their own course, denying that humans were a commodity as communism suggests, and then quoted Saint Paul, exhorting them to bear one another’s burdens. The crowd erupted in chants of Solidarity, solidarity. Then the pope finished his homily:

“I have tried in my own words to speak about you and speak for you.”

As the pope was in Gdansk, Poland devastating communism from the inside, his friend and ally president Reagan was launching his own offensive from outside. That same day Ronald Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate at the Berlin wall and made history:

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Finally, before ending his trip, the pope laid flowers at the grave of Father Jerzy Popieluszcko, and kissed the priest’s parents. But he still had one last meeting – Jaruzelski, who was fuming by this point. They met for 45 minutes, but no record exists of the meeting. All we know is when the meeting wrapped up, the general slammed his car door shut and sped away.

The president had thrown down the moral gauntlet for Gorbachev. The pope had transcended the Jaruzelski regime, rendering it impotent. The pope called on Poland, especially its youth to look past the grey of communism, and the receding hairline and coke bottle glasses of the leader whose only fountain of authority were Soviet nuclear threats. The pope urged them to look ahead and within and discern what the future of their nation might be once this fleeting aberration had finally passed, when Poland might once again be Poland. The irrelevance place upon the Jaruzelski regime by Pope John Paul II was damming.

Western media reported that Jaruzelski “bristled with frustration and bitterness” while the pope maintained an ironic smile during his exit. He knew the damage wrought.

After the visit, a polish journalists declared that there are now three Polands: Poland of the Jaruzelski regime, Poland of the tired and pathetic masses, and the Poland of John Paull II. And the third was prevailing. Police reports note that during this third visit of Pope John Paul, a banner was unfurled that read: “Let the fourth pilgrimage be in an already free Poland.”

The pope’s fourth pilgrimage in June of 1991 would indeed fulfill that prophecy.

Seven months to the day after the Pope arrived in Poland for the third time, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the blessed Virgin Mary, Ronald Reagan and Mikail Gorbachev signed the historic INF treaty, for the first time in history decreasing the nuclear armaments they had pointed at one another, the first real and significant de-escalation of the cold war.

The dual effect of political momentum from within and without was forcing a change upon the Soviet Union. By 1988 Mikhail Gorbachev allowed 800 Orthodox churches in Russia to reopen and begin worshiping God. Monasteries were next. The Kremlin Museum began returning mountains of stolen relics and sacred items. Then, the thousand-year anniversary of the Russian Orthodox Church was allowed to be celebrated in 1988. At these events, Gorbachev invited the Vatican to send a delegation. Pope John Paul sent two – one religious and one political. Reagan too had been in Moscow recently where he quoted scripture to an audience of Russian students.

In this environment, Poland was rising. As 1988 commenced, strikes broke out nationwide and this time the regime had not the clout to counter them. They could only yield. Jaruzelski reached out to his old nemesis, Lech Walesa for help. Solidarity began stepping out from the shadows with Walesa leading negotiations against Jaruzelski. In August of 88, Dominican friars in Gdansk organized a Solidarity rally with 3000 people. In October of the same year, the intelligentsia communities put out a statement calling for the legalization of Solidarity and complete democratization. The Polish Church hierarchy donated its spaces at its churches for Solidarity to operate its headquarters. When the Polish communist regime asked for renewed diplomatic ties to the Vatican, the legalization of Solidarity was required as a non-negotiable.

In the spring of the next year, 1989, in the Polish Sejm, Solidarity was relegalized, religious freedom was again guaranteed by law, and for the first time since World War II, the Church was given back its legal status within the country, along with full freedom to operate its seminaries and universities. The Church now had full right to organize radio and television broadcasts and took back control of Caritas, its robust charity organization. Hospitals, elderly homes, schools, orphanages where all handed back to the Polish hierarchy. The requirement of military service for seminarians was abolished. Religious instruction was again now allowed in all schools. Sunday was reinstituted as a day of rest, and further, January 1st, All Soul’s Day, Christmas day, Easter Monday, Corpus Christi and the Feast of the Assumption of Mary were officially recognized as holy days of obligation and state holidays.

The death pangs of communism weren’t entirely unviolent. Three more priests were murdered during these times of change. Nonetheless, a free election was announced to commence. In anticipation of the election, the office of General Secretary was abolished in favor of a president. Solidarity was recognized an as official political party of Poland. And further a ruling chamber in the Sejm was declared, in which all 100 seats were up for election. In the lower chamber, one third were up for reelection. Poland had reverted to bicameral legislation.

With the election just weeks away, a group of Poles visited the now retired Ronald Reagan for words of advice in their pending campaigns. But instead of political advice, he told them:

“Listen to your consciences, because that is where the Holy Spirit speaks to you.”

One of the Polish guests then handed Reagan a hand carved image of the Black Madonna, carved in his homeland during the past 50 years of communist rule.

On election day, June 4th in Poland, Solidarity candidates claimed every single seat in the lower house up for election and 99 out of the 100 seats in the upper house. Not one single communist candidate claimed a seat. In December of 1990, Lech Walesa was elected President of Poland

Communism had been voted out of Poland. It was finished. It was a thing never supposed to happen. No people would ever reject the utopia of communism. And yet, Poland was now, as John Paul and Ronald Reagan predicted, the first Soviet bloc state to flip. After Poland, Hungary followed suit, with communists losing control of the electoral system in March of 1990. Then the Berlin Wall came under attack by average Germans chiseling apart the hideous monument to oppression with sledgehammers. In East Germany, the Stasi were stormed by protestors, forcing free elections the same month as Hungary. In May, Romania flipped. Czechoslovakia then held free elections in June. Bulgaria a month later. Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Mongolia, Georgia, Serbia, and many more now followed in the footsteps of Poland, taking back control of their countries. By the summer of 1991, the Warsaw pact which damned Poland to Russian overlordship was officially dissolved. Then, later that year, the day after Christmas of 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved itself, and ceased to exist on world maps.

In 2012, French priest Father Bernard Brien was taking a tour of Poland at the suggestion of a friend, to following in the footsteps of John Paull II. He knew very little about Poland or its recent history. His friend recommended that before he visits the Shrine of Jasna Gora, that he first stops into St. Stanislaus Kostka in Warsaw, and visit the grave of Father Jerzy Popieluszko. The name meant nothing to Father Bernard, but he took up his friend’s suggestion anyway. As he browsed the various plaques recounting the harrowing story of Father Jerzy, he realized both he and Father Jerzy had been born on the exact same day, September 14th, 1947. Father Bernard was astounded, and instantly impacted by the life of this brave, yet frail chaplain to the Polish workers. Returning to France Father Bernard bought every book he could on the period Father Jerzy lived through. He wanted to understand the context of his life as much as possible, feeling an invisible connection to Jerzy. During his morning prayers, he even began praying for Father Jerzy’s canonization.

Two months after discovering Father Jerzy, Father Bernard was eating his lunch at his church’s rectory when he received a phone call. Sister Rozalia from the nearby hospital needed him to give last rites to a dying cancer patient. He went immediately. Arriving in the hospital room, he saw the poor man stretched out on the hospital bed. Francois was 56 years old and had been battling a rare form of leukemia for 11 years. He was now in a comma, and very near death. His wife, Chantal and sister Rozalia were praying at his bedside. Chantal explained how aggressive the cancer spread in those 11 years despite three chemotherapies and a bone marrow graft. She told Father Bernard that last August, the doctors finally advised her to transport her husband to a hospital that specializes in palliative care and prepare for death. There was nothing else to be done. By the time Father Bernard arrived, she had already scheduled an appointment with the funeral home.

Father Bernard placed a candle, a crucifix, holy chrism, and a photo of Father Jerzy Popieluszko at Francois’ bedside table and administered the sacramental rite. During a moment of silence, he realized that today was September 14th, both his and Father Jerzy’s birthday. He spontaneously suggested that Chantal entrust her husband to Father Jerzy, and that they both pray for his canonization. After the brief prayer, Father Bernard turned inward, saying to himself:

“Listen, Jerzy, today is September 14th, your birthday and mine, and so if you are supposed to do something for our brother Francois, this is the day.”

After that, Father Bernard bid the husband-and-wife adieu.

The next day, Father Bernard received a panicked phone call from Sister Rozalia. She had just come from Francois room, where she had expected to find him already passed. But instead, he was sitting up on his bed. He had gotten up early in fact, and shaved, and showered. Francois wife, Chantal then told the priest:

“As soon as you had left his room, Francois opened his eyes, smiled, and asked what had happened. I had the impression that a veil was being torn, that my husband, like Lazarus, was emerging from the tomb.”

Francois cancer had gone from one day attacking his bones, to the next being completely gone, as confirmed by dozens of medical tests. By the end of September, Francois was back home living his life again. His doctor, Jean Michel Dormont then signed a statement saying:

“After an in-depth examination, I certify that his rapid cure, starting on September 14th, 2012, when he was in palliative care, has no medical explanation.”

When Father Bernard made his bishop aware of the potential miracle, things happened fast. The archbishop of Warsaw immediately took up Jerzy’s cause for canonization and placed the investigation file into the hands of Rome, where it still sits today.

We began this narrative ages ago in a time before tanks and guns, before fossil fuels, before capitalism, communism and mechanized or nuclear warfare. We began in the humble home of an agrarian Polish famer, and his family, as they marveled, and laughed at the novelty of an alarm clock, a novelty that despite its ringing bells and machine precisions, did not change the realities of what the future portended, hard work, and one more day in the seasonal, liturgical cycles of life and death.

One of the most difficult times for these agrarian people, and yet most vital, was the harvest season, when the entire community would go out to the fields as one, shoulder to shoulder, in solidarity to collect what bounty their spring plantings yielded. From first light of the day till moonlight, under the heat of the waning summer, all would labor intensely without complaint, for as it was said in old Poland, “he who looks for coolness during the harvest, will suffer hunger during the winter”. Then across the moonlit fields all the men, women, and children would wander back to their homes carrying the harvest upon their backs, offering to God their labor, singing:

“All of our daily happenings, I accept dear God, and when I fall asleep, let our dreams praise you father.”

At the end of the harvest, the last few stalks of grain to be cut held deep spiritual significance. Different parts of Poland called the custom of the last cutting different things, but all regions, rich and poor, held these customs to be sacred. A small patch of grain was always left uncut, standing alone in the field. Then at last, when the entire harvest was complete, the townspeople would gather around that last patch of grain. The reapers with scythes in hand would ceremoniously move in. Then the would begin, stalk by stalk, motion by motion, cutting those last standing grains to the ground. Death had at last come.

These last few stalks, now removed from the field were brought to the women and divided into three parts. Each part was carefully braided, and then each braid was tied together at the top of the ears, forming something like a dome. A flat stone was placed underneath and covered with a white cloth, as if it were a table. Upon this altar of sustenance, the townspeople would place their bread, their salt, and their money, and leave them the middle of the baron field until the spring, as a sign of their toil, and labor, offering it all up so that the next year, they may be blessed with bounty yet again.

One final stalk of grain would be left apart from this tradition, however, and used for another. The women would weave into this last stalk with the wildflowers of the earth and braid them into a bouquet. It would then be brought to the most senior reaper, who would relinquish his scythe to be adorned with their bouquet – consecrating this tool of death with the very things it was built to destroy.

The question I sought out to answer at the onset of this series was, how did the Faith thrive during five decades of institutional communism. I believe the answer to that question is mysteriously wrapped up in the historical, agrarian strength of the Polish nation, particularly in this striking image of a scythe adorned with wildflowers.

When Poland converted to the Faith it permanently altered their national soul. Their agrarian pagan customs instantly blended with this new doctrine and over the course of a thousand years they proved themselves an essential force in Europe, militarily, culturally, spiritually. Both east and west recognized Poland as the critical crossroads of Europe. They gave the Church some of the greatest saints and martyrs in its vast communion. They saved Europe, more than once from the Islamic forces of the east, bent on conquest, and did it in remarkable, Tolkienesque fashion with their glorious, winged hussars. It’s a nation that knew where it was on a map, knew its vulnerability as the doorstep to Europe and rose to the occasion. Poland accepted its place in history as the martyr of Europe and accepted it with grit. Its repayment for this martyrdom was partition, and suppression of the Faith.

After World War I it reemerged, only to fall again to the Nazi’s. The Warsaw underground rose, unified in resistance. Polish pilots made a significant contribution to the battle of Britain and the RAF during the war years. Winston Churchill never forgot their critical part. Before the Nazi madness receded, they left behind possibly the greatest martyr of the 20th century. Saint Maximilian Kolbe became an enduring source of strength for Poland in the years to come.

At long last the armies of the Soviet Union rolled in and entirely subjugated Poland. There’s almost no more perfect antithesis of the Catholic faith in the material world than communism. It rejects God. It holds no value of the human soul, and thereby casts aside the value of the human person, allowing for terrible crimes in the name of the greater good. In communism, the ends justify the means. This is anathema to the Catholic Faith. No political ethos is sacred, no politician is above truth. The Catholic of the 20th century that endured communism is the closest thing in practice and yet the farthest thing in time from the early church and its martyrs. The Polish Catholic was hated for their faith, for their joy, for their eternal hope, for their willingness to die for something unseen by the legions of the material world. The impotence of guns and tanks against such a meek people only fueled the communist hatred and fear of the Polish Catholic.

When one reads the stories of the martyrs, one finds sublime, peaceful resistance. When the enemy put a gun to their temple, they did not fight, they did not beg for their life, they simply declared that they were ready, that they had made their peace. This recurring story of Christian martyrdom is Poland’s story as well.

I think some people may find the end of this narrative on Poland a bit anticlimactic. There was no armed revolt, no decorated general giving speeches of death and glory, rallying the men into an army of rebellion. There are no secular martyrs to be forged into bronze statues. There was no distinctive document whose authors pledged their lives to defend. No trials, no execution against government collaborators. No, the victory of Poland was its long martyrdom. It was a victory in the spiritual realm first, then manifested in the material. The Faith cannot be destroyed – it can be suppressed, and for time exist in private places. Yet in these private places where the faith burns dim, it illuminates in its small way those enduring customs and dreams of a nation simply waiting for the novelty of this age to pass, so that it could one day get back to its hard work, its labor for the day, its sacrifice for its children, and its worship of God.

This, I think, is the secret sauce of Poland. I can only read the history and repeat it here. I can’t say for certain what is on the hearts and minds of the people we’ve discussed here. But I’ve learned something about their spirit. They endure and endure with saintly grace. They never lost the faith. They never even came close to losing faith. The toughest, cruelest, most oppressive periods in Poland were the breeding ground for zeal, from which we get great men, like Father Jerzy. Yet great because they were meek.

Of all the communist bloc nations, from the very beginning Poland was the one Stalin declared communism fitted like a saddle on a cow. Of all the soviet states, Poland is the one where the Church hierarchy maintained legitimate, authoritative control in opposition to the regime, and used this strength to disarm the patriotic zeal that could have led to an urban warfare bloodletting.

This meekness, in the classical sense, as a virtue is the strength of Poland. In its meekness Poland recognized itself as the martyr-nation of Europe. The nation that would allow itself to be led to Calvary, in imitation of Christ.

To say nothing of its pre-20th century history, if we simply look at the age of the Soviet Union, Poland’s contribution to the world is simply this: in following in the footsteps of Christ, and fully embracing the gospels, and the Roman Catholic discipline, Poland landed the world’s death blow to that evil empire. Its volleys went farther and pierced deeper than any arsenal of the west. It was the first chink in the armor against, what Our lady called the errors of Russia. As it dislodged itself, against all odds and without a shot being fired, from that union of atheism, it precipitated the greatest geopolitical collapse in the history of the world. And in doing so, freed over 200 million people from bondage, and allowed in those nations for the worship of God to resume.

A survey taken at end of the 19th century revealed that most Poles felt their nation was destined to be a martyred nation for the West. Today, if you ask a Pole what its contribution to the 20th century was, they will tell you they gave you a pope and rid the western world of communism. In the 1830’s when uprisings against Russian oppression was ignored by western Europe the first time, authors and poets began referring to their beloved nation as the Christ of Nations.

One of these authors was a Pole named Adam Mickiewicz. He referred to the Polish as the Apostles among the Idolaters. In a work he titled Books of the Polish Nation and Polish Pilgrimage, published in 1833, he gave a voice to his fatherland:

“And Poland said, ‘Whosoever will come to me shall be free and equal for I am Freedom.’ But the Kings, when they heard it, were frightened in their hearts, and they crucified the Polish nation and laid it in its grave, crying out ‘We have slain and buried Freedom.’ But they cried out foolishly… For the Polish Nation did not die. Its body lieth in the grave; but its spirit has descended into the abyss, that is, into the private lives of people who suffer slavery in their own country… For on the third Day, the Soul shall return to the Body; and the Nation shall arise and free all the peoples of Europe from Slavery.”

Stephen DiJulius 5/28/19 Stephen DiJulius 5/28/19

The Business of the Cross

These Christian holy wars emblazoned into modern consciousness that we collectively call the crusades existed before the protestant reformation, and therefore, are explicit Catholic history. The modern papacy as we know it was in fact carefully crafted by crusader-era popes. The most prominent and most universally recognized promoter for holy war to Judea was St. Bernard of Clairvaux, canonized in 1197 and declared a doctor of the Church. Battles of epic scope, accounts of miracles, the most venerated of Catholic relics, and the most renowned holy orders exploded into western European society and its consciousness. Yet in the margins of the pages of the chronicles of these times, despite the overall affirmation of their means, you’ll also find terrible crimes: institutional greed and scandal, thefts on an unimaginable scale, and mass murder. While this is less a condemnation of the behavior of Christians, and rather an indictment of the fallen state of mankind, as Catholics, this particular history is ours to reckon with.

Sources:

Tyerman Christopher. 2006. God's War : A New History of the Crusades. Cambridge Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Tyerman Christopher. 1998. The Invention of the Crusades. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Bartlett Robert. 1994. The Making of Europe : Conquest Colonization and Cultural Change : 950-1350. London: Penguin Books.
Joinville Jean Caroline Smith and Geoffroi de Villehardouin. 2008. Chronicles of the Crusades [New ed.] ed. London: Penguin Books.
Cobb Paul M. 2014. The Race for Paradise : An Islamic History of the Crusades. New York: Oxford University Press.

On September 16th, 2001, while the United States was still reeling in shock from the terrorist attacks on 9/11, then President George W. Bush held a press conference. A reporter asked the president about the prospects of increased government surveillance, and how that might result in potential infringement of American’s constitutional rights. The president replied that they are facing a new enemy, using never-before-seen barbaric tactics - a new kind of evil, he called it. He wrapped up his answer to the reporter by saying:

This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I'm going to be patient.

The president’s use of the word ‘crusade’ went relatively unnoticed in the United States. Some in the press bristled at the context, but by in large, the country was in no state to care about such a minor controversy. There was, however, some damage control. Bush’s aides went out and clarified the what the President meant by the usage of the word. The president himself later made a point to declare Muslims and Arabs friends of the United State. But suspicions were nonetheless raised in the Muslim world. What would a western crusade in the 21st century mean look like for the world?

Even if flippant, the president was not alone in his framing of the coming conflict. Just three years earlier, Osama Bin Laden himself recalled the crusades as the only time in history that the armies of the west marched on their lands.

Just a few days after President Bush’s crusade remarks, Islamic intellectual and politician Laith Shubeilat told the Wall Street Journal that during the Crusades, people were told they were fighting for Christ, but fought, in reality for Venetian trade routes. And that today, just like the past, just tell the Christians the coming war is for an idea, and they do the bidding of Texaco.

Despite how minor this presidential faux pas was, I still find it remarkable in its acuteness. Depending on what you count as crusades, the period ended anywhere from 700 years to 500 years prior to the President’s speech. The first crusade was commenced 900 years prior. And yet, the word is still loaded enough that’s its usage can cause a minor geopolitical crisis.

Now, geopolitics aside, the word crusade is of course also loaded with religious context. When asked to define a crusade, your average person today would probably string together something about Christian holy war, or knights. Overly simplistic, yet still correct.

These Christian holy wars emblazoned into modern consciousness that we collectively call the crusades existed before the protestant reformation, and therefore, are explicit Catholic history. The modern papacy as we know it was in fact carefully crafted by crusader-era popes. The most prominent and most universally recognized promoter for holy war to Judea was St. Bernard of Clairvaux, canonized in 1197 and declared a doctor of the Church. Battles of epic scope, accounts of miracles, the most venerated of Catholic relics, and the most renowned holy orders exploded into western European society and its consciousness. Yet in the margins of the pages of the chronicles of these times, despite the overall affirmation of their means, you’ll also find terrible crimes: institutional greed and scandal, thefts on an unimaginable scale, and mass murder. While this is less a condemnation of the behavior of Christians, and rather an indictment of the fallen state of mankind, as Catholics, this particular history is ours to reckon with.

It is obvious that European society didn’t suddenly wake up one day and decide to conquer Jerusalem. This begs an answer to the question of what and why – what were the crusades and why did the crusades happen? This seemingly simple question is what I’m going to attempt to answer.

I know I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on the word ‘crusade’, but one final point I want to make on the word will, I think, also help provide a good starting point for this discussion. ‘Crusade’ is not a medieval word. There are some early variations of it in the late 16th century, but the exact word doesn’t arrive in the European lexicon until the 18th century.

This relatively novel word reflects the question of what and why. How can we ask ‘what were the crusades and why did the crusades happen’ if we are using a word that a crusader would never have understood? So, what would one of these soldiers have called themselves? Most concisely, they would have said they were taking up the cross. In the 12th century, if I had told you that, you would understand where I was going, and what my new legal protections were under the pope and the king. You would understand my new status in society was something closer to a monk. And you knew my family wouldn’t see me again for years, if ever again. Yet you would also understand that I had achieved complete remission of my sins and expunged whatever temporal punishment awaited me in purgatory. These are the those that today we call crusaders.

Christopher Tyerman, Oxford professor and author of countless books on the crusades tells us that to take up the cross was a specific religious act, closely bound with Catholic eschatological issues of the soul – meaning the salvation of one’s soul. But to crusade was also demonstrably political and social in consequence. It was at its basic function, a military activity in which one’s internal spirituality complemented external ambition. The crusader was the reflection of the contemporary practical and ideological conflicts: faith, self-regard, religious discipline, social control, honor, pride, material, and spiritual greed.

It is tempting and would appear easy to view the crusades as a singular subject to be used as a historiological definition of an era. I think that attempt is not only incorrect, but also impossible to do with any intellectual honesty or satisfaction. The crusades were a product of medieval Europe, not the other way around. The fact the crusades reflected and refracted all aspects of their contemporary existence is what makes them so hard to define in any neatly packaged concept.

Crusader involvement represented a tiny fraction of society, with most taking no part in them directly. The call to crusade was never compulsory or permanent. Canon law reflects virtually nothing of crusading as a practice of the faith and crusader apologists never succeeding in couching the wars in any legal context for justification.

After the third crusade, crucesignatus – meaning ‘a person signed by the cross’ became the closest single word – but it carried with it no distinction between warrior or peaceful pilgrim to the Holy Land. Other words too were used for the act of taking a spiritual sabbatical to Judea, such as expedito, profectio, passagium, via, and voyage – all words for extensions of social and religious activities already entrenched in society. Eventually, certain aspects of crusading did become recognized routine or tradition, especially in theological apologetics. A succinct term was given at last by Pope Innocent III when he called for the fourth crusade as an attempt to codify all these social and religious extensions. He called it negotium crucis – the business of the Cross.

To begin a comprehensive narrative, we need to understand chemical composition of the fertile ground in which the crusades were planted – in a word, Christendom. More specifically the High Middle Ages, defined as the 11th to the 14th century. Leading up to this period, Europe was emerging form the first millennium having survived the Viking age by assimilating them into its own existing paradigms of social order. The afterbirth of wedding European social structures with Viking attitudes was a period that would come to be defined by massive creative activity in the arts, gothic Church architecture, systemic legal maturation, and new levels of production and distribution driven by population growth. In short, an entirely new existence that can be summed up as urbanization and commercialization.

Author Robert Bartlett, in his Making of Europe identifies three critical inheritances of this medieval society: first, the roman imperial skeleton of roads cities, and Latin language; second, Christianity’s traditions of scripture and sacraments; and third, Germanic pagan cultures of military aristocracy, rites, and ethos.

Of the people inhabiting this world, there were three large and distinct groups: The aristocratic laymen comprised of soldiers and nobles preoccupied with preserving their lineage. Second were the clergy, clerics and monastics: unique in their literacy and vows of celibacy. Both the aristocracy and the clergy supported each other through a loosely organized structures of hierarchy and alliance. The last group making up medieval Europe was of course the peasants: the salt of the earth agricultural hunters and gatherers under the domination, for better or worse, by the other two groups. The clergy, it’s worth noting, coming out of the first millennium found almost no centralized authority in the papacy, giving the bishop a Rome only a nod over the Alps in recognition of the primacy of the chair of Peter.

Bartlett tells us that the easiest way to track the expansion of western European frontier society was to track the Latin church’s bishoprics. With each new diocese came detailed records, reliable dates, parish communities, followed soon by stone churches and grand cathedrals – the physical and tangible embodiment of the Latin Church.

By the year 1200, there were 800 bishoprics that recognized the chair of St. Peter and joined the pope in celebrated the Roman liturgy. 300 alone were in Italy, southern France, and the Rhineland with some bishop’s seats only 6 miles apart. The oldest of these bishoprics had linear histories back to the earliest centuries of the Church.

With rapid growth from the Aegean to the Atlantic, fueled by the tapestry of western European cultures and traditions, various liturgies arose that were still “Latin”, albeit unique in form and rubric. Overtime, by way of papal suppression, these local rites of worship were eliminated. Their followers brought to heel by papal influence that demanded the uniformity of the official Roman liturgy. Robert Bartlett identifies this centralized auhtority of the Latin Church with not only western European military and political hegemony, but also with waning power of the Byzantine Empire:

When we turn to the definition of Latin Christendom as an obedience, that is, as a multitude of churches who accept the authority of the pope, we find an organization with an active executive head, and it is easier to imagine growth springing from the drives of an institution rather than from liturgical forms.

With the rise of the Latins, Byzantium was finding itself increasingly pinched geopolitically. And as the artistic flavor of the Latin Church embodied gothic architecture, scholasticism, and Arthurian romance, the divide between eastern and western churches begins to develop into ethnic fault lines. Latin increasingly came to mean Frankish. The expansionary gumption and the ground level organization of the bishoprics gave the Latins the edge in conquest throughout Europe, as it soon would in Judea.

There is another “X” factor that must be addressed when discussing the formation of medieval Europe, and it plays a significant role in understanding why the crusades happened the way they did. That “X” factor is Norman culture, or perhaps more honestly, Norman conquest. One of the authors I read, I think it was Bartlett, called this “X” factor, Norman Diaspora.

If one was going to place a bet on who would rule the High Middle Ages in western Europe, one might be inclined to put money on Charlemagne’s Carolingian dynasty, and the subsequent Holy Roman Empire. One would lose this bet. While the Normans, these French speaking descendants of the Vikings, now had a new language and land, they did not lose their fathers’ insatiable, terrifying and deadly spirit of adventure. A practical explanation of Norman expansionism can be found by examining a fundamental change in European inheritance tradition from one millennium to the next. From Bartlett:

Recent work by German and French historians suggests that the structure of the aristocratic family itself underwent a transformation in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Loosely linked kindreds, for whom maternal and paternal relations might be equally important, and who possessed no enduring genealogical or territorial center, were, it has been argued, replaced by clearly defined linages, in which patrimony and primogeniture became ever more important. A single line of male decent, excluding as far as possible, younger sibling, cousins, and women, came to dominate at the expense of the wider, more amorphous kindred of the earlier period. The decline in opportunities for some family members of the military aristocracy – notoriously, of course, younger sons – may have been the impetus to emigration.

In my last podcast series, Written in Blood, I wrote an episode on John De Courcy - Norman conqueror of Ulster. He was the younger son of a younger son. He had no inheritance yet possessed immeasurable ambition. It was these younger sons, like De Courcy, who founded Norman dynasties across Europe and eventually into the Holy Land. Remember that one of William the Conqueror’s titles was William the Bastard. Yet after his conquest in 1066, Normans now controlled the English crown and kingdom, and significant holdings in France. After England, Norman conquest expanded to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Sicily and Spain. With the Normans assimilated into French society, and, much like the Latin Church, Norman conquest became increasingly recognized as… Frankish.

While it may be obvious, it must be highlighted that transition to Norman rule was not pleasant for the conquered. A chronicler of the conquest of Wales recounts the deeds of Robert, Earl of Chester as he subdued those people:

This warlike marcher often fought against that restless nation and shed much blood in frequent battles. He pushed back the Welsh by fierce warfare, expanded his territory and founded a strong castle on the hill of Degannwy, next to the sea. For fifteen years he ground down the Welsh inexorably and invaded the lands of men who had previously enjoyed liberty and owed the Normans nothing. Through the woods and marshes and harsh mountains he pursued and harried the enemy. Some he slaughtered indiscriminately like beasts, others he bound in chains for long periods or harshly subjected to undue service. Pride and avarice, which control the hearts of everyone in this world of mortal men, drove the marcher Robert to this unrestrained plundering and killing.

This is obviously not Holy War, but it did represent the expansionary frontier of the Latin Church and Roman liturgy, albeit indirectly. The previously mentioned biographical subject of mine, John De Courcy, established his dynasty in Ulster by way of not only defensive motte-and-bailey castles, but also with minted coins bearing his name on one side, and St. Patrick on the other. He founded and endowed six monasteries, along with more religious houses. The preexisting pseudo pagan-Irish Christianity was replaced with the Roman liturgy, and a bishop was sent from Rome. John de Courcy’s method of establishing himself as a semi-autonomous prince with papal anointment was the playbook of Norman conquest. Even Willian the Conqueror marched under a papal banner when he through out nearly every dynasty of England.

At one parley during Norman conquest in the Balkans, a leader of the eastern European people was recorded to ask the Frankish knight leading the conquest:

Lord, we wonder greatly at your good chivalry. And we wonder greatly at what you are seeking in this land, and why you came here to conquer lands from such a distant country. Have you no lands in your own country to support you?

This medieval Norman diaspora was a military aristocracy, that planted withing Frankish culture their weapons and methods of war, techniques that gave them a distinct edge in combat.

Heavy cavalry, or the mounted knight, is a staple of any great medieval epic. The dominance of the infantry was still hundreds of years away. These cavalries were heavy because they were clad in iron: conical helms, coats of mail, large shields, spears, swords, maces, clubs, and axes. The mail coat was often the single most expensive object a knight could owned. At a time when much of the world’s infrastructure was built from wood, this marching wall of iron could decisively tip the scales on the battlefield. Bartlett rightly notes that though they lived in the wheat age, they looked like men of the steel age.

Their war horses had to not only bare the tonnage of these iron soldiers but also face the rigors of combat. Thus, they were specially bred and trained. Noble horses were not only highly valued weapons of war, but highly valuable plunder too. All of this was fantastically expensive, especially considering that most knights required at least three war horse to properly operate, and each horse needed their own trappings and armor. The aristocracy is the only class rich enough to support this method of mounted cavalry – a method so effective it remained virtually unchanged for 300 years.

Of equal military significance were the bowmen, and of them you had three kinds: the short bow, the long bow, and the crossbow. The short bow was three feet long and could be pulled back to the chest. Nearly every medieval army utilized them, but in terms of range and lethality, it couldn’t compete with the long bow. It was six feet long and could be drawn back to the ear. The Welsh were the first to introduce this weapon onto the medieval battlefield. A twelfth century chronicler recount reads:

One of the men at arms was struck by an arrow shot at him by a Welshman. It went right through his thigh, high up, where it was protected inside and outside the leg by his iron [armor], and then through the skirt of his leather tunic; next it penetrated … the saddle… and finally it lodged in his horse, driving so deep that it killed the animal.

But the most terrifying battlefield projectile was the crossbow. Years later when the crusaders brought this weapon to Byzantium, princess Anna Comnena called it barbaric, and diabolical. The Latin clergy quite agreed with her. At the Lateran Council in 1139 its use was declared illegal under pain of excommunication. This ban was completely ignored by the princes of western Europe. And by the end of the 12th century, any respectable lord had a crossbow corps. Despite their usage, these corps were considered unchivalrous pariahs, thus the crossbow corps were made of mercenaries and heretics – yet well paid all the same.

The last weapon of war of the Franko-Normans is of course their castles. The encastleation of Europe by these peoples did not follow an organized infrastructure plan. Each was erected for uniquely local political and military purposes. But there are two features of Norman motte-and-bailey castles that make them efficient and effective – they were small and they were tall.

On average their footprint was only about 3000 square feet. They were not meant to shelter whole communities, but to simply be a place military defense for their lord. These cheap, innovative, and utilitarian structures exploded across western Europe and beyond as fast as the Normans did. In England, in the year 1100, 44 years after the Norman conquest there were over 500 castles less than 50 years old.

Naturally, along with this highly defensible innovation came new methods of breeching them. Catapults were generally to small and weak to break the thick stone walls several meters deep, so the trebuchet was invented. Your average trebuchet could throw a 500 lb. projectile 300 yards. Siege craft became an art, and the corps of engineers was born.

The last point that needs to be touched on with regards to the Normans is of the personality of the conqueror himself. A Norman conqueror was elevated to mythical status by his unique chronicler. Often, when writing of their lords the chronicler would ignore technological or strategic superiority but highlight the psychological characteristics that gave them the edge in battle. The Norman conqueror was called “energetic at arms” or “obtaining favor of all though their energy”. Before battle one Franco-Norman knight called on his men to remember energy of their ancestral race, i.e. the Vikings. Robert Guiscard, conqueror of Italy and Sicily was said to win the day by his “great daring and knightly energy”.

Chronicler of the Normans, William of Apulia describes them as more powerful than any other people in military conquest. Exaggerated, sure, but it does show that something different was happening in Europe. A new people had arrived in history and their time was nigh. In describing how the Greeks were routed by the Muslims of Sicily, William literally calls the Normans a new race:

Then it was the turn of our men. The Messinese had not yet experienced our prowess and attacked fiercely at first, but when they realized they were being pressed much harder than usual, they turned tail in flight from this new race’s warfare.

This “new race” had developed a reputation. The Lombards of France called the Normans savage, barbarous, and a “horrible race of inhuman disposition”. Pro-Norman chroniclers preferred terms like ferocious. Bartlett emphasizes that this reputation was not an accident. In fact, it was carefully crafted. During their Sicily conquest, Muslim carrier pigeons fell into Norman hands after a catastrophic loss. The Normans wrote the account of the battle in the blood of the dead Muslims, affixed them to the pigeons, and sent them back flying to the women and children awaiting news of their fathers and husbands.

Their own chroniclers were eager to highlight such violence as a means of instilling fear in their enemies. But they were also unabashed about their greed as well:

They spread here and there through various parts of the world, in various regions and countries… this people set out and left behind small fortune in order to acquire a greater. And they did not follow the custom of many who go through the world, and enter the service of others, but, like the ancient knights, they wished to have everybody subject to them and under their lordship. They took arms and broke the bond of peace and performed great feats of war and knighthood.

Another chronicler notes the Norman inability to be content with whatever ill-gotten gains they acquire:

Who does not know that the Norman race refuses no effort in the continual exercise of its power? Its warlikeness is ever hardened by adversity, it is not easily upset by difficulties nor, when difficulties have been overcome, it does not allow itself to be conquered by slothful inactivity, for it has learned always to shake off the vice of sloth with activity.

It’s a bizarre argument, isn’t it? Despite their faults, at least they weren’t lazy.

While this mix of vigor, boldness, avarice, and viciousness may have given the Franco-Norman conqueror the psychological edge he needed to overcome aristocratic rules of inheritance, to the Byzantines, according to historians Michael Attaleiates, they were simply bloodthirsty. According to a Muslims aristocrat, they were:

Animals possessing the virtues of courage and fighting, but nothing else.

Coinciding with Norman expansionism, western Europe was in the midst of a population boom. By the 12th century, its biggest cities would for the first time reach 100,000 citizens. In a 100-year period the walls of Florence expanded from 200 acres to encapsulating 1500 acres. Urbanization was afoot. Using the Norman’s Domesday Book as a guide, England was estimated to have a population of 1.2 million during the time of their conquest. 300 years later, and after the black death killed approximately half the population, an English census put the population at 6.5 million.

With urbanization pushing rural Europe further out, agricultural resources were being strained with growth that required additional labor, larger farms, and more efficient logistics. Rural Europe was forced to develop itself into cities and towns, followed, of course, by new bishoprics. With Roman liturgical influence and practice reaching now out into the boonies, linguistic uniqueness of the French and German countryside began to blend into national tongues.

Latinized legal framework also followed both the growth of urban centers, but also the Norman conquests. Thus, at a certain time in history, a Frankish knight could have a reasonable presumption of his same legal right in Wales, as he would in Sicily, and soon, Palestine.

Partly fueling this expansion into European frontiers is something that looks awfully like capitalistic new world exploration a few hundred years later. Entrepreneurial fiefdoms were conceived. An aspiring aristocrat could receive funding to plant his flag in some distant countryside, and then send tithes back to the bankroller of the expedition. But they weren’t the only ones cashing in on growth and expansion.

Sea born trade had of course always existed, yet its true power was now finally recognized. In the Mediterranean, the line between merchant and pirate was very thin. However, these were the people western lords must do business with if they want protection form the Egyptians or the Byzantines. Enter the Italian merchants: the Pisans, Genoese, and, shrewder and more successful then all were the Venetians, far from idealists, trading with Latin, Greek, and Muslim alike.

Due to illiteracy, the effect Catholic theology had on the individual person amidst all these societal changes is hard to firmly grasp. Today we take the cliched concept of “what would Jesus do”, a bit for granted. The Old and New testaments were not accessible to the average person during the medieval periods. The Faith was generally received through commentary by Church fathers like Origen, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and Pope Gregory I.

Stories of Old Testament violence, without any theological context were popular because they were exciting: Moses enlisting the Levites to slaughter the followers of the golden calf. God exhorting Saul to kill the Amalekite mothers and babies. Despite Origen’s insistence that these stories should be viewed as allegorical spiritual battles, this sort of genocide and violence against the helpless seemed to be pleasing to God. The writings of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine did little to dissuade violence among the masses by building on Aristotle’s and Cicero’s theories of Just War. Clovis, as the founder of the franks won victory in battle by invoking the name of God. The Venerable Bede, Saint, and Doctor of the Church, arguable one of the most important historical scholars to have ever lived (and my patron Saint by the way), even he wrote of the justifications of war between Christian peoples.

It would be no surprise then that Charlemagne demand Christian prayers and fasting to defeat and ultimately carry out something akin to genocide against the Saxons – just as the Israelites had done.

This history is not easy to reckon with. It flies in the face of not only modern expectations of civil, rational behavior, but also seems to ignore the teachings of Jesus Christ and the apostles after Him. Yet as I said before, because of the lack of actual access to the scripture, we can’t completely comprehend these people’s understandings of them. This populist distortion of scripture is made exceptionally clear, and honestly a bit disturbing when examining the Vikings conversions.

When the Vikings arrived, they encountered the residual military structure of the Roman empire. That is, warlords with armies vying for local and regional supremacy. The bishoprics, obviously had to form alliances with these warlords in a symbiotic relationship for support and influence. This resulted in Bishops commanding their own military retinues. As the Vikings ravaged Europe, they found a people and a Faith that was not afraid to fight – this was attractive to Viking nature. During the attack of Paris in 855, a French monk proved himself not only deadly with a ballista, but also laconic in speech:

He was capable of piercing seven men with a single arrow. In jest he commanded some of them be taken to the kitchen.

Stories of Christian battles with the Vikings began to look like stories told in a mead hall. The ghost of St. Benedict was purported to be running around battlefields, directing cavalry, and killing Vikings with his staff. Christopher Tyerman calls these tales, what are likely a recruitment stories, are a foreshadowing of the confusing blend of the sacred and the profane that would come to define Christian Holy War.

This blend appealed directly to Viking sensibilities. About a generation after their conversion to the Faith, an old English poem was written called The Dream of Rood. In it, Christ is described as a young warrior called the Lord of Victories. His death on the cross was described as a battle. Heaven is a type of Valhalla for the victorious. In their unregulated vernacular Christianity, Christ is called manno drohtin– a generous mead-giver. His disciples are styled as his earls in “high horned ships”. Judas committed the crime of changing his loyalties from one lord to another lord. St Peter is remembered as a mighty and noble swordsman.

Moving toward the end of the first millennium, dependence on these warriors rose around them. Those who became aristocrats were increasingly important to governance. Others became knights. Political, juridic, and fiscal policies reflected their sensibilities. These neighboring warlord aristocrats engaged in endless violence to expand their holdings, but also, on some level at least, recognized the need to save their immortal soul and with the same vigor, yet now engaged in contrition.

One of the ways this warrior class achieved contrition was by going on pilgrimage to the holy land. As this custom increased, they along the way founded abbeys and monasteries who’s explicit directive was to continually pray for the soul of its founder, that he may be forgiven the river of blood his brutality left behind.

This internal Christian on Christian warring for land reached recognizable crises around the year 1050. In response to the bloodshed a movement arose that called itself The Peace of God, or the Truce of God. The clergy was trying to get a handle on the chaos and began to threaten excommunication if the violence did not cease. Ceremonies were then held before the bones and relics of now forgotten saints where knights would line up and swear oaths of chivalry. There they promised to forever protect and serve the Church, its clerics, the monasteries, and also the poor and helpless. Then the knight’s armor and weapons were blessed, preventing them from using these tools against each other, lest they commit a sacrilege. This movement reached official clerical approval at the Council of Narbonne in 1054 where it declared Christian on Christian violence equal to shedding the blood of Christ.

The knightly warrior class of western Europe was now couched in a pseudo-spiritual chivalric light. They were defenders of the Faith, the Church, and the poor, and now forbidden to ply their trade within Christendom.

At this dawn of the new millennium, there were also massive geopolitical changes. The Carolingian empire had descended into chaos, torn apart by Germanic and Italian states to the east, Vikings to the north, and Mediterranean Arab pirates to the south. By the end of the 10th century, France was still an idea, with the king holding little real power.

Germanic lords replaced the elective Carolingian kings with Parisian lords with rights of hereditary succussion, preserving a dynasty more loyal to them. The Latin Church was on board and lent ideological support. The wealthy Parisian aristocracy poured money into the new dynasty. France became a vassalage, ruled by thugs and knights in high castles. Frankish romantic tales of lore had died with the Carolingians.

The ill-defined mess that was the western European system of lordship lent itself perfectly to external control. A French lord could possess holdings in both France and Germany, thus owing two allegiances. Christopher Tyerman calls it a political minefield. Case in point, William the conqueror being both the Duke of Normandy and King of England.

Which brings us to England. England had by far the most centralized system of government, allowing for coherent national policies and societal growth, but also made it a juicy target of conquest – all one had to do was capture the throne. Again, case in point, William the conqueror. This is the paradox of power. France, due to its disunity, could never easily be conquered. From Tyerman:

For all its elaborate institutions of government, the English state was created and maintained by armed force. After 1066, England was invaded in 1088, 1101, 1139, 1153, 1216 and 1217; civil wars involving the English king or regent were fought in 1087, 1088. 1100-1106, 1123-1124, 1139-1153, 1173-1174, 1191, and 1215-1217.

Before the era of statehood, organized violence was as ubiquitous as it was inescapable. It was the general employment of the tapestry of the noble class. It is arguable that only the Byzantines at this point in Christianity who had some semblance of national state. Compared with the Latins, the Greeks seemed dominant in culture, trade, and politics. Their empire was vast, but their influence was being chipped away by growing Latin influence, Germanic expansion, and most consequentially, the rise of the Seljuk Turks – recent nomadic converts to Islam. They had taken Syria, Palestine, and now Anatolia. They made Nicaea their capital and were now within striking distance of Constantinople. Seeing the success of the Turks, other nomadic tribes were now pressing into the Balkans.

The Seljuk Turks not only pinched the Greek Empire but destabilized the whole middle east. They were very much a foreign ruling class reigning over all the various ethno-religious groups from Egypt to Anatolia. Simultaneously, the Islamic states in Spain were falling to what would later be called the Reconquista. Disunity amongst the Spanish Muslims allowed Christian nobles to push south and establish the states of Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, Leon, and Castile. German knights took advantage of all this cross-continental instability by pushing into Prussia and the Baltics. The warrior class was now greatly desired, and desperately needed to both defend and expand. Kurdish mercenaries, Flemish mercenaries, Varangian guards – lords, nobles, and aristocrats who sold their swords to Christian and Muslim alike amounted to a new prominence and social profile. The image of the feudal lord as a mounted, armored knight found its way on wax imprints, paintings, sculptures, stained glass, poetry, and funeral effigies.

Astride horses bred for combat, armor with dozens of arrows sticking out of it like a hedgehog, and only being unseated by a lance or spear, or direct hit to the eye, it’s no wonder these warriors were revered. Considering the damage a knight could inflict and sustain, and along with the expense of maintain these fighters, pitched battles were extremely expensive, and therefore rare and avoided. Most skirmishes were little more than a few dozen men or raiding parties looking for easy pickings. The only mitigating component to the potential for wanton terror a nobleman could unleash was this newly instituted concept of the Truce of God – what we would later call chivalry. Yet, there were still incentives for the knight to engage in combat – loyalty and idealism were two. Treasure was another. Soon, Holy War would provide another.

When discussing the transformations of second millennium Europe, the most significant is also the easiest to miss. The Church and the papacy were directing and undergoing extensive changes.

We’ve already touched on how, through its system of bishoprics, the Latin Church had an expansionary edge. Yet with this newfound influence came newfound centralization of power. Latin Christendom was increasingly becoming not only a rite, but an obedience. Other religions throughout the world and even other forms of Christianity tolerated, to one degree or another, liturgical diversity. The Latin Church was unique in that it outright demanded liturgical uniformity and tied it together with canon law with jurisdictional authority. In other words, institutional legal and liturgical uniformity – rite and obedience.

By the eleventh century, the oldest institution consciously tracing its history was the papacy – the chair of Peter, one of the five original patriarchs of the Church. The others being Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria. After the Arab invasions of the 7th century, only Rome and Constantinople survived. And with Rome being the successor to Peter, it held innate primacy.

There is an old agreement, many say a forgery, that exists between Constantinople and Rome – called the Donation of Constantine. It is said that before he died, Constantine gifted the care of the Eastern Orthodox Church to Pope Sylvester I. The Latins believed it. The Greeks didn’t. Nonetheless, it was always used as legal leverage between the two patriarchs in matters of authority.

But besides Byzantium, there is another flashpoint of the papacy that must be understood – that is its relationship to the Holy Roman Empire.

On Christmas day, 800 AD, Pope Leo 3rd crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor. As the Carolingians declined, the crown changed over to the Germans in 962 when King Otto I was invited by Pope John XII to invade Italy and defeat the enemies of the papacy. In return, Otto received the imperial crown. A few years later the Chair of Peter found itself in need of an army again. From the South, Norman conquest threatened the Papal States. So, in exchange for full remission of sins, Pope Leo IX assembled and army and marched on the Normans. The papal army was obliterated at the battle of Civitate and the Pope Leo IX was captured and held hostage. Soon after attaining control of the papacy, the Normans negotiated to receive papal banners for their coming conquests of both England and Sicily.

These Normans in Italy, who are contemporaneously described as “a surplus of arms-bearers with an insufficiency of land” had now become papal reformers. Norman aristocrat Robert Guiscard received the title Duke of Sicily, and with his younger brother they invaded the island in May 1061. This former goldmine of Byzantium was currently under the control of the Muslims, but soon it would fall to its new conqueror - a Norman anointed by the Latin Church. The business of Norman-style conquest had gained spiritual legitimacy.

Both because of, and in spite of the Norman’s, ecclesiastical reformers had grabbed the reigns of the papacy with the ascension of Pope Saint Gregory VII in 1073. There were several facets to his reforms, the most crucial regarded the papacy itself. Using the Petrine texts (meaning the scenes from the Gospels where Christ appointed Peter as head of the Church) they became Gregory’s baton he waved for total, unquestioned papal authority in all matters. The pope was and ought the be the worldly kingmaker. It was a gross violation of the Church of Christ, in Gregory’s view, for kings and dukes to squabble over the installation of popes and bishops. His own ascension to the Chair reflected this – as he was one of a few rare popes to be elected by acclimation – meaning there was a groundswell of people who declared him people.

Gregory walked the walk. He injected himself and the Latin Church in as many military matters that he possibly could. He twice granted remission of sins to armies going to battle – once against the Muslim in Sicily, and once against Byzantium itself. He increased military enlistments in Italy in defense of the papacy and encouraged civil conflict in the papal states where it suited the Church’s interests.

The effect of Gregory’s very public papal rhetoric was enormous. Kings and princes found themselves bombarded with letters from the new pope insisting they adhere to his principles of papal supremacy. He took sides against the Henry IV, Holy Roman Empire in Germany to exert what he saw as the Church’s independent authority to dictate geopolitical policy. This division between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire would come to be known as the investiture contest – it was essentially a debate about who had the right to appoint bishops: The king, or the pope?

So dramatic was Gregory in his ideological views of the papacy, that in 1074 he shocked everyone when he announced that he would personally lead an army to aid the Christians of the eastern Mediterranean against the Seljuk Turks. He called on Christendom to “take up arms against the enemies of God and push forwards even to the Sepulcher of the Lord under His supreme leadership.”

Christopher Tyerman points out that the Latin Church inherited by Gregory existed in a delicate triangulation between the Papacy, the Normans, and the Greeks – for the pope to declare, even rhetorically, unto his own authority active military leadership of all of Christendom, lay and ecclesiastical, east, and west, towards the goal of seizing the Holy City of Jerusalem – was quite a new recognition of potential power.

The growing dispute between the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor is relevant to our subject matter for several reasons. For one, it became such an international debacle that, by requiring all of Gregory’s time, it ensured his rhetoric about marching to Jerusalem remained exactly that. But perhaps more importantly, the dispute serves as a tangible, while overly dramatic, demonstration of exactly what new political inlfuence the papacy was seeking.

In 1073 Gregory attempted to codify his investiture reforms via a papal decree called Dictatus Papae – Dictates of the Pope. Henry, leader in opposition to the pope represented the traditionalist camp. He argued that he had the right and authority, as dictated by history, to invest bishops, abbots, and other clergymen to positions, despite this novel papal decree.

Two years after this decree, after wiping out a Saxon rebellion, Henry appointed, by his own volition a bishop of Milan, northern Italy, driving deeper the wedge between himself and the pontiff. That Christmas, an anti-Gregory mob attacked the Pope while he was saying Christmas Mass and threw him in prison. The very next day, papist supporters stormed the prison and released him. Pope Gregory then picked up Mass precisely where he had left off the day before.

The very next month, in January, Henry assembled a group of German Bishops at Worms where he convinced them to abandon all loyalties to the to the pope. Henry then began calling for Gregory’s abdication.

Now remember, the entire conflict revolved around who’s in charge of who. Thus, Gregory’s response was to calls for his abdication was excommunicate the Holy Roman Emperor, and declared him deposed from the throne, and further, that if he did not repent within one year hence, his loss of kingship would be permanent.

Emperor Henry found himself losing a realpolitik chess match against a master, for Gregory new that without papal support, the title of Holy Roman Emperor would do little to protect him from his enemies withing the empire, particularly the Saxons. Henry’s situation quickly deteriorated. He needed to act decisively.

Pope Gregory locked himself up at Canossa Castle in northern Italy just in case Henry came went on the march. Henry did just that. The emperor arrived at the castle without his army and almost no personal retinue. He then asked to see the pope. His entry was refused. So, he donned the dress of a penitent of the age, going barefoot and wearing a hairshirt. And there, in front of the gates of the castle he fasted for three days.

Finally on January 28th, the castle gates were opened, where Gregory the reformer was waiting. Henry fell before the feet of the pope and begged his forgiveness. Gregory then absolved Henry of his sins and invited him back into the Church. Afterward, Henry, his wife, and the pope shared communion at the sacrifice of the Mass, officially ending the Holy Roman Emperor’s excommunication.

The capitulation of the Holy Roman Emperor represents a watershed moment in both papal and secular relations but also in Gregory’s campaign for papal supremacy. Now it should be noted, and expected, that the drama between the two did not end there, in fact it got worse, to the point where Henry was excommunicated again, and Gregory ended up having to flee Rome when Henry actually did march on the city. The papacy, as an office, learned a fundamental truth – while the pope lacked legions, it could push its authority only so far.

From a legacy standpoint, once could argue Gregory gave the papacy two. Obviously, establishing papal supremacy in a lasting way was one – and would be built on and expanded by the popes to come. The other is planting the seed of Holy War in the consciousness of Christendom. Gregory in his willingness to enlist the help of the warmongering Normans to both protect and further the influence of the papacy found himself cast out of Rome, a pope in exile at the whim of the Holy Roman Emperor.

Under the rise of papal influence, prescriptions for war took a legal context. If, after the Truce of God movement, it was now illegal for a knight to wage war against his Christian brothers, now it was certainly legal, and encouraged now by the bishop of Rome to wage it against say the pagans in Ireland, or the infidels in Spain.

The monastic orders, which were swiftly growing in influence at the turn of the millennium had found themselves the victims to Muslim violence in Spain, and now with Spain being taken back by Christians, Gregory proclaimed that any monk who broke their vow of peace against the Moors would be granted salvation. Absolution in exchange for violence by papal decree was already granted under Leo IX, and again under Gregory VII, now he extended and expanded this to the monastics. Christopher Tyerman described the moment the papacy had arrived at:

From the perspective of the western church, conflict with Islam was ispo facto meritorious in a religious context. Whatever the reality of ambitious Italian trading cities, Norman bandits, Spanish lords or even Greek princes, churchmen, in particular successive popes, conceptualized the conflict, fitting into a wider picture of cosmic significance and individual grace. Whereas in the ninth century, Christendom appeared genuinely threatened, the frontier skirmishing of the eleventh century was of a very different order, yet the rhetoric was conversely gaudier.

The rise of the warrior class, the rise of the papacy, the rise of the Turks, the fall of the Moors, and the decline of Byzantium – while much of this constituted a new experience for western Europe Christians it’s important to remember that it didn’t all happen overnight – our narrative has already covered roughly 200 years. The world seemed normal. It stands to reason that if there are holy warriors then there must be holy wars needing fought. With little to no access to scriptures, the words of Christ are not there to couch any of this in a healthy theology.

The military society might have even seemed existential. Europeans had good reason to fear external threats –Carolingian France and Visigoth Spain knew all too well the capabilities of both the Moors and the Vikings – eliciting a quite natural pastoral, scriptural, theological, and legal response to equip the Faith to deal with these threats. Though positivity towards the military society and the desire to make Holy War was not ubiquitous. Far from it, in fact. Pope Gregory VII had many enemies, some of them political, but some of them theological. Many of the monastics abhorred the idea of holy war – but they were not in charge.

At the side of Gregory VII during his pontificate was an aspiring Cardinal bishop, who contemporaries mockingly called Gregory’s valet, named Odo of Largery.

In March of 1088, Odo was elected Pope by acclimation by a small group cardinals and prelates – as pope he took the name Urban II. He was an acolyte of Gregory, and it was implied by virtue of his election that he would continue Gregorian reforms. Any doubt about the zeal for the new pope’s continued fight for papal supremacy was swiftly laid to rest by Urban himself.

Urban II inherited Gregory’s papacy in exile while an anti-pope named Clement III occupied Rome. But he also inherited friendly relations with the Franks – and their Norman warriors. He was a native of France and knew the spirit and temperament of that land. So he launched his papacy on what might look like stump speeches across western Europe, favoring regions that supported him, avoid those that didn’t.

He was an august figure, and his presence was stirring. He spoke with confidence and demanded respect. He was politically savvy and worked to form alliances on the road. He was careful to deliver his most important speeches about the duties of Catholics to the Papacy during the two penitential seasons of the Church, Advent, and Lent. In one of his more lasting reforms, he revamped the bureaucratic operational efficiency of how the church dispenses judgment on worldwide matters by created the modern-day roman curia.

On one fateful day, Urban II assembled the Council of Piacenza – an international ecclesiastical meeting to pass judgements on a variety of matters effecting the church. Most of the issues had to do with reforming the internal workings of administrative affairs, but one issues was brought to the table that would change the course of history – Byzantine Emperor Comnenus had sent ambassadors to deliver a message to Urban. It was a plea for help. A plea for men at arms to aid them in their fight against the infidels marching on the empire’s doorstep. It was a request that had been made before, and the manner and scope of the help was, as always, left vague.

At the conclusion of the council, Pope Urban summoned his bishops and nobility and the swaths of peasants to Clermont France, where he had prepared a sermon in answer to the request of the eastern Church. So many people had turned out that the speech was moved outdoors to accommodate the crowds. There is no official transcript of Urbans speech, but there are roughly five or six accounts that all differ in one way or another. I’ll read an excerpt from Robert the Monk who we know was present:

This land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels and, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves… God has conferred upon you above all nations great glory in arms. Accordingly undertake this journey for the remission of your sins, with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Robert continues his account:

When Pope Urban had said these things… he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!". When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, [he] said: "Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, 'Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.' Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God!"

It is the will of God – Deus Vult, Deus Vult.

The Fulcher of Chartres wrote his own account of Urban’s speech where he quotes the pope as promising:

All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.

For a peasant or noble, the promise of full remission of sins was a pretty good deal.

Urban was a planner. His speech was not spontaneous and was attended by the who’s who of medieval Europe. It was theatrical and organized. His offer of expunging sins was couched nicely in the familiar concepts of just war, Old Testament sentiments, and anger towards Islam. When he finished his speech, cloth crosses were suddenly produced and affixed to the shoulder or breast of those who agreed in that moment to take up the cross, and march to the Holy Land. While the laity signed up in droves, the high-level aristocracy and clergy was notably, not moved.

Nonetheless Urban was great at marketing. And soon instructions were sent to the pulpits of eastern Europe, obliging the pastors to pass along the pope’s instructions. His words admonished each Christian to search their own soul, to sign up in the service the Church and the Pope, and wrestle the holy land from the infidel, and all the while gain eternal salvation.

Pope Urban had managed to do what Gregory before him could not, he had (perhaps unwittingly) tied all the loose ends of High Medieval Europe into one single cohesive focused release of energy. Those who now found themselves taking up the cross, the crucisignati, were those same Norman knights, eager to ply their trade and found dynastic legacies. Also taking up the cross were the peasants who pined for something more than a life of a poverty. All of them all found themselves motivated a sense of loyalty to the newfound power and prestige of the papacy. And they were all, no doubt sinners, in need of redemption. Some were true believers, others, profiteers. Many wondered who would leave and who would go – and what could be gained in another’s absence. The chance of success was low, the road seemed hard. Some planned a seaward passage; others began planning marches through the Balkans. Despite the best laid plans of Christendom, all bets would be off once they reached Judea.

Despite the impossibility of task, the call of Urban to Jerusalem evoked something beyond worldly practicality. From Tyerman:

Jerusalem in the eleventh century as in other centuries defined an ideal as much as a terrestrial city. It could stand as a metaphor, ‘The holy city, God’s celestial Jerusalem’, as an English royal charter of 1093 put it, for the world redeemed by Christ. Jerusalem could represent a spiritual condition and aspiration, as in the religious life of an individual or community, or its attributes could be geographically transposed to create a virtual reality in relics and shrines. More pervasively, the liturgy recreated scenes from Jerusalem in the Mass or enacted whole episodes, as in the increasingly popular Easter plays, each a glimpse of the holy city. Yet for all its liminality, poised between heaven and earth, God and man, Jerusalem remained a place as well as an ideal, temporal as well as spiritual, corporal as well as supernatural. In the tenth and eleventh centuries its distance and association with Christ’s life, Passion, and Resurrection ensured Jerusalem as the most meritorious goal of pilgrimage to such an extent that the chronicler Ralh Glaber noted that such a trip was in danger of becoming a fashionable social accessory rather than an act of piety. The difficulties of the journey magnified a hundredfold by war, secured its penitential attraction.

This was Urban’s call. He wanted a Holy War to liberate the streets on which Jesus Christ trod. But it was the interlinked and hardened military aristocracy in need of remission of sins that answered. And their results would astonish the world.

The undertow of enthusiasm that swept up western Europe in response to Urban II’s speech is probably not he help Emperor Alexius expected, nor wanted. Unleashing pent up Norman martialism and Holy Land fervor created an acuteness of power under Urban that the papacy never yet exercised. Urban himself was very aware of this. It’s clear from his writings that he intended to unite all the armies of Christendom under a banner of the cross, led by the pope.

Even so, and as we’ve already discussed, preparing for conquest under a papal banner was not new to any of these people. That war of conquest with approval from Rome was already a facet of medieval life lent itself to the ease in which society accepted Urban’s call to what would become the first crusade. This can be seen when examining at what people did in response to the call to take up the cross. There was almost no central military leadership, at least at first. After crossing themselves at a ceremony, usually after Mass, individuals simply began their pilgrimage east. And not everyone went to fight.

As swathes of peasants, merchants, and nobles meandered eastward, they encountered the western European diaspora of prior generations making this same pilgrimage – abbeys, monasteries, cemeteries of pilgrims, reminding them of the frailty of life, and the footsteps of their ancestors. Within a year of Pope Urban’s call, its estimated that 80,000 pilgrims had made their way east, mostly from France, but also from Italy and Germany. The journey was expensive. Nobles broke medieval society code by selling their holdings and inheritances to fund their own pilgrimages. Many peasants, finding the road harder than expected, and short on provisions, turned back before even reaching eastern Europe.

It should not be surprising that copycats of Urban appeared on the scene, preachers who, in their own way thought they were furthering the intentions of the pope, but their messages would have been something that we might today call… unhinged. Some were charismatic populists, and some were apocalyptic prophets of doom.

One group of wayward pilgrims, not knowing how to actually get to the holy land, had decided that a wayward goose in their company had been sent by God to lead them to the Holy Sepulcher. And so, every day, this group followed wherever this goose led them.

Celestial events gave further credit to the whole endeavor. A meteor shower put itself on display for western Europe to behold in 1095. And many recalled that Haley’s Comet had appeared before the Norman conquest of 1066. It was God telling them that they were doing was his will and he would be with them.

The Fulcher of Chartres appealed directly to criminals and murders, asking them to redirect their vices:

Let those who are accustomed wantonly to wage private war against the faithful march upon the infidels… Let those who have long been robbers now be soldiers of Christ; let those who once fought against brothers and relatives now rightfully fight against barbarians. Let those who have been hirelings for a few pieces of silver now attain an eternal reward.

True killers and butchers headed the call of the charismatic crusade preacher. Guys like Bertrand of Moncontour and Nivelo of Freteval signed up. Both had long histories of terrorizing the local peasantry subject to their rule. Thomas of Marle terrorized and pillaged the French locals on his way to the east. William of Melun, earned the nickname the carpenter for his skills as a battlefield butcher. Stephen of Blois (who will come up again) had a personal body count racked up in his own private wars that would rival the coming crusade. Raimbold Croton castrated a monk who opposed him in a land dispute.

By today’s standards, these men are monsters, not the pious types that our modern sensibilities would hope to see answer a call to Holy War. But remember, they were Norman, and have built a legacy on brutality and conquest. And critically important to remember, they were responding to a call that promised to expunge their sins no matter how terrible or numerous.

Christopher Tyerman gives a wonderful summary of the overall zeitgeist:

Part revivalism, part politics, part a search for release and personal renewal, both manipulation of popular beliefs and prejudices common to all social groups and an attempt to channel these towards a narrowly laudable yet essentially familiar and explicable end, the summons to Jerusalem succeeded because it caught the imagination of a society not necessarily ready but psychologically, culturally, and materially equipped to answer the call. In the level of official enthusiasm, in the rapidity of popular acceptance, in the extremes of response, in the widespread uncertainty, indifference and regional variation shadowing extravagant and well-publicized bellicosity, 1096 was the 1914 of the Middle Ages.

The military elite and hardened warriors who knew very well what it took to campaign successfully, they were taking time assembling their forces, but as Tyerman points out this summons to Jerusalem had taken on a societal imperative with a life of its own. Some simply wouldn’t wait for the warrior class. The impatient masses of people would constitute the first wave, that would come to be known as the people’s crusade.

The man we need to introduce to discuss this first wave of pilgrims is one of those over-the-top characters that history just loves to throw in at the perfect time for their strangeness to shine through. This man was a priest known as Peter the hermit. When I think of Peter the hermit, I think of one of those street corner preachers, repent, the end of the world is nigh. It’s possible he was at Pope Urban’s speech at Clermont, but no one knows for sure. What is known is that he was a true believer in this call to take back Jerusalem. Anna Komnene, daughter of the Byzantine emperor who kept a magnificently detailed journal of the first crusade, believed Peter the hermit had attempted a crusade before. We know he had been to the Church of the Holy Sepulture before and was appalled at the way Christian were treated in front of the empty tomb of Christ.

As I said, the warriors of Christendom were making battle and provision plans, but Peter said forget that, I’ve got the Holy Ghost on my side. Thus, on April 12th, Holy Saturday, a mere four months after Pope Urban’s summons, thousands of Peter’s followers assembled at Cologne. That’s an astonishingly short amount of time for any army to muster, even by modern standards – but Peter’s followers are not warriors. While there might have been a smattering of low-level knights here and there, this crowd is mostly poor pilgrims, true believers in Peter the Hermit’s zeal, and he commanded thousands of them. Some historians put the number as high as 40,000, just insane numbers. Imagine if today some street corner preacher who was written off as only having one oar in the water, amasses 40,000 followers in four months. Any body of people that size gets very hungry, very fast, and if you don’t feed them very bad things can happen. This is where we begin to see that the holy idealistic call of the crusades cannot out way human prejudices and fallen nature.

In medieval Europe, when Christians needed money, they often went to the Jews. The Jewish communities in Christendom did not have a ton of career opportunities among them, so loaning money on interest was one business they could occupy since, depending when and where you were in Christendom, loaning on interest was either frowned upon or completely banned under the sin of usury.

Peter the Hermit had zero plans for provisions and financing. So, they turned to the local Jewish leaders. And in something that can amounts to a shake down, those leaders procured letters for the pilgrims to show to the Jews in the nearby communities urging them to hand over whatever money they had. Bearing these letter on the day after Easter, Peter the Hermit and his merry band of pilgrims began their march to the holy land.

The size and unruliness of Peter’s pilgrims preceded them, causing some of the Jewish communities to throw open their gates at his arrival out of fear. The pilgrims marched light and fast through France, covering 20 miles a day until they reached the Hungarian city of Semlin, and now in bad in need of more provisions.

In the medieval days, the prospects of feeding and support tens of thousands of foreigners could bring starvation to your own family. The Hungarians, not interested in Peter the Hermit’s pilgrims, nor Urban’s call to Jerusalem, shut their gates and refused entry or provisions. So, the pilgrims attacked and ransacked the city, and simply pilfered whatever provisions they wanted and looted whatever else was available too. It’s estimated that 4000 Hungarian men, women and children were left dead in the wake of the attack – these were 4000 Christians they killed, not infidels or pagans, not that it makes it more acceptable, just revoltingly ironic.

Word was now out about what this wayward army of pilgrims from France was really capable of. Most towns between them and Constantinople emptied and got out of dodge. Some of those town, Peter’s pilgrims burned as they passed through them. Peter’s chroniclers tell us that Peter tried to stop them, and did not condone their destruction, but such is the inherent danger of the mob. He was no longer in control of his own creature.

The pilgrims by this point new they were public enemy number one in Hungary and were trying to hightail it to Byzantium as quick as possible. But one of the local governors had caught up with Peter’s pilgrims and attacked. Before they could make their escape, its estimated a quarter of the Frankish pilgrims were cut down like cattle.

This bleeding, starving, murderous band of thieves and plunderers was the first western army that arrived in Byzantium in answer to Emperor Alexius’s call for help against the Turks. By now everyone knew there were more professional armies mobilizing behind them, but still, his disappointment had to be considerable. The emperor was even more shocked when Peter the Hermit asked for transportation across the Bosporus to Anatolia. Alexius told him of the perils that awaiting his poorly equipped army there, but Peter would have none of it. He and his pilgrims were headed to the Holy Land under the protection of God – they didn’t need to wait for anyone. Being a Christian in Anatolia in the late 12th century under Turkish rule had its downsides, but one could generally be left alone. To be an invading Franco-Norman pilgrim crusader without soldiers or a plan, was borderline suicide.

Reaching Anatolia, Peter’s pilgrims broke into various raiding parties and began pillaging the Anatolian countryside for provisions, much as they had done in Europe. One group attacked and raided Nicaea. Another seized a castle at Xerigordo – this pilgrim contingent at Xerigordo, after taking the castle, found themselves surrounded by an army of Seljuk Turks. The pilgrims held up at the castle were now under siege, in an arid climate, with no water. One contemporary recounts:

Our people were in such distress from thirst that they bled their horses and asses and drank the blood; others let their girdles and handkerchiefs down into the cistern and squeezed out the water from them into their mouths; some urinated into one another's hollowed hands and drank; and others dug up the moist ground and lay down on their backs and spread the earth over their breasts to relieve the excessive dryness of thirst.

On the 8th day, the pilgrim contingent in the castle surrendered. The Turks gave them a choice – convert to Islam or be killed. Some converted, many didn’t. Those who converted were sold into slavery. The rest were killed.

In revenge for Xerigordo, the pilgrims attempted to attack the Turks outright. They were again slaughtered like the lumbering, untrained, unarmored rabble that they were. The European camps were nearly overrun entirely until Greek Imperial troops arrived to give the pilgrims a narrow escape back to Constantinople.

Peter the Hermit and his pilgrims were only the first wave of the first crusade. Other similar rag-tag groups of true believers followed that spring, but after Peter, Coloman, King of Hungary was done letting crusaders march through his country, and he shut his borders.

The leader of the next wave was very different from Peter the Hermit. He was not a member of the clergy, but a member of the German nobility. His name is Count Emicho. Count Emicho did a lot of awful things. And so, as does happen with people like him, contemporaries, and chroniclers sympathetic to the victims of a guy like Count Emicho, tend to pile on. Yet there are plenty of verifiable things that Count Emicho did do on his way to the Holy Land, as you’ll see.

The more you examine Count Emicho, the more you find things that make you… seriously question his sanity. It is said that his reason for taking up the cross in the first place was based on a vision given to him by God, in which he received a crown from one of the apostles and was destined to invade the Holy Land and kill everyone who resisted him. To add another facet of eeriness to Count Emicho, the pilgrims who were following that goose to the holy land were under Emicho’s wing.

Emicho had assembled probably around 10,000 crusaders, many were peasants, but he had a lot more knights and nobles in his group that Peter. They assembled at Speyer – Emicho is said to have been there, but sources are mixed. Crusader fever descended into mob mentality as the assembling pilgrims demanded the conversions the local Jews, by force if necessary. When they refused, the pilgrims began executing them. The local bishop swiftly stepped in and stopped the slaughter. By the time he did, historians estimate less than 20 had been killed. The Jews who converted under duress were allowed to revert to their faith by the bishop. Those Christians who had direct involvement in the killings, had their hands cut off.

It was a close call. While tragic for the families of those killed, it could have been much worse.

After Speyer, it’s said that Count Emicho moved to Worms. Again, riots against the Jews broke out. This time, hundreds were killed. Some sources say as many as 800. Torahs were desecrated and burned. Some Jews allegedly committed suicide rather than be forced to renounce their faith. The local bishop opened his palace as sanctuary for the those lucky enough to flee the bloodbath. But the palace could not hold back the rioting pilgrims. They broke into to the bishop’s palace and executed the Jews seeking sanctuary. Even one of the bishop’s own family members was killed in the frenzy.

After Worms, there is undeniable evidence showing beyond a doubt that Count Emicho personally moved his army on Mainz. The Bishop of Mainz, who had heard of the mayhem being wrought by the Count, ordered the city gates shut against him. So, the pilgrims frothed up anti-Jewish sentiments among the locals in the countryside and convinced them to march on the city. The Jewish leaders inside attempted to buy off Count Emicho. Some sources say he took the gold offering and attacked anyway. Regardless, he attacked. The Christian Burghers, which are basically German businessmen joined up with the bishop’s forces and the local military in defense of their city. Many of the Jews were given shelter in friendly Christian homes.

The burghers and guards first attempted to fend off the crusaders, but they were quickly overrun and fled the city. The bishop fled with them. The pillaging and slaughter lasted for two days. Some of the Jews formed an armed resistance in the bishop’s palace, but eventually they were all killed. The synagogue was destroyed. Some of the Jewish parents chose to kill their children before the Christians could get a hold of them. One story circulated by the chroniclers tells of a woman named Rachel looking for her son Aaron who fled at seeing his mother kill his siblings:

When this pious woman had completed sacrificing her three children to their Creator, she raised her voice and called to her son: ‘Aaron, Aaron, where are you? I will not spare you either or have mercy on you.’ She drew him out by his feet from under the box where he had hidden and slaughtered him before the Exalted and Lofty God.

When the crusaders reached Rachel, surrounded by the still twitching bodies of her children, they demanded she show them the money that she, as a Jew, must have hidden up her sleeves.

The chronicler continued:

Cruel foreigners, fierce and swift, Frenchmen and Germans...[who] put crosses on their clothing and were more plentiful than locusts on the face of the earth.

By the time Count Emicho reached Cologne, the Jews took no chances and fled. From there, the Jewish body counts fell, but the desecration of synagogues continued.

After Cologne, Emicho continued his path of destruction toward the Holy Land. He traveled down the Danube into Hungary, but instead of finding innocent helpless Jews, he found the army of King Coloman of Hungary – now a sworn enemy of the Crusaders. After skirmishing, Count Emicho’s army broke apart. Many were slaughtered. Some drowned trying to flee. Count Emicho survived and slithered back to his home.

Count Emicho’s crusade was not the last of the pogroms that would come to be known as the Rhineland massacres, but his crusade was the pinnacle of those vile atrocities. After the Rhineland massacres, some of the German aristocracy attempted to put some spin on what had happened. They formulated a populist argument, asking why should they crusade against enemies of the Cross in the Holy Land when they have so many enemies of the Cross in their own lands.

By August 15th, 1096, the date Urban had set for the armies of Christendom to depart for the Holy Land, three separate German expeditions had completely collapsed and failed to even make it out of Europe, while Peter the Hermit’s contingent sat on the rim of western Asia, barely alive. The time had finally come for the Norman princes of Europe to embark. Stephen of Blois, husband of William the Conqueror’s daughter, remembers the scene of their leaving:

What sighs, what weeping, what lamentation among friends when husband left wife so dear to him, his children, his possessions however great, his father, mother, brother, and other relatives. But however many tears those remaining shed for departing friends and in their presence, none flinched from going… Then husband told wife what time he expected to return, assuring her that if by God’s grace he survived he would come back home to her. He commended her to the Lord, kissed her lingeringly, and promised her as she wept that he would return. She, though, fearing that she would never see him again, could not stand but swooned to the ground, mourning her loved one, whom she was losing in this life as if he were already dead. He, however, like one who has no pity – although he had – and as if he were not moved by the tears of his wife nor the grief of any of his friends – yet secretly moved in his heart – departed with firm resolution. Sadness was the lot of those who remained, elation, of those who departed.

I can’t help but pause her and consider how very different societal structure in medieval Europe is from ours. Many of these guys described here by Stephen of Blois were fabulously wealthy and internationally famous. While Stephen’s description could be of middle-class American soldiers departing for Iraq, it would be more like if Jeff Bezos and his entourage of Amazon underlings were kissing their families goodbye to go fight. Oh, and by the way, the Amazon contingent better hurry up because the Elon Musk contingent also leaving, and we need to beat them to the Holy Land.

Stephen of Blois gives us a great account here, but the first great western lord to set out on crusade was the younger brother of the king of France, Count Hugh of Vermandois. Hugh setting out first on crusade is intentionally symbolic, partly because of his closeness to the French throne, but also because he represented a reunion between the papacy and the king. The king, Philip I had been excommunicated for bigamy, but the prospect of a significant Frankish lord to rule over the rowdy Normans was too appealing for Urban. Employing his little brother allowed the prestige of the French crown to be used under a papal banner, while still saving face.

These Franco-Norman designs were not the unplanned escapades of Peter the Hermit. The organization was impressive. An itinerary was devised and sent to Emperor Alexius, giving him estimations of the armies’ route and arrival. Hugh’s army was swollen with crucisignati from all corners of France – including remnants from Count Emicho’s contingent.

Hugh reached Constantinople toward the end of 1096 and was immediately put under house arrest by the emperor. Emperor Alexius, despite requesting military aid from the Latins, was immediately suspicious of them. The infamy of crusader pillaging and sacking on their way to his city was well known. How could he be certain this army wouldn’t do the same to Constantinople? After all, the Greeks and Romans they were barely 50 years into their worsening schismatic relationship. For all of Urban’s polemicizing of papal supremacy it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think this might be some western plot to force the Greeks to conform to Latin rites of worship.

By Christmas, a duke of Lorraine named Godfrey of Bouillon arrived with his contingent. When you think of romanticized caricatures of fearless, chivalric crusading knight, Godfrey stands out as one of the closest things to that in history. He, like others of the aristocracy, was not above extorting money from the Jews to fund his campaign, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. He’s described as tall, strong, handsome, and in his mid-30s.

Godfrey, it could be said, had that intangible stability that tends to attract other people, placing him inevitably in a position of leadership. In his retinue were soldiers sent by the Holy Roman Emperor, as well as a couple of future kings of Jerusalem. Godfrey’s feudal house of knights that followed him was large, experienced in war, and extremely loyal to him. As a testament to his character, successfully negotiated peaceful passage through Hungary with King Coloman was his doing. Upon arriving in Byzantine territory, he promised the emperor that his army would not resort to raid or plunder of the countryside, provided the town markets were open to them to buy provisions.

After entering Constantinople, and finding Count Hugh under house arrest, Godfrey was furious and demanded his release. The emperor demanded Godfrey agree to serve the emperor as a condition of Hugh’s release, provisions, and passage to Anatolia. Godfrey refused and had 8000 mounted Norman knights and tens of thousands of infantry to back him up. After some negotiations, a mutual agreement was struck where the crusaders agreed to return former byzantine lands they liberated along their way.

And here we come to the predictable conflict of interest since pope Urban’s speech. Alexius wanted western aid to recapture Byzantine holdings. The crucesignati wanted to capture the Holy Land. It’s a critical failure of diplomacy that would plague both Rome and Constantinople with every crusade.

Arriving behind Godfrey was Bohemund, Norman prince from Taranto Italy. To complicate the delicate alliance, Bohemund and Emperor Alexius were mortal enemies, having fought territorial wars against each other for years. It’s alleged that when Bohemund arrived, he attempted to convince Godfrey to sack Constantinople and take it for the Latins. Godfrey refused, and Bohemund agreed to the emperor’s contract, but now you might begin to get an idea of why Emperor Alexius treated the crusaders with suspicion. But the emperor likewise had to respect Bohemund’s presence – he had as much experience fighting the Turks as he did the Byzantines.

Count Raymond of Toulouse arrived next. His contingent was the best funded and largest. He had a reputation as a planner but was said to have arrived in a furious mood due to the difficulty of his journey. One could speculate that his demeanor accounted for him being the only western lord not to sign the emperor’s agreement to return Byzantine lands.

Last to arrive was Robert of Normandy, brother of the king of England. With him was Stephen of Blois who we’ve referenced a few times. Stephen’s own son would one day sit upon that throne.

By May of 1097, the armies of Christendom, those warriors who had answered the call of the pope, had assembled and were ready to march east. Their goal was Jerusalem. For Emperor Alexius, he could care less about Jerusalem, so long as they won back for him the lands of his once great empire.

After these armies of God took the leap of faith into Anatolia, they steamrolled through its barren landscape. By June, Nicaea was wrestled from the Turks in what Stephen of Blois called a remarkable achievement. Rumors of the innumerable Franks marching toward Jerusalem made their way through the Turkish and Arab powers. Their fear, disunity and division played into the hands of the Normans, allowing them to enter Asia unopposed. Those divisions in Islam were deep. Not only did you have religious rifts of Sunni and Shia, but also political, like Egyptian caliphs and Berber mercenaries, along with ethnic divides like Turk and Arab.

Serious Islamic resistance finally came together at the battle of Dorylaeum. It was close. The Normans almost lost, but they rallied and drove off the Turks. The locals received them as liberators, giving the crucesignati a sprit de corp despite their near destruction.

Despite all their planning, the climate realities of Anatolia eventually set in: blistering heat by day, biting cold by night; fatigue, thirst, hunger. After a few weeks most of the horses were gone. Thousands of men died from exhaustion. Mothers among the crucesignati abandoned their newborn children for they could no longer care for them. Eventually, the entire operation slowed to five miles per day. The leaders were affected to. Raymond of Toulouse fell ill enough to receive last rites, and Godfrey of Bouillon, was randomly attacked by a bear receiving nearly lethal injuries. Despite these difficulties, Anatolia inexorably fell to the Armies of God, putting Antioch in attacking range.

Antioch was once a powerhouse city of Byzantium. It is critically important both geopolitically and biblically. If Constantinople is gateway to the east, Antioch is gateway to the Holy Land.

As they approached, Armenian Christian lords in exile lent their help to the Norman conquerors. Greek imperial ships also arrived and secured the coast, reinforcing the Christian armies from the harbors. In October of 1097, the Norman’s dug in for a siege against Antioch.

Sieges were not the Norman’s strong suite, for sitting still went against their nature. As boredom and discomfort set in, so did desertion. Even Peter the Hermit was caught attempting to flee. Moral was given a jolt however from additional crusaders arriving by boat from Italy, England, and Denmark. Tyerman points out that it’s a testament to planning and a miracle of logistics that this army was never entirely cut off from Byzantium or the west.

During the siege an Islamic relief force from Aleppo was defeated by Bohemund’s contingent. Nonetheless their numbers were still dwindling. Those who remained were an elite corps of hardened warriors. They were now used to the environment and had multiple successes in pitched battles. All the pomp and fluff of the army was starved out of it. Yet Antioch still stood.

News arrived that a massive coalition of Turks was only days away from arriving at Antioch with intentions of breaking the siege and driving the crusaders to the sea. The Norman leadership held an emergency council to decide what to do next. It was decided that the city must be taken immediately, that they would never survive being pinched between Antioch and an enemy army.

This was a dark night for the crusaders. The prospects were near hopeless, so hopeless that some abandoned the mission, most notable Stephen of Blois, who snuck away mere hours before the attack.

Bohemund and his soldiers, as I said had experience fighting both Greek and Turk, and thus spoke both languages. He had been working on backchannel communications with the local Armenians inside the city and found some among the local population willing to help them. On the night of June 2nd, the gates were secretly opened. The citizens of Antioch awoke to the sounds of pillaging. The garrison fled, abandoning Antioch to be plundered by the conquerors. The Latins, unable to tell Christian from Muslim, massacred thousands indiscriminately. While it was a victory, it was of little consolation. They knew the Turkish relief forces was still on its way.

Five days later the Turkish army arrived and dug in for a siege. Latin moral plummeted, and panic began to set in. More pilgrims attempted to flee the entire expedition by scaling ropes draped down the city walls. So many fled by this way that they garnered a nick name – furtive funambuli – shifty rope dancers. It’s estimated that as the Turkish siege set in, less than 30,000 crucesignati remained.

Crusader lore, like Catholic hagiography, sometimes encounters difficult to believe stories. When one reads the chroniclers details of what happened at Antioch, one is asked by them to suspend a strictly historical narrative. Whether these things are true, we will never know. That they are claimed to have happened is absolutely true. It is alleged that a priest named Stephen of Valence found himself beset with grief at the impending disaster soon to fall upon Armies of God. So, he did what countless Christians before him had done for centuries during times of hopelessness – he went to a church to pray for the intercession of the Blessed Mother. There he claimed to receive a vision of Christ, the cross, the Virgin Mary and St. Peter – first bishop and Christian patron of the city of Antioch.

St. Peter assured Stephen the crusaders would receive his aid in five days if they demonstrated their faith with prayers, worship, and penance for their sinfulness. The Norman leaders, upon hearing this priest’s vision were… pessimistic. So, Stephen swore to the truthfulness of the visions upon the gospels themselves. Thus, the Norman leaders obliged the heavenly request.

At the same time another pilgrim named Peter Bartholomew claimed he had been receiving visions form St. Andrew – brother of St. Peter, who likewise insisted that the crusaders do penance. The martyr allegedly told Peter Bartholomew where he could find the Holy Lance that pierced the side of Christ, right there within the city of Antioch. Again, the Norman leadership was cautious in obliging these tales, but nonetheless allowed Peter to lead them to a spot in the Cathedral of St. Peter, where he instructed they begin digging. And after a few feet they indeed found something not unlike the point of a lance.

These stories are difficult, even for a Catholic, for one could easily stray into superstition. Historian Christopher Tyerman offers refreshingly sober perspective on these events:

The objective reality of these visions or the authenticity of the Holy Lance are immaterial. The visions fitted the contemporary models of such encounters, the visual iconography of the celestial messengers borrowing from contemporary art. A scrap of metal found beneath an old, much-renovated church after a day’s digging does not stretch credibility or credulity. What mattered in June 1098 was the crusaders’ belief.

The result of these events was a collective boost in moral – which is borderline miraculous by itself. Peter the Hermit was then sent as an emissary to the Turkish leader, a warlord named Kerbogha. Peter was probably sent as more of a spy than messenger, for his proposal was that they settle this siege by duel, which was flatly rejected, and Peter returned to Antioch, but he had surmised the enemy’s strength and position. Bohemond decided then that with moral high, and the enemy’s position more or less unsuspecting, the time had come to breakout.

And so, the gates of Antioch were thrown open. And Bohemund unleashed the Latin legions upon he Turks. The battled hardened Norman knights remained disciplined, and well ordered. They executed tight maneuvers that drew in Kerbogha’s forces allowing them to outflank the Turks and roll up their rear guard, crushing them. Now I can’t help but go back to my Written in Blood podcast days and think of what General Patton called this risky strategy – he called it grabbing the enemy by the nose, and kicking him in the ass.

Kerbogha, seeing the trap he’d fallen into, fled the field in terror, leaving his camp behind full of his retinue: women, prisoners, provisions, tents, beasts of burden, gold, silver, food, drink and other spoils to plunder. Contemporary sources say all the Muslims were killed. The women had lances driven through their bellies to extinguish the next generation.

Wanton death, after a month’s long painful, fearful, miserable siege, by either side, while abhorrent to us moderns, is the norm throughout. I say this not to make excuses for Christians, but to remind myself that this is fallen human nature on display – and while there is nothing holy about it that I can see, in the context of history, it is expected.

Shortly after the semi-miraculous victory of Antioch it was learned that Emperor Alexius was preparing a relief force to send to the Latins, but some of the absconding lords, including Stephen of Blois convinced him that all hope was lost, and so the relief force was never sent. For the Latins, this constituted unforgivable treachery in their most dire hour of need. The Byzantines were now never to be trusted. As a result, perhaps inevitable result, Bohemund considered his contract with the emperor broken and claimed Antioch for himself. The crusader leadership became mired in squabbling over the riches of Antioch. So paralyzing were the feuds that some sent letters to Urban himself to visit the city to get the crusade back on track.

But their delay did have unknown positives. Kerbogha’s defeat significantly weakened his own personal grip on Jerusalem, allowing it to be conquered by the Fatimid Caliphate from Egypt - a Shia sect. The Latins had a diplomatic connection with the Fatimid’s – the Coptic Christians who enjoyed friendly relations with the Fatimids. This allowed, at least temporarily, open lines of negotiations between the two groups, which secured Christian pilgrimages permission to celebrate Easter that year in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Yet conquering Jerusalem for themselves was still very much the crusader goal. The weakness of both the Fatimids and the Latins created a sense urgency – like a space race to the moon. Yet the strategy remained elusive. There were ultimately two options. First was the long game - move down through Judea and lay siege to each city and conquer territory by territory. The other option was more expedient – make a mad dash for Jerusalem now while they still had the strength, and attack. The latter won out for many reasons. First, conquering territory was no longer a goal since they abandoned their oath to Byzantium anyway. Second, attacking Jerusalem had populist support among the troops. Third, Godfrey of Bouillon liked it.

And so, on May 16th, 1099, the Armies of God began their march at breakneck pace toward the Holy City. The speed was truly remarkable for a massive medieval army: 200 miles in 20 days, shadowed along the coast by the English fleet the entire way. Speed necessitated diplomacy. Hasty treaties were written up with each city they encountered along the way: Beirut, Acre, Tyre, Haifa, Caesarea. The conquerors moved so fast their Viking ancestors would have been impressed. So fast, the Fatimids could not form any organize resistance, allowing the crusaders to completely overrun Jaffa – the port to Jerusalem, and critical lynchpin to take the city. They occupied Bethlehem and fanned out across the Judean hills securing towns and outposts. The locals welcomed them as just the next wave of foreign rulers, happy at least that they weren’t more Turks.

But the Fatimid’s weren’t entirely helpless. Most of the trees between Jaffa and Jerusalem were cut down to prevent the Latins from building siege weapons – must-haves to capture a walled city. They also poisoned the local wells – also necessities for large armies in desert climates.

Despite the best efforts of the Fatimids, on June 7th, 1099, the dwindled Franco-Norman army of less than 14,000 arrived at the walls of Jerusalem. The sight of the walls was a long desired and nearly overwhelming spiritual experience. Many of the knights took off their shoes as they approached – a symbol of reverence for the same streets trodden by Christ, and an act of penance that they might expunge their sins. Yet time was not on their side. They knew a Fatimid resistance army of relief was imminent. The Norman conquerors on the other hand had no hope of any relief reinforcements, no locals to call on for support, and were deep in enemy territory. They had too little men to form a blockade or siege. Water was scarce. Dysentery was spreading. Provisions were gone. The city must be taken now.

Then a miracle of logistical support arrived in Jaffa at this very moment – Genoese mariners, thanks to negotiations by Bohemund in exchange for trade rights in Antioch. On June 17th these famed marine engineers put into port and delivered large European timbers and the engineers required to turn them into siege weapons.

Jerusalem is defended by double walls, moats, and a naturally hilly landscape. The governor inside controlled only a small garrison made up of local militias consisting of Egyptians and jews. With such a small force, he decided to launch no disruptive forays as the siege building progressed – a critical error. His strategy rested solely on a relief army from Egypt.

On July 13th the attack commenced from two separate crusader contingents – one from the north, and one from the south. A signal corps was set up upon the Mount of Olives with reflectors to coordinate both attacks – the very hill in which Christ warned of coming tribulation and destruction. At the base of these hills was the garden of Gethsemane, the sight of Christ’s agony in the garden.

Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon oversaw the siege tower on the north side. It’s recorded that he placed a gold cross on top of it and he himself stood at its peak, firing his crossbow into the city below while the tower rolled forward. Once pushed up against the walls of the city, Godfrey stepped down upon the walls of the city, followed by other princes of Europe. Massacre ensued. The citizenry and shred of resistance fled and melted away. Some of the people made for the citadel hoping for mercy, but this was not a day of mercy, and were all murdered. Jews fled to their synagogues and were slaughtered where they stood. Muslims were butchered indiscriminately. Stories range from decapitations – who were the lucky ones, to being tied to a spit and roasted over a fire. The accounts are from the Christian sources.

Such was the horror that a Jewish onlooker coldly commented that at least the Christians didn’t rape them as the Muslims did when they arrived. From Tyerman:

The city was comprehensively ransacked: gold, silver, horses, food, the domestic contents of houses, were seized by the conquerors in a pillage as thorough as any in the middle ages.

After three years of blood and toil, and now pillaging and destruction, a crucesignatus recounted reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulcher:

Jerusalem was now littered with bodies and stained with blood… With the fall of the city, it was rewarding to see the worship of pilgrims at the Holy Sepulcher, the clapping of hands, the rejoicing and singing of a new song to the Lord. Their souls offered to the victorious and triumphant God prayers of praise which they could not explain in words.

I, as your podcast host, can’t entirely explain in words these events. We moderns… we Catholics… can we rejoice as these crusaders did at these events? As the great one, Dan Carlin so often says, we all have the same DNA. Again, I return to my usual crutch, but it’s all I have. From a historical perspective, when an army conquers a city, pillage and plunder is the norm.

Modern reservations aside, and to get back to the narrative, the crusaders had little time to celebrate their victory. The inevitable Egyptian relief army was mere miles away. And by now the crusaders barely numbers 10,000 soldiers. But there was only one option. On August 10th the crusaders left Jerusalem and met the Egyptians out in the open, destroying an army twice their size. With surprise, speed, unity, determination, and an indomitable Norman spirit of conquest, they routed the Egyptian relief army at the battle of Ascalon, putting their seal on the campaign for the holy land. The only question now, was could they keep it?

By the end of August, most of the crucesignati were eager to return home. Only Godfrey of Bouillon was willing to stay behind. He was presented with the title of King of Jerusalem – which he rejected, refusing, in his words, to wear a crown of gold where his savior had worn a crown of thorns. Nonetheless he was the leader of the Holy city.

On July 29th, 1099, Pope Urban the reformer, acolyte of Gregory VII, the one whose call for Holy War define the next two hundred years of western European history and set in motion events that would establish the papacy as the most powerful earthy office the world had ever seen, died a mere hours before news of the capture of Jerusalem could reach his ears.

On July 15th, 1149, 50 years to the day after the capture of Jerusalem, in the southern corner of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there was a dedication ceremony to a complex of new chapels built around what was thought to be Cavalry. There engraved is the following:

This place is holy, sanctified by the blood of Christ. By our consecration we add nothing to its holiness.

The entirely unexpected, logic-defying success of the first crusade turned those involved, especially Godfrey of Bouillon into instant mythical heroes. The secular results are far easier to track than spiritual – it cemented the military tactics of the Norman warrior class for the entire world. Conquering England was one thing, Italy and Sicily were perhaps more impressive, but owning Judea represented geopolitical supremacy between spanning two great continents.

The lands of Judea were carved into four distinct Catholic states. Moving south along the banks of the Mediterranean, they are the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem – which, after the death of Godfrey of Bouillon, his brother became king, not having the same reservations of a crown of gold. Together, the Franks called the crusader states Outremer, meaning overseas. Frankish Outremer to the north and east, was surrounded by the Seljuk Turks. To the south, the Egyptian Fatimids. Enemies all.

The business of the cross now turned to the business of governance. Walls needed defending, fields needed tending, ports needed shipping. The new lords of Outremer were faced with not only governing the locals but managing the flood of pilgrims from the west. Pilgrims granted remission of sins by the pope were now arriving in droves, but there were also secular reasons for coming to Frankish Outremer. Alleged relics procured in the holy land and brought back to western Europe sold for small fortunes. Tour guides set up businesses selling maps and brought the tourists on biblical expeditions. New lands were prospected by wealthy western lords. There was also a military necessity to attracting pilgrims, as most of the original crusaders had gone back home, and all these Holy sites and relics needed defending.

Some pilgrims enlisted in the service of the king, but more significant were the new military orders that filled the gap of necessity. The Order of the Hospital of St. John, also called the Hospitallers were given papal recognition in 1113 with the mission of caring for the sick and infirm, but soon after acquired military duties. Around 1120 they were joined by the Order of the Temple of Solomon – the Templars. Their job was to guard the pilgrim routes from the port of Jaffa to Jerusalem. Even though Jerusalem was conquered using Frankish people and tactics, these military orders gave it a uniquely garrisoned feel. These military orders soon found huge benefactors in the kings of Europe, highlighting the general acceptance of their necessity. But not everyone was happy about the combination of monk and warrior. Some thought it was monstrous. The head of abbey wrote:

It is useless attacking external enemies if we do not first conquer those within ourselves… first purge our souls of vices, then the lands from the barbarians.

These types of arguments were outweighed by the cold practical need to manage the huge numbers of faithful arriving every day, responding to the tourism propaganda sent back home.

Within 12 years of the capture of Jerusalem, there were four full published accounts of the first crusade being circulated, not to mentioned epic poems and songs that spread like wildfire. Tyerman recounted that some of the crusading heroes had to sit through painfully inaccurate stories and deeds that never happened.

All this post crusade zeal and confidence cemented a model of spiritual warfare that could be waged in the physical world. New artwork was commissioned by the papacy depicting Christ as a mounted warrior knight. The critics of Urban and Gregory’s new penitential warfare in the service of the papacy were silenced, while Urban received a posthumous triumph of his reforms. The pope’s direct involvement in the salvation of the individual Catholic was established through indulgences for the remission of sins. Criminals could be exonerated by going on pilgrimage. Political enemies of the pope – like the Holy Roman Emperor – could reconcile by going to Jerusalem. Immunity against debts and crime was gifted to the crucesignati. Yet difficulty arose in codifying these changes with successive popes using vague language. Canon lawyers now had their days filled with examining when remission was fulfilled or not.

Pope Paschal II, who succeeded Urban recognized the need to offer support to the holy land and ignited a fresh recruitment campaign for warriors to go on pilgrimage in support of Frankish Outremer. For those who now took up the cross, he added the punishment of excommunication for anyone who failed to begin or fled as a coward.

Previous deserters, like Stephen of Blois were subjected to public humiliation. Stephen also received private humiliation from his wife, the daughter of William the conquer. Before she would agree to lay in bed with him she reminded him of his cowardice.

Her humiliation had its desired effect. Stephen, along with other princes united in purpose across the many fault lines of medieval Europe, went on pilgrimage to offer their services to the new Catholic states in Judea. These armies of course needed to pass through Constantinople, bringing fresh stresses on the infrastructure and markets of the city. Emperor Alexius now constantly bemoaned what he called “the commotion from the west.” Like many of the Latin armies before them, Stephen and his contingent pillaged the countryside of Byzantium. The emperor simply shipped them across the Bosporus as fast as logistically possible.

The Muslims warlords had now learned something of their enemy – they learned pitched battle against iron clad mounted warriors was a bad idea. They also learned they needed to act on a more united front against the lords from the west. The evolving of Turkish tactics became clear almost immediately when Stephen of Blois’ army was destroyed trying to take a Turkish outpost. The women and children in his contingent were massacred on sight. The surviving knights limped back to Constantinople. The hopes and dreams of the various princes of the west who attempted to expand the Christian frontier died in the deserts of the middle east. The Turks were masters of food and water logistics, something the crusaders proved shockingly terrible at managing. This disparity was made crystal clear during post-crusade military engagements. The myth of the invincible soldier of the Christ was shattered, sending thousands of pilgrims: prince and peasant alike, back to Europe bereft of money and dignity.

After these expansion expeditions failed din glorious fashion, simply holding on to what was already occupied in Syria and Palestine became the official military policy.

Outremer was small and narrow, roughly the size of England along the Mediterranean coast. There were few roads that brought you there. None of the citizens of the new states were crusaders, and few were western, making the political and economic realities of governance complex and extensive. They had virtually no police force to call on – for instance, before Godfrey died, at any given time he had only 300 knights and 200 infantry at his service in the event of a crisis. There was trouble in the royal palace too. Nearly every male line of the king failed repeatedly and quickly devolved into a level of bigamy and sleaziness that, well frankly, is very normal for the European aristocracy.

The rule of law was surprisingly Neapolitan. The Hospitallers would treat anyone no matter their race or religion. The courts of justice allowed for jurors to be Syrian or European, and each witness could swear upon the bible, Koran, or torah.

This instability of Outremer was the major deterrent to pilgrims – one never knew when one might arrive and find themselves pressed into military service against a Turkish army. This inherent military weakness forced the crusader states to sustain themselves with a strange mix of Franko-Norman feudalism, and constant diplomacy and negotiation with their Turk and Arab neighbors – sometimes even going to battle alongside one another. This realpolitik to governing Judea was abhorred by the new coming pilgrims from the west who believed the propaganda depicting an eastern Christendom digging in its heels and holding back the Islamic hordes.

Not unlike the Vikings centuries before in Europe, it was the Europeans in Judea who were enveloped into eastern society. Many married Muslims, blending language and creating new words with French and Arabic syllables – so much so that interpreters were only needed in official legal affairs. Yet Normans are still Normans and shall rule the Norman way. They established their dynastic territories, formed treaties with Muslim lords, and leveraged their friendship for material gain with the infidel.

This contentment with the enemy, combined with the political tolerance for Muslim and Jew led predictably to theological fissures between western nobles and Outremer Nobles. To the west, this crop of leadership seemed a far cry from those haughty conquerors barely a generation ago.

Yet the leadership of Outremer did acknowledge its lifeline was western tourism and Holy pilgrimage that flooded it with money and men. This transient existence in the long run hurt Outremer. Few of European descent were born and died in the Holy Land. There was very little of what we might call hometown pride. It was largely a population was on vacation. This is highlighted by the fact that during the entire 12th century, there was only one Latin bishop who could claim to be born in Judea.

The primary sphere were the Franks and the locals hit it off was in trade. From Tyerman:

Most evident is the degree to which the Franks in Outremer fitted into the Levantine economy, exporting dyes, luxury textiles, castor sugar and glassware and, increasingly, spices, while importing from Europe and Islamic neighbors such things as foodstuffs, metals, wood, and cotton. Outremer stimulated cross-Mediterranean commerce, in men and goods. By the 1160s, one Genoese notary was recording a higher value (almost double) in trade to Syria than to Alexandria, the greatest depot of the eastern Mediterranean. In return, the profits of commerce increasingly sustained the economy and finances of Outremer. Thus, it may have appeared to restless westerners that Outremer indeed promised a land of opportunity which its rulers and patrons of settlements struggled to realize.

The Latins had captured a gold mine. The problem was the people they captured it from still existed.

Going into the 1140s, there was a new Turkish leader on the scene named Imad al-Din Zengi. He was riding of wave of Islamic revivalism, fueled by the displaced Muslims from the crusader states that created a diaspora of their own. To cope with this loss, they turned to their culture of art, music, mythology, and religious zeal for solace. Islamic political unity and spiritual purity had come together into a movement. Zengi looked toward the County of Edessa as low hanging fruit. It was the least latinized and least populated of the four Christian states. He attacked and laid siege to it and brought it to its knees on Christmas Eve 1144. Muslim chroniclers mark this moment as the beginning of their jihad against the crusaders.

To western Europe, the message was clear. Islam was on the march. News reached the papacy in the autumn of 1145, but the response was muted. There had been crises before, and Rome, before reacting always had to consider how any action would be percieved by the Emperor of Byzantium.

The pope at this time was Eugenius III, and he had reason for caution. He had seen his predecessor killed in the streets and was nursing a still exiled papacy. Yet it seemed obvious to everyone that without western support, the Turks would continue to march on Outremer. Thus a call to arms seemed necessary, perhaps inevitable. So, Eugenius couched his request for what would come to be call the second crusade in a defense of Byzantium, in a bull on December 1st, 1145, called Quantum Praedecessores.

In it he recalled the heroic events of the first crusade, and of the new onslaughts of the Turks. He reiterated the papacy’s unilateral ability to expunge sins and offered this same deal to a new generation of crusaders, in particular to Louis VII, king of France. Added to these rewards was also the promise of Church protection of pilgrim’s property in their absence, and forgiveness of interest on loans. But Eugenius also emphasized the need for the Latin warrior class to maintain its status:

So that the dignity of the name of Christ may be enhanced… and your reputation for strength, which is praised throughout the world, may be kept unimpaired and unsullied.

Unbeknownst to Pope Eugenius, King Louis VII – energetic 25-year-old that he was, was already preparing to go on crusade any way. All that changed for him was the windfall of papal approval. Like any other French king before him, he had almost no control over his country. Crusading would allow the young king to centralize himself, placing his barons directly under his martial control. He also had some repair work to do in his relations with his countrymen and the Church. Louis already had his own citizen’s blood on his hands. Years earlier in a war against one of his barons, he burned down a church with 1500 people inside who were seeking refuge during the war. With this coming crusade, he would be the first Frankish king to go on foreign conquest in three centuries.

Another King who agreed to take up the cross, was Conrad III, King of Germany – he was not Holy Roman Emperor due to ongoing feuds with Rome, so he instead begrudgingly styled himself as King of the Romans – whatever that means.

An interesting difference already alluded to between the first and second crusade is papal involvement. Unlike Urban, Eugenius went on no speaking tours, and took virtually no ownership of the enterprise. Recruitment was put in the hands of a mystic abbot, co-founder of the Templars, and future saint – Bernard of Clairvaux. He was an obvious choice. He had a trusted relationship with the papacy and strong ties to the Holy Land. He was already famous through his wide network of Cistercians. With his blessing from the pope, he instantly became a staple of the second crusade recruitment process.

When St. Bernard came to town you wanted to be there – it was like a rock star had arrived and you couldn’t the once in a lifetime opportunity pass without hearing him. Towns and castles emptied to attend his sermons. And where he couldn’t travel, he would write – Brittany, England, Bavaria, Bohemia and more were inundated with his letters, encouraging pilgrims to once again take up the cross and defend their brothers holding the line against Islam. But what Bernard found was that despite his ability to draw crowds, there was virtually no popular support for another crusade when compared to the fervor in 1095. Remission of sins simply wasn’t worth the journey. So, St. Bernard amped up the rhetoric and added King Louis of France as his stagehand.

Together, St. Bernard and Louis, monk and king stood upon a platform in a field outside Vezelay, where Bernard is recorded to make the following remarks:

O ye who listen to me! Hasten to appease the anger of heaven, but no longer implore its goodness by vain complaints. Clothe yourselves in sackcloth, but also cover yourselves with your impenetrable bucklers. The din of arms, the danger, the labors, the fatigues of war, are the penances that God now imposes upon you. Hasten then to expiate your sins by victories over the Infidels, and let the deliverance of the holy places be the reward of your repentance.

Then it is said the crowd cried back, “Deus vult! Deus vult”, so loud that it echoed throughout the countryside. To which St. Bernard answered:

Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood.

To use the parlance of our times, the crowd went wild and enlisted in droves. When the organizers ran out of cloth to make crosses to sew on the pilgrims, Bernard is said to have taken off his own robe and tore it into strips to make more. Others did the same until they all had vowed to take up the cross.

St. Bernard’s words were designed to reach down into the soul of Norman heritage, to tap into the chivalric essence of the warrior class. He took St. Paul’s spiritual armor of God and turned it into a far more materially useful armor:

The knight who puts the breastplate of faith on his soul in the same way as he puts on a breastplate of iron on his body is truly intrepid and safe from everything… so forward in safety, knights, and with undaunted souls drive off the enemies of the Cross of Christ.

His recorded speeches and letter are full of this type of imagery. The result of his speaking tour had a achieved quite a remarkable thing – he had taken a generally disinterested Europe and incited them, with apparently convincing arguments based on new testament texts, to wage Holy War. His speeches of course fly in the face of not only the overall message and tone of the New Testament but also the words of Christ himself. Yet remember, most of the laity haven’t read scripture.

In Germany, Bernard ran into lack of zeal, as he did in France, but he also discovered another problem with recruitment… a shall we say, uniquely Rhineland problem – frothing hatred toward the Jews. When he preached of taking up the Cross to go kill the enemies of Christ, the response was the same as before, why not kill the enemies of Christ who live amongst us? Bernard’s answer was clear:

The Jews are not to be persecuted, killed, or even put to flight… The Jews are for us the living words of scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered… Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity.

There was another recruiting monk in Germany named Radulf, who was one of the prime instigators of anti-Jewish sentiment and violence. More pogroms resulted. One Rabbi was found with the five wounds of Christ inflicted upon him. Force baptisms led yet again to suicides and murder. Another Jew who refused to forgo his faith was brought to a wine press and squeezed until his head fell was severed from his body.

St. Bernard stepped in quickly and publicly rebuked Radulf, which, due to the prestige of Bernard, thankfully ended Radulf’s recruitment career. Against anti-Jewish mobs, the bishops reacted with much greater force this time, establishing either military patrols to protect the Jews or granting them santuary in their palaces. In the end, as awful as this stuff is, it didn’t reach the scale of horror of the Rhineland massacres of 1096.

Kings Louis and Conrad were now ready to launch this second crusade. Louis held a grand ceremony to see he and his nobles upon the road. Conrad being over 50, named his son co-king, having doubts in his chances of returning alive.

Conrad would set our first in June of 1147. But Louis was on his heels with both armies planning to meet in Constantinople. Moral was high. The planning was thorough. Feelings of optimism and piety were everywhere in the common ranks. There was an air of professionalism in its organization. The kings offered stable, reliable leadership, and tons of cash. The routes for safe passage were personally negotiated by St. Bernard. And the entire endeavor had the full confidence of the pope.

The first sign of trouble occurred not in either of the kings’ armies, but in Spain. A contingent of sea born crusaders set sail with roughly 200 ships from England that were supposed to pass into the Mediterranean and meet the land-based armies on the coast of Palestine. As this contingent was navigating the Portuguese coast they ran into bad weather and decided to anchor in the city of Porto on June 16th – about the same time Conrad and Louis were began their march.

The local bishop recognized opportunity knocking on his door – here was an armada of crusaders, and he had an Islamic Moor problem on his hands. He convinced the maritime leadership, through promises of plunder to and lay siege to Lisbon and wrestle it from the Moors. And so, without permission from the pope, they did just that. By July, Lisbon was under attack.

Muslim artillery proved a formidable answer to crusader siege weaponry. The battle settled into a month’s long stalemate. Both sides began running out of food. Some of the deserters who left Lisbon in search of food and relief from the crusaders had their hands cut off and were turned away, or simply stoned to death – the unfortunate result of the type of animus that builds up during close, prolonged conflict.

By October, wall mining operations by the crusaders finally brought down part of the city defenses. Still the Moors defended their city to the death. Gruesome casualties mounted on both sides. Eventually the Moors could see the writing on the wall and asked to parley. But as the negotiation dragged on, the rank-and-file sailor and soldier began to get the sneaking suspicion their promises of plunder and booty were being bargained away – so a mutiny arose among the crusaders. To end the mutiny, the crusader leaders promised they would negotiate a “ordered plunder” of the city without bloodshed – the Moors had no choice but to accept the terms.

But the ordered plunder predictably descended into mayhem. Looting, rape, and outright pillaging ruled the day. The violence was senseless. A contemporary for the chaos recounted:

They ran hither and yon. They plundered. They broke down doors. They rummaged through the interior of every house. They drove the citizens away and harassed them improperly and unjustly. They destroyed clothes and utensils. They treated virgins shamefully. They acted as if right and wrong were the same. They secretly took away everything which should have been common property. They even cut the throat of the elderly Bishop of the city, slaying him against all right and justice.

Not even the bishop was spared. At the end of it all, with a ceremonial procession through the blood-stained city streets, Lisbon was reconsecrated to Christian rule.

By the time the siege was over, it was November. The crusader armada split a few different ways. Some went deeper into Portugal to conquer and settle. Some left immediately for the Holy Land in disgust. But most of them stayed put, content to spend the winter in Portugal. The Holy Land could wait.

In the contemporary context of the second crusade, the fall of Lisbon was seen as both irrelevant and a distraction. Tyerman points out that most of Europe ignored it ever happened. But armada’s presence in Judea would soon be missed.

King Conrad reached the edges of Byzantium on July 20th, 1147. His army had substantially larger retinues of noncombatants than the previous crusade army, and thus moved much slower – only 10 miles per day. But they also marched unopposed thanks to the organizational efforts of St. Bernard. Another notable difference was the leadership’s control of the men. Conrad was strict and disciplined and tried to keep his men from descending into plunder. He lost control of them in the Byzantine city of Philippopolis, where the Germans left behind a city strewn with corpses. Another violent outbreak of plunder broke out at Andrianopoulos, quelled only by a flash flood that struck the German camp, washing away their horses and provisions.

Despite his efforts of discipline, Conrad’s army was ill tempered and unruly by the time it reached Constantinople. Emperor Manuel understandably, had the Byzantine legions on full military alert. The threat of Latins sacking the enviable city, again hung heavy in the air. When news of the attacks by the German army reached Emperor Manuel, he was in the east giving battle to the Turks. He quickly signed a peace treaty and marched back to the defense of his capital city. Beyond the sacking of his towns to the west, he had other reasons to fear a Latin attack. Roger II of Sicily had recently began attacking Byzantine holdings. Roger and this new wave of Latin crusaders had a relationship way too close for comfort. A papal-Germanic-Franko-Sicilian alliance against Byzantium would be worse for him than the armies of Islam.

So, Manuel did what most Byzantine emperors do when a large Latin army arrives at Constantinople – he sailed them across the Bosporus as fast as possible. At this crossing, King Conrad made two decisions. He refused any alliance or treaty with the Byzantine Emperor, promising him nothing. And he refused to wait for the Frankish army, deciding instead to press on to Syria.

The Germans moved at a snail’s pace through Anatolia – a strategically stupid mistake. We’ve discussed the hazards of that peninsula before. Soon, the Germans were predictably running out of food and water. As their provisions decreased, Turkish skirmishers increased – testing the mettle of this new invasion force. On October 25th, the same day Lisbon fell far to the west, the Turkish army engaged the Germans in force. The fast-moving Turks on horseback had discovered that the unruly Christians were easily suspectable to being drawn out by feigned attacks. When this tactic worked yet again, a German cavalry contingent of knights found themselves utterly separated from the main army, leaving the infantry they were supposed to be protecting, dangerously exposed. Both wings were cut to pieces. Conrad ordered a general retreat to Nicaea, but the march was slow as they had to forage for food along the way. The stragglers were slaughtered where they stood, while volleys of arrows continually rained down on the main body. Finally, Conrad’s rearguard collapsed and rolled up, and the retreat turned into a rout. Turkish mounted archers raced and weaved around the lumbering German knights like stinging hornets. When it was all over, Conrad himself had two arrows stuck in his body. And his once grand army of 20,000 had been reduced to 2000.

Catching up to the Germans was the French army. Louis had made his way through Hungary rather peacefully by negotiating fair prices for his soldiers and safe passage. But when they reached Byzantium, the stress of the journey began to set in. Food ran out, so foragers were dispatched. But Byzantine mercenaries were ready for the foragers and cut the Franks down. Now, both Latin and Greek were increasingly regarding each other as hostile enemies, with heretical religious practices. The Frankish leadership began grumbling about forming an alliance with Roger of Sicily and making an attack Byzantium, just as Manuel had feared.

On October 4th the Franks reached Constantinople. Manuel knew his dangerous situation, and so instead of antagonizing Louis, he killed him with kindness by lavishing praise upon the young king. He gave him a personal guided tour through the enormous city, showing him all its relics and holy sites. Huge feasts were planned, including one to honor the feast day of the French saint Denis, at which, the emperor allowed for both Roman and Greek liturgical celebrations. For both groups, who considered each other at best schismatic, at worse, heretics, celebrating the Roman rite of Mass in Constantinople was a big deal.

Yet still there were many who desired to take the great city by force for the glory of the Roman Pontiff. The most aggressive in trying to convince Louis of this were of course his bishops. But he would have none of it. The young king kept his eye on the prize. They were marching to the relief of Edessa. But rumor of these plots reached the ears of Manuel, and so he resorted back to his old tactics. He told Louis that Constantinople was running out of provisions, and that the Germans were winning massive victories in the east and used these pretenses to shuttle the Franks across the Bosporus, avoiding, in his mind, an inevitable attack from the crusaders if they lingered. Upon leaving, Louis VII accepted the emperor’s terms of returning former Byzantium holdings.

After marching into Anatolia, the French camped at Nicaea. As they set out to leave Nicaea, under a partial eclipse in the sky, the ran into the fleeing, starving, broken, and terrified remnant of the German army.

The rest of the march through central Anatolia was precarious. Even though the Turks ruled this land, the populations that were still Greek were likewise hostile to this Latin army slowly looting their way through their cities. Feeling hungry, thirsty, outnumbered, and unwanted, dissertations were rampant. Finally, the army reached Ephesus, where they hoped to spend Christmas. When they arrived, King Conrad had fallen so ill that he had to be sent back to Constantinople for treatment where the emperor took the sickly into his house under the care of his personal physicians. This German king who had led one of the largest armies ever sent from the west, was now a sick and dying invalid in a foreign land.

Back in Ephesus, King Louis received intelligence that Turkish armies were marching through Anatolia, on the prowl for crucesignati. The young king was brave and undaunted, and willed the march to Edessa forward. As soon as he was out of sight of Ephesus, the Turks attacked, hoping to once and for all scatter the crusaders. But the French and Germans held their ground and beat back the Turks. King Louis was seen by his men as both brave and noble on crusade. He used money from his own coffers to care for the poor and injured. At the battle of Honaz, he found himself the only thing between attacking Turks and a group of noncombatants, so he led a charge against the oncoming enemy with his personal retinue. A chronicler recounts the scene:

During this engagement the king lost his small but renowned royal guard; keeping a stout heart, however, he nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots… The enemy climbed after, in order to capture him, and the more distant rabble shot arrows at him. But his breastplate protected him from the arrows, and to keep from being captured he defended the crag with his bloody sword, cutting of the heads and hands of many opponents in the process. Since they did not recognize him and felt that he would be too difficult to capture… the enemy thereupon turned back to collect the spoils before night fell.

That was written in the 12th century, but it’s hard not to let the mind’s eye put that into a Ridley Scott film.

After this near defeat at Honaz, Louis finally realized bravery is no substitute for experience, and handed martial control of his army over to the Templars. Under their leadership the French and Germans repelled four more intense Turkish attacks. Despite these victories they were now completely out of food, filling their bellies with only horse meat. The army arrived in Adalia, on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey, on January 20th, 1148. Adalia was a Byzantine city surrounded by enemies.

The peasants and low-level fighters who followed King Louis didn’t have much left in the gas tank. And his nobles weren’t in much better shape – financially destroyed from the whole affair – all their armor, horses, knights, and piles of equipment brought on campaign were gone. Again, King Louis pulled from his own pockets to keep as many afloat as he could. About fifty years ago, when the first crusaders were in nearly the same situation at nearly the same place, relief ships came ashore from the Mediterranean. Louis and Conrad had arranged for the same plan, but that relief fleet they needed was currently overwintering in Portugal.

The winter in Anatolia was brutal. They were constantly under attack by Turkish skirmishers. When a smattering of ships did arrive, King Louis was convinced that to carry on by land was futile. And so, with zero fanfare, he took his nobles and what knights he could fit and boarded a ship for Antioch. He left behind money for the care of the peasants and infantry – the bulk of the army, hoping that somehow, they would find passage back to Constantinople.

But remember, the low-level soldiers that made up the crucesignati were not politicians, or nobles vying for recognition. They were true believers in this cause. They were there to kill the infidels and free Edessa in exchange for eternal salvation. In the wake of being abandoned by their king, they decided they would rather die fighting their enemy on the field of battle instead of running and hiding or sitting in Adalia only to slowly succumb to starvation and famine. So, they, without their king marched out to meet the Turks, and were massacred. Anyone who survived the battle was either executed or sold into the abyss of slavery.

Christopher Tyerman, while reflecting on this event notes that the French, unlike the Germans were not defeated in battle, but defeated themselves due to poor planning and logistics, and poor help form the indifferent Greeks who didn’t ask for nor want this crusade. For the Latins, it was an unfolding disaster. For Islam, it was proof the west could be defeated.

King Louis and his small band of nobles landed at the port of St. Simeon in Antioch on March 19th, where Prince Raymond of Antioch, who was also the uncle of Louis’ wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was waiting to greet the army-less king. After his arrival in Antioch, almost miraculously, late comers to the crusade began arriving and eager to get in on the fight against Islam. Conrad too had by this time recovered and put in port at Acre with a contingent of soldiers. And then finally, better late than never I suppose, came the English ships from Lisbon. All of the sudden, the crusader camp had swelled to tens of thousands strong – some sources say as many as fifty thousand – and further, the crusader leadership was still intact.

The problem now lay in how to attack Edessa. It was a huge region under firm control by the Turkish leader Nur al-Din. There was another reality too. While it was a Christian state it had very few actual Christians living there, they had all left when it fell. There was no one in Edessa who needed liberating.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, at the urging of her uncle Raymond, pressed her husband to march on Aleppo, and use that as a gateway to Edessa. Her insistence on this plan, that had very little strategic upside to it, was made mirky by the rumors that she and her uncle were involved in an affair. Historians generally regard the evidence of this credible, but not conclusive. And something did lead to their annulment four years later. All of this is to say, King Louis did not trust the intentions of the Aleppo plan and saw no benefits to it.

The teenaged king Baldwin of Jerusalem was urging King Louis to march on Damascus – an Islamic kingdom that had once been aligned with Jerusalem but recently switched sides after seeing which way the wind was blowing.

But King Louis could not wholly trust this council either. There was something of a civil war going on in Jerusalem during this time. King Baldwin’s mother was not yet ready to relinquish control of the kingdom to her son. And so, this historically predictably, incessantly repetitive, manifestly obvious, and catastrophic flaw in monarchal government had spit the entire kingdom of Jerusalem in two over nothing more than a minor family feud. King Baldwin had thought that a victory in Damascus would secure for him the military clout he needed to get out of the time out corner and show mommy who’s boss.

The Damascus plan did have practical reasons too. Its capture would actually protect and strengthen Jerusalem unlike Aleppo where al-Din’s main army would be encamped. It would also gain control of a large part of the desert that would protect it from attacks. Further, Jerusalem had allies on the inside. Having someone willing to open the gates is always a huge ace in the hole.

So, Damascus was decided upon, and the plan was speed. They wouldn’t waste time building siege weapons, and prepared little provisions. Shock and awe would, it was hoped, terrify the defenders into a quick surrender with little actual fighting. At this point, the second crusade just needed something they could call a win.

The army mustered at Tiberius in mid-July, and arrived at Damascus on the 24th, with it is said, possibly as many as 50,000 soldiers. But Damascus is huge. And after two days of skirmishing, they made no progress at penetrating the city walls, so they moved to what we would call the suburbs, hoping to find a weakness into the city from there. But without towers and catapults, the effort, to use Tyerman’s description was stillborn. And then, they received word that Nur al-Din was on his way with a relief army.

Out if fear, at dawn on July 28th, the retreat was sounded, and the crusaders marched back to Palestine, harassed by Turks the whole way. The siege had barely lasted four days. Both western and Muslim chroniclers acknowledge that this was easily the most humiliating defeat for the crusaders yet. They ran from a ghost in the desert while their army was still completely intact.

Naturally the leaders all began pointing fingers at one another. Accusations of betrayal were everywhere. King Conrad was furious at the whole debacle and tried to conceive plans to just march out and capture something. He called for a muster for an army to follow him, they were to meet at an appointed time and place… but no one showed up. And so, the aging German king finally abandoned the second crusade and prepared himself for his long journey back to his kingdom.

King Louis was nearly broke. He donated even more of his money toward the defense of Jerusalem and stayed through Easter of 1149. It could be said that when he returned to his throne he had a much closer relationship with the many princes of Europe, that might be called a win. However, despite his own demonstrable heroism, his legacy was now tarnished with cowardice.

As news of the disintegration of the second crusade made its way west, the reaction was a combination of shock and disgust. Many blamed the failure on the sinfulness of the crusaders themselves, that they had not the grace of God with them. The leadership bore the brunt of these accusations. Pope Eugenius called it “the most severe injury of the Christian name that God’s Church has suffered in our time”. One English apologist argued that the English contingent that took Lisbon was the best part of the entire effort. In the cold, calculating lens of geopolitics, he was right.

St Bernard of Clairvaux, the Pope’s energetic recruiter for the enterprise also blamed the failure on the sins of the crusaders, but also wrote a personal apology to Eugenius for his role in the endeavor.

A monk in Germany who personally witnessed the atrocities carried out against the Jews as the crusaders set out, scolded them all:

The preachers, pseudo-prophets, sons of Belial and witnesses of the Antichrist, who seduced the Christian with empty words.

The once silenced and loathsome critics of killing in the name of Christ had re-emerged. The notion of Holy War now a shattered stained-glass window in Christendom. Fewer pilgrims now made their way to Jerusalem, lest they get mixed up in some pointless war.

The fiasco of what came to be called the second crusade cast a long shadow over Europe. There was no appetite among the peasantry, the clergy, or the aristocracy to return. Regardless of Western disinterest, the Christian states of Outremer, seeing the coming tidal wave of Islamic military cohesion from the south and the east, had no choice but to petition them for aid. They soon realized the Holy Land was largely on its own.

Small private expeditions and pilgrimages occurred here and there for various reasons. The Byzantine emperor too would occasionally petition the Latins for a joint assault against the Turks, but support was nonexistent. Byzantium was now consistently losing battles and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was consistently losing alliances, which piled on to the growing western view that one was hopelessly weak, and the other hopelessly corrupt. When the patriarch of Jerusalem personally visited the west to garner military support for the Holy Land, he was brushed off as “all dangling jewelry and incense”. Holy war, as a model of warfare, appeared to be over.

One of my favorite movie quotes comes from the Big Lebowski, and if you are a convert from my other podcast Written in Blood, you know it’s one I often use. Sometimes there’s a man, and he’s the man for his time and place. The man we’re about to discuss was Kurdish by birth, born around 1137. His full name was Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shadi, as he rose in prominence, he was given the epithet Salah ad-Din, which was soon latinized as Saladin.

He was originally a mercenary lieutenant for Nur ad-Din, leader of the Turks, and was sent to the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt to help ad-Din maintain power over them. Saladin’s career from here gets a bit complex from here but the long and short of it was that he travelled with his uncle, Asad al-Din Shirkuh who was able to exert control over the Fatimids. This Islamic unification to the north, east and south of Outremer represented a worst nightmare. So, King Almeric of Jerusalem attacked Egypt to break the alliance before it could solidify. The proceeding war resulted in Egypt owing tribute payments to Jerusalem as a protectorate. But then, King Almeric attacked again, desiring now to have utter control of Egypt. To win the war this time, Saladin’s uncle, Shirkuh had the Shia leadership assassinated and took control of Egypt for himself. By March of 1169, Shirkuh was dying from old age and left his newly usurped kingdom to his nephew, Saladin.

Saladin’s rule of Egypt was by no means secure. He reigned directly over a few thousand mercenaries, the recently acquired Fatimid armies. But his new kingdom was currently under attack by some 30,000 black infantry from Sudan. Yet, within a year Saladin had defeated the Sudanese, repelled King Almeric of Jerusalem by land and sea, and sent him packing back to Palestine. The factor of motivation, unification, zeal, and self-confidence that came to define Saladin’s forces was singular. He and his subordinates bred and trained his legions in traditional Islam. In 1170, Saladin went on the offensive. He took both Gaza on the Mediterranean coast, and Aila on the Red Sea from the Franks, and forced his control and influence into Arabia and Yemen. As this new sultan of Cairo grew in power and prestige, Nur al-Din began preparing to fight this mercenary upstart once subservient to him.

But on May 15th, 1174, before the two men could wage their war for control of the middle east, Nur al-Din dropped dead of a heart attack in Damascus. Then, on July 11th, King Almeric died of a fever in Jerusalem at 38 years old. By October, Saladin had entered the city of Damascus as ruler of Iraq, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt. His geopolitical and spiritual enemy, the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem was now in the hands of Almeric’s son, a 13-year-old boy, tormented with leprosy. Archbishop William of Tyre, and contemporary to these events wrote in no uncertain terms about the decisive and terrifying advantage Jerusalem’s enemies now had:

Now… all the kingdoms adjacent to us have been brought under the power of one man. Within quite recent times, Zengi… first conquered many other kingdoms by force and then laid violent hands on Edessa… Then his son, Nur al-Din, drove the king of Damascus from his own land… seized that realm for himself, and added it to his paternal heritage. Still more recently, the same Nur al-Din, with assiduous aid of Shirkuh, seized the ancient and wealthy kingdom of Egypt as his own… Thus… all the kingdoms round about us obey one ruler, they do the will of one man, and at his command alone, however reluctantly, they are ready, as a unit, to take up arms for our injury. Not one among them is free to indulge any inclinations of his own or may with impunity disregard the commands of his overlord. This Saladin… a man of humble antecedents and lowly station, now holds under his control all these kingdoms, for fortune has smiled too graciously upon him.

If you were to take out a map of Saladin’s kingdom at this time, the coastal land bridge that connected the two lungs of Saladin’s empire and happened to contain the most consequential city in all of history, was Frankish Outremer.

To make matters worse, Frankish Outremer was a corrupt mud swamp. Saladin’s rise coincided with a political low point for Jerusalem. Its recent kings were various combinations of bigamists and war mongers, and all wildly unpopular. Their defensive strategy was a series of truces with Islamic warlords prowling on their borders – it became a game of how much money could the Christians pay to not be attacked. This naturally created perpetual state of bankruptcy, which prevented reinvestments infrastructure and defense. The Templars and Hospitallers had by now devolved into real estate empires. In Caesarea alone the military orders owned over half of the landed property. Nearly every Castle in Outremer was their collective property. In response to this desperate situation, the only thing the kings new how to do was to raise taxes.

Archbishop William of Tyre, who we just quoted, was a tutor to the new boy-king of Jerusalem. Christopher Tyerman wrote that of all the chronicles and contemporary writings on the crusades, the most haunting are the archbishop’s writings on the life of Baldwin IV. It was under his tutelage that the symptoms of leprosy first appeared, but they were not officially diagnosed until after he was made king at the age of 13. You get the sense when you read about Baldwin IV, his demeaner and philosophical nature, that if there was a king that Jerusalem needed, it was him.

The leper king, as he came to be called, increasingly crippled and maimed form his terrible disease, had to face down one of the most powerful Islamic rulers to date, with scant resources. It is an inherent and systemic weakness in European monarchy that a king has little direct control over his barons and knights. Baldwin at any given time could call on around 700 knights, 700 templars, and maybe 5000 troops from the towns, but this would leave his kingdom completely open to invasion. Mercenaries existed, but they were expensive, and Jerusalem was out of money anyway.

Vultures circled in and around Baldwin’s court knowing his reign would be short-lived. The path to the throne for ambitious Christian nobles was through his sister Sybil. Most were not so secret in vying for her hand in marriage. The resulting amoral sleazy contest would have beaten out any series of the bachelorette in ratings. It’s complex and hard to follow. I had to chart the relationships to get any sort of basic handle on it all. But it can be boiled down into a couple of rival factions. Some wanted a decisive pitched battle against Saladin. Some wanted Sybils hand in marriage. Some had decided to completely abandon Outremer for the hopeless rat’s nest that it was. These factions were not static and crossed interests and familial relationships when convenient. Tyerman sums up King Baldwin’s court nicely when he calls it “fluid self-interest”.

But political intrigue had to wait for the moment. Saladin was on the march, and he had detected that Jerusalem was weak, ripe for an attack. But the leper king, at the age of 16, personally led an army out to meet him. It was by all appearances the foolhardy move of a novice military brat in over his head. The exact numbers are hard to ascertain for certain, but historians think Baldwin had maybe three or four thousand troops, while Saladin had over 20,000. The two armies clashed on November 25th, 1177, in what would be called the battle of Motgisard. Under the surprisingly lucid leadership of Baldwin the Jerusalem army routed the Muslims, rolling them up almost immediately. When Saladin’s army turned and fled, the Christians pursued them for 12 miles. Saladin survived and escaped to Cairo on December 8th, with only a tenth of his army left. Baldwin, for the short time he had left on this earth, proved far more capable than Saladin, or any of his contemporaries gave him credit for.

Despite the military successes of Baldwin IV, the suiters after his throne were on the on the verge of a military overthrow of his kingship if he did not appoint an heir – the poor, suffering young man was just taking too damn long to die. And so, at last Baldwin chose the newly arrived Guy of Lusignan his sister’s hand in marriage.

By June of 1183 Saladin had reconsolidated his forces and was on the March again in earnest. Baldwin, anticipating an attack sent his army out to muster in a show of force. But the leper king fell seriously ill, and feeling as if death was imminent, he gave the regency of his kingdom temporarily over to his new brother-in-law, Guy.

The Christian muster reached numbers that surprised Saladin, and the Sultan feared he may be outnumbered. But the Christian generals feared Saladin’s army too, so both forces played coy, shadowing each other without engaging in combat. At the end of it all, nothing happened. Baldwin was furious and revoked Guy’s regency, who took the blame for not using the massive muster to attack and destroy their great enemy. Baldwin then transferred the regency to his sister’s son with her first husband, now Guy’s stepson and gave command of his armies to Raymond of Tripoli. Guy was publicly shamed, and worse, entirely bereft of any chance of inheriting the throne of Jerusalem. He then lodged himself in his castle and brooded over the judgement of the half paralyzed, mostly blind, dying king.

On May 16th, 1185, Baldwin IV finally succumbed to his lifelong disease. Sybils son, another Baldwin, was now King, and only around eight years old. Raymond of Tripoli was named regent over the kingdom. But the young boy died within a year of taking the throne of unknown causes. His mother Sybil then took the crown and named her disgraced husband Guy of Lusignan as king of Jerusalem.

Count Raymond of Tripoli despised Guy, and refused to acknowledge him as king, probably also feeling passed over for the same crown Guy now bore. And so, in an act that borders on something akin to treason, Raymond signed a separate peace treaty with Saladin to protect his realm north of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and essentially revoking any willingness to aid the king.

Outremer in general had a temporary truce, ironically negotiated by Raymond and Saladin during his regency, that was set to expire a week after the coming Easter of 1187. Saladin had no intention of restoring it. He could smell Christian blood in the water.

King Guy had little skill for leadership, many of the counts and barons recognized this about him. The way he had led the army in the past in addition to his path to the throne left almost no one in Outremer with any sense of loyalty to him. This was exasperated by his behavior of promoting himself with kingly pomp rather than paying attention to the defense of the holy land. When it became obvious to everyone that a campaign by Saladin was imminent, Guy knew he had to swiftly reconcile with Raymond of Tripoli, who controlled Galilee. If Raymond allowed Saladin to march through his lands, the West bank and coastal plains would fall, leaving the Kingdom of Jerusalem completely unprotected. Thus, King Guy, a day late and a dollar short sent delegations to the disgruntled count.

During all this, Saladin’s son led a force of 7000 soldiers through Raymond’s territory toward Nazareth, and though Raymond was in the best situation to confront this expeditionary force, Nazareth itself was technically outside of his territory, and so he let them pass, so as not to break his truce with Saladin. The terrified locals at Nazareth called on the Templars and Hospitallers for aid, and in an act of incredible and legendary act of chivalric bravery, they defenders came, but were only a few hundred mounted knights against 7000. Gerard of Ridefort led the Templars. Roger of Moulins led the Hospitallers. Another knight, Balian of Ibelin was a day behind them after trying to make peace with Raymond of Tripoli.

On May 1st, 1187, Gerard and Roger found the 7000 forces lead by Saladin’s son and charged them head on. The battle of Cresson commenced. It was brave, but hopeless. Roger, leader of the Hospitallers was killed, along with nearly everyone else. Only Gerard and three or four knights survived. By the time Balian could have arrived to help, it was all over. Saladin’s troops put the dead Frankish soldiers’ heads on spears and carried them ahead of their march.

The fallen knights became instant martyrs in living memory. Both Christian and Muslim chroniclers note that after the tragedy of Cresson, nearly every noble in Outremer turned against Raymond of Tripoli. Even the count’s own subordinates were blaming him personally for the disaster. The tragedy worked in favor of Guy. It wasn’t long before Raymond officially severed his ties with Saladin and returned his support back to the King of Jerusalem. Cresson was now a Christian rally cry. Nearly every soldier from as far and Tripoli and Antioch came now to the protection of Jerusalem. At first muster, Guy had somewhere around 1200 mounted knights, and nearly twenty thousand infantry. Saladin mustered his forces at the south end of the Sea of Galilee with about 30,000 strong.

After marching out to meet Saladin, and just like four years earlier, Guy was weary of committing to pitched battle. Saladin tried drawing him out with raiding parties and detachments from the main army, but Guy wouldn’t bite. Finally, Saladin sent a force to take the city of Tiberius, currently under rule of Raymond’s wife. Guy, likely out of fear of being accused of inaction, and preserving his friendly relations with Raymond, marched to the relief of Tiberius on July 3rd.

The march was slow, and lumbering in the desert heat under with heavy armor, and constantly needing to stop at known springs to rehydrate. Nonetheless Saladin had reason to fear Guy’s army. It was formidably large and well-seasoned, so he broke off his siege on Tiberius to turn and face Guy head on. Saladin attacked Guy’s rear guard and right flanks, causing them to roll up. The Christian leadership waivered and fled. They regrouped and camped at Maskana, an arid plateau overlooking the sea of Galilee. They were exhausted, out of water, and had no idea how large the enemy’s strength was. Their spirits were beginning to break.

On the morning of July 4th, 1187, Guy’s army awoke to find itself surrounded by Saladin’s. Their only hope of survival was to break through Saladin’s lines and race for the fresh water of the Sea of Galilee. Raymond was the first to launch an assault, and what happened next could be either confirmation of Raymond’s treachery or brilliant psychological warfare by Saladin. He opened his lines and let Raymond’s contingent pass unscathed. The rest of the Christian army seethed at this apparent act of friendship.

For the rest caught in his trap, Saladin showered them with arrows and set brush fires all around them. The Franks formed up and regrouped upon a dramatic and strange geological feature called the Horns of Hattin – twin extinct volcanic peaks that formed a high plateau capped with ancient bronze and iron age ruins sinking into the sands. It was a defensible position, but like the Alamo, it was one from which there was no escape.

Guy and his franks fought on in desperation, hoping for a miracle from God that never came. Guy himself launched a last desperate charge but was beaten back. Saladin’s own son recounts this pivotal charge by the king:

When the king of the Franks was on the hill with that band, they made a formidable charge against the Muslims facing them, so that they drove them back to my father. I looked towards him and he was overcome by grief and his complexion pale. He took hold of his beard and advanced, crying out "Give the lie to the Devil!" The Muslims rallied, returned to the fight, and climbed the hill. When I saw that the Franks withdrew, pursued by the Muslims, I shouted for joy, "We have beaten them!" But the Franks rallied and charged again like the first time and drove the Muslims back to my father. He acted as he had done on the first occasion and the Muslims turned upon the Franks and drove them back to the hill. I again shouted, "We have beaten them!" but my father rounded on me and said, "Be quiet! We have not beaten them until that tent falls." As he was speaking to me, the tent fell. The sultan dismounted, prostrated himself in thanks to God Almighty, and wept for joy.

The bishop of acre, in possession of what was said to be a relic of the true cross was killed in the melee. The Christians watched has Saladin’s army took ownership of the relic, affixed it upside down upon a lance, and carried it behind enemy lines. This event was the nail in the coffin for Christian moral. God, it seemed to them, was not on their side. When Saladin’s lieutenants finally entered the Christian camp, they found Guy, his knights and nobles slumped on the ground in despair.

The bulk of the low-level infantry were herded off to the slave markets. 200 or so Templars and Hospitallers were summarily executed. Saladin had captured the head of the Jerusalem snake – Guy and his top lords were taken prisoner.

To commemorate his victory over the infidels Saladin had a dome constructed upon the Horns of Hattin. But there was another monument to his victory, one more macabre. A year after the battle of Hattin, an Islamic historian travelled to see the old battlefield. Coming upon it, he saw:

The land all covered with bones, which could be seen even from a distance, lying in heaps or scattered around.

Hattin was the first domino. Next, Tiberias fell, then Acre after it. Over the next two months, most of southern Outremer and all its ports fell to Saladin. On September 20th, 1187, Saladin surrounded Jerusalem.

There was no army and no king to defend the city. They had all been captured or killed at Hattin. Jerusalem was completely unprepared for a siege. Patriarch Heraclius, archbishop of Caesarea was technically in charge, but with him was Balian, recently from Tyre, and late comer to the battle of Cresson. Being one of the only knights left alive, Balian was given martial control of Jerusalem. There was minor resistance against the siege, but that proved futile almost immediately. So the Christian citizenry was ordered to due public penance for their sins, praying for God’s mercy, as well as Saladin’s. Balian then moved to negotiations with the Islamic leader.

What’s fascinating is that Balian already had friendly relations with Saladin. Saladin had earlier allowed him safe passage into the Holy City so that he may retrieve his wife and children, so long as he agreed to leave the city immediately afterward. When Balian decided to break his agreement and stay to assist with whatever Jerusalem needed, he sent a message to Saladin, letting him know he had decided to break his agreement. Saladin replied that he understood, and even arranged an escort to ensure Balian’s family safe passage to Tripoli. This, to me stands out as a remarkable moment of decency in a decidedly indecent time and place where the stakes really couldn’t be higher for either side, and both have fought bloody wars over issues of cosmological significance.

Perhaps, it’s as simple as both men knowing that the war was already over. Balian had no hope of defending the city, no swelled with refugees from Saladin’s campaigns, and more arriving every day. In the entire city, Balian had less than twenty knights.

In the end, he negotiated for the city to be relinquished to Saladin peacefully. In exchange, Saladin agreed that almost all its inhabitants would be allowed leave with their lives so long as they pay the sultan a ransom made from the melted gold and silver of the Christian churches, and their own pockets.

On October 2nd, the doors to Jerusalem were opened by the Latins. The queen, Sybil was allowed to leave with her entire retinue. Saladin even guaranteed her safe passage to visit her husband in his captivity. The rest of the women were let go without having to make any ransom at all. Saladin’s own brother took pity on the miserable Christians. Upon seeing over a thousand in captivity that Saladin for whatever reason decided would not be freed, his brother asked them to be transferred as slaves to him as payment for his military service. Upon receiving the would-be slaves, Saladin’s brother immediately released them, and let them go.

Patriarch Heraclius asked Saladin to release another 700 in his captivity, and Balian petition for 500 more. Saladin granted both of their requests, releasing them all. Any of the elderly who could not pay a ransom were freed immediately and allowed to leave the city. This peculiar conqueror of Jerusalem further provided military escorts ensuring the Christian caravans made their way to safety. Saladin did some captives who could not pay him ransom – it’s hard to say exactly how many, but how different is this from what could have been? What would have been the historical norm we’ve now seen countless times? Saladin was keenly aware of his benevolence, and in fact reminded the Christian leadership of this fact. He recalled to their memories the mass butchery and beastly slaughter his own people suffered at the hands of the crusaders when they conquered this same city, 88 years ago.

At taking possession of Jerusalem, Saladin ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher closed while he decided what should be done with it. Some of his advisors argued he should destroy it and end Christian interest in the city. Others argued the Christians would still come regardless. After three days, he allowed the church to reopen, and declared that he had no desire to prevent Christian pilgrimages to the sacred site.

Naturally, with new rulers yet again, change did come to Jerusalem. The cross the Franks had put on the Dome of the Rock, an old Islamic Mosque, was removed, and the Mosque restored to its original use. The Church of St. Anne was converted into an Islamic seminary. The Latin clergy was expelled. Islamic calls to prayer resumed across the city as every mosque was ritually purified with rose water. Their Christian furnishings were replaced with oriental rugs. The walls were re-adorned with texts from the Koran. Native Orthodox and Syriac Christians were allowed to stay, free to practice their faith. The Coptic Christians along with other local branches, who were considered heretics, barred from entering the city, were now allowed entry without paying any fees or tithes. Saladin considered these people his subjects and returned to them their Churches once robbed from them by the Latins.

Byzantine Emperor Isaac Angelus sent a message to Saladin, congratulating him on his victory, and requested that all the Orthodox churches in the city be reverted to Orthodox care, and that the ceremonies therein returned to the Eastern Orthodox Liturgy, and further, that all Christian affairs be transferred to the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. Saladin agreed to it all. Before long he carried a new epithet, the Restorer of the World and Faith.

News of the fall hit western Europe like a lightning bolt. One, probably apocryphal claim is that upon hearing of the loss of Jerusalem Pope Urban III instantly died.

The news of the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem did not, like after the second crusade expose already festering attitudes of apathy towards the east, instead, at the direction of the papacy of course, it shocked the west into action. As soon as October of that same year, the new pope Gregory VIII issued a bull called Audita Tremendi, authorizing yet another expedition to Judea, guaranteeing again all the usual conditions of remission of sins. But this time, he commanded the ‘whole Christian people’ to take up the cross in defense of that land from which ‘our salvation and truth arose from earth”. To quote Christopher Tyerman’s summation of the latest call to the holy land:

After forty years of complacency, indifference and lip-service, Christendom’s response to Gregory’s call was overwhelming.

This new crusade was put into clear context by Pope Gregory VIII. It was in no uncertain terms a call to religious revival. The business of the cross was discussed with clear communication and tones of professionalism yet unseen in the crusades. The preaching was even more tightly monitored and coordinated under the direction of the papacy. New taxes, specifically called the Saladin tax were levied in both France and England. Massive sea fairing transportation contracts were negotiated. The experienced western military nobles devoted their time to deeper strategic understanding of eastern conquest. And, in a demand indicative of a new plane of political power from Gregory VII to Gregory VIII, as well as the beginning transformation from kingdoms to nation-states, the pope asked for and received new legal distinctions between pilgrim and crucisignatus – between peaceful travelers, and armed conquerors. The latter, who once enjoyed spiritual prominence and respect, now found themselves enjoying new temporal legal status in society. Bear arms for the pope and never pay taxes again.

By Christmas of the same year that Saladin had taken Jerusalem, European nobility was fully anticipating and preparing for a new crusade. Sicily was already pulling the anchors on a fleet of 200 ships to secure the Mediterranean coast ahead of the armies.

By March, Holy Roman Emperor, and veteran of the second crusade, Frederick Barbarossa had taken up the cross. Following his leadership, King Henry II of England and King Phillip of France also signed up. In witness of the Bishop of Tyre they agreed at least temporarily, to put down their wars with each other and march to Judea. With these three kings, would follow nearly every count and duke of Europe.

The coordinated marketing and preaching propaganda efforts from the papacy were wildly successful, with tens of thousands taking up the cross from Germany to the Atlantic in just a few months’ time, all committing themselves to taking back Jerusalem. There were even stories of monks catching crusading fever, throwing off their dull robes in exchange for mail and swords.

While not to minimize whatever newfound filial piety the kings had toward the pope, as always, crusading carried political benefits. Emperor Barbarossa had a block of disloyal dukes that he had been contending with. The spiritual commitment of taking up the cross brought many to heel, but not all. When given the choice of following the emperor to the holy land or exile, at least one chose exile. Problem solved.

Henry II of England thought taking up the cross would allow him to exert what he considered his natural authority over the rebellious Welsh. He offered to settle their ongoing border disputes with them if they marched under his banner to Jerusalem. The Welsh flatly refused, leading to their excommunication by the Bishop of Canterbury.

For Phillip II of France, his dukes under his reign were, as always, famously unwieldy. Crusading would bring the dukes under his direct military authority, but leaving France also carried risk of losing lands to opportunistic nobles.

It should be noted that the opposition movement against the crusades had reached the highest levels of the aristocracy. Up until the fall of Jerusalem, King Henry II of England was one of the strongest opponents of calls to the east. This apprehension was partly due to the innate and growing English disdain for the increasing power and influence of the papacy. The English were not entirely convinced of this novel concept of papal supremacy, and King Henry himself spoke against the propaganda put forward by the Church and the Byzantines:

These clerks can incite us boldly to arms and danger since they themselves will receive no blows in the struggle, nor will they undertake any burdens which they can avoid.

Even William Marshal, arguably the most famous knight in history and known for his legendary, and almost superhero qualities of chivalry, opted to avoid Holy War altogether. Many contemporary English chroniclers shared these views to, dispensing open hostility the calls of the papacy, accusing the office using blood to fulfill mere political ambitions. Growing doubt can be found France too, with chroniclers questioning conquest to the east, doubting whether they carried any spiritual benefit at all.

In the norther kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, where there was no affection for the bishop of Rome, no real acknowledgment of earlier doctrines of papal supremacy over their kingdoms, and no prior interest in crusading at all, the propaganda failed entirely. For the third crusade, the recruitment effort was largely built upon the foundation of preexisting familiarity with the Holy Land, Holy War and diplomatic proximity to the papacy.

From Tyerman:

While the impact of the preaching of the third crusade was spectacular, it presumed prior acceptance of the message being promoted. Preaching provided ceremonial confirmation of pledges already agreed and created the conditions in which preparation, planning and recruitment could be achieved with maximum public consent. Preaching rarely created a spontaneous response. By taking the cross the crucesigntatus not only acquired exemptions from repayment of debts, paying the crusade tax and answering certain lawsuits but also gave a solemn promise to fulfil the vow, in theory enforceable through canon law. The high chances of death on crusade and the need to convert income into capital, commonly through sale or mortgage of property, required careful consideration and consultation not least with other family members. Conjugal rights also could not, in theory, be ignored nor the very real dangers to life, limb and possessions to which abandoned crusader’s wives, widows and heiresses were liable. Numerous uplifting moral anecdotes, known as exempla, concerned the obtaining of family agreement before the irrevocable adoption of the cross. On a social as well as political level, the crusade sermon, and the ritual of giving the Cross constituted an act of recognition as much as inspiration.

These ceremonies, just as before, took place after the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, after reliving Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, with the relics of saints and martyrs looking on. Other, more provocative imagery was used was used as propaganda, such as an Arab striking the face of Christ, or a Muslim cavalrymen’s horse urinating on the Holy Sepulcher. These images, when discovered by Muslim chroniclers were understandably quite offended considering the unique and friendly treatment the Christian faith received in the wake of its recent defeat.

The growth in centralized stately power of the late 12th century monarchs is one of the key influences on the financial organization of the third crusade, but they still had little coercive military power. Thus, any support of subjects had to be met with mutual benefit. The biggest rub for Europeans during recruitment was, predictably, the Saladin tax. It was immensely unpopular. A crucesignatus, as I mentioned was exempt, but most of the crusaders were rich enough to afford it anyway. Popular peasant and low-level aristocratic outcry against it were so strong in France that Phillip was forced to revoke it in exchange for mobilization of his country. In England, during all this planning, before the crusade march began, the royal landscape changed significantly. By July of 1189, Henry II of England was dead, succeeded by his quick-tempered son Richard, who inherited an impressively centralized throne, well-oiled military recruitment apparatus, and an armada of ships ready to sail.

The efforts of these burgeoning nations of Europe had completed the most comprehensive military recruitment campaign in history, one that would not be matched again until World War I. They were now ready to march once again upon the Holy Land, to bring the full ironclad military might of the west against Saladin. It would come to be known as the King’s Crusade.

If you were to look at a map of the planned routes of the kings, it would reveal a terrifying scenario for Saladin. Two marches by land and one by sea, plus various smaller continents and reinforcements all converging on Acre. The first king to set out was Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

Tyre was the last significant city in the holy land under Frankish control. Saladin had tried to take it, and probably would have without the arrival of Barbarossa’s cousin, Conrad of Montferrat. Though he only had a single ship of knights, he possessed a General Patton-esque character of leadership and resolve. Arriving in Tyre, Conrad found the remnants of the Outremer army preparing to surrender to Saladin. It is recorded that when he took command of the city, he threw Saladin’s banners into a ditch and forced all the inhabitants to swear loyalty to him. Dramatic? Yes. Apocryphal? Maybe. Its tough to say when coming from the mouths of friendly chroniclers. Something caused Saladin’s assault on Tyre to stall, which allowed new men from the west to begin arriving with ever increasing numbers and never before seen resolve.

Saladin’s reconstitution of Islamic control over the holy land was still patchy. He may have captured castles and cities, but the larger regions were full of people now three generations of western pilgrims intermingled with Syrian farmers. Customs and traditions were blended. Loyalties were… uncertain. Western friendly inhabitants who otherwise spoke Arabic were now using their cultural ambiguity to actively delay and confound Saladin’s troops. The sultan’s benevolent pragmatism was now seen as a liability and miscalculation. An Iraqi contemporary blamed him specifically for letting the Christians regroup at Tyre.

These complicating factors for Saladin, multiplied a thousand times over all the holy land resulted in a single truth obvious even to his own chroniclers, his army was stretched.

In August of 1189, Saladin received word that Guy of Lusignan had broken his sworn oath and condition of his freedom by reentering the fight. He had mustered an army and was marching towards Acre, the same destination as the crusader armies from the west. Acre was not only was it the richest port on the Palestinian coast, it was Saladin’s main garrison town and largest weapons depot. It was startling news for the sultan, who was engaged in other fights at the moment, and would have trouble responding quickly.

Guy’s decision to march south to Acre was not without danger. He was a king without a kingdom or much support. While in Tyre, he demanded to take kingship over the city, but it was denied by Conrad. The Templars sided with Guy. The Hospitallers sided with Conrad. His position was weak. His army was small. Acre, on the other hand was a massive walled city with an enormous garrison. And if Saladin decide to attack, which we definitely would, Guy will find himself caught between the stone walls of Acre, and the full force of Saladin’s army. The confidence with which Guy marched to Acre seems to suggest that he knew legions of westerners were on their way to the same city, but historians can’t confirm that he knew anything of their plans. Whether Guy knew it or not, his army constituted the vanguard of a full-scale invasion force. He arrived outside the walls of Acre on August 28th, 1189. By the end of September, detachments had arrived from Germany, France, and England.

Saladin chose not to attack the growing army immediately. The Christians had already attempted to assault the walls once and failed. He had confidence that the defenses he built at Acre would hold. This, he thought, would by him time to fully muster, calling to him all his troops from his vast kingdom. Guy's army circled in Acre, and Saladin’s army circled in Guy. Despite this attempted pinch, by October, Guy’s forces had swelled to a formidable 30,000 strong.

Sensing a tip in military balance, Guy attacked Saladin on the plains of Acre. It was a bloody battle, leaving thousands dead on both sides. The Christians were ultimately beaten back, but the heaps of rotting corpses began spreading disease across both camps. Saladin, always wary of pitched battles anyway, withdrew to wait for reinforcements. Over the next few weeks, both armies continued to grow. Then, almost anachronistically, something like trench warfare settled in, with the French digging huge ditches and ramparts around their camp, while skirmishes broke out in no-man’s land between the camps. From both disease and battles of attraction, low moral began to set in amongst the Christian ranks.

A contemporary at the siege of Acre recounts:

The Turks were a constant threat. While our people sweated away digging trenches, the Turks harassed them in relays incessantly from dawn to dusk. So, while half were working the rest had to defend them against the Turkish assault… while the air was black with pouring rain of darts and arrows beyond number or estimate… Many other future martyrs and confessors of the Faith came to shore and were joined to the number of faithful. They really were martyrs: no small number of them died soon afterwards from the foul air, polluted with the stink of corpses, worn out by anxious nights spent on guard, and shattered by other hardships and needs. There was no rest, not even time to breathe. Our workers in the trench were pressed ceaselessly by the Turks who kept rushing down on them in unexpected assaults. The Turks reduced them to exasperation before the trench was eventually before the trench was eventually finished.

In previous crusades, the Mediterranean fleets played a relatively small role, but now they were everything. Not only did they keep the ports open, but they were delivering men by the thousands. Off the planks of these ships stepped the nobility of Europe – first the bishops, followed by the cousins and brothers of kings.

Saladin was also in an increasingly dangerous situation. As the Christian ranks swelled with more and more nobility, he knew soon the kings of Europe would be upon him with their hosts of soldiers. But received a stroke of luck. His Egyptian fleet arrived not a moment too soon and blockaded Acre’s coast from the western ships.

Then winter set in. The Christians, blocked in by sea and land, began running out of food and showing signs of weakness. Still Saladin still did not attack, drawing the ire of his contemporaries. As winter boredom took over both sides, we begin to get bizarre stories of inter-army fraternization. There are accounts of both Christian and Muslim inviting each other to dinner parties, exchanging views, singing, dancing, and playing games. There was also interaction on a more carnal level. The Christian camp had a sizeable red-light district, something strictly forbidden in the Muslim camp. One of Saladin’s secretaries notes his annoyance that Christian prostitutes were so often visited by Islamic soldiers.

Guy, realizing his lifeline was being strangled by the Egyptian fleet, made amends with Conrad up in Tyre. And on March 25th, as the weather was improving, just before easter, Conrad arrived with a fleet of his ships and broke the Egyptian blockade, delivering fresh food, equipment and men.

By April 28th, the Christian camp had completed three siege towers and was reinvigorated with hope. They renewed their attack on Acre hoping to finally take it down. Saladin, in turn launched a fresh attack on the Christians to stifle their efforts. After a week of fighting, the assault ended in failure. The siege engines were set on fire by the enemy. Acre still stood.

Then on July 25th a small skirmish broke out while intending to roll up a Muslim flank. The operation deteriorated into a full-scale battle between both armies. The Christian lords lost control of their forces, and by the end of it 5000 Christians were dead. Blame was laid upon the low-level knights unwilling to follow orders. These knights responded by accusing their lords of cowardice. It was beginning to look like the siege of Acre would soon be over. But three days after this catastrophe, an enormous crusader fleet arrived under the command of Henry II of France, Count of Champaign – one of the wealthiest nobles in all of Europe, and nephew of both the kings of France and England. Henry brought with him partially fabricate siege weapons and massive quantities of men. Christian moral swelled around the arrival of this extravagantly wealthy noble – effectively ending any command King Guy had over the siege.

Saladin now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that more French would be arriving, followed by the English, followed by the Holy Roman Emperor arriving from the north by land. He was very soon going to be facing a war on two fronts.

As Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa was de facto military leader of the third crusade. His presence repaired decades long disputes with the papacy. He occupied many of the papal states and was potential heir to Sicily. The pope had no choice but to respect this prestige. Frederick traveled with a copy of the account of the first crusade in his pocket, written by Robert of Rheims. He was idealistic yet determined to avoid the errors of his predecessors. His army was well funded, well organized, and gigantic, with some 20,000 knights and 80,000 infantry. It was said that it took this army some three days just to pass a single point, and only travelling by land because it was too big to go by sea.

Barbarossa kept strict control of his army. He was severe with discipline against disorderly conduct and installed a regimental judicial system allowing for commanders to dish out justice for the crimes of their subordinates. Any looting or theft was met with either the loss of one’s hands, or head. Any undesirable elements, such as prostitutes, were strictly forbidden, giving Barbarossa’s army a reputation for order and piety.

He raised small taxes on the Jews to help fund the endeavor but successfully prevented any pogroms or riots against them. When passing through a city with a Jewish quarter, Frederick was sure to ride down its streets with a rabbi at his side as a message to his own men.

Barbarossa was a thoughtful diplomat too. He travelled through Hungary with a negotiated delivery of provisions, equipment, and access to markets. But navigating the politics of Byzantium would still be challenging for any crusader army. The schism between east and west was all but calcified now. And the Latins were sick and tires of Greek apathy toward the Holy Land.

The political situation in Constantinople at this point was a trainwreck anyway. Emperor Isaac Angelus came to power through a bloody mob. His predecessor was a murderous usurper of the same throne. Further, Isaac was on friendly terms with Saladin, and kept the Sultan abreast of the Latin army’s movements. When German envoys arrived at Constantinople ahead of Barbarossa, they found Saladin’s envoys already there. The Germans envoys were thrown in prison.

As Frederick inched closer to Constantinople, his army began suffering attacks form Byzantine skirmishers. At first it appeared random, then is seemed peculiar, then it was clearly intentional. Reaching the Byzantine city of Sophia on August 13th, 1189, Frederick found the promised markets closed, and his route fortified against him. But the behemoth of the Holy Roman Empire would not be stopped. It muscled its way through all Isaac could throw at it. Then he reached Philippopolis on August 24th, the Germans found the city completely abandoned on imperial orders, and its defense destroyed. Soon after, Barbarossa learned of his ambassadors’ imprisonment. He had now substantial evidence of an alliance between Isaac and Saladin in unity against the Latins. He knew too that he had the clear military advantage over the crumbing empire. He could sack the capital city on a whim. And here it is again, that thing that Byzantine emperors always feared, a Latin attack on Constantinople. Yet it seemed the more they tried to prevent it, the more they laid the groundwork.

Barbarossa moved his army to occupy Thrace and contacted Bulgarian rebels, who he knew were always willing to go to war with the Byzantine empire. He wrote to his son and regent to procure a fleet of ships from Italian ports to meet his army in preparation for an attack on Constantinople.

Then, Frederick Barbarossa suddenly changed his mind. He decided to keep his cool and maintain diplomatic pressure on Isaac. All he needed from the petty eastern emperor was transportation across the Bosporus. Finally, after months of delay, and outright threats, Isaac finally capitulated and signed a treaty with Frederick in the Hagia Sophia in February of 1190. Once again the Byzantine emperor would shuttle Latins to Anatolia.

Saladin, being kept aware of Barbarossa’s progress took advantage of the five-month delay by reinforcing his northern Syrian defenses. Throughout the ranks of Christendom, news spread of Isaac’s traitorous and vindictive behavior. Any love for Byzantium that still existed in the west was now gone.

As the German army trudged through Anatolia toward the end of March, Turkish skirmishing and pestering began. Like all crusader marches in Anatolia, hunger, thirst, and exasperation from constant attacks began to take its toll on Christian moral. But military discipline, the weight of numbers, and lack of options carried the day for Frederick Barbarossa. As he drew close to the Seljuk Turk capital of Iconium he decided he’d rather take it than leave it as a base of operations to be attacked from at his rear. He split his forces with one army attacking the city directly, and himself leading the other to attack the main Turkish army directly. Both operations were victorious, with Iconium falling easily. Fredericks army was now flush with food, supplies, and high moral yet again. The local Turk leadership was forced to sign a peace treaty. Then on May 23rd, he set out to continue his march to the holy land. This enormous German army, with dependable, coherent leadership like Frederick Barbarossa, seemed to be an indomitable force of nature.

This Holy Roman Emperor had done what the first two crusades had failed to do, bring a Christian army intact into the middle east. It was rumored that Saladin expected his vast empire to begin folding up at the German juggernaut steamrolling towards him. But God, it seems had other designs for Frederick Barbarossa.

In early June, while fording a river, something went terribly wrong. The chroniclers differ a bit on exact details, but the best guess that historians make is that during a detour suggested by friendly Armenians, while making a crossing, Frederick Barbarossa suffered a heart attack, fell from his horse, and drowned. Other accounts say he tried to swim across the river and was carried away by the current. And still others claim he attempted to take a bath and suddenly drowned.

For the German army, this was worse than any potential battlefield defeat that Saladin might have handed them. German morale vanished in the blink of an eye. Barbarossa’s son, Frederick VI of Swabia tried to maintain control, but he was not his father. Nearly everyone in the German army deserted. By the time they arrived at the siege of Acre in October, Barbarossa’s son had barely 5000 soldiers that being sapped of spirit and racked with disease, added next to nothing to the scales of the battle.

The unexpected demise of Frederick Barbarossa left the command of the crusade to rivals, King Phillip II of France, and King Richard of England. The Christian camp was still locked in deadly stalemate with disease increasing every day. Soon Queen Sybil and her two daughters succumbed to the mystery sickness, throwing Christian succession of the imaginary throne of the Kingdom of Jerusalem into chaos. While Guy technically held rights to the throne through Sybil, now that she was dead, some thought this was a good opportunity to move on from him. Through a series of absurd annulments and political conspiracies the inheritance of the throne was transferred to Conrad of Montferrat by wedding him to Sybils half-sister Isabella. Without bigamy, and loose rules on the sacrament of marriage, the Jerusalem monarchy would never have lasted this long. After this dodgy transfer of power to Conrad, however much Guy insisted he was still the rightful king, no one cared. Now, everyone was waiting on the kings of France and England.

King Richard, who would be called the Loin Heart before this episode is through, was an unlikely inheritor of the throne. He was the third son – but his older brothers died before his father did. Richard was a showman, and his men loved him for it. As he set sail for the Mediterranean, he brought with him a sword that he claimed was Excalibur, although he later sold it when he was short on cash. He met up with his fleet at Lisbon where, yet again, pillaging, looting, and rape occurred at the expense of both the Jewish and Christian quarters alike. Things got so out of hand that King Sancho of Portugal had to step in to quell the attack. By September of 1190, Richard rendezvoused in Sicily with Phillip of France. Despite the chaos at Lisbon, the ability to control a fleet of several hundred ships across thousands of miles of ocean and see demonstrates an intense degree of competency. He also did not plan on being a neglectful king. He brought with him a retinue of bureaucrats and officials who would maintain streams of messengers back to England, keeping Richard in tight control of his government back home.

Richard was 33, Phillip was 25. Both were operating at significant capacities for war, and both distrusted each other. Phillip, for his youth, was already in his second decade as king. He was cunning and quiet and had a knack for political intrigue. Richard was very much the opposite, quick tempered with hot emotions, yet a capable battlefield general.

Both kings had planned to keep their armies in Messina through the winter and wait until spring to cross the Mediterranean and land in Judea. But they found Sicily not quite the peaceful respite it was supposed to be.

King William of Sicily had died a year earlier. The claims to the throne were passed to the eldest son of the now deceased Frederick Barbarossa, Henry VI. But William’s cousin Tancrid seized the throne and threw the country into a succession crisis. It was largely thought that Henry would be invading in short order to enforce his rights to the throne. So Tancrid recalled the 200 ships from the Mediterranean coast that were sent there to aid the crusade, ad brought them home to aid himself. His position of the throne of Sicily was shaky at best. He had Greek populations openly hostile to him, an active Islamic revolt, and now, two of the most powerful kings in the world over wintering with their armies on his island.

In Messina, Tancrid failed to prevent the locals from harassing Richard’s troops, so he sacked the city and forced Tancrid pay him 40,000 gold ounces for his troubles, giving a third of it to Phillip of France – technically a violation of their agreement. Plunder was supposed to be split 50/50.

Phillip finally arrived at acre on April 20th, 1191 on ships loaned to him from Richard. The ships were cargo vessels, and there was little fanfare as the king of France stepped off. Upon his arrival, he was the highest ranking noble in the Holy Land. He immediately took control of the siege and pressed for renewed attacks against Saladin.

Richard was taking his sweet time. He was busy taking delivery of his new fiancé, under the arrangement of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Finally, he set sail with his armada of 219 ships to the Holy Land on April 10th. But a storm struck the fleet, blowing the ships apart. The ships carrying his future bride, his sister, and his treasure were cast out of sight of the fleet, crash landing on the southern coast of Cyprus. There they were found by the forces of its local Byzantine-connected ruler, Isaac Comnenus. Then, in an incredibly irrational and shortsighted move he took King Richard’s bride to be and sister as hostages, presumably to be ransomed.

The furious Richard landed on the island, alongside Guy of Lusignan to march to their rescue. Richard demanded his family be released. Isaac refused, and so naturally Richard attacked. The attack quickly turned into a conquest. The pleas for help from Acre went ignored as Richard in his own words said he was spurred on by revenge. Isaac had been a monster of a ruler for the people of Cyprus and saw Richard more as a liberator than a conqueror. The nobility quickly abandoned Isaac and sided with the King of England. Within a month, the conquest was complete. Upon capturing Isaac, the disgraced ruler pleaded with the king of England not to be clapped in iron chains. Richard agreed and had chains of silver made for him instead. He then sold the island to the Templar knights.

The shipwreck of his sister and fiancé was a windfall for Richard. He was flush with cash from not only the sale, but also the plunder. Cyprus too was a fantastic strategic base of operations for future crusaders. It was well out of the reaches of Saladin, and Christian forces could safely assemble, and raid form its coasts.

In early June, Richard reached Tyre, but was refused entry by Conrad of Montferrat on the grounds that Richard supported Guy in his claim to the still somewhat imaginary throne of Jerusalem. If you are finding yourself eyerolling at this constant, self-inflicted disunity, and petty bickering, instead of keeping their eyes on the prize, you are not alone. But I can hear the pessimist in me reminding my more ideological side that these men are men of their times. Who’s to say I would be any different had I lived the. In high medieval Europe, birthrights were everything. I digress.

Richard sailed south directly for Acre and along the way ran into a Muslim barge carrying more of Saladin’s soldiers to the siege. Richard’s fleet attacked it and sunk it. Finally, on June 8th, 1192, Richard stepped foot upon the soil of Judea, three and a half years after taking up the cross. His delivery of western siege engines, catapults, scaling ladders and engineers helped turn the tide of the battle. Each duke now had their own enormous catapult in his war chest. The kings of France and England had the two biggest. Phillips was named “bad neighbor”. Richard’s was named “God’s Own”. The Christian camps were injected with 25,000 new men in the fight, and plenty of cold hard cash to throw around at local mercenaries.

However, within two days of Richards arrival, both kings fell sick with the mystery camp sickness that had been plaguing the battle. Historians’ best guess is scurvy. The king’s hair and nails fell out. Richard nearly died. The effects of this disease lingered with both men for the rest of their lives.

Moral tanked because of the kings of the west being laid low by what seemed to be the curse of God. Yet, Richard the showman felt compelled to do something. He was carried to the front lines and stood up to face the walls of Acre where he fired off a few shots from his crossbow to show the men he was still in the fight.

There were growing personality tensions between the kings as well. For the throne of Jerusalem, Richard openly backed Guy. Phillip openly backed Conrad. When Phillip would hire knights at three gold pieces per month, Richard would offer four. When the count of Flanders died, Richard took control of his siege engines that should have gone to Phillip. And, in a remarkably idiotic show of disunity to their enemy, each king had opened his own separate line of negotiation with Saladin.

While Richard seemed most of the time to be a braggadocios blowhard, he was also a shrewd diplomat who knew violence would be the means to a negotiated end. If Saladin could not yet be intimidated or threatened, he would continue to box him in until he had no choice but to negotiate.

The very idea of negotiating with Saladin was anathema to the true believers in the true believers. This was holy war, a battle of cosmological significance, a future which tens of thousands have died for, that hundreds of thousands of wives and children gave their fathers and husbands for. The salvation of one’s eternal soul was wrapped up in this fight, called for by the successor to the chair of St. Peter. How could one negotiate with the infidels of Asia or Africa like petty merchants and keep their piety? But Richard knew better. He was far more pragmatic than this and didn’t give purist councils the time of day.

On June 17th, the negotiation parties first met. Saladin’s hard line was keeping Jerusalem, as well as the land bridge between the north and south wings of his empire, Syria and Egypt. When Richard heard this news, he could also hear the battering of his catapults against the walls of Acre and decided he would wait. And he wouldn’t have to wait long.

On July 3rd a large breech was finally achieved in the city walls. The Christians attacked but were repelled. Yet on July 4th, seeing no options, Acre offered its surrender terms. Richard rejected them, wanting an unconditional surrender. On July 7th, Acre sent word to Saladin that unless he attacked and immediately relieved the city they would be forced to capitulate. Saladin was helpless. On July 11th, another attack on Acre. On July 12th the city gave itself up to Richard.

It’s worth mentioning that the defense of Acre is one for the history books. The crusaders literally had to undo the defensive walls stone by stone until the massive city yielded. While undoubtedly a massive psychological blow to Saladin and his armies, it was also a testament to their resolve. For Richard, their ferocious defense put the future siege of Jerusalem in healthy context.

The defenders’ wives and children were sparred their lives in exchange for ransom payments. And Per the terms, Saladin was supposed to free 1500 Christian prisoners, and return the relic of the true cross, taken at the Battle of Hattin. All the massive stores provisions and weapons of Acre were now in the hands of the crusaders, as well as 70 galleys of Saladin’s fleet. The captures of his naval fleet was a catastrophic military setback.

Per their agreement, Phillip and Richard split the spoils of Acre equally, leaving out all the other Dukes and barons who had been chewing sand while these kings over wintered in Sicily. Remember, throughout most of history, plunder was how a soldier expected to be paid. Many, like Duke Leopold of Austria left the holy land, disgusted at the greed of the kings.

Then, just ten days after the fall of Acre, King Phillip announced he was done crusading, and prepared to take his leave back to France. Historians aren’t settled on any single reason, more than likely a combination of several. It may be the cumulative displeasure at Richard aggressively overshadowing him at every turn. It could have been a shake up in the aristocracy back home – remember, the king of medieval France had one of the most bizarrely decentralized thrones in Europe. His nobles could very easily squeeze him into a ceremonial role, especially in his absence. Whatever the reason, King Phillip was leaving, and he was leaving without his men. This act, strangely similar of the last French king on crusade, again left his chroniclers struggling to defend – for any other crusader this act would constitute excommunication by the pope. His soldiers despised him for it. Before he left, he further abandoned his support for Conrad and capitulated the throne of Jerusalem to Guy. He swore publicly that he would do no harm to Richard’s lands while he was away. And he appointed the Duke of Burgundy in charge of the remaining French forces. By July 31st, he was gone.

With Phillip gone, Richard was unilateral leader of the third crusade. He did have a growing contender for power in Conrad who was gifted one half of Acre by Phillip before he left. But the more urgent issue was Saladin, who had not delivered on the terms of the surrender of Acre. The Sultan was playing it slow, delaying both the delivery of the True Cross and the release of the Christian prisoners. His strategy of delay, rested in the hope that as time went on, the Christian ranks would become fractious, and self-destructive, as they often had before.

On August 20th, ten days after the deadline to meet the terms of the surrender expired, Richard acted. And I’ll let the lionheart tell us in his own words what he did:

On Saladin’s behalf it had been agreed that the Holy Cross and 1,500 living persons would be handed over to us, and he fixed a day for us when all this was to be done. But the time limit expired, and, as the pact which he had agreed was entirely made void, we quite properly had the Saracens we had in custody – about 2,600 of them – put to death. A few of the more notable were spared, and we hope to recover the Holy Cross and certain Christian captives in exchange for them.

One of Saladin’s chroniclers witnessed this event. His account is a bit less business-like than Richards:

When the king of England saw that the sultan hesitated to hand over the money, the prisoners and the Cross, he dealt treacherously towards the Muslim prisoners… He and all the Frankish forces, horse and foot, marched out at the time of the afternoon prayers on Tuesday, (August 20th). They… moved on into the middle of the plain. The enemy then brought out the Muslim prisoners for whom God had decreed martyrdom, about 3000 bound in ropes. Then as one man they charged and with stabbings and blows with the sword they slew them in cold blood.

This was not a crime of passion or mob violence like the first crusade. It was, as that Muslims chronicler noted, cold blooded in the purest sense. Like in the Godfather film, it was not personal. It was business. In this transaction one party had failed to deliver, so the other made a power move. Saladin, it is said knew what Richard’s motives were and took them for nothing more than that. He had no desire for vengeance because he had no justification for it. He must have known he was partly responsible for it.

Saladin also now knew the type of King he was dealing with. His chronicles note that because of the massacre, Saladin held Richard in high respect. Just two weeks after this incident, he reopened lines of negotiation with Richard.

But Richard was not ready to negotiate yet. He wanted more leverage. So, he left Acre to march 80 miles south to the port of Jaffa, with plans of re-conquering the Holy Land along the way. He put the Templars ahead as his vanguard, the Hospitallers as his rear guard, and split the infantry and archers into organized columns, anticipating Saladin harassing him the whole way. Guy and his Jerusalem contingent marched with what was left of the French forces. Saladin, knowing the crusader’s aim had launched a scorched earth policy, burning crops and fields, leveling defenses, eliminating rest stops. But Richard didn’t need local provisions. Instead, he stayed close to the coast, shadowed, and supported by his navy the entire time.

During the march, Richard himself was wounded while he was rallying his troops. Saladin pressed again for negotiations. Richard refused, unless the surrender of Jerusalem was on the table. Saladin obviously rejected those terms, leaving only the prospects of pitched battle, something the sultan was loathe to do.

On September 7th, the harassment of his army had finally pushed Richard over the edge, and he turned to fight the Sultan. It was the desired response. Muslim tactics were predictable in both their operations, and effectiveness against crusader armies. Annoy the crusaders until they are lured into an unplanned battle. Muslim light cavalry would then feign an attack on Christian lines, drawing them out into disorganized countercharges where they would be chopped into pieces by Turkish mounted archers. The Christian gold standard of military tactics was still the good old fashioned cavalry charge, sweeping the battlefield clean by tanks on horseback. This time Saladin found the Christian line unusually disciplined, and not fooled by the feints – a testament to not only the leadership of the nobility but the bravery of the infantry. Finally, the Hospitallers played into Saladin’s hands. They broke formation and were goaded into a charge, taking with them the French division to their right. Richard immediately grasped the unfolding battle and instead of leaving the defenseless divisions to be butchered out in the open, he ordered a general attack.

This was completely unexpected by the Turks, and Saladin was beat back by the onslaught and forced to regroup. This gave Richard time to raise the English Red Dragon standard and rally the troops to him. He then led a charge of his own choice, driving the Turks from the field. Saladin, for the moment was beaten.

The Christian army marched into Jaffa on September 10th, 1191, putting Saladin in an extremely dangerous situation. He had no way to stop this Christian behemoth led by the lionheart and now at Jaffa, they controlled port access to Jerusalem.

As Richard encamped at Jaffa, he began seeking intelligence about the strength of Saladin behind the walls of Jerusalem. He may have been lionhearted, but he was also a strategist, and knew full well that a successful siege required command of the surrounding region. He used Saladin’s own tactics against him, harassing the Sultans forces with constant skirmishing and foraging raids. He boxed the Turkish forces out of the plains around Jerusalem and squeezed all of Saladin’s army into the Holy City.

Despite possessing the battlefield initiative, Richard was thinking of the long game. Even if the crusaders took Jerusalem, Saladin would only be defeated temporarily. The Sultan’s true military strength was in Egypt, with its ports and standing armies. Yet this was no ordinary war relying on strategic acumen. This was Holy War – the only thing that mattered to the rank and file of true believes was Jerusalem. The crucisignati would never stand for any deviation from this goal. They were less than fifty miles from their long sought after purpose and that is the only place would allow themselves to be led.

On October 1st, Richard’s army left Jaffa for Jerusalem. Nearly a hundred years ago this march took the first crusaders a week. It took Richard two months. His army was larger and required more provisions. But he was also rebuilding and refortifying old Christian castles and forts along the way. By January of 1192, King Richard had total command of all activity in the coastal plains of Jerusalem – a critical element for a siege.

During all this, Richard maintained constant communication with Saladin, engaging in diplomacy and exchanging gifts. When this relationship became public knowledge, there was uproar in his ranks. To quell the rank and file he had a few Muslim prisoners beheaded a to show he was still a man of God.

Lingering now nearly within sight of Jerusalem, and having secured a stranglehold on the coastal plains, Richard and the high command debated what the next steps would be. One faction wanted to chance it all to Divine Providence and attack immediately. But this wasn’t Richard’s style. Other, more hardened veterans who understood the realities of desert warfare urged caution. They pointed out that even if the city were taken, they did not have the men nor means to keep it for very long.

Richard then made a decision that made perfect military sense but lacked any ideological reward. He withdrew the army to Ascalon for the winter, to reinforce the coastal territories and lock down any imports of material and men that Saladin would need to improve his position within Jerusalem. It kept Saladin stagnant, preventing him from using the city as a launchpad for an attack.

This decision by Richard, despite its reason, precipitated into moral collapse among the crucesignati. Many openly cursed the English king, swearing the city would have fallen if they had attacked. Some of the nobility and barons abandoned Richard and the whole crusade in despair. Others moved into Conrad’s camp, bolstering his claims to the throne that may one day exists again. Saladin, espying the division, and concluding that there would be no attack this winter gave his soldiers leave home.

For the crusesignati, some of those innate, debilitating and obvious fundamental flaws with monarchal government were going to begin affecting the crusade from way back in England. News was reaching Richard of problems in his court back at home. His little brother, the soon to be infamous King John of Robin Hood fame was attempting a coup in his brother’s absence – yet another otherwise minor family feud that dictates intercontinental geopolitical events and hundreds of thousands of fates. Apart from the coup, Richard was also faced with overwhelming crusader support for Conrad over Guy as king of Jerusalem. So to simplify his problems, he withdrew support for Guy and transferred it to Conrad and compensated Guy for the loss of his kingship by allowing the Templars to sell the island of Cyprus to him.

Yet, shortly after Richard switch allegiances, Conrad was stabbed to death by an assassin. Eight days after Conrad’s murder, Richard married off his own nephew, Henry II of Champagne to Conrad’s widow, Isabella, who was also carrying Conrad’s child. The murderer was never discovered. But Richard’s contemporaries openly accused him of organizing the entire plot.

With Jerusalem succession put to bed, and eager to get back home, Richard offered Saladin a partition state in Jerusalem. Saladin refused. So to strengthen his leverage, Richard marched on Darum, one of the sultan’s last strongholds in the area. It fell on May 22nd, 1192.

Seeing renewed vigor in the army, the military command became eager to March on Jerusalem, but this time under Henry II, without Richard who had fallen somewhat in disfavor after Conrad’s murder. Richard skulked at the plan but marched with the anyway towards the Holy City, not really having any choice. Despite division, partisanship, and intrigue among the Christian nobility, from the Muslim perspective, the crusader army was a steamroller that could not be stopped. Seeing Richard, the Lionheart at the helm of a crusader army became something of a dreadful ghost story for the Muslim skirmishers. One recounted seeing him on this march:

I have been assured ... that on that day the king of England, lance in hand, rode along the whole length of our army from right to left, and not one of our soldiers left the ranks to attack him. The Sultan was wroth thereat and left the battlefield in anger.

With the crusaders closing in on Jerusalem again, Saladin’s generals were as divided as Richard’s. The Christians were upon his doorstep yet again. The sultan, for all his reputation, had failed to dislodge them. The city began hunkering down for the inevitable siege to come. It is said that during Friday prayers, Saladin went to the al-Aqsa mosque to pray, where he openly wept.

What Saladin did not know, was that dissention was festering in the crusader camps. The rank and file were sick of strategic delays and wanted to attack now. The French contingent agreed. Yet still Richard urged cation and patience. To stem the chaos, the King called a meeting of the crusader brass. In that meeting, the hawkish French military found themselves in a minority. Most of the leaders decided not to attack Jerusalem. The vigorous defense of Acre was still fresh on their minds. How much greater the Islamic defense would be of Jerusalem with Saladin himself lodged in the city.

Saladin then watched, with what must have been an unthinkable sense of relief, as this great crusader army, the greatest and most successful that had yet been assembled, slinked back to the coast. The next western army to come this close to Jerusalem wouldn’t be until 1917.

Crusader unity utterly collapsed in the wake of the retreat. Whatever was left of the French army went home. Richard himself was running out of cash and men. And he still had threats against his own throne back home from his brother. He was simply out of time to complete the mission. While this seem to be a defeat, it’s worth remembering why Richard made the fateful decision not to attack Jerusalem. He was an experienced, pragmatic military commander. He recognized that total victory for either army was out of reach. He said as much in a note he sent to Saladin:

You and we are together ruined.

Saladin underestimated what resolve Richard still had. After the crusaders retreated from Jerusalem, the sultan made a surprise attack on the port of Jaffa. The garrison of this city had no choice by to hold up in the citadel – where they would likely be slaughtered. Then, like a Tolkien-esqeu Deus ex machina, King Richard himself arrived upon the coast with a few dozen knights, a few hundred infantrymen and a couple thousand Italian mercenaries. They swam from their ships to the relief of Jaffa under occupation by up to 10,000 of Saladin’s light cavalry.

The sight of Richard the Lionheart personally storming the coast of Jaffa struck disproportionate fear into the hearts of the Muslims. Panic gripped them and they abandoned their posts. Saladin tried to regroup and launch a counterattack, but it was repelled by Richard who now had the initiative of the battle. The attack on Jaffa was over. It was a massive psychological defeat for Saladin, sapping him of the victory of keeping Jerusalem.

Both Saladin and Richard had come to the realization that their respective positions were becoming untenable. The invasion had precipitated problems with the stability of Saladin’s own rule – he had suffered a series of defeats against the crusaders under Richard, and he could not kick the Christians out of the Holy Land. The Christians could not retake Jerusalem – it was as simple a stalemate as that. Christopher Tyerman brilliantly describes this as the result of two world championship heavyweight boxers sugging it out, each unwilling to give up, unable to deliver a knockout punch, and each out of gas.

So, these two leaders entered negotiations again, thought never meeting personally. What came out of these meetings was a three year truce, a partition of Palestine, but most importantly to the crusaders, and yet most insignificant to history, was that unarmed Latin Christian pilgrims were allowed to visit the Holy Sepulcher unmolested. This, being something that Saladin had already promised anyway.

Nonetheless, the crusader leadership wase determined to consider this anticlimactic news a win. With the declaration of truce, many put down their arms an marched barefoot to Jerusalem. One of the first to arrive was a bishop named Hubert. Bishop Hubert was personally entertained by Saladin, where he was permitted an audience in front of the relic of the True Cross. Establishing friendly terms with Saladin, Bishop Hubert then successfully got the Sultan to agree to the allowance of a skeleton crew of clergy to officiate the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.

Richard, for his part, never stepped foot in Jerusalem and never met Saladin in person. On his journey back home, passing through eastern Europe, he was arrested by the Holy Roman Emperor for the murder of Conrad of Montferrat. For those awaiting their beloved to come back home, overall Christian casualties are estimated to be so high, that not a quarter of those who left for the holy land were said to have returned.

From a military perspective, the third crusade under Rochard the Lionheart was a success, despite heavy losses and not taking back Jerusalem. Christian grip on the coast was regained and strengthened. Much of Saladin’s territorial conquest was reversed, as was his reputation for invincibility. Yet, Jerusalem stood under control of the infidel, and Latin Christendom had thrown countless lives at its retaking. Those who considered Holy War to be a theological mental illness were not quiet in their opinions. The claim was made that if God wanted to enact vengeance upon the Muslims, he could do it without kings and knights. These crusaders were viewed by some as casting aside the value of life wastefully in the futile attempt to force God’s hand. And now, in the wake of the third crusade, God’s purpose seemed for clouded than ever.

Power in Europe was shifting. After Tancred of Sicily died, German Emperor Henry VI, son of Barbarossa, was crowned the island’s new king. Reigning over both the Holy Roman Empire, and the wealthy, strategically important island of Sicily, his speeches took more Universal tones. It was language usually reserved for popes.

Henry decided he was destoned to finish the business of his father. So, he publicly committed to raising an army himself and returning to the Holy Land to conquer Jerusalem and add it to his collection of kingdoms. To pay for this imperial army, he demanded tribute payments from Byzantium, from Emperor Alexius III – the new ruler of the Greeks, who came to power by dethroning and blinding his brother.

Emperor Alexius succumbed to the bullying from the Holy Roman Emperor and began raising funds through a wildly unpopular tax known as the Alamanikon – The German Tax. The crusade was activated with typical German precision. And for once, Tyerman notes, a crusader army arrived precisely when it needed to, with tens of thousands of soldiers putting in to port on the coast of Acre, just 12 days after the truce with Saladin had ended. But Saladin was now dead. His Empire was now under control of his less inspiring brother, who now had to deal with an enormously well-funded and well-organized invasion army of the Hole Roman Empire that had just secured a beach head. The Imperial army was on its was to join forces with the Henry II of Champagne, the new King of Jerusalem installed by Richard the Lionheart. The Germans, for their part wasted no time in reclaimed the land bridge that connected Tripoli, Tyre, and Acre.

But then God had his say in the fate of this burgeoning crusade. On September 10th, 1192, The King of Jerusalem, Henry II was inspecting his troops from a balcony window when disaster struck. Some stories say the latticework gave way. Others say he slipped and lost his balance. Whatever caused his fall, he died instantly.

Then, just two weeks later, on September 28th, while preparing to leave Sicily to join his grand army, King Henry VI of Germany fell ill with a fever. Some say malaria. Some say poison. No one will ever know. Whatever caused his sickness, the Holy Roman Emperor was now dead.

When news reached Emperor Alexius of Byzantium about the German Emperor’s death, he instantly withdrew his promise of payment from the Alamanikon. When the German nobles already in Judea received word – they immediately abandoned all military engagements and rushed home to protect their territorial claims within the empire. They of course didn’t know it, but this was the beginning of a 20-year German civil war. The new king of Jerusalem, Aimery, brother of Guy, after witnessing the instant collapse of the grand alliance swiftly negotiated a new six-year truce with Saladin’s brother.

German power in Europe crumpled is shocking fashion and its internal politics were turning bloody. To the west, Spain was under siege from the Muslims in the south, losing the hard-won reconquered territories from Islam. England and France had resumed war with each other. Europe was desperate for an unifying factor – that factor would be a man named Lother of Segni.

Lothar was nephew of pope Clement III and was himself elected pope as Innocent III on January 8th, 1198, at the age of 37. I don’t know how many of you have seen HBO’s young pope with Jude Law, but when I think of Innocent III, I tend to think of someone like that character. He was remarkably young for a pope, and naturally brought a disruptive, youthful vigor to the chair of Peter that in 2000 years of Catholic history, we’ve rarely seen.

When ranking popes on a list of their ability to project the power and influence of the papacy, Innocent is right at the top. Like his reformer predecessors, beginning with Gregory VII, he claimed political supremacy over all of Europe’s kings. To support his dominance, he began popularizing an old title for the papacy – The Vicar of Christ. But bringing European princes to heel was just one of his pillars. As second pillar was his ecclesiastical reform through changes in canon law – much of which focused on codifying the increased authority of the papacy. A third pillar would support the other two - a call for a fourth crusade.

If we choose to call crusading a movement, distinct from ongoing and concurrent affairs of Franco-Norman conquest, we can say the movement began with Urban II’s speech at Clermont. This movement then continued in two separate styles as demonstrated by Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Christopher Tyerman labels these two styles apocalyptic, and eschatological, that is, concerning the salvation of one’s soul. By the 13th century, through the organized preaching of the 3rd crusade, the two distinct styles had merged into a singular message from Rome that was both academically precise, and spiritually rigorous. Innocent promoted and spread this blended style of recruitment preaching across Europe both privately through correspondence, and publicly through authorized preaching. He was aiming for nothing short of the institutionalization of crusader-Europe.

I mentioned back in part one that the term crusader didn’t exist for another 500 years or so. But For Innocent to codify a thing, this thing must have a name. So he crafted a term encapsulated all of this business surrounding the crusades. He called it Negotium Crucis – the Business of the Cross.

In a flurry of letters sent to the princes of Europe dated August 15th, 1198, and citing the collapse of the German campaign as well has the fear of a Muslim counter attack, Innocent officially called for his crusade. His tone was that of a political leader rather than spiritual one – calling for those who serve to be held to a minimum of two years on the front lines, with the goal of reversing what Tyerman man called the hung jury of the third crusade, and of course he reiterated the pope’s ultimate authority on all these matters.

Innocent then released a papal bull cheerfully titled Concerning the Misery of the Human Condition. Now, if you read this papal bull, even modern traditional catholic might find themselves a bit, discouraged. It reads as an odd spiritual polemic that leaves little hope for salvation. If you are a Catholic who suffers from scruples, I do not recommend reading it. But the ethos he presented was intentionally grim. To gain salvation, man must metaphorically crucify himself with his own vices and lusts. What better way to crucify oneself than by marching on Jerusalem. He criticized Europe’s princes for failing to act with any resolve concerning he business of the Cross, accusing them of doing injury to each other while failing to see the injury done to them by the Muslims.

Since Pope Urban II, there was no concrete canonical language or authority for any of the business of the Cross. Innocent’s bull was the closest thing yet. Under him, the mass structure changed, inserting newly crafter intercessory prayers for the crucesignati. And when a Mass being offered was specifically for the reconquest of the Holy Land, a bell was rung during the Lord’s prayer.

Networks of crusader preachers were sent out across Europe, focusing, of course on France. They were under direct oversight of the pope, instituting a homogenous, habitual, and carefully crafted provincial liturgical life. Under Innocent, the crusades were no longer reserved to demagogue cardinals or aspiring nobles. His aim was more fundamental. The business of the Cross was the business of Christianity.

One reoccurring problem for crusade organizers was the inevitable buyer’s remorse that would settle in for crucesignati between when they took their vow and the muster date. With every crusade there was a significant fall out rate that hampered the hard work of the organizers. Innocent sought to minimize this problem by giving his preachers the authority to threaten excommunication in these instances. And if excommunication wasn’t enough to spur on courage, there were other options. One who was well off enough could send a proxy in their place. It wasn’t hard to find a desperate peasant willing to fight as a Holy mercenary. In this case both the person going on crusade and the person putting up the cash, would get an indulgence. For many, this seemed like the safest path to remission of sins. Still for some, abject poverty was a barrier to fulfilling their oaths. For these people, Innocent’s fundraising campaign could provide minimal arms and travel.

These legal and financial cooperations between church and state at the behest of the papacy were the result of the past hundred years of learned lessons and what we would call best practices, yet still novel in their scope and breadth. Everything now rolled up to the chair of Peter, and so detailed were the ledgers and correspondence that most of what historians know about the 4th crusade comes directly from these documents.

But Innocent officially instituted another novelty to the business of the Cross. We mentioned that a husband could not take up the cross without the consent of his family, primarily his wife. There are the practical reasons that are common to medieval life – a woman during this time can’t just go get a job in her husband’s absence, and the denial conjugal rights was of primary lest someone to fall into sin. This was both a spiritually and canonically serious matter. A wife left abandoned by a crusading husband was also subject to very real threats, perhaps maybe of a sexual nature but also legal and material. How could she defend against a neighbor trying to seize her lands? How could she provide for her children? Yet the danger could also be homicidal. There’s at least one story of a brother, who, being jealous of his crusading sibling’s land holdings, murdered his sister-in-law in his brother’s absence and threw her body into a quarry. Innocent III officially removed these canonical hurdles by allowing husbands to abandon their vow as a Catholic husband and their duty as a provider without consent of his wife, to go on crusade for the pope.

For this coming fourth crusade, the great kings of Europe had little interest in participating. As we said, France and England were busy at war with each other, and Germany was a nightmare. Innocent instead was forced to rely on the counts and dukes of Europe. The man who ran his propaganda campaign was Fulk of Neuilly, a charismatic priest who was rumored to perform miracles during his recruitment. He was something of a mega-church pastor, once claiming that in a single event he signed up to 200,000 men to take up the cross – it’s a claim that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, but it shows you his reputation for magnetism. Once he confronted Richard the Lionheart about his infamous and unrepented life of sin, allegedly telling the king to finally marry off his three daughters of pride, greed, and lechery. Richard, being the sort he was, replied that we would indeed marry them off appropriately to the Templars, Cistercians, and bishops.

Richard’s words, apocryphal or not, represented a festering undercurrent of resentment building against the perceived hypocrisy of the clergy and military orders – demanding from the laity lives of piety and poverty, while some in the clergy seemed to exude the opposite. For Innocent III, preachers like Fulk of Neuilly were the vanguard of clerical reform movement against this pastoral disorder that came to be called apostolic poverty. Yet even Fulk of Neuilly, the pope’s most prolific preacher was not immune to this hypocrisy according to James of Vitry, theologian and chronicler of this era:

He began amassing a great sum of money from the alms of the faithful which he had undertaken to pay out to poor men who took the cross, both soldiers and other. But through avarice or other base motive, he did not make these payments, and from that time, by God’s hidden judgement, the power and influence of his preaching swiftly declined. His wealth grew, but the fear and respect he had commanded fell away.

Fourth crusade preaching was fizzling out. And Innocent had yet to secure any major European princes to his cause. Yet he was successful in establishing a defined, coherent, legal apparatus of indulgences, extending to anyone who crusaded, anyone who was left behind by a crusader, anyone who donated to the crusades, anyone who paid to remove their vow, or paid another to go in their stead. These alms for arms were powerful tools in the hands of a Vicar of Christ on earth. Despite widespread disillusionment towards Holy War and Jerusalem, Innocent’s proclaimed non-sacramental authority over the condition of the soul inevitably attracted those the pious, the scrupulous, the ambitious, and the profiteers alike.

Richard the Lionheart died on April 6th, 1199, in the arms of his mother, Elanor of Aquitaine. With his death, Phillip no longer needed his nobles for war with England and thus freed them for recruitment into Innocent’s call. For many of these Norman Frankish nobles, crusading was now in their pedigree. Something like a child’s father today who fought in Iraq, whose father fought in Vietnam, whose father and grandfather fought in the world wars. But this time the organization of crusader armies had changed – instead of self-financed, dynastic lords and princes, the army was primarily underwritten by the fundraising efforts of the Church.

With king Phillip acquiescing his knights to go on crusade and the wildly successful fundraising campaign of indulgences, its looked like Innocent was going to get his crusade. But there was one problem - Outremer and the Islamic armies were in the middle of a truce, so any invasion force would not only be unwelcomed but possibly repelled by force of arms by the Christians. So, he arranged for an alternate target – the same target Richard argued for in the last crusade - Egypt. But the same problem with Egypt before still existed now, no one cares about Egypt. Crusading for the strategically important goal of a coastal African country just didn’t have the same ring to it – it certainly didn’t match the grandiose recruitment preaching. So, Innocent and the crusader leadership came up with a remarkably simple solution: they would lie. Preaching for a crusade to the Holy Land remained official marketing campaign, but Egypt became the focus of the military campaign.

Another gordian knot for Innocent was Byzantium. None of this commotion from the West was asked for, hoped for, or wanted by the Byzantine Emperor to the east, and relations between the two lungs of the Church were already at an all-time low. Innocent compounded this problem when he couched his announcement of this fourth crusade to the emperor in a demand the Eastern Orthodox church to return under the dominion of the pope, and further provide material support for the crusades, and in return, Innocent would shower the east with papal indulgences. Emperor Alexius of course rebuked the chair of Peter, reiterated his empire’s independence of Rome, and went on to call that he returns the stolen property of Cyprus – taken by the last round of crusaders.

This stunted attempt at diplomacy officially closed off the land route. The sea route was an easy choice to make not only because the land route was unavailable, but because it was also the least treacherous. It avoided skirmishing with eastern European kings as the crusaders trampled through and completely circumvented any need for aid from the schismatic Byzantines. And there would be no parched parades through Anatolia under constant attack from Turks. With the sea route through the Mediterranean, they could land anywhere they wanted, and besides, they wanted to go to Egypt anyway. But the sea rout is expensive, requiring entire fleets of vessels and the skill to sail them. That’s where the Venetians come in.

The Republic of Venice was a sovereign state in Italy that had grown to be an economic powerhouse recognizing no one above itself, including the pope, preferring spiritual independence through the patriarch of Venice. It dominated maritime trade in the Mediterranean and did business with anyone and everyone. No religion, nationality, or continent was off limits, as long as there was profit to be made.

And so, a delegation was sent to Venice to negotiate the transport of this fourth crusader army. The doge of Venice, the highest-ranking official agreed to meet them. The doge, an old man, and allegedly almost blind, named Enrico Dandolo, loved the idea of helping the crucesignati. Not only would they be paid well for their taxi service, but the Venetians had long fixed their eye on the Egyptian spice trade. It was a lucrative business and entirely monopolized. The pope had recently banned Christian nations from trading for Egyptian spices because they were enemies of the Cross, but an exception was made for the Venetians. If this crusader army could take down the Egyptian regime there were rivers of money to be made. The Treaty of Venice was thus signed, and the crusaders were scheduled to muster for transport on June 29th, 1202, at the Venetian Island of Lido.

One of the members of this Franco delegation was a knight named Geoffrey of Villehardouin. Geoffrey did posterity a favor by keeping a detailed journal of the fourth crusade. He recounts, in glowing language, the signing of their treaty, and the need for secrecy:

I cannot recount to you all the fine and fitting words the doge said, but the matter was settled, and charters were prepared the following day, duly drawn up and set in order. When this had been done our intended destination was kept secret. Cairo had been chosen because it would be easier to destroy the Turks through an attack on Egypt rather than anywhere else, but it was announced simply that we were going overseas.

The military leader chosen for Innocent’s crusade was Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat. His father served in the second crusade and his brother was Conrad, the would be king of Jerusalem allegedly assassinated by Richard the Lionheart. Boniface’s family was the most intertwined bloodline between Outremer and Europe, making him an easy choice. Yet he being Italian, the low level Frankish rank and file not only didn’t know who he was, but didn’t care. This disunity added to the chaos that became the muster at Lido. As these crucesignati made their way into Italy some had no idea about the bait and switch the pope was pulling on them and decided that they would continue to the holy land and wait for the crusading army to catch up with them. Others, scraping by just to travel to the muster found the markets in Italy closed to crusaders. Discouraged, impoverished, and now starving, many turned around and went home.

The hemorrhaging of would be soldiers for Christ almost destroyed the fourth crusade before it ever started. Geoffrey Villehardouin estimates that only a third of the 33,000 knights actually showed up at the muster, and maybe only half the infantry. When Innocent’s legate, Cardinal Peter of Capua arrived he realized that the majority of the people there were either women, sick, or men entirely too poor and destitute to be of any help, and would be more of a burden, and so he dispensed them of their vow and sent them home, leaving behind a skeleton army.

Before long, the Venetians began demanding money for their current hospitality and future taxi service that the crusaders didn’t have. The financial strategy was collapsing along with the muster. There was no more money coming from Rome, France, or Germany. To save the crusade the military brass tried to make each individual crusader pay their own way, violating the terms they signed up under. Realizing they would lose what was left of the army if they tried to enforce this, the nobles ponied up some of their own cash to try and keep the Venetians happy. Some even went into debt to meet the contractual payments to the Venetians. But after everything was counted, it amounted to less than half of what was owed. And winter was looming over a now penniless army on a faraway island.

The Venetians could have simply abandoned the whole operation and wished the crusaders luck on their journey. But the Doge and his compatriots already had a sizeable investment in ship building and preparations to move this army. Many of the Venetian leadership had staked their civic reputations on promoting and aiding the crusade. And Egypt was the prize they kept their eyes on. So, Doge Dandolo proposed a quid pro quo. He offered to put a moratorium on the payments for a short time if, before the crusaders begin their Holy War, they take a small detour across the Adriatic.

Along the Dalmatian coast was a city called Zara, now modern-day Zadar, Croatia, but during these days it was loosely under the control of Emeric, King of Hungary, who was not only a Catholic loyal to the pope, but also was a crusader for him against local heretics. Before placing itself under the protection of Hungary twenty years prior, Zara was under Venetian control, and the Venetians were still bitter about the loss. All the crusaders had to do to postpone the debt payment to the Venetians was to lay siege to Zara and take it back.

In early October, the Venetian fleet carrying the crusaders set sail for Zara. Oddly, their leader, Boniface chose not to go with them. Some historians guess he wanted to keep his hands clean of what was about to happen. But other suggest he was pulling the strings on a larger political goal that we’ll come back to in a little bit. Leaving the Venetian coast, Villehardouin recounts:

Ah, God! What fine warhorses were put on board! When the ships had been loaded with arms and food, and the knights and sergeants had embarked, their shields were hung round the sides and on the ships’ castles alongside their banners, of which there were many splendid ones.

As the cities along the eastern coast of the Adriatic saw this the largest naval fleet since antiquity approaching, they quickly surrendered without a fight. Zara too was preparing to surrender, knowing they were the target of the Venetians, but disgruntled crusaders made their way to the Zaran leadership and convinced them that the rank and file would not go along with any attack on a Christian city. Zara then sent a message to the crusaders, refusing their terms of surrender, and both sides, both Christian, dug in for a siege.

Simon of Montefort, one of the most renowned military commanders of the Middle Ages, was steadfastly opposed to laying siege to Christians. Through his connections he even produced a letter from Pope Innocent III, expressly forbidding an attack on Zara, under pain of excommunication and revocation of all given indulgences for taking up the Cross.

The crusader brass held a meeting where the decision had to be made to become a mercenary army, Holy warriors for hire, or go home. Venetian pressure was intense. And most of the leadership thought the sin of sacking Zara was a means that justified the ends. But Simon of Montefort held his ground, quoted as saying, that he did not come here to kill Christians. When it became clear to him that he was in the minority, he withdrew from the crusader camp and continued on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with his retinue and supporters.

On November 12th, 1202, the siege engines built by the venetians were wheeled up the walls of Zara. By November 24th, the city fell. Some Zarans were killed but most of the population fled, for the victims of the conquering crusaders over the past hundred years had a reputation that preceded them. The booty and plunder were split evenly between the Venetians and the Crusaders, and the army settled in for the winter.

Immediately after the attack, the papal legate, Peter Capua arrived with permission from Innocent to remove the excommunications of those involved so they could carry on with the mission and save face for the pope… if the crusaders repented of their crimes. The Latin crusaders did publicly repent, but the Venetians told Peter where he could put his excommunications – caring not for notions of papal supremacy, and further, they viewed their deal with the crusaders as a secular business arrangement – nothing more. From their perspective, the pope should be thanking them for agreeing to put a moratorium on his crusader’s debts.

As winter settled into the crusader occupied Zara so did discontent. The rank-and-file true believers with nothing but their own thoughts were beginning to feel… used. Open discontent spread against both the Venetians and the Frankish brass. Riots broke out and many disserted. But still for some, the Venetians represented the last best hope to get to the Holy Land and expunge their sins. They still were completely unaware that the Venetians would be sailing them in the opposite direction.

By December, the crusade military leader Boniface finally arrived, but he was closely followed by a delegation from Germany. It is believed that this delegation was what he had been working on while Zara was being taken. The King of Germany, Philip of Swabia had arrived with his brother-in-law Alexius Angelus. Alexius Angelus was the son of the deposed, blinded, and imprisoned former emperor of Byzantium, Isaac II. During the coup, the young Alexius was smuggled out of the empire in into the safety of his sister’s husband in Germany.

Boniface, the King of Germany, and young Alexius had a proposition for these Holy warriors turned mercenaries – that was to help Alexius reclaim the throne to Byzantium which he believed was rightfully his. In exchange for their services, Alexius promised to rejoin the Eastern Orthodox with the Church of Rome, plus make a payment of 200,000 silver marks to aid the army, provide full provisions for every soldier in the army, bolster the crusader ranks with 10,000 Greeks, and station 500 knights in Outremer to help with its defenses. It was an offer almost too good to be true. Christopher Tyerman, among other historians calls the timing of this proposition highly suspect, and at worst out right collusion to take out the emperor of Byzantium by the Venetians. The Venetians hated the Byzantines. Not only were they maritime opponents but tier feud was fueled by an incident about 20 years prior. Inside Constantinople, long percolating tension boiled over into an eastern riot against the Latin quarters of the city, inhabited by Venetians and Genoese. Thousands were killed, countless were raped. The Latin clergy was persecuted. One of the papal legates had his head cut off, tied to the tail of a dog, and dragged through the streets. It was a horrific event. Even the empress of the city, Maria, who was known for having Latin sentiments was executed in the chaos. The Venetians never forgot these events, committed by an empire in decline. If they could supplant the emperor, the vast wealth and monopolized trade between east and west would be convenient fallout alongside revenge.

Alexius Angelus sought to capitalize on the recent Latin mobilization by previously asking Pope Innocent III to help him retake Constantinople. But papal support was flatly denied. So, in Christmas of 1201, Alexius met with Boniface, where the plan for Constantinople was allegedly hatched.

Innocent must have sensed a scheme against Constantinople was in the works. Before the crusaders had even left Italy a few months ago, the leaders received a letter from the pope forbidding them from ever attacking Constantinople. If Innocent bares any guilt in the precipitating events, it lies in his misplaced confidence that threats of excommunication would stop secular war and shines through 800 years of history as a glittering example of the pope’s complete obliviousness of what this army had become. He had lost control of his own crusade.

The Venetians needed no convincing of the Constantinople plot since they probably organized the entire thing. The clergy among the crusaders simply ignored papal threats and instead leaned on just war theory to satisfy the army’s leadership. Many of these disillusioned crucisignati, seeking only remission of their sins, had only now begun learning of their initial, and pending excommunication through rumor. And as news of yet another detour to attack yet another Christian city spread through the crusader rank and file, these true believers utterly abandoned the fourth crusade for good, washing their hands of it all. What remained, was little more than a cold, mercenary skeleton force, soldiers of fortune being transported to a mission of conquest by mercantile sailors in the Church’s anathema.

Pope Innocent again demanded they halt, and begged them not to attack the city, but it was too little too late. By April of 1203 crusaders mustered on the Greek island of Corfu. Young Alexius arrived to proclaim himself the new emperor in front of his new troops. For the next two months the Venetian and crusader mercenaries raided the Greek coasts, weakening them, before landing in Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople on June 24th, 1203. Geoffrey Villehardouin recounts their arrival:

Those who had never seen Constantinople before gazed at it for a long time, barely believing there was such a great city in all the world. They saw its high walls and mighty towers, with which the city was completely encircled, as well as the fine palaces and impressive churches, of which there were so many that none could believe if he did not see it with his own eyes, and they could be seen the length and breadth of the city, which is the sovereign of all others. Know that there was no man there so bold that his flesh did not tremble, which should come as no surprise for never was such a great project undertaken by as many men since the creation of the world.

The crusader brass decided to float a ship in front of the sea facing walls of the great city with Alexius Angelus standing tall and proud to show its inhabitants they had come not to conquer, but to put the rightful emperor back on the throne. But upon seeing the parading of the young man, the Greeks not only had no idea who Alexius was. Despite the way the current emperor came to the throne no one in Constantinople was interested in another destabilizing coup. And more significantly, the legions of Venetian and Frankish nobles behind this proposition did little to reassure the Byzantines that this was not an army of conquest and plunder.

Geoffrey of Villehardouin tells us the crusaders camped across from the great city and readied their weapons for war as the crowds of eastern Christians looked down upon them, wondering, perhaps fearing, why they were here. Eventually emissaries of the emperor came before the crusaders and read the following message, as transcribed by Villehardouin:

My lords, Emperor Alexius informs you that he knows well that you are the best of men among those who do not wear crowns, from the best land there is, and he is deeply perplexed as to why or for what purpose you have come to his lands and to his kingdom. You are Christian, he is Christian, and he well understands that you set out to recover the Holy Land overseas, the Holy Cross and the Sepulcher. If you are poor and needy, he will gladly give you some provisions and some money, and then you can leave his lands. He does not wish to do you any harm, but he has the power to do so. For, if you had twenty times as many men you would not be able to escape if he wished you ill; you would be killed and destroyed.

It was the same tactic the Byzantine emperor had used every time a crusading army was on his doorstep: feed them, give them cash, and keep them moving.

Villehardouin says the Doge of Venice took the lead and gave the response on behalf of the crusaders, saying they would not accept this pretender’s words since he was not the rightful emperor, and that he should step aside and beg forgiveness of his nephew who they intended to install upon the throne of Byzantium. It was a response intended not to be heard. War was the only desired outcome. The very next day Villehariouin and the other barons met upon horseback in the middle of a field where they heard Mass and planned the details of the attack that was to come.

On July 5th, the battle commenced. From Villehardouin:

It was a fine morning, a little after sunrise. Emperor Alexius awaited them with numerous battalions and a vast array of equipment on the other side of the straights. Trumpets were sounded. Each galley was towing a transport ship so that the crossing might be made more easily. Nobody asked which ship should go first, but instead each of them landed as soon as they were able to.

The crusader forces landing on the north side of the peninsula hoping to gain access to Constantinople’s famous natural deep-water harbors. These harbors were protected by an enormous iron chain stretched across the bay. But the Venetians were prepared for this defense and broke through the chains with their ramming ships. Then they concentrated their forces on the golden horn, near the northeast gate of the city, alarmingly close to the imperial palace. From Villehardouin:

The knights came out of the transports, leaping into the sea up to their waists, fully armed, their helmets laced and their lances in their hands. The good archers, the good sergeants and the good crossbowmen did the same, each group going ashore as soon as they reached land. The Greeks made a great show of being ready to resist, but when the knights came to lower their lances, the Greeks turned their backs and fled, abandoning the shore. Know that no one ever made such an audacious landing. Straightaway the sailors began opening the doors of the transports and bringing forward the gangplanks so that the horses could be led out. The knights then began to mount their horses and the battalions to form up in the designated order.

This offensive to take control of the shore lasted over ten days, until on July 17th, the Venetians launched an amphibious assault using scaling ladders from their ships, taking control of a large section of the wall, east of the gate. The Varangian guard - elite forces of the emperor, made up of Anglo-Saxons and Danes were called out to defend Constantinople with battle axes, smashing into the Franks with hand-to-hand combat, driving them back towards the sea.

Villehardouin then tells us that the doge of Venice himself carried the banner of St. Mark into the battle all the way up to a tower upon the walls of Constantinople, rallying all troops to him. It was brave, but they still could not get past the formidable Varangian Guard. And so in a last ditch effort to take the wall, the crusader army set it on fire. But they lost control of it, and the fire turned into an inferno. It spread into the city. Soon it was spreading through 120 acres homes and farms.

The emperor of Constantinople rode out with an army to meet the crusaders along the shore, to engage them directly, hoping to drive them back to the Venetian ships. The Franks and Venetians were enormously outnumbered by the imperial legions. Yet these Franks were still very much Norman, and they welcomed a pitched battle where they could unleash their deadly cavalry charge. At seeing the advancing wall of iron the emperor retreated without a fight, squandering what should have been his moment of victory.

Slinking back to his throne, Alexius III’s reputation was shot. He was deemed a coward. Yet the crusading army had still failed to breech the city, being held at bay the Varangian guard. Tyerman points out that this is an odd moment where the fate of Byzantium was being decided by battle between two western European armies. Despite the resolve of his Varangian guard, Alexius gave into fear and abandoned his throne, driven away, as one of his chroniclers notes, by no one.

The now abandoned leaders of Constantinople decided to free the former emperor, Isaac II, currently imprisoned and blind, and father of the young Alexius with the crusaders. They quickly reinstated him as their ruler and sent new emissaries out to the franks and Venetians letting them know of their… change of heart. In response, the Franks and Venetians sent their own envoys into the city to speak directly with Isaac and ascertain the situation. From Villehardouin:

The envoys were accompanied as far as the gate; it was opened for them, and they got down from their horses. The Greeks had placed Englishmen and Danes bearing battle-axes along the route from the gate as far as the palace. There the envoys found Emperor Isaac, so richly attired that one would seek in vain for a man more lavishly dressed. The empress, his wife, was alongside him. There were so many other high-ranking men and women present… And all those who had been opposed to the emperor the previous day were now subject to his will.

The envoys delivered the promises made to them by Isaac’s son to the reinstated emperor. He agreed to them but acknowledged they would be hard to fulfill. Nonetheless he swore an oath to the crusaders and Venetians. Once everything was signed, the crusaders marched his son into the city and both father and son were installed as co-emperors.

The first step towards fulfilling the monetary requirements of their enthronement was to pay 50,000 marks of silver to the Venetians, 34,000 to pay against the debts of the franks, and 16,000 to venetian bankers holding personal debts of the Frankish nobility. It was the beginning of the long-foreseen windfall for the Italian merchants.

Alexius, the younger emperor, now had an empire to run, but he knew no one inside his own kingdom and his father’s support was feeble at best. It became clear that the survival of this dynasty rested on the mercenary army staying put. Thus, it was further negotiated that the secret attack on Egypt would be put off for another year and they would stay encamped inside Constantinople. For this, the Venetians and crusader brass demanded high fees. Boniface of Montferrat, leader of the crusaders employed himself as the personal paid bodyguard of the emperors.

Everything about this pseudo-occupation by the west was infuriating to the locals. Rumors of scandal and vast exchanges of byzantine wealth were everywhere, and both Eastern Orthodox Christians and Muslim alike despised Roman religious practices and crusader hubris. And the co-emperors of father and son was shaping up to be a disaster. The younger began stripping churches and mosques for their gold and silver claiming he needed the precious metals to pay the high demands of the crusaders and strutted around the city as a drunkard. His father Isaac began publicly accusing his son of engaging in same-sex orgies, while he himself had become something of a recluse, practicing astrology in deep within his halls. Predictably, with such weak governance, riots broke out against the crusaders. The crusaders responded to the riots with brilliant de-escalation tactics such as burning Greek churches and Islamic mosques. These fires set by the westerners again grew out of control and was more destructive than the last. From the golden horn to the sea of Marmara, 440 acres of Constantinople burned to the ground. After the fire, the visceral hatred the local population held against the Latins and Venetians was deadly. The crusaders were increasingly prisoners among a hostile populace. Villehardouin recounts:

None of the Latins who had been resident inside Constantinople, no matter where they came from, dared stay in the city any longer. And they gathered up their wives and children and whatever they had been able to bring out of the fire and they boarded boats and ships to cross the harbor to where the pilgrims were.

The grip doge of Venice and the Latin barons had upon Constantinople had slipped through their fingers like sand. The co-emperors had failed to deliver on their payments and promises, and now none of them were welcome inside the city. A local rebellion of Greeks had sprung up that opposed the emperors and crusaders equally. The leader of this rebellion was a man named Murzuphlus who had mustered a large enough army that the Venetians nearly lost all their ships to his attacks. The Eastern Orthodox Church had now set up its own rival emperor to the throne, a man named Nicholas Kannovos.

To avoid the total unraveling of his regime, Emperor Alexius called of the crusaders to come to his defense. His call for the westerners to march again on Constantinople led to a polarization of opponents against him, resulting in total unified resistance led by Murzuphlus, backed by the byzantine army, the clergy, and civil authorities. A few days later Murzuphlus crowned himself emperor and threw both father and son emperors into prison where the son was strangled to death.

With the death of the young, debouched emperor also died any hope of the streams of wealth from Byzantium to the west. The Venetian ships were in disrepair, the crusader barons were completely broke. They controlled no land and thus had no means to grow food, and now they looked on as Murzuphlus, now known as Alexius V, began reinforcing and repairing his city walls.

Some of the crusader brass considered it may be time to abandon the entire crusade, but the Venetians reminded them of their still present obligations to repay their debt of hundreds of thousands of marks. It was decided then that the best and easiest way to service this debt would be to simply steal it. They decided to sack Constantinople and plunder its riches. Every detail of splitting the winnings and rule of Byzantium was negotiation between the doge and Boniface. The gold, silver and textiles would be split evenly. The new emperor would be a Latin, and the new patriarch would be Venetian. They further agreed that the army would stick together yet another year to hold the new regime together, through March of 1205.

Under pain of excommunication, and after having been misled by the leaders of this enterprise so many times, even the more mercenary minded soldiers among the rank and file were understandably concerned about the moral licitness of this war now being waged upon their Christian brothers, who by this point, were guilty of nothing more than wanting an emperor that had their best interest in mind. The Latin clergy carried the theological water yet again for the nobility. From Villehardouin quoting the cleric:

‘We therefore tell you,’ said the clergy, ‘that this battle is right and just. If you have the right intention of conquering this land and placing it in obedience to Rome, all those of you who die here having made your confession will receive the same indulgence the pope has granted you.’

With permission from the clergy, the crusaders could, in their own minds, deny culpability for what was about to happen. The enemy were schismatics. The new leader had committed regicide and had usurped the throne. Innocent threatened excommunication again, but from the crusader’s perspective, an excommunication revoked, just like at Zara, especially once the glory of the enterprise is revealed. But the bishops went further, appealing to the most based level of medieval Catholic prejudice, calling the Byzantines enemies of God himself, worse than Jews.

Villehardouin recounts the siege towers being readied and the scaling ladders being affixed to the Venetian ships. No outside army had ever taken this great city before. Its walls were thick. Its walls were tall. But the Latins sensed its time had come. And so, all through lent of 1204 the western Christians tirelessly labored to bring the schismatic city to its knees.

On April 9th, a Friday, the attack began on the north shore. The Venetian ships unloaded the men and acted as floating castles right up to the walls of the city. Villehardouin recounts the men exchanging blows on the tops of these towers with the defenders on the tops of the walls, spear for spear, sword for sword. The initial attack failed. Villehardouin blamed the sins of the attackers for their failure.

On Monday the Latins had regroup and concentrated their attacks on individual wall towers, attacking with two ships per tower. Villehardouin says the cries of battle were so great that it seemed the very earth was shaking. But then he tells us that God himself raised a great wind, and by chance drove two Venetian ships by chance toward a tower that they hadn’t planned on attacking. One ship was called the Pilgrim, the other, Paradise. With no other option, these the Pilgrim and Paradise attacked the tower that stood before of them. As the Pilgrim’s ladder reached the tower, the Franks, and Venetians abord climbed up. The defenders abandoned their post, and a foothold was now gained upon the walls of Constantinople.

This shook the confidence of the defenders. They wavered and allowed four more towers to be captured. With a large section of the wall taken the crusaders were able to open the gates. Murzuphlus lead an assault of byzantine warriors against the oncoming deluge. It was exactly what these western knights wanted. They knew their cavalry charges were nearly unstoppable. Murzuphlus turned and ran. From Villehardouin:

Then you might have seen Greeks being struck down… There were so many dead and wounded that they were endless and innumerable. Many of the great men of Greece turned and fled… The hour of vespers had already passed, and the men of the army were wearied by battle and killing.

Aware of their weakness in numbers, the crusaders gathered in the great square of Constantinople and set up a perimeter. A brief resistance was set up against the Latins but quickly scattered. By the 13th of April, because of Venetian brilliance at sea and siege-craft, and Franco-Norman brute force, the city founded by Constantine the Great was lost.

After four brutal days of battle the crusaders commenced indiscriminate slaughter against their fellow Christians, making no distinction between soldier and civilian – enemies of God all… worse than Muslims, worse than Jews. Pillage, violence, rape was everywhere. The number of victims of this Christian-on-Christian horror, by Villehariouin’s own telling, is greater than any man can count. On day two of the despoiling, the systematic plundering of the riches of the city’s capital buildings and Churches began. The Holy sanctuaries were desecrated and pilfered. The ancient Roman and medieval Greek works were either seized or destroyed. The tombs of Byzantium’s emperors inside the St. Apostles church were defiled and looted. Monasteries and convents met the same fate as the churches. The consecrated alters were smashed, their gold and marble stolen. Even the Latin bishops took part in the plunder by lifting ancient relics of the city to take back to the west. When looters could find no more loot, they resorted to stealing things of a more carnal desire from the helpless women of Constantinople. The Venetians, always the professionals, kept their lower appetites in check and let the crusaders carry on this vile terror while they hunted the artistic treasures of the city. A massive bronze statue of Hercules, commissioned under Alexander the Great was stolen. And the famous bronze horses of the hippodrome were eventually sent back to St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, where they still stand today.

The civilian casualties were in the thousands… no one really knows how many died. The estimated plunder was said to equal around a million silver marks. Christopher Tyerman calls it enough booty to fund a western European state for a decade. As news of actions of the crusaders spread, nearly everyone, even those who were loath to criticize the endeavor, were left appalled.

With the cities power and riches that stood for a thousand years taken in three days, the Latins and Venetians now needed to turn to governance. By May, Baldwin of Flanders was elected emperor. A Venetian was elected patriarch. Murzuphlus was captured and executed. The Norman conquerors began settling themselves into new land holdings just as they had done in Jerusalem, Sicily, and England before.

In the years that followed, much like Frankish Outremer, Byzantine purists set up resistance movements throughout Greece. The surrounding nations loathed Latin traditions and quickly lent their support to the resistance. The venetians had soon retracted into insular self-rule as they always had done and the whole Latin-Byzantine experiment began to roll up. Emperor Baldwin was eventually captured in a rebellion along with other Latin leaders. Boniface, military leader of the fourth crusade was killed in an ambush by Bulgarians.

During these years however, the flood of sacred relics, real or unreal, was vast. The True Cross, drops of Christ’s sacred blood, the Crown of Thorns, pieces of stone from sacred sights of Jesus’s life, pilfered from the east and sent to the west. News of miracles associated with the relics began spreading, and naturally tourism exploded around them. Vast sums of cash flowed into the cities that now housed these relics, funding the now necessary expansion of infrastructure to handle these new pilgrims. Some of these improvements are the most famous and beautiful churches we have today.

Christopher Tyerman, in his eloquent pen, sums up this growth much better than me:

Whatever transcendent gains accrued; the relics of Byzantium contributed to patches of economic prosperity across Europe. Some relics could even play a political role. The Crown of Thorns pawned to the Venetians in 1237 and later sold to Louis IX of France prompted the construction of the luminous Sainte Chapelle in Paris and played a significant part in the manufacture of a Capetian religion of monarchy. The acquisition by wealthy nations of the cultural icons of conquered or exploited weaker lands is a staple of world history, as shown by glancing at Ancient Rome, nineteenth-century England or the United States of America in the past century. Byzantium was another prime example, a storehouse of classical and Christian artifacts, many of which had been translated, stolen, or otherwise removed from provinces of the empire.

The Greeks would eventually reclaim their empire from the Latins piece by piece, but they would never fully recover. Future emperors were never able to hold sway over much beyond the walls of the city. The final destruction of Byzantium was complete, if only delayed. 250 years later when Mehmed II finally brought the walls of Constantinople crumbling to the ground under canon fire, he broke open merely a tomb encasing a skeleton of a great Christian empire. While the west is not wholly to blame, since much of Byzantium’s destruction came from myopic self-interest, the physical destruction come upon horseback in western armor aboard western ships.

The sacking of Constantinople by the fourth crusaders is remembered as so complete, so devastating, so historically consequential, and so vicious, that as recently as 2001, Pope John Paul II flirted with a public apology by using phrases like “deep regret” and “heavy burden” when discussing it – over 800 years later.

Historian Steve Runciman called the fourth crusade the greatest crime against humanity – perhaps an over exaggeration, yet if one sees Constantinople’s fall to the Turks two and a half centuries later as one of the greatest disasters in history, then perhaps one may feel justified this feeling.

Then there’s of course the Pope at whose feet lay the entire fourth crusade: the sac of Zara, and the sack of Constantinople lay… Pope Innocent III. He of course excommunicated everyone involved and disowned the entire enterprise, washed his hands of their villainy, and was recorded to say of the Greek church, that they, “now, and with reason, detest the Latins more than dogs.”

Innocent’s papacy and well of energy was far from exhausted, however. The structure with which he raised funds and harnessed the aristocracy of Europe continued when he launched the Albigensian crusades against heretical Christians in France. He now had at his disposal the maturation of coherent legal, liturgical, and fiscal provisions, conceived by his likeminded predecessors that launched the first crusade. Crusade propaganda, now over a hundred years old was now written tradition: service to God, promise of salvation, remission of sins, charity toward oppressed Christians, reclaiming the realm of Christ, a test of one’s religious devotion. Canon lawyers and chroniclers now had the task of backfitting the crusades into just war theory. And with the examples of the ancient Israelites, it wasn’t hard to do.

Vow redemption, more Innocent’s novelty than anyone elses, became a new powerful tool to raise quick cash – donate to the Holy War and have your sins expunged. Indulgences became broader and more common. One could obtain and indulgence now by simply listening to a crusade sermon. Within a hundred years, you could just buy them outright. Papal centralization now expanded beyond just crusading. Preaching was standardized across the bishoprics of western Europe – one could now hear the same sermon in the urban sprawl of London as they could in rural Germany. Manuals and handbooks were published describing how the pope wanted his preachers to preach. Brand new evangelical armies like the Dominicans and Franciscans carried out personal conversion missions of the pope. Within a few decades of Innocent’s papacy, all of Christendom had been divided by Rome and organized into collection regions, with each diocese paying up to Rome. All of this fell under what Innocent III had so often called The Business of the Cross. Being a vehicle for papal reformers like Gregory and Urban to expand their theories into practice, and bring meaningful political power to the papacy, the crusades were wildly successful. For the Norman knight, younger sons left out of inheritances, they were windfalls of conquest, and plunder. For the true believers and peasants, they were largely nothing more than the remission of temporal punishment for sin, and only God can know if this was truly attained.

The onset and then harnessing of Norman methods of conquest simply gave these medievals the means to launch intercontinental Holy War – which is interesting in that, in crusading, almost nothing was done that hadn’t been done before, that is, conquer, pillage, and claim for their own a foreign land. What stood as different is the reasons why they were doing it. And those reasons are as numerable is the crucesignati. Taking of the Cross was not a monolithic ideology like communism or some nationalistic goal of positive and negative outcomes. Therefore, it’s not enough to simply say they were wars of conquest, but also literal, allegorical, moral, and mystical resonations of the soul of the medieval western Catholic.

The problem of defining the crusades was equally difficult for Innocent. Despite his attempts to codify the crusading Church with the authority of the pope, his failure is evident when one examines canon law and finds no conclusions about the pope’s ability to declare war. Innocent’s apologists few years after his papacy naturally needed to define Holy War – the best they could do was theorize on a concept of papal just war. These theories, Christopher Tyerman notes, were arguments borrowed from everywhere but canon law.

Two centuries after Innocentian style papal practices had been entrenched, a Benedictine scholar attempted to ask the question, “By what law or on what ground can war be made against the Saracens?” This Benedictine knowing canon law and history, could only conclude that since sacred lands were occupied by enemies of God, and all crusades occurred under the banner of the pope, they had just cause by just leadership, and therefore engaged in just war – the same theory-tradition used by the Latin bishops before the doors of Constantinople.

With regards to the vow of taking up the Cross, Canon lawyers during and after the crusade never came to conclusions on this act, primarily because taking this vow, under the direction of the clergy constituted and authorization of violence. Thus, the crusader’s vow was fueled by practice, not established canonical law, or theological theory. There was a demand for soldiers, and spiritual and material benefits were held out as a carrot of organized recruitment preaching, naturally followed by developments in financing, resulting in the centrality of bureaucracy overseen by the office of the papacy. On a political level, the crusader vow existed as a grand contract between ecclesiastical authorities and secular commanders.

Yet for all the spiritual novelty, the crusades did not create a new religion. The Catholic faith remained unchanged in dogmatic expression. And taking up the cross did not become a universal prerequisite for the faith. Case in point Ireland, who never took up the cross in any meaningful way and yet never lost their identity as a catholic country. And so then if you look at the engines of the crusading period: European expansionism, Norman militarism, and papal ascendency, the crusades were a reflection and refraction of Latin religious, social, and cultural norms.

Author Robert Bartlett reinforces this idea, saying that the crusades were an extension of developing European culture, one that preceded the nation state. The cross was a badge of universalism, not a dynastic or state symbol. The armies were the hosts of God, the company of God, the host of Jesus. He calls them the common heritage of all Latin Christians. It would be no surprise then that as western Europe grew, changed, matured, and became distracted with other threats, such as the Reformation, crusading as a structure of warfare ceased to be effective towards its geopolitical goals, and as such, ceased to be used.

Academic definitions aside, the difficulty, for me at least, in trying to say what the crusade were lies in the abject sinful means by which they were waged. I’m no theologian. Nor would I dare to presume God’s judgement. Yet when I hear certain chest thumping ideology today that shouts the words “Deus Vult”, I can help but wonder if that same person has the capability of thrusting a cold steel blade through the pregnant belly of a Muslim or Jew.

The shocking and grotesque amount of violence wrapped up in what we call the crusades is impossible to square with the faith Jesus Christ exhorts us too, and yet so few contemporaries, kings, clergy, popes, and laity, found nothing distasteful. And who’s to say that had you or I been transported to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, heard the news of the marches of Islam upon the lands of Christ, heard the sermons calling each one of us to take up the cross and expunge the sins staining our souls, would we not take that opportunity. Would we resist the words of great preachers and future saints like Bernard of Clairvaux when he tells us:

The word had gone round that a new kind of knighthood had arisen… It is a new kind of knighthood, I say, unknown to the ages, for it fights an endless double battle, against flesh and blood and against spiritual wickedness in high places… The knights of Christ fight the battles of their Lord with untroubled minds, fearing neither sin from killing the enemy nor danger in their own death, since there is no guilt and much deserved glory in either bearing death or inflicting it for Christ… The knight of Christ, I say, kills with an untroubled mind, dies with an even less troubled one… a Christian glories in the death of a pagan, since Christ is glorified.

Whether this confidence in just war and killing was an invention of the papacy to an end, or an extension of religious militarism, or some combination, it’s clear the crusades can never be fully defined because they mean something different to the induvial who took up the cross. And through the ages critics and apologists have run the gauntlet of explanations. And there were more crusades than just the four we discussed here. Soon nearly every war in Europe was billed as Holy War, further muddling any attempt at definition. This was a method of pronouncing moral superiority. Call your war a crusade, and then all would know God was on your side. I opened this narrative with words from President George W. Bush, 900 years after the first campaign into Judea, where he invoked the word crusade to frame the coming invasion by camouflaged legions of the west. Islamic radicals still use the word today when exhorting their followers to kill the crusaders.

My goal with this podcast is simply to understand better those periods in Catholic history when it seemed the Gates of Hell came awfully close to prevailing. My intention is not to give scandal to the Church, for the scandal is not upon her but upon the fallen men at her helm. Yet where scandal exists, it is best we understand it in its proper context. In the mobilization of what Innocent called the Business of the Cross, the context is more complicated than I ever imagined. Truly, after all my reading, researching, and contemplating, I find myself still unable to confidently define what the crusades were. I am reassured thought that this at least puts me in good company. Christopher Tyerman reminds anyone who reads his works that in trying to define the crusades, one will always run into historical and contemporary difficulties:

If historical perceptions of the crusades are today fragmented, not united, prosaic rather than epic, in one central respect they follow their predecessors. They paint their canvases in contemporary colours. For almost a millennium writers concerned with Holy Wars which originated in the first campaign to Jerusalem have demonstrated that there are few absolutes in interpreting the past which, as often as not, is the construct of the present. The invention of the crusades began in 1095: it has not ended yet.