The "Golden Age" of the Papacy.
c. 1000 A.D.
As the new millennium dawns over Europe and the world, Rome tightens its grip. It seems every Pope is trying to outdo the last in wickedness and power plays.
Benedict VIII buys the office of Pope in 1012, as does his successor in 1024. The latter Pope passes through all the necessary clerical degrees in one day, according to Halley. (p. 774 ff)
"Benedict IX committed murders and adulteries in broad daylight; robbed pilgrims on the graves of martyrs; a hideous criminal, the people drove him out of Rome. Some call him the worst..."
Finally, cries for change are heard, and Hildebrand, a monk, is elevated to the Papacy. Elevation it was! Gregory VII, as he calls himself now, is the first Roman bishop who claims the dual title of Pope and Supreme Pontiff, the nomenclature of Pagan Rome.
He needs the extra authority, it would seem, to deal with one Henry the Fourth. Now, Henry has picked up a bad habit from the church: buying and selling church positions. He doesn't care much for Hildebrand, who turns out to be a reformer, of sorts. Hildebrand -Gregory - tries to do away with the practice, and other of the most odious of the papacy's immoralities.
So the king and the pope are at odds. The king deposes the pope. Then the pope excommunicates the king. Then repentance, by the king at least, and for 3 days and 3 nights Henry, in bitter cold, climbs a castle wall, viewed with joy by the gloating pontiff at the top, to beg the pope's pardon.
He gets his pardon, but war breaks out. Later, Gregory is put out of Rome and dies in exile, but not before he has planted the "seed" of papal dominion in the hearts of the empire's leaders. To them, later popes will be considered overlord of kings and princes. Definitely not to be messed with.
Some other "seeds":
"The Pope alone offers his foot to be kissed by princes."
"The Pope alone has the right to depose emperors and kings."
"The Pope can be judged by no one."
How sad. I think of the trial of Jesus, and the Roman courtrooms that witnessed Paul's pleas, the dungeons that housed the first pope. A trail of humility not followed by the papacy.
It is in this 11th century, in 1054, that the "church" divides, or more properly, officializes the division begun in 869.Halley explains:
"Up to 869 all Ecumenical Councils had been held in or near Constantinople, and in the Greek language. But now at last the Pope's insistent claim of being Lord of Christendom had become unbearable, and the East definitely separated itself..."
If there has been any doubt about the political nature of the church, the constant power struggle, the constant opposition of others claiming their own supremacy over the church, let it end here.
THIRTY-TWO: THE CRUSADES AND "INNOCENT" III
c. 1100 A.D.
"Babylon" greatly desires to control the Middle East. Her attempts to go back to her supposed origins will continue to the end. It is a way of deceiving the world into thinking that this is the institution which began in Jerusalem.
Her original attempts are staged from 1095-1272, during the summit of papal power. In fact, this stress on foreign conquests is part of the strengthening of the papacy, as U.S. Presidents in our day can become viewed with awe by their away-from-home exploits, even when domestically they may not be in the best shape. (I said "can.")
The Crusades are an effort to regain the "Holy Land" from the now-controlling Muslims. They are named after that same sign which Constantine is alleged to have seen and attached to his shield: the cross (crux, crucis in Latin).
The Crusades, though mostly aimed at the ancient homeland of the Jews, are a time of horrendous insult to that people group, showing once more the Satanic nature of the organization under scrutiny:
The Crusaders "turned against Jews in their home countries...synagogues were burned down, homes were plundered; Jews were massacred at will..." (Weinberg, Because They Were Jews, p.66)
Strange, don't you think? My eyes blurred with tears as I first wrote these things, remembering well the expressions of love I have heard from sons of Israel about their land. To a real Jew, nothing is more pleasant than to consider eretz Israel, the land given him by the hand of Almighty God. To that same Jew, nothing could be more humiliating than to be treated so savagely by people who are on their way to the JEWS' own possession!
The Hebrews (since the thread is showing again), fare no better in the years to come. Four possible solutions are finally delineated for this "problem" called Judaism. The church, which is the real problem, decides that Jews must either:
1) "convert" and be "baptized"
2) be expelled
3) be segregated
or 4) be exterminated
In the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, Jews are forced to wear distinctive badges. Adolf only borrowed that idea.
In 1237, the Holy Roman Empire adopts the doctrine of "servitus Judeorum," according to which Jews are serfs as punishment for their allegedly anti-Christian acts and beliefs. (per Weinberg, op. cit., p.85) Pope Gregory IX is of course the one defining their activity as anti-Christian.
1242. Under papal encouragement, copies of the Talmud and other sacred volumes are burned in Paris and elsewhere. 1288. Jews are tried by the church, found guilty, and burned at the stake. (Weinberg, pp. 85 ff.) And so on and on...
But I was showing that Israel does not prosper from the conquest of Israel's land. The papacy in fact desires this land for itself, for supposedly religious purposes, and is ready to absolve any sin, free penitents from fasting and all other "penances," do anything for anyone who will be a part of his campaign.
Many respond. Many fight and die. But they fail. There are some things over which are written "do not disturb." The papacy's politics fall short when God's purposes regarding Israel are at stake.
In introducing one of the popes of the Crusades, I quote Romano Guardini, who is also quoted by Gontard, op. cit.
"Christ lives on in the church, but He lives as crucified. One almost ventures to use a parable and to say that the imperfections of the church are the cross of Christ. What would become of us if human nature vanished from the church?"
Thus reasons a Catholic mind of another generation. Paraphrased, he says, "Sure, we have our problems, but we're only human. And if we weren't human, we wouldn't be the church." Sounds like the ungodly humanism of our own generation.
But, based on Guardini's flawed logic, the actions of one named "Innocent" III seem almost justified and necessary .This man was very human. ( Paul uses the word carnal, though)
This third pope named Innocent was least innocent of all. Halley, calling him the most powerful of the popes, also makes these observations: (p. 776)
"He claimed to be the Vicar of Christ, Vicar of God, supreme sovereign over the church and the world." That he had the right to depose kings and princes and that "all things on earth and in heaven and in hell are subject to the vicar of Christ. He brought the church into supreme control of the state. The kings of Germany, France, England, and practically all the monarchs of Europe obeyed his will...never in history has any one man exerted more power...
He decreed transubstantiation...declared that Peter's successor 'can never in any way depart from the Catholic faith '...Condemned the Magna Carta. Forbade the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. Ordered the extermination of heretics. Instituted the Inquisition. Ordered the massacre of the Albigenses. More blood was shed under his direction than in any other period of church history until the reformation."
"Innocent," you say? Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus...who made himself of no reputation...and humbled himself...and became obedient to death on the cross...(Paul)
"Innocent"? My kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight...(Jesus)
"Innocent" indeed! The servant of the Lord must not strive...do not lord it over God's inheritance...love is gentle...(Peter, Paul)
If your heart does not grieve with me by now, I know not what comparison of light with darkness will suffice. But we have yet a long road ahead...
THIRTY-THREE: THE INQUISITION
Let us now turn our attention to the idea of the "church" as an agent of massacre. Peruse this excerpt from the "Protestant Magazine" of February, 1913:
"A recent convert to the Roman Catholic Church, with evident sincerity, but with a zeal which was not according to knowledge, wrote to the editor...'the church is ever intolerant of error, and zealous, as she should be, for the truth; but persecution finds no place in her doctrine...' "
In contrast with her statement, the editor points out the following quotations from Roman Catholic authors:
" ' The church has persecuted. Only a tyro in church history will deny that...Protestants were persecuted in France and Spain with the full approval of the church authorities. We have always defended the persecution of the Huguenots, and the Spanish Inquisition. ' The Western Watchman, Dec. 24, 1908.
" ' During the middle ages the church guarded the purity and genuineness of her apostolic doctrine through the institution of the ecclesiastical (and state) Inquisition, which, with many excellent qualities, had unfortunately also its drawbacks. ' The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV, p. 766.
" In the bull Ad Exstirpanda (1252) Innocent IV says: 'When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podesta, or chief magistrate, of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them.' ...Nor could any doubt remain as to what civil regulations were meant, for the passages which ordered the burning of the impenitent heretics were inserted in the papal decretals from the imperial constitutions Commisis nobis and Inconsutibilem tunicam. The aforesaid bull Ad exstirpanda remained thenceforth a fundamental document of the Inquisition, renewed or reenforced by several popes: Alexander IV (1254-61), Clement IV (1265-68), Nicholas IV (1288-92), Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and others. The civil authorities, therefore, were enjoined by the popes, under pain of excommunication, to execute the legal sentences that condemned impenitent heretics to the stake. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, p.34.
"The Catholic Encyclopedia, the fifteenth and closing volume of which has just been completed [1913], is a recognized authority among Roman Catholics. I hardly think, therefore, that you will longer maintain that the Roman Catholic Church does not believe in persecution and never has been the cause of the death of heretics.
"I might add that in the Decretum of Gratian, which was for centuries the recognized standard of canon law, in the second part, case 23, question 5, chapter 47, occurs the following:
" ' Those are not to be counted homicides who, fired with zeal for mother church, may have killed excommunicated persons. ' "
For another witness to Catholic approval of slaughter, I offer Paul Blanshard who in 1951 gave us Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power. From pages 106-109 I quote:
"For exhibition purposes the Papacy preserved the rule that 'The Church abhors the shedding of blood, ' but in practice the rule simply exempted priests from duty as executioners; it did not prevent the Church from turning over heretics to the civil arm of the government, which employed non-priests to light the faggots.
"...By 1197 Peter of Aragon was ordering the stake for heretics, and a little later Pope Innocent III was proclaiming the bloody crusade against the Albigenses. Soon afterwards the Papacy organized a continent-wide system for suppressing heresy.
"...it was common practice for Catholic authorities to burn books they considered heretical long before the Inquisition. Under Innocent IV in 1248 twenty wagon-loads of the Talmud and other Jewish books were publicly burned in Paris.
" The Inquisition flowered in Southern Europe, especially in Spain, France, and Bohemia, and spread to countries like the Netherlands, and even Mexico, where priests and conquistadores united in 'Christianizing' the Indians with sword and cross.
"The assumption behind the Inquisition was that the Pope, as the highest representative of truth on earth, had a special assignment to search out and punish disbelief. The disbelief might be quite trivial; any deviation from orthodoxy which in the eyes of the clerics seemed important was enough for retributive slaughter. The Waldensians were massacred in a body in Piedmont for advocating Christianity in its pristine form and for opposing such purely clerical contrivances as indulgences, purgatory, and prayers for the dead...
"The popes, beginning with Gregory IX, went about the process of searching out unbelievers with great zeal, and they seemed to have no doubt that they were authorized by Providence to punish all heresy. They frequently used traveling monks as doctrinal spies. They appointed special and permanent judges to sit in the Inquisition courts, and too often these judges were Dominican friars who lacked every ingredient of the judicial temperament. Frequently the friars kept the money of the heretics they condemned...
"The techniques of prosecution were far worse than those of a modern Communist court. Usually an inquisitor chosen by the Pope would go into a medieval town and start an investigation of suspected heresy by asking the local inhabitants to spy on each other. The Inquisitor would frequently direct the parish priest to send in the witnesses with their complaints. Naturally, the complaints poured in. They were primitive mixtures of malice, fanaticism, and distorted truth, representing fact, fancy, and hearsay. The prosecutions were entirely secret.
"The persons complained of never had a chance to confront witnesses, and witnesses for the defense almost never appeared because they were afraid to testify. Every defendant was presumed guilty until he established his innocence. There were no juries and usually no lawyers for the defense. Innocent III forbade lawyers to appear for heretics, and later popes allowed lawyers to appear only if they were of 'undoubted' loyalty. Nobody was ever acquitted; the most that a victim could hope for was to have his case filed for further inquiry.
"To make sure that guilty heretics did not escape, each victim was threatened with the stake if he did not confess. Then, if he still held out, he was imprisoned for a time and half-starved. Then he was visited by a persistent inquisitor who was experienced in worming admissions out of broken men. Finally, if no other method produced a confession, the prisoner was submitted to torture. Torture was officially introduced by Pope Clement IV, and Clement V drew up a whole set of regulations for personal torture.
" Theoretically, it was permissible to torture each heretic only once in order to secure a confession, but the rule was easily evaded by describing the second session as a ' continuation' of the first session. Soon, witnesses as well as defendants were submitted to preliminary torture to loosen their tongues and to impress upon them the importance of supplying effective evidence against the accused.
" Savonarola, the stormy evangelist of Florence, underwent a slight variation in treatment. He was subjected to a form of torture known as the strappado for at least three days before he was finally burned. This device, in the words of H.C. Lea in his famous History of the Middle Ages ' consisted in tying the prisoner's hands behind his back, then hoisting him by a rope fastened to his wrists, letting him drop from a height and arresting him with a jerk before his feet reached the floor. Sometimes heavy weights were attached to the feet to render the operation more severe.' Some victims actually died from torture before they could be sentenced and killed. Sometimes a fanatical judge would order a whole company of alleged heretics burned alive - one Dominican monk, acting as a judge of the Inquisition in 1239, sent 180 victims to the flames at one time. The Spanish Inquisition capped all the other national varieties for sadism, and nominally it lasted for more than three hundred years, until 1820. To this day, the name of Torquemada, the chief Grand Inquisitor of Spain, is synonymous in history with cruelty.
" It is true that some of the excesses of the Inquisition can be charged to civil governments rather than the Church. The Church usually turned over its victims to civil authorities for execution after they had been pronounced guilty. But the moral, and sometimes the official, responsibility for the punishment rested with the church. The courts that convicted the heretics were entirely ecclesiastical. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that 'the predominant ecclesiastical nature of the institution (the Spanish Inquisition) can hardly be doubted. The Holy See sustained the institution...' "
In the mouth of these two witnesses let this foul scene be established. But let their descriptions bring, not hatred, but compassion on anyone in our era still bound to Babylon.
THIRTY-FOUR: PINNACLE TO PIT
c. 1300 A.D.
We have again moved ahead of the story. Back to the "golden age."
Our hearts revolt at the scene unfolding. Essentially godless men ruling over the church of God. Vile unholy perverted dictators lording it over the holy church. Warring criminals reigning in the name of the Prince of Peace. Among the most guilty and the most unrighteous of all calling themselves Innocent and Pius. Men reprobate and outside the saving grace of God claiming that it is "altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
So says Boniface VIII in his bull Unam Sanctam, in the year 1302. It will be difficult for moderns to believe that the man is essentially an atheist.
Boniface is brought to trial. Even the darkness of his day perceives his yet greater darkness. Pigott, (op cit., p 95) says:
"dozens of clerics and monks testified under oath that the pope had murdered his predecessor and many of his priests, that he denied the existence of life after death, that he held that the 'three religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity )...are human inventions, ' that Christ was a 'hypocrite, ' and ' a man like us '...."
"He was so corrupt that Dante, who visited him, called the Vatican a 'sewer of corruption, ' and assigned him...to the lowest part of hell. "
But Unam Sanctam stands.This bull states that Boniface is both Pope and Emperor, that the temporal is subject to the spiritual.
Jesus, in referring to Satan in Judas, called His enemy "the ruler of this world." Satan has dominion over the kingdoms of earth for the present. Any church which claims to be united to the temporal powers is thus telling on itself. The Roman Church never renounced its earthly militant status, until compelled to do so by force of arms in 1870. Given the chance, Rome will rise to political as well as spiritual dominion over the earth.
I mean, it's the nature of the beast. And the nature of the whore on its back.
THIRTY-FIVE: THE PAPACY DECLINES
Eventually the earthly kingdom which is Papal Rome suffers setbacks. Setbacks are not to be confused with defeat or extinction. Please understand again that no other power has ruled the world since the Roman Emperors mounted the Pagan throne. Many have tried, all have failed. Papal Rome's kingdom remains intact. If in fact Rome succumbs to a world power before the final antichrist is in place, God's Word to Daniel about the "leg" kingdom which will last until the "10-toe" kingdom is not true. The true church knows the likelihood of that being the case!
The reversals of domain include:
1)70 years in which the entire Roman system is transferred to Avignon, France. This is the so-called "Babylonian Captivity" (of Babylon).
2) 40 years immediately following the 70, in which there are TWO reigning Popes, one in France, one in Rome. The Vatican today recognizes only the Roman "line." As, for example, John XXIII,
"called by some the most depraved criminal who ever sat on the Papal Throne. Guilty of almost every crime, as cardinal in Bologna. 200 maidens, nuns, and married women fell victim to his amours. As Pope he violated virgins and nuns, lived in adultery with his brother's wife; was guilty of sodomy and other nameless vices, bought the Papal office, openly denied the future life..." (Halley, p. 779)
No wonder his very name, like a retired jersey of a retired athlete, is eliminated from the ranks, not to be used again until in 1958 one named Roncalli becomes Pope John XXIII.
So the Papacy has hit on some hard times. Things get even worse.
THIRTY-SIX: THE PRESENCE OF LIGHT
Nowhere in this study is it claimed, or meant to be intimated, that all Roman Catholics of all time are bound for Hell. It would be just as foolish to claim that all persons living in Communist lands are enemies of the free world. It is systems and institutions which are here being exposed, the mother of all such abominations being Babylon, currently doing business out of a seven-hilled city on the banks of the Tiber River.
As in Elijah's day there were many who had not bowed the knee to Baal, so in our day, and even in "Innocent's" day, and in the days of John the 23rd, first or second, there are those who have formed relationship with God, based on the little light they are permitted to see. Even popes may be included in this roster of the faithful. We must be extremely cautious about condemning to hell those whom God may have already received to himself. God only has the right to judge!
On the other hand, by their fruits you shall know them!
Now, in all ages, by all religions and all kingdoms, multitudes of "good works" are done, for a myriad of motivations. For a listing of these kinds of things, read a history of the Vatican from a Vatican perspective. Or a history of any institution from its own vantage point. Satan, in the wisdom that has been alotted to him, has allowed "good" things to come out of Babylon. How else can he deceive if not by the face of the lamb?
But Babylon has, in every generation, also pushed people as far as possible, to the point of being "thrown off" altogether. One day, antichrist -led men will throw her off. But in her place will be something even worse.
So, in reading of all the losing men and ideas of Babylon, it is important to remember that she is not constantly so odious. She is what she is only as long as men will stand the stench.
This concludes part 2 of Scarlet Threads. Part 3, "When People Protest," covers the Protestant Reformation, and the reactions within Rome.Babylon's involvement in the young Americas will also be considered, including a look at Lincoln's assassination.
