Angelic Pope

Angelic Pope



An ideal pope, recurrently prophesied in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
The Angelic Pope is mentioned first in 1267 by the Franciscan polymath Roger Bacon, who refers to a revelation some unnamed person had about him. The prophecy has been current, Bacon says, for forty years. This pope will reform the Church, getting rid of corruption and internal strife, and impress the world by his goodness and justice. Thanks to his influence, the breakaway

Greek Christians will return to the Roman fold; the Jews will acknowledge Christ; and the Tartars and Saracens will cease to trouble Christendom. A brighter day will dawn, and, Bacon believes, in his own lifetime.
This glorious pontiff was adopted by the followers of Joachim of Fiore, who had already prophesied an Age of the Holy Spirit and now added the Angelic Pope to their program, as its inaugurator. In 1294 it seemed for a moment that he might have arrived. Pietro di Morrone, a humble and saintly hermit from Naples, was elected as Pope Celestine V. Public enthusiasm was tremendous, but he was unequal to the tasks of administration and soon resigned without effecting any reforms.
He became, however, a sort of prototype in Joachite imagination, and a true Angelic Pope was still hoped for. There might even be a succession of good popes, associated with another prophetic figure, the Second Charlemagne. These speculations were embodied in a series of symbolic pictures, the Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus (Prophecies of the Supreme Pontiffs), culminating in the Angelic Pope.
When the Renaissance unleashed a wave of freelance preachers and prophets and the spread of printing created an enlarged audience for them, some of them spoke of fulfilling such predictions. In 1516 Fra Bonaventura, under Joachite influence, announced that he actually was the Angelic Pope and took it upon himself to excommunicate the real one, Leo X. In 1525 Pietro Galantino, an astrologer, likewise under Joachite influence, seems to have regarded himself in much the same light. The official Church tried to bring such outbreaks under control; the Fifth Lateran Council was censorious, though without denying that revelations of the future could happen and, by implication, might have happened for the Joachites. Guesswork of a more responsible kind fastened briefly on other candidates, including Leo himself, an unfortunate choice since, far from bringing harmony, he provoked the Reformation. Marcellus II, elected in 1555, may have inspired hopes, but he did not live long enough to show whether he was angelic or not.
After Marcellus, the atmosphere of the Church was unfavorable to such speculation. Nevertheless, towards the end of the sixteenth century, further prophecies became current that led up, like the Vaticinia, to an Angelic Pope in an indefinite future. One of them, attributed to Saint Malachy, has an interest of its own as containing—arguably—a number of fulfilled predictions.
George Eliot mentions the Angelic Pope in her historical novel Romola.