Papal Oath
Encyclopedia
The Papal Oath is an oath (see text below) that some Traditionalist Catholic
s say was taken by the pope
s of the Catholic Church
, starting with Pope Saint Agatho
, who was elected on 27 June 678. They claim that over 180 popes, down to and including Pope Paul VI
, swore the oath during their papal coronation
s. Pope John Paul I
, Pope John Paul II
, and Pope Benedict XVI
, who had no coronation ceremonies, clearly did not take the oath, and some Traditionalists interpret this fact negatively, even to the point of declaring them to be false popes (see sedevacantism
).
They claim that by this oath the popes swore never to innovate or change anything that has been handed down to them. Some of them confuse the alleged oath with the oath against modernism that Pope Pius X
mandated for those taking up certain offices in the Church. There is no evidence that any pope took such an oath during his coronation ceremony.
The "Papal Oath" they speak of appears to be loosely based on the text of the profession of faith, addressed to Saint Peter
, included, as part of another document, in the Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum
, a collection of formularies for correspondence or decrees, some of which may even date from before the time of Pope Gregory I
(590-604), while others may be of the time of the three existing manuscripts, and so of the eighth or ninth century.
While the collection was used in the papal chancery until the eleventh century, the content of the document that contains the profession of faith shows that this formulary can have been used only at some time or times in the short period between the election of Pope Conon
(686-687) and that of Pope Zachary
(741-752); and the profession of faith speaks of the Third Council of Constantinople
(680-681) as having been held recently ("nuper"), making the beginning of that period the most likely.
The profession of faith refers to Pope Agatho (678-681) as already dead.
Patrologia Latina, 105, columns 9-188 reproduces, with notes and commentary, the full text of Garnier's 1680 edition of the Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum
. The article in The Catholic Encyclopedia on this book states that Garnier's edition "is very inaccurate, and contains arbitrary alterations of the text"; it describes as the first good edition the one published by Eugène de Rozière in 1869. Later editions have been able to take into account not only the oldest surviving manuscript, which is preserved in the Vatican and is described on the website of the Vatican Secret Archives, but also two other manuscripts of slightly later date, which were rediscovered, one in 1889, the other in 1937. The Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum is in fact a "miscellaneous collection of ecclesiastical formularies
used in the papal chancery until the 11th century". It then fell into disuse and was soon forgotten and lost, until a manuscript containing it was discovered in the 17th century.
Its rediscovery in the seventeenth century caused surprise precisely because the text declared acceptance of the condemnations of the Sixth General Council, which were directed also against Pope Honorius I
. In the opinion of one writer, the oath had the effect of confirming that an ecumenical council
could condemn a Pope for open heresy and that Honorius was justly condemned.
The Papal Oath is addressed to Jesus Christ, and presents the Pope as his successor, as Vicar of God, endowed with a power of revelation (not just of maintaining an existing revelation) on a par (or almost) with Christ's, and as a "successor" of Tradition.
None of these ideas are present in the Liber Diurnus text.
The detailed account of the coronation of the nineteenth-century Pope Leo XIII
that can be consulted at this site makes no mention of the taking of this particular oath, or of any coronation oath, by the Pope.
In fact, all evidence of papal coronations, including that of Pope Paul VI on 30 June 1963, which was the last, excludes the taking of any oath by the Pope in the course of the ceremony. The claim that Pope Agatho and his immediate successors took the alleged oath at their coronation ceremonies is also evidently false: popes of that time had neither crown nor, in consequence, coronation (see Papal Tiara
).
included an oath of fealty taken by the Pope to the Holy Roman Emperor
, beginning in 824 until no later than 884.
More closely related to the subject of this article is the "profession of the supreme pontiff" that the 23rd session (26 March 1436) of the Council
at Basel
decreed should be made by anyone elected Pope as a condition for his election to be valid.
By this profession, the Pope was to declare adherence to the eight "universal" councils (down to the Fourth Council of Constantinople
) and the later "general" councils (down to that of Basel, to which the Pope would thereby be obliged to grant recognition).
The profession in the Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum, a book that had fallen out of use four centuries before, declared acceptance only of the first six ecumenical councils.
The Council of Basel wished the newly elected Pope to read this profession again at his first public consistory, and it was to be read to him every year on the occasion of the anniversary of his election or coronation.
This "profession of the supreme pontiff" seems to be referred to as an oath in the formula that each cardinal
was also called upon to swear before voting in the conclave
. The cardinals were to declare: "I shall not make obeisance to anyone elected as pontiff before he takes the oath prescribed by this council of Basel." The text of the "profession of the supreme pontiff" and of the oath of the cardinals can be consulted on the Internet.
Antipope
Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, made the profession drawn up by the Council of Basel; but as none of the recognized Popes ever made it, there is no justification for calling it a papal oath, still less for referring to it as "the Papal Oath".
Traditionalist Catholic
Traditionalist Catholics are Roman Catholics who believe that there should be a restoration of many or all of the liturgical forms, public and private devotions and presentations of Catholic teachings which prevailed in the Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council...
s say was taken by the pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
s of the Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, starting with Pope Saint Agatho
Pope Agatho
-Background and early life:Little is known of Agatho before his papacy. A letter written by St. Gregory the Great to the abbot of St. Hermes in Palermo mentions an Agatho, a Greek born in Sicily to wealthy parents. He wished to give away his inheritance and join a monastery, and in this letter...
, who was elected on 27 June 678. They claim that over 180 popes, down to and including Pope Paul VI
Pope Paul VI
Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...
, swore the oath during their papal coronation
Papal Coronation
A papal coronation was the ceremony of the placing of the Papal Tiara on a newly elected pope. The first recorded papal coronation was that of Pope Celestine II in 1143. Soon after his coronation in 1963, Pope Paul VI abandoned the practice of wearing the tiara. His successors have chosen not to...
s. Pope John Paul I
Pope John Paul I
John Paul I , born Albino Luciani, , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and as Sovereign of Vatican City from 26 August 1978 until his death 33 days later. His reign is among the shortest in papal history, resulting in the most recent Year of Three Popes...
, Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
, and Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the leader of the Catholic Church as well as the other 22 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See...
, who had no coronation ceremonies, clearly did not take the oath, and some Traditionalists interpret this fact negatively, even to the point of declaring them to be false popes (see sedevacantism
Sedevacantism
Sedevacantism is the position held by a minority of Traditionalist Catholics who hold that the present occupant of the papal see is not truly Pope and that, for lack of a valid Pope, the see has been vacant since the death of either Pope Pius XII in 1958 or Pope John XXIII in 1963.Sedevacantists...
).
They claim that by this oath the popes swore never to innovate or change anything that has been handed down to them. Some of them confuse the alleged oath with the oath against modernism that Pope Pius X
Pope Pius X
Pope Saint Pius X , born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, was the 257th Pope of the Catholic Church, serving from 1903 to 1914. He was the first pope since Pope Pius V to be canonized. Pius X rejected modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting traditional devotional practices and orthodox...
mandated for those taking up certain offices in the Church. There is no evidence that any pope took such an oath during his coronation ceremony.
The "Papal Oath" they speak of appears to be loosely based on the text of the profession of faith, addressed to Saint Peter
Saint Peter
Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The son of John or of Jonah and from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, his brother Andrew was also an apostle...
, included, as part of another document, in the Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum
Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum
Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum is the name given to a miscellaneous collection of ecclesiastical formulae used in the Papal chancery until about the 11th century...
, a collection of formularies for correspondence or decrees, some of which may even date from before the time of Pope Gregory I
Pope Gregory I
Pope Gregory I , better known in English as Gregory the Great, was pope from 3 September 590 until his death...
(590-604), while others may be of the time of the three existing manuscripts, and so of the eighth or ninth century.
While the collection was used in the papal chancery until the eleventh century, the content of the document that contains the profession of faith shows that this formulary can have been used only at some time or times in the short period between the election of Pope Conon
Pope Conon
Pope Conon was Pope from October 21, 686 until his death in Rome. Conon was buried in the Patriarchal Basilica of St...
(686-687) and that of Pope Zachary
Pope Zachary
Pope Saint Zachary was Pope of the Catholic Church from 741 to 752. A Greek from Calabria, he was the last pope of the Byzantine Papacy...
(741-752); and the profession of faith speaks of the Third Council of Constantinople
Third Council of Constantinople
The Third Council of Constantinople, counted as the Sixth Ecumenical Council by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches and other Christian groups, met in 680/681 and condemned monoenergism and monothelitism as heretical and defined Jesus Christ as having two energies and two wills...
(680-681) as having been held recently ("nuper"), making the beginning of that period the most likely.
The profession of faith refers to Pope Agatho (678-681) as already dead.
Text
Following is the text of what is called the Papal Oath or Papal Coronation Oath:- I vow to change nothing of the received Tradition, and nothing thereof I have found before me guarded by my God-pleasing predecessors, to encroach upon, to alter, or to permit any innovation therein;
- To the contrary: with glowing affection as her truly faithful student and successor, to safeguard reverently the passed-on good, with my whole strength and utmost effort;
- To cleanse all that is in contradiction to the canonical order that may surface;
- To guard the Holy Canons and Decrees of our Popes as if they were the Divine ordinances of Heaven, because I am conscious of Thee, Whose place I take through the grace of God, Whose Vicarship I possess with Thy support, being subject to the severest accounting before Thy Divine Tribunal over all that I shall confess;
- I swear to God Almighty and the Saviour Jesus Christ that I will keep whatever has been revealed through Christ and His Successors and whatever the first councils and my predecessors have defined and declared.
- I will keep without sacrifice to itself the discipline and the rite of the Church. I will put outside the Church whoever dares to go against this oath, may it be somebody else or I.
- If I should undertake to act in anything of contrary sense, or should permit that it will be executed, Thou willst not be merciful to me on the dreadful Day of Divine Justice.
- Accordingly, without exclusion, We subject to severest excommunication anyone – be it ourselves or be it another – who would dare to undertake anything new in contradiction to this constituted evangelic Tradition and the purity of the Orthodox Faith and the Christian Religion, or would seek to change anything by his opposing efforts, or would agree with those who undertake such a blasphemous venture.
Connection with the Liber Diurnus
The only historical source claimed for the Papal Oath is Migne's Patrologia Latina, referring, it can be supposed, to volume 105, columns 40-44.Patrologia Latina, 105, columns 9-188 reproduces, with notes and commentary, the full text of Garnier's 1680 edition of the Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum
Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum
Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum is the name given to a miscellaneous collection of ecclesiastical formulae used in the Papal chancery until about the 11th century...
. The article in The Catholic Encyclopedia on this book states that Garnier's edition "is very inaccurate, and contains arbitrary alterations of the text"; it describes as the first good edition the one published by Eugène de Rozière in 1869. Later editions have been able to take into account not only the oldest surviving manuscript, which is preserved in the Vatican and is described on the website of the Vatican Secret Archives, but also two other manuscripts of slightly later date, which were rediscovered, one in 1889, the other in 1937. The Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum is in fact a "miscellaneous collection of ecclesiastical formularies
Formulary (model documents)
Formularies are medieval collections of models for the execution of documents , public or private; a space being left for the insertion of names, dates, and circumstances peculiar to each case...
used in the papal chancery until the 11th century". It then fell into disuse and was soon forgotten and lost, until a manuscript containing it was discovered in the 17th century.
Its rediscovery in the seventeenth century caused surprise precisely because the text declared acceptance of the condemnations of the Sixth General Council, which were directed also against Pope Honorius I
Pope Honorius I
Pope Honorius I was pope from 625 to 638.Honorius, according to the Liber Pontificalis, came from Campania and was the son of the consul Petronius. He became pope on October 27, 625, two days after the death of his predecessor, Boniface V...
. In the opinion of one writer, the oath had the effect of confirming that an ecumenical council
Ecumenical council
An ecumenical council is a conference of ecclesiastical dignitaries and theological experts convened to discuss and settle matters of Church doctrine and practice....
could condemn a Pope for open heresy and that Honorius was justly condemned.
Comparison of texts
The Papal Oath, if indeed based on the text in the Liber Diurnus, is a serious mistranslation. Much of it has no basis whatever in the historical document, including the paragraphs "I swear ... defined and declared" and "Accordingly, without exclusion ... blasphemous venture" and the phrase "I will put outside the Church whoever dares to go against this oath, may it be somebody else or I".The Papal Oath is addressed to Jesus Christ, and presents the Pope as his successor, as Vicar of God, endowed with a power of revelation (not just of maintaining an existing revelation) on a par (or almost) with Christ's, and as a "successor" of Tradition.
None of these ideas are present in the Liber Diurnus text.
Alleged use in coronation ceremonies
The Traditionalist Catholic sources that give the Papal Oath also claim, without citing any source, that all popes from Saint Agatho, who in the Liber Diurnus text is spoken of as already dead, to Pope Paul VI pronounced this text in the course of their coronation ceremonies. The fact that the Liber Diurnus was forgotten for centuries is a difficulty against this account.The detailed account of the coronation of the nineteenth-century Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII , born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903...
that can be consulted at this site makes no mention of the taking of this particular oath, or of any coronation oath, by the Pope.
In fact, all evidence of papal coronations, including that of Pope Paul VI on 30 June 1963, which was the last, excludes the taking of any oath by the Pope in the course of the ceremony. The claim that Pope Agatho and his immediate successors took the alleged oath at their coronation ceremonies is also evidently false: popes of that time had neither crown nor, in consequence, coronation (see Papal Tiara
Papal Tiara
The Papal Tiara, also known incorrectly as the Triple Tiara, or in Latin as the Triregnum, in Italian as the Triregno and as the Trirègne in French, is the three-tiered jewelled papal crown, supposedly of Byzantine and Persian origin, that is a prominent symbol of the papacy...
).
Other oaths
The Constitutio RomanaConstitutio Romana
The Constitutio Romana was drawn up between King Lothair I of Italy , co-emperor with his father, Louis the Pious, since 817, and Pope Eugene II and confirmed on 11 November 824. At the time the election of Eugene was being challenged by Zinzinnus, the candidate of the Roman populace...
included an oath of fealty taken by the Pope to the Holy Roman Emperor
Holy Roman Emperor
The Holy Roman Emperor is a term used by historians to denote a medieval ruler who, as German King, had also received the title of "Emperor of the Romans" from the Pope...
, beginning in 824 until no later than 884.
More closely related to the subject of this article is the "profession of the supreme pontiff" that the 23rd session (26 March 1436) of the Council
Council of Florence
The Council of Florence was an Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. It began in 1431 in Basel, Switzerland, and became known as the Council of Ferrara after its transfer to Ferrara was decreed by Pope Eugene IV, to convene in 1438...
at Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
decreed should be made by anyone elected Pope as a condition for his election to be valid.
By this profession, the Pope was to declare adherence to the eight "universal" councils (down to the Fourth Council of Constantinople
Fourth Council of Constantinople
The Fourth Council of Constantinople of 879-880 is believed to have been the Eighth Ecumenical Council by some Eastern Orthodox. Photius had been appointed Patriarch of Constantinople but deposed by a Council of Constantinople called in 869 by Emperor Basil I the Macedonian and Pope Adrian II...
) and the later "general" councils (down to that of Basel, to which the Pope would thereby be obliged to grant recognition).
The profession in the Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum, a book that had fallen out of use four centuries before, declared acceptance only of the first six ecumenical councils.
The Council of Basel wished the newly elected Pope to read this profession again at his first public consistory, and it was to be read to him every year on the occasion of the anniversary of his election or coronation.
This "profession of the supreme pontiff" seems to be referred to as an oath in the formula that each cardinal
Cardinal (Catholicism)
A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...
was also called upon to swear before voting in the conclave
Papal conclave
A papal conclave is a meeting of the College of Cardinals convened to elect a Bishop of Rome, who then becomes the Pope during a period of vacancy in the papal office. The Pope is considered by Roman Catholics to be the apostolic successor of Saint Peter and earthly head of the Roman Catholic Church...
. The cardinals were to declare: "I shall not make obeisance to anyone elected as pontiff before he takes the oath prescribed by this council of Basel." The text of the "profession of the supreme pontiff" and of the oath of the cardinals can be consulted on the Internet.
Antipope
Antipope
An antipope is a person who opposes a legitimately elected or sitting Pope and makes a significantly accepted competing claim to be the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and leader of the Roman Catholic Church. At times between the 3rd and mid-15th century, antipopes were typically those supported by a...
Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, made the profession drawn up by the Council of Basel; but as none of the recognized Popes ever made it, there is no justification for calling it a papal oath, still less for referring to it as "the Papal Oath".