40. The Papal Prisoners

Throughout history, the successors of Saint Peter have found themselves at the mercy of emperors, kings, and revolutionaries. From Byzantine dungeons to Napoleonic captivity, papal claims to divine authority repeatedly prove worthless against earthly violence.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Caalarogu shark Media. September seventh, thirteen o three, the most
powerful man in medieval Europe lay dying in a filthy
cell in the fortress of a nanny, thirty miles from Rome.
Pope Boniface the Eighth, who had claimed that every human

(00:23):
being was subject to papal authority, was the prisoner of
King Philip the Fourth. Soldiers his captors had beaten the
eighty six year old pontiff, humiliated him before his own subjects,
and destroyed his claims to supreme temporal power. The outrage
of a nanny, as history would remember it, marked a
turning point in papal authority. Never again would a pope

(00:45):
seriously claim the right to depose kings or command the
obedience of secular rulers. The man who declared himself the
supreme judge of earthly princes had become their victim, proving
that spiritual claims were worthless against military force. Yet Boniface
was neither the first nor the last pope to experience imprisonment, kidnapping,

(01:07):
or captivity at the hands of temporal rulers. Throughout papal history.
The successors of Saint Peter have found themselves at the
mercy of those who recognized no authority higher than their
own ambition. This is White Smoke Episode forty. The papal prisoners,

(01:29):
from Roman emperors to French revolutionaries, from Holy Roman emperors
to Napoleon Bonaparte, secular powers have repeatedly demonstrated that papal
claims to divine authority provide no protection against earthly violence
when political interests are at stake. Today, we examine the
dark history of papal imprisonment, when the vicars of Christ

(01:51):
became the prisoners of men who acknowledged no power above
their own will. The vulnerability of papal authority to physical
coercion had been established during the earliest centuries of Christianity,
when Roman emperors routinely imprisoned, exiled, or executed bishops who
challenged imperial religious policies. Yet the papal office itself seemed

(02:13):
to acquire a kind of sacred immunity as the Roman
Empire converted to Christianity and the pope emerged as the
premier religious authority in Western Europe. This immunity proved largely
illusory when tested against determined opposition from secular rulers who
possessed both the will and the means to use violence
against papal persons. The medieval synthesis of spiritual and temporal

(02:37):
authority that elevated papal claims also made popes more attractive
targets for rulers seeking to legitimize their own power through
control of religious authority. Pope Silverius became one of the
earliest papal prisoners when Byzantine Emperor Justinian's general Belisarius arrested
him in March five thirty seven for allegedly corresponding with

(02:58):
the Ostrogothic enemies of the business Thine Empire. Silverius was deposed,
exiled to a baron island, and starved to death, demonstrating
that imperial power could dispose of papal authority as easily
as any other form of political opposition. The precedent established
by Silverius's fate would be repeated throughout the following centuries

(03:21):
whenever papal policies conflicted with imperial interests. Byzantine emperors routinely arrested, deposed,
or exiled popes who opposed imperial religious policies, treating the
Roman pontiff as merely another bishop subject to imperial authority.
Pope Martin the First suffered a particularly brutal captivity when

(03:43):
Emperor Constants the second had him arrested in six fifty
three for opposing imperial religious policies. Martin was transported to
Constantinople in chains, subjected to public humiliation, and imprisoned under
conditions so harsh that his health was permanently destroyed. He
died in exile in six fifty five, a martyr to

(04:04):
papal independence from imperial control. These early examples of papal
imprisonment established patterns that would persist throughout medieval and modern history.
Secular rulers discovered that controlling the pope provided religious legitimacy
for their political objectives while neutralizing potential opposition from Catholic populations.

(04:26):
The successor of Saint Peter could be reduced to a
propaganda tool through sufficient application of force. The transfer of
imperial authority from Byzantine to Frankish rulers changed the context,
but not the essential dynamics of papal vulnerability to secular coercion.
Charlemagne's coronation as emperor in eight hundred created new opportunities

(04:49):
for papal and imperial cooperation, but it also established precedents
for imperial intervention in papal affairs when cooperation broke down.
Vestiture controversy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw both
popes and emperors attempting to imprison or control their opponents
through military force. When Pope Gregory the Seventh excommunicated Emperor

(05:12):
Henry the Fourth, Henry responded by installing an anti pope
and besieging Gregory in the Castel Santangelo until the pope
died in exile. Henry's treatment of Gregory established the principle
that papal spiritual weapons could be countered through temporal force
applied with sufficient determination. The pope who claimed the right
to depose emperors discovered that emperors possessed more effective means

(05:35):
of deposing popes when political necessities demanded such extreme measures.
The emergence of powerful national monarchies in the late medieval
period created new threats to papal independence, as kings like
Philip the Fourth of France developed both the administrative capacity
and the ideological justification for challenging papal authority within their territories.

(06:00):
Treatment of Pope Boniface the Eighth represented the most dramatic
assertion of royal authority over papal claims in medieval history.
When Boniface issued the bull unam sanctum, declaring that temporal
authority was subject to spiritual power, Philip responded by sending
soldiers to arrest the pope and drag him before a
French court on charges of heresy, simony, and sexual misconduct.

(06:25):
The physical assault on Boniface at Nanni included not merely arrest,
but personal humiliation designed to destroy the psychological foundations of
papal authority. Contemporary accounts describe how Philip's representative, Guilloum de Nogaret,
struck the pope with an iron glove, demonstrating that even
the person of the pontiff was not immune from violence

(06:46):
when royal interests demanded such extreme measures. Boniface's death within
weeks of his release from captivity was widely attributed to
the shock and humiliation he had suffered during his imprisonment.
The pope, who had claimed supreme authority over temporal rulers,
had been broken by the very forces he claimed to command,

(07:06):
proving that spiritual authority provided no protection against determined opposition.
The Avignon papacy that followed Boniface's death represented a form
of collective papal imprisonment, as French kings maintained effective control
over papal policy through their dominance of the papal court.
The popes who resided in Avignon were not technically prisoners,

(07:28):
but their dependence on French protection made them unable to
exercise independent authority in opposition to French interests. The Great
Western Schism created unprecedented opportunities for secular rulers to manipulate

(07:49):
papal authority through threats of imprisonment or withdrawal of protection.
With multiple claimants to the papal throne competing for recognition,
kings could pressure their preferred casseidate through various forms of
coercion while maintaining the fiction of supporting legitimate papal authority.
The concilier movement that emerged during the schism crisis established

(08:11):
the principle that popes could be deposed by church councils
when their conduct threatened church unity or moral authority. The
Council of Constance's deposition of three competing papal claimants demonstrated
that even legitimate popes could be removed from office when
higher authorities determined such action was necessary. John the twenty third,

(08:33):
one of the deposed papal claimants, attempted to flee the
Council of Constance in disguise, but was captured and imprisoned
until he formally abdicated his claims to papal authority. His
captivity established the precedent that popes could be held prisoner
by church authorities themselves when their continued freedom threatened ecclesiastical stability.

(08:55):
The Renaissance papacy's entanglement with Italian politics created new vulnerabilities
to imprisonment as popes became involved in military conflicts that
exposed them to capture by enemy forces. The papal role
as temporal rulers of the papal states made them legitimate
military targets when their territories became battlefields in larger conflicts.

(09:18):
Pope Clement the Seventh's imprisonment during the Sack of Rome
in fifteen twenty seven represented one of the most dramatic
episodes of papal captivity in Renaissance history. When imperial forces
captured Rome, Clement fled to the Castel Santangelo, where he
was besieged for months while his city was systematically destroyed
around him. The psychological impact of Clement's imprisonment extended far

(09:42):
beyond his personal suffering to affect papal authority throughout Europe.
The pope, who was reduced to a prisoner in his
own capital, could hardly claim effective leadership over European Christianity,
while his obvious powerlessness encouraged Protestant reformers who argued that
papal claims were mere human pretensions. Napoleon's treatment of two

(10:03):
successive popes represented the most systematic assault on papal independence
in modern history. The imprisonment of Pious the Sixth in
French captivity and the subsequent kidnapping of Pious the Seventh
demonstrated that even post revolutionary governments would use violence against
papal persons when their political objectives required such measures. The

(10:25):
deportation of Pious the Seventh from Rome in eighteen o
nine marked the nuardir of papal temporal authority, as the
spiritual leader of European Catholicism was reduced to a comfortable
but powerless prisoner, while French administrators seized control of the
papal states. The pope's five year captivity proved that spiritual
authority provided no protection against military force when emperors possessed

(10:49):
both the will and the means to exercise it. Pious
the Seventh's eventual release and restoration to papal authority did
not restore the medieval synthesis of stars spiritual and temporal
power that Napoleon's actions had permanently destroyed. The pope, who
returned to Rome in eighteen fourteen, ruled over a church
that had learned the limitations of its claims to temporal

(11:11):
authority through the bitter experience of imperial captivity. The Nazi
occupation of Rome during World War II created the possibility
that Pious the twelfth might become the first Pope to
be imprisoned by totalitarian rather than monarchical authority. Hitler's forces
surrounding Vatican City demonstrated that even the international recognition of

(11:34):
papal sovereignty could not guarantee papal freedom when ideological conflicts
reach sufficient intensity. The modern papacy's retreat from temporal claims
while maintaining spiritual authority reflects lessons learned from centuries of
papal imprisonment and humiliation. Popes who claim only religious leadership
are less attractive targets for secular rulers seeking to legitimize

(11:58):
their authority through control of religion institutions. Yet, the history
of papal imprisonment reveals fundamental tensions between spiritual claims and
political realities that cannot be resolved through institutional arrangements alone.
As long as popes claim moral authority over temporal affairs,
they risk conflict with secular powers that recognize no authority

(12:21):
higher than their own interests. The prisoner popes of history
serve as permanent reminders that religious authority, however exalted its claims,
remains vulnerable to those willing to use physical force without
moral restraint. The successors of Saint Peter, who found themselves
in chains, demonstrated that spiritual power provides no protection against

(12:44):
earthly violence when political necessities overcome religious scruples. The legacy
of papal imprisonment extends beyond individual tragedies to illuminate the
fundamental problem of authority in human society. The recurring pattern
of papal captivity reveals how difficult it is to maintain
moral authority. In a world where power ultimately derives from

(13:07):
the willingness to use violence against those who oppose it,
Each imprisoned pope represents not merely personal suffering, but institutional
failure to reconcile competing claims to legitimate authority. The spiritual
power that should transcend temporal limitations repeatedly proves vulnerable to

(13:27):
the very forces it claims to judge and guide. The
prisoner popes remind us that even the highest religious authorities
remain human beings, subject to the same vulnerabilities that affect
all who claim to speak for higher powers in a
world dominated by lower motives. White Smoke is a production
of Calaroga Shark media, portions of which were made with

(13:50):
the help of a narration, but still written and produced
by real podcasters Mark Francis and John McDermott.