CELESTINE, the name of five popes.
Celestine I. was a Roman, and is supposed to have been a near relative of the Ernperor Valentinian. Various portions of tha liturgy are attributed to him, but without any certainty on the subject. He held the Council of Ephesus in which the Nestorians were condemned, in 431. Four letters written by him on that occasion, dated all of tham loth March 431, together with a few others, to the African bishops, to those of Illyria, of Thessalouica, and of Narbonne, are extant in retranslatious from the Greek, the Latin originals having been lost. Ha actively persecuted the Pelagians, ani was zealous for Roman orthodoxy. He sent Palladius, a Greek, to Scotland, and Patricias (St Patrick) to Ireland. He raged against the Novatian.} in Rome, imprisoning their bishop, and forbid ding their worship. He was zealous in refusing to tolerate the smallest innovation on the constitutions of his pre decessors, and is recognized by the church as a saint. He occupied the seat of St Peter eight years five months and three days, and died on the 6th April 432. He was buried in the cemetery of St Priscilla in the Via Salaria, but his bjdy, subsequently moved, lies now in the Church of St Prasside.
Celestine II. was elected in 1143, governed the church only five months and thirteen days, died 9th March 1144, and was buried at the Literan. His name hal been Guido di Castello, from the small town of which he was a native. Ha had studied under Peter Abelard. The principal act of his Papacy was the absolution of Louis VII. of France at the request of that penitent monarch, and the removal of the interdict under which that country had lain for three years.
Celestine III., Giaeinto Bobone Orsini, of that noble race, was elected Pope 30th March 1191, being then only a deacon, received priest s orders on the 13th of April, ruled tli3 church six years, nine months, a.id nine days (though bsliaved to have been ninety whan elected), died 8th January 1 193, and was buried at the Lateran. He crowned tha Emperor H^nry VI. on tha day after his election with a ceremonial symbolizing his absolute supremacy, as dascribal by Roger Hjveden, who is believed (more reasonably as it would seam) by Baronius, but discredited by Natalis A exander. He subsequently excommunicated the same Henry for wrongfully keeping Richard of England in prison. In 1192 he coafinnad the statutes of the Teutonic Ovder of Knights. Ha would have resigned the Papaoy, and recommanled a successor shortly before his death, bat was not suffared to do so by tha cardinals.
Celestine IV., Godfrey Castiglioni of Milan, a naphew of Urban III., became a monk at Hautecombe in Savoy, there wrote a history of Scotland, and was elected Pope by seven cardinals only, in the midst of troubles caused by the vicinity and violence of the Emperor Frederick II., on the 2 3d September 1241. He occupied the throne only seven teen days, died, before consecration, on the 8th October 1241, and was buried at the Vatican.
Celestine V. was known before his election as Peter di Morone. Bjrn in 1215, the son of a peasant in the Neapolitan district, named Angelario, he became a Benedictine m >nk at Faifoli in the diocese of Benevento when he was seventeen. He showed from the first an extraordinary disposition to asceticism and solitude, and in 1239 retired to a solitary cavern on the mountain Mjrone, whence his name. Five -years later he left this retreat, and betook himself, with two companions, to a similar cave on the Mountain of Majella in the Abruzzi, where he lived as strictly as was possible according to the example of St John the Baptist. Terrible accounts are given of the severity of his penitential practices. While living in this manner ha founded, in 1244, the order sub sequently called after him Celestines. (See Celestines.) The cardinals assembled at Perugia after the death of Nicholas IV., and after long dissensions and difficulties agreed as a means of escaping from them to elect the hermit Pietfo di Morone. When sent for he obstinately refused to accept the Papacy, and even, as Petrarch says,[1] attempted flight, till he was at length persuaded by a deputation of cardinals accompanied by the kings of Naples and Hungary. Elected 7th July 1294, he was crowned in ths city of Aquila in the Abruzzi, 29th August. He issued two decrees, one confirming that of Gregory X., which orders the shutting of the cardinals in conclave ; the second declaring the right of any Pope to abdicate the Papacy, a right he, at the end of five months and eight days, proceeded himself to exercise at Naples on the 13th December 1294. He did one other thing which may be noted, because it seems to be the only instance known to the church in which such a thing occurred. He empowered one Francis of Apt, a Franciscan friar, to confer priest s orders on Lodovico, son of Charles, king of Sicily, a fact which seems to have escaped the notice of Bingham, who says that such a thing was never done.[2] In the formal instrument of his renunciation he recites as the causes moving him to the step, " the desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquillity of his former life ; " and having divested himself of every outward symbol of dignity, he retired to his old solitude. He was not allowed to remain there, however. His successor, Boniface VIII., sent for him, and finally, despite desperate attempts of the late Pope to escape, got him into his hands, and imprisoned him in the castle of Furnone near Ferentino in Campagna, where, after languishing for ten months in that infected air, he died on the 1 9th May 129G. He was buried at Ferentino, but his body was subsequently removed to Aquila. Many Dantescan com mentators and scholars have thought that the poet stigmatized Celestine V. in the enigmatical verse which speaks of him "Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto."[3] Recent opinion on the point more reasonably rejects this interpre tation. Celestine V., like the first of the name, is recognized by the church as a saint.
monastic order. At the foundation of the new rule, they were called Hermits of St Damiano, or Moronites (or Murronites), and did not assume the appellation of Coles tines till after the election of their founder to the Papacy as Celestine V. The fame of the holy life and the austerities practised by that saintly hermit (as noticed above) in his solitude on the Mountain of Majella, near Sulmona^ attracted many visitors, several of whom .were moved to remain and share his mode of life. They built, therefore, a small convent on the spot inhabited by the holy hermit, which very shortly became too small for the accommodation of those who thronged thither to share their life of priva tions. Peter of Morone, their founder, therefore built a number of other small oratories in that neighbourhood. This happened about the year 1254. A new religious community was thus formed, and Peter of Morone gave them a rule formed in accordance with his own practices. In 1264 the new institution was approved by Urban IV. But the founder, having heard that it was probable that Pope Gregory X., then holding a council at Lyons, would suppress all such new orders as had been founded since the Lateran Council, having commanded that such institutions
should not be further multiplied, betook himself to Lyons,
