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13 July 2003
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Sylvester II - Pope from IM to 1003
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Sylvester II - Pope from IM to 1003
Pope Sylvester II ... ‘numbers’ man
Dr Joe Morley
A thousand years ago, on May 12 1003, Pope Sylvester II - one of the greatest popes in history - died.
Although Sylvester’s pontificate lasted only four years, it has been termed ‘glorious’.
Sylvester has been called the Philosopher Pope; the Renaissance Man of 1000; a forerunner of modern science, one of the wittiest and learned men in Europe; an expert ecclesiastical politician; and the most distinguished scholar of his time.
His knowledge of mathematics and astronomy was so advanced that his enemies easily made credulous people look upon him as a magician
Elected Pope on Palm Sunday, April 2, 999, Gerbert of Aurillac, then the Archbishop of Ravenna, became the first French pope and took the name Sylvester II. (Three years earlier, on the death of John XV, Emperor Otto had secured the election of his cousin as Gregory V, the first German Pope.)
Born between 940 and 945 (the date is vague), at or near Aurillac in the French province of Auvergne, Gerbert came from a free humble family.
He attended the Bene-dictine Monastery of St Gerald in Aurillac and learned grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic and music. Some reports say he became a monk there.
Even as pope, he rem-ained an austere monk.
In 967 Count Borell of Barcelona took Gerbert to Spain where he remained for three years, studying the quadrivium (the higher studies of the liberal arts) as a pupil of Bishop Atto of Vich at the famous monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll.
Then in 970 he went with Borell to Rome where Pope John XIII introduced him to Emperor Otto I who appointed him tutor to his son, the future Otto II.
His stay in Spain had resulted in a comprehensive knowledge of Islamic culture and science.
On his return to Rome, and later in the French archdiocese of Rheims, he introduced Hindu-Arabic numbers in place of the Roman style.
He also championed the theory that the Earth was spherical.
He used to say: “The just man lives by faith; but it is good that he should combine science with his faith.”
He wrote a chart for learning rhetoric; constructed celestial globes; a hemisphere for learning about imaginary celestial circles, one for identification of constellations and another for tracking planetary orbits.
He wrote on geometry, had a vast knowledge of music, and constructed several organs, and a monochord.
Realising that he was deficient in logic, Gerbert persuaded Archdeacon Gernann of Rheims, a famous logician, to take him to Rheims, where he studied under German masters.
He soon became renowned as a preacher and Archbishop Adalbero of Rheims ordained and appointed him as a lecturer at the cathedral school.
In 980, Otto II made him director of the huge monastery of St Columban at Bobbio in Lombardy. Pope Benedict VII consecrated him abbott of the monastery.
When a rebellion broke out at Bobbio on the death of Otto II in December 983, Gerbert fled back to Rheims and the protection of Adalbero.
There, following the deaths of the last Carol-ingian kings (Lothar in 986 and Louis V in 987), Adalbero and Gerbert persuaded the French nobles to elect Hugh Capet as king instead of the Carolingian Charles of Lorraine.
Before he died in January 989, Adalbero had nominated Gerbert as his successor.
However, contrary to expectations, Hugh Capet chose Arnulf, an illegitimate son of King Lothar, as Archbishop of Rheims.
Gerbert escaped after months as a virtual prisoner in Rheims and fled to Hugh Capet’s court.
In June 880, Hugh and a number of bishops tried but failed to persuade Pope John XV to depose Arnulf and consecrate a new archbishop.
But, in March 991, Hugh captured Charles and Arnulf and had a council at St-Basle de Verzy degrade Arnulf and appoint Gerbert in his place.
Several bishops refused to recognise Gerbert as archbishop and eventually he went to Rome to defend his claim.
But the new pope, Gregory V, refused to support him.
While Archbishop of Rheims, Gerbert disputed the papal right of interference in the administration of local churches.
Gerbert was still opposed in Rheims, though, so in April 997 he left and joined the newly appointed Emperor, the teenaged Otto III, at his court in Aachen in Germany, never to return to his native France.
About April 998 he went with Otto to Italy where Otto had him appointed Archbishop of Ravenna.
Pope Gregory (pictured below) died on February 18, 999, and Otto presented Gerbert, then 54, to the clergy and people of Rome as his candidate for the papacy.
On April 2, Gerbert was elected by acclamation and on April 9 was consecrated as the first French pope.
His choice of the name Sylvester II has been held to reflect his co-operation with Emperor Otto in the same manner that Pope Sylvester I (314-345) was alleged to have co-operated with Constantine
On election as Pope, Sylvester did declare his intention of co-operating with Otto III in renewing the Christian Roman Empire.
They disagreed on only one significant decision.
Sylvester opposed the crowning of Duke Boleslaw as king of Poland.
In that he proved to be right.
Boleslaw subsequently executed St Stanislaw, the patron of Poland.
Sylvester did agree to - and created - Stephen as king of Hungary with an independent archdiocese in Budapest.
He also created the first Polish archbishopric at Gnieno, then the capital of Poland.
The French Pope also co-operated with Grand Prince Vladimir, the first Christian ruler of Russia.
He had King Olaf I of Norway, who had adopted Christianity as the national religion, ban the use of runic writing in the country.
He sent ambassadors to Dalmatia and reprimanded the Doge of Venice for failing to act against the Venetian clergy’s loose morals.
He also restored Arnulf to the archbishopric of Rheims.
Sylvester and Otto III were driven out of Rome by citizens led by John Cresentius II, who revolted against the foreign rulers.
However, after Otto’s death on January 23, 1002, Cresentius allowed Pope Sylvester to return to the Vatican, restricting his operations to ecclesiastical affairs.
Because of his learning and his implementation of Arabic culture into Christendom, many legends arose about the Pope.
One was that while in Spain he had entered into a pact with the devil who made him a magician.
Another was that on the day he died Satan appeared at his side while he was celebrating Mass in the Church of Santa Croce de Gerusalem in Rome.
Sylvester broke out in a sweat and died soon after, says the legend, having first ordered that his body be dismembered to prevent Satan getting it.
The legend also claimed that a cold sweat spread over his tomb and his bones rattled every time a pope was dying.
When his tomb was opened in 1648, his remains were found intact, with the arms crossed on his chest and a mitre on his skull.
For centuries all that was known of Sylvester came from legends.
It has only been in modern times that a contem-porary biography, written by Richer of St Remy, has been discovered in the cathedral library at Bamberg in Germany.
Copies of some of his letters have been preserved.
Sylvester denounced simony and nepotism (because that deprived the Church of the acquisition of territories) and endeavoured to enforce clerical celibacy for the same reason.
By his reforms he was a predecessor of the great popes Gregory VII and Innocent III.
Pope Sergius V (1009-12) wrote this epitaph for Sylvester’s tomb: “By him every age rejoiced, and ever crime was crushed.”