How female power throughout history influenced the papacy
(REVIEW) When it comes to women and the Catholic church, the stories are often limited to that of the saints. What about women in positions of power throughout the history of Christianity who influenced the Vatican and in particular the papacy? Those women — some of whom have largely been forgotten — grab the spotlight in a new book by English author Lynda Telford.
Lynda Telford’s new book delves into the lives of prominent women who helped shape the papacy and Christianity throughout the centuries.
Women of the Vatican: Female Power in a Male World looks at a variety of female personalities who exerted influence over the centuries. The Vatican may be a male-dominated system — from the pope on down to a local priest — Telford’s account has enough history and sleaze in it to make for a gripping Netflix series.
What this book does very well is shift the spotlight away from men and places it on the women and their oft-ignored influence on the papacy and Christianity as a whole throughout Europe. It also isn’t a preachy look at historical figures that are in may ways flawed, but who also influenced Western civilization. Instead, this is a fact-based book that allows readers to make up their own minds — although the scoundrels here aren’t hard to spot.
Some Catholics may view this book as a controversial work. Instead, it should be looked upon as a historic account, warts and all, about the people who made up the power structure of the church for centuries. Indeed, this book is more about power than piety, digging controversially into the lives of several women such as Queen Joanna of Naples and the Borgias. Telford, starting in chapter 1, goes to the very beginning of Christendom. She references Saint Petronilla, traditionally identified as the daughter of Saint Peter. Venerated by Catholics as a virgin martyr, she has a special place in St. Peter’s Square with a statue along the colonnade.
Virginity was largely the trait that helped elevate women in the early church — something some Romans who converted to Christianity also held in high esteem. The people in the book, both men and women, largely ignored the sexual restraints the church put on its clergy starting about 1,000 years ago. That irony isn’t lost on Telford. This is how she sets up the book — by pitting the sexual tension between men and women within the church, the depravity that often comes with power and the role of the papacy among some of Europe’s royal families.
“It seems that Christ was never the advocate of priestly celibacy that later church writers argued he was,” she writes. “Physical ‘purity’ was not required of any priest before 1139 and marriage was then the norm. Once celibacy became a requirement it was frequently and openly argued.”
Early in the 408-page book, Telford highlights two women in particular who had a profound and indirect impact on the early church’s power structure. The life and times of Marozia, believed to be the mistress of Pope Sergius III in the early 900s, highlights the warring aristocratic factions within central Italy — known as the Papal States at the time — that sought to use the military resources of the papacy. It details a very violent path to power that highlights the tensions that governed the church at the time.
Similarly, Vannozza dei Catanei, a mistress of Cardinal Rodrigo de Borgia, was a key figure in helping him became Pope Alexander VI starting in 1492 just as Christopher Columbus was about to embark on his voyages to the Americas and the church able to extend its power. They ultimately had four children together, although Alexander VI publicly pretended they were his nieces and nephews. He became pope even though he flouted the church’s rules on clergy celibacy, with Telford chronicling how he eventually took on another mistress named Giulia Farnese.
In turn, Farnese used her influence behind the scenes to promote her brother Alessandro Farnese, who would eventually become a cardinal and later Pope Paul III. The story of the Borgia family, it should be noted, was chronicled by the BBC in 1981 and again on Showtime in 2011. As the book travels through the Middle Ages and to the Italian Renaissance, it turns its attention to women like the powerful Catherine de Medici, a ruthless 16th century noblewoman and the niece of Pope Clement VII who would go on to be queen of France. In those years, the papacy was largely an extension of European royalty.
The Medici family were big patrons of the arts at the time, turning Florence into the cradle of the Renaissance. The Medici dynasty would go on to produce four popes — Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IV and Leo XI — forever cementing their legacy as one of the most powerful families in history.
The book also takes a controversial look at a 19th century nun named Mother Pascalina who served as a close confidant Pope Pius XII. The German nun served as both the pontiff’s housekeeper and secretary from his period as Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria in 1917 until his death as pope in 1958. She also managed the papal charity office for Pius XII from 1944 until his death. Telford could have dedicated a whole book to Pascalina as the papacy fell under siege during World War II. The chapter on her is one of the most-fascinating reads in all the book.
Pascalina would vacation with the pope — something Telford says Pius XII knew could cause scandal — but that didn’t stop her. At the Vatican, she acted as a drill sergeant, much to the dismay of other Vatican officials. Indeed, so hated was Pascalina that she was not given any prominent role at Pius’ funeral. Instead, she was ordered to leave the Vatican and allowed only to take one thing that belonged to the pope: his pet birds. She died in 1983. Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI, even attended her funeral.
The number of female employees currently working at the Vatican is on the rise, although women still struggle for power within Catholicism. Pope Francis currently employs 1,016 women, representing 22 percent of the Holy See’s total workforce. By comparison, during Benedict’s pontificate, that number represented 17 percent of the total.
Francis had created a commission to study the possibility of making women deacons, something he decided not to act upon earlier this year as part of a larger proposed reform that would have allowed some men in the Amazon to marry due to the priestly shortage in that part of the world. The pope’s decision was the latest example of the longstanding tension between women and the male power structure of the Catholic church. It’s something, as the book so thoroughly chronicles, that dates back to the very start of the church’s history.
Clemente Lisi is a senior editor and regular contributor to Religion Unplugged. He is the former deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.