Abbiamo già ricordato, in un articolo dello scorso giugno, a firma del card. W. Brandmüller, la vicenda matrimoniale del re Lotario II.
Oggi, l'ottimo blog Rorate caeli, da noi seguito con molta attenzione, ci propone un nuovo contributo su quella controversia, che si svolse in un'epoca in cui si badava, prestandovi molta attenzione, all'eterna salvezza dell'anima ed in cui aveva ancora significato dirimente parlare di dannazione eterna.
Oggi, la Chiesa appunta la sua attenzione, al contrario, non sui Novissimi, ma sul "disagio spirituale", che altro non sarebbe, in verità, che il rimorso della coscienza, con la consapevole certezza del soggetto di aver violato la santa Legge di Dio.
Nel prossimo sinodo straordinario - si spera - i pastori della Chiesa possano cercare il bene della salvezza eterna delle anime, non offrendo argomenti, che possano attenuare o soffocare quei rimorsi, aggiungendo a quelli degli altri ... .
* * * * * * * * *
The Roman See, Permanent
and Unwavering Champion of the Indissolubility of Marriage and of the Integrity
of the Blessed Sacrament:
I - Lothair II
"Yes, I do... for the whole life."
“There is nothing new under the
sun,” least
of all the continued crusade the church has headed and now heads against the
enemies of Christian marriage. What marriage is, what duties it involves, what
holiness it requires, what grace it confers, we leave to other pens more
learned or more eloquent to define. What are the Scripture authorities and
allowable inferences concerning the married state, its indissolubility and its
future transformation in heaven, we leave to theologians to state.
But as witnesses are multiplied
when a strong case has to be made out in favor of some important issue, let us
turn to the tribunal of history, and look over the record of the church’s
battles. Witnesses without number rise in silent power to show on which side
the weight of church influence has ever been thrown—the side of the oppressed
and weakly. Every liberty, from ecclesiastical immunities to constitutional
rights, she has upheld and enforced, and it would be impossible that she, the
knight-errant of the moral world, should have failed to break a lance, through
every succeeding century, for the integrity of the marriage bond.
...
Lothair [Lothair II], King of Lorraine [Lotharingia], ...
was anxious to get rid of his wife Thietberga [Teutberga]. This was
one of the most famous cases of the sort during the Middle Ages, and was
prolonged over many years, breeding not only the utmost moral disorder, but
threatening also to bring about even political convulsions.
Lothair had conceived a criminal
passion for one of his wife’s maids, Waldrade, and to marry her his first
endeavor was to prove the queen guilty of incest before her marriage with him.
For this purpose he summoned his bishops three times at Aix-la-Chapelle [Aachen], in 860, and had Thietberga condemned to the
public penance usually inflicted in those days on a fallen woman. The
time-serving prelates, after a superficial examination of the evidence, allowed
the divorce on the plea that “it is better to marry than to burn”; thus giving
an early historical proof of the old saying about a certain person “quoting
Scripture.”
Widalon, Bishop of Vienne, who
had not concurred in this iniquitous decree, wrote to the pope for guidance.The pope, Nicholas I, firmly standing by the tradition of the
church, and vindicating the fundamental dogma of the sanctity of marriage,
replied uncompromisingly that the divorce was null and void, the bishops
blamable for their servility, and that even were it proved beyond doubt that
Thietberga had been guilty of incest or any other sinful intercourse before
marriage, yet the marriage itself could never on that account be legally
dissolved.
The queen herself then appealed
to the pope, who appointed two legates to inquire into the matter. Baffled in
his first attempt, Lothair now trumped up a second pretext, and pretended that
he had been previously married to Waldrade, and that the queen had therefore
never been his lawful wife. The pope replied that, until this matter was
disposed of, the queen should be sent with all honor to her father, and suitably
provided for from the royal treasury. Thietberga was now arraigned before a
packed and bribed tribunal, and forced to acknowledge herself an interloper,
but found secret means of sending word to the pope that she had acted under compulsion.
Nicholas then wrote an indignant letter to the king and bishops, annulled all
previous decisions, and commanded a new and fair trial of the case to be held
He then wrote to the Emperor of Germany, Louis II, and the King of France,
Charles the Bald, as well as to all the bishops of the four kingdoms, Lorraine,
France, Germany, and Provence, whom he ordered to repair to a council at Metz,
where his legates would meet them. He charged them to have
more regard to the laws of God than the will of men, and to protect the weak
and innocent with all the dignity of their influence. Lothair,
however, succeeded in corrupting the legates themselves, and the council merely
met to confirm the previous infamous decrees and condemnations. Two of the
prelates were chosen to report to the pope and bear hypocritical and falsified
messages to him, but in vain.
Nicholas, secretly advised of
this treachery, and no doubt also divinely inspired, detected the imposition,
abrogated the decrees of the false council, and canonically deposed the two
guilty prelates from all their functions and dignities. They immediately took
refuge at Benevento with the Emperor Louis II, who, hotly espousing their
cause, marched with his army against Rome, and surprised the clergy and people
in the act of singing the litanies and taking part in a penitential procession
at S. Peter’s. His soldiers dispersed the people by force of arms, and
blockaded the pope in his palace. Nicholas escaped in disguise, and for two
days lay concealed in a boat on the Tiber, with neither covering for the night
nor scarcely food enough to sustain nature.
Thus the conflict between a
sovereign’s unbridled passions and the calm and immutable principles of the
Gospel was carried so far as to entail actual persecution on the sacred and
representative person of the pontiff.
The emperor, repenting of his
hasty attack, sent his wife to the pope to negotiate a reconciliation. ...
Lothair and the rebellious bishops now quarrelled among themselves, and one of
the deposed prelates, the Archbishop of Cologne, repaired in haste to Rome to
reveal the duplicity, the plotting, and insincerity that had characterized the
whole of the proceedings. The iking himself, however, showed a disposition to
submit, most of the bishops begged the pope’s forgiveness, and the former
legate, Rodoaldus, having been excommunicated for his collusion with the king,
a new one, Arsenius, Bishop of Orta, was appointed. The conditions he was
charged to demand were explicit — either Waldrade must be dismissed, or the
excommunication until now delayed in mercy would be pronounced. Unwilling to
submit entirely, yet dreading the consequences if he did not, Lothair actually
recalled Thietberga to her lawful position, and allowed Waldrade to accompany
the legate to Rome, as a public token of her repentance and obedience. But
although his royal word was plighted, he soon found his blind appetites too
much for his reason and his faith, and, sending messengers to bring back his
mistress, relapsed into his former sins. Waldrade herself was now
publicly excommunicated.
In the meantime, Pope Nicholas
died, and was succeeded by Adrian II, who proved himself no less strenuous an
opponent of royal license than his holy predecessor had been. Lothair,
naturally inclined to temporize, offered to go to Rome and plead his own cause with
the new pontiff. In a preliminary interview held at Monte Casino, the pope reiterated his firm intention of coming to no
understanding before the king had made his peace with Thietberga and finally
dissolved his criminal union with Waldrade.
The next day was Sunday, and the
king hoped to hear Mass before he left for Rome, but he could find no priest
willing to celebrate it for him, and was forced to take his departure in diminished
state for Rome, where no public reception awaited him, so that he had to enter
the Holy City almost as a pilgrim and a penitent. In those days of princely
hospitality and profuse pageantry, such an occurrence was rare, and, therefore,
all the more significant of the majestic and practical power of the church.
The
famous Lothair Cross, in the Aachen Cathedral treasury, is named after King Lothair II of Lorraine, though mostly crafted at a later
date
Lothair, now thoroughly sensible
of his sin, and warned by the terrible dissensions of the past of what further
misery to his country and people his prolonged obstinacy might involve,
signified his intention to submit unconditionally to the pope’s decree. High
Mass was then celebrated in his presence and that of all his noble followers by
the pope in person, and when at the moment of communion the king approached the
altar, Adrian impressively addressed to him the following unexpected
adjuration:
“I charge thee, O King of
Lorraine, if thou hast any concealed intention of renewing thy shameless intercourse
with thy concubine Waldrade, not to dare approach this altar and sacrilegiously
receive thy Lord in this tremendous sacrament; but if with true repentance and
sincere purpose of amendment thou dost approach, then receive him without fear.”
The king, evidently moved by this
solemn address, knelt down and communicated, and his retainers and courtiers
took their places at the sacred board. That no pretext might remain for further
equivocation, the holy pontiff warned them also, before administering the
Blessed Sacrament to them, saying:
“If any among you have wilfully
aided and abetted the king, and are ready wilfully to aid and abet him again in
his wicked intercourse with Waldrade, let him not presume to receive
sacrilegiously the body of the Lord; but you that have not abetted him, or that
have sincerely repented of having done so, and are resolved to do so no more,
approach and receive without fear.”
A few of them shrank back at these awful words, but the greater part, whether in sincerity or in contempt, followed the king’s example and received.
After this, which did not take
place till 869, we hear no more of Lothair’s passion for Waldrade. [Lothair died soon afterwards, in
Piacenza, in his way back from Rome to Aachen.]
[Source: Catholic World, vol.
XVI, Oct. 1872/Mar. 1873. THE CHURCH, THE
CHAMPION OF MARRIAGE (Excerpts)]
Fonte: Rorate caeli, 9/13/2014
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento