Word Finder - pontificate

definition

The status or term of office of a pontiff or pontifex.

Fredericks long minority was occupied by Innocents pontificate.

But the usual sequence has been observed under Pius X., who appeared to be greatly in favour of the Society and to rely upon them for many of the measures of his pontificate.

A weak and easily-influenced old man, his resignation was the noblest act of his pontificate.

Unhappily Frederick preferred to put his Sicilian house in order, and the legate preferred to listen to the Italians, who had their own 3 A canon of the third Lateran council (1179) forbade traffic with the Saracens in munitions of war; and this canon had been renewed by Innocent in the beginning of his pontificate.

The greater part of the year that followed was occupied in one of those progresses through Italy, Germany and France which form a marked feature in Leo's pontificate.

The College of Cardinals, and the Curia in general, grew more and more infected with worldliness during his pontificate.

The beginning of his reign was not unpromising; but all too soon that nepotism began which attained its height under this Spanish pope, and dominated his whole pontificate.

Even though, in his all too brief pontificate, he failed to attain any definite results, he at least fulfilled the first condition of any cure by laying bare the seat of disease, gave an important impetus to the cause of the reform of the Church, and laid down the principles on which this was afterwards carried through.

The harvest was reaped during the long pontificate of the Farnese pope, Paul III.

The last pope to be canonized, his pontificate marks the zenith of the Catholic reformation.

Although the Liberal record of the pope was a thing of the past, and his policy had, since Gaeta, become firmly identified with the reactionary policy of Antonelli, yet the early years of his pontificate were in such lively recollection as to allow of Pius IX.'s appearing to some extent in the light of a national hero.

He had long passed the traditional years of Peter's pontificate, had reigned longer than any previous wearer of the tiara, and had seen some brilliant days - days of illusory glory.

The following years of Leo XIII.'s pontificate only tended to increase their dissatisfaction.

One of the earliest acts of the new pontificate was to forbid the use in the services of the Church of any music later than Palestrina, a drastic order justified by the extreme degradation into which church music had fallen in Italy, but in general honoured rather in the spirit than in the letter.

What progress reform made during his pontificate was due to its acquired momentum, rather than to the zeal of the pope.

The fourteen years of Gregory's pontificate were marked by extraordinary vigour and activity.

During his pontificate the estates increased in value, while at the same time the real grievances of the tenants were redressed and their general position was materially improved.

Before his elevation to the pontificate he had been suspected of favouring the Pelagians, but when he became pope he disappointed their expectations, and repelled their attempts to enter again into communion with the Church.

During his pontificate the dispute was settled between Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch, who had been at variance since the council of Ephesus, but he himself had some difficulties with Proclus of Constantinople with regard to the vicariate of Thessalonica.

Boniface escaped from his captors only to die (October 11), and the short pontificate of his saintly successor, Benedict XI., was occupied in a vain effort to restore harmony to the Church.

He was made cardinal and archbishop of Naples by Innocent XI., whose pontificate he took as a model for his own, which began on the 12th of July 1691.

In the same work the archbishop claims to have written his Chronicon januense in the second year of his pontificate (1293), but it extends to 1296 or 1297.

In the second year of his pontificate he baptized King Ceadwalla of Wessex at.

To prevent abuses, a minute tariff of expenses was drawn up during the pontificate of Leo XIII.

During the remainder of that pontificate Della Rovere remained in France, nominally in support of the pope, for whom he negotiated the treaty of 1498 with Louis XII., but in reality bitterly hostile to him.

He was the first bishop of London, since the Reformation, to "pontificate" in a mitre as well as the cope, and though no man could have been less essentially "sacerdotal" he was always careful of correct ceremonial usage.

In 1560 his uncle, Cardinal Angelo de'Medici, was raised to the pontificate as Pius IV.

In the last years of his pontificate he was busied with preparations for a crusade and for the reunion of Christendom, and sent to Constantinople the celebrated Carmelite monk, Peter Thomas, to negotiate with the claimants to the Greek throne.

One of the things that commended his candidacy to certain cardinals was his physical vigour, which seemed to promise a long pontificate.

Sixtus set no limit to his plans; and what he achieved in his short pontificate is almost incredible; the completion of the dome of St Peter's; the loggia of Sixtus in the Lateran; the chapel of the Praesepe in Sta Maria Maggiore; additions.

The only territory gained during Urban's pontificate, the duchy of Urbino, the last addition to the papal states, was acquired by reversion (1631); and in his one war, with the duke of Parma, for the district of Castro, he met defeat and humiliation (1644).

The eight years of his pontificate were important in the political, scientific and literary history of the world.

He was compelled, however, to add that the lustre of his pontificate would be for ever dulled by the tragic fall of Constantinople, which the Turks took in 1453.

Throughout his pontificate Innocent was completely dominated by his sister-in-law, Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, a woman of masculine spirit.

Although the pontificate of Innocent witnessed the conversion of many Protestant princes, the most notable being Queen Christina of Sweden, the papacy had nevertheless suffered a perceptible decline in prestige; it counted for little in the negotiations at Minster, and its solemn protest against the peace of Westphalia was entirely ignored.

It was under his pontificate that a general council was convened at Capua in 391, at which various Eastern affairs were brought forward.

It was during his pontificate that the last attempt to revive paganism in Rome was made (392-394) by Nicomachus Flavianus.

His brief pontificate was marked by several important events.

His pontificate was signalized by efforts to unite the Greek and Latin churches, by the establishment of the Inquisition in France, by favours shown to the mendicant orders, and by an attempt to organize a crusade against the Tatars.

Towards the end of the pontificate trouble began anew in England, Paschal complaining (1115) that councils were held and bishops translated without his authorization, and threatening Henry I.

The papacy received its full monarchial structure under Hildebrand (Gregory VII.) in the middle of the II th century; its political decline set in suddenly after the pontificate of Boniface VIII.

Thus he may grant indulgences, issue censures, give dispensations, canonize saints, institute bishops, create cardinals - in short, perform all the acts of his jurisdiction, even though he be no more than a layman; but by custom certain of his more solemn acts are postponed till after the ceremony of his coronation, from which his pontificate is officially dated.

At the head of this is the college of cardinals, who are the princes and senators of the Church, the counsellors of the pope, and his vicars in the functions of the pontificate.

At Viterbo, where he spent most of his pontificate, Clement died on the 29th of November 1268, leaving a name unsullied by nepotism.

Though the process went on from the pontificate of Paul III.

The pontificate of Innocent fell within an important period in European politics, and he himself played no insignificant role.

Urban was frugal and never practised simony, but harshness, lack of tact, and fondness for unworthy nephews disgraced his pontificate.

The thirty-eighth and last Abbasid caliph, Mostasim, was brutally murdered, and thus the Mahommedan caliphate ceased to exist even as an emasculated pontificate.

In this pontificate Rome was ravaged, and the churches of St Peter and St Paul robbed, by Saracens (August 846).

We find it laid down in the pontificate of Archbishop Ecgbert of York, A.D.