Sometimes the office was vacant for up to 3 years i think.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope
Canon Law 332 §2 states, “If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone.”
The official list of titles of the Pope, in the order in which they are given in the Annuario Pontificio, is: Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God.
The title “Pope” was from the early 3rd century an honorific designation used for any bishop in the West.[93] In the East it was used only for the Bishop of Alexandria.[93] Pope Marcellinus (d. 304) is the first Bishop of Rome shown in sources to have had the title “Pope” used of him. From the 6th century, the imperial chancery of Constantinople normally reserved this designation for the Bishop of Rome.[93] From the early 6th century, it began to be confined in the West to the Bishop of Rome, a practice that was firmly in place by the 11th century,[93] when Pope Gregory VII declared it reserved for the Bishop of Rome.
In Eastern Christianity, where the title “Pope” is used also of the Bishop of Alexandria, the Bishop of Rome is often referred to as the “Pope of Rome”, regardless of whether the speaker or writer is in communion with Rome or not.
Briefly in the 15th century, three separate lines of popes claimed authenticity (see Papal Schism). Even Catholics don’t all agree whether certain historical figures were popes or antipopes. Though antipope movements were significant at one time, they are now overwhelmingly minor fringe causes.
Longest-reigning popes
Although the average reign of the pope from the Middle Ages was a decade, a number of those whose reign lengths can be determined from contemporary historical data are the following:
Pius IX (1846–1878): 31 years, 7 months and 23 days (11,560 days).
John Paul II (1978–2005): 26 years, 5 months and 18 days (9,665 days).
Leo XIII (1878–1903): 25 years, 5 months and 1 day (9,281 days).
Pius VI (1775–1799): 24 years, 6 months and 15 days (8,962 days).
Adrian I (772–795): 23 years, 10 months and 25 days (8,729 days).
Pius VII (1800–1823): 23 years, 5 months and 7 days (8,560 days).
Alexander III (1159–1181): 21 years, 11 months and 24 days (8,029 days).
St. Sylvester I (314–335): 21 years, 11 months and 1 day (8,005 days).
St. Leo I (440–461): 21 years, 1 month, and 13 days (7,713 days).
Urban VIII (1623–1644): 20 years, 11 months and 24 days (7,664 days).
Shortest-reigning popes
Conversely, there have been a number of popes whose reign lasted less than a month. In the following list the number of calendar days includes partial days. Thus, for example, if a pope’s reign commenced on 1 August and he died on 2 August, this would count as having reigned for two calendar days.
Urban VII (15–27 September 1590): reigned for 13 calendar days, died before coronation.
Boniface VI (April 896): reigned for 16 calendar days
Celestine IV (25 October – 10 November 1241): reigned for 17 calendar days, died before consecration.
Theodore II (December 897): reigned for 20 calendar days
Sisinnius (15 January – 4 February 708): reigned for 21 calendar days
Marcellus II (9 April – 1 May 1555): reigned for 22 calendar days
Damasus II (17 July – 9 August 1048): reigned for 24 calendar days
Pius III (22 September – 18 October 1503): reigned for 27 calendar days
Leo XI (1–27 April 1605): reigned for 27 calendar days
Benedict V (22 May – 23 June 964): reigned for 33 calendar days
John Paul I (26 August – 28 September 1978): reigned for 33 calendar days.
Stephen (23–26 March 752), died of stroke three days after his election, and before his consecration as a bishop. He is not recognized as a valid pope, but was added to the lists of popes in the 15th century as Stephen II, causing difficulties in enumerating later popes named Stephen. The Holy See’s Annuario Pontificio, in its list of popes and antipopes, attaches a footnote to its mention of Stephen II (III): “On the death of Zachary the Roman priest Stephen was elected; but, since four days later he died, before his consecratio, which according to the canon law of the time was the true commencement of his pontificate, his name is not registered in the Liber Pontificalis nor in other lists of the Popes.”[155]
East–West Schism to Reformation (1054–1517)
A historical map of the Mediterranean states in 1400. The Western Schism lasted from 1378 to 1417.
The East and West churches split definitively in 1054. This fracture was caused more by political events than by slight diversities of creed. Popes had galled the emperors by siding with the king of the Franks, crowning a rival Roman emperor, appropriating the Exarchate of Ravenna, and driving into Greek Italy.[63]
In the Middle Ages, popes struggled with monarchs over power.[6]
From 1309 to 1377, the pope resided not in Rome but in Avignon. The Avignon Papacy was notorious for greed and corruption.[64] During this period, the pope was effectively an ally of France, alienating France’s enemies, such as England.[65]
The pope was understood to have the power to draw on the “treasury” of merit built up by the saints and by Christ, so that he could grant indulgences, reducing one’s time in purgatory. The concept that a monetary fine or donation accompanied contrition, confession, and prayer eventually gave way to the common assumption that indulgences depended on a simple monetary contribution. The popes condemned misunderstandings and abuses, but were too pressed for income to exercise effective control over indulgences.[64]
Popes also contended with the cardinals, who sometimes attempted to assert the authority of councils over the pope’s. Conciliar theory holds that the supreme authority of the church lies with a General Council, not with the pope. Its foundations were laid early in the 13th century, and it culminated in the 15th century. The failure of the conciliar theory to gain broad acceptance after the 15th century is taken as a factor in the Protestant Reformation.[66]
Various anti-popes challenged papal authority, especially during the Western Schism (1378–1417). In this schism, the papacy had returned to Rome from Avignon, but an anti-pope was installed in Avignon, as if to extend the papacy there.
The Eastern Church continued to decline with the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, undercutting Constantinople’s claim to equality with Rome. Twice an Eastern Emperor tried to force the Eastern Church to reunify with the West. Papal claims of superiority were a sticking point in reunification, which failed in any event. In the 15th century, the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople.
Various challenges (without comment):
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/06/nonexistent-early-papacy.html
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/11/roman-catholic-hermeneutic.html
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/11/luke-147-11-now-jesus-told-parable-to.html
Pope Paul IV, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, Feb. 15, 1559: In addition, [by this Our Constitution, which is to remain valid in perpetuity We enact, determine, decree and define:-] that if ever at any time it shall appear that any Bishop, even if he be acting as an Archbishop, Patriarch or Primate; or any Cardinal of the aforesaid Roman Church, or, as has already been mentioned, any legate, or even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his elevation as Cardinal or Roman Pontiff, has deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy: www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/Articles/john_salza.php
Tradition has it that Marcellinus broke down, bowed to the imperial command, and offered incense in court. Condemned for his apostasy, he was deposed. He repented prior to his execution, however, and died a martyr if not a Pope.
In 357, Liberius signed a compromise deal with the Arians, and returned to Rome. The people threw him a parade, and Liberius, feeling cocky, denied he’d ever made the deal. After the death of the Emperor in 361, Liberius again stepped up his campaign against the Arians, sending so many letters of condemnation that they often hadn’t opened the envelope before a new one arrived.
Even so, it was not enough to get his reputation back, and in death sainthood has eluded him. — http://www.popesonparade.com/lists/400.html
Klaus Schatz [Jesuit Father theologian, professor of church history at the St. George’s Philosophical and Theological School in Frankfurt] on Priesthood, Canon, and the Development of Doctrine in his work, “Papal Primacy”:
The further question whether there was any notion of an enduring office beyond Peter’s lifetime, if posed in purely historical terms, should probably be answered in the negative. That is, if we ask whether the historical Jesus, in commissioning Peter, expected him to have successors, or whether the authority of the Gospel of Matthew, writing after Peter’s death, was aware that Peter and his commission survived in the leaders of the Roman community who succeeded him, the answer in both cases is probably “no”
.. if we ask in addition whether the primitive church was aware, after Peter’s death, that his authority had passed to the next bishop of Rome, or in other words that the head of the community at Rome was now the successor of Peter, the Church’s rock and hence the subject of the promise in Matthew 16:18-19, the question, put in those terms, must certainly be given a negative answer. (page 1-2)
“If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no.” (page 3, top)
We probably cannot say for certain that there was a bishop of Rome [in 95 AD]. It is likely that the Roman church was governed by a group of presbyters from whom there very quickly emerged a presider or ‘first among equals’ whose name was remembered and who was subsequently described as ‘bishop’ after the mid-second century. (Schatz 4). — http://thulcandra.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/klaus-schatz-on-priesthood-canon-and-the-development-of-doctrine/
The Roman Catholic writer Francis Sullivan, in his work From Apostles to Bishops (New York: The Newman Press), painstakingly works through all possible mentions of “succession” from the first three centuries, and concludes from that study not only that “the episcopate [development of bishops] is a the fruit of a post New Testament development,” but he interacts with the notion that there is a single bishop in Rome [as a certain Mr. Jones tried to argue] through the middle of the second century, and he flatly dismisses it.
It seems inconceivable that, if there had been a bishop in charge of the church of Corinth at that time, Clement would not have said something about the obligation of the guilty parties to submit to their bishop or about his role in restoring good order to his church.
However, Jones sees a hint of the existence of a bishop in Corinth in the analogy Clement gives for good order: namely, that in the liturgy of the Old Law the high priest, priests, Levites and laity each had their proper tasks. As noted above, this is one of several examples Clement offers of good order, and nothing in the letter supports the conclusion that the Corinthian church must also have had its “high priest.” -
http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/search/label/Klaus%20Schatz
American Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar Raymond Brown, in “Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections,” could not prove on historical grounds, he said, that Christ instituted the priesthood or episcopacy as such; that those who presided at the Eucharist were really priests; that a separate priesthood began with Christ; that the early Christians looked upon the Eucharist as a sacrifice; that presbyter-bishops are traceable in any way to the Apostles; that Peter in his lifetime would be looked upon as the Bishop of Rome; that bishops were successors of the Apostles, even though Vatican II made the same claim.. (from, “A Wayward Turn in Biblical Theory” by Msr. George A. Kelly can be read on the internet at www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Dossier/Jan-Feb00/Article5.html)
While the early Church Councils conceded to the Papacy the position of primus inter pares, “first among equals,” this did not give to the Popes any special authority. Second place in precedence was acknowledged for the Patriarch of Constantinople by the Ecumenical Council II of 381, though this was somewhat resented by the older Patriarchates at Alexandria and Antioch. The elevated status for Constantinople was because, of course, this had become the seat of the Emperor, beginning with Constantine, and the principal capital of the Roman Empire. Even when there was a Western Emperor, his seat was no longer at Rome, but in Milan and Ravenna. Indeed, more of the Ecumenical Councils were held in Constantinople (II, V, VI, VIII) than elsewhere — and Council IV was held just across the Bosporus in Chalcedon.
In Constantinople it was unmistakable that the Emperor imposed a unity on the Church that it would not otherwise have, and that would not otherwise be claimed until the Papacy began arrogating powers to itself that otherwise had belonged only to the Emperor or to Church Councils. I have discussed above how the term “Caesaro-Papism,” often used for the role of the Emperor in Constantinople, is applied more appropriately to the Popes themselves, whose claims and accumulation of power were an innovation, while the role of the Emperor had precedents all the way back to Constantine (and earlier, when a Roman Emperor was the Pontifex Maximus). What ends up being distinctive about the Orthodox Churches in communion with Constantinople is that, although Constantinople was responsible for the establishment of several such Churches, e.g. Bulgaria and Russia, the new ones ended up with independent authority, i.e. they were autocephalous, and were in no way subordinate to Constantinople the way the Popes expected national churches to be obedient to them. The principle is still that Orthodox Churches base their doctrine on the Ecumenical Councils. — www.friesian.com/popes.htm
It is illuminating to understand that even some very illustrious Roman Catholic theologians today recognize that the Papacy as it now exists is of late origin. W. DeVries admits, “...throughout the first ten centuries Rome never claimed to have been granted its preferred position of jurisdiction as an explicit privilege” (Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism by Methodios Fouyas, p. 70). Avery Dulles considers the development of the Papacy to be an historical accident. “The strong centralization in modern Catholicism is due to historical accident. It has been shaped in part by the homogeneous culture of medieval Europe and by the dominance of Rome, with its rich heritage of classical culture and legal organization” (Models of the Church by Avery Dulles, p. 200) http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/ecumenical/maxwell_peter.htm
Peter Lampe is a German theologian and Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Heidelberg, whose work, “From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries,” was written in 1987 and translated to English in 2003. The Catholic historian Eamon Duffy (Irish Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and former President of Magdalene College), said “all modern discussion of the issues must now start from the exhaustive and persuasive analysis by Peter Lampe.” (“Saints and Sinners,” “A History of the Popes,” Yale, 1997, 2001, pg. 421).
The picture that finally emerges from Lampe’s analysis of surviving evidence is one he names ‘the fractionation of Roman Christianity’ (pp. 357–408). Not until the second half of the second century, under Anicetus, do we find compelling evidence for a monarchical episcopacy, and when it emerges, it is to manage relief shipments to dispersed Christians as well as social aid for the Roman poor (pp. 403–4). Before this period Roman Christians were ‘fractionated’ amongst dispersed house/tenement churches, each presided over by its own presbyter–bishop. This accounts for the evidence of social and theological diversity in second-century Roman Christianity, evidence of a degree of tolerance of theologically disparate groups without a single authority to regulate belief and practice, and the relatively late appearance of unambiguous representation of a single bishop over Rome. Review of this work, from Oxford’s Journal of Theological Studies: http://reformation500.blogspot.com/2008/08/review-of-from-paul-to-valentinus.html)
Roger Collins (M.A., D. Litt., F.R.Hist.S., F.S.A. Scot., English medievalist at Edinburgh) has written a very thorough history of the papacy (Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy; http://www.amazon.com/Keepers-Keys-Heaven-History-Papacy/dp/0465011950/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236398577&sr=8-1
“There was … no individual, committee or council of leaders within the Christian movement that could pronounce on which beliefs and practices were acceptable and which were not. This was particularly true of Rome with its numerous small groups of believers. Different Christian teachers and organizers of house-churches offered a variety of interpretations of the faith and attracted particular followings, rather in the way that modern denominations provide choice for worshipers looking for practices that particularly appeal to them on emotional, intellectual, aesthetic or other grounds (15-16).
The late Catholic priest and major Biblical scholar Raymond Brown (twice appointed to Pontifical Biblical Commission) states,, “The claims of various sees to descend from particular members of the Twelve are highly dubious. It is interesting that the most serious of these is the claim of the bishops of Rome to descend from Peter, the one member of the Twelve who was almost a missionary apostle in the Pauline sense – a confirmation of our contention that whatever succession there was from apostleship to episcopate, it was primarily in reference to the Puauline tyupe of apostleship, not that of the Twelve.” (“Priest and Bishop, Biblical Reflections,” Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur, 1970, pg 72.)
American Roman Catholic and Biblical scholar Raymond
The Catholic historian Paul Johnson goes a bit further than Brown, in his 1976 work “History of Christianity”:
By the third century, lists of bishops, each of whom had consecrated his successor, and which went back to the original founding of the see by one or the other of the apostles, had been collected or manufactured by most of the great cities of the empire and were reproduced by Eusebius…– “A History of Christianity,” p. 53 ff.) - http://reformation500.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/historical-literature-on-the-earliest-papacy/
Before the second half of the second century there was in Rome no monarchical episcopacy for the circles mutually bound in fellowship. Peter Lampe’s extensive work, “From Paul to Valentinus,” chapter 41, pages 397 - http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2010/08/this-bridge-should-be-illuminated.html
“Recent research on the Reformation entitles us to sharpen it and say that the Reformation began because the reformers were too catholic in the midst of a church that had forgotten its catholicity...”
“The reformers were catholic because they were spokesmen for an evangelical tradition in medieval catholicism, what Luther called “the succession of the faithful.” The fountainhead of that tradition was Augustine (d. 430). His complex and far-reaching system of thought incorporated the catholic ideal of identity plus universality, and by its emphasis upon sin and grace it became the ancestor of Reformation theology. — Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959, p. 46)
“If we keep in mind how variegated medieval catholicism was, the legitimacy of the reformers’ claim to catholicity becomes clear. (Pelikan, pp. 46-47)
More: http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2010/09/trajectory-of-church-history.html
This neglects the way that the office of bishop developed from the equivalent of chief Rabbi to prelate. The apostles were charismatic figures, but more prophet than priest. When we say that bishops were successors to the apostles, we are speaking of the passing down of the spiritual authority, the teaching authority primarily. The Reformers had a poor sense of history and unconsciously assumed that the early Christians were pretty much like themselves and projected onto the Scripture a vision of their own society as “the norm.” Luther has a more sophisticated notion, but he also assumed that the Jews he knew were the Jews of Jesus’s time. But rabbinical judaism was a development of the post-temple period, where the role of priests was more or less subsumed into that of the rabbi. The Christian priesthood took another route, with the Eucharist as the replacement of the temple sacrifices. The first bishops were simply leading men of the first churches. We have forgotten how important Alexandria was in the ancient world.It was its New York, with Rome never being more than the Philadelphia, and Constantinople being the equivalent of Washington. For the church, the great significance of Rome was as the shrine city for the martyrs and apostles, Peter and Paul. It was the petrine authority that took preeminence, however. After the destruction of Jerusalem and its reconfiguration as a Roman garrison city, Rome quickly became the center of focus and pilgrimages to its shrines replaced those to Jerusalem, in no large part because transportation to it was available as its center of the empire.