Keeper of the Keys:
Crews, Clyde F
Books: A PROCESSION OF POPES KEEPER OF THE KEYS A HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM ST. PETER TO JOHN PAUL II Nicolas Cheetham Scribner's, $19.95,340 pp. Clyde F. Crews "When I'm good, I'm very good,...
...In the bibliography, one misses some of the better recent materials on the modern papacy...
...The corruption of the best is the worst...
...With such obvious limitations of visual space, why are we rendered three pictures each of Gregory the Great, Gregory VII, and John Paul II...
...The presentation of John Paul II comes down to that May day in 1981 when he was shot...
...Nicolas Cheetham Keeper of the Keys tremist, pathologically power-conscious and impelled into dramatic confrontations by his imperious pugnacity and arrogant confidence.'' And of Nicholas V (1447-1455) we read: "He was a small ugly man .. . and as Aeneas Sylvius used to say, what he did not know was outside the scope of human knowledge...
...The text is a popular, introductory type of writing without critical apparatus (save for a short bibliographical essay) and is based to all appearances on secondary sources...
...This was speedily obtained...
...There are landmark characters in papal chronicles, of course, to which one instinctively turns to gauge a production...
...Perhaps no better source exists in Western history for a study of the intricacies of human character-in its deficiencies and its splendor-than in the lives of the popes...
...His account of Pius XII in short compass recounts both sides in the disputes concerning the papal policy toward the Nazi holocaust...
...If this seems too mild, though, Cheetham is quite capable of calling Paul IV (1555-1559) what he was: a "harsh bigot" of "pathological tendency...
...In many ways he prefigured good Pope John XXIII whom, not surprisingly, Cheetham also deeply revered...
...Slightly wounded...
...Suffice it to say, Cheetham has written a readable and careful accounting of the papal saga...
...Ranke had listed Clement VI (1523-34) among the most disastrous of all the popes...
...moreover he kept his promise that his captor would come to no harm...
...as part of its sentence the two blessing fingers are severed and the body thrown into the Tiber...
...If it is tendentious, it tilts in the direction of making allowances for the popes, invoking their historical gestalts, settling for' milder judgments when harsher ones might make for a better press...
...Shortly thereafter Stephen himself was strangled to death...
...His last word on this Medici is that "he was quite unequal to the task 6f healing the new division in Christendom...
...Certainly all of the shadow side of things papal is here in veteran diplomat Nicolas Cheetham's new history of the popes, Keeper of the Keys...
...The reportage is scrupulously fair...
...which] was besieged by infuriated crowds seeking his release...
...Pope Vigilius of the mid-sixth century appears, caught in a brawl in a church, clinging to the altar which collapses in the melee...
...All the modern popes, beginning with Pius XI, are seen by Cheetham as in some ways forerunners of conciliar renewal in Catholicism...
...Gregory was held prisoner in a fortified tower...
...Some of the occupants of Catholic Christianity's highest corporate office seem to have made it their studied intention to prove the validity of that point...
...Keeper of the Keys provides a kind of Grey Line tour of such intricacies, pointing out landmarks, leaving the traveler looking for more.r looking for more...
...When the incident was over he calmly resumed his Mass at the point where it had been broken off...
...Coming to more recent times, the narrator finds a favorite in Benedict XIV (1740-58...
...Was Paul VI really stabbed while in the Philippines or was he untouched as the New York Times (Nov...
...He is aware of the evolution of the papal office from a beginning of modest leadership into what often became an empire of domination, and he treats that rise gingerly...
...Here is Cheetham on Boniface VIII (1294-1303): "He was a political exWhile he was celebrating midnight Mass in Santa Maria Mag-giore on Christmas Eve, armed men rushed into the church and snatched [Gregory VII] from the altar...
...Or we find Renaissance Pope Paul II (1464-1471) "dying from a stroke brought on by a surfeit of melons...
...The Wall Street Journal (March 30, 19)57) in challenging Populorum Progreksio spoke of "warmed over Marxism...
...There are about fifty of them, some quite striking...
...Even so, Cheetham approaches his task with clarity and occasionally with elan...
...Macaulay had termed Benedict the best and wisest of the popes, and it is nearly impossible not to fall under the man's spell...
...Cheetham is more inclined to blame inherited evils...
...27 1970) reported...
...Clyde F. Crews "When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad I'm better"-thus spake the quippable Mae West in one of her more memorable dicta...
...The photographs...
...Given the number of such books available, it would seem appropriate to indicate the distinctiveness of yet another of the species appearing, but this is not touched on in the text...
...Such a sentiment comes almost invariably to mind when one reads the long history of the popes...
...Alongside all the holiness, virtue, brilliance, and selfless service that has often been resident in the pontiffs, there have also been the horrors, degradations, and venalities that make for the sort of badness that is better in making history books popular...
...And Stephen VI (896-97) exhuming the corpse of his predecessor Formosus to put it on trial...
...Aubert's Church in a Secularised Society and Holmes's Papacy in the Modern World...
...not "souped up Marxism...
...Here come the quibbles...
Vol. 110 • June 1983 • No. 11
