Gregory XIII

Italian pope (1572-1585)

• Born: January 7, 1502
• Birthplace: Romagna (now in Italy)
• Died: April 10, 1585
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

Gregory XIII, dedicated to the principles of the Catholic Reformation, implemented the decrees of the Council of Trent, which included a reform of the breviary. This led to the most significant achievement of his papacy: the reform of the Julian calendar. He also founded colleges for training priests and opened up meaningful dialogue with Eastern Orthodox patriarchs and non-Christians beyond Europe.

Early Life

Born to a wealthy Bolognese family as Ugo Buoncompagni, Gregory XIII began his career in the legal profession, earning degrees in both civil and canon law at the University of Bologna in 1530. From 1531 to 1539, he taught these disciplines at the University of Bologna, where he counted among his students Saint Carlo Borromeo and Reginald Pole.

By 1540, he was living in Rome, having been appointed by Pope Paul III to be one of the city’s two chief civil judges. Paul III later nominated him to serve as one of the jurists during the first phase of the Council of Trent . His legal training continued to be put to good use by Popes Julius III and Paul IV , the former giving him various legal responsibilities within the curia and the latter charging him to investigate the legitimacy of Charles V’s successor to the imperial throne, Ferdinand I. Gregory provided a moderate voice during the final sessions of the Council of Trent (concluded in 1563), and soon after his return to Rome, Pius IV appointed him cardinal of Saint Sisto. Also under Pius IV, he was sent to Spain to help resolve issues of heresy. There he met Philip II, who would later support his own election to the Papacy after the death of Pius V in 1572.

Life’s Work

As pope, Gregory chose his name in honor of Gregory the Great, whose feast day fell on March 12, the calendar day that Gregory XIII had been made a cardinal. Soon after his election, Gregory XIII formally pledged to carry out the decrees of the Council of Trent and to quickly appoint councils and commissions to abolish ecclesiastical abuses, complete the Index of Prohibited Books, and reform the calendar, this latter mandate being implicit in the Council of Trent’s demand for a revised breviary.

Responsible for implementing the calendar that today bears his name, Gregory XIII is rightfully admired for finally providing a solution to what had been a thorny scientific and theological issue. Ever since the Council of Nicaea of 325 had established that the date of Easter would depend on a formula involving the lunar calendar and the vernal equinox, which at that time was falling on March 21, the relationship between the Julian calendar then in use and the true tropical year was under scrutiny. The Julian calendar year was more than eleven minutes too long, so that by Gregory XIII’s papacy, the vernal equinox was falling on March 11, a full ten days earlier than during the Nicene Council. The solution Gregory XIII adopted eventually was to reduce the number of leap days added (by eliminating those that fell on centuries not divisible by 400) and to suppress ten days from the calendar year of 1582. Although Gregory XIII’s reform was inspired by liturgical rather than scientific concerns and made no claim to mirror true planetary motion, the resulting calendar was exceptionally accurate and eventually also adopted by non-Catholic nations.

While the reform of the calendar is Gregory XIII’s single most noteworthy achievement, it should be viewed, like his emendation of the Roman martyrology, within the larger context of his desire to place the Catholic Church on a more firm historical foundation and, ultimately, to restore the Catholic Church to a position of preeminence in Europe. Most of his other papal acts were addressed to this latter purpose.

Faced with the increasing threat of Protestantism, Gregory XIII founded and supported colleges in Rome and in other European cities geared toward the training of priests specifically, the first such institution to benefit being the German College in Rome. Many of these colleges were run by the Jesuits, including the most famous and prestigious of them all: the Collegium Romanum, colloquially referred to as the Gregorian University because of an impressive school building Gregory erected in 1567 to expand it. The university was founded in 1551 by Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Gregory took a less defensive approach with respect to the Eastern churches, where he sought open dialogue with their patriarchs in the hopes of ultimately reuniting them with the Roman church. Although this larger goal did not succeed, he did achieve amicable relations with both the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches so that Catholics in those areas could practice their religion without fear of persecution.

Further abroad, Gregory’s Jesuit missionaries arrived in India, China, Japan, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and South America, and it was at the close of his pontificate in 1585 that the first Japanese Christian delegation arrived on European soil. Considering Gregory’s interest in time calculation, it is worthy of note that Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit missionary who introduced Christianity into Chinese cities (and who had studied under the chief supporter and defender of Gregory’s calendar reform, Bavarian mathematician and astronomer Christoph Clavius), enjoyed particular success by offering a European mechanical clock as gift to the Chinese emperor.

At home in Rome, Gregory’s politics were more controversial. He employed his legal expertise to long-forgotten property and tax documents in order to confiscate many noble estates. Convinced that pomp and display were necessary images for a strong Catholic Church, he used these funds, combined with more culled from a dwindling papal treasury, to host lavish events, the most noteworthy being the Holy Year of 1575, the most elaborate jubilee to date. The temporary decorations erected for the occasion emphasized the traditional links between Rome and heavenly Jerusalem while his permanent restructuring of the city focused on providing better access to the principal pilgrimage churches, particularly St. John Lateran.

With an eye to material splendor, he initiated the building of the Quirinal Palace in 1574 and commissioned vast pictorial cycles that commemorated his achievements as pope. The Galleria delle Carte Geografiche (gallery of maps) in the Vatican Palace, for example, boasts frescoed maps of the known world of the sixteenth century, framed by sacred narratives, as if in support of Gregory’s global missionary activities. The ceiling of the Sala di Costantino, with its dramatic di sotto in su image of the Fall of the Pagan Idols-Triumph of Christianity, represents Constantine’s official support of Christianity, a theme with deep resonance in Counter-Reformation Italy.

The Tower of the Winds (1578-1585), a structure that rises out of the Vatican Palace, offers a grand celebration of his calendar reform through the depiction of time and space and the incorporation of a gnomon for measuring the year. Finally, the fresco in the Sala Regia, executed at the beginning of his pontificate, illustrates the achievements of earlier popes who had taken the name of Gregory and illustrates two modern narratives: the Battle of Lepanto (1571), when the Turks were definitively driven from the Mediterranean Sea, and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572), in which hundreds of French Huguenots (Protestants) were slaughtered. Although most historians claim that Gregory did not possess prior knowledge of this brutal event, the pope has been criticized heavily for celebrating it in Rome after the fact.

Significance

Gregory XIII was an extremely vigorous pontiff whose indefatigable defense of the decrees of the Council of Trent earned him a measure of immortality.

Founder of numerous educational institutions still in use today, Gregory’s most important and lasting achievement was his expeditious implementation of a long overdue reform of the Julian calendar. Although not the scientific triumph one might expect, Gregory’s calendar, along with his other liturgical emendations, permitted the Catholic Church to confront other Christian and non-Christian churches from a position of theological strength. In time this calendar, designed to permit a liturgically sound calculation of Easter, became equally important to civil society. Its swift adoption by Catholic countries is a testament to the continued political power of the Papacy in the Counter-Reformation period and of Pope Gregory XIII in particular, while its early and vehement rejection by non-Catholic nations encapsulates the religious strife that still plagued Europe at the close of the sixteenth century.

Bibliography

Courtright, Nicola. The Papacy and the Art of Reform in Sixteenth-Century Rome: Gregory XIII’s Tower of the Winds in the Vatican. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. An in-depth study of one of Gregory’s most important artistic commissions, the Tower of the Winds, in the context of his ecclesiastical goals and the artistic scene of Counter-Reformation Rome.

Coyne, G. V., M. A. Hoskin, and O. Pederson, eds. Gregorian Reform of the Calendar: Proceedings of the Vatican Conference to Commemorate Its Four-Hundredth Anniversary, 1582-1982. Vatican City: Specola, 1983. A collection of essays on the scientific, technical, theological, and historical issues and outcomes surrounding Gregory’s calendar reform, published by the Vatican in commemoration of the event.

Pastor, Ludwig von. The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. Translated and edited by Ralph Francis Kerr. 34 vols. 5th ed. St. Louis, Mo.: Herder, 1923-1941. Volume 9 is dedicated to Gregory. Still the most comprehensive discussion of his pontificate in English.