The Mistery of Belicena Villca and expert in Diplomacy , would be close to the Saint without arousing the suspicions of the Colonna , those against whom he nourished within him deadly desires .
Two of the changes introduced by Celestine V , at the request of Charles II , should now be highlighted . He increased the number of Cardinals by appointing other twelve , mostly Italians and French , and reestablished the Conclave law , which forced to replace the vacant members of the Sacred College . And he conferred on the Spiritual Franciscans the authorization to function independently from the Order of Friars Minor . Such provisions favored the French influence on the Church and the Colonna party .
The Golen would not come to control Celestine V . And with the running of the months , they realized that the war between France and England not only strengthened Philip IV but threatened to paralyze the plans of the White Fraternity . There was no more time for subtleties : it was urgent to finish off the saint and put in his place a Golen Pope , a man capable of imposing himself on that beardless King who dared to defy the Powers of Matter : from the Throne of Saint Peter , whose dominion They had exercised almost uninterruptedly for seven hundred years , they would present Philip IV with an opposition as was not seen since the days of Henry IV , Frederick I and Frederick II . However , they did not dare to assassinate Celestine because of the repercussions that that fact might have on the people of Italy , who were impressed with the spiritual virtues of the Pope . Thus arose the idea of convincing the Saint that his Pontificate did not suit the Church , in need of a Pope who took care of other important matters apart from the religious ones , such as the administrative , legislative , legal , and diplomatic . The spokesperson for this idea , and who offered the legal advice to finalize the resignation , was Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani .
Those pressures made Celestine doubt , but the advice was more powerful from those who asked him to remain in his position because the Church required the Holiness of his presence . As the five months of his reign approached , Benedetto Gaetani comes to resort to the crude plot of buying his valet and have him installed from the upper deck , a pipe bearer of voice that looked behind the Christ of the Altar , in a Chapel to which Celestine attended daily to pray : the voice that came from " Jesus " said : “ Celestine , unload from your back the feud of the papacy , for it is a weight greater than your strength ”. At first , the Saint took it as a warning from Heaven , but later he was alerted about the hoax . However , Christmas was approaching and Celestine was preparing to retire to a solitary monastery in the Abruzzi to pray in loneliness , as was the custom of his whole life . On the advice of the King of Naples , he decides to appoint three Cardinals with broad powers in order to act on his behalf during the four weeks of absence : it was then that a Golen Cardinal accused the Pope of carrying out an illegal action . The Church , he told him , could not have four husbands , the papal dignity was not delegable up to that point . This decided the Saint to resign , more disgusted by the intrigues that unfolded around him that by the weight of the arguments wielded .
But renouncing the papal investiture is not the same as abdicating a royal investiture . In the Canon Law in force until then , the possibility was not covered and there had never been a case since St . Peter named St . Linus his successor , in the 1st century . On the contrary , the Canon Law stated that the investiture was for life , since its acceptance had the character of a marriage bond between the Pope and the Church , which was dogmatically indissoluble . To overcome this insurmountable difficulty , the canonist Cardinals Bianchi and Gaetani resorted to childish logical reasoning : the Canon Law governs and formalizes the conduct of the Popes , but , above the Canon Law , there is the Pope himself , the Vicar of Jesus Christ ; to him corresponds the evident right to modify with his infallible word all law and all dogma ; including the issue of resignation from the papal investiture . On 13 December 1294 , five months and nine days after being enthroned , Celestine V signed the Bull drawn up by the canonists of Benedetto Gaetani , which confirmed the right of the Pope to resign if deep and well-founded guilty feelings , such as , for example , believing
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