Saint of the day July 8: Blessed Eugene III. Catholic Saints

Every July 8, the Catholic Church remembers Blessed Pope Eugene III, whom St. Anthony of Padua described as “one of the greatest and most suffering Pontiffs.”

His given name was Bernardo Paganelli Montemagno, and he was born in the disappeared kingdom of Pisa (Italy) around the year 1088.

Dad eat, eat Dad

There is not much information about the first years of Bernardo’s life – the future Eugenio III. However, it is known with certainty that around the year 1106, when he was about 18 or 19 years old, he began to serve as canon of the cathedral chapter of Pisa. From 1115 he appears registered as a subdeacon of the cathedral.

Sometime between 1134 and 1137, he was ordained a priest by Pope Innocent II, who was residing in Pisa at the time. Influenced by the figure of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, he became a member of the Cistercian Order in 1138, when he was already around 50 years old. Later he moved to the famous Cistercian abbey of Clairvaux (Claraval), in France.

Becoming a monk, he took the name of his abbot or superior, ‘Bernardo’, thus maintaining his given name. When Pope Innocent II asked that some Cistercians go to live in Rome, Saint Bernard sent his namesake as leader of the delegation. The group of Cistercians established themselves in the monastery of San Anastasio (Tre Fontane) in the town of Scandriglia.

Years later, upon the death of Pope Lucius II in 1145, the cardinals elected Bernard as his successor, who remained abbot of Saint Anastasius and was renowned for his righteousness and strength. The new pontiff would be consecrated in the abbey of Farfa, taking the name Eugene III. In this way, Bernard, who had renounced the world to become a monk, ended up being erected as the 167th Pope of the Catholic Church, the first Cistercian to occupy the See of Peter. It is said that Eugene III always continued to wear the habit of his order while he held the pontificate, until the day of his death.

In defense of Christianity

In January 1147, Eugene III gladly accepted King Louis VII’s invitation to call for a second crusade to France. The French monarch needed papal support to recover the city of Edessa (Turkey), erected as a Christian bastion in Mesopotamia after the first crusade. As is known, this new crusade, called by Pope Eugene, ended in resounding failure.

The Pope would remain in French territory until the popular outcry for defeat made it impossible for him to remain in the country any longer. During his stay, Eugene III presided over the synods of Paris and Trier (Germany), as well as the Council of Reims (Rhineland, Germany), which were mainly concerned with strengthening the teaching of the Church against the heresies of the time. In Reims, for example, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux had a special participation in defense of the Trinitarian doctrine, once again questioned by Gilberto Porretano (1070-1154), a scholastic theologian, who had to retract his statements.

Eugenius III, on the one hand, promoted the renewal of the curia and the episcopate with the purpose of responding to the requirements of the laymen who saw in their ecclesial authorities a clear anti-Christian testimony; On the other hand, he promoted the renewal of religious life, which was also going through a deep crisis. In parallel, he did everything he could to reorganize the main schools of philosophy and theology.

A world in crisis

The nature of the medieval world is complex and cannot be understood without breaking many of the contemporary paradigms, those with which men today tend to approach history in general. Part of the difficulties that the medievals faced had to do with the separation of jurisdictions. The spiritual realm and the temporal realm intersected countless times, producing great tensions, if not, simple and direct confrontations due to particular interests or struggles for power.

The balance of most of the most important historical processes of that period was not always in accordance with the principles that spring from the Gospel, both inside and outside the Church. For this reason, the Popes who governed played a very important role where it was necessary to correct things or make decisions in pursuit of the unity of the Christian world. That was the context that Pope Eugene had to live in, and in it he tried to do the right thing.

spiritual authority

In May 1148 the Pontiff returned to Italy and excommunicated Arnold of Brescia – a priest with reforming pretensions, but infected by the erroneous positions of his teacher, the controversial philosopher Peter Abelard -. Brescia had led a schismatic movement.

Pope Eugene had already fought on various occasions different attempts to abolish the ecclesiastical hierarchy and build a church of “pure” ones – of “not contaminated” with the obvious errors or sins of the members of the clergy. Pope Eugene also had to alleviate numerous political tensions generated by power struggles between the heads of the kingdoms of Italy, which only subsided when the powerful agreed in their animosity towards papal authority, both spiritual and temporal.

Saint Bernard, aware of the harshness of the battles that the Pope fought, dedicated his ascetic treatise to the Supreme Pontiff. On Considerationwhere he stated that the Pope’s main duty was to attend to spiritual matters and that he should not allow himself to be distracted too much by matters that correspond to other jurisdictions.

Eugene III, who left Rome in the summer of 1150, remained in Campania for two and a half years, seeking to obtain the political support of Emperor Conrad III and his successor, Frederick Barbarossa. Certainly, the Pope had excommunicated the schismatic Brescia, but he had the protection of the Germans. In this, as in the issue of the autonomy of the Papal States, the Pope’s intention was always to maintain the unity of Europe around Christianity.

Eugene III died in Rome on July 8, 1153. His cult was approved on October 3, 1872, after being declared blessed by Pope Pius IX.

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If you want to know more about Pope Eugene III, we recommend this article from the Catholic Encyclopedia: https://ec.aciprensa.com/wiki/Papa_Beato_Eugenio_III.