Friday, May 26, 2006

Frankenstein Meets Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758)?!
["De-bugged" version! 6/01/2006]


It might even sound like an axiom when we say that authors in general and novelists in particular get their inspiration from who knows where, and that in her rambles around the European countryside in around 1819 or so, Mary Shelley more than likely developed a good ear for all kinds of local stories and legends. And, being undoubtedly both talented and imaginative, she would have more than likely woven bits and pieces of colorful local folklore into Frankenstein.

Now comes a whimsical suggestion: supposing at least one of the local legends had as its foundation a concrete historical fact, or rather two or more?

The first fact might be that Pope Benedict XIV's changes in Canon Law, especially changes in what would become over two centuries later Canons 976 and 977 would, sooner or later, be put to the conclusive test, even within fifty years of his own era.

The second fact might be that two people, presumably of the opposite sex, according to Shelley's version, finding themselves in extremis, and instinctively drawing what comfort they can from the prudent foresight of a pope who lived perhaps a half century earlier, just might try to make the most of a really desperate life-threatening situation.

A really desperate life-threatening situation, further, purportedly involving a Roman Catholic priest and his mistress? Could there be, if nothing else, a chance for her to receive the consolation of the last rites?

Pope Benedict XIV, born Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini, was himself a lover of fine literature, while being at the same time an indefatigable defender of the integrity of the priesthood. He might even be considered a pope in so many ways of the same broad humanistic stripe of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. He surely knew the generally dismal state of this same priesthood in many parts of mid-18th Cenury Europe, yet he wasn't about to leave anyone without at least a sporting chance of eternal salvation, no matter what.

Now, just what do these Canons deal with, that might apply to a folkloric story in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? Moreover, about a Catholic priest and his live-in female lover?

From the bottom of page 688 of The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, we can see what it is that these following two Canons state under the heading of Absolution in Danger of Death :

Canon 976 -- "Even though he lacks the faculty to hear confessions, any priest validly and licitly absolves from any kind of censures and sins any penitent who is in danger of death, even if an approved priest is present.

"Finally, [this] revised canon has suppressed the norm that the absolution of an accomplice in these circumstances would be valid but illicit (CIC 884)* [The "Old Code of Canon Law" of 1917] or that the penitent upon recovery would in certain circumstances be obliged to have furher recourse (CIC 2252)."

* Benedict XIV, apconst Sacramentum Poenitentiae, June 1, 1741: Document II among the documents appended to the 1917 Code.

Absolution of an Accomplice

Canon 977 -- "The absolution of an accomplice in a sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue is invalid, except in danger of death."

"As noted under the preceeding canon, the norm of canon 977, while derived from canon 884 of the 1917 Code, no longer declares illicit the absolution of an accomplice who is in danger of death. In all other cases, it is both illicit and invalid for a priest to absolve an accomplice, female or male, from a sin against the sixth commandment in which he and the penitient have been accomplices. There is no further restriction under pain of invalidity of absolution, whatever may be the impropriety of the confessor's absolving an accomplice from other sins. The matter is treated in detail by moral and pastoral theologians."

As anybody who has noodled her or his way through Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as part of an upper-level undergraduate course in Literary Criticism for English Majors in any US college of university knows, a reader can't help but be struck by the trip made by Victor Frankenstein and Henry, cruising down the River Rhine, and Henry's idle remark that he thought he'd seen the best extremes of mountain and water in Switzerland.

And this includes Henry's reference to "the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche, and where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the night wind..."

Now, comes the question for the first semester creative writing student:

What might have the dying priest and his dying mistress been talking about?

More on Benedict XIV:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02432a.htm

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