CELESTINE V, Saint, a Pope celebrated as the one occupant of the papal see who, his title undisputed and no demand made for his retirement, voluntarily and of his own motion abdicated the pontificate. He was a Neapolitan, born in 1215, and while a lad entered the order of Benedictines. From the first he practised the greatest austerities, and at the age of 24 years, for the sake of freedom in the pursuit of religious perfection, he quitted the monastery and adopted the solitary or eremitical life in a cave 'of Mount Morone, whence his surname, Peter di Morone. After five years spent in this solitude he, with two companion hermits, migrated to a similar cave in the Monte di Ma jella in Bruttium. Here. disciples flocked to him in scores, and to these he gave a rule of life and thus laid the foundation of a new monastic order which later received papal ap proval; after the death of the founder the order assumed the title of Celestines. While Peter di Morone was, as superior-general, governing 36 communities of the new order comprising 600 monks, he was elected Pope, 7 July 1294. He protested vigorously against this unexpected promotion, but at last was prevailed upon to assume the burden of the papacy. As Pope he promulgated two decrees, one re-enforcing the rule which requires that the cardinal electors of a Pope shall be strictly secluded in the con clave; and the other that a Pope may lawfully and validly lay down his office. At the end
of five months and eight days he acted on this definition and abdicated, out of a desire, as he publicly declared, ((for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, and in view of his lack of physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, and his longing for the tranquillity of his former life." All emi nently strong and good and honorable reasons, and worthy of the sincerely religious soul that was moved by them. His successor in the papacy, Boniface VIII, doubtless fearing lest the honest hermit should repent of his abdi cation and resume the papal title, made him a prisoner and confined him in a strong castle where he died, after languishing 10 months, 19 May 1296. He was canonized in 1313. Some commentators of Dante ((Inferno,' iii, 60) think that Celestine is the damned soul, Who to base fear Yielding, abjured his high estate (Cary's trans.), or as the verse is rendered by Longfellow— The shade of him Who made through cowardice the great refused.
But as has been well remarked, '