There had been reading at table, especially from two books, Pope Gregory The Great's account of St. Scholastica in his Dialogues and my own The World Of Washington Irving.

The first case recorded of the partial exemption of an abbot from episcopal control is that of Faustus, abbot of Lerins, at the council of Arles, AD 456 ; but the exorbitant claims and exactions of bishops, to which this repugnance to episcopal control is to be traced, far more than to the arrogance of abbots, rendered it increasingly frequent, and, in the 6th century, the practice of exempting religious houses partly or altogether from episcopal control, and making them responsible to the pope alone, received an impulse from Pope Gregory the Great.

Pope Gregory I repeats the concept, articulated over a century earlier by Gregory of Nyssa that the saved suffer purification after death, in connection with which he wrote of " purgatorial flames ".

The same word in adjectival form ( purgatorius-a-um, cleansing ), which appears also in non-religious writing, was already used by Christians such as Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory I to refer to an after-death cleansing.

Alfred's first translation was of Pope Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, which he prefaced with an introduction explaining why he thought it necessary to translate works such as this one from Latin into English.

This order is known from a bull of Pope Gregory XI addressed to the monks of the church of St Ambrose outside Milan.

In 1375 Pope Gregory XI gave them the Rule of St Augustine, with set of constitutions.

Therefore, Pope Gregory IX requested him to give up this practice.

On 20 August 1233, Andrew had a meeting with the legate of Pope Gregory IX in the woods of Bereg, and they made an agreement which ensured the privileges of the clergy.

Pope Gregory VII canonized Ælfheah in 1078, with a feast day of 19 April.

The Angles are the subject of a legend about Pope Gregory I, who happened to see a group of Angle children from Deira for sale as slaves in the Roman market.

He was one of the seven cardinals who, in May 1408, deserted Pope Gregory XII, and, with those following Antipope Benedict XIII from Avignon, convened the Council of Pisa, of which Cossa became the leader.

John XXIII was acknowledged as pope by France, England, Bohemia, Prussia, Portugal, parts of the Holy Roman Empire, and numerous Northern Italian city states, including Florence and Venice ; however, the Avignon Pope Benedict XIII was regarded as pope by the Kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, and Scotland and Gregory XII was still favored by Ladislaus of Naples, Carlo I Malatesta, the princes of Bavaria, Louis III, Elector Palatine, and parts of Germany and Poland.

During the third session, rival Pope Gregory XII authorized the council as well.

The first Archbishop of Canterbury was St Augustine ( not to be confused with St Augustine of Hippo ), who arrived in Kent in 597 AD, having been sent by Pope Gregory I on a mission to the English.

It seems that Pope Gregory, ignorant of recent developments in the former Roman province, including the spread of the Pelagian heresy, had intended the new archiepiscopal sees for England to be established in London and York.

Pope Gregory XVI rescinded this privilege and reserved to the Pope the right of creation of such knights ( Acta Pont.

Apart from a short poem attributed to Mark of Monte Cassino, the only ancient account of Benedict is found in the second volume of Pope Gregory I's four-book Dialogues, thought to have been written in 593.

In Gregory ’ s day, history was not recognized as an independent field of study ; it was a branch of grammar or rhetoric, and historia ( defined as ‘ story ’) summed up the approach of the learned when they wrote what was, at that time, considered ‘ history .’ Gregory ’ s Dialogues Book Two, then, an authentic medieval hagiography cast as a conversation between the Pope and his deacon Peter, is designed to teach spiritual lessons.

In the monastic library at Jarrow were a number of books by theologians, including works by Basil, Cassian, John Chrysostom, Isidore of Seville, Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, Pope Gregory I, Ambrose of Milan, Cassiodorus, and Cyprian.

Bede was the first to refer to Jerome, Augustine, Pope Gregory and Ambrose as the four Latin Fathers of the Church.

Pope Gregory XI's return to Rome in 1377, followed by his death and the controversial election of his successor, Pope Urban VI, resulted in the defection of a number of cardinals and the election of a rival pope based at Avignon in 1378.

Pius XI's first encyclical as Pope was directly related to his aim of Christianising all aspects of increasingly secular societies.

Fénelon particularly condemned Pasquier Quesnel's Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament, and his writings were part of the build-up to Pope Clement XI's 1713 bull Unigenitus, condemning Quesnel's opinions.

Popes were not restricted to a particular tiara: for example, photographs on this page show Pope John XXIII, on different occasions, wearing the tiara presented to him in 1959, Pope Pius IX's 1877 tiara, and Pope Pius XI's 1922 tiara.

Pope Pius XI's 1922 crown, in contrast was much less decorated and much more conical in shape.

In 1939, a few weeks after his election to the papacy, Pope Pius XII ordered the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples to relax certain aspects of Clement XI's and Benedict XIV's decrees.

They see this as contradicting the teachings of the Bible, Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XII's Humani Generis and other documents.

They see this orientation as contradicting Pope Pius XI's Quas Primas, Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, and other papal and conciliar documents.

Forty years later, the corporatist tendencies of Rerum Novarum were underscored by Pope Pius XI's May 25, 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (" In the Fortieth Year "), which restated the hostility of Rerum Novarum to both unbridled competition and class struggle.

The bronze epigram commemorated Pope Clement XI's restoration of the sanctuary.

* Mit brennender Sorge Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, 1937 ( English translation ).

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term " subsidiarity " in English follows the " German usage Subsidiarität ( 1809 or earlier in legal use ; 1931 in the context of Catholic social doctrine, in § 80 of Rundschreiben über die gesellschaftliche Ordnung, the German version of Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno ( 1931 ))".

Pius XI was succeeded in 1939 by the aristocratic ultra-insider Curialist, Pius XI's Secretary of State, Pope Pius XII ( 1939 – 1958 ).

His position on Pope Clement XI's 1713 bull Unigenitus was also controversial ; he opposed it, despite papal disapproval, up to 1728 but then abruptly reversed himself shortly before his death.

Indeed, Distributism in Catholic social teaching such as Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum and Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno resembles a Mutualist society based on Cooperatives, while Pope John Paul II's Catechism of the Catholic Church states " She ( the Church ) has ... refused to accept, in the practice of " capitalism ," individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.

During Clement XI's reign as a Pope the famous Illyricum Sacrum was commissioned, and today it is one of the main sources of the field of Albanology, with over 5000 pages divided in several volumes written by Daniele Farlati and Domenico Coletti.

* Gaetano Bisleti, announced Pope Pius XI's election ( 1922 )

On December 13, 1705 Sancha was beatified by Pope Clement XI's papal bull Sollicitudo Pastoralis Offici, along with her sister Theresa of Portugal.

In 1179 the bull Manifestis Probatum accepted the new king as vassal to the Pope exclusively.

In the papal bull Manifestis Probatum, Pope Alexander III acknowledged Afonso as King and Portugal as an independent crown with the right to conquer lands from the Moors.

In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting Afonso V the right to reduce " Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers " to hereditary slavery.

Since Pope Leo XIII issued the bull Apostolicae Curae in 1896, the Catholic Church has insisted that Anglican orders are invalid because of changes in the Anglican ordination rites of the 16th century and divergence in understanding of the theology of priesthood, episcopacy and Eucharist.

In 1589, by the bull Cum pro nostri temporali munere, Pope Sixtus V re-organised the choir of St Peter's, Rome specifically to include castrati.

The procedure initiated by the text of Alexander III, confirmed by a bull of Pope Innocent III in the year 1200, issued on the occasion of the canonization of Saint Cunegunde, led to increasingly elaborate inquiries.

In reply to the Papal bull Exsurge Domine of Pope Leo X ( 1520 ), Martin Luther burned the document and appealed for a general council.

After Pope Pius II, in his bull Execrabilis ( 1460 ) and his reply to the University of Cologne ( 1463 ), set aside the theory of the supremacy of general councils laid down by the Council of Constance

This petition was complied with by Pope Pius IV, January 26, 1564, in the papal bull, Benedictus Deus, which enjoins strict obedience upon all Catholics and forbids, under pain of excommunication, all unauthorized interpretation, reserving this to the Pope alone and threatens the disobedient with " the indignation of Almighty God and of his blessed apostles, Peter and Paul.

The Tridentine Creed was initially contained in the papal bull Iniunctum Nobis, issued by Pope Pius IV on November 13, 1565.

More likely, Pope Sixtus IV granted Cesare a release from the necessity of proving his birth in a papal bull of 1 October 1480.

* 1484 – Pope Innocent VIII issues the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany and leads to one of the most oppressive witch hunts in European history.

* Regimini militantis Ecclesiae was the papal bull promulgated by Pope Paul III on September 27, 1540, which gave a first approval to the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, but limited the number of its members to sixty.

* Universalis Ecclesiae, a bull of Pope Pius IX that recreated the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, which had gone underground with the death of the last Marian bishop in the reign of Elizabeth I

In the belief that the revolt had been successful, Pope Pius V issued a bull in 1570, titled Regnans in Excelsis, which declared " Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime " to be excommunicate and a heretic, releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her.

The inscription declares, citing a 12 November 1548 papal bull of Pope Paul III, that God inflicts " maledictions and excommunications " on all who abandon a child of theirs whom they have the means to rear, and that they cannot be absolved unless they first refund all expenses incurred.

* 1113 – Pope Paschal II issued a bull sanctioning the establishment of the Order of Hospitallers.

German peasants greet the fire and brimstone from a papal bull of Pope Paul III in Martin Luther's 1545 Depictions of the Papacy

The Fourth Council of the Lateran was convoked by Pope Innocent III with the papal bull of April 19, 1213, and the Council gathered at Rome's Lateran Palace beginning November 11, 1215.

Although the belief was widely held since at least Late Antiquity, the doctrine was not formally proclaimed until December 8, 1854, by Pope Pius IX in his papal bull Ineffabilis Deus.

It was not until 1854 that Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Roman Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted between 1851 – 1853, promulgated the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus ( Latin for " Ineffable God "), which defined ex cathedra the dogma of the Immaculate Conception:

* 1521 – Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.

* 1348 – Papal bull of Pope Clement VI protecting the Jews accused to have caused the Black Death.