Sic Semper Tyrannis!

Sic Semper Tyrannis!

Why would anyone wear the damning phrase, Sic Semper Tyrannis as a badge of honour.  It is a Latin motto meaning “thus always to tyrants.” In contemporary language, it means tyrannical leaders will inevitably be overthrown.  Parlance or not, it is a phrase that perfectly fits the Papal States (756-1870).   A tyrannical theocracy that lasted for over 1,100 years.  Not inherited by legal means, but through forgery, and deceit.  A motto that actually came true in 1870, with the annexation of the Papal States into the Kingdom of Italy.  Leaving the last Pope-King Pius IX (1846-78) in a self-imposed exile within the Vatican.  In 1870, the people, who had been kept in perpetual serfdom since the year 756, saw freedom from a tyrannical state of despotic pope-kings for the first time.  Even the rest of Europe had street lighting, the peasants of the Papal States were denied such amenities to assist with their drudgery of life.  Street lighting was banned in the Papal States in 1831 by Pope Gregory XVI. The church argued that God had established the natural distinction between night and day, and putting lights up after sundown went against God’s law.  The Vatican City has installed a new LED lighting system in the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica in 2018. This system is environmentally friendly and cost-efficient, reducing energy costs by 90%.  They must have forgotten God’s law?

Malachi Brendan Martin S.J.(1921-99), an Irish/American Catholic scholar, and professor of Palaeontology at the Vatican’s Pontifical Biblical Institute.  When writing about the end of the Papal States (754/6-1870), and the last Pope-king, Pius IX (reign 1846-78), and the last (if it has really ended?) of the Roman Inquisition (1823-46) wrote: … Pius was not yet a cardinal on the death of Pius VI.  But he remembers the three popes after Pius VII (Leo XII, Pius VIII, and Gregory XVI); they had done the damage.  The legacy of Pius VII was a terrible one: oppression, surveillance, a dictatorship.  Between 1823 (death of Pius VII) and 1846 (when Pius IX was elected), almost 200,000 citizens of the papal states were severely punished (death, life imprisonment, exile, galleys) for political offences; another 1.5 million were subjected to constant police surveillance and harassment.  There was a gallows permanently in the square of every town and city and village.  Railways, meetings of more than three people, and all newspapers were forbidden.  All books were censored.  A special tribunal sat permanently in each place to try, condemn, and execute the accused.  All trials were conducted in Latin.  Ninety-nine per cent of the accused did not understand the accusations against them.  Every pope tore up the stream of petitions that came asking for Justice, for the franchise, for the reform of the police and prison system.  When revolts occurred in Bologna, in the Romagna, and elsewhere, they were put down with wholesale executions, sentences to lifelong hard labour in the state penitentiary, to exile and torture.  Austrian troops were always being called in to suppress the revolts….[Malachi Martin (1981), Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, p.254, Secker & Warburg, London].   Countless generations suffered under the illegal papal theocracy. What do you say?
Jeanne, J.E. pp. Jero Jones.
R&I ~ MJM

Jero Jones

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