A Crippled Prophecy

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 33, 13 August 1903, Page 1

A Crippled Prophecy

Congreve wrote in a well-known passage in his ' Mourning Bride ' :— ' I've read that things inanimate have moved, And, as with living souls, have been inform'd, By magic numbers and persuasive sound.' It is a matter of some surprise to us that our secular contemporaries have not long ago cast the horoscope of the new Pope and determined the duration of his reign by the aid of the magic-number formulae supplied by a Cornish non-Catholic clergyman, the Rev. Baring Gould, in his book of ' Curious Myths.' ' There is a singular rule,' says his ' Reverence, < which, has been supposed to, determine the length of the reigning Pope's life in the earlier half of a century. Add his number to that of his predecessor, to that add ten, and the refeult gives the year of his death.' And then he proceeds to illustrate the ' singular rule ' by a series of concrete instances : Pius VII. succeeded Pius VI. ; six and seven make thirteen ; add ten ; the sum is twenty-three ; and Pius VII. died in 1823. Leo XII. succeeded Pius VII ; twelve and seven make nineteen ; add ten ; the sum is twenty-nine ; and Leo XII. died in 1829. Pius VIII. succeeded Leo XII ; and eight and twelve and ten make thirty ; and Pius VIII. died in 1830.

However, the best-laid calculations based on magic numbers, like the best-laid schemes o1o 1 mice an' men, gang aft a-gley. Gregory XVI., who followed Pius VIII., ought to have been ' fatally dead 'in 1834. But his thread of life spun out till 1846. Matters look still worse for Baring Gould's ' singular rule ' in the « earlier half r Vtof the* eighteenth century,. Iti fails to scord even once. Clement XI., who succeeded Innocent XII., ought to have lived till 1733. As a matter of fact, he passed beyong the veil in 1721. Innocent XIII. came next in order. His span of life ought, by virtue of the ' singular rule,' to have endured till 1734. It was cut short ten years earlier, in 1724. Benedict XIII. t who followed him, died in 1730, instead of 1736 ; and his

next successor, Clement XII., who ought to have passed to the majority in 1735, endured till 1740. The seventeenth, sixteenth, fifteenth, fourteenth, thirteenth, twelfth, eleventh, and tenth centuries do not furnish among them a solitary instance of the verification of this • singular rule ' for « determining the length of the reigning Pope's life in the earlier half of a century.' This magic formula is as good— and as bad— as a thousand other gamblers' and fortune-tellers' ' systems ' ; but it is scarcely worth while to pursue it farther Lack into the mists of antiquity.