Scipione Cardinal Rebiba

[Lil Red]

+J.M.J.+
how come many bishops can only trace their 'lineage' back to [url="http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/brebi.html"]Scipione Cardinal Rebiba[/url] and no further back?

[Maggyie]

From my experience in the somewhat related field of genealogy, I am guessing there was some kind of fire, flood or war that destroyed the records. In the U.S. this happens a lot to families with roots in the South, many many courthouses were burned to the ground during the Civil War and that's usually the only place information would be... if it's not there it's no longer in existence. And so their trail has to end

[Ziggamafu]

That's why the succession is most necessarily dependent on and tied to communion with Peter's chair; the one office that can indeed be traced all the way back to an apostle.

Edited February 16, 2009 by Ziggamafu

[CatholicCid]

If I recall, around 90% of the current Bishops can. Why? I've heard several reasons, including that up until that time, records were not the most important things and/or were destroyed due to a variety of reasons (fire, natural disaster, ect...)

The best that I've heard is that the Cardinal ordained to the Bishopric the Bishop who ordained the future Pope Benedict XIII to the Bishopric. Pope Benedict XIII was very involved in the ordination of the Bishops during his pontificate, ordaining over 100 prominent Bishops. These Bishops, of course, ordained other Bishops, ect... who can all be traced back to Pope Benedict XIII and then to Cardinal Rebiba.


Also, quick such found the original item I read on this - [url="http://mysite.verizon.net/res7gdmc/aposccs/"]http://mysite.verizon.net/res7gdmc/aposccs/[/url]

Edited February 16, 2009 by CatholicCid

[Lil Red]

+J.M.J.+
thanks for the link!

[CatherineM]

I've wondered about the same thing since I saw one of my former Archbishop's "genealogy" paperwork. I wondered if perhaps there was a time when all bishops went to Rome to become bishops, or at least the ones from prominent sees. It's just like my genealogy has been made much easier because my family had land and titles, and that produces a paper trail. If things were pretty small, and everyone knew who someone was descended from, there was no need for paper in the beginning. Perhaps during the time of this Cardinal, there were many going around being ordained by impostors or something, so that they made people come to Rome to make sure they were legitimate. I agree though that lots of paperwork may have been lost, especially during the Reformation.

[Aloysius]

Pope Benedict XIII traced his lineage to Cardinal Rebiba, and in his reign he ordained an overflow of bishops who themselves ordained the rest of the sees, thus killing off most other lines of apostolic succession. It is believed that Cardinal Rebiba was himself ordained by Giovanni Pietro Carafa, ie, Pope Paul IV, but there are no substantial documents.

of course, the thing about the Roman line of papal succession is that it is not a clear-cut line of apostolic succession... because one pope was not necessarily ordained by the last pope; but they all come out of the same Roman lines in a sense so if Cardinal Rebiba was ordained by Paul IV, we almost have a direct line for all the bishops to Peter himself.

That's not the way Apostolic lineage works, however; namely because we cannot document Paul IV's ordination of Rebiba, and of course the issue of popes not each being in a line by which they laid on hands to the suceding popes necessarily... though it is likely that if all the documentation were available the line of the papacy really could establish direct laying on of hands from pope to pope (ie the pope ordained the bishop who ordained the bishop who became the next pope, stuff like that is likely a regular historical occurence)