I’m always leery of people who refer to writers as “prophetic.” For example, Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” which is indeed a great poem by perhaps the most widely-read poet of the 20th century, is often called a “prophecy.” But of what? I mean to say, if you predict something bad or evil is going to happen in the future, there is no doubt that something bad or evil (eventually) will. And it always does. However beautifully written and moving this poem is, it is also open to all sorts of interpretations.

But the novel Hadrian the Seventh by Fr. (short for Frederick, not “Father”) Rolfe, Baron Corvo, published in 1904, actually predicted—if not prophesied—many of the elements that have come to mark the papacy in the past century.

If you haven’t heard of—let alone read—the novel, you are not alone. Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe (1860-1913), self-styled as “Baron Corvo,” toiled in obscurity his entire adult life, never achieving fame or fortune. In fact, he lived and died in penury. A British convert to Catholicism, he was dismissed from two seminaries for the simple reason that his superiors felt he did not have a vocation to the priesthood. A stint as a painter did not pan out, either. Nor did his “invention” of underwater color photography. None of his books earned him any royalties in his lifetime.

And yet his best-known novel, Hadrian the Seventh, has never been out of print and is now considered a classic of its kind. It was recently reissued by New York Review Books with a new Introduction by novelist Alexander Theroux. It is truly sui generis, a one of a kind book. Part of its appeal is that, in its turn-of-the-century view of Catholicism, the author correctly called a lot of what went on to occur in Rome long after his untimely and sudden death in Venice.

Part of Hadrian the Seventh‘s appeal is that, in its turn-of-the-century view of Catholicism, the author correctly called a lot of what went on to occur in Rome long after his untimely and sudden death in Venice.Tweet This

The first part Rolfe (pronounced “Roaf”) got right was that there would be a non-Italian pope. Since there hasn’t been an Italian pope in the past forty years, this seems almost forgettable. But at the time of its writing (1900-1903), all of the popes had been Italian for nearly a half a millennium. Rolfe’s election of the British George Arthur Rose, who is merely a fictionalized version of the author, was 78 years ahead of its time. True, there hasn’t been a British pope since Hadrian IV (1154-1159)—and the next non-Italian pope was the Polish pontiff St. John Paul II in 1978—but still, this was almost a shocking starting point for a novel at the time; the idea of a pope who was not Italian was almost unthinkable.

The next part of papal-history-to-come the writer guessed correctly was that a pope would take a totally different name. Until St. John XXIII in 1958, popes had been named Pius, Gregory, Benedict, Clement, or Leo stretching all the way back to Pope Innocent XIII in 1721. In the novel, when George Arthur Rose takes the name of Hadrian VII, he remonstrates with the Cardinal Dean who implores him to take a name like “Leo, or Pius, or Gregory, as is the modern manner?” No matter. Rose—that is, Hadrian—stays with his new style, as would St. John, St. Paul VI, and Blessed John Paul I.

One of the fictive Pope Hadrian’s first acts as pope is to stop being “a prisoner of the Vatican” by having his papal window unbricked so that he may impart his Urbi et Orbi blessing. In real life, this did not occur until 1929—or about 30 years after Rolfe started writing the novel—when Pope Pius XI agreed to the Lateran Treaty with Italy. Very prescient on Rolfe’s part, this.

As a sort of adjunct to this, Pope Hadrian next formally renounces, in writing, all claim to temporal sovereignty. Although the Papal States had ceased to be the pope’s property and were absorbed into the newly-minted and unified Italy in 1870, this led, as mentioned above, to the pope being a “prisoner of the Vatican” and “The Roman Question,” as it came to be called. This would not be solved until the conclusion of the aforementioned Lateran Treaty. 

However, it’s hard for any ruling class to give up part of its raison d’être, and everyone from Blessed Pius IX to Pius XI seemed—rightly—to resent having their land stolen from under them. In the words of historian Sir Kenneth Clark, writing in 1970, “we now consider the pope a purely ‘religious’ leader—but that’s a recent innovation.” Still, Rolfe saw this coming before it ever happened.

The make-believe pope’s first encyclical in the novel is titled “Epistle to All Christians.” This presaged, by 60 years, Pope St. John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris encyclical, which was addressed “To Our Venerable Brethren the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and all other Local Ordinaries who are at Peace and in Communion with the Apostolic See, and to the Clergy and Faithful of the entire Catholic World, and to all Men of Good Will.” The novelty in the novel is that the Church, via the pen of the pope, is not merely addressing Catholics to admonish them or heretics to bring them back into the fold; she is speaking to all Christian denominations. 

Since Pope Hadrian is no longer a prisoner of the Vatican, he sees no reason why he should not stroll the streets of Rome, not just the papal environs, and go out to meet the faithful. While popes did leave the Vatican on occasion, it wasn’t until St. John XXIII, whom one reporter derisively called “Johnnie Walker,” that the popes began mixing with the hoi polloi. Of course, St. Paul VI would later famously fly to the U.N. and the Holy Land, and St. John Paul II went out to meet the world, literally. But at the time of this novel’s publication, a pope mingling with Romans regularly was unheard of.

Unfortunately—and here I suppose I am obliged to call out “Spoiler Alert!”—Hadrian VII is assassinated by a couple of radical Marxist-Socialists who felt he was a danger to society. This is startling, since Mehmet Ali Ağca’s assassination attempt of St. John Paul II was probably ordered either by the KGB or possibly the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Thus, the two leading candidates for John Paul the Great’s foiled killing lead back to Marxist-Socialists, just like in Hadrian the Seventh. 

The novel ends with the simple words: “Pray for his soul. He was so tired.” Of all the parallels and cognates that the novel has with the modern papacy, this is perhaps the most trenchant and heartfelt. One immediately thinks of the exhausted Pope Benedict XVI, who simply could not physically carry on as pope. Or St. John Paul II, at the window, silently imparting his final benediction and valediction after nearly 30 years of kenosis. Or St. Paul VI’s quick demise after the kidnapping and murder of his dear friend the Italian politician Aldo Moro at the hands of the Brigate Rossi (“The Red Brigade”) in 1978.

The novel ends with the simple words: “Pray for his soul. He was so tired.”Tweet This

Rolfe wrote several other novels, but none have the sheer clear-sightedness of what the future, or at the very least the papacy, would look like in the 20th century. While it is not exactly “great literature,” it is certainly enjoyable—if not prophetic—reading.