# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1861_S268
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

268 That the Pope at Rome is the Antichrist.

You falsely claim the title of Father; in reality you show yourself like Jupiter. While you are the servant of all servants, you claim to be the lord of all lords," etc. At the Synod of Rheims (991) the bishop Arnulf of Orléans said: "What do you think, honored fathers, who it is that sits there on the high throne and gleams with purple and golden robes? If he has no love and is puffed up and proud only through knowledge, then he is the Antichrist, who sits in the temple of God and shows himself as though he were God." In the year 1010 Aretas writes on the Apocalypse: "the Antichrist appeared after the fall of Constantine, and Babylon is the name of the place over which the man of sin rules." Concerning the age of Gregory VII, Aventinus (Annals, book V) says that all pious and simple hearts confessed that the reign of the Antichrist had begun; and of the same period Petrus Asilus (De tyrannide pontificum, cap. 3, p. 67) says: "Around the time of Hildebrand, who was called Gregory VII, the bishop of Florence (episcopus Florentinus, alias Fluentinus) preached publicly that the Antichrist had been born. For when Paschal II, Gregory's successor, raged against the church of Ravenna, that bishop taught publicly that the Antichrist had appeared." Against this same Paschal II the church of Liège also rose up in righteous indignation over the wars between Henry IV and V (1100); it called Rome Babylon and held that Peter had given this name in a prophetic spirit, because the church was to be thrown into confusion by Roman storms. It was also loudly complained that the Pope was waging and stirring up war against the church of Christ. Around 1110 there lived Honorius of Autun, who says, among other things: "Turn your eye upon the citizens of Babylon — — behold, in their midst stands the throne of the beast!" Similarly also St. Bernard (1130), concerning Pope Anacletus (Epistle 125): "The apocalyptic beast, to which is given a mouth full of blasphemies and the power to wage war against the saints, occupies the chair of Peter as a lion devours its prey." Around 1157 John of Chartres published two treatises, "Objurgatorium Cleri" and "Polycraticus," in which he calls the Pope Antichrist and Rome the Babylonian whore. "In Rome sit the scribes and Pharisees, and lay unbearable burdens on people's shoulders. The high priest is a burden to all, indeed unbearable, and his legates rage as though Satan had gone out from the presence of God to scourge the church." The abbot Joachim of Calabria (around 1200) writes to King Richard of England: "the Antichrist has arisen, and indeed he is at Rome, sits in the church, and exalts himself above everything." There also existed from him prophetic paintings on the Apocalypse with Italian explanations, full of accusations against the Pope and the clergy. At the Synod of Regensburg (1240) Eberhard of Salzburg said: "The Babylonian priests wish to rule alone! — — The hunger for money, the thirst for honor, is insatiable. The servant of all servants wishes to be the lord of all lords,