We will continue reviewing and analyzing the latest comments from Mervyn Maxwell, related to the historical events that occurred before, during, and after the capture of Pope Pius VI in 1798. Maxwell once again asks: “What happened in 1798? On February 15, 1798… citizen Haller, general commissioner… announced to the sovereign pontiff on his throne that his reign had come to an end… there had been many other attempts to frustrate individual popes. Did this attempt have the ‘intention of killing’ the little horn as a whole, that is, ‘Roman Catholicism and all that it implies? Yes, it did. When the French armies were victorious in Italy in 1797, Napoleon received a communication from the French Directory… stating that ‘the Roman religion will be struck down in France; it must be struck down in Rome… there is something more essential to achieve the desired end, and that is to destroy, if possible, the center of unity of the Roman church… and it is up to you… to carry out this purpose if you consider it practicable. One thing is very clear, the French government ordered him to destroy the unity of the church, to assist in his task of destroying the church as a whole. It is this purpose or intention, which marks this captivity of the Pope as unique among all the captivities that the man of sin has suffered. In 1798, the attackers aimed to kill the entire system he represented, thus marking the end of the 1,260-day period.” After the above-mentioned by Maxwell, he concludes: “The year 1798 can be taken as the end date of the 1,260 years, because in that year, a major trend of diminishing the effectiveness of Roman Catholicism on the minds of men in Europe reached its climax with a deliberate and unique attempt to destroy the church by attacking the center of its unity.”
Maxwell’s previous comments present the following inconvenient: The French Directory did not order Napoleon to destroy the church by attacking its center of government, but rather suggested doing so, if he considered it practicable. Napoleon, as a pragmatic man, understood that taking such a measure would provoke more harm than benefit, so he entered into negotiations with representatives of the Pope, requesting 30 million shields in exchange for not militarily occupying Rome. Pius VI accepted the deal, so Napoleon wrote a letter to the Directory, in which he said: “Thirty million shields are worth ten times more to us than Rome, from which we would not have taken even five million. ‘That old machine will fall apart by itself.'” Before February of the year 1798, the French armies had conquered most of Italy and half of the Papal States, but they had not yet received authorization to take Rome, respecting the agreement signed with the Pope the previous year.
The reason that triggered the rupture of the aforementioned agreement, was the dispatch of a French delegation, led by Joseph Bonaparte – Napoleon’s brother—and General Duphot to request compliance with the agreement. This commission was attacked by Pius VI’s soldiers, which led to Duphot’s death. Due to the above, Napoleon appointed General Berthier to take Rome and appoint new secular authorities to take charge of the civil government. The prestigious French historian Maurice La Chatre, born in 1814, details what happened at that time in his voluminous work: History of the Popes and the Kings, volume III, page 292, volume IV, pages 296, 299, 301-303, 306-307, 310, where he generally mentions the following: A – Pius VI plotted a plan to kill the new civil authorities; the plan was discovered, and it was decided to arrest him and remove him from Rome. B – Pius VI internally organized groups of assassins with the purpose of killing French and creoles sympathetic to revolutionary doctrines. Historical are the proclamations with which he called for the massacre of the republicans: “We promise plenary indulgences to the faithful who slaughter more French; we grant complete amnesty to thieves and murderers who redeem their crimes by fighting for religion.” “We order you… to take up arms… and we inform you that, by virtue of our sovereign authority, we grant forty thousand years of indulgence and heavenly beatitude to those who kill even one of our enemies.” C – The detention and exile in 1798 of Pius VI was an extreme measure taken by Napoleon, who pretended to respect the right of worship that the Catholic Church had and the physical integrity and religious status of its highest leader, to whom he offered a salary of two thousand Roman shields to maintain his status as a religious leader.
Maxwell, after concluding that the prophecy of the 1,260 days ended in 1798, goes on to demonstrate that in 538 said prophecy began, for which he formulates some questions and argues the following: “What happened for the prophecy to start in 538? It is accepted that 538 is initially chosen because it has 1,260 years before 1798. It should not be ashamed to admit this procedure, because knowledge should always advance from the known to the unknown… the question that must be answered, considering the clarity of 1798 as an end date, should be: Is 538 an appropriate starting date?” Maxwell acknowledges that in 536 Belisarius entered Rome, writing the following: “Belisarius acting as the general of Justinian’s army… on December 9, 536 entered Rome… if the Goths left Rome in 536: Why not choose that date instead of 538?” The reason, according to Maxwell, is that the Goths returned within a few weeks and besieged Rome, and in 538 they abandoned the siege without achieving their purpose; so he affirms the following: “The Goths’ withdrawal from Rome in the spring of 538 marks their defeat… for this reason… 538 can reasonably be taken as the year in which… the 1,260 years began.
Here we must ask ourselves: Is it reasonable to deliberately dismiss the year 536, in which a larger event occurred, such as the liberation of Rome from the Ostrogoths, rather than a voluntary abandonment of the siege of the city by the same barbarian tribe in 538? The answer is very simple; if we accept 536 as the starting year of the prophecy, as it should be due to its significance, our traditional interpretation of the 1,260 year prophecy collapses because the year 1798 loses its prophetic importance. Another question we must ask ourselves is: Do Maxwell’s claims make sense, which at the end of his article, points out that the 1,260-year prophecy ended in 1798 and that by a posteriori calculation ensures that the prophecy started in 538; and, on the other hand, at the beginning of his article, he indicates that the dates mentioned for the beginning and end of the prophecy are not appropriate; because before 538, the Ostrogoths ruled Italy in the years 540-541, – in which Rome was assaulted and plundered in 540, 546, and 550 -; and before 1798, some Popes were repudiated, persecuted, forced to leave Rome, and imprisoned? To the above, we must add the extreme cases of Popes Stephen VI and Leo V, who were strangled in the dungeon, and John XIV, who was sentenced to die of hunger in prison.
Considering all of the above, we must end by asking ourselves: Did papal supremacy truly exist for 1,260 years, as we have affirmed and taught, or were they merely exaggerated claims of supremacy? Blessings.
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