Bad Bishops have been blasted throughout Christian history. St. John Chrysostom is supposed to have said, “The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops” (though he never used the precise phrase). In the Middle Ages in Germany near Bingen am Rhein, a legend arose about Bishop Hatto. Having summoned the poor to buy bread from him at prohibitive prices, he instead locked them in a barn, informed them they would die like rats, and set the barn alight. Hatto awoke in the night to find his portrait devoured by rodents, upon which a servant informed him a great mischief of mice was fast on the way to the palace. In terror Hatto saddled his steed, rode to the river, boarded a boat, and rowed to a redoubt, a stone tower. The rats remained undeterred. They devoured the Bishop’s horse, swam the river, besieged the tower, gnawed through doors and windows, and gorged themselves on the Bishop’s corpulent flesh. To this day the tower is thus called the Mäuseturm, the Mouse Tower, in memory of the demise of a most wicked bishop.
Bishop Hatto, chroniclers and historians agree, was falsely maligned. But the legend reflects medieval discontent with the episcopacy. In our own times, the misjudgment and malfeasance of many bishops is not legendary but all too real. Much criticism is justified; the pedophilia and ephebophilia scandals of the last decade are the obvious example here. Some is not, as when critics excoriate Cardinal Dolan for inviting both presidential candidates to the Al Smith dinner.
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