Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Shakespeare and the Pope

 

Between 1580 and 1613, William Shakespeare wrote 38 plays and 150 poems, many of which are the best that have ever been written in the English language.




The plays are broken down into tragedies, comedy, and history.

If Shakespeare would have written a history of the Catholic church, it would encompass all three of these categories.

https://reference.yourdictionary.com/books-literature/many-plays-shakespeare-write.html

The tragedy part comes into play when you consider the order of papal succession.

Since the beginning of the Catholic church, there have been 266 popes, including Pope Francis. Not all of them died a natural death in office.

Throughout history, there have been a number of Popes who had very short tenures. In fact, a total of 9 Popes reigned for less than 30 days, and 2 Popes reigned only for 33 days.

A total of 10 Popes served 20 years or longer, and the longest serving Pope was Pius IX, who served for more than 31 years. 

Pope John VIII was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 14 December 872 to his death. He is often considered one of the ablest popes of the 9th century. John devoted much of his papacy attempting to halt and reverse the Muslim gains in southern Italy and their march northwards.

John VIII was assassinated in 882 by his own clerics; he was first poisoned, and then clubbed to death.[5] The motives may have been his exhaustion of the papal treasury, his lack of support among the Carolingians, his gestures towards the Byzantines, and his failure to stop the Saracen raids.[15] Without the protection of powerful magnates or the Carolingian emperor, the papacy after John VIII's reign became increasingly subject to the machinations and greedy ambition of the rival clans of the local nobility

https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tTP1TcwMqkqKTZg9OIryC9IVcjKz8hTKMvMzAQAcPMIsw&q=pope+john+viii&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS1017US1017&oq=pope+John+VIII&aqs=chrome.1.69i59j46i20i263i512j0i512l3j0i22i30l2j0i390l3.34658j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Pope Stephen VI was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 22 May 896 to his death. He is best known for instigating the Cadaver Synod, which ultimately led to his downfall and death.

 The circumstances of his election as pope are unclear, but he was sponsored by one of the powerful Roman families, the dukes of Spoleto, that contested the papacy at the time.

Stephen is chiefly remembered in connection with his conduct towards the remains of Pope Formosus. The rotting corpse of Formosus was exhumed and put on trial, before an unwilling synod of the Roman clergy, in the so-called Cadaver Synod in January 897. Pressure from the Spoleto contingent and Stephen's fury with Formosus probably precipitated this extraordinary event. With the corpse propped up on a throne, a deacon was appointed to answer for the deceased pontiff. During the trial, Formosus's corpse was condemned for performing the functions of a bishop when he had been deposed and for receiving the pontificate while he was the bishop of Porto, among other revived charges that had been levelled against him in the strife during the pontificate of John VIII. The corpse was found guilty, stripped of its sacred vestments, deprived of three fingers of its right hand (the blessing fingers), clad in the garb of a layman, and quickly buried; it was then re-exhumed and thrown in the Tiber. All ordinations performed by Formosus were annulled.

The trial excited a tumult. Though the instigators of the deed may actually have been Formosus' Spoletan enemies, notably Guy IV of Spoleto, who had recovered their authority in Rome at the beginning of 897 by renouncing their broader claims in central Italy, the scandal ended in Stephen's imprisonment and his death by strangling that summer.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Stephen_VI

 Pope Leo V was the bishop of Rome and nominal ruler of the Papal States from July 903 to his death in February 904. He was pope immediately before the period known as the Saeculum obscurum, when popes wielded little temporal authority. Leo V was born at a place called Priapi, near Ardea.

During his brief pontificate, Leo granted the canons of Bologna a special bull (epistola tuitionis) where he exempted them from the payment of taxes. However, after a reign of a little over two months, Leo was captured by Christopher, the cardinal-priest of San Lorenzo in Damaso, and thrown into prison. Christopher then had himself elected pope (903–904). Although now considered an antipope, he had until recently been considered a legitimate pope. If Leo never acquiesced to his deposition, then he can be considered legitimate pope until his death in 904.

Leo died shortly after being deposed. He was either murdered on the orders of Christopher, who was in turn executed by Sergius III (904–911) in 904, or, possibly, both were ordered to be killed at the beginning of Sergius’ pontificate, either on the orders of Sergius himself, or by the direction of Sergius' patron, Theophylact I of Tusculum. According to Horace K. Mann, it is more likely that Leo died a natural death in prison or in a monastery

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_V

Pope John X was the bishop of Rome and nominal ruler of the Papal States from March 914 to his death. A candidate of the counts of Tusculum, he attempted to unify Italy under the leadership of Berengar of Friuli, and was instrumental in the defeat of the Saracens at the Battle of Garigliano.

The power struggle between John X and Guy of Tuscany and Marozia came to a conclusion in 928. Guy had secretly collected a body of troops, and with them made an attack on the Lateran Palace. Peter was caught off his guard, having only a few soldiers with him, and was cut to pieces before his brother's eyes. John was thrown into a dungeon, where he remained until he died. There are two variant traditions surrounding his death; the first has it that he was smothered to death in the dungeon within a couple of months of his deposition. Another has it he died sometime in 929 without violence, but through a combination of the conditions of his incarceration and depression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_X

Pope Benedict VI was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 19 January 973 to his death in 974.

Otto I died soon after Benedict VI's election in 973, and with the accession of Otto II, troubles with the nobility emerged in Germany. With the new emperor so distracted, a faction of the Roman nobility opposed to the interference of the Ottonian emperors in Roman affairs, took advantage of the opportunity to move against Benedict VI. Led by Crescentius the Elder and Cardinal-Deacon Franco Ferrucci, who had been the preferred candidate of the anti-Ottonian faction, Benedict was taken in June 974, and imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo, at that time a stronghold of the Crescentii. Ferrucci was then proclaimed as the new pope, taking the name Boniface VII.

Hearing of the overthrow of Benedict VI, Otto II sent an imperial representative, Count Sicco, to demand his release. Unwilling to step down, Boniface ordered a priest named Stephen to murder Benedict whilst he was in prison, strangling him to death. Boniface VII is today considered an antipope, with Benedict VII as the legitimate successor of Benedict VI.

 Pope John XIV, born Pietro Canepanova, was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from November 983 until his death

 Pope Benedict VII died in 983. Empresses Adelaide and Theophanu, Otto II's mother and wife respectively, wished to enthrone Majolus of Cluny as the new pope, but he refused, and Pietro Canepanova was chosen instead. Canepanova took the papal name John XIV to avoid being linked to Saint Peter.

Otto II died shortly after his election, his heir Otto III, being only 3 years old and unable to protect John's position. Antipope Boniface VII, on the strength of the popular feeling against the new pope, returned from Constantinople and placed John XIV in prison in the Castel Sant'Angelo, where he died either from starvation or poison.

The comedy part of papal succession when you consider the times when there was more than 1 pope during a given time period, essentially a religious version of Abbot and Costello’s “who’s on first?”.

 

Since Popes generally are older when they are elected, it is not unusual for a Pope to die in office. As a result, it is common for 2 different people to serve as a pope in a given year. There have also been 12 times when there were THREE different Popes in one year, and there is one year (1276) when there were FOUR different people to serve as the Pope in a given year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_three_popes 

There was also a period of time (1378 – 1417) when three popes served AT THE SAME TIME. Pope Clement was the Pope of Avignon (France), Urban was the Pope of Rome, and Alexander was the Pope of Pisa.

I went to a Catholic grade school and a Catholic high school, but never learned about any of the scandals that existed with the church over the years.

You could probably write a book about the Crusades (and people have). Although many people consider them to be a worth cause, the truth is that they did a lot of harm, especially if you consider that 7 of the 39 crusades were conducted against fellow Christians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades

Steve Berry is one of my favorite novelists.

He has more than 25 million books in print, translated into over forty languages. With his wife Elizabeth, he operates History Matters, an organization dedicated to historical preservation. He serves as an emeritus member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board and was a founding member of International Thriller Writers. His lates book, “The Omega Factor” alerted me to the fact that papal succession can sometimes be a very messy affair.

 The Catholic church, of course, has 2000 years of history (the third type of play written by Shakespeare). I don’t know if I would say that Steve Berry is a better writer than Shakespeare, but he is definitely a master at making history come alive,




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