POPE OF THE DAY!

You asked for it, and here it is. Your freshly-baked (half-baked) Pope of the Day. Today we mix it up a little bit and go with...

...an ANTIPOPE! Settle in, this one takes some introduction.

That's right, cognoscenti, the Pope of the Day is in fact the (Anti)Pope of the Day, Benedict XIII. Now this is where it gets confusing. There was, later on, an actual legit B13 (1724-1730). But he's obviously not as interesting:

Honest-to-goodness terracotta B13 with a very fetching terracotta camauro.

Nope, we're sticking with Anti-B13, an Aragonese fellow born Pedro de Luna, a good solid Avignon pope.

Since the prudent decision, in March of 1309, of Clement V to remain absent from a very nasty Italy, the popes had been in Avignon. For some time it was nothing more than a temporary retreat, a convenient alternative location removed from the chaotic politics and urban violence in Rome. But in April of 1328, Avignon became a refuge: uppity Holy Roman Emperor Lewis of Bavaria declared Pope John XXII a heretic and appointed his own candidate in Rome, a certain Fratricello named Pietro Rainalducci, to be (Anti)Pope Nicholas V.*

Long story short? Two popes. Major problem, especially since in 1302 Boniface VIII had issued Unam Sanctam, a bull declaring the infallibility of the papacy. Whoops.

Not sufficiently papal.

So, whatever, now there were two popes. Fortunately, the antipope realized he was in a bad situation and renounced his claim in 1320. At Avignon. Where the real pope still was. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that things were a bit of a mess as far as the papacy was concerned for a LONG TIME - i.e., until our story begins, in 1377.

In 1377, Pope Gregory IX decided that if he wanted to be pope of anything more than few square feet of pretty Provençal soil, he'd better haul his sweet papal ass back to Italy. This, incidentally, is an exact quote from St. Catherine of Siena, who told him what was what. Her head is in a box, you can see it in Siena. But I digress.

It's a nice box.

Anyway, Catherine convinced Gregory to go back to Rome and sort things out with the feuding Italian city-states (for some context: the Black Death had ravaged Italy some fifteen years previously, and Boccaccio died two years before Gregory made it back. Petrarch was still going strong, though). Unfortunately, three months after he got to Rome, Gregory very unsportingly died, in March of 1378.

The conclave convened in Rome for the first time since 1303 (the rules said you had to convene where the Pope died, and since everyone was at Club Med Avignon, guess what, conclaves met in Sunny France. Naturally, this had given French cardinals a great advantage over their (mostly Italian) colleagues, and there had been a long string of French popes. The Italian people were (1) thrilled to have the conclave back in Rome, and (2) angry as hell that they hadn't had a pope in nearly a century. During April of 1378, there was tremendous mob presence in Rome as Italians pushed, hard, for an Italian pope. The conclave, rightly fearful about what delaying any longer than absolutely necessary might mean for their personal safety, quickly elected one Bartolommeo Prignano as Pope Urban VI.

Well, that was a mistake. Urban VI turned out to be an asshat of the first degree and offended nearly everyone in no time flat. Thirteen French cardinals stroked their mustaches, donned their berets and striped cassocks, and said, "Zis election, she is no good! We go back to la belle France! Au revoir, you reediculous Italians!" They left.

When they got back to Avignon, they realized it was a bit crap hanging around a papal palace without a pope in it, so they promptly elected one, citing the pressure of the Roman mob and arguing that the April elections were null and void. Their candidate was promptly endorsed by Charles V of France, who naturally hated the Italians too. You can see how this is going to go.

Well, with one thing and another, there were two popes at any given time until 1394. In December of that year, the Avignon faction elected Aragonese yahoo Pedro de Luna to the Holy See, as (Anti)Pope Benedict XIII. You thought we had forgotten about him. You thought we had wandered off down the primrose path. We did not forget. We have not wandered.

Benedict XIII was elected mainly on the strength of his major platform - reconciliation with Rome and the end of the schism. One pope was obviously better than two, and hey, Benedict said, if I have to give it up, well, that's how the biscotti crumbles. Only it turned out that he was not so committed to this ideal as he had been previous to his election to the (anti)pontificate.

By 1398, everyone had pretty much had it with B13. His repeated insistences that he would end the schism were not taken seriously by anyone, and finally even his staunchest ally, Charles VI, the king of France, abandoned him. When Charles pulled out the rug, the curia quickly saw which way the wind was blowing and packed up. Before you could say "Alitalia," they were back in Rome.

Only five cardinals remained in Avignon, and B13 did what any sensible right-thinking (anti)pope would do - he locked himself in his palace with the domestic help and 200 Catalan soldiers and refused to acknowledge that his (anti)papacy was drawing to a very quick close.

"Look," said Charles VI, "it's over. Just admit it, so we can all move on."

"La la la la la la I can't HEAR you," replied Benedict, with his fingers firmly plugging his (anti)papal ears.

For the next year, Charles VI laid seige to the papal palace at Avignon. But with not much to do besides commission works of art and eat brioche, there had been a lot of improvements in the fortifications during the Avignon papacies and Charles in fact made virtually no progress.

"Fine," he said in 1399. "I'll tell you what. You agree that you're under house arrest and that you can't leave unless I say, so I can go home."

"La la la la la la la la you're not the BOSS of me," said Benedict, adding that if he was under house arrest could someone please bring him in a sandwich as there had been no proper sandwiches for the past year.

But in 1403, Benedict escaped from the papal palace and ran about Provence, Languedoc, and Rousillon, still insisting that he was pope. Despite the fact that everyone had really moved on by this point and had stopped paying any attention to Benedict years ago.

"I'm SUPREME PONTIFF!" he would yell bad-temperedly, stamping his red-shod feet in the barnyard of whatever small farm he'd stayed the night in.

This sort of foolishness continued until 1415, when the Council of Constance met. Item number one? Get rid of all the extra popes hanging about. In a positive fit of depositions, the Council deposed John XXIII (there had, indeed, been two (anti)popes since Benedict, but he refused to acknowledge them, either - fairly typical behavior out of him, really), and deposed Benedict just for good measure. Again.

But of course, it didn't stick. And even though ecclesiastical history moved on into the fifteenth century with little disturbance, Benedict himself retired - as (anti)pope, mind you - to a rocky little island off the Catalan coast. He remained there until his death in 1422, still loudly insisting to anyone who would listen that he was (Anti)Pope. Of course, by this point it was mostly just....

*crickets*

*crickets*

*crickets*

Pedro de Luna's last stop as (anti)pope

*If you're missing some of this, don't worry about it. The good part is coming. Want to learn about the Fratricelli? Well, if you do, you're a big fat heretic. Google it yourself, unbeliever.