Alexander Street: Religion

Lifting their minds from the beef-pott

Aldhelm was a 7th century English ecclesiastic who knew how to get his congregation's attention.  Maybe he's been reincarnated as the founder of one of those megachurches. 

from The life of sainct Aldelme Bishop of Sherburne and confessor, of the holy order of Sainct Benedict, as appearing in The Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation.

And surely S. ALDELME was the first of our countreymen that writt verses in Latine, as he himself doth testify in these two.

Primus ego in patriam mecum, modo vita supersit Aonio rediens, de ducam vertice Musas

First to my Countrey from the Roman hill

Ile bring, if life me last, the Muses quill.

childish sports and pasttimes

from the Life of Sainct Cuthbert, Bishop, and confessor monk of the holy
order of S. Benedict, as appearing in the Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation.

For, until the age of eight years, he was only delighted in all manner of
childish sports, & pastimes which that age is wont to follow, ever desiring
to be with the first at boyish meetings, and places of gaming.

Papasellus

I noticed that the History blog here at Alexander Street Press put up some political cartoons.  I noticed because they were strutting around the office bragging about it for weeks afterward.  Well, now it's time to show them that we have political cartoons too, except that ours are hundreds of years old and require paragraphs of explanation.  That'll show 'em.

What we have here is what you'd call an allegorical representation of the Catholic Church.  I don't know who drew it, but it's found in Martin Luther's Miscellaneous Writings, 1523-1524.

See the flag with the crossed keys in the top left corner?  That's how you know this is about the Papacy.  Anyway, a helpful guide to the puzzling symbolism is included.  I summarize:

• The head is a donkey's because it represents the Pope, who is head of the church.  The implication is clear.
• "The right hand is similar to an elephant's foot, signifying the Pope's spiritual authority, with which he overpowers and destroys all terrified and fragile souls."
• "The left hand is a man's, which signifies the civil power of the Pope, even though Christ clearly forbade this."  This is explained as having something to do with the Devil.  I don't know if there's a theological equivalent of Godwin's Law, but I'm guessing this would be it.
• "The right foot is a cow's hoof, which signifies the ministers of the spiritual authority, who like pallbearers support and sustain the papal regime in the oppression of souls."  Why a cow?  He doesn't say.
  
• "The left foot is similar to a griffin's which signifies the ministers with civil power." "For just as griffins grab what they want with their claws and don't easily give up, so do these papal cronies seize the goods of all Europe with their canonical talons."  Leading cryptozoologists inform me that that's exactly what griffins do, so the story checks out.
• "The stomach and chest are a woman's, signifying the body of the Pope, i.e., the cardinals, bishops, priests, monks, and other holy men, martyrs, and that type similar to pimps and a well-stuffed herd of Epicurean pigs . . ." After this is gets pretty nasty.  I'm not even going to leave it in Latin.  Suffice it to say that the author believes that the behavior of the clergy is wanting.
• "The fish scales that cover the arms, legs and neck . . . represent princes and lords.  For in Scripture the sea signifies the world, and fish represent worldly men, just as Christ himself represented St. Peter with a net in Matthew 4 when he said: 'I will make you fishers of men.'"  We're almost done.  Just a couple more to go.
• "The old man's head by the hip signifies the decline, the old age, and the death of the Pope's reign."  This is cheating, if you ask me.  Up until this point, the Popemonster has at least had only body parts that real people have.  Giving it a head on its hip is making it hard for me to suspend my disbelief.
• "The dragon looking out from the rear end of the monster, threatening a torrent of flame from its open maw, represents the threats, insults and horrible bulls as well as the hateful writings which the Pope along with his cronies vomits over the whole world."  This isn't realistic either, but it's cool enough that I don't mind.

It's not exactly thoughtful discourse.  But thoughtful discourse lends itself neither to hilarious caricatures nor to punchlines.

Cadaver Synod

The late 9^th and early 10^th centuries were tough times for the Papacy. The office was a tool in the Machiavellian arsenals of various political leaders, and the so-called “Pornocracy” saw . . . wait, this is getting us away from the point here: corpse on trial!

In 891, the Holy See was entrusted to one Formosus. The fact that his name means “Good-Looking” puts him on my very select list of Awesomely-Named Popes, along with Sixtus V and Lando. Formosus’ papacy isn’t as interesting as his post-papal career, which coincided with his post-being alive career. Stephen VI, who took the job after a brief reign by a non-entity named Boniface, thought some things needed to be set straight, specifically the fact that Formosus was bishop of Portus at the time of his election, which should have disqualified him from another bishop job. I quote Caesar Baronius quoting Luitprand of Cremona (the translation is mine and terrible):

With this decided, [Stephen], so impious and so ignorant of holy doctrine, decided to drag Formosus from his tomb and to set him up on the Papal seat dressed in his priestly vestments. And to him he said: ‘When you were Bishop of Portus, why did you with ambitions spirit usurp the universal Roman See?’ This done, [Formosus] was straightway stripped of his sacred vestments, and three fingers, with which it was his custom to bless, were cut off. They threw him headlong into the Tiber, and all those whom he ordained were relegated to their previous positions.

The world had to wait until 1870 for a heavy metal album cover-worthy depiction of the Cadaver Synod, when Jean-Paul Laurens obliged.

Formosus’ defense is not recorded here, although it is said in other sources that when Stephen asked his question, a young cleric kneeling behind Formosus’ seat responded, “because I was evil.” That’s the kind of thing that would get a conviction overturned on appeal these days, and that’s more or less what happened with Formosus. A monk fished his body out of the Tiber, and he was buried again in St. Peter’s. At some point the church decided that Formosus was OK, and now Stephen’s the bad guy. Which just goes to show you.

Pope Joan

While working on Caesar Baronius' Annales Ecclesiastici (soon to be added to the Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation), I was surprised to find mention of Pope Joan.  Joan was, according to legend, a woman who managed to hide her sex so effectively that she got herself elected Pope in the ninth century.  The story, which arose some 150 years after Joan was installed, gave rise to a plethora of related myths.  For example, before assuming the throne, a new pope would have to submit to a careful inspection, which if successful was greeted with a cry of "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes!"

Baronius spends a good three-plus pages in his entry for AD 853 refuting this "inanis fabula," as he calls it. The blame is laid the at the feat of an ecclesiastical historian named Marianus Scotus (the first guy here), "asserts most falsely and indeed most stupidly that after the death of Pope Leo a woman called Joan [Ioanna] was elected, who sat for two years, five months, and four days."  Boronius goes on to trace the story's development through the writings of other malicious or merely credulous chroniclers while proclaiming its impossibility.

The story was so popular it even made it onto a Tarot card.

But everyone loves a good story, especially one this juicy (in some versions Joan gets pregnant while in office), and it needed debunking, as it was apparently widely believed for centuries.  We could be seeing a revival of the saga of Pope Joan even now: they're making a movie about it in Austria, which is itself a remake of a quarter-century old Finnish production.