Stupid Question ™
Feb. 28, 2005
By John Ruch
© 2005
Q: How is a new pope selected?
—Anonymous, from the Internet
A: Not to be pessimistic about Pope John Paul II, but…well, you’re not asking to be optimistic, are you?
Fittingly, the current pope himself made the most recent changes to an electoral system that has been regularly tweaked to avoid the riots and antipopes that once plagued the choosing of the peaceful pastor of the God of love.
The history of selecting popes is long, colorful and wildly brutal, as amusingly described in Catholic almanacs and encyclopedias.
At first, choosing a guy who was basically just the archbishop of Rome was a relatively casual affair. But then the whole Christianity thing really took off, and next thing you know—riots like there should have been over the 2000 U.S. election.
The Roman emperors, being law-and-order types, said enough of that, and stepped in to start running—not to mention fixing—the elections. No more riots, but a few centuries of Machiavellian politics, assassinations and general unholiness (involving other countries and Italian families, too).
Eventually, the church got sick of all that and decided that only cardinals would choose the new pope. A further tweak was requiring a two-thirds majority vote. Next thing you know—more riots!
Cardinals have to choose among themselves who gets the plum pope-for-life job. One can only imagine the horrific jockeying and office politics involved.
Actually, one doesn’t have to imagine. Just take my personal favorite, the election following the 1268 death of Pope Clement IV. The cardinals jerked around for three years, arguing about who would get the job, and even then didn’t decide until, in the words of Our Sunday Voice’s Catholic Almanac, “the citizens of the city [Viterbo, Italy] reduced them to bread and water and tore the roof off the palace in which they were residing.”
Finally, the church came up with the still-current practice of the Conclave. I.e., the cardinals are locked into the Sistine Chapel and not allowed to come out until they’ve made up their minds. Unsurprisingly, solitary confinement has greatly speeded the election process.
Things begin when the so-called College of Cardinals convenes in the Vatican for the election, called there by the Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church. They have 15 days to gather, and no more than five days to mess around, with an introductory Mass and processional and so on, before they enter the Conclave. (Cardinals over 80 years old don’t get to vote and hence don’t enter the Conclave.)
The Conclave means they’re sealed inside the Vatican with almost literally no outside contact whatsoever. They’re allowed to spend the night in Vatican lodgings, but the rest of the time they’re locked inside the Vatican Palace. In either case, they’re not allowed to say anything about the voting or deliberations, ever. Secrecy is a huge and significant part of the process, avoiding unsightly Florida-style election embarrassments and scandals. No one ever knows who the “candidates” even are—except for the winning one, of course.
And I mean locked inside, literally. The Vatican’s Swiss Guard puts a padlock on the door .
Once inside, the cardinals can presumably mill about and deliberate as at any political convention—though trading votes is reportedly not allowed. The actual voting takes place in the Sistine Chapel; during the election of the current pope, ballots were counted at a table set up in front of the altar of the Last Judgement. Yikes!
In theory, a pope can be chosen by “acclamation”—that is, all the cardinals agreeing on one guy. Unsurprisingly, this apparently never happens, judging by the amount of time recent Conclaves have lasted.
This leaves “compromise” or “scrutiny”—a normal casting of ballots, as we would call it. Votes are written on paper ballots, put in a ballot box, and read aloud. Four votes are taken each day of the Conclave until somebody wins.
Winning consists of pulling two-thirds of the votes plus one. After a certain number of unsuccessful ballots—30, according to one source—the rule changes to allow the man who wins a simple majority to win the election.
Keeping in mind the obsession with secrecy, all of the ballots, notes and any other election documents are tossed into a stove and burned.
This burning is what led to the famous smoke signal from a Vatican chimney—the sfumata—that is the only indication to the outside world whether a new pope has been chosen. If the smoke is white, that means they’ve made up their minds. If it’s dark, it means they’re still deciding.
The smoke distinction used to be made by adding straw to produce thick, dark smoke if necessary. However, this was never reliable, and more recently chemicals have been used to produce either white or black smoke.
Even this screwed up in the 1978 election of Pope John Paul I, when a reported accident with the “white” chemical unintentionally produced thick, dark smoke.
Showing posts with label Christianity popes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity popes. Show all posts
March 29, 2008
Woman Pope
Stupid Question ™
Feb. 21, 2005
By John Ruch
© 2005
Q: Was there ever a female pope?
—Tracy, from the Internet
A: The short answer is, “No”—despite an 800-year-old legend that a woman masquerading as a man indeed beat Vatican sexism at its own game.
The long answer is more complicated, because the legend has gone through a strange progression of being strongly believed to strongly reviled and/or debunked, and then believed again in some circles. Almost no one, including modern Catholic historians, has written about it with objectivity.
I relied on Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe’s history “The Female Pope: The Mystery of Pope Joan” for much of what follows. It’s the only rational, in-depth study available.
The story first appears in obscure histories dating to the mid-1200s. They have an unnamed, highly-educated woman, dressed as a man for traveling purposes, being hired into the Vatican and eventually rising to pope around 1100. She is discovered when she becomes pregnant and inconveniently gives birth while mounting a horse for a public procession. A demon outs her, to boot.
The tale was later interpolated into the contemporary manuscripts of Martin of Troppau’s extremely influential history of the popes and Roman emperors. This slightly different and more elaborate version identified the woman as a German called “Johann Anglicus” (indicating an English connection), and further confused matters by placing the action in the 800s.
Other histories quickly picked up the story, too, adding various details and commentary, usually describing her death by stoning. She had some aliases, with Agnes being popular in the 1400s. “Johannes” or “Joan,” the feminized “Johann” or “John,” became popular in the late 1400s through the present.
There is no doubt that the story somehow was taken seriously by both the public and the Church. A bust of her—later removed—was included in a series of papal portraits in the cathedral of Siena, Italy around 1400.
And popular legend connected to her some type of statue, now lost, in a Roman street said to be the location of her unmasking, along with an inscription of unknown content and location. The elaborated legend was that the popes avoided this street due to the connection, and there appears to be some validity to that.
The legend did have its doubters, including the future Pope Pius II. However, the Church didn’t really change its tune until Protestant reformers in the late 1500s began making fun of the supposed female pope, which was held up as a sexist example of hypocrisy and corruption in the Church. It also incarnated the Protestant image of the Church as the “Whore of Babylon” and spun off other insulting legends, such as the pope being required to undergo a proof-of-sex display.
It didn’t help that many Catholics continued to believe the legend, forcing them to attempt to explain her as a hermaphrodite.
Ironically, it was Protestant authors, influenced by modern rationalism, who took the first shots at debunking the legend.
Women gaining power by dressing up as men was a motif of medieval storytelling. The Pardoes point out specifically that it’s an element of the legends of many women Catholic saints. They even found a similar legend, dating to about 980, about a woman ascending to a bishopric of the Eastern church that way; the tale apparently stuck in the imagination, being brought up in 1054 in a nasty letter to the Eastern church from Pope Leo IX.
The Pardoes suggest the woman pope legend—which first appears in histories written by Franciscan monks—was invented, based on pre-existing material, as part of potshots in an internal dispute between their order and Rome.
Why the story would be taken seriously and even embraced is another question. The setting around 1100 was credible, since there were several would-be popes vying for power (and short reigns for those who got it). Perhaps the warning to troublemaking women or anyone who would sneak into power was considered useful.
Interestingly, however, the idea of the woman pope seems to have been responded to positively in the 1400s, the same period in which its popularity appears to have peaked. Some sources credit the humanist movement for embracing papal equal opportunity.
While the popularity of the legend is mysterious, there is no doubt is simply a legend. There are no contemporary references to a woman pope or such a remarkable scandal. There isn’t even room in the currently acknowledged papal chronology to fit her in.
Things are now coming full circle among some feminists, who argue “Pope Joan” was real, her history now somehow censored by the Vatican. Her bust in Siena was indeed censored—one might say, properly edited out—during the Protestant controversy. But it takes a lot of wishful reading to locate her historically.
Likewise, some feminist sources refer to Maifreda (sometimes “Manfreda”) as a woman pope. She was a figure in a late-1200s Italian sect called the Guglielmites, which formed around a deceased woman preacher. The group supposedly plotted to overthrow the Roman Catholic Church and elected Maifreda as its would-be pope; the Inquisition had them all killed around 1300.
While Maifreda may have called herself a pope, that’s like me declaring myself president. The Guglielmites were a small group that never threatened the formal Catholic papacy.
Feb. 21, 2005
By John Ruch
© 2005
Q: Was there ever a female pope?
—Tracy, from the Internet
A: The short answer is, “No”—despite an 800-year-old legend that a woman masquerading as a man indeed beat Vatican sexism at its own game.
The long answer is more complicated, because the legend has gone through a strange progression of being strongly believed to strongly reviled and/or debunked, and then believed again in some circles. Almost no one, including modern Catholic historians, has written about it with objectivity.
I relied on Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe’s history “The Female Pope: The Mystery of Pope Joan” for much of what follows. It’s the only rational, in-depth study available.
The story first appears in obscure histories dating to the mid-1200s. They have an unnamed, highly-educated woman, dressed as a man for traveling purposes, being hired into the Vatican and eventually rising to pope around 1100. She is discovered when she becomes pregnant and inconveniently gives birth while mounting a horse for a public procession. A demon outs her, to boot.
The tale was later interpolated into the contemporary manuscripts of Martin of Troppau’s extremely influential history of the popes and Roman emperors. This slightly different and more elaborate version identified the woman as a German called “Johann Anglicus” (indicating an English connection), and further confused matters by placing the action in the 800s.
Other histories quickly picked up the story, too, adding various details and commentary, usually describing her death by stoning. She had some aliases, with Agnes being popular in the 1400s. “Johannes” or “Joan,” the feminized “Johann” or “John,” became popular in the late 1400s through the present.
There is no doubt that the story somehow was taken seriously by both the public and the Church. A bust of her—later removed—was included in a series of papal portraits in the cathedral of Siena, Italy around 1400.
And popular legend connected to her some type of statue, now lost, in a Roman street said to be the location of her unmasking, along with an inscription of unknown content and location. The elaborated legend was that the popes avoided this street due to the connection, and there appears to be some validity to that.
The legend did have its doubters, including the future Pope Pius II. However, the Church didn’t really change its tune until Protestant reformers in the late 1500s began making fun of the supposed female pope, which was held up as a sexist example of hypocrisy and corruption in the Church. It also incarnated the Protestant image of the Church as the “Whore of Babylon” and spun off other insulting legends, such as the pope being required to undergo a proof-of-sex display.
It didn’t help that many Catholics continued to believe the legend, forcing them to attempt to explain her as a hermaphrodite.
Ironically, it was Protestant authors, influenced by modern rationalism, who took the first shots at debunking the legend.
Women gaining power by dressing up as men was a motif of medieval storytelling. The Pardoes point out specifically that it’s an element of the legends of many women Catholic saints. They even found a similar legend, dating to about 980, about a woman ascending to a bishopric of the Eastern church that way; the tale apparently stuck in the imagination, being brought up in 1054 in a nasty letter to the Eastern church from Pope Leo IX.
The Pardoes suggest the woman pope legend—which first appears in histories written by Franciscan monks—was invented, based on pre-existing material, as part of potshots in an internal dispute between their order and Rome.
Why the story would be taken seriously and even embraced is another question. The setting around 1100 was credible, since there were several would-be popes vying for power (and short reigns for those who got it). Perhaps the warning to troublemaking women or anyone who would sneak into power was considered useful.
Interestingly, however, the idea of the woman pope seems to have been responded to positively in the 1400s, the same period in which its popularity appears to have peaked. Some sources credit the humanist movement for embracing papal equal opportunity.
While the popularity of the legend is mysterious, there is no doubt is simply a legend. There are no contemporary references to a woman pope or such a remarkable scandal. There isn’t even room in the currently acknowledged papal chronology to fit her in.
Things are now coming full circle among some feminists, who argue “Pope Joan” was real, her history now somehow censored by the Vatican. Her bust in Siena was indeed censored—one might say, properly edited out—during the Protestant controversy. But it takes a lot of wishful reading to locate her historically.
Likewise, some feminist sources refer to Maifreda (sometimes “Manfreda”) as a woman pope. She was a figure in a late-1200s Italian sect called the Guglielmites, which formed around a deceased woman preacher. The group supposedly plotted to overthrow the Roman Catholic Church and elected Maifreda as its would-be pope; the Inquisition had them all killed around 1300.
While Maifreda may have called herself a pope, that’s like me declaring myself president. The Guglielmites were a small group that never threatened the formal Catholic papacy.