On This Day in History: September 20

The Western Schism

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If a pope and an antipope touch each other, do they annihilate each other in a massive explosion the way antimatter and matter do? Between 200 and 1449, there were over three dozen antipopes. The fuck is an antipope? It’s when a pope is elected, and another guy says no fuck you I’m pope. Sometimes these pretenders have support and crazy shit happens, like the Western Schism.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: September 20, 1378--

It was a clusterfuck of biblical proportions. Bartolomeo Prignano was elected Pope Urban VII in April of 1378. The papacy had resided not in Rome for much of the 14th century, but in Avignon, France. Why that happened is another story involving much political fuckery. Anyway, there had been seven popes in Avignon, but in 1376 Gregory XI said fuck this place I’m moving back to Rome and then he died in 1378. Upon his death a mob formed in Rome and shouted we want a Roman pope! And the cardinals were all fuck if we don’t act fast they’re gonna do a pope in Avignon so they unanimously chose Prignano, even though he was from Naples and not Rome.

But those in Avignon would not relinquish their power of housing the pontiff. They said fuck your pope, we’re electing our own guy. So Robert of Geneva became Clement VII on September 20, 1378. Of course he said he was pope, not antipope. The other guy was antipope. And the other guy said no you are the antipope. But winners write history, and the book of popes, or whatever, said Clement was an antipope.

That began the Western Schism in the Catholic Church between Rome and Avignon. Then there was a second antipope, really, in Pisa starting in 1409 with the election of Alexander V saying this is the guy. He’s the pope. But the Pisan pope died a year later so they had another Pisan pope named John XXIII. Five years after that the Church said okay this bullshit is getting out of control, let’s end this fucking schism.

They held an ecumenical council and said to John XXIII hey, fucknut, you’re not a pope. That shit’s over. And John said yeah okay. Benedict XIII was the Avignon pope at the time, and the council deposed him too in 1417, but he said you’re not the boss of me and refused to resign. In Rome the pope of the day was Gregory XII and he stepped down so a brand baby-spanking new pope could be elected who would make almost everyone happy. The new pope was named Martin V. And most folks were cool with that except for a small number of supporters of Benedict in Avignon, who cried “I’m still pope!” for another six years until he died at the age of 94. But that didn’t end the Avignon papacy. It continued under Clement VIII, but he stepped down after six years and was made bishop of Mallorca.

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