Legends surrounding the papacy

Last updated December 30, 2023

The papacy has been surrounded by numerous legends . Among the most famous are the claims that the papal tiara bears the Number of the Beast inscriptions, that a woman was once elected pope, or that the current pope will be the last. The latter claim is false for every known pope barring the incumbent, but it remains theoretically possible.

Vicarius Filii Dei

One misconception surrounding the papal tiara suggests that the words Vicarius Filii Dei (Latin for "Vicar of the Son of God") exist on the side of one of the tiaras.

The story centres on the widely made claim that, when numerised (i.e., when those letters in the 'title' that have Roman numeral value are added together as in a chronogram) they produce the number 666, described in the Book of Revelation as the Number of the Beast (the Antichrist), who wears multiple crowns (identified by some as the triple tiara).

VICARIVS·FILII·DEI with the non-numeric letters removed gives: VICIVILIIDI = 5 + 1 + 100 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 50 + 1 + 1 + 500 + 1 = 666

This claim has been made by some Protestant sects who believe that the Pope, as head of the Roman Catholic Church, is the Beast or the False Prophet mentioned in the Book of Revelation. However, a detailed examination of the existing tiaras shows no such decoration.

Further, Vicarius Filii Dei is not among the titles of the Pope; the closest match is Vicarius Christi ("Vicar of Christ", also rendered in English as "Vicar of Jesus Christ"), the numerical values of which do not add up to 666, but to 214.

Pope Joan

The claim that a woman, often called Pope Joan, became pope first appeared in a Dominican chronicle in 1250. It soon spread Europe-wide through preaching friars. The story grew in embellishment but centered on a set of claims.

The period for this claim is traditionally given as AD 855–858, between the reigns of Leo IV and Benedict III; however, this possibility is unlikely, because Leo IV died on 17 July 855 and Benedict III was elected as his successor on 29 September 855.

Jean de Mailly, a French Dominican at Metz, places the story in the year 1099, in his Chronica Universalis Mettensis, which dates from approximately 1250 and gives what is almost certainly the earliest account of the woman who became known as Pope Joan. His compatriot Stephen of Bourbon acknowledges this by placing her rule at approximately 1100. Also, Rosemary and Darrell Pardoe, authors of The Female Pope: The Mystery of Pope Joan. The First Complete Documentation of the Facts behind the Legend, is assuming that a more plausible time-frame would be 1086–1108, when there were a lot of antipopes, and the reign of the legitimate popes Victor III, Urban II, and Paschal II was not always established in Rome, since this city was occupied by Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and later sacked by the Normans.

Generally, there are two versions of the legend.

In the first, an English woman, called Joan, went to Athens with her lover, and studied there.
In the second, a German woman called Giliberta was born in Mainz.

"Joan" disguised herself as a monk, called Joannes Anglicus. In time, she rose to the highest office of the church, becoming a pope.

After two or five years of reign, "Pope Joan" became pregnant and, during an Easter procession, she gave birth to the child on the streets when she fell off a horse. She was publicly stoned to death by the astonished crowd, and according to the legend, removed from the Vatican archives.

As a consequence, certain traditions stated that popes throughout the medieval period were required to undergo a procedure wherein they sat on a special chair with a hole in the seat. A cardinal would have the task of putting his hand up the hole to check whether the pope had testicles, or doing a visual examination.^[1] This procedure is not taken seriously by most historians, and there is no documented instance. It is probably a scurrilous legend based on the existence of two ancient stone chairs with holes in the seats that probably dated from Roman times and may have been used because of their ancient imperial origins. Their original purpose is obscure.

In a seventeenth-century study, Protestant historian David Blondel argued that 'Pope Joan' is a fictitious story. The story may well be a satire that came to be believed as reality. This view is generally accepted among historians.

Prophecy of the Popes

According to the Prophecy of the Popes, some interpretations hold that after Pope Benedict XVI, who abdicated on 28 February 2013,^[2] there will be one pope left before the destruction of Rome. This individual is labeled by the prophecy as Petrus Romanus.

Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus

A series of manuscript prophecies concerning the Papacy.

Documents of Jesus Christ

It is sometimes claimed that there exists a collection of documents that directly refer to Jesus, such as the execution order for Jesus signed by Pontius Pilate, or were personally written by Jesus, explaining to his followers how to conduct the formation of the Catholic Church after his death, or even the exact date of his return to judge mankind. These documents are said to be a closely guarded secret of the Catholic Church, and supposedly are hidden in the Vatican Secret Archives, or at past times in an underground vault if Nazi Germany would invade the Vatican.

However, there is no solid evidence for any of these claims; in history, only one document has ever been attributed to Jesus himself, the Letter of Christ and Abgarus.^[3] Scholars generally believe that those letters were fabricated, probably in the 3rd century AD.^[4] Even in ancient times, Augustine and Jerome contended that Jesus wrote nothing at all during his life. The correspondence was rejected as apocryphal by Pope Gelasius I and a Roman synod (c. 495).

Jewish legends

Jewish legends related to the papacy include the Jewish pope Andreas and also concerning the fate of the Menorah, which some, including former Israeli Minister of Religious Affairs Shimon Shetreet, have believed is being held in secret by the Vatican,^[5] and the idea of hidden Jewish manuscripts in the Vatican Secret Archives.^[6]

Related Research Articles

The pope, also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome, head of the worldwide Catholic Church, and has also served as the head of state or sovereign of the Papal States and later the Vatican City State since the eighth century. From a Catholic viewpoint, the primacy of the bishop of Rome is largely derived from his role as the apostolic successor to Saint Peter, to whom primacy was conferred by Jesus, who gave Peter the Keys of Heaven and the powers of "binding and loosing", naming him as the "rock" upon which the Church would be built. The current pope is Francis, who was elected on 13 March 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pope Joan</span> Woman who reigned as pope during the Middle Ages, according to legend

Pope Joan was, according to legend, a woman who reigned as pope for two years during the Middle Ages. Her story first appeared in chronicles in the 13th century and subsequently spread throughout Europe. The story was widely believed for centuries, but most modern scholars regard it as fictional.

Pope Leo IV was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 10 April 847 to his death. He is remembered for repairing Roman churches that had been damaged during the Arab raid against Rome, and for building the Leonine Wall around Vatican Hill to protect the city. Pope Leo organized a league of Italian cities who fought and won the sea Battle of Ostia against the Saracens.

The papal tiara is a crown that is worn by popes of the Catholic Church from as early as the 8th century to the mid–20th century. It was last used by Pope Paul VI in 1963, and only at the beginning of his reign.

A papal coronation is the formal ceremony of the placing of the papal tiara on a newly elected pope. The first recorded papal coronation was of Pope Nicholas I in 858. The most recent was the 1963 coronation of Paul VI, who soon afterwards abandoned the practice of wearing the tiara. To date, none of his successors have used the tiara, and their papal inauguration celebrations have included no coronation ceremony, although any future pope may elect to restore the use of the tiara at any point during his pontificate.

Vicarius Filii Dei is a phrase first used in the forged medieval Donation of Constantine to refer to Saint Peter, who is regarded as the first Pope by the Catholic Church.

A papal renunciation also called a papal abdication, occurs when the current pope of the Catholic Church voluntarily resigns his position. As a pope's time in office has conventionally lasted from his election until his death, a papal renunciation is an uncommon event. Before the 21st century, only five popes unambiguously resigned with historical certainty, all between the 10th and 15th centuries. Additionally, there are disputed claims of four popes having resigned, dating from the 3rd to the 11th centuries; a fifth disputed case may have involved an antipope.

Vicar of Christ is a term used in different ways and with different theological connotations throughout history. The original notion of a vicar is as an "earthly representative of Christ", but it's also used in the sense of "person acting as parish priest in place of a real person." The title is now used in Catholicism to refer to the bishops, and more specifically, was historically used to refer to the Bishop of Rome.

Papal regalia and insignia are the official items of attire and decoration proper to the Pope in his capacity as the visible head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State.

The personal papal coat of arms of Pope Benedict XVI was designed by Archbishop Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo soon after the papal election in 2005.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church holds a unique system of eschatological beliefs. Adventist eschatology, which is based on a historicist interpretation of prophecy, is characterised principally by the premillennial Second Coming of Christ. Traditionally, the church has taught that the Second Coming will be preceded by a global crisis with the Sabbath as a central issue. At Jesus' return, the righteous will be taken to heaven for one thousand years. After the millennium the unsaved cease to exist as they will be punished by annihilation while the saved will live on a recreated Earth for eternity.

The Beast may refer to one of two beasts described in the Book of Revelation.

A papal name or pontificial name is the regnal name taken by a pope. Both the head of the Catholic Church, usually known as the pope, and the pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria choose papal names. As of 2013, Pope Francis is the Catholic pope, and Tawadros II or Theodoros II is the Coptic pope. This article discusses and lists the names of Catholic popes; another article has a list of Coptic Orthodox popes of Alexandria.

This is an index of Vatican City–related topics.

In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist refers to people prophesied by the Bible to oppose Jesus Christ and substitute themselves in Christ's place before the Second Coming. The term Antichrist is found four times in the New Testament, solely in the First and Second Epistle of John. The Antichrist is announced as the one "who denies the Father and the Son."

The coat of arms of the Holy See combines two crossed keys and a tiara, used as a coat of arms by the Holy See. These forms have origins attested from the 14th century. The combination of one gold and one silver key is a somewhat later development.

Pontificalis Domus was a motu proprio document issued by Pope Paul VI on 28 March 1968, in the fifth year of his pontificate. It reorganized the Papal Household, which had been known until then as the Papal Court.

Historicism is a method of interpretation in Christian eschatology which associates biblical prophecies with actual historical events and identifies symbolic beings with historical persons or societies; it has been applied to the Book of Revelation by many writers. The Historicist view follows a straight line of continuous fulfillment of prophecy which starts in Daniel's time and goes through John of Patmos' writing of the Book of Revelation all the way to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

The titles of the bishop of Rome, more often referred to as the papal titles, refer to the various titles used by protocol, as a form of addressing or designating a theological or secular reality of the bishop of Rome (pope). The Catholic Church believes that they "constitute what has been termed a primacy of honor. These prerogatives are not, like his jurisdictional rights, tied to the divine jure of his office. They have grown in the course of history, and have been enshrined by the passage of centuries, but they are not free from modification."

References

↑ Histoire de naître. (2023). Retrieved 7 September 2023, from https://www.google.com/books/edition/Histoire_de_na%C3%AEtre/5aqgvIsStVsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA101&printsec=frontcover}
↑ "Frail Pope Benedict to step down". BBC. 11 February 2013.
↑ "Letters of Jesus and Abgar". www.pseudepigrapha.com.
↑ Christie, Albany James (1867), "Abgarus", in Smith, William (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology , vol. 1, p. 2, archived from the original on 28 July 2005, retrieved 20 February 2008
↑ Hollander, Sophia (14 August 2014). "Yeshiva Students Challenge Myths of the Menorah". Wall Street Journal . ISSN 0099-9660 . Retrieved 6 December 2015.
↑ Gantz, Nesanel (15 December 2013). "The Vatican and the Temple Vessels". aish.com. Retrieved 6 December 2015.