7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy (#6: Anti-Popes)

Black smoke over the Sistine roof signals the first
balloting in the  2013 Conclave.

Whatever the outcome of the current conclave, one thing is fairly certain: Once that white smoke does appear from the chimney over the Sistine Chapel, we won't be seeing an anti-pope on the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica. 

It certainly hasn't always been this way. Everything that has been done over the past weeks, from the careful setting of dates to the taking of oaths, to the command "extra omnes" when the doors of the Sistine Chapel were closed, has been ordered to ensure the freedom of the Cardinals and the validity of the papal election. It's not only a matter of interesting traditions. It's vital that Catholics can be secure about just who it is who is piloting the Barque of Peter.

One of the most important roles the Successor of Peter has in the Church is that of being a visible sign of the unity of Christ's followers. Anti-popes represent the exact opposite of this papal ministry. 

The first anti-popes seem to have arisen in the third century, while persecutions still threatened the Church in Rome. The most recent anti-popes (there are a half-dozen or so right now, two of them in the United States) are so marginal that they cannot even be taken seriously. Historical records are incomplete enough (or simply inconclusive enough) for us to even identify all the Popes and anti-popes of history with absolute certainty. 

By some accounts, St. Hippolytus is considered the first anti-pope, but the term really doesn't fit the primitive Church's situtation. Hippolytus is identified as a bishop in or around Rome, but he was a Greek writer, and may have been the “episcopos” (literally “overseer”/bishop) of a Greek-speaking community that was not integrated into the Latin speaking majority of Rome's christians. It's not even the possibility that Hippolytus was an “extra” bishop in Rome that makes him a candidate for anti-pope status: it's that he is known to have had serious differences with more than one of the recognized early Popes. Hippolytus is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church, thanks to his martyrdom, in exile along with Pontian, Bishop of Rome, with whom he shares a feastday.

Coming right after Hippolytus, Novatian of Rome is a more likely candidate for first-ever anti-pope. When the savage persecution under the Emperor Decius finally subsided, the Church of Rome had been without a bishop for a year. (Pope Fabian had been one of Decius' many victims.) Evidently, the priest Novatian did not agree with the majority of clergy, faithful and bishops who, according to the report by St. Cyprian, elected Cornelius to the Chair of Peter: he sent messengers to summon three bishops to ordain him a bishop as well, and then issued proclamations claiming that he had been chosen to take Fabian's long vacant seat. That this was happening from Rome meant it was not a simply local matter, but affected the whole Church. All the more was this so when Novatian sent missionaries and attempted to replace local bishops with his own appointees: men who would adhere to Novatian's own rigorist views of Church life. 

From Africa, the Council of Carthage undertook an investigation into the case of the two Popes, concluding without a doubt that Novatian's act was completely illegitimate. Within the year, Novatian was formally excommunicated by Pope Cornelius, in a council of some sixty bishops. True to the disruption of Church unity initiated by this first anti-pope, Novatian's followers (“Novatians”) continued on for several centuries.


Later anti-popes, for the most part, followed a different pattern, being associated in one way or other not with a theological or pastoral tendency (Novantian's severity, for instance) but with politics. They were installed with the support of (or under pressure imposed by) an Emperor or king. The tenth and twelfth centuries witnessed the most of this attempted manipulation of the papal office by secular powers.


The longest-lasting and most disruptive succession of anti-popes began in 1378 when a group of cardinals rejected the (admittedly difficult) Pope Urban VI in Rome, declared his election invalid and named their own man, the former Papal Legate known as the “Butcher of Cesena” for his approval of a mass slaughter of villagers in a disputed territory. (Not the most auspicious of beginnings.)

As “Clement VII,” Robert of Geneva established himself in the old papal stronghold of Avignon, France. His successor was a Spaniard who had volunteered for the job under the ruse of then surrendering his claim and reuniting the Church under one legitimate Pope. Needless to say, the anti-pope Benedict XIII found it more congenial to reign in Avignon than to serve in Rome.

Meanwhile in Northern Italy, a council of hundreds (cardinals, bishops, abbots) met to address the problem of the two Popes. The [discredited] Council of Pisa declared the two contenders, Benedict XIII of Avignon, and Gregory XII of Rome, deposed, and led the way for the cardinals to convoke a conclave and elect—that's right—a third “Pope,” who took the name Alexander V. Alexander was not long for this world; his successor was the Anti-pope John XXIII (not to be confused with the 20^th century John, now Blessed John XXIII!). This John (a friend of the powerful Medici family) has the unfortunate distinction of promoting the sale of indulgences, a practice bemoaned in Prague by Jan Hus. In a way the seeds of the Reformation were already sprouting in the fertile terrain of disunity.

With the encouragement of King Sigismund of Germany, John called a Council to end the long schism. Gregory XII in Rome, for his part, authorized the Council, too. Only Benedict XIII in France refused to have anything to do with it. The Council proposed a solution: that all three “Popes” abdicate and allow for a single, valid Pope to be elected. John fled, thinking that the Council proceedings would be invalid without him. Gregory abdicated. Benedict was excommunicated. The new Pope, Martin V, was elected in 1417.

Since the Great Western Schism, no significant anti-popes have arisen with the exception of Felix V, a widower and former hermit who was elected by the Council of Basel when the new Bishop of Rome acted to dissolve the council called by his predecessor. Felix ended well, abdicating his claim and accepting a (real) red hat from his former opponent.





This is the 6th in a series of 7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy

#5, The Papacy Might Have Had a Different Form
#4, Infallibility: It's Rare, but It's There 
#3, Bad Popes
#2, The Bishop of Rome is the Pope, not the other way around
#1, It was Jesus' idea

7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy (#3)

Alexander VI, Poster Child of Bad Popes

Bad popes, good popes, mediocre popes: we've seen them all. And kind of shrugged off most of them as just not that interesting. But the fascination continues with the more notorious occupants of the Chair of Peter. That TV series on the Borgias didn't help, given that one of their own is generally acknowledged as the worst of the bunch.

Popes are men of their times... and the bad popes tell us something about the Church's ever-changing relationship to society. In the early middle ages, influential Roman families controlled the election of the Pope (unless a northern king from, say, Germany, came down and put his own candidate on Peter's Chair). Meanwhile the Vikings were devastating the monasteries that could have been training grounds for scholarly and virtuous bishops (and, possibly, popes). The lack of leadership from within opened the way to exploitation by the powerful, and this continued off and on through the Renaissance. (A series of popes, including the most notorious, came from just two Italian families, the Medici and the Borgia.) The Church became a career path like any other; the Pope a “prince” like any other with lands to defend and commerce to be conducted. Yet despite the financial and moral corruption of some of the successors of St. Peter, none of them ever promulgated false teachings or attempted to rewrite the moral laws they themselves flouted in their personal lives! 

In one of the most challenging eras in Church history, with European leaders in ever-changing alliances and wars (and body counts to match), with Martin Luther's righteous challenges as yet unanswered, two of the less admirable popes succeeded one another. Clement VII (a Medici) was more interested in continental politics than in the city of Rome, which was sacked on his watch. His successor was Paul III, born Alexander Farnese. Through his sister, Farnese had ties to the most infamous of Renaissance popes, the Borgia Alexander VI (the married Julia was the pope's mistress). Farnese himself was a family man who appointed two teenaged grandsons as Cardinals (he had separated from his own mistress, the mother of his four children, before he was ordained to the priesthood--and, to be fair, was not a wicked man).

The young St. Ignatius Loyola
discovering the call of Christ.

Any other institution would have been completely run to the ground, but the Holy Spirit not only has protected the Church from error and from the depredations of her own unworthy leaders, God has been continually raising up SAINTS, the real powerhouses in the Church, to point out the path of the Gospel: “Do not conform to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind!” (Rom. 12:4).

During this same period, some of the greatest saints in history made their mark: Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Peter Favre, Philip Neri, John of the Cross, Cajetan, Thomas More, John Fisher, Peter of Alcantera, Francis Borgia (great-grandson of Pope Alexander). Could it be that the weaker and more worldly the Pope, the greater the saints of the age?

Most of the 8-10 generally recognized "bad popes" reigned between 880-1550. As Protestantism made the pope irrelevant to swaths of northern Europe and nation-states began to arise, the climate that had allowed for bad popes gradually changed. We haven't seen their like since.

When a pope is saintly, it could be believed that he – and he alone – is responsible for the spread of the Gospel. But no one can be tempted to shift all the responsibility for the cause of the Gospel on men who are obviously unfaithful to it! Then it becomes clear that the work of evangelization truly rests on the shoulders of each and every member of the Church. (Could the bad popes have been somehow good for the Church, after all?)

This is the third in a series of 7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy.
#2 is The Bishop of Rome is the Pope, Not Vice-Versa
#1 is It Was Jesus' Idea to Build His Church on Peter