Daily Medieval

The awkwardness about antipopes is that they take names that are later taken by official popes. One has to keep them straight in the histor...

The reign of Pope Urban II was barely more than a decade, but he made some decisions with profound effects for centuries. He was born Odo of...

When Pope Innocent II (shown here on the left, hanging out with St. Laurence) finally was able to be  pope—after the rival antipope Anacletu...

When Pope Honorius II died in 1130, two popes were elected by rival factions, first Innocent II by a small contingent of cardinals, and then...

Like many well-known theologians/priests in the Middle Ages, Bernard of Clairvaux was born to a wealthy family. This was in Burgundy in 1090...

The existence of rival popes in the Western Schism led to the Council of Pisa and, ultimately, to the need to elect a third pope. After mo...

The Medici family name is known to many casual readers of history. Let's talk about the man who started it all. Born on 27 Septembe...

I like to link items in each post to previous posts that offer more info on those items. I have frequently referred to the time when the po...

The Council of Constance (illustrated here) in 1414 has been mentioned before—or, at least, its outcomes. It was at this, the 16th ecumenica...

Hole Roman Emperor Henry IV When Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV took the Walk to Canossa and asked forgiveness of Pope Gregory VII in orde...

Part 1 showed how Christian writers eventually came to the conclusion that the State was not the result of Man's sinful nature, and had ...

Sicily, an island of less than 10,000 square miles just off the coast of Italy, would not seem to merit its own king, and for a long time it...

Given all the fuss about the Mayan calendar, I thought it would be fun to look at other times when people thought the world might end. The E...

What makes a pope into an antipope? In 355, the Roman Emperor Constantius II (317-361) wasn't happy with the pope. Constantius was an ...

Pope Celestine V might have needed Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani to find a justification for him to resign, but papal resignations had taken p...