Speaker 1: What's going on.
Speaker 2: Not much.
Speaker 3: I've been laughing about how like Trump somehow lost an
Speaker 3: election in Canada.
Speaker 2: That's really funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's it's impressive that quickly. It's all just it's
Speaker 1: all just going to ship with him. They are like
Speaker 1: alienating everyone. He made China and Japan are on the
Speaker 1: same page. Now, like that is that is? Uh? Man,
Speaker 1: you did it, congratulations. If you had intentionally done it,
Speaker 1: it would be one of the greatest Lake diplomatic moves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just It's funny though, Like there's a rare
Speaker 3: or really rare thing can happen in parliamentary politics, and
Speaker 3: it happened in Canada. I've seen it happen in Australia,
Speaker 3: which is that the guy who was like in line
Speaker 3: to BPM because you know, in the parliamentary system, you
Speaker 3: don't vote for the guy itself, you vote for the
Speaker 3: party and then the party leader becomes head. So you
Speaker 3: have to have a seat in parliament in order to
Speaker 3: be able to.
Speaker 2: Be the head of the party. Right, So our god.
Speaker 3: Awful piece of shit MP for example, is like the
Speaker 3: MP for like Candate. Right, But anyway, Pollybear, the head
Speaker 3: of the Conservatives, lost his seat like not just like
Speaker 3: that the Conservatives lost the election in Canada. He's not
Speaker 3: in parliament anymore. Like that's how much, absolutely not And
Speaker 3: it's very funny to me. I'm just like I'll take anything.
Speaker 3: I'll take anything, bro anything, Like I'm just like I'm
Speaker 3: hanging on by a fucking thread.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, like, I you know.
Speaker 2: Electoral politics is not our salvation. That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying is I want to laugh at fascists.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I'm doing that every day, Like we like
Speaker 1: these people are idiots. They're terrible at this. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you, what what are we doing here? Like what
Speaker 1: are you? Like? You you're trying it, but you're not
Speaker 1: trying it the way you should do it, and especially
Speaker 1: not if you don't want to be under the thumb
Speaker 1: of China.
Speaker 3: But you know, like I guess that deep in my soul,
Speaker 3: I think what is happening here is that they have
Speaker 3: failed to come to grips with the fact that all
Speaker 3: of this stuff takes takes time. Like if you want
Speaker 3: to do whatever the fuck this is, you need to
Speaker 3: kind of like put in a lot more time and effort.
Speaker 3: But then the other thing that they have fail to consider,
Speaker 3: is that America's treat pilled. Oh you know, like we're
Speaker 3: the they're the treat lovingest people in the world, and
Speaker 3: now the treats aren't coming like oh God, bless y'all
Speaker 3: in the next month.
Speaker 2: Because it's looking.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's uh, yeah, it's if they if they
Speaker 1: were doing I know, if you're not, like not only
Speaker 1: is it that, it's like how how do you like,
Speaker 1: how do you misread this thing with tariffs so bad?
Speaker 1: You get this one guy who's like, yeah, tariffs are
Speaker 1: going to fix everything. Trump's on board because like he
Speaker 1: you know, remembers like some terriffs from when he was younger,
Speaker 1: and you know he's read all this stuff, and you
Speaker 1: know he hates the income tax, so it's going to
Speaker 1: replace the tariffs. Like like you like, are they like
Speaker 1: they throwing away like so much of this, so much
Speaker 1: of their opportunities, so much of everything to fight the
Speaker 1: stupid thing over tariffs, which is like alienating business, which
Speaker 1: you don't want to do, which is like pushing all
Speaker 1: of your enemies together like against you, which you really
Speaker 1: don't want to do, and which is like just you're
Speaker 1: doing it for something, so something that that everybody knew
Speaker 1: was going everybody knew was going to fail, like everybody
Speaker 1: you talk to. I'm not in economics. I don't have
Speaker 1: an economics degree. I don't respect economists anyway, But like
Speaker 1: even even I knew, because you like, how how are
Speaker 1: like how is that going to replace all the income
Speaker 1: dext you have? How is that going to even pay
Speaker 1: for like our military, like the people that you really
Speaker 1: need to keep happy if you like, how how is
Speaker 1: any of that happening? And it's just like.
Speaker 3: I just I find it very funny anyway, But because
Speaker 3: like whenever Americans think they pay too much in taxes,
Speaker 3: I just think it's fucking hilarious.
Speaker 2: It is like yeah, bro, yeah, that's what's going on.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, sure, Yeah. The problem is you don't pay
Speaker 3: enough in taxes. That's your fucking issue right there. I mean, like, granted,
Speaker 3: you know, I've seen good critiques from the left of
Speaker 3: like what if America tax more because there's like they
Speaker 3: would just spend it on more military, And I'm like, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, true, that's probably true.
Speaker 1: I mean, like there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: I that I support, but not under this government, like
Speaker 1: under that yeah, yeah, because they're not because they're not
Speaker 1: gonna like they're not They're not gonna do it right,
Speaker 1: They're just gonna suck everything up. They're just gonna quite
Speaker 1: So you know, I support I support taxing these people
Speaker 1: more heavily. I support a lot of this stuff, but
Speaker 1: I don't like for the US to do it. Now. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, they're not going to and
Speaker 1: second of all, if they did, it would be used
Speaker 1: for something evil at the very least, So yeah. Fuck.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, I'm here, like to frightened to open, like my
Speaker 3: I wrote a ranting email to my MP about trans writes,
Speaker 3: and like she's written me back, and I'm too afraid
Speaker 3: to open, even.
Speaker 2: Though I want to like go and yell at her
Speaker 2: in her.
Speaker 3: Face because I like demanded a face to face meeting
Speaker 3: because I was like, say it to my face, Like
Speaker 3: tell me all my loved ones I'd like have to
Speaker 3: show their junk to the bathroom police, say it to
Speaker 3: my face.
Speaker 2: I want you to tell me that. But now I'm like, oh.
Speaker 1: No, an email, so.
Speaker 2: Like fallen at the first hurdle and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 2: too busy for this.
Speaker 3: I gotta go podcast.
Speaker 1: Well I'm sure it's like uh, women, gender or something something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's good.
Speaker 3: She's just gonna be like, on the one hand, you're right.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, have you considered that we've been
Speaker 3: completely captured by five women who are completely insane? It's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I have considered that. Actually, what I what I am
Speaker 3: indicating is that you shouldn't be right.
Speaker 1: The joys of liberal feminism.
Speaker 2: You did it women, Yeah, they're doing great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those like thousands or so women or whatever across
Speaker 1: the world who have attained like levels of actual power. Congrats,
Speaker 1: he did it.
Speaker 2: That was the peak. That's it. Nice one. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Everyone else just gets to hang out and best in that.
Speaker 3: I guess, right, I mean yeah, which is a lot
Speaker 3: like uh, people conclaves because it's a real sausage fest.
Speaker 2: So you know, what, can I say?
Speaker 1: You should have some women around to uh, to get
Speaker 1: a different, different perspective.
Speaker 3: The legend of Pope Joe notwithstanding, that's right, m hmmm,
Speaker 3: quite so.
Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of legends that are fun,
Speaker 1: but it's like, how would you ever believe that the
Speaker 1: number of.
Speaker 2: People who really want to It's it's interesting.
Speaker 3: People ask me about it all the time, and they
Speaker 3: really like that one, yeah.
Speaker 2: Which I don't.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of like it's it's funny because like some
Speaker 3: of some of them want to do it from like
Speaker 3: a liberal girl power one where they're like girls can
Speaker 3: do it too, like go on and gas.
Speaker 1: Like no they can't, they can't, Like that can't. That's
Speaker 1: the thing it's like.
Speaker 3: And then some people like to do it from a
Speaker 3: like oh haha, like the perversion of the church stance,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, but like I mean, like I.
Speaker 2: Fully saw people.
Speaker 3: I saw people online doing girl boss papacy in.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 3: They're like they're like I would like to see a
Speaker 3: woman pope and I'm like, well, you're not gonna like that,
Speaker 3: Like what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: I need I need everyone to understand that you could
Speaker 1: as religious as you want, and that's great. It is
Speaker 1: so good if you have a personal relationship with God
Speaker 1: that you find meaning in and everything, that is perfectly
Speaker 1: fucking great. However, I need you to understand one thing Intrinsically,
Speaker 1: when the revolution happens, all of these organized religions are
Speaker 1: going with it. You can rebuild your own thing later
Speaker 1: if you won't. However, that looks they're all going with it,
Speaker 1: so I don't know what to tell you. You can't.
Speaker 1: You can have a club, but like, we're not doing
Speaker 1: the revolution and then leaving the patriarchal two thousand year
Speaker 1: old institution that has had pedophilia issues for over a
Speaker 1: thousand years stick around. That's not happening. So I don't
Speaker 1: know what to tell you. I don't know what to
Speaker 1: tell you. I don't know how you deal with that.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, there's no girl bossing. That's a
Speaker 1: glass ceiling you can't break asolutely, absolutely, mostly because if
Speaker 1: you did, if they were like, oh, we're going to
Speaker 1: do this, like a massive chunk of the Catholic population
Speaker 1: would split off, for at least a large chunk of
Speaker 1: it would, and then you just have another uh you know,
Speaker 1: East West.
Speaker 3: Schizo liked percent of the guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, let's talk about the let's talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're fun, all right, Hello, and welcome back to
Speaker 1: Not So Different, a podcast about ornate religious ceremonies that
Speaker 1: we're going to continue after the revolution. My name is Luke,
Speaker 1: and after the revolution my job will be seneschal for
Speaker 1: the Pope, and that's doctor Eleanor. And after the revolution
Speaker 1: she will of course be the first Lady Pope. Welcome back, folks.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about conclaves of the you know, antique, medieval,
Speaker 1: and even early modern variety. We're just going to talk
Speaker 1: about conclaves because they've been in there recently. If you
Speaker 1: just woke up from a coma and we're like, the
Speaker 1: first thing I got to do is listen to the
Speaker 1: newest episode of my favorite podcast, which if you did,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. We're glad you're feeling better.
Speaker 2: Welcome back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, there's a lots going on, a lot
Speaker 1: to keep up. Man. Can you imagine having been in
Speaker 1: a coma for like three years and all the stuff
Speaker 1: you have to catch up on, like good god man
Speaker 1: and be like wait what no, oh, god no, because
Speaker 1: everything changes every other day now. Anyway, before we get there,
Speaker 1: we had a couple of questions. First, we got one
Speaker 1: from Vivi or Vivi, who says, how did they decide
Speaker 1: who in the monastery got the various jobs in the scriptorum?
Speaker 1: Did the illuminators usually show up as already respected artist
Speaker 1: or was it something more internal?
Speaker 3: The answer is a little bit of column A, a
Speaker 3: little bit of column B here, because sometimes you just
Speaker 3: train them up yourself. You know, if you're gonna be
Speaker 3: working with any of the oblates, that you get to
Speaker 3: teach them skills throughout their time in the monastery. So
Speaker 3: they're going to start out, you know, learning how to
Speaker 3: read and write things. And if anybody has particular promise,
Speaker 3: then you train them up and do well. But if
Speaker 3: you have a particularly celebrated scriptorium and you know that
Speaker 3: there's a very fine illuminator somewhere else in your order,
Speaker 3: they might get moved over specifically in order to serve there.
Speaker 3: So yeah, monks in the scriptoria in many ways are
Speaker 3: like players in football teams here or in Australia, right
Speaker 3: like where you couldn't have nurtured talent who rises up
Speaker 3: through the ranks who you have grown in the monastery,
Speaker 3: or you can trade for them, right like you can
Speaker 3: you can go after I don't know, the Lebron James
Speaker 3: of illuminators.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that's available to you, right.
Speaker 1: I wonder who that. I wonder who that would have been,
Speaker 1: who they would have considered that to be, because like
Speaker 1: there's got to be one that everybody's just like that's
Speaker 1: the bet, Like that kid.
Speaker 3: I tell you what the talent oh yeah, Like I'm
Speaker 3: probably like front of the show. Doctor Asaro Oberg strut
Speaker 3: All is like yelling at her phone right now, being like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's this person, and I'll be like, yeah, well.
Speaker 1: You should tell doctor ellinor who that person is at will.
Speaker 1: I certainly don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know the names of too
Speaker 2: many of the illuminators.
Speaker 3: I'm just like in my affair, we don't always you know,
Speaker 3: like a lot of time, we'll just call them the
Speaker 3: master of whatever the fuck thing, you know.
Speaker 1: So in my head, I'm just imagining like Lebron James
Speaker 1: dunking and basketball. But it's got like some like medieval
Speaker 1: white guys, like old medieval white guy's head plastered on it.
Speaker 1: He just he's just fucking slamming that down there. I
Speaker 1: love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, somebody somebody draws that in the style of uh,
Speaker 3: you know, in Inky Bailey or something.
Speaker 2: Please thank you, Tures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Viv, thank you very much for the question. Next,
Speaker 1: we got one from Benjamin Cisco, who says trying to
Speaker 1: read Imagining Communities by Benedicte Anderson. In it, he's talking
Speaker 1: about medieval conceptions of time and how it's not linear.
Speaker 1: Can you guys, explain what the fuck he's talking about.
Speaker 3: I fucking know what he's talking about, because these are
Speaker 3: the most literal linear time motherfuckers. I So the only
Speaker 3: thing I could kind of come up with with this
Speaker 3: is because you know, I'm always bagging on, like as
Speaker 3: someone who works on eschatology, about how linear their time
Speaker 3: view and worldview is, because it's like, you're moving towards
Speaker 3: the apocalypse and the end of the world right now.
Speaker 3: There are things that exist outside of time, right, Like Paradise,
Speaker 3: like and Heaven and Hell exists outside of time in
Speaker 3: that they are eternal, and the soul exists outside of time.
Speaker 2: But time itself is.
Speaker 3: Linear, and we're moving towards the end of the world,
Speaker 3: right so at which point we'll see, you know, the
Speaker 3: destruction of the phenomenal universe. Maybe he means like the
Speaker 3: way that they like set up their day in terms
Speaker 3: of kind of like thinking about the cyclical nature of like.
Speaker 1: That's that's the only thing I can think of, because
Speaker 1: like they they were all obsessed with like linear time,
Speaker 1: and like now like we have like now there are
Speaker 1: like fairly common scientific theories about how, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the universe could restart after like the heat death, like
Speaker 1: you know, like stuff like that, it could start over
Speaker 1: again and and like you could do that. So I mean,
Speaker 1: like now you could say we have some people have
Speaker 1: a much uh more circular view of time than we
Speaker 1: used to. And I mean it's definitely something that we
Speaker 1: can posit and consider as a real theory. But like
Speaker 1: the only thing I could think of for medieval people
Speaker 1: would be like maybe because of like how routinized farming
Speaker 1: and stuff like that was, and like the the changing
Speaker 1: of the seasons and they didn't travel much. I don't,
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, that's all.
Speaker 1: I've never read imagined Communities. I I know it's about
Speaker 1: it's a foundational text on nationalism. There's definitely a whole
Speaker 1: in my theory catalog, but like, well.
Speaker 2: I mean I will say that, yeah, I don't know what.
Speaker 3: One of the criticisms of imagined communities, uh in general
Speaker 3: from medievalist is you got you got that part wrong?
Speaker 3: Uh you know, like I mean, that's that'stuff about like
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century, not necessarily like the time thing. Although
Speaker 3: like I must have glazed over this when like I
Speaker 3: mean I think I skim read this in my theory days,
Speaker 3: but he is incorrect in that, like, certainly nationalist sentiment
Speaker 3: exists within the medieval period. Let us not forget you know,
Speaker 3: monks like Czech monk ghosts, teeth, like chasing out Germans
Speaker 3: and things like that. You know, like at least anti
Speaker 3: foreigners sentiment exists. But there is certainly a sense of something,
Speaker 3: but it tends to come up more particularly in groups
Speaker 3: that see themselves as kind of like a persecuted minority. Right,
Speaker 3: So you'll see this, for example with like Latvian's who
Speaker 3: are like, we are just trying to continue to have
Speaker 3: our weird religion and worship the sky God and like
Speaker 3: that's what it means to be Latvian, right, And yeah,
Speaker 3: but that's different, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think you could, like
Speaker 1: I think, you know, you can easily argue that the
Speaker 1: one hundred Years War is a dual war of national
Speaker 1: liberation for two people, but they don't understand what that
Speaker 1: means yet, and they are like kind of forming nationalists
Speaker 1: sentiment on the fly, and you know, like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: start to get like like stuff like that, and I
Speaker 1: mean like, yeah, I don't know, uh, yeah, I have
Speaker 1: no idea.
Speaker 3: I still think it's worth reading. I still think it's
Speaker 3: worth reading, but it's just a thing to keep in mind.
Speaker 3: A lot of the time is that in a lot
Speaker 3: of these kind of like foundational texts, they get the
Speaker 3: medieval part wrong.
Speaker 1: Now, I think, yeah, the understanding of the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: has changed radically in even like the last like twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty years. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the historical consensus
Speaker 1: of it. So like, yeah, it's like, you know, and
Speaker 1: we just understand more and we figure out more, you know,
Speaker 1: we stop, you know, unfortunately some stuff persists, but some
Speaker 1: stuff will get right you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And so I mean that doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that it is not worthwhile.
Speaker 2: So I mean, sorry, mate, Like an.
Speaker 3: Answer to the question, I don't fucking know what he's
Speaker 3: talking about, Uh sorry, because I think he's wrong.
Speaker 2: I mean, but the best that I can get.
Speaker 3: Out of this is that he's kind of talking about
Speaker 3: like the cyclical nature of church time.
Speaker 1: M yeah, yeah, yeah. If I mean, like if it's
Speaker 1: like the days, like the hours of the day or whatever,
Speaker 1: and how they like are ruled by that, I guess
Speaker 1: you could say so, but I don't understand how we're
Speaker 1: any less ruled by like the cyclical hours of the
Speaker 1: day as they change. It's just a different type of hours.
Speaker 1: It's enumerated differently. But anyway, Yeah, Eleanor's red imagined communities
Speaker 1: or at least skimmed it. Uh, definitely check it out
Speaker 1: if that's something you're interested in. Just you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: they don't get the middle ages stuff quite right. Uh.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Uh, Mark's famously uh you know with the feudal motive
Speaker 1: production calling at that, but I mean, you know that
Speaker 1: was you know, we could we could try and call
Speaker 1: it the manorial mode of production, but who cares? Feudal
Speaker 1: motive production sounds fun?
Speaker 2: Like we can't we can't expect everyone to do everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, and and I mean yeah, like at the time,
Speaker 1: like that was the broad based understanding of it, Like
Speaker 1: it was incorrect, but you know, they they were going
Speaker 1: with what they knew anyway. Uh, Benjamin, thank you very
Speaker 1: much for the question. If you want to ask us
Speaker 1: questions like these that we uh sometimes just don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to, but we will give it our.
Speaker 2: Best shout out to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we will definitely talk about it. And I certainly
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to most of it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to ask us questions like these, please
Speaker 1: subscribe to our Patreon, Patreon dot com slash w nsd pod.
Speaker 1: Uh you get to ask us questions. You get accessed
Speaker 1: to our discord. Uh. You can listen to all of
Speaker 1: our bonus episodes. We do two a month. You can
Speaker 1: check out the stuff ad for It's five dollars a month.
Speaker 1: It's really cool. You can check it out. We're doing
Speaker 1: a book club series on the Cameron Cameron right now. Uh,
Speaker 1: just finished up part three. Uh, so youase you check
Speaker 1: that out. It's a lot of fun. Uh, anti clericalism, uh,
Speaker 1: sex well, a lot of people pretending to be paraplegic
Speaker 1: or ill. I don't know, they have fun way back then.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not I'm not going to judge them.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to judge them for that. I mean
Speaker 1: I will, but.
Speaker 2: Whatever, I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, you should check it out. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Anyway, onto the main show. So on
Speaker 1: April twenty first, twenty twenty five, Pope Francis shuffled off
Speaker 1: this mortal coil after a long battle with various illnesses.
Speaker 1: This means that a papal conclave will need to be
Speaker 1: called to elect the next Vicar of Christ, a practice
Speaker 1: for which the Church has copious rules and procedures. Since
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety six changes to the Apostolic Constitution made
Speaker 1: by Pope John Paul and a few adjustments by Benedict
Speaker 1: the sixteenth, the papal conclave process has been standardized. The
Speaker 1: members of the College of Cardinals who will form the
Speaker 1: conclave will gather in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican
Speaker 1: City to be sequestered away and undergo the rigorous voting process.
Speaker 1: Though previously capped at one hundred and twenty, the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five conclave will have one hundred and thirty five
Speaker 1: cardinals in attendance, the largest ever, and they will enter
Speaker 1: the conclave and be sequestered with only one or two
Speaker 1: non voters present. To avoid meddling, they are housed in
Speaker 1: a purpose built structure called the Domos Sancte Marthe for
Speaker 1: the duration, while all the actual votes, sermons, and gathering
Speaker 1: still take place in the sixteene Chapel. The buildings are
Speaker 1: repeatedly swept for hidden cameras, wiretaps, intruders, and have continuous
Speaker 1: Wi Fi and signal blocking. A two thirds majority is
Speaker 1: required to elect the new pope. The ballots are burned
Speaker 1: after each vote is tabulated, and black smoke is released
Speaker 1: from the chimneys on days when unsuccessful votes occur, whereas
Speaker 1: white smoke indicates a new pope has been elected or
Speaker 1: they're vaping again, whichever it is. A concolivet to choose.
Speaker 1: Pope Farancis's replacement will begin between May sixth and May eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, unless all participating cardinals gather in Rome
Speaker 1: before that time and initiate the process early. Now, there's
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of politicking and haggling and backroom dealing
Speaker 1: that goes on with the modern conclave, but this voting
Speaker 1: process is pretty solid and logical all things considered. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we think about everything the Catholic Church has ever done,
Speaker 1: this is one of the more, you know, normal thing
Speaker 1: normal processes they have, whether they're the fun, weird processes
Speaker 1: or the bad weird ones regardless. But folks, it wasn't
Speaker 1: always this streamlined, sterile affair. Why there was even a
Speaker 1: time when you could say the papal conclave was fun.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'd say that these new fangled papal conclaves
Speaker 1: were their type procedures not only offend the zany tradition
Speaker 1: of the Catholic Church but also my own delicate sensibilities.
Speaker 1: What happened to the good old days when a man
Speaker 1: could be elected pope if a dove landed on his
Speaker 1: shoulder at the right time. Whither the long lost art
Speaker 1: of papal candidates slap fighting with one another to settle things.
Speaker 1: Why do you have an entire constitution of electoral laws
Speaker 1: now when there wasn't a codified rule for the first
Speaker 1: thousand years that the church's existence return What happened to
Speaker 1: the church that was so unconcerned by boring law and
Speaker 1: order of menuche that a barbarian king had to impose
Speaker 1: a rule on it from the outside that outlined how
Speaker 1: much money could be spent to win papal elections because
Speaker 1: it had gotten two out of hand. Where's my conclave?
Speaker 1: That election installs the same man as pope on three
Speaker 1: non consecutive occasions and at one point turns into something
Speaker 1: called the pornocracy in the arena of papal conclaves. We
Speaker 1: are very different, worse off for it. So we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about all the fun they had in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, But First we have to get through the
Speaker 1: boring early years, which is mostly just voting because you know,
Speaker 1: old Peter, a boring rock that he is, he's not
Speaker 1: going to do anything fancy. So eleanor yeah, uh, we
Speaker 1: don't really. Yeah, I don't know what would you say
Speaker 1: if I if I say paper conclict to you, and
Speaker 1: I'm talking about before the modern era, Like, what do
Speaker 1: you think of?
Speaker 3: First? If I say that, Since I'm a nerd, the
Speaker 3: first thing I think about is.
Speaker 2: Pope Gregory the Great, Okay, who is in the eleventh century.
Speaker 3: He's the one who does like the codifying about like
Speaker 3: this is how we're gonna do, like, this is what
Speaker 3: we're gonna do. So so like so if you say conclict,
Speaker 3: I'm like.
Speaker 2: Well, technically there's all those things.
Speaker 3: This is really a gold glove, you know, like because
Speaker 3: because until you get to the point where you're locking
Speaker 3: people away kum klube, you know with h.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what that meant, but I mean I
Speaker 1: knew why I called it a conclave, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know what the word meant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't call it a coumclave because yeah, there
Speaker 3: you go, thank you, thanks.
Speaker 2: I said it out loud yesterday and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's why I got it.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the no loads refused to come close. I get
Speaker 1: I would make that the episode wouldn't get me in
Speaker 1: trouble anyway.
Speaker 2: We should just edit there. That's where we're not.
Speaker 1: Up, and that paper conclaves. You guys know what they
Speaker 1: You guys know what they did. Thank you know what's up.
Speaker 2: You know what's up.
Speaker 3: But you know, I guess fundamentally when I say that,
Speaker 3: it's because until then, it's a lot more like navigating
Speaker 3: on vibes, right, Like I was just like like, oh, yeah, Peter,
Speaker 3: he's he's the first pope, you know, because Jesus like, homie,
Speaker 3: you're my rock. I mean, I don't recall him being
Speaker 3: like why shot you go to Rome and you'll be
Speaker 3: the bishop there. And also bt dub that means that
Speaker 3: you run the church.
Speaker 1: Constantine's going to give one of your successors a letter
Speaker 1: you know, as he dies, it's going to be fine.
Speaker 3: The church I grew up in, like the Catholic church
Speaker 3: that was attached to my school, they had like a
Speaker 3: big stained glass window of Jesus giving.
Speaker 2: Peter the keys.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, Yeah, like was it was it on like
Speaker 1: a big key ring.
Speaker 3: It's like it was like two big fuck off huge keys. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're like yeah, they're they're both like I don't know,
Speaker 3: a foot long or something like that. I say, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like a bunch of sentimental Victorian nonsense,
Speaker 3: you know, but it's great.
Speaker 2: It's great to look at.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. So yeah, the early stuff, like
Speaker 1: before it was legalized in the Roman part basically seems
Speaker 1: to be mostly just voting. But I mean it is
Speaker 1: interesting because they did let lay the laity vote back then. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably including uh, non nobility, like so just like random Christians,
Speaker 1: you know, women maybe come on, we talked about it earlier.
Speaker 1: Let me make my joke. Come on now, I'm just
Speaker 1: kidding women.
Speaker 3: Well, we think, yeah, we think that it's probably it's
Speaker 3: probably most likely that at first. The big thing that
Speaker 3: kind of happens is Romans get to vote on this,
Speaker 3: so and by that I mean like specifically within the
Speaker 3: city of Rome. So it's like you get the clergy
Speaker 3: and like any higher up members of the lady or
Speaker 3: you know, lady that are super involved, you know, like
Speaker 3: people who are like hanging out at the church all
Speaker 3: the time, like they can come in, uh, and they
Speaker 3: can kind of do this, and you know, that's just
Speaker 3: kind of the way things are done. There is some
Speaker 3: conjecture that sometimes these guys would be elected in the
Speaker 3: same way that any bishop is, which is like other
Speaker 3: bishops sound off, you know, but you know, popes like
Speaker 3: to think they're special, so they're like, no, there's.
Speaker 1: No, no, we didn't know.
Speaker 2: The bishop of Milan can't tell me what to do.
Speaker 2: But probably they did. Probably they did as well.
Speaker 3: But it's like it's all a little bit of Roman
Speaker 3: exceptionalism when you hear those ones. So I mean it
Speaker 3: is quite likely, you know, I cannot rule out that,
Speaker 3: like in the third century or something like, you know,
Speaker 3: you'd also be like, hey, what do you think to
Speaker 3: the bishop of Milan, because he's also really important, you know,
Speaker 3: so yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I mean as it goes along the
Speaker 1: there are historical references to it. A bit later, Saint
Speaker 1: Cyprian wrote about how in the two hundreds, one of
Speaker 1: the popes was elected by favorable witness of almost all
Speaker 1: of the clergy, by votes of the lady then present,
Speaker 1: and by the assembly of bishops, so that that was
Speaker 1: before it was legalized, you know, so there's persecution going on.
Speaker 1: But a funny thing happened the very second that it
Speaker 1: became legalized, and that was that the leadership of whatever
Speaker 1: political entity held control of Rome at the time, they
Speaker 1: really wanted to have their say in it. And when
Speaker 1: you know, a Constantine began the long tradition of putting
Speaker 1: his thumb on the scale of of Pope Mark to
Speaker 1: get to get him elected. And you know that's how
Speaker 1: it went from there. When Rome collapsed, the Ostrogoths, they
Speaker 1: they came in and uh yeah, yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: weird how that happened. And you're like, the popes are like,
Speaker 1: we've always been independent. It's like, dude, athel Rick was
Speaker 1: an Ostrogothic king and he was the one that imposed
Speaker 1: the law, and you guys, is like campaign finance for
Speaker 1: foreign laws to stop you from spending so much money.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, maybe it was a little if
Speaker 1: an Ostrogothic king is doing it. Sorry.
Speaker 3: And also I just want to point out, like we
Speaker 3: we we you alluded to this, you know in the introduction,
Speaker 3: but I mean, let us not forget Saint Fabian. Yes, yes, right, okay,
Speaker 3: So like I mean, just to make it clear, you guys,
Speaker 3: you guys. In two thirty six, a dove flew into
Speaker 3: a crowd and landed on Fabian's head, and everyone went.
Speaker 1: Oh shit.
Speaker 3: The whole spirit says, this is the mom.
Speaker 1: Now, this is a legend that like I believe, you
Speaker 1: believe no matter what, there's no downside in believing this.
Speaker 1: It's fun, it's cool, it's quirt good, it's cute. Like
Speaker 1: come on, like we're talking about electing popes here, like
Speaker 1: this is about to become the most money grubbingest backstabbing
Speaker 1: his shit in the world. Let him have a dove
Speaker 1: laning on a god.
Speaker 3: Want one dove, just one fucking dove place.
Speaker 1: By the way, the only thing we're talking about here
Speaker 1: that is not historically like specified, that we don't have
Speaker 1: historical backing for is the dove thing. That's just a legend.
Speaker 1: The rest of this stuff, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the dove thing also is just fun to point
Speaker 3: out too, because this is the process known as acclamation.
Speaker 2: Yes, when a pope is found, So that's just fun.
Speaker 2: But anyway, yeah, like it it's like and then it's
Speaker 2: like a bang boom.
Speaker 3: Immediately after that, you've got political interference right, like you know,
Speaker 3: we got the ost Goths and basically, you know, like
Speaker 3: once once the once the Roman Empire falls over, such
Speaker 3: as it is basically the Oscar Goths who pick it up,
Speaker 3: and like more particularly I mean Theodoric because obviously they
Speaker 3: the emperors get to just choose who the pope is,
Speaker 3: which is the same thing that's happening over in Constantinople
Speaker 3: with like picking the the archpicial of Constantinople. You know,
Speaker 3: like it's like why would it be any different, right,
Speaker 3: So yeah, and that's how you get Pope Felix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, speaking of Constantinople when you know it.
Speaker 1: But there was a time, a long time, in fact,
Speaker 1: two centuries worth of time where uh do you want
Speaker 1: to guess who had the final say over the Roman
Speaker 1: pope was? It was in Paris. Oh no, but it
Speaker 1: was the only European city at the time, that's right.
Speaker 1: It was Constantinople. Back after Justinian and Bilisarius's Raventius gains. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they basically knocked Yeah, and they only did
Speaker 1: in some years.
Speaker 3: They only stopped it because it just took too long
Speaker 3: to get back and forth to Constantinople. That's the only
Speaker 3: reason they knocked it off is that it was just
Speaker 3: like it could take ages to actually get over to Constantinople,
Speaker 3: and it was taken too long to one hundred percent
Speaker 3: say okay, yeah, cool, that's the pope, and then like
Speaker 3: as a result, there was more slap fighting going on. Yes,
Speaker 3: so they were like, okay, well, we're going to just
Speaker 3: have to like let you guys pick, but then you
Speaker 3: got to report to us, and then if we're really pissed,
Speaker 3: we'll like nullify it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, they eventually this was stopped, like the
Speaker 1: whatever constituted the Roman Army at that or yeah, they
Speaker 1: they seized the Basilica, the Army of Constantinople, seized Saint
Speaker 1: Peter or the Basilica of Saint John lateran and and
Speaker 1: basically installed who they wanted and then controlled a couple
Speaker 1: of elections. But then by the mid seven hundreds their
Speaker 1: rule had gotten so hands off because they were dealing
Speaker 1: with their own problems back home. That Pope Zachary, which
Speaker 1: you know, I love the popes who own there's only
Speaker 1: one name. There's only one with that name. Pope Zachary
Speaker 1: is a good one. Love that guy, Pope Mark. Earlier,
Speaker 1: we talked about. But then you know, then guests who
Speaker 1: kind of took over. It's our old friends, the Franks,
Speaker 1: the Carolinians, and uh yeah. A lot of times, you
Speaker 1: know when we talk about it, it's like why did
Speaker 1: why did the pope crown Charlemagne? And I mean there
Speaker 1: are a lot of reasons. He was looking for, like
Speaker 1: physical protection, he was looking for temporal political support, he
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. But one of the reasons is that
Speaker 1: they kind of realized that, like this whole process had
Speaker 1: gone insane, like it's just been going and going and going,
Speaker 1: and like before Charlemagne's time, there were like you know,
Speaker 1: there were dueling popes and anti popes and you know
Speaker 1: people were elected by like forty forty guys, like forty
Speaker 1: Frankish guys, and that was it. You know, It's just
Speaker 1: like stuff like that. So they go to Charlemage and they're like, look,
Speaker 1: you give us protection, you help us out, We'll do this.
Speaker 1: And this was one of the reasons that Contantinople was
Speaker 1: kind of pissed about it, because they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: that was our job, and they were like it was
Speaker 1: your job like sixty years ago.
Speaker 2: Bro grow up, like you see, like I don't see
Speaker 2: an XR Chack of Revetta anywhere.
Speaker 1: No, not anymore, you guys in my face. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: guys don't own this land anymore. If anything, it's the
Speaker 1: uh the uh, the Caliphate of Ravenna or close to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like yeah, they fucking just hate to see a
Speaker 3: playboy wedding.
Speaker 2: They imagine that's what's going on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so the popes placed themselves under Charlemagne, and
Speaker 1: that's all good until the Carolingian dynasty devolves on itself
Speaker 1: and it turns into a fucking mess. And then it
Speaker 1: turned like whatever you imagine the most corrupt medieval papal bullshit.
Speaker 1: This is it, this is it. This is in nine
Speaker 1: oh four, the start of what's called the pornocracy, which
Speaker 1: is a real thing. That's a real term. Uh hell
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, And basically one of the popes was assassinated
Speaker 1: and there was a time when twelve opes were killed
Speaker 1: either before after they resigned, three were deposed to atterned
Speaker 1: return and yeah, it's it was kind of owned by
Speaker 1: this family, the Theophilacti, the theophilact from Tusculum, and they
Speaker 1: just kept installing people for sixty years and it was
Speaker 1: called the seculum obscureum, which throsure aris eleanor I'm sorry, no,
Speaker 1: but they I know, I know, you know, I'm playing
Speaker 1: go ahead.
Speaker 3: Sorry, it's the right use of the term. Yes, ourcages
Speaker 3: seculum obscure them. It's it's because there's like so much
Speaker 3: wild git going on that we just we get weird
Speaker 3: stuff with the documentation.
Speaker 2: So that's why we don't we don't know very much
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: And you know, like when if you've got a bit
Speaker 3: of a chaotic situation in the papacy, which I think
Speaker 3: this counts as you know, who does all the record
Speaker 3: keeping around here, the papacy, right, so and also probably
Speaker 3: they were like getting rid of each other's things, you know,
Speaker 3: because they're like nope, not expunging that.
Speaker 2: One from the record or whatever.
Speaker 3: So we have this like we have a pretty significant
Speaker 3: loss of sources. But also just like it might not
Speaker 3: even be a loss of sources. It's it's just kind
Speaker 3: of like a lack of sources because they were too
Speaker 3: busy slapping each other to like write things down, and
Speaker 3: like that's what it comes down to. It's not necessarily
Speaker 3: a value judgment or anything like that. And this is
Speaker 3: where it comes from this is the one. This is
Speaker 3: the one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean they don't even meet, like, well,
Speaker 1: the sources are weird because almost all of this comes
Speaker 1: from one source. What's his name, fuck leot prand of Cromona,
Speaker 1: which is God. That's the way we need to bring
Speaker 1: back return And yeah, and he he was, you know,
Speaker 1: he was offended in a palled by all this, and
Speaker 1: so there is kind of a there's kind of a
Speaker 1: constant consensus that's for him now that like, while a
Speaker 1: lot of this did happen and it was very corrupt
Speaker 1: and bad, like it might be blowing a little bit
Speaker 1: out of the water because this guy was trying to
Speaker 1: argue for like a we got to return back to
Speaker 1: you know, the wave Peter and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: he was calling it out. But yeah, the pornocracy in
Speaker 1: Greek it means rule of the harlots, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you.
Speaker 2: Know, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we should amend our earlier claims because the
Speaker 1: you know, it is ledge that theophile's wife and daughter
Speaker 1: were you know, they had undue influence over the papacy
Speaker 1: and they apparently did installing their boyfriend's husbands sons.
Speaker 3: Normal Wow, Okay, Okay, a woman have political influence, God forbid,
Speaker 3: she exercised political power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's it's not good for the papacy,
Speaker 1: Like it contributes to all of the like ideas, you know,
Speaker 1: the ideas that are running around at the time that
Speaker 1: will be given new life you know, later on by
Speaker 1: the reformers and stuff, like look at all of this
Speaker 1: stuff they did, and it's like, well, yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: really argue with that, because this was pretty fucking bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 3: But then well we also have to consider that probably
Speaker 3: Leod Prond is like a slightly hostile witness, so he's
Speaker 3: probably like he's probably given it the big one. And
Speaker 3: I don't know, to a certain extent, I think that
Speaker 3: everything goes wrong when you expect the clergy did not
Speaker 3: have wives and stuff. I think that like before we
Speaker 3: have like the Gregorian reforms, it's not necessarily like I
Speaker 3: think that you're you're inviting sex pests in that's that
Speaker 3: I think. So it's like, okay, yeah, on the one hand,
Speaker 3: like your girlfriend might be like.
Speaker 2: Well I think it would be cool if we did this,
Speaker 2: like yeah, okay, that that is a thing.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, I don't know Pedo Church,
Speaker 3: So like what am I meant to do.
Speaker 1: With all of this? Right, Like, yeah, it's I don't, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't, sorry about all that.
Speaker 1: Sorry, No, it's like.
Speaker 2: I mean, like it is bad.
Speaker 3: It is bad, but it's also one hundred percent this
Speaker 3: is like a political this is a polemic, right, and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, we don't necessarily know anything that is happening,
Speaker 3: and this is kind of like it's it's a lot
Speaker 3: like Procopius's Secret History about about the Empress Theodora and
Speaker 3: be like.
Speaker 2: Good shoe was fucking a swan and I saw and
Speaker 2: I saw the swan, and the.
Speaker 3: Swan looked at me, Like it's it's pretty much exactly
Speaker 3: the same thing, because like he's attempting to make a
Speaker 3: very specific case. As you mentioned, however, probably yeah, there
Speaker 3: was a lot of ladies hanging out in there, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't. Yeah. I think my views on
Speaker 1: Paple Sell Lucie are well known. It's a bad practice
Speaker 1: that leads to a lot of problems, as Leonor just said,
Speaker 1: but like I mean, you know, they probably wanted to
Speaker 1: get some women out of there, but also it's probably
Speaker 1: like you know, there you know, it's it's also a
Speaker 1: lot of like, uh, you know, this just kind of
Speaker 1: looks bad, like uh.
Speaker 2: I mean, it looks bad. It looks bad.
Speaker 1: As those guys who call themselves the Holy Roman Emperors,
Speaker 1: they're starting to to, uh, they're starting to look at
Speaker 1: this and they're starting to wonder what the fuck is
Speaker 1: going on and whether they need to really get involved,
Speaker 1: and they will. And yeah, so there's the pornocracy and
Speaker 1: that ends, and you enter like a couple of more
Speaker 1: eras where like it's being where the papacy is being
Speaker 1: directly influenced by families, by like a single family, and
Speaker 1: then we come to before we get to the actual conclaves,
Speaker 1: we come to one of my favorite guys that I
Speaker 1: found out about during this Pope Benedict the Ninth, who
Speaker 1: is the only person elected to the papacy more than once.
Speaker 1: He was elected twice and then reinstalled himself a third time. Uh,
Speaker 1: the only person known to have actually committed simony, literal simony,
Speaker 1: as in selling the office of the papacy. Many of them,
Speaker 1: of course committed uh, you know, they committed simony as
Speaker 1: we would say it, but he literally offered, uh, the
Speaker 1: papacy to his nephew who became John the nineteenth and
Speaker 1: he offered it for money. He was like, look, as
Speaker 1: long as you pay me back, I'm good. You know,
Speaker 1: just just just you know, pay me back, and then
Speaker 1: he had second thoughts about it went back in. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I just really liked this guy because I didn't know
Speaker 1: there was a non consecutive papal terms guy until this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really didn't know that someone had done actual assigmony
Speaker 1: like that. Like someone was like, hey, here's a quid
Speaker 1: pro quote, give me money for papacy, and someone else went, yeah,
Speaker 1: sounds good man, let's do it, Like, yeah, it's delight.
Speaker 3: It's a really interesting one because the histories about him
Speaker 3: are are written that it's like kind of cute because
Speaker 3: he was like the kind of Tuscany and the way
Speaker 3: they say it is that he's like, well he both
Speaker 3: his uncles were popes or whatever, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is just something I've inherited. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 3: just like you know, I can sell lamp, Like, you know,
Speaker 3: if I wanted to set to sell the County of Tuscany,
Speaker 3: I would be able to do that. You know, there's
Speaker 3: probably not enough money in the world. But you know
Speaker 3: it'd be possible, and uh, you know, so why wouldn't
Speaker 3: I be able to sell this?
Speaker 2: And it's like, well a budy the vibes.
Speaker 1: You can't you can't go you can't like go around
Speaker 1: say like you are you taking notes on a criminal
Speaker 1: fucking conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Mother, Like yeah, exactly, Like what do you do?
Speaker 1: Like you literally just asked him in front of other
Speaker 1: cardinals and bishops like hey, eh, eh, how much would
Speaker 1: you give me? Money? Means that, yeah, how much will
Speaker 1: you give me for this uh papal hat? And he
Speaker 1: was like so much that that hat's fucking you know.
Speaker 3: Don't uh I my dare officer rest in piss officer, Mike,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you're alive. Uh. He like told
Speaker 3: us some story as fifth graders when he was like
Speaker 3: warning us not to do angel dust, a thing that
Speaker 3: fifth graders definitely.
Speaker 2: Do or whatever the shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all the time he's like, you know that, like
Speaker 3: people are drug dealers, Like he said, oh, I saw
Speaker 3: this young man with the Ferrari and I said, like
Speaker 3: a nice car.
Speaker 2: And I was like and I looked up to him
Speaker 2: because he must have made it. And then he said,
Speaker 2: I'll sell it to you, and.
Speaker 3: Then I realized he was probably a drug dealer. And
Speaker 3: it's kind of like that where, you know, like, absolutely
Speaker 3: no props to Officer Mike, who also cheated at four square, Okay,
Speaker 3: but I'm just like thinking of him like a said
Speaker 3: imaginary drug dealer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, his ass. Yeah. Look, I'm having a lot
Speaker 1: of fun with this. But the actual concluict start in
Speaker 1: ten fifty nine, when the Holy Roman emperors and people
Speaker 1: who wanted to get the papacy back on track had
Speaker 1: had enough. There was the investiture controversy, which you've talked
Speaker 1: about before, which, uh, look, I know, like the popes
Speaker 1: ended up getting their way for a little while and
Speaker 1: being the upper hand, but it was it was one
Speaker 1: thousand fucking years and you guys had to be propped
Speaker 1: up by every moron who came by and took control
Speaker 1: of the swamp city. Like I know, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: Like maybe maybe else should have stop pretending like it's
Speaker 1: amazing that they did not get the conclave process together
Speaker 1: until thirty years before the first Crusade. That is insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's insane.
Speaker 3: A thing to keep in mind about the church and
Speaker 3: the way that it comports itself. And I'm always saying
Speaker 3: this is that it's a vibes based operation until you
Speaker 3: get to the eleventh century. It's the eleventh century when
Speaker 3: it gets off the ground. It's the eleventh century when
Speaker 3: it becomes the rules based legal organism that we all
Speaker 3: know and love, right, And and that's a fucking long time,
Speaker 3: you know. It takes like a good five hundred years
Speaker 3: for them to coalesce this power into anything and to
Speaker 3: stop being you know, a couple of popes, you know,
Speaker 3: one anti pope and one graveyard and the pope and
Speaker 3: another one and waiting on a letter from Constantinople to
Speaker 3: say who the guy is gonna be?
Speaker 2: Like these are not.
Speaker 3: It's not the same thing as the papacy will be
Speaker 3: here too. Four And Gregory the Great is very responsible
Speaker 3: for that, and that's why that's why we we call
Speaker 3: it that, you know.
Speaker 1: Yep, Yeah, So like what what does now look when
Speaker 1: we're talking about this, there's still going to be corruption
Speaker 1: like a lot of Borgia popes popes to go through
Speaker 1: like stuff like that, but eleanor like hat like how
Speaker 1: did they go? Like what are what are like? You know,
Speaker 1: what are the outlines here? Is it basically the same
Speaker 1: outline as we have now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's essentially more or less that.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's uh, you're all gonna get locked away,
Speaker 3: although one of the differences is at the time initially
Speaker 3: you're allowed to have like two servants per voter. Uh,
Speaker 3: you're all gonna get locked away, and you're all going
Speaker 3: to vote on.
Speaker 2: Who this is.
Speaker 3: You need a two thirds majority, and then that is
Speaker 3: gonna determine who the pope is. There will be some
Speaker 3: vacillation on many of these points later, so, for example,
Speaker 3: in order to try to speed things up, like you
Speaker 3: can have into regnum of you know, multiple years even
Speaker 3: with this in place, so certain popes try to bring
Speaker 3: in a for example, ways of speaking it up by
Speaker 3: being like after five days you only get one hot
Speaker 3: meal a day, after ten days bread and water.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 3: There are times when like the election was taking so
Speaker 3: long and it's being held in some small Italian town
Speaker 3: that the townspeople get pissed off and take.
Speaker 2: The roof off the fucking palace.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they're like, all right, well nat, how about now, bitch,
Speaker 3: you know, like.
Speaker 2: Kind of a thing.
Speaker 3: There are amusing things too, because it for a while
Speaker 3: after they decide you can vote for yourself. It has
Speaker 3: to be two thirds in your vote something like that,
Speaker 3: like two thirds and one. It has to be two
Speaker 3: thirds plus one, like just to like you know, discount
Speaker 3: your vote essentially. But then like that comes and goes,
Speaker 3: but more or less, Yeah, this is when we have
Speaker 3: the process concreted into place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, a fun thing is that, uh they uh,
Speaker 1: the when they started out, when the College of Cardinals
Speaker 1: was created, it was very small, very very small. The
Speaker 1: first papal conclave had six electors. Six so yeah, they
Speaker 1: just for a while, it's just like a meeting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you think? What do you think? And they're
Speaker 1: like and they're dragging it out for two months, Like
Speaker 1: what the fuck could they be talking about in there?
Speaker 1: What are they doing?
Speaker 3: And like we got to understand that like papal appointments sometimes,
Speaker 3: like especially during like the Carolingian phase might happen like
Speaker 3: the day a guy died, because the emperor will be
Speaker 3: like that guy. Yeah, and that like which, to be clear,
Speaker 3: the Church doesn't love but there's an a whole lot
Speaker 3: that you can do, but it is also something that
Speaker 3: is put in place very specifically to try to cut
Speaker 3: off Yeah, the the various emperors from interfering, which they
Speaker 3: absolutely fucking did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for quite such Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it I mean it goes on like the
Speaker 1: the electorate is small for a while. We don't have
Speaker 1: great numbers on a lot of the stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: did the did the process change a lot with when
Speaker 1: the Avignon papacy happened or were they just like, look,
Speaker 1: we're doing the same thing but in France, the.
Speaker 2: Same thing about in France. Yeah, just straight up there,
Speaker 2: like dude, this is the church. We're just here now, right.
Speaker 3: They do try to kind of say we're going to
Speaker 3: try to like limit you know, outside you know what, ever,
Speaker 3: but you're just doing it in Avenuel.
Speaker 2: Now, that's all. That's all that shit is.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: A fun thing is that throughout the entirety of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages there was not a rule that required the
Speaker 1: pope to be Catholic. Well happened until fifteen fifty nine
Speaker 1: because you didn't have to because what else these were
Speaker 1: they going to be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, you know how, he's not.
Speaker 1: Going to be Muslim, he's not going to be jew
Speaker 1: so like.
Speaker 3: What yeah, like what you're gonna pick a heretic like,
Speaker 3: I don't think you're going around Languedoc being like anyone,
Speaker 3: anyone you know, like that, well that.
Speaker 1: All the Albagencians should have elected their own pope. I
Speaker 1: know they I know Albigensian isn't a real thing, but whatever,
Speaker 1: but still we're just it's easy, yeah, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's the okay, So I asked you earlier, like when
Speaker 1: you think about like the medieval conclaves, so like when
Speaker 1: you think about the ones like from after ten fifty nine, like,
Speaker 1: what do you think about with that? Like, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I know there are some of these like we're people
Speaker 1: are actually getting in fist fights with one another like.
Speaker 3: It, Like yeah, I mean, well a lot of these
Speaker 3: things get really testy.
Speaker 2: For example, like you know, the Western Schism happens.
Speaker 3: Because fundamentally a conclave is essentially threatened by the people
Speaker 3: of Rome right like where they're they're like, we're going
Speaker 3: to burn this shit down. You better get us a
Speaker 3: Roman pope and they're like, best I can do is
Speaker 3: Neapolitan and then like and he is like a madman
Speaker 3: and like a violent and like breaking people's arms and shit,
Speaker 3: and they're they're like, dude, this was under duress and
Speaker 3: then he's like, no, it wasn't. And you know, like
Speaker 3: so you see all of these things that like have
Speaker 3: immense outside pressure. You know, like my favorite Holy Roman
Speaker 3: emperor is like an anti emperor at first. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: but because the pope likes him at the time. But
Speaker 3: the pope will come to not like him, but they
Speaker 3: like at the time, right, So you know you see
Speaker 3: this like back and forth hit for chat. You know,
Speaker 3: like living the Bavarian absolutely is like making antipopes, you know,
Speaker 3: like they're going around and doing these things. So it's
Speaker 3: like it's also interesting and important to see that even
Speaker 3: when we're in a period where we're saying, Okay, this
Speaker 3: is what a conclay is, this is how they're carried out,
Speaker 3: you still see emperors being like nah, dog, like I'm
Speaker 3: not I'm not doing all that right, Like that's that's
Speaker 3: just how it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you know, they just put rules. They just
Speaker 1: put rules in a facade around the whole thing that
Speaker 1: was happening. You know, it was you know, you still
Speaker 1: got you still got these Italian popes buying the papacy
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. You get some of these weird
Speaker 1: quirks in fifteen forty nine, we would have had an
Speaker 1: English pope, but Cardinal Pohl wouldn't vote for himself to
Speaker 1: cast that in what would have been the deciding vote,
Speaker 1: and does thank God for that someone else is elected.
Speaker 1: But like it's it's just really kind of funny. The
Speaker 1: Cardinal Borgia who became Pope Alexander the sixth rather you know,
Speaker 1: he privately bribed people while this was happening like in
Speaker 1: fourteen ninety two.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Like the Borsia's like this is the thing
Speaker 3: that that is kind of frustrating. It's like, don't get
Speaker 3: me wrong, like there is there's plenty of problems with
Speaker 3: nepotism and simony and and you know, like sexual things
Speaker 3: that are.
Speaker 2: Happening within the medieval church all the time.
Speaker 3: But the real bad shit is like all happening at
Speaker 3: the early modern period where it's like the Borgia popes,
Speaker 3: you know, rockin' and it's like literally we have like
Speaker 3: one of the popes, like one of the last popes
Speaker 3: to just be like some guy is like one of
Speaker 3: the medici or they're like you're the pope now, and
Speaker 3: he's like, oh word, yeah. You know, like it gets
Speaker 3: really bad during the Renaissance, which so you can understand why,
Speaker 3: like you know, Luther kicks off and everything and you know,
Speaker 3: and that's why they're also like Amita that opin this
Speaker 3: one isn't very fashionable, you know, and it's just like
Speaker 3: shut the fuck up, right, So you know the medieval
Speaker 3: polks they never get that bad with it, right.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, it's like you just it's also funny
Speaker 1: to look through this and find out the stuff that
Speaker 1: was added later, like the white and black smoke thing
Speaker 1: didn't start until nineteen fourteen. It like I would have
Speaker 1: thought that was an age old process like nope, that
Speaker 1: started like when when the First World War was going off,
Speaker 1: Like cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's the thing, right, is that it's so easy with
Speaker 3: people anything to assume that this has been done since
Speaker 3: I'm immemorial, but like, actually the thing about it is, uh,
Speaker 3: it hasn't because in time immemorial, we weren't writing this
Speaker 3: shit down and they were just like navigating on vibes, right,
Speaker 3: like we know when all of this stuff kind of
Speaker 3: comes in and you know, there are it's very funny
Speaker 3: because like you know, Gregory the Tenth when he makes
Speaker 3: uh Ubi perriculum m in twelve seventy four and is like, dude,
Speaker 3: we've got to like fucking.
Speaker 1: We gotta get some strict and we at least have
Speaker 1: to have to get everything out out of the open
Speaker 1: and like put it in like a building somewhere where
Speaker 1: like they can't see us like whipping each other with
Speaker 1: with cat of nine tails to figure out who's going
Speaker 1: to be the pope or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's like that some pops are like, we're
Speaker 3: getting rid of this because like Ba basically like that
Speaker 3: goes away almost immediately under Adrian the Fifth, yeah, right
Speaker 3: where he's like, dude.
Speaker 2: I'd rather not do this. But then but then like
Speaker 2: it comes back in.
Speaker 3: So it's like you end up having these really big
Speaker 3: vacancies if you don't make it really uncomfortable essentially, because
Speaker 3: like they don't care and there and they will they
Speaker 3: will sit there and they will squabble and they will
Speaker 3: go for their candidate for like years and years and
Speaker 3: years unless you're like you are on bread and water now, motherfucker,
Speaker 3: Like I hope, I hope you you like that shit right, like.
Speaker 1: You're eating bread and water. The angry mob outside is
Speaker 1: beating on the door repeatedly like good luck, I'll be
Speaker 1: back in a week. I hope you're not dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the thing is that it's like these
Speaker 3: things and also they move around like medieval people are
Speaker 3: a lot more pragmatic than you think. You know, now,
Speaker 3: it always takes place in the Sisting Chapel. Obviously it
Speaker 3: couldn't take place in the Sisting Chapel because it didn't exist.
Speaker 3: But like you know, sometimes it's happening over here. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's happening over there, like you know, I don't know where,
Speaker 3: Like what wars are going on?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Is Rome currently on fire? There's certainly there are questions
Speaker 3: that we have to ask, you know, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you I mean, I'm just looking at literally
Speaker 1: just a list of paper conclaves Verona, Ferrara, Pizza, Naples, Perugia,
Speaker 1: like you know, they just kind of went wherever. A
Speaker 1: question I was going to ask is like how the
Speaker 1: hell do people get like are they nominated? Like how
Speaker 1: does that work? Because like I mean, like you basically
Speaker 1: just start like like how did Like I saw a
Speaker 1: list of like current like people like contenders, and it's
Speaker 1: like are they are they running campaigns at this point?
Speaker 1: Do they have like secret like like Cardinal College of
Speaker 1: cardinal only can't like how does that work?
Speaker 2: What do they mean?
Speaker 3: Basically, I think that it's just kind of like uh,
Speaker 3: glad handing. You know, you don't you don't run an election,
Speaker 3: but it's just sort of like people like opinions will
Speaker 3: coalesce around particular figures that they're seen as being, you know,
Speaker 3: particularly charismatic or having a good story and like reflecting
Speaker 3: the values that the voters want at the time, right,
Speaker 3: And so what you do in this is the you know,
Speaker 3: you kind of have a first round of voting, like
Speaker 3: on the first day, you have a first round of voting,
Speaker 3: and then everyone just sees like who who's up there?
Speaker 2: Like right, like who is it possible to have votes for?
Speaker 3: Right? And then if your guy got three votes, you're
Speaker 3: gonna go fuck it all, right, and then like you
Speaker 3: know whatever. And I think that they all sit around
Speaker 3: and they talk to each other and they consider things,
Speaker 3: and you know, like I think it's it's a lot
Speaker 3: like playing diplomacy, I think, which you know, shout out
Speaker 3: where it's like you just kind of got to go
Speaker 3: around and talk to people and be like hey.
Speaker 1: What be like going around like high five like this
Speaker 1: boom be like hey, man, he's like, I ain't voting
Speaker 1: for that, dude, I fucking hate him.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, it's gonna be obvious, like who's like a
Speaker 3: fucking opus day guy, you know, and who isn't you know,
Speaker 3: like that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so let me I'm sorry. I know you've
Speaker 1: done a lot of episodes on this in the last
Speaker 1: week or so, but like I read the Pope Francis
Speaker 1: had kind of like stacked the College of Cardinals with
Speaker 1: people who maybe weren't white as insane.
Speaker 2: To be hope. Here, here's the thing. When you're the pope,
Speaker 2: you get to pick bishops. That's true, all right, and.
Speaker 3: Only bishops can become cardinals. That's kind of the rule now,
Speaker 3: uh and so and also the pope a points cardinals.
Speaker 3: So like Homeboy was just like, yeah, I'm choosing everyone
Speaker 3: who isn't a fascist piece of shit, Like I mean, like, don't.
Speaker 2: Get me wrong, like.
Speaker 3: I'm not praising Pope Francis, you know, a pab et cetera.
Speaker 3: But you know, it could be so much worse. But
Speaker 3: I think that, you know, you also kind of get
Speaker 3: to that level if you're at playing the politics and
Speaker 3: good at playing in the game. So it is to
Speaker 3: be hoped that we'll get some people who genuinely want
Speaker 3: to make the world a better place or whatever is.
Speaker 1: But yeah, is there like what am I trying to say?
Speaker 1: Are is there like a like an inside track like
Speaker 1: where people are like, Oh, this guy's got the best shot.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, the whole Like like, don't how
Speaker 1: does that he? I don't know it, just like I
Speaker 1: understand completely how Like how like political campaigns, how you
Speaker 1: can vote on them. You could be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think uh, Mark Carney uh is going to beat
Speaker 1: Pierre paulaver in Canada and you can bet like fifty
Speaker 1: bucks on Mark Carney. But like if you put a
Speaker 1: list of names in front of me for the papacy
Speaker 1: and we're like here, like you can bet money on it,
Speaker 1: It's like, how do I, like, how do I even
Speaker 1: choose that? Do we do? I choose it on a
Speaker 1: number of like people who confessed with them like baseball cards,
Speaker 1: Like I'm turning it over the meth trading card. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's conversion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel I feel like it is.
Speaker 3: It's one of these things where you kind of have
Speaker 3: to be really clocked into a church bossip and politics.
Speaker 3: So it's like, I mean, fundamentally, the Vatican is a state, yeah, right, Like,
Speaker 3: and that is true.
Speaker 2: That is true.
Speaker 3: It is a state, and in many ways you can
Speaker 3: look at churches as kind of like embassies, you know,
Speaker 3: of the church everywhere in the world, and as a result,
Speaker 3: it is political as fuck, right, and so they're there
Speaker 3: are political games that are happening within it all the time,
Speaker 3: just like with any other government. And it's just kind
Speaker 3: of like we don't always acknowledge that. I mean, I
Speaker 3: mean I do because I'm a fucking historian, and you're like,
Speaker 3: are you fucking kidding? Right, Like, for from a medieval standpoint,
Speaker 3: all of this stuff is a big deal, right, So yeah,
Speaker 3: Like I think that the thing you need to do
Speaker 3: is kind of like have your ear to the ground.
Speaker 3: And it's like, I guess I'm kind of aware of
Speaker 3: like some of the front runners, but I'm only kind
Speaker 3: of aware of it because it's like the pope signal
Speaker 3: goes up right when you're you know, I work in
Speaker 3: one of the only professions where like the pope really matters,
Speaker 3: and I'm quite interested in this, right, But I mean,
Speaker 3: if you're a real devout Catholic, uh, this is stuff
Speaker 3: that you'd be aware of, but especially like the kind
Speaker 3: I mean, actually, I'm not even saying devout Catholic?
Speaker 2: What am I saying? I'm saying, like, my God bless them.
Speaker 3: You know, my relatives who are super involved in the church, right,
Speaker 3: like they're going to be the ones like you know,
Speaker 3: and I know all kinds of wazdow people you know,
Speaker 3: who are like I spend time like attempting to get
Speaker 3: like particular people sainted, you know, like I'm like I
Speaker 3: am a laid deacon because that's how much I love
Speaker 3: the church. And it's like they would all know and
Speaker 3: have opinions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, they're like yeah, they're they're definitely telling
Speaker 1: me who's the like the number one pick for, you know,
Speaker 1: in the papal lot.
Speaker 3: And like I think that there are there are people
Speaker 3: who specialize like obviously and kind of like uh Vatgan
Speaker 3: politics now like Paul Sie, people who probably tell you
Speaker 3: more than I can about this, But you know, it
Speaker 3: is still just kind of like a numbers game.
Speaker 2: It's still an election. I mean, what's cute about it
Speaker 2: it is it.
Speaker 3: Is like still medieval in that way where it's like, well,
Speaker 3: we're gonna put a bunch of guys in a room
Speaker 3: and see what fucking happens. Right, They're gonna have to
Speaker 3: hear a bunch of sermons, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so many sermons, so many about uh, I don't know, personal.
Speaker 3: God, They're about what the church needs at the moment.
Speaker 3: And like I just every time I think about it,
Speaker 3: I can't help thinking how much my boy meal each
Speaker 3: would have liked to get that call, you know, like
Speaker 3: he would love to yell at those motherfuckers just like
Speaker 3: that's great.
Speaker 1: You need to go back to Rome.
Speaker 3: And they're like, God, dammit, I get out.
Speaker 2: You're an avenue right now because you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah town, Uh yeah, did we miss anything on the
Speaker 1: medieval conclaves? They are a hodgepodge of fun slash corruption slash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're really fun. What I would say is they're.
Speaker 3: Really fun to go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole with,
Speaker 3: and also a good resource online and resource generally if
Speaker 3: you want to learn more about various popes is to
Speaker 3: check out the Catholic Encyclopedia, which is quite funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, any Encyclopedia Catholica, that's what they should have called it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I used to have encyclop Encyclopedia Britannica CD at
Speaker 1: my house when I was a kid. That's right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we got my parents have a bunch of
Speaker 3: old encyclopedias and they're really fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, we have we have some of that stuff
Speaker 1: at my parents' house. It's like, man, these things are
Speaker 1: fun and so outdated.
Speaker 3: I know, and I kind of like really want them.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia. You can't be talking like that.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, my parents encyclopedias. We talk about Czechoslovakia and
Speaker 2: all this shit.
Speaker 1: It's great. Yeah, Like they're like in the Glory to
Speaker 1: the Glory of Yugoslavia and you're like a hell yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: yeah cool. Uh yeah, folks, thank you for listening. Papal conclaves.
Speaker 1: They were a lot of fun in the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: We we love them. Uh they're there. There are a
Speaker 1: snooze fest now as far as we can tell, unless
Speaker 1: fighting spills out of the building, in which case I
Speaker 1: take it all back. If they get in a fight
Speaker 1: in the Sistine Chapel, I take it off. You guys.
Speaker 3: Let's go find like an ancestor of an ostro goth
Speaker 3: and say he gets to pick like fucking but like
Speaker 3: whatever you.
Speaker 1: Like, gotta find an ancestor of an Ostrogoth who's like,
Speaker 1: not weird about it. I just from Theodore, like, all right, man,
Speaker 1: you got a brother who's like not weird. Maybe No,
Speaker 1: it's a thank y'all for listening. Paper conclaves. They're fun.
Speaker 1: This one will be important. I we'll see who gets elected.
Speaker 1: Will it be kind of good or will it be
Speaker 1: very bad, very bad? It depends who's to say. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's we hope you enjoyed it. I don't know what
Speaker 1: we'll be back with next time. We got to figure
Speaker 1: it out, but we'll get there. And uh yeah, that
Speaker 1: I think is not going to do it for us today.
Speaker 1: Other than eleanor what what have you got going on?
Speaker 2: I don't even know anymore.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm on the socials at Going Medieval. I
Speaker 3: wanted to write something on the blog this month, but
Speaker 3: everything's been so hellish.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be just sur real with you.
Speaker 3: It's very difficult to write things under the tyranny of fascism.
Speaker 3: But you know, I'm here and I'm gonna give it
Speaker 3: my best shot, and if I can figure it out tomorrow,
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: Not gonna try anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but otherwise yeah, like see me melting down about
Speaker 3: fascism socials, I guess yeah.
Speaker 1: And you can find me, Luca is amazing on the socials.
Speaker 1: You can find my old show People's History of the
Speaker 1: Republic wherever you listen to this stuff. If you want
Speaker 1: to hear me yap about Star Wars. Other than that,
Speaker 1: that's going to do it for us today, and we'll
Speaker 1: see you next time. Bye.