ANTIPOPES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH - Sunday 29 June, Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

Antipopes in the History of the Catholic Church up to and including Antipopes of the Vatican II religion


In the 2000 year history of the Catholic Church, there have been more than 40 antipopes. That is, a bishop who claims to be a pope, but was not canonically elected as Bishop of Rome.


The Catholic Church teaches...


A heretic would cease to be pope, and that a heretic couldn't be validly elected pope


The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Heresy," 1914, vol.7, p. 261:

"The pope himself, if notoriously guilty of heresy, would cease to be pope because he would cease to be a member of the Church."


Heresy is the obstinate denial or doubt by a baptized person of an article of divine and Catholic Faith. A person who denies one authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church is a heretic.

Besides antipopes reigning from Rome due to uncanonical elections, the Catholic Church teaches that if a pope were to become a heretic he would automatically lose his office and cease to be the pope. This is the teaching of all the doctors and Fathers of the church who addressed the issue.


St. Francis de Sales (17th century), Doctor of the Church, The Catholic Controversy, pp. 305-306:

"Now when he [the pope] is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church...""St. Antoninus (1459): "In the case in which the pope would become a heretic, he would find himself, by that fact alone and without any other sentence, separated from the Church. A head separated from a body cannot, as long as it remains separated, be head of the same body from which it was cut of. A pope who would be separated from the Church by heresy, therefore, would by that very fact itself cease to be head of the Church. He could not be a heretic and remain pope, because , since he is outside of the Church, he cannot possess the keys of the Church." (Summa Theologica, cited in Actes de Vatica I. V. Frond pub.)


The case in which a pope prior to his election fell into heresy, is covered by Pope Paul IV, in his Bull, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, Feb. 15, 1559 [ covered in an earlier article]
Here is a list of Antipopes taken from Wikipedia :
LIST OF ANTIPOPES IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BEFORE VATICAN II
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1. St. Hippolytus ( reconciled with Pope St. Pontian and died as martyr to the Church), 217 – 235
2. Novitian, 251 -258
3. Felix II ( confused with a martyr with the same and thus considered an authentic pope until recently), 355 -365
4. Ursicinus (Ursinus), 366 -367
5. Eulalius, 418 -419
6. Laurentius, 498 -499, 501 -506
7. Dioscorus ( legitimate perhaps as opposed to Boniface II but died 22 days after election), 530
8. Theodore (II) (opposed to antipope Paschal), 687
9. Paschal (1) (opposed to antipope Theodore), 687
10. Theofylact, 757
11. Constantine 11, 767 -768
12. Philip (replaced antipope Constantine II briefly; reigned for a day and then returned to his monastery), 768
13. John VIII, 844
14. Anastasius III Bibliothecarius, 855
15. Christopher, 903 -904
16. Boniface VII, 974 , 984 -985
17. John Filagatto, (John XVI), 997 -999
18. Gregory VI, 1012
19. Sylvester III, 1045
20. John Mincius, ( Benedict X), 1058 -1059
21. Pietro Cadalus, (Honarius II), 1061 -1064
22. Guibert of Ravenna (Clement III), 1080 & 1084 -1100
23. Theodoric, 1100- 1101
24. Adalbert, 1101
25. Maginulf, (Sylvester IV), 1105 -1111
26. Maurice Burdanus, (Gregory VII), 1118 – 1121
27. Theobaldus Buccapecuc (Celestine II), ( legitimate but submitted to opposing pope, Honorius and afterwards considered an antipope), 1124
28. Pietro Pierleoni ( Anacletus II), 1130 -1138
29. Gregorio Conti ( Victor IV), 1138
30. Ottavio di Montecelio ( Victor IV), 1159 -1164
31. Guido di Crema ( Paschal III), 1164 -1168
32. Giovanni of Struma ( Callixtus III), 1168- 1178.
33. Lanzo of Sezza (Innocent III), 1179 -1180
34. Pietro Rainalducci (Nichloas V), antipope in Rome, 1328 -1330
35. Robert of Geneva ( Clement VII), antipope of the Avignon line, 20 September 1378 – 16 September, 1394
36. Pedro de Luna, (Benedict XIII), antipope of the Avignon line, 1409 -1410
37. Pietro Philarghi ( Alexander V), antipope of the Pisan line, 1409 -1410
38. Baldassare Cosa ( John XXIII), antipope of the Pisan line, 1410 -1415
39. Gil Sanchez Muno ( Clement VIII), antipope of the Avignon line, 1423 -1429
40. Bernard Garnier (the first Benedict XIV), antipope of the
Avignon line, 1425 – c. 1429
41. Jean Carrier ( the second Benedict XIV), antipope of the Avignon line, 1430 -1437
42. Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy (Felix V), 5 November 1439- 7 April 1449
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[ That's a lot of Antipopes, when you consider we have had 260 popes since St. Peter, and according to my calculations [e = mC2/2000 - 1999x (y/b) + constant],
with a margin of error of + or - 4%.
...means that the chances of having an antipope are 16.1%...that seems pretty high, doesn't it, especially when you realize that Christ only managed 8.25% in the 'failed' dept, we have since managed to double that!
Note: where e, is estimate, m is my, C is calculation (squared), y=1,b=1, constant is short for Constantinople ( I thought it would look good in there)
[If you would like to see how I came up with those figures, don't forget to apply the BODMAS rule...or you will come up with some stupid results].
To be continued...