Prophesying the popes, or swinging papal elections

Joachim of Fiore (Pseudo-). Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus [Prophecies of the Popes].

€ 12.500,00

Divination, politics, medieval charlatans, occult symbols, and rigging Renaissance papal elections: this manuscript illustrated with twenty-nine original ink drawings comprises the infamous "Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus". The work is a series of thirty occult predictions of future popes attributed to various mystics, primarily Joachim de Fiore (ca. 1135-1202); however, the oldest section of prophesies is generally considered to have been written in the late 13th century (after the elections of many of the popes it seemed to predict) as "a vehicle of both propaganda and reform" with which "the authors not only wished to influence the outcome of contemporary events including perhaps the papal election of 1304, but also wished to inspire a reform and renovatio in a larger context - that of the church and society as a whole" (Fleming, pp. 1-2). What they created instead was a new genre: that of papal prophecies.

By the 1500s, the famous Renaissance struggles between competing papal families like the Orsini and Medici were well underway, and a second set of papal prophesies was conceived, updating the work with a few more recent popes, and more up-to-date propaganda. Taken together, these two sets of papal prophesies are known as the "Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus". Each prophesy includes a short text in Latin, a "motto" meant to be associated with each pope, and very specific mystic illustrations, sketched here in original ink drawings. Because many manuscripts and the early print edition associated specific prophesies with specific popes, these visions can be identified: from the scribe's pen appears Celestine V (1215-96) kneeling in prayer below the literal Hand of God, which is emerging from a dark starry disk of heaven, itself issuing from a tree. John XXII (1244-1334) holds the hilt of a sword in his mouth while a lamb sits at his feet and a bishop with the lower body of a serpent looms to the left. Nicholas IV (1227-92), meanwhile, sits extending a chalice to a woman, somewhat hindered by the small dragon hanging almost comically off his right arm, having bitten his wrist. The antipope John XXIII (1370-1419) appears not as a pope but as a blushing tonsured monk, holding a sickle and a rose, a severed leg nearby. Urban VI (1318-89) gets perhaps the most extreme treatment, appearing in his papal crown, but as a hybrid chimera, with a donkey's ears and the body of a winged dragon with its tail terminating in the head of a creature (in other illustrations a wolf) spitting up or swallowing the hilt of a sword.

Following the "Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus" is a list of popes by prophesied motto in a different hand, with a few of the later prophesies with no assigned pope speculatively filled in by a few much later writers; the final pope listed in the original hand is Alexander VII (1599-1667), whose papacy ran from 1655 until his death, suggesting a date for the manuscript from this range.