Kenneth Whistler wrote:
> Hmm. I see. So 54 popes in the official Catholic chronology,
> from St Gregory I (the Great) through John IX (or something
> along those lines) just didn't exist, and were all invented
> by chroniclers who had "a great occasion for dynasties and
> kings". Along with everything connected to them. And why
> are those particular 54 (or whichever ones were faked -- Niemetz
> doesn't bother to get into that detail) the missing ones? Why
> not assume that St. Miltiades (311-314) was faked, too, for
> example. Maybe they were *all* faked, and the Catholic Church
> didn't exist before Pope Sylvester II.
To play the devil's advocate, it is not necessarily *those* 54 popes who
never existed: it could have been any of the 150-odd popes who lived in the
first millennium of Christianity.
But it is not strictly necessary that any pope did not exist: 300 years
could be the sum of many little errors in the biographies of many popes.
Imagining that historians extended some popes' lifes by a two or three years
(maybe unintentionally, maybe to hide little periods of vacancy on the siege
of Peter) is much more plausible than inventing 54 popes from scratch.
Yes: I think that Niemetz and pals designed a very nice hoax, which will
entertain us for a few years to come.
_ Marco
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