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
