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Inspired by the Medieval Christian Murder Cult thread in Ask/Tell, post your favorite cult or heresies or weird beliefs. I posted about these guys in that thread but I'm reposting for here. The Cirucmcellions The Circumcellions were a group based in North Africa during the Roman Empire. North Africa was the Bible Belt of the empire and most of the really crazy sects from this time period up to the Muslim Conquests were based out of here. They believed very strongly in the power of Martyrdom and that anyone who was martyred for Christ would be guaranteed a place in heaven. Since heaven was so great they were all lining up to be martyred. Being martyred for Christ was very easy in the early days of the sect, when a Circumcellion started itching to die they would simply go to the marketplace and start insulting all of the Roman gods until and angry mob killed them for blasphemy. But then the worst thing that could have happened to the Circumcellions happened. Constantine converted to Christianity and suddenly it wasn't just legal, but cool, and people were converting en masse to try to get on the emperor's good side. Now when they went to the market place for suicide by preaching they would just get back-pats and "right ons" instead. So they innovated, they started attending criminal trials for robbers, murderers etc. and interrupting the proceedings with sermons about Christ, and when the judge would tell them to take it outside, they would start insulting him for not being a true Christian and stopping the trial to praise the Lord. Eventually the judge would get pissed off enough at this they would hold the Circumcellion in Contempt of Court which was a crime punishable by death. The other way was that they would go out into the country and lie in wait for merchants to pass by. Then they would leap out of the bushes and start attacking them with clubs (Because Jesus said "that he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword" and obviously this just meant that Jesus was opposed to bladed weapons. There couldn't be any metaphor at work here.) The whole time they would be shouting about how great Jesus was so that when they were hopefully killed in self-defense, they died for Christ.
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Aug 23, 2019 18:20
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nestorius did nothing wrong 
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Aug 24, 2019 03:37
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bitcoin
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Aug 26, 2019 21:19
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In 1260, Gerard Segarelli had been rejected from the Franciscan order, and took it upon himself to found the Apostolic Brethren. Apostolics rejected the grandeur of the church, considering it to have strayed from holiness, and lived their lives in accordance with descriptions given in Acts of the Apostles, living in poverty without homes, working just enough to afford food. For his heresy, the Bishop of Palma imprisoned Segarelli in 1280 in his palace as a source of amusement until his release and banishment in 1286. In 1294 Segarelli was imprisoned for life, but was tortured into confession of heresy by inquisitors and burned at the stake. Leadership of the Apostolics was restored in 1303 by Fra Dolcino, the son of a priest who according to Wikipedia, was "a member of the order since 1291, and eloquent, enthusiastic utterer of apocalyptic prophecies." He led Apostolics who had gone into hiding to a valley in northwest Italy, where the order became known as the Dulcinians. Dulcinians were prohibited from taking oaths, allowed perjury and deception when needed, opposed capital punishment, and celebrated their purity while the men and their "Apostolic Sisters" spent a lot of time praying and loving. This did not sit well with the Catholic church. Dolcino's teachings (copied from Wikipedia) were considered heretical: quote:The main concepts of the Dulcinian heresy were: These were obviously very liberal ideas for the time, and the church wasn't having any of it. The church once again declared them heretical and sought to eliminate them. During the time spent on Mount Parete Calva in the Sesia valley, the Dulcinians waged guerrilla warfare against crusaders and episcopal troops sent to capture or kill them, and also pillaged and killed villagers who they regarded as heretical for not defending them, looting their villages and burning houses. Every day, the Dulcinians prayed and waited for God's judgment against the church to come and prove their righteousness. In 1307, Crusaders laid siege to their fortification and Fra Dolcino and his "sister in spirit" Margaret were captured and executed without trial by being violently dismembered and their remains burned. 15 years later, another 30 Dulcinians were found in hiding and burned at the stake. His ideas were later celebrated by French revolutionaries and some dubbed him the "Apostle of the Socialist Jesus." Leftist workers in 1907 built a monument to Dolcino on Mount Rubello near where the Dulcinians had lived, and it stood for 20 years until destroyed by fascists. A new monument was built in 1974. Dulcino is depicted in Dante's Inferno as being tortured as a Sower of Discord in Bolgia 9 in the 8th circle of Hell.
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Aug 26, 2019 23:06
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Incidentally Christianity is itself a weird cult in origin.
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Aug 26, 2019 23:10
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Heavens Gate OP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqSZhwu1Rwo
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Aug 27, 2019 10:53
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Republicans are a suicide cult
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Aug 27, 2019 17:54
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If you think about it, literally any group of any kind is a cult. Now heresies are a different thing. My favorite heresy is 40k heresy. 
Big Mackson has a new favorite as of 20:41 on Aug 27, 2019 |
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Aug 27, 2019 20:37
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The Fellowship Foundation, The Family, or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays. Either way, they're the Christian group behind the national Prayer Breakfast hosted every year, and one of the most hosed up groups out there. Researching them and their founder Doug Coe is like falling down a rabbit hole full of corruption, bigotry, back-door deals and weaponized social pressures. TL;DR it's run by many of the individual Rich White Men™️ who benefit from the patriarchy and racism. Of course it's a bit more complicated than just that. However, the gist is they're run by a bunch of politically powerful old men who have amassed fortunes off of marginalized people, or their descendants who were raised to believe they have a right to do so. These rich people have poured a fraction of those fortunes into convincing the poor-but-not-desperately-poor to blame their struggles on those they can consider 'beneath them'. They prey upon the religious belief of your average person by funding preachers, religious figures etc. who support their status quo message. It's fascist techniques without anyone actually calling them "fascist". I recommend reading the book by Jeff Sharlet or watching the documentary The Family (on Netflix iirc) if you haven't already. It's as chilling as it is eye-opening. e:spelling and grammar. also: Croatoan posted:Republicans are a suicide cult 'cause yeah, basically. DeathCrabForCutie has a new favorite as of 16:43 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 16:06
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I think it was on here: Some goon(?) whose parents raised him in a cult did an Ask/Tell(?) about what it was like. You know how sometimes, the song you're listening to when you're reading something becomes associated with the text? I listened to Smashing Pumpkins while I read his story. While I read the post where he talked about falling in love with a girl from the cult, and them (I think) talking about how they wanted to leave, I was listening to "Tonight, Tonight". I'll always associate it. https://youtu.be/NOG3eus4ZSo Also, regarding the Heavens Gate guy, I think the trick cult leaders do with their eyes to make them look like that is to "look wide". Someone who wants to have those eyes can mentally pretend that they're looking at something in the far distance, which causes their eyeballs to spread apart and become soft focused.
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Aug 31, 2019 07:43
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I was technically raised in a cult, but it was just Rosicrucianism plus Dad's fixation on Ireland. He has all the charisma of a brick, so it failed so hard and so fast that no one outside the family knew it was a cult-attempt, except that he made us dress funny. My fashion sense has never recovered, but I have been assured that I can pass for at least 80% normal.
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Aug 31, 2019 19:15
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The Rajneeshis. I spent a good chunk of my childhood in the area and my mom and maternal relatives worked with and knew a number of people who either were Rajneeshis or were poisoned by them. Yukio Mishima's insane nationalist group is hilarious but debatably culty.
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Sep 1, 2019 02:58
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the final footage of the jones town massacre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJSv0gDPVLA
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Sep 1, 2019 13:02
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Tulalip Tulips posted:The Rajneeshis. I spent a good chunk of my childhood in the area and my mom and maternal relatives worked with and knew a number of people who either were Rajneeshis or were poisoned by them. Are those the people who tried to poison people at a salad bar and force themselves into the council of the local county?
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Sep 1, 2019 21:39
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Truck Stop Stall posted:I think it was on here: Some goon(?) whose parents raised him in a cult did an Ask/Tell(?) about what it was like. I'm not sure if this is the one you're talking about, but Prester Jane did a thread about being raised in Accelerated Christian Education and it is seriously hosed up (may require archives, I'm not sure): https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3659026
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Sep 2, 2019 00:24
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twistedmentat posted:Are those the people who tried to poison people at a salad bar and force themselves into the council of the local county?
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Sep 2, 2019 04:37
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Zamboni Rodeo posted:I'm not sure if this is the one you're talking about, but Prester Jane did a thread about being raised in Accelerated Christian Education and it is seriously hosed up (may require archives, I'm not sure): Different guy. This looks super interesting though, thanks for the heads up.
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Sep 2, 2019 05:13
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Tulalip Tulips posted:
Can someone be considered a weeaboo if they are actually Japanese? Because those dudes sure tries their hardest.
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Sep 2, 2019 13:42
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jared leto is easily the funniest one
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Sep 2, 2019 17:16
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My "favorite" cult/sect is the Westboro Baptist Church. So you've probably heard of the WBC. They're the ones who go to funerals of soldiers and hold up signs that say (CW: homophobia) "GOD HATES FAGS" and "THANK GOD FOR 9/11" and such. So obviously they're some of the most heinous and hateful people in modern America. But they're also incredibly peaceful and law-abiding. When they protest, they keep the required distance, they don't obstruct anyone or interfere with anything, they just hold their signs and yell at anyone who's in earshot. They know everything there is to know about the legal precedents involved with the right to assembly, and they respect the law. The WBC was founded by a former lawyer named Fred Phelps. The church is largely a family affair, and Fred was the patriarch (until his death in 2014). Before he was a crazy-rear end cult leader, Phelps was a civil rights lawyer. He fought against Jim Crow laws and earned awards from civil rights organizations, despite allegedly being pretty racist himself. And then at some point he stopped being an honorable(?) and effective lawyer and started being a crazy man. The beliefs of the WBC are all entirely logically based on the Bible. As we all know, the Bible is a huge book and you can get a lot of different conclusions out of it depending on which parts you focus on. So, for starters, WBC is Calvinist; it believes that the Saved and the Damned are predetermined, since God is omniscient after all. So when they protest, they're not trying to save you or convert you, they're just letting you know that you're gonna burn because God told them to do that. Probably the most striking thing about them is their signs, which largely focus on the fact that bad things happening to the United States are cool and good. This comes very straightforwardly from a reading of the Old Testament. The biggest theme in the Old Testament (or the whole Bible, even) is that if you disobey God's laws, then He will bring bad things upon you. Like 60% of the Bible is concerned with the incongruity between the Hebrews being God's chosen people and the fact that they got fuckin' owned by the Babylonians. The explanation is that the Hebrews weren't worshiping right, and God was punishing them. Back when Moses was in charge, they conquered and were prosperous; when their morality failed them, they were conquered and laid low. And there's a whole series of books about prophets who tried to get the Hebrews back on track with the Law so they could again receive God's blessings. The lesson is clear: when bad things happen to people who aren't following the Law, that's God's righteous punishment. And hence anything bad that happens to America is a righteous and good thing that stems from all the holy law that America breaks. Hence: thank God for 9/11. Thank God for IEDs, thank God for dead soldiers, thank God for mass shootings, etc. Another thing that amuses them is that they get a large portion of their funding from suing people/governments who violate their 1st Amendment right to assemble. And then they take that money and use it to fly around and protest more dumb poo poo. And frankly, I find that funny. Of course, they're terrible for being homophobic, anti-Semitic, etc., and tremendously rude for bothering people at loving funerals. But logically thought out, consistent, legal, peaceful bigotry is a step up from the knee-jerk, poorly-thought-out, often violent bigotry exhibited by a lot of Christians and Christian leaders.
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Sep 2, 2019 19:37
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GWBBQ posted:Sure are. I got an eBay ad recently for one of their guard shacks so apparently their cult compound is up for sale. There is a good Down the Rabbit Hole about them. They really seemed like the kind of cult that you'd see as the villians of a movie or game. The Leader in the Joy of Sect episide is sorta based in their leader, he would drive in a rolls Royce waving to the members while they toiled.
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Sep 2, 2019 22:24
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I would never have heard of these people if they hadn't randomly had a festival in the empty lot opposite my house one day two years ago. Anyway, Divya Jyoti Jagrati Sansthan is  run by the Indian Guru Ashutosh and has a lot of very generic fairly normal for a cult beliefs but when I looked them up out of interest there was one story that was immediately popping up more than anything else.Ashutosh is hecka dead since 2014 from heart failure but his group claimed his body and has the belief that he's just meditating. To make his meditation more pleasant and close to his homeland of the Himalayas he now resides in a freezer where he has continued to meditate to this day, and will totally come out of when he's finished. e. the dollop did a good episode on Rajneeshpuran too.
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Sep 3, 2019 09:50
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Funny thing is Fred Phelps got thrown out of his own church when he was dying because WBC church members aren't supposed to die. Also last I checked they're having trouble getting any traction with the protests now because people figured them out and started mocking them; they tried protesting a Comic-Con once and got confused and left when cosplayers came out with signs parodying them.
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Sep 3, 2019 10:09
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Funny thing is Fred Phelps got thrown out of his own church when he was dying because WBC church members aren't supposed to die. Also last I checked they're having trouble getting any traction with the protests now because people figured them out and started mocking them; they tried protesting a Comic-Con once and got confused and left when cosplayers came out with signs parodying them. He was excommunicated because he had a "change of heart" but too late fucker, you'll always be remembered as a total piece of poo poo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps#Excommunication_and_death wikipedia posted:According to Phelps' grandson and former church member Zach Phelps-Roper, Phelps was voted out of the church after undergoing a "change of heart" regarding his religious beliefs. Zach reported that Phelps had spoken in support of the members of Equality House across the road from the church, which was regarded as "rank blasphemy" by the church.
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Sep 3, 2019 14:17
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DontMockMySmock posted:The beliefs of the WBC are all entirely logically based on the Bible. As we all know, the Bible is a huge book and you can get a lot of different conclusions out of it depending on which parts you focus on. So, for starters, WBC is Calvinist; it believes that the Saved and the Damned are predetermined, since God is omniscient after all. So when they protest, they're not trying to save you or convert you, they're just letting you know that you're gonna burn because God told them to do that. The last verses in matthew " Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." contrast with this quote from wikipedia In the BBC documentary The Most Hated Family in America, filmmaker Louis Theroux questioned Shirley Phelps-Roper as to whether she had considered that Westboro's technique of protests were more likely to "put people off the Word of Jesus Christ and the Bible". In response, Phelps-Roper said, "You think our job is to win souls to Christ. All we do, by getting in their face and putting these signs in front of them and these plain words, is make what's already in their heart come out of their mouth." Hmm, very christlike to focus on hate and make others hate, extremely logical.
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Sep 3, 2019 15:52
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Big Mackson posted:The last verses in matthew Extremely logically based on different parts of the bible.
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Sep 3, 2019 15:57
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DontMockMySmock posted:Extremely logically based on different parts of the bible. Just thought that the literal words of Jesus Christ would have some value for these people :/
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Sep 3, 2019 16:34
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Big Mackson posted:Just thought that the literal words of Jesus Christ would have some value for these people :/ Well, Jesus says a lot of things in the Bible. You can't follow everything God or Jesus says.
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Sep 3, 2019 16:59
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DontMockMySmock posted:Well, Jesus says a lot of things in the Bible. You can't follow everything God or Jesus says. I hate that some people unironically believe that and at the same time proclaim to be a follower of Jesus Christ. But then again we wouldnt have WBC and this (translated from norwegian wikipedia) "WBC has also shown its support to Anders Behring Breivik for punishing Norway for making it legal for gays to marry. They believe that God hates Norway. They also said that they would go to Norway to demonstrate when those killed on Utøya were buried. This was never done."
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Sep 3, 2019 17:17
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Alright. Today's effort post is going to be about the Oneida Community. The Oneida community was one of a wave of Utopian Communes that various sects of American Chrisitanity whose ideas were too far outside the mainstream for them to really live in mainstream American society founded in the early 19th century. They were all completely insane although some had some admirable ahead-of-their-time beliefs (The Shakers believed the sexes were equal like 250 years before that idea got sexy) and are ripe for this thread but today we're going to focus on these guys, The Oneida Community, named after Oneida, New York where they lived. The Oneida's had three main ideas which separated them from the rest of the Protestantism. The first was called Mutual Criticism, the Oneida would meet together in their big town hall, they would pick one member of the community and every single person there would discuss everything that that person was doing wrong. They would discuss all of their flaws in the name of self-improvement and allowing the person to work to better themselves. The second was that they believed that Christ had already come back in AD 70, a mere 40 years after his death and that because of this it was completely possible to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. (The fact that this isn't mentioned by nearly any documents of the era is ignored) The third one is the thing that they were most famous for and that was their belief in free love which they called Complex Marriage, every member of the community was free to have (consensual) sex with any member of the opposite sex, (they're still a 19th century Christian group so no gay sex allowed). They were actually pretty feminist about this, at least by the standards of the day, women were allowed to refuse to have sex with people, they practiced a rudimentary form of birth control based around the men being trained on edging and the men being trained on how to avoid ejaculating and the Oneida actually thought that women orgasming and enjoying sex was important (women enjoying sex more was one of the points they used to advocate for their birth control method). Other parts of this was pretty sketchy and weird however, for example older people who were infertile were supposed to mentor teenagers in sex. A side note: Charles Guiteau who would earn his place in American history for assassinating American president James Garfield out of anger for not being appointed Ambassador to France actually joined the Oneida Community a couple of years before he killed Garfield. He was such a loser that he was somehow an incel despite living in a Free Love community because none of the women wanted anything to do with him. Now most of these Utopian communities were based around labor of some kind, the Shakers for example, were really well-known for their construction of furniture that they would sell to the outside world. This was very common because running a cult isn't free, and when you run a self-sufficient Utopian community where people are born and die you can't run the usual method of bleeding new followers dry and having them give you their banking information. Every member of the community, male and female was expected to work, and this work took the form of manufacturing silverware (Bells are probably going off in some of your heads at this one. We'll get to it later.) Palm frond hats, leather bags, furniture, and tourism (apparently people really wanted to see the freaky-deaky free love community). So what killed the Onedia community? Two reasons, the first was a lack of leadership, as the founder of the community John Noyes got older he tried to pass the leadership of the community on to his son. This was a big problem because his son was an agnostic, which isn't a good fit for a Christian cult. The second reason? Remember how the Oneida would have the older members of the community teach the teenagers about sex? Well it turns out there's laws again that, and those squares in Albany put a warrant out for Noyes arrest for statutory rape. Noyes did what any honorable would do and fled to Canada. He then wrote to the community that they should abandon this free love thing , maybe if he stopped it the cops would have mercy on him and let him return to the US. Well it didn't and he died in exile in Niagara Falls seven years later. The community however took his advice and voted to outlaw the practice of Complex marriage. This was a problem though because surprisingy the only reason anyone was even at this freaky-deaky community in Upstate New York was because they were horny and wanted to have lots of sex. Without complex marriage the commune had no Raison d'etre and quickly died. Except it didn't really die. Remember that silverware from earlier. Well as it happened the Oneida were really good at making silverware and there was a huge market for it. So when the community died a corporation was born, with about seventy of the members voting to stay behind and start a company with each having equal shares. Today Oneida Limited is one of the largest manufacturers of plates and silverware in the world. At the company's peak in the 1980s half of all plates sold in the United States were Oneida products. It's declined quite a bit since then. Oneida targeted the upscale end of the silverware market so the 2001 recession combined with some bad debt decisions hit them very hard and they were bought out by some hedge funds and taken private in 2006 after declaring bankruptcy. They're no longer the behemoth they used to be but they're still a very lucrative, large corporation that started as a tiny insignificant sex cult in Upstate New York. In many ways they exemplify the American dream.
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Sep 3, 2019 20:07
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The Benandanti (Good Walkers) of 16th-17th century Friuli in what is now northeastern Italy were people, usually those born in the caul, who were believed to leave their bodies on certain nights to protect the crops from evil witches. The Benandanti themselves sorta being good witches that in addition to waging a nocturnal astral projection war against the forces of darkness also acted as healers. The inquisition wasn't fond of this.
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Sep 4, 2019 04:14
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So i guess every dark cloud has a silver lining huh
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Sep 4, 2019 15:41
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Alright. Today's effort post is going to be about the Oneida Community. A very good effort post indeed. Thank you for taking the time to write it up.
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Sep 4, 2019 17:36
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:The second was that they believed that Christ had already come back in AD 70, a mere 40 years after his death and that because of this it was completely possible to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. (The fact that this isn't mentioned by nearly any documents of the era is ignored) Apparently this is a whole thing, not just with Oneida. Jesus and the apostles repeatedly said he was coming back in the near future, so unless Jesus was lying he was being very figurative about either the timing or the nature of the Second Coming. Mainstream theology generally says "of course the Second Coming is 100% literal, he just figuratively said he would definitely be back before the apostles were dead" but some people really latched on to the timing instead.
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Sep 22, 2019 22:54
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Funny thing is Fred Phelps got thrown out of his own church when he was dying because WBC church members aren't supposed to die. Also last I checked they're having trouble getting any traction with the protests now because people figured them out and started mocking them; they tried protesting a Comic-Con once and got confused and left when cosplayers came out with signs parodying them. St. Louis police got spit on by dozens of people for escorting them when they came to Pride Night at Cardinals Stadium. Really warmed my heart.
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Sep 23, 2019 01:39
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Does weird Catholicism count? I think this fits the spirit of the topic well enough, https://www.oddsalon.com/january-897-rome-the-exhumed-corpse-of-pope-formosus-is-put-on-trial-found-guilty/ The Cadaver Synod You could probably fill this topic with the early Church but this one was always one of my favorites. I don't know the details of all the politics behind it but what I do know is the mental image of the trial is absurd. After Pope Formosus went and died, the next Pope accused him of crimes. Some might tell you death would preclude a trial but not the Catholic Church. No, you dig up the 7 month dead corpse, dress it in papal vestments, prop it up in a chair and have someone sit behind his throne to throw their voice like a ventriloquist to answer to his "crimes". Unsurprisingly, the corpse was found guilty. They cut off the 3 fingers used for blessing, invalided his acts and buried him in a paupers grave. Then they decided to dig up the body and throw it into the Tiber River. Rumors said the body wash up on shore and performed miracles. The public then turned on the Pope behind all of this and the Cadaver Synod was later annulled. Pope Formosus was once again buried in Saint Peter's Basilica in his pontifical vestments and it was decided that any future trials of dead people were prohibited...until the decision to overturn the Synod was overturned,
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Sep 23, 2019 04:14
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Quid posted:Does weird Catholicism count? I think this fits the spirit of the topic well enough, I love papal misadventures. Like the time there were three popes that all claimed to the only true pope and that the others were heretics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism
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Sep 23, 2019 05:43
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Quid posted:
invalidating the dead pope's acts was partly a strategic move by stephen vi here, one of the accusations stephen vi threw at formosus was that he had acceded to the papacy illegally, the reason being that according to an ancient canon law - one that was almost always ignored - a bishop already holding a diocese couldn't transfer to a new one ... since the pope is technically just the bishop of the diocese of rome this means that formosus, who held the diocese of portus before being elected pope, was technically an ineligible candidate by this ancient, arcane law now stephen vi, before being elected pope, also held the diocese of anagni, but this wasn't also a problem for him because the man who elevated him to it was none other than formosus himself and well... if formosus' acts as pope were invalid then stephen vi never actually legally held that diocese you see so technically stephen was still a valid candidate for rome anyway, on top of the miracles formosus' body was apparently out doing when it was recovered by a monk on a shore, an earthquake occurred in rome about a week or two later which evidently collapsed the roof of the original basilica salvatoris, the cathedral church of rome and official seat of the pope ... these signs were enough for a mob to form to take down stephen vi ultimately the politics behind all this weren't too complex so i'll give the quick and dirty version with the caveat that my source was a book by paul collins, who is a catholic historian: at this time the holy roman emperor was traditionally crowned by the pope to mimic the historical coronation of the charlemagne by pope leo iii - this ceremony gave any claim to the holy roman title airs of legitimacy and it was especially relevant in times of civil war or contested successions - and at this time the imperial title was being heavily contested and stephen v, formosus' predecessor, was bullied into crowning the duke of spoleto emperor, then later on during formosus' reign formosus himself was coerced, supposedly at swordpoint, into also crowning the duke of spoleto's son co-emperor to further enhance the family's claim at around this time formosus was also allegedly forced into making stephen vi the bishop of anagni... incidentally stephen vi at this time was being heavily sponsored by the spoleto family anyway formosus sought to free the papacy from these apparent shackles and invited the duke of carinthia to send an army to 'liberate' rome from the clutches of spoleto and in return the duke of carinthia would be crowned emperor... the duke of carinthia and his forces swoop in, evict forces loyal to spoleto from italy, and soon after the duke of spoleto succumbs to the same camp fever that was ravaging his army leaving behind his son, accompanied by his mother, to desperately travel to rome to ask formosus to confirm the coronation, formosus refuses, and later the duke of carinthia arrives in rome to be crowned emperor by formosus... only to soon-after suddenly come down with a mystery illness forcing him to leave italy, the suddenness leads to rumours of poisoning by the spoleto clan with the duke of carinthia in retreat, the spoletos move in and execute any officials the duke of carinthia managed to install in his short time, formosus himself then suddenly dies from a mystery illness and then his successor boniface vi also dies from a mystery illness after a papacy of just 2 weeks (leading to more rumours of poisoning); now stephen vi is elected the next pope, allegedly at swordpoint with the support of the spoletos, with the mandate to undo the damage formosus had done e: i feel like i should point out that the shenanigans didn't end here, there was a lengthy chain of popes after stephen vi who all had very short reigns - the explanation i've seen argued for this was that various factions had emerged in rome, fellas who had the backing of a particular noble family and were secretly pursuing their party's interests there, who were all playing the deadliest game against each other hard counter has a new favorite as of 08:06 on Sep 23, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2019 07:42
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:
Apparently his nickname in the cult was Charles 'Get out'.
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Sep 23, 2019 08:17
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christmas boots posted:I love papal misadventures. Like the time there were three popes that all claimed to the only true pope and that the others were heretics. And I thought that was just a Blackadder episode.
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Sep 23, 2019 12:33
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