Inarticulable

bluelightseven replied to your post: Love the post on 1st Defenestration of Prague, but…

FUCKING POPE WARS, MAN. Also, I cannot WAIT until we get a Pope Whatever XXX.

Pope Wars, indeed.  I think it’s gonna be a while until we get up to 30, though.  Unless somebody really decides to go for it?  Which could be a thing.  It’s been a while since anybody’s had a really proper antipope, but the hypercatholics who think everybody since WWI has been too soft on heathens to be considered a proper pope are working on it.  As far as most people are concerned, though, it looks like nobody’s even hit the upper 20s yet.

westerosbartender asked: Love the post on 1st Defenestration of Prague, but you may want to fix one of the Pope numbers. John XXIII was in the 20th Century, he called Vatican II.

I love you people.

Just in case anyone else is rattling around giving this the side-eye:

Proper Actual Real Pope John XXIII was indeed a 20th century pope!  He was born Angelo Roncalli, he became pope in 1958, and he convened Vatican II because “screw being a placeholder pope, you guys don’t know who you elected” (not an actual quote).  Before he was pope, at a time when most people consider Pope Pius XI to have been going “la la la what Holocaust I don’t see a Holocaust,” dude saved so many Jews from Hitler that he actually bagged “righteous gentile” status.  Once he was pope, apparently one of his first housekeeping deals was deciding that it wasn’t okay to officially call Jews, uh, “perfidious” during in the liturgy on Good Friday, because that was a thing that everybody needed to be told in the ’50s.  One of his last public acts was to try to get Kennedy and Khruschev to not blow up the planet over Cuba.  He died of stomach cancer in 1963.

Not-Real Antipope John XXIII was born Baldassarre Cossa and became Not-Real Pope John XXIII in 1410.  Since he was the successor of somebody who’d been previously declared an antipope, I’m assuming he became pope of everybody who was sort of mad at Rome and antipope of Rome simultaneously?  Like, I don’t think they need to officially declare you an antipope if you take over for an antipope.  It’s just a thing.  He remained Pope/Antipope until being deposed five or six years later and tried for a whole laundry list of shit he may or may not have done, who knows at this point?  Anyway, the whole thing was so awful that he was the last Pope John for five hundred and forty fucking years.

Real Pope John XXIII kind of got a little flak over the name choice, and basically said, “Look, motherfuckers, we had 22 perfectly normal, serviceable Pope Johns, we’re not throwing out a perfectly good name just because of one douchebag.  Also?  He wasn’t even a real pope.  You erase that ‘IV’ and you put down three Is like a sane person or so help me I will excommunicate you.” (Not an actual quote, but an actual event.)

Bonus trivia: There was no Pope John XX.  Apparently somebody misread a papal record concerning the popedom of Real Pope John XIV, who was imprisoned by Not-Real Antipope Boniface VII, who was opposed by Not Ever Pope At All Cardinal John after Real Pope John XIV died.  Because they were using Roman numerals and drinking a lot, somebody decided that there was a Pope John XIV and a Pope John XIV the Second (like maybe a reboot or something), and that the numbering had secretly been off for Real Popes John XV-XIX.  Pope John XXI said “Fuck everything, I don’t care,” and settled the issue once and for all by just skipping ahead one, which is apparently a thing you can do when you’re pope. 

Bonus bonus: Antipope Boniface VII doesn’t run into the same numbering issue that Pope/Antipope John XXIII does, because he somehow wasn’t considered an antipope until the next Boniface had already picked the name, even though he straight murdered the Real Pope who preceded him, ran away from the Papacy, and then kidnapped and eventually murdered the Real Pope elected after him.

bluelightseven:

scoldylox:

WHYYY is the music 400 times louder than the showwwww?

The story of my media experience.

Hate this phenomenon with the fire of a thousand suns.  Yes, even when the score is practically a main character, like in Batman: TAS.  Thank fuck for subtitles.

Batman and Robin have to keep taking pills until the Joker strikes again.

Alternately: This is the only way to get Robin to bed after too much crime-fighting.

(Detective Comics #332, 1964; “The Joker’s Last Laugh!”)

Also notable for this nonsense:

copperbadge replied to your post: History time!: This is now a defenestration blog, I guess

DEFENESTRATION JUNCTION OH MY GOD

Defenestration Junction: Home of all the finest Prague-based defenestrations!

So, the First Defenestration of Prague.

Okay, so we’re all more or less familiar with Protestantism and Catholicism as things, right?  We didn’t need to go into too much detail to explain what was up with the Second Defenestration of Prague, and why those two groups were maybe a little sick of each other at that point in history.  

Well, Martin Luther wasn’t the only dude running around protesting the papacy.  There were many other dudes running around protesting the papacy.  One of those dudes was Jan Hus/John Huss, whose adherents were raising a ruckus in Prague like a century before Luther came up with his List o’ Bullshit.

Just so we’re clear here, if you think of “the Crusades” as like this thing that involved Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson, those are just the most famous crusades.  You know that Eddie Izzard joke about how white people think Muslims go around declaring jihad on everybody who mildly annoys them?  

Well, that is actually more or less how medieval popes declared crusades.  In the aftermath of the First Defenestration of Prague, the Hussite “rebellion” (I mean, it was at the time but they pretty much eventually won the argument) successfully defended against five papal crusades in eleven years.  Joan of Arc threatened to come and sort them out for the pope, guys. (Spoiler alert: The English sorted her out first.) While Hus was still alive, there were like three popes running around Europe, all excommunicating each other and declaring crusades on each other and generally disrespecting each other.

I mean, we are talking about a guy (Alexander V) being elected pope by one council, declared an antipope by another council, dying and being succeeded by another guy (John XXIII, also declared an antipope), who then goes on to declare a fucking crusade on Naples because Naples is supporting another pope (Gregory XII), and starts selling indulgences to pay for his antipope uncrusade.    Who’s the real pope?  Depends on where you live, motherfucker.

Anyway, so Hus got declared a heretic and burned at the stake for it in 1415.  Bonus round: The Imperial marshal who tried him was named Von Pappenheim.  I think this means he was actually a time-traveler subbing in for an incapacitated historical figure, and that the time-traveler in question is not good under pressure.

Anyway, by the time he was killed, he was so well-established that everybody completely lost their shit.  And by “completely lost their shit,” I mean it was so bad that a year or so later, Martin V (the real pope, one of which they finally had) issued a general order that Hussites were to be slaughtered, presumably “like the dogs they are hon hon hon (just imagine a French laugh there for no reason, he probably also twirled a mustache)”.  This didn’t really help the general state of affairs.

So basically you had a bunch of Hussites pushing Catholics around and Catholics trying to push Hussites around and that maybe not going as well as it could have.  In 1419, a Hussite priest led a procession through the streets of Prague.  Catholics threw rocks at their heads, a near-universal sign of vehement disagreement.  The demonstration was initially about the council’s refusal to exchange Hussite prisoners taken during earlier hostilities but quickly became about the rocks getting thrown at their faces, because fuck everybody.  It continued to be about fucking everything up by the time the priest and his fucking-shit-up followers gained the building, leading directly to everybody who didn’t hang onto something really, really hard getting thrown out a window.

Unlike the Second Defenestration of Prague, which occurred in a more or less official setting, this defenestration involved a really pretty infuriated mob waiting outside the building, so there were no survivors.  Given what we now know of angry mobs, this was probably not the result of any sort of planning on the mob’s part, and most likely just the upshot of a bottleneck around the staircase.

Because nobody can get thrown out a window in Prague without it turning into a fucking federal case or something, Real Pope Martin V decided that no, really, everybody in the whole damn country needed to go.  (Popes were fond of saying shit like that back in the day, as opposed to now when they just quietly grumble it to themselves every time they get delayed by airport security.)  The king dying of shock at the I guess somehow completely unexpected bullshit his civil-war-starting subjects were engaging in made everything worse by dumping it right in the unhappy lap of his poor wife, who hired mercenaries (protip: mercenaries are usually not a good move) to try to regain some semblance of control over Defenestration Junction Prague.  Eventually control of the huge pile of fucking rubble that Prague had been turned into was re-established.  Hooray!

For-Reals-We-Swear Superpope Martin V issued a proper bull the next year declaring that God hates everybody who’s not Catholic, but most especially the Hussites, and they all needed the be ground into dust and spat on repeatedly.  Because this is more or less what a crusade is, this was considered a crusade.  Which Martin V proceeded to lose.  Repeatedly.  Whoops!

rpgmaker:

thatbatterisaspy:

hairandbeardkommando:

punks not dead

Heosemys spinosa is an endangered species.

punks almost dead

Punk is gonna eat your face.

(Source: sinyasiki, via backstagebethy)

craftastrophies:

anachronistique:

lifecrystals:

I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t reblog it.

well shit now I’m scared too

SOON

(Source: rafi0pafi)

Oh my god, you beautiful bastards.  Somebody made a lego diorama of the First Defenestration of Prague.

Above: Half a town council being hurled out windows by the power of Hussite rage.

(via eimearkuopio)

copperbadge:

stuckinabucket:

copperbadge:

I have to admit, while this is some HARDCORE AWESOME HISTORY, I am a little disappointed because I thought “The defenestration of Prague” was not a defenestration that happened in Prague (as locale) but the defenestration of the entire city (as subject). Like the Defenestration of Jimmy or something. I was imagining some kind of mob of, I don’t know, Visigoths or Huns or something, rampaging through the city, throwing every single Pragueite out of every window they could find. 

History is great, yo, but still does not rival my Monty-Python-esque imagination. 

If it’s any comfort, the First Defenestration of Prague involved like half the town council getting thrown from a window by an angry priest, and the king reportedly dropping dead of shock at the news. (Like, he definitely died, but 1419 wasn’t known for their super-accurate autopsies.)

Wait, wait, AN angry priest? Like just one? One priest threw half the town council out a window?

Had he been previously dosed with ye olde gamma rays? 

YOU WOULDN’T LIKE ME WHEN I’M PIOUS. 

He also had some angry followers, but he definitely did not have the power of the king behind him, though he did also manage to start a religious war.  

Also thrown out the window with half the town council: a judge and a burgomaster.