Pope John XXI (, , ; – 20 May 1277), born Pedro Julião (), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 September 1276 to his death in May 1277. He is the only Portuguese pope in history. He is sometimes identified with the logician and herbalist Peter of Spain (; ), which would make him the only pope to have been a physician. He tried to become bishop of Lisbon but was defeated. Instead, he became the Master of the school of Lisbon. Peter became the physician of Pope Gregory X (1271–1276) early in his reign. In March 1273, he was elected Archbishop of Braga, but did not assume that post; instead, on 3 June 1273, Pope Gregory X created him Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum (Frascati).

Papacy

thumb|Tomb of Pope John XXI in [[Viterbo Cathedral]]

After the death of Pope Adrian V on 18 August 1276, Peter was elected pope on 8 September. He also launched a mission to convert the Tatars, but he died before it could start.

To secure the necessary quiet for his medical studies, he had an apartment added to the papal palace at Viterbo, to which he could retire when he wished to work undisturbed. On 14 May 1277, while the pope was alone in this apartment, the ceiling collapsed; John was rescued alive from beneath the rubble; however, he died of his serious injuries on 20 May, possibly an early recorded case of crush syndrome.

He was buried in the Duomo di Viterbo, where his tomb can still be seen. The original porphyry sarcophagus was destroyed during the cathedral's 16th-century refurbishment, and was replaced with a more modest one in stone with the pope's effigy. In the 19th century, the Duke of Saldanha, as Portuguese Ambassador to the Holy See, had the pope's remains transferred to a new sarcophagus sculpted by Filippo Gnaccarini.

Legacy

After his death, it was rumored that John XXI had actually been a necromancer, a suspicion frequently directed towards the few scholars among medieval popes (see, e.g., Sylvester II). It was also said that his death had been an act of God, stopping him from completing a heretical treatise. Since the works of "Peter of Spain" continued to be studied and appreciated, however, Dante Alighieri placed "Pietro Spano" in his Paradiso's Sphere of the Sun with the spirits of other great religious scholars.

See also

  • List of popes

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Guiraud, J. and L. Cadier (editors), Les registres de Grégoire X et de Jean XXI (1271–1277) (Paris, 1892–1898) [Bibliothèque de l'Ecole française à Rome, série 2, 12] (in Latin)
  • Walter, Fritz, Die Politik der Kurie unter Gregor X (Berlin, 1894) (in German)
  • Stapper, Richard, Papst Johannes XXI. Eine Monographie (Münster 1898) [Kirchengeschichtliche Studien, volume 4, no. 4] (in German)
  • Gregorovius, Ferdinand, History of Rome in the Middle Ages, volume V, part 2, second edition, revised (London: George Bell, 1906)
  • H. D. Sedgwick, Italy in the Thirteenth Century Volume II (Boston-New York, 1912)
  • Mazzi-Belli, V., "Pietro Hispano papa Giovanni XXI," Rivista di storia della medicina 15 (1971), 39–87 (in Italian)
  • Morceau, Joseph, "Un pape portugais : Jean XXI, dénommé Pierre d'Espagne", Teoresi 24 (1979), 391–407 (in French)
  • Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. Chronicle of the Popes: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Papacy from St. Peter to the Present, Thames & Hudson, 2002, p. 119. .
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  • Jean Claude Bologne: La Naissance Interdite; stérilité, avortement, contraception au Moyen-Age. Orban, Paris, 1988 .
  • Joachim Telle: Petrus Hispanus in der altdeutschen Medizinliteratur und Texte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Thesaurus pauperum‘. 2 vol., Heidelberg, 1972.
  • J. P. Kirsch: Art. Pope John XXI (XX), in: The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII (1910)
  • Salvino Leone:
  • Joke Spruyt: Peter of Spain (2001), in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy