# Previous 'Non-European' Pope. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 20, 2013, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470 "2013-03-20T17:35:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Teacake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Teacake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teacake)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/21 "2013-03-21T21:51:13Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > Actually, as an RC, I was brought with Catholic dogma. And according to RC history?/legend? St. Peter went to Rome shortly before he died. That is why all?/most? subsequent popes (according to this theory) were Italian. (Hey, if you dispute this claim, your beef it with the Catholic church, not me;).) I have many beefs with the Catholic church, but this isn’t one of them. As a Catholic, I have never once in any context whatsoever heard anything approaching this, spoken as dogma or announced by a spare idiot… sorry, RE teacher. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/22 "2013-03-22T00:58:13Z")
I think one of the main reasons why the Bishop of Rome, who was originally one among equals, eventually became the Pope was the collapse of the western Roman Empire. In the east, the Byzantine Emperors maintained political control over Constantinople and cities like Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem so they were able to have a direct effect on the religious leaders of those cities and hold them back from getting too powerful. Rome, however, had much weaker secular authorities over it and as a consequence the Bishop of Rome was able to act with more independence. ---
**Author:** ![Obnoxious\_Hood\_Ornament](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3be4f8/32.png) [@Obnoxious\_Hood\_Ornament](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obnoxious_Hood_Ornament)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/23 "2013-03-22T12:33:26Z")
Please pardon my outburst, but as I was scanning the front page I misread the thread title as **‘Non-Euclidean’ Pope** , and suddenly found myself terribly excited. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/24 "2013-03-22T12:40:59Z")
> [@Obnoxious\_Hood\_Ornament](#): > > Please pardon my outburst, but as I was scanning the front page I misread the thread title as **‘Non-Euclidean’ Pope** , and suddenly found myself terribly excited. > > :smack: Gives a new meaning to “Urbis et Orbis”. ---
**Author:** ![Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrogance_ex_machina/32/192_2.png) [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrogance_Ex_Machina)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/25 "2013-03-22T13:49:57Z")
> [@Obnoxious\_Hood\_Ornament](#): > > Please pardon my outburst, but as I was scanning the front page I misread the thread title as **‘Non-Euclidean’ Pope** , and suddenly found myself terribly excited. The stars aren’t right yet. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/26 "2013-03-22T13:58:29Z")
> [@Obnoxious\_Hood\_Ornament](#): > > Please pardon my outburst, but as I was scanning the front page I misread the thread title as **‘Non-Euclidean’ Pope** , and suddenly found myself terribly excited. > > :smack: Well. at least that ex[;aoms why they excommunicated the **Ang** lcans!! ---
**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/27 "2013-03-22T14:35:00Z")
> [@Obnoxious\_Hood\_Ornament](#): > > Please pardon my outburst, but as I was scanning the front page I misread the thread title as **‘Non-Euclidean’ Pope** , and suddenly found myself terribly excited. > > :smack: Maybe Pope Francis will do a complete 190 and allow married priests. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/28 "2013-03-22T14:44:01Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > First off, while long-range travel was expensive and a little dangerous in ancient times, it happened constantly. There was a massive flow of ships between Rome and Alexandria alone, and we extremely storng evidence that St. Paul travelled extensively, and himself went on a rather final journey to Rome. While it’s not known exactly how far afield St. Peter ventured (as he didn’t write letters as often, or least not ones that survived), it’s extremely plausible that he could and would go to Rome. He certainly wouldn’t have been unique among the Apostles in leaving Judea and ministering first to expatriot Jews around the Med, and then to slave or Greek communities. I wasn’t talking about (or perhaps against) Peter dying in Rome, which I’m absolutely convinced he did: being crucified upside-down is pretty bad for health and I’m sure OSHA wouldn’t approve of it. What I mean was that one of the reasons there have been so many Italian popes (and, while the notion of Italy as a “nation state” is recent, the nation of Italy as “that boot shaped peninsula east of the Alps” is much older) was the same difficulty in travel and communication which made it unlikely for someone who was living in a distant location to be made Cardinal (thus making it more likely for an Italian to get the job simply on account of the area having more Italians than People From Elsewhere), and which required Cardinals to live in Rome in order to be able to perform their jobs. One: \*\*Colibri \*\*has provided another, there are more. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/29 "2013-03-22T14:57:55Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I think one of the main reasons why the Bishop of Rome, who was originally one among equals, eventually became the Pope was the collapse of the western Roman Empire. In the east, the Byzantine Emperors maintained political control over Constantinople and cities like Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem so they were able to have a direct effect on the religious leaders of those cities and hold them back from getting too powerful. Rome, however, had much weaker secular authorities over it and as a consequence the Bishop of Rome was able to act with more independence. It also helped that the Lombard King Desiderius launched an offensive against the papacy in the 700s. The Pope appealed to Byzantium for help, but the East was embroiled in a crisis over iconoclasm and couldn’t send assistance. So the Pope appealed to Charlemagne, who stomped the Lombards in 772 and was eventually crowned Emperor by the Pope in 800. This led to a consolidation of the Western church, isolating the ‘Latins’ even further from the ‘Greeks’ than they had been previously. In the succeeding years, Islam came to predominate in the Eastern territory, sapping Orthodox Christians of their political strength. In 1054, a papal legate excommunicated Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius, who excommunicated the legate in turn. Since the other patriarchs in the Pentarcy were already under Muslim control, this left the bishops of Rome and Constantiople as the only players on the board. By the time the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, Orthodox Christianity had splintered into several autocephalous churches along ethnic (or ‘national’) lines, while the Pope maintained authority over all of Western Christendom until the Reformation (the Western Schism and Conciliar Movement nonwithstanding). It is arguable that the Pope’s more well-defined powers after the Council of Trent actually represented an overall increase in Papal authority, even with the Roman Church’s losses to the Reformation. In other words, the Papacy firmly hitched its wagon to a set of monarchs who weren’t overrun (by and large) by non-Christians, while the Eastern Patriarchs weren’t so lucky. The Pope was the last Patriarch standing. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470/30 "2013-03-22T15:04:17Z")
Ah, I can see what you mean now. When you said you “disputed the claim” I suppose I didn’t understand what you were saying. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/previous-non-european-pope/653470.md?page=1)