The Seat of Power

Last Wednesday a new Pope was elected by the College of Cardinals. Pope Francis will be officially the 266th Pope in an unbroken succession that starts with Saint Peter in the first century to today -almost 2,000 years later.

Being a lapsed Catholic doesn't mean I don't take any interest in the pomp and ceremony of Catholicism. The Catholic Church has always been a major player in history and for better or worse the history of any institution is filled with equal measures of inspiration and scandal.

Once when consulting on a movie screen play that was being sold for option, the writer asked me -what's under the Vatican? In my best used car salesman voice I described a network of catacombs, vaults and tunnels; then stated as fact that there is more built underneath the Vatican then what's built above ground.  The writer wrote that down in his notes, thought about it for a minute and asked if that was really true? It wasn't true but the writer had to admit he wanted to believe it was true because it added something to his story.

The fictional network of catacombs, vaults and tunnels stayed in the script. In the story, hidden under the Vatican is stored the relics and the loot of the church. Many of the stories about the Catholic Church are like fictional labyrinth, something plausible mixed with something bizarrely fantastic that's all next to impossible to prove or disprove.  

One of the myths of the Catholic Church is the Sedes Stercoraria. That translates into English as the "dung chair" or maybe better said the potty seat, though it's also referred to as the "pierced chair". The chair seems to pre-date the church. A keyhole shape has been cut out of the seat and it looks like a commode. Other historians have speculated it could be a Roman bidet or a birthing stool.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe was a Mad Max kind of world. The Dark Ages really lived up to the name. For a couple of centuries armies Goths, Vandals, Saxons and Huns sacked Rome and raided other cities. They smashed, burned and carried off anything of value -even if they didn't know what it was.

It's like how the double-headed eagle became the symbol of royalty in Eastern Europe.  Charlemagne the Great was able to establish a large empire in the 8th century that covered most of modern France, Germany and half of Italy. From a diplomatic mission to Rome a piece of decorative pottery was found in the rumble and given to Charlemagne as a souvenir.  

The double headed eagle on that bit of pottery became synonymous with Charlemagne.  A century later when the empire was breaking up Lothair the First, a great grandson of Charlemagne, reintroduced the symbol to help secure his legitimacy over the part of Germany he ruled. For the next 500 years that symbol moved eastward as Teutonic knights and lords carved out fiefdoms throughout Eastern Europe and into Russia.  

Back to the chair, whatever its original purpose was in ancient Rome it might have been repurposed by the Medieval Church. The free and uncluttered space beneath the chair supposedly allows a designated Cardinal to discreetly reach under and touch the genitals of a newly elected Pope. This is to confirm he is really a male. Of course you might ask why is that necessary?

That gets into the other half of the story, Pope Joan.  A story that a woman disguised as a man became a priest and rose in the ranks of church. She was elected Pope in the sometime in the 8th century. The whole thing came crashing down when she fainted and fell off her horse in a Papal procession.  She fainted because she was about ready to give birth, which she did in front of a horrified mob in the streets. It's unclear if she died of natural causes but afterwards the church conspired to hide it.

The story does not appear in writing until the 13th century. Several other versions are printed later on as anti-pope propaganda. Many modern scholars are skeptical but the sedes stercoraria does exist, it's on display in the Vatican Museum though there is no explanation of the exhibit. Pope Joan is vigorously denied by the Papacy to this day. 

Pope Joan is connect to the real Pope John the 8th. Pope John the 8th was believed to be a very effeminate man. He was also a reformer and not well liked because of that. Maybe after his death the rumors start and got more and more outlandish and lurid over time. Somewhere over the centuries John the 8th went from being a sissy to becoming a woman.  It's possible the story got repeated until it was accepted as truth. There were even monuments made to Pope Joan that were later destroyed or altered. 

No one really knows the truth. The sedes stercoraria might have been used to check the Pope out of fear, to prevent the possibility of a Pope Joan, even though that probably didn't happen.  Fear is quite a motivator, it will have you looking for monsters in closets and under beds. Then again the sedes stercoraria could just an old potty or birthing chair that might have used by a few early Popes and later kept around long after its original use was forgotten. It could be another example where the legend long out lives the truth.