(2014)

A buddy posted he just landed in Avignon, France. I commented:

Say hey to the Anti-Pope for me. Well, they don’t have anti-popes anymore. So say hey to the Anti-Pope impersonator. I read a book about Avignon in the days of the Anti-Popes, come to think of it. Swinging place. Wild. Like Hollywood in the twenties. When they call it the High Medieval period, they weren’t kidding.

Then it occurred to me I’d just done a stand up routine on 14th century papal schisms. Which would not go over in the Catskills. I’ll stick to jazz criticism. Not that the audience for that is much bigger. To think I could have been a doctor. No wait…my mom was Irish. She said be a writer.

(And yes, medieval scholars, I know it is antipope (antipapa). But antipope is too much like poloponies. So we’ll stick with the hyphen.)

Clement VII, or what was left of him after blasphemous French Revolutionaries got ahold of him. He eventually took up extortion and simony–selling parishes and bishoprics to the highest bidder–to maintain his anti-papal lifestyle. Ya do what ya gotta do.

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