How do butterflies affect the Papacy?

This is a question that crossed my mind after I read the thread on how getting rid of a specific Pope would affect a Papacy.

The question I'm asking is not the same, it's more complex. How exactly does a POD affect the Papacy? When does it start to take action and make an ATL Pope first appear?

I imagine butterflies of direct consequences on the Papacy (death of Pope or ATL election result for example) will change the list of Popes immediately. But what of PODs not centred on the Papacy? Would all the Popes born before the POD still end up being elected Popes? And how does it affect those born after the PODs that aren't erased from History (i.e. those who exists but may not rise to the same preeminence as they did OTL)?
 
Depends on the path their lives take. It's likely that most of the papabile at the POD will remain so, and you can see them still being elected.

By 25 years after the POD Papal politics may have changed.
 
Useless answer: Depends on the POD.

More specific answer (the approach I'm using for my timeline):

All popes up to 1190 are the same as OTL, because nothing has happened to change the situation there.

Popes who became popes after 1190 who are still born and who are still pursuing a church career may well still become popes. Or not. Depends on how much the changed events are relevant - but that things happen differently in Spain will not automatically butterfly a given person's rise.

So what SavoyTruffle said, really. If papal politics are the same, and the individuals are still in the Church, they're just as likely as OTL - but after a while, the odds of both being true are not favorable.
 
Depends on the era. Is it a time when the Roman nobility are monopolizing the Papacy, or is currying favor with France, the Empire and possibly Spain important? In between those, we have periods where the Papacy is an Italian matter but not limited to Rome et al. Popes that lived a long time stacked the Cardinals deck toward their designated successor, while a Pope who died quickly and accomplished little or made a mess will be followed by someone with dissimilar ideas usually.

Was it a close election? What Cardinals are unable to get to Rome in a timely manner because of butterflies, or saw other opportunities? My favorite example is Giulio Mazarini, never Pope in OTL but if he hadn't been busy being Regent of France - he probably would have been.
 
Shawn Endresen said:
My favorite example is Giulio Mazarini, never Pope in OTL but if he hadn't been busy being Regent of France - he probably would have been.

For that, Mazarin would need not become an important Minister in France. It would thus require to avoid the Regency of Anne of Austria: it means either a longer living Louis XIII, a longer living Richelieu or an earlier born Louis XIV.
Would Mazarin really stand any chance to become Pope though?
 
Until the early modern era, Papal politics wouldn't have mattered much in who became Pope as he was almost always chosen by external international politics. After the collapse of the western Roman Empire, for several centuries the Pope was chosen by the Byzantine Emperor. As the Byzantine influence over Rome waned into the early Medieval period, a succession of feudal kings controlling northern Italy chose the Pope. By the High Medieval period, the Pope was generally chosen by either a powerful noble family of central Italy, the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of France, or the King of Naples.

There are an infinite number of PODs throughout this entire period that could have altered the Papacy in numerous ways. But most of those PODs would have to do with changes in the rulers of Europe rather than in the Papacy itself.
 
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