The Papacy:

Cook

Banned
Getting away from Female Popes and births in parades and back to a Hereditary Pope…

One of the consequences of a hereditary Pope that I see is a much stronger and possibly earlier Reformation.
 
The only way this will possibly work is if you have a POD very far back. By which I mean, 1 -50 AD. However, a POD this early would result in a completely unrecognizable Catholic Church. Christianity may not be able to survive in this a timeline, especially if the hostilities toward the Christians remain the same.

The family tree will be wiped out too easily.

The whole idea of the Papacy being a hereditary position goes against some of the earliest teachings of the Church.

The Pope would need to be a descendant of Peter, or Paul if this is to work.

EDIT: You could perhaps have the Church never institute celibacy and have there be a trend for the position being passed down, but I doubt you can make it a law without destroying it.
 

Cook

Banned
What about it develops into tradition at the time of the Borgia’s?
Make it unwritten but inevitable that the Pope is from the Borgia family or blood line?

Sort of like the Kennedys.
;)
 

Sachyriel

Banned
Well why can't the two hereditary and female pope thing be inclusive? I mean it makes sense, females have kids, genetic link right there. :rolleyes:
 
Well why can't the two hereditary and female pope thing be inclusive? I mean it makes sense, females have kids, genetic link right there. :rolleyes:

ROFL. Nice.

I don't think anyone actually thought of it that way, considering we were mainly talking about father and son. Perhaps also because Christ declared that the Church was to be led by a man, given that the church itself is the 'Bride of Christ', it might seem inconsequential in that manner to have a female upon the Papal Throne.

I mean, it could be possible for the female to inherit, but the whole catholic faith itself would have to be reformed (which is mostly the problem with this idea), but if you can change the dogma, then you can change anything.
 
Well why can't the two hereditary and female pope thing be inclusive? I mean it makes sense, females have kids, genetic link right there. :rolleyes:
This was actually used in Imagin's Seleucid timeline, with the papacy being inherited by Peter's only child (a daughter), and the traditon starting that the eldest daughter would inherit the position. Granted, in his TL, the Seleucids survived until the 300s, Rome was weaker, and the Papacy was based in Alexandria, so Christianity was more or less unrecognizable from anything in OTL.
 
SUGGESTION

What if we looked at this another way?

Perhaps, instead of looking at it from the inside, we look at it from the outside.

What i mean is that, it is well known that the popes are extremely powerful, and even history concludes that they were power hungry, that is mainly why there were so many problems between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor - and many other problems besides.

What if, there was an radical, power hungry reformist-type like pope who did challenge the catholic faith and the way that it was practiced, and he could have changed it, drew a large following of sorts amongst the clergy and even the catholic followers. He could, in essence, become an anti-pope and create his own catholic faith. In the end though he would have to win out against the current catholic system.

The biggest problem that i foresee (among the many) is to choose which Pope would be better suited to this ideal?
 

Philip

Donor
What if, there was an radical, power hungry reformist-type like pope who did challenge the catholic faith and the way that it was practiced, and he could have changed it, drew a large following of sorts amongst the clergy and even the catholic followers. He could, in essence, become an anti-pope and create his own catholic faith.

I am not optimistic about the chances of this succeeding. Any pope making a serious change to the faith will be deposed.

The biggest problem that i foresee (among the many) is to choose which Pope would be better suited to this ideal?
You are probably going to have to create your own. I think this would require several generations of preparation.
 
The biggest problem is that the elective system is older than the system of Medieval dynasties. At a fairly early point, the system of how to determine the new pope will be considered too holy to change it drastically.


Of course, the "Disney" type of succession (= from uncle to nephew) would be possible without any major changes in canonical law (elective but de-facto dynastic, similar to the HRE; as Carlton has suggested).
But note that for many influencial episcopal sees, not necessarily the Roman one, even the most powerful families usually have not managed to install more than two incumbents from their house in a row.
 

Vitruvius

Donor
There was a strong tradition of inheritance from Uncle to Nephew amongst the Aristocrazia Nera. It was tradition among families of the Black Nobility that one son would continue the the family line and the other would go into the Church. This second son would use his position in the Curia to help the family and eventually would pass it on to his nephew. The best examples are among the Borgias, Borghese, Barberini, della Rovere and Farnese but there are countless others. If one of them became Pope he would customarily make his nephew a cardinal (often done at a very young age). This practice wasn't ended until the 18th century.

If you study the Black Nobility you will see this bifurcated structure reflected through out. The pattern is quite clear in their family trees one side always goes into the Church, not producing heirs but passing down titles from uncle to nephew. Their palazzi (most notably Palazzo Barberini) typically had two major wings for the secular and ecclesiastical branches of the family. This is literally the origin of the word nepotism as it came to us from the Italian.

So having said that its possible that this practice could be instead institutionalized among one very powerful family. I'd say the best time frame for this might actually be later by the 15th or 16th centuries. This 'Papal' family could then monopolize the Papal See in the same way the Habsburgs came to control the position of Holy Roman Emperor. Possibly the best opportunity may be during the Sack of Rome 1527. If Charles V selected a family (the Colonna or Farnese perhaps) and pushed them to the Papacy while simultaneously crushing the other noble families it would clear the way for them to assume de facto hereditary control (by eliminating the competition). How this affects the reformation and counter-reformation I can only begin to speculate.
 
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