Antipope

(noun)

A person who, in opposition to the one who is generally seen as the legitimately elected pope, makes a significantly accepted competing claim to be the pope.

Related Terms

Examples of Antipope in the following topics:

  • The Western Schism

    • There had been antipopes—rival claimants to the papacy—before, but most of them had been appointed by various rival factions; in this case, a single group of church leaders had created both the pope and the antipope.
    • Archbishops loyal to Benedict XIII subsequently elected Antipope Benedict XIV (Bernard Garnier), and three followers simultaneously elected Antipope Clement VIII, but the Western Schism was by then practically over.

  • The Investiture Controversy

    • Henry IV was succeeded upon his death in 1106 by his son Henry V, who had rebelled against his father in favor of the papacy, and who had made his father renounce the legality of his antipopes before he died.
    • Nevertheless, Henry V chose one more antipope, Gregory VIII.

  • Ethiopia and Eritrea

    • Later, as the Crusades were dying out in the early fourteenth century, the Ethiopian King Wedem Ar'ad dispatched a thirty-man mission to Europe, where they traveled to Rome to meet the Pope and then, since the Medieval Papacy was in schism, they traveled to Avignon to meet the Antipope.