Pope John XXI (Latin:Ioannes XXI,Italian:Giovanni XXI,Portuguese:João XXI;c. 1215 – 20 May 1277), bornPedro Julião[1] (Latin:Petrus Iulianus), was head of theCatholic Church and ruler of thePapal States from 8 September 1276 to his death in May 1277. He is the only ethnicallyPortuguese pope in history.[a][2] He is sometimes identified with thelogician and herbalistPeter of Spain (Latin:Petrus Hispanus;Portuguese:Pedro Hispano), which would make him the only pope to have been a physician.[2]
He was Archdeacon of Vermoim (Vermuy) in the Archdiocese of Braga.[4] He tried to becomebishop of Lisbon but was defeated. Instead, he became the Master of the school of Lisbon. Peter became the physician ofPope Gregory X (1271–1276) early in his reign. In March 1273, he was elected Archbishop ofBraga, but did not assume that post; instead, on 3 June 1273,Pope Gregory X created himCardinal Bishop of Tusculum (Frascati).[5]
After the death ofPope Adrian V on 18 August 1276, Peter waselected pope on 8 September.[2] He was crowned a week later on 20 September. One of John XXI's few acts during his brief reign was the reversal of a decree recently passed at theSecond Council of Lyon (1274); the decree had not only confined cardinals in solitude until they elected a successor pope, but also progressively restricted their supplies of food and wine if their deliberations took too long. Though much of John XXI's brief papacy was dominated by the powerful Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, who succeeded him asPope Nicholas III, John attempted to launch acrusade for theHoly Land, pushed for a union with the Eastern church, and did what he could to maintain peace between the Christian nations.
Among his other acts, he excommunicatedAfonso III of Portugal for interfering with episcopal elections and sent legates toKublai Khan.[6] He also launched amission to convert theTatars, but he died before it could start.[7]
To secure the necessary quiet for his medical studies, he had an apartment added to the papal palace atViterbo, to which he could retire when he wished to work undisturbed. On 14 May 1277, while the pope was alone in this apartment, the ceiling collapsed; John was rescued alive from beneath the rubble; however, he died of his serious injuries on 20 May, possibly an early recorded case ofcrush syndrome.[8]
He was buried in theDuomo di Viterbo, where his tomb can still be seen. The originalporphyry sarcophagus was destroyed during the cathedral's 16th-century refurbishment, and was replaced with a more modest one in stone with the pope's effigy. In the 19th century, theDuke of Saldanha, as Portuguese Ambassador to the Holy See, had the pope's remains transferred to a new sarcophagus sculpted byFilippo Gnaccarini.[8] In 2000, theLisbon City Council, led by MayorJoão Soares, successfully had a new funeral monument built inlioz stone, topped by the original stone effigy of the pope, placed in a more condign location in thetransept.[9][10]
After his death, it was rumored that John XXI had actually been anecromancer, a suspicion frequently directed towards the few scholars among medieval popes (see, e.g.,Sylvester II). It was also said that his death had been anact of God, stopping him from completing aheretical treatise.[11] Since the works of "Peter of Spain" continued to be studied and appreciated, however,Dante Alighieri placed "Pietro Spano" in hisParadiso'sSphere of the Sun with the spirits of other great religious scholars.
^Johann Peter Kirsch (1910). "Pope John XXI (XX)". InCatholic Encyclopedia.8. New York.
^abDe Santo, Natale G; Bisaccia, Carmela; De Santo, Luca S; Cucu, Andrei I; Costea, Claudia F (April 2021). "John XXI, the Pope Philosopher and Physician-Scientist of Portuguese Origins Died of Crush Syndrome in 1277".J Relig Health.60 (2):1305–1317.doi:10.1007/s10943-020-01096-3.PMID33141403.S2CID226231611.
^Saint-Maurice, Anabela (19 February 2000)."Mistério em Viterbo".O Lugar da História (in Portuguese).RTP2. Retrieved13 September 2021.
Branco, Maria João (2001). "The King's Counsellors' two Faces: a Portuguese perspective". In Linehan, Peter; Nelson, Janet L. (eds.).The Medieval World. Routledge. p. 518-533.
Guiraud, J. and L. Cadier (editors),Les registres de Grégoire X et de Jean XXI (1271–1277) (Paris, 1892–1898) [Bibliothèque de l'Ecole française à Rome, série 2, 12] (in Latin)
Walter, Fritz,Die Politik der Kurie unter Gregor X (Berlin, 1894) (in German)
Stapper, Richard,Papst Johannes XXI. Eine Monographie (Münster 1898) [Kirchengeschichtliche Studien, volume 4, no. 4] (in German)
Gregorovius, Ferdinand,History of Rome in the Middle Ages, volume V, part 2, second edition, revised (London: George Bell, 1906)
H. D. Sedgwick,Italy in the Thirteenth Century Volume II (Boston-New York, 1912)
Mazzi-Belli, V., "Pietro Hispano papa Giovanni XXI,"Rivista di storia della medicina 15 (1971), 39–87 (in Italian)
Morceau, Joseph, "Un pape portugais : Jean XXI, dénommé Pierre d'Espagne",Teoresi 24 (1979), 391–407 (in French)
Maxwell-Stuart, P. G.Chronicle of the Popes: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Papacy from St. Peter to the Present, Thames & Hudson, 2002, p. 119.ISBN0-500-01798-0.
José Francisco Meirinhos: Giovanni XXI. In: Massimo Bray (ed.):Enciclopedia dei Papi. Volume 2: Niccolò I, santo, Sisto IV. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2000 (treccani.it)
Joachim Telle:Petrus Hispanus in der altdeutschen Medizinliteratur und Texte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Thesaurus pauperum‘. 2 vol., Heidelberg, 1972.
