r/todayilearned • u/MyKinkyCountess • 2d ago
TIL that Michelangelo spent two months hiding in the underground chamber while evading a death sentence ordered by the Pope
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/oct/31/michelangelo-secret-sketches-under-church-in-florence-open-to-public1.2k
u/Semanticss 2d ago
THE underground chamber?!! Wait, does everybody know about the chamber except for me?!!
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u/BreathingAlternative 2d ago
It's downstairs from the secret bordello.
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u/bakerton 2d ago
SEX CAULDRON?
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u/MelonElbows 2d ago
I thought they closed that place down?!
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u/Visual-Juggernaut-61 1d ago
To the public, yes. But if you know the right phrase they will still let you in.
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u/ClosPins 2d ago
You risk your life to hide Michelangelo - and he scribbles all over your walls?
Did Anne Frank cover her room with permanent marker and Hello Kitty stickers?
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u/Electrical-Piano-860 2d ago
In the pope's defense he did try to piss them off. But, popes back then were wild anyways. One pope ordered the former popes body to be dug up after 7 months and tried in a court. When the dead pope somehow won the trial, the pope ordered the body thrown in the river. Then the active pope went to jail for this and was strangled to death
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u/gentlybeepingheart 2d ago
The Cadaver Synod! The dead pope was actually found guilty, and that's why the live pope threw him in the river.
But the dead pope was basically put on trial for internal political reasons, and so most of the common people did not know or care why he was posthumously put on trial. They just knew that the current pope had desecrated the body of god's previous representative on earth (whose dead waterlogged body was also allegedly preforming miracles) who seemed like a cool and important guy to them, and so they got pissed and deposed the live pope and then he got strangled.
Also they appointed an "interpreter" for the dead pope for his trial. It was some guy who would lean in and pretend to listen to the dead pope's rotting corpse and then relay the dead pope's "response" to the rest of the court.
It was an interesting time for popes.
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u/AngriestManinWestTX 2d ago
The Medieval centuries were fucking wild holy shit.
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u/Theban_Prince 2d ago
From wikipedia article:
"Stephen VI asked Formosus' corpse why he "usurped the universal Roman See in such a spirit of ambition (...)"
"Formosus, being several months dead, could not answer."
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u/Teledildonic 2d ago
You try sitting around knowing the internet won't be thing for like 500 more years!
Got to find other shit to pass the time.
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u/Missus_Missiles 2d ago
Porn was VERY low-res back then.
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u/memento22mori 2d ago
Porn was actually illegal in Japan at the time because pixelated penii hadn't been invented yet.
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u/ActualKidnapper 1d ago
I wonder if they realized how bad the corpse was going to stink up the entire building when they came up with the idea, or if they were really just that committed.
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u/Faiakishi 1d ago
I mean, after seven months I feel like it would be pretty desiccated. Wouldn't smell great, but it probably wouldn't be that strong from far away.
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u/Collucin 2d ago
Sounds like the interpreter was damn good if he won the trial
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u/Admiralthrawnbar 2d ago
He didn't
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u/Collucin 2d ago
Hah you're right, I must have read it wrong the first time through. Ah well
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u/RidingYourEverything 2d ago
The first comment said he won, but the comment you replied to said he lost.
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u/Haunting-Prior-NaN 2d ago
Several other folks have noted, he didn’t. Probably for the best of the interpreter, I’m sure it would’ve been his ass on the bonfire if the dead pope would havewon.
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u/NbdySpcl_00 2d ago
So checked into this and enjoyed one more bit of detail in the story. The dead pope was Pope Formosus, who was succeeded by Pope Boniface V. PBV was pope for 15 days before he... ahem... 'died of gout.' Thus began the supremacy of Pope Stephen VI. PSVI is the one who put PF (deceased) on trial.
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u/Brigid-Tenenbaum 2d ago
You look back and think ‘How could something so bizarre have happened?!’ Then you watch a presidential debate and think the same thing. Strange shit really can happen.
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u/Dom_Shady 2d ago
Wasn't the dead Pope's interpreter the origin of the term "the Devil's advocate"?
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u/gentlybeepingheart 2d ago
No, the office of advocatus diaboli (Devil's Advocate) was established a few hundred years later. It's a position for canonization of saints. Someone would argue for the deceased and why they should be made a saint, and then the devil's advocate would argue against canonization (pointing out flaws in the proposed saint's character and trying to disprove the miracles)
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u/DonaldLucas 2d ago
the office of advocatus diaboli (Devil's Advocate) was established a few hundred years later
Wait, it's something that really exists instead of something people made up?
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u/walterpeck1 2d ago
Nah that was a separate thing that came way later in the 1500s. The devil's advocate basically acted as someone arguing against the canonization of someone, a double check to ensure someone getting sainthood deserved it.
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u/TheMadTargaryen 2d ago
That happened over 600 years before Michelangelo was even born, it was a different time period with different level of papal influence or power.
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2d ago
It’s what unchecked religious power does. There’s a reason the Pope is a symbolic role now. The power they wielded was too chaotic
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u/Faiakishi 1d ago
Reading about the kid that was kidnapped from his Jewish parents and raised by the Pope because a random maid claimed to have baptized the kid-yeah, shit was crazy.
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u/NRMusicProject 26 1d ago
I remember reading in Le Morte d'Arthur that there were a number of hermits throughout the stories because they couldn't deal with any of the politics of Camelot, and likely how they used religion. I can see the point then, and I can see the point now.
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u/ILikeLenexa 2d ago
In his defense, I believe the position of the Catholic church is inviolability and dignity of the individual, or something like that.
So, maybe executing annoying guys conflicts with that.
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u/earthlings_all 2d ago
So yesterday I watched Weekend at Bernie’s after many years and it was funny as hell. Anyone reading this crazy shit should watch that movie. And keep going, all the corny scenes are worth it for the laughs.
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u/_LarryM_ 2d ago
Kinda what happens when you give someone nearly unlimited power and tell them they speak for god
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u/ooouroboros 2d ago
Rome was essentially an anarchistic state - there was no rule of law, just which of the eternally feuding families were the most powerful -they were literally killing each other in the streets. If memory serves many/most Popes were members of one of these families.
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u/WesCoastBlu 2d ago
……. Eating pizza with Don, Raph, and Leo?
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u/WhoaFee1227 2d ago
Pizza dudes got 30 seconds.
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u/Full_Victory2024 2d ago
Wise man say: forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza
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u/memento22mori 2d ago
I haven't seen that movie in probably 30 years but I thought he said never pay full price for cold pizza.
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u/MyKinkyCountess 2d ago
After teaming up with those guys, Michelangelo was no longer afraid of any Pope
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u/EntrepreneurPlus7091 2d ago
Literally the post above it on my feed was an image of Leo, so for half the sentence I was wondering what arc it was talking about.
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u/Ritz527 2d ago
Leo and Raph maybe. Donatello predeceased the birth of Michelangelo by more than a decade.
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u/Justlikearealboy 2d ago
He did piss off popes on purpose, because they were such dicks to everyone.
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u/Landlubber77 2d ago
The Pope should've ordered a death paragraph, Michelangelo would've had to have stayed down there four, possibly five times longer.
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 2d ago
Fuckin popes man
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u/MyKinkyCountess 2d ago
Unfortunately, "men" aren't the only age group that Popes are fucking...
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u/IC-4-Lights 2d ago
It's a pretty safe bet that Michelangelo was, at least. At least one of his infatuations was a 14 year old boy.
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u/TrustyMonkeyWrench 2d ago
Redditors: Why are we always stereotyped as being obsessed with pederasty? It's so unfair!
Also Redditors:
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u/Lokarin 2d ago
Can our current Pope order death sentences?
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u/Hatweed 2d ago
Not at the moment as capital punishment was taken off the books in the Vatican in 1969, but seeing as the Pope is the absolute sovereign of the Holy See and it is a distinct legal entity from Italy, it’s theoretically possible for one to reinstate it and order an execution.
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u/bfume 2d ago
he would only theoretically be able to order the execution of a citizen of Vatican City
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u/Jumpyjellybutton 1d ago
He also changed the catechism to say that capital punishment isn’t permissible
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u/UsernameAvaylable 1d ago
The papal states were much bigger in the past. If the emperor of france could order a death sentence, then so could the pope.
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u/myonlinegirl 2d ago
The Sistine Chapel, where the Pope is often given to praying.
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u/aladdydeen 2d ago
No, it wasn't in the Sistine chapel. Not even remotely near it. Several hundred kilometres from it.
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u/thatdevilyouknow 2d ago
Am I the first one to mention the film The Agony and The Ecstasy, one of Charlton Heston’s greatest movies ever? If you are too young to have ever heard of this movie you must watch it.
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u/Take-to-the-highways 2d ago
I'm reading the book right now it's really good, I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I have been.
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u/ooouroboros 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not surprising if you have read Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography.
Rome was a virtually lawless wild west beset with clan violence and the Pope stepping in sometimes to throw people in prison for mostly political reasons.
Cellini was thrown in prison at least a few times, including for killing a man, but his writing makes it believably clear that with basically no type of law enforcement and a society which idolized violence, a person without a powerful family protecting them basically had to use violence as a means of self-protection. Cellini was sometimes protected by the Pope because he could make beautiful objects for him, but at a whim the Pope would turn against him, and Cellini hated having to kiss up to him.
Cellini was one of the major artists of the Renaissance and writes entertainingly of his fellow artists including Michelangelo.
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u/WarrenMulaney 2d ago
The thumbnail looks like pubes. That is all.
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u/KypDurron 2d ago
Those are balls... see, this close, they always look like landscape. But nope, you're looking at balls.
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u/Sisiutil 2d ago
Not sure if this is accurate, specifically being "opened to the public for the first time". Assuming it's the same room, I visited it twice, once in 1988 and again in 1990. It was in the New Sacristy in the Prince's Chapel around back of the Basilica de San Lorenzo. When you paid for your entrance fee, you had to know to ask for the special ticket to enter the "Sale de Michelangelo" (Michelangelo's Room)--no extra charge. You gave that ticket to a guy sitting by a trap door in one of the rooms and he opened it to let you down there. (SO Italian, I know; the only thing missing was a secret handshake.) Pretty amazing, like stepping directly into the mind of an artistic genius.
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u/GoliathPrime 1d ago
The only thing I remember about Michelangelo from my art history professor, was that he and Leonardo absolutely hated eat other and had to have armed guards around the clock to stop them from trying to murder each other on a project they were jointly working on. Something with horses. I remember Leonardo was supposed to match his side to Michelangelo's, but decided to do his own thing, so to this day, it's still unfinished because when the two sides were painted together - the styles didn't match and Michelangelo went absolutely insane with rage.
The other thing was Michelangelo would get so engrossed in his work he would pass out from starvation and dehydration. His servants and the servants of his patron would keep an eye on him and try to make him eat and drink and he was often extremely violent and abusive to him in return for their care. On one occasion he barricaded himself in his studio for weeks and when they heard no sounds for a day, the servants call the guards and they broke down the fortifications to find him unconscious. They summoned a doctor who drip-fed him fluids which saved his life. Upon awakening, he assaulted his caregivers again and tried to start working but was so weak, he could not drag himself to his tools. They ended up tying him down until he could recover, and relented by bringing his tools to him so he could work from bed.
He sounds like a lovely person.
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u/GeriatricHydralisk 2d ago
For the curious, there's a fully accurate recreation of the events that led to this right here
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u/blitzkrieger17 1d ago
oddly enough, it wasn't for drawing dicks on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel... probably the only guy to ever get away with it!
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u/Coldspark824 1d ago
I mean he also painted god’s ass on the sistine chapel ceiling in place of the “moon”.
I’m gonna pretend the death sentence was for that instead
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u/JackDrawsStuff 2d ago
Might be butchering this fact, but his notebooks suggest he discovered what we now call cholesterol 300 years before it was properly recognised by François Poulletier de la Salle.
Much of his work was dismissed as heresy, we’d potentially be centuries ahead on cholesterol if it wasn’t.
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u/CarnegieFormula 1d ago
The Catholic Church was evil and the most powerful entity for like 1,000 years. They killed lots of people who disagreed with their religion / God. They killed Giordano Bruno because he postulated that stars were distant suns and that the Earth was not the center of the Universe. They burned him at the steak for his scientific genius.
Fuck tha pope
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u/VAUltraD 1d ago
Everybody knew that the sun was the center of our galaxy at the time, this is just some bullshit propaganda from the lads of the enlightenment, study a little bit more of history, this view has been debunked for quite a while, cheers.
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u/LupusDeusMagnus 2d ago
IIRC, Michelangelo worked on fortifications for the city after the Medici were deposed and the city was put to siege. They eventually forgave him, and he kept working on the chapel.
Basically he participated in military action against his patrons and got pardoned.