Strange History
Strange, dramatic and sometimes absurd turns in the history of religions: churches that split, holy wars, would-be messiahs, a pope tried after his death and a town that danced for weeks. Each story is told from the sources, with the legends beside it.
Splits and schisms
How churches divided, and how a king and three popes changed Christendom.
- Great Schism How a quarrel in Constantinople in 1054 became the symbol of the split between Catholic and Orthodox Christians, and why historians see it as a slow drift, not one day.
- Avignon papacy Why the popes lived in Avignon from 1309 to 1377, and how their return to Rome led to the Western Schism, with two and then three rival popes, until the Council of Constance.
- Henry VIII and Rome How Henry VIII’s wish to annul his first marriage led England to reject papal authority in the 1530s, dissolve its monasteries and execute Thomas More, and what really changed.
Holy wars
Crusades and sieges where faith, power and legend met.
- Crusades The holy wars launched by the Latin Church from 1095, from Clermont and the capture of Jerusalem to Saladin and the fall of Acre in 1291, seen from Christian, Muslim and Jewish sides.
- Children’s Crusade In 1212 crowds of young people in France and the Rhineland set out to free Jerusalem without weapons. What the chronicles really say, and how a legend of shipwreck and slavery grew.
- Fall of Constantinople In 1453 the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II besieged and took Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire. The siege, the ships carried over land, Hagia Sophia and the legends that followed.
Prophets and heavenly kingdoms
Visionaries who promised the end of time, and the kingdoms they founded.
- Münster rebellion In 1534–1535 radical Anabaptists took over the German city of Münster, proclaimed it the New Jerusalem and crowned a king, until a sixteen-month siege ended their kingdom in blood.
- Din-i Ilahi The Mughal emperor Akbar hosted debates between Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians and Christians and gathered a circle of disciples later called the Din-i Ilahi, or divine faith.
- Sabbatai Zevi In 1665–1666 much of the Jewish world believed that Sabbatai Zevi of Smyrna was the Messiah, until he converted to Islam before the Ottoman sultan, leaving a puzzle that lasted centuries.
- Taiping rebellion Hong Xiuquan, who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus, founded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, whose war with the Qing in 1850–1864 was one of history’s deadliest conflicts.
Strange trials and outbreaks
Events so odd that they still sound like legends, and what the records say.
- Cadaver Synod In 897 Pope Stephen VI had the body of his predecessor Formosus exhumed, dressed in vestments and put on trial in Rome. Why it happened, what followed, and how later popes undid it.
- Dancing plague In the summer of 1518 dozens of people in Strasbourg danced for days without stopping, until the city sent them to a shrine of St Vitus; historians still debate why it happened.
- Galileo’s trial What really happened when the Roman Inquisition judged Galileo in 1616 and 1633, the actual charges and sentence, the myths of torture and ‘Eppur si muove’, and the 1992 papal address.