Despite the assertion by The Catholic Encyclopedia that "no useful purpose would be served by giving the name of every such claimant" (to the post of Pope) and that "many of them possess no historical importance whatever," I make no assertion as to the importance of any of the information I post here and thus provide you with a list of competing antipopes. A contemporary reason people are interested in at least some of the antipopes is because of St. Malachy's prophecy in 1139 AD describing the future bearers of the papal title; with the occasional inclusion of around ten antipopes as fit particular lines of the prophecy the Papacy is near its end, with only two of the 122 unsorted predictions having not been retroactively matched to any pope or claimant in the time period between the utterance of the (suspected forged in the 16th century and officially unacknowledged by the Catholic Church) prophecy.

An"ti*pope (#), n.

One who is elected, or claims to be, pope in opposition to the pope canonically chosen; esp. applied to those popes who resided at Avignon during the Great Schism.

 

© Webster 1913.

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