• John XXIII (ruled 1410-15), Pope.

Joseph McCabe (1867-1955) was one of the most prolific authors of all time. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic, worked on Latin documents, and made himself very well-informed about Christianity, but turned against it. But he was extremely naive about Jews; bear this in mind.

Click for Detailed notes on McCabe - scroll down for selections from A Rationalist Encyclopaedia (1948).

Here's the full A Rationalist Encyclopaedia (about 1.3 MBytes; Word format; includes notes on some of its limits)

John XXIII (ruled 1410-15), Pope.

J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia

A brutal Neapolitan adventurer, said by some of the best contemporary writers to have been a pirate in his youth, who won his way to the cardinalate by ferocity in leading the Papal troops and raising large sums for the Popes by an infamous traffic in sacred offices. The German-Roman lawyer Dietrich von Neheim (De Schismate), the best-informed and most conscientious writer of the time, says that Cardinal Cossa, as he then was, corrupted 200 girls while he was Papal Legate at Bologna, and levied commissions on the gamblers and prostitutes of the city. He was elected Pope by a majority of the cardinals, but was deposed by the Council of Constance [see Hus] under pressure from the Emperor Sigismund (who certainly corrupted as many girls as the Pope). The indictment of his character which the great gathering of more than 400 cardinals and prelates drew up, while 1,000 prostitutes enlivened the city, runs to seventy-two articles, and includes every known crime and vice. Pope John was sent into a comfortable retirement, and John Hus was burned. The Dark Age had ended two centuries earlier. See F. J. Kitto, Pope John the Twenty-Third and Master John Hus of Bohemia (1910).

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Scanning, HTML Rae West. First upload 98-02-08