Celestine V

Article

Celestine V is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between August 05, 2022 and July 12, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “His words and demeanour reflected a previous papal renunciation, that of Celestine V in 1294”; “he joked that the brain-sensor cap on his head made him look like Celestine V, and that, like the thirteenth-century pope, he wanted to renounce his crown”. It most often appears alongside 1980s, 1989, 1990s.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: August 05, 2022
  • Last seen: July 12, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

August 05, 2022 · Original source
While this pronouncement was shocking, it was not completely unprecedented. His words and demeanour reflected a previous papal renunciation, that of Celestine V in 1294; this Pope had left the job after only around five months, citing physical and mental exhaustion, and much of the language the two pontiffs used was remarkably similar (although in Celestine’s case, there is some concern that his successor Boniface VIII was nudging him towards the door).
July 12, 2024 · Original source
During lucid moments, Silvano could laugh with Ignazio and Lisi over what was happening—he joked that the brain-sensor cap on his head made him look like Celestine V, and that, like the thirteenth-century pope, he wanted to renounce his crown—but such joking did not disguise his terror. Two months into his stay at Bologna, he was howling in the night, his arms and legs wrapped around themselves, the tiny pocket square still in place. In the last days of his life he lay in a twitchy, exhausted nothingness.