XII ғасырдағы Рим Папасы Иоанн XXI

Head of the Catholic Church from 1276 to 1277

Pope John XXI (Ioannes XXI, João XXI; c. no – c. 1215 – 20 May 1277), born Pedro Julião (Petrus Iulianus), was the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church from 8 September 1276 to his death. He is the only Portuguese pope in history. He is sometimes identified with the logician and herbalist Peter of Spain (Petrus Hispanus; Pedro Hispano), which would make him the only pope to have been a physician. He tried to become bishop of Lisbon but was defeated. Instead, he became the Master of the school of Lisbon. Peter became the physician of Pope Gregory X (1271–1276) early in his reign. In March 1273, he was elected Archbishop of Braga, but did not assume that post; instead, on 3 June 1273, Pope Gregory X created him Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum (Frascati).

After the death of Pope Adrian V on 18 August 1276, Peter was elected pope on 8 September. To secure the necessary quiet for his medical studies, he had an apartment added to the papal palace at Viterbo, to which he could retire when he wished to work undisturbed. On 14 May 1277, while the pope was alone in this apartment, the ceiling collapsed; John was rescued alive from beneath the rubble; however, he died of his serious injuries on 20 May, possibly an early recorded case of crush syndrome. He was buried in the Duomo di Viterbo, where his tomb can still be seen. The original porphyry sarcophagus was destroyed during the cathedral's 16th century refurbishment, and was replaced with a more modest one in stone with the pope's effigy. In the 19th century, the Duke of Saldanha, as Portuguese Ambassador to the Holy See, had the pope's remains transferred to a new sarcophagus sculpted by Filippo Gnaccarini.

After his death, it was rumored that John XXI had actually been a necromancer (see also Communion of the Saints), a suspicion frequently directed towards the few scholars among medieval popes (see, e. g., Sylvester II). It was also said that his death had been an act of God, stopping him from completing a heretical treatise. Since the works of "Peter of Spain" continued to be studied and appreciated, however, Dante Alighieri placed "Pietro Spano" in his Paradiso's Sphere of the Sun with the spirits of other great religious scholars.