Visual Illusion, Historical Confusion: Exposing the Cracks in Rome’s Claimed Line of Popes

J. Neil Daniels

The Seductive Simplicity of a Chart

On June 20, 2025, an account on X (formerly Twitter) going by the handle @SecretFire79 posted a striking chart titled Succession of Popes. It was sleek, attractively formatted, and seemingly authoritative. A line stretched unbroken from St. Peter all the way to Francis, the current occupant of the Vatican throne. For viewers scrolling past in haste, the message was immediate and powerful: Rome alone has the pedigree, Rome alone has the keys, Rome alone has the lineage of legitimacy.

And yet, one cannot help but sense that the beauty of such a chart is also its danger. It gives the impression of continuity, stability, inevitability. But beneath that glossy surface lies a centuries-long tangle of disputes, textual discrepancies, corruptions, and open schisms. The papal register has never been quite as smooth as the Vatican’s art department would prefer. In fact, the very idea of an “unbroken line” is a theological aspiration dressed up as historiography.

The question, then, is not whether the papacy has a history. Of course it does, and a colorful one at that. The question is whether that history justifies the claim of an unbroken apostolic succession stretching back to Peter. And here, things begin to crumble.

Competing Catalogues and the Problem of Lists

Immediately one must ask: which list of popes are we meant to trust? The chart circulating online did not bother to identify its source—an omission that is itself telling. The Church has produced, over the centuries, multiple and competing registers. Damasus in the fourth century offered his catalog. Jerome, never one to hide his partisanship, produced another. Eusebius, that pioneering historian of the early Church, recorded his sequence, albeit one riddled with gaps and contradictions.¹ In the modern era, Duchesne’s nineteenth-century critical reconstructions tried to sort the mess,² while the Vatican’s Annuario Pontificio continues to update and occasionally revise its own official version.³

The Annuario is worth pausing on. Published annually, it is Rome’s authoritative listing, and yet even it has quietly adjusted names and dates as scholarship shifts. The inclusion of certain figures, the demotion of others, and the outright erasure of rival claimants tell us something: the list is not carved in stone but is rather a product of theological judgment layered upon historical memory. As new archaeological evidence emerges or as historians correct past exaggerations, Rome adapts, sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically. A succession supposedly guaranteed by divine institution should not require such regular editing.

The Shadows of the First Centuries

Consider the earliest names. Linus, traditionally placed after Peter (ca. 67–76), and Anacletus (76–88) make their way into most lists. But what exactly do we know of them? Virtually nothing. Their names surface in fragmentary references, sometimes under different forms—Cletus, Anencletus—suggesting duplication or confusion. Duchesne, with commendable honesty, admitted that their actual episcopal roles are uncertain.² Did they even function as “bishops of Rome” in any recognizable sense? The category itself is anachronistic, since the monarchical episcopacy developed gradually and only clearly emerges in the second century. To speak of Peter handing the keys directly to Linus is, historically speaking, to project a later model backward into the fog of the first century.

The problem only multiplies as one moves forward. Clement of Rome (ca. 88–99) does leave us a genuine text, the First Epistle to the Corinthians, but even here the evidence is ambiguous. Clement never calls himself bishop. His letter speaks on behalf of the church at Rome, not of an individual pontiff. If anything, it suggests a collegial leadership structure. That Clement later becomes retroactively invested with papal authority tells us more about later ecclesiology than about first-century realities.

Heresy in the Chair

Jumping ahead, one collides with the awkward figure of Honorius I (625–638). Officially counted as pope, he was posthumously condemned for heresy at the Third Council of Constantinople (681).⁴ The charge? He had supported Monothelitism, or at least failed to oppose it vigorously enough, thereby betraying the orthodox confession of two wills in Christ. Here is the scandal: the pope condemned as heretic by an ecumenical council. Rome has twisted itself into knots explaining this away—was he personally heretical or merely negligent, formally teaching or merely passively endorsing? But the fact remains that the council fathers anathematized him by name. If apostolic succession guarantees doctrinal fidelity, the case of Honorius explodes the theory.

The Antipope Dilemma

Then there is the problem of antipopes. During the Western Schism (1378–1417), Christendom was split between rival claimants. Urban VI sat in Rome, Clement VII in Avignon, and for a time a third papacy arose in Pisa. Each claimed legitimacy. Each excommunicated the others. Which one held the unbroken line? The Annuario resolves this by canonizing one stream and relegating the others to the category of “antipope.”³ But this is hardly a historical solution; it is simply an ecclesiastical ruling after the fact. The faithful living in fourteenth-century France, compelled by obedience to Clement VII, would be surprised to learn that their “pope” was later demoted to illegitimacy.

The problem reemerges in other centuries. Hippolytus in the third century, Novatian around 251, and more than twenty others across the centuries all claimed the papal throne at one time or another. The sheer frequency of these disputed elections demonstrates that the papacy was never an unbroken chain of serene succession but a contested battlefield of power.

Politics, Bribery, and the Saeculum Obscurum

If the schisms represent theological rupture, the saeculum obscurum—the “dark age” of the tenth century—shows moral collapse. During this period, noble Roman families like the Theophylacts controlled the papal office, installing relatives and lovers onto the throne of Peter. John XII (955–964) provides the most infamous case. Contemporary chroniclers accuse him of fornication, simony, even invoking pagan gods. He was deposed by a synod for crimes so grotesque that even sympathetic historians blush. And yet, he appears unbroken on the chart, his line unspotted, his tenure canonically secured.

One could tell a dozen such stories. Benedict IX, who reigned in the mid-eleventh century (in fact, three separate times), is notorious for having sold the papacy outright. The office of Peter reduced to a cash transaction. Again, the Annuario simply lists him as pope.³ Succession continues, no questions asked. But surely this is less apostolic continuity than dynastic corruption.

The Theology Beneath the History

Behind these disputes lies a deeper theological question. The Catholic claim is not merely that there has been a bishop of Rome in each generation, but that this succession guarantees doctrinal authority by divine institution. That is the hinge. But once the historical cracks are exposed—murky first-century leadership structures, popes condemned for heresy, antipopes dividing Christendom, immoral pontiffs ruling by bribe and sword—the theological edifice totters. Continuity of office does not equal continuity of truth. The Old Testament gives sobering analogies: the high priesthood continued unbroken in Israel, and yet many high priests were corrupt, faithless, even murderous. Lineage alone does not preserve fidelity.

Historians of the Papacy: Catholic and Protestant Alike

It is striking how even Catholic historians acknowledge the ruptures. Karl Joseph von Hefele, the nineteenth-century bishop and scholar, documented the contested elections and the heretical inclinations of certain pontiffs.⁴ Hubert Jedin, in his magisterial History of the Council of Trent, admitted the chaotic political entanglements that shaped papal policy.⁵ Louis Duchesne’s critical Histoire ancienne de l’Église remains an embarrassment to triumphalists, since Duchesne, though Catholic, exposed the historical inconsistencies in the early papal lists.²

Protestant historians, of course, have long pressed the point. Philip Schaff in his History of the Christian Church catalogued the crises with almost relish,⁶ while more recent scholars such as Klaus Schatz (himself Catholic, yet more candid than most) conceded that the papal succession cannot be read as a simple line.⁷ The irony is that the more critically one studies the history, the less smooth the succession appears.

A Side Note on Manuscripts and Memory

A curious aside: the Liber Pontificalis, the medieval chronicle of papal reigns, survives in multiple manuscripts, each with variants. Some names are duplicated, some reigns are altered, some details plainly legendary. The biography of Pope Sylvester, for instance, includes a tale of Constantine being healed of leprosy through baptism, a story now universally recognized as a pious fiction. Yet for centuries such tales were woven into the papal tradition, bolstering claims of power and authority. The manuscript evidence itself testifies to the instability of the narrative.⁸ One cannot chart a straight line from Peter to Francis without passing through a swamp of textual fabrication and legendary embellishment.

The Nineteenth-Century Reassertion

Pius IX (1846–1878) marks another turning point. His reign, one of the longest in papal history, was also one of the most contested. He lost the Papal States to Italian unification, was opposed fiercely by liberal Catholics and secular governments alike, and yet managed to convene the First Vatican Council (1869–70), which defined papal infallibility. Here we see the paradox: a pope whose legitimacy was politically undermined simultaneously asserted his doctrinal supremacy. That his reign is included on the unbroken line says less about historical continuity than about theological assertion at a time of crisis.

The Chart as Apologetic

Which brings us back to the online graphic. It should not be taken as history. It was an apologetic device, meant to inspire confidence, to convey legitimacy by sheer visual simplicity. By omitting sources, by smoothing over ruptures, by canonizing one version of events while suppressing others, it creates the illusion of inevitability. The line is not history; it is propaganda.

That is not to say it is entirely worthless. One can appreciate it as a work of Catholic self-presentation, a window into how Rome wishes to be seen. But serious scholarship cannot accept such neatness. The papal line is a construction, built from disputed texts, partisan chronicles, and post facto decisions. It is an edifice of memory, not of uninterrupted reality.

Conclusion: Continuity or Construction?

The papacy is real, its history long and tangled, its influence immense. But the claim of an unbroken, divinely guaranteed succession from Peter to Francis is not borne out by the evidence. From the murk of the first century to the chaos of the Middle Ages, from the heresies of Honorius to the corruption of John XII, from the antipopes of Avignon to the contested reign of Pius IX, the cracks are everywhere.

The online chart, with its polished graphics, conceals more than it reveals. It is not continuity but construction, not inevitability but invention. And the sooner we see through the illusion, the sooner we can grapple honestly with the real, messy, fascinating history of the papacy.

Endnotes

Eusebius of Caesarea, The Ecclesiastical History, trans. C. F. Cruse (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998), 3.2–3.
Louis Duchesne, Histoire ancienne de l’Église, vol. 1 (Paris: Fontemoing, 1906).
Annuario Pontificio (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, annual).
Karl Joseph von Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 5, trans. William R. Clark (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1896).
Hubert Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, trans. Ernest Graf (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1957).
Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1910).
Klaus Schatz, Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present, trans. John A. Otto and Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996).
Liber Pontificalis, ed. Louis Duchesne, 2 vols. (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1886–1892).

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