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Necessary Art · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: One thousand years ago, in October of ten thirty two,
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  Speaker 1: a man named Theophylactus did the unthinkable. He was named
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  Speaker 1: pope at the age of twenty. He chose the name
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  Speaker 1: Benedict the Ninth, and as far as we know, became
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  Speaker 1: the youngest person to ever hold the title. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: this was no coincidence. Two of his uncles had been
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  Speaker 1: Pope's as well as his grand uncle and great granduncle.
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  Speaker 1: He was part of it unofficial papal dynasty, and his
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  Speaker 1: family's connections had been crucial to securing his election. Unsurprisingly,
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  Speaker 1: his papacy was controversial almost from the start. He was
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  Speaker 1: accused of making a mockery of Rome, living a hedonistic lifestyle.
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  Speaker 1: We have no way of knowing which of these accusations
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  Speaker 1: were true and which were politically motivated hearsay, but it's
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  Speaker 1: easy enough to conclude that he was not a popular pope.
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  Speaker 1: In ten thirty six, just four years later, Benedic found
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  Speaker 1: himself exiled from Rome. He would return shortly after, thanks
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  Speaker 1: to the support of Holy Roman Emperor Conrad the Second,
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  Speaker 1: but he didn't get any more popular, and rumors of
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  Speaker 1: his indiscretions only grew. In ten forty four, he was
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  Speaker 1: exiled the second time, and this time local bishops appointed
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  Speaker 1: a replacement, Pope Sylvester the Third, But Benedict the ninth
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  Speaker 1: was not going to take this line down now in
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  Speaker 1: his early thirties, He rallied and returned to Rome the
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  Speaker 1: following year, ousting his replacement. But something had changed in
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  Speaker 1: his attitude. We don't know for sure if he was
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  Speaker 1: tired of being the pope or if the constant criticism
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  Speaker 1: was finally getting to him, but by April of ten
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  Speaker 1: forty five, he was considering leaving the papacy behind. Honestly,
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  Speaker 1: he just wanted to get married and move on with
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  Speaker 1: his life. So he did what few popes have ever
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  Speaker 1: done before or since. He resigned, although not before making
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  Speaker 1: a deal that would set him up comfortably. You see,
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  Speaker 1: Benedict's godfather, John Gretien, was a well liked priest, Benedict
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  Speaker 1: proposed that he would resign and allow Gratzien to take
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  Speaker 1: the papacy as long as Gratien paid all the debts
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  Speaker 1: that Benedict had incurred during the papal elections. His uncle consented,
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  Speaker 1: paid up, and was named Pope Gregory the sixth. This
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  Speaker 1: was a huge relief for the Catholic Church at large,
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  Speaker 1: who immediately started to press Gregory to root out corruption
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  Speaker 1: amongst the priesthood. However, this wasn't a solution to the
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  Speaker 1: problems created by Benedict's time in the Holy See. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: it only made things more complicated. A year into his retirement,
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  Speaker 1: Benedict started to regret his decision. In July of ten
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  Speaker 1: forty six, he came back and demanded his proper place
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  Speaker 1: as Pope, much to the annoyance of his godfather, and
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  Speaker 1: around the same time, Sylvester the Third started speaking up,
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  Speaker 1: claiming that he was the rightful pope. So, for those
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  Speaker 1: who are keeping track at home, by ten forty six
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  Speaker 1: there were three different popes, all claiming the title in Rome,
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  Speaker 1: but nobody in Rome was powerful enough to do anything
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  Speaker 1: about it. That November, the new Holy Roman Emperor Henry
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  Speaker 1: the third traveled to Rome to meet the pope in
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  Speaker 1: arrange for his coronation, so he spoke to Gregory the sixth,
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  Speaker 1: only to learn that that guy was part of a
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  Speaker 1: trinity who were squabbling over power. He learned that Gregory
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  Speaker 1: himself got the title by paying off the previous pope,
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  Speaker 1: who himself was part of a dynasty of corrupt popes.
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  Speaker 1: It was more than a little outrageous. On December twentieth
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  Speaker 1: of ten forty six, Henry the Third gathered a council
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  Speaker 1: of bishops to address this chaos. All three popes were
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  Speaker 1: invited too, but only Sylvester the Iird and Gregory the
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  Speaker 1: sixth showed up. The bishops determined that soil l vest
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  Speaker 1: the third was not a proper pope, and both Benedict
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  Speaker 1: and Gregory had obtained their titles illegitimately. So after the council,
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  Speaker 1: Henry deposed all three popes, appointing Clement the Second in
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  Speaker 1: their place to return stability to the Roman Catholic Church.
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  Speaker 1: Which is enough to make your head spin. Right, we
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  Speaker 1: have four guys now who all claimed to want to
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  Speaker 1: wear the point he had, So what happened to the others? Well,
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  Speaker 1: Sylvester returned to Sabina, where he served as a bishop
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  Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. Gregory left for Germany
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  Speaker 1: and died only a few years later. Benedict, however, never
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  Speaker 1: learned his lesson. After Clement the second died, Bennedict seized
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  Speaker 1: the papal throne yet again, resulting in the Church fully
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  Speaker 1: excommunicating him. His final fate is actually unknown, but he
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  Speaker 1: went down in history as the only pope to ever
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  Speaker 1: sell the title and the only one to reign three
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  Speaker 1: times nonconsecutively, no matter how hard he fought for it. Though,
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  Speaker 1: it really seemed like he didn't take the job all
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  Speaker 1: that seriously, which is perhaps even more damning than anything
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  Speaker 1: he was accused of while he was in power. In
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  Speaker 1: twenty seven hundred BC, a time so ancient its people
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  Speaker 1: might seem completely alien to us today, the Egyptian architect
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  Speaker 1: and priest Imhotep was performing a delicate operation on a
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  Speaker 1: stone tablet beneath a single shaft of light. The light
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  Speaker 1: shone down from a hole cut into the stone roof
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  Speaker 1: above It allowed Imhotep to see every detail of his
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  Speaker 1: work in the otherwise dark palace. He made subtle observations
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  Speaker 1: tweaking things here and there he had his assistance record
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  Speaker 1: everything on pages of papyrus. They needed to preserve what
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  Speaker 1: they learned. After all, any knowledge gleaned was from the
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  Speaker 1: creator God Ptah himself. That being said, Imhotep began his
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  Speaker 1: career as a priest of Ra, the sun god. He
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  Speaker 1: owed everything to Ra. Although im Hotel had been born
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  Speaker 1: a commoner, this time as a priest had exposed him
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  Speaker 1: to all kinds of learning. He became a master of architecture, poetry, astronomy,
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  Speaker 1: and mathematics. His designs for a new kind of building,
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  Speaker 1: to whom he called a pyramid, were much grander than
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  Speaker 1: the plain rectangles the pharaohs and other important Egyptians were
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  Speaker 1: buried in at the time. This had soon captured the
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  Speaker 1: attention of the current pharaoh, and he immediately had Imhotep
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  Speaker 1: build him a pyramid, even allowing m Hotep to carve
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  Speaker 1: his name into one of the stones. Afterward, m Hotep
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  Speaker 1: became his chief adviser, and although he was a master
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  Speaker 1: of the arts, there was one art that he now
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  Speaker 1: valued above all the others. Architecture no longer held any
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  Speaker 1: mysteries the heavens They've all been mapped. Now he was
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  Speaker 1: exploring a new frontier, an art form that wasn't just
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  Speaker 1: fascinating but also necessary. In fact, im Hotep had taken
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  Speaker 1: to calling it the necessary art. Today, though we call
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  Speaker 1: it medicine. Unlike architecture and poets, medicine didn't just exist
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  Speaker 1: for its own sake. It existed to save lives. Motep
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  Speaker 1: felt that there was no greater art than that. He
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  Speaker 1: tried to help anyone he could who was suffering from
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  Speaker 1: injury or illness. He considered his treatments a gift from
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  Speaker 1: the god thought and recorded his findings as thoughts teachings.
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  Speaker 1: Any physicians who deviated from these treatments was committing a
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  Speaker 1: punishable crime. And that may sound ignorant, but it was
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  Speaker 1: actually incredibly progressive for the time. You see, up until
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  Speaker 1: this point, medicine was entirely based on superstition. This or
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  Speaker 1: that herb was believed to cure this or that illness,
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  Speaker 1: not out of testing or evidence, but out of passed
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  Speaker 1: down traditions. If that herb didn't work, it was the
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  Speaker 1: patient's fault for displeasing the gods. Imhotep, though believed his
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  Speaker 1: treatments were from the gods, but he didn't believe that
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  Speaker 1: they failed because of the patient. Instead, he believed that
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  Speaker 1: the gods were telling him that he needed to try
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  Speaker 1: something different. He was essentially inventing what we would call
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  Speaker 1: today empiricism, the idea that knowledge is gained through other observation,
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  Speaker 1: not intuition or superstition. It is the underpinning idea behind
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  Speaker 1: the modern scientific method. Take Imhotep's current patient. With that
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  Speaker 1: in mind, let's return to his patient at the moment,
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  Speaker 1: the one mentioned at the beginning of this story. His
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  Speaker 1: latest project laid out on the stone table. The man
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  Speaker 1: had been mauled by a hippo. One leg had been
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  Speaker 1: torn to shreds, the other was badly broken and had
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  Speaker 1: a bone sticking out. He was covered in lacerations, and
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  Speaker 1: there was a strange swelling in his abdomen. Imhotep used
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  Speaker 1: trial and error. He applied a thick paste to the
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  Speaker 1: mangled leg, but it was not enough. He next tried
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  Speaker 1: a reed splint, which worked on the snapped leg, but
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  Speaker 1: not the mangled one. He considered a plaster linen cast,
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  Speaker 1: but worried that the bleeding was too great. Instead, he
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  Speaker 1: had his assistants hold down the man and while he screamed.
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  Speaker 1: Impo Tep used a saw to cut off the leg,
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  Speaker 1: but then Imhotep retrieved a hot poker from a nearby fire,
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  Speaker 1: which he used to cauterize the wound, because he thought
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  Speaker 1: that this might finally stopped the bleeding, and it did
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  Speaker 1: a new discovery for his book of medicine. Next, he
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  Speaker 1: treated the lacerations with an oiled eel's head, wrapping the
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  Speaker 1: wounds up with bandages afterward, and upon closely examining the
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  Speaker 1: swollen abdomen, he made an incision with his scalpel, a
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  Speaker 1: small fine blade that he had invented for work. Just
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  Speaker 1: like this, black blood began to pour from the abdomen,
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  Speaker 1: and then it stopped and the swelling went down. By
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  Speaker 1: observing what worked and what didn't, Imhotep could learn how
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  Speaker 1: to effectively treat a variety of injuries and diseases and
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  Speaker 1: force other doctors in Egypt to do the same rather
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  Speaker 1: than rely on superstition. His methods were so effective that
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  Speaker 1: even two thousand years after his death, the Egyptians were
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  Speaker 1: still using his teachings on others. Imhotep was one of
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  Speaker 1: the few Egyptians to be raised to the status of godhood.
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  Speaker 1: His work was so influential that it crossed the ocean
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  Speaker 1: to Greece, where a man named Hippocrates was inspired by it.
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  Speaker 1: He went on to become known as the father of
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  Speaker 1: modern metas, and his Hippocratic oath do no harm is
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  Speaker 1: still sworn by doctors today. Curiously, the real father of
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  Speaker 1: modern medicine lived a couple thousand years prior. His methods
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  Speaker 1: might seem rough today, but like his pyramid designs, they
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  Speaker 1: laid the foundation for something magnificent. I hope you enjoyed
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  Speaker 1: today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: researched and written by the Grim and Mild team, and
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  Speaker 1: produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and
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  Speaker 1: the people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com
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  Speaker 1: slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official
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  Speaker 1: Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online,
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  Speaker 1: as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking
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  Speaker 1: for an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's
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  Speaker 1: all the same stories, but without the interruption for a
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  Speaker 1: small monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at
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  Speaker 1: patreon dot com. Slash rim and mild and until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious m HM.