Papal elections and tariff troubles: history behind the headlines

Summary

Papal Elections and Historical Insights

In the wake of Pope Francis’s passing on Easter Monday at the age of 88, the History Extra podcast delves into the intricate process of papal elections and their historical significance. Hannah Skoda, a fellow and tutor in medieval history at St John's College, Oxford, provides an in-depth analysis of the evolution of papal conclaves. She explains that since 1059, the College of Cardinals has been the primary body responsible for electing new popes, a system designed to minimize political interference (09:04). Skoda highlights the dramatic papal election of 1378 as a pivotal moment leading to the Great Schism, where two rival popes emerged, causing immense division within Christendom (09:56). She emphasizes the importance of the 15th-century conciliarism movement, which debated whether authority resided solely with the pope or with church councils, foreshadowing modern discussions about centralized versus collective decision-making.

When Matt Elton inquires about the likelihood of a modern papal schism, Skoda reassures listeners that such an outcome is improbable today. However, she anticipates a vibrant and contentious debate within the current conclave, reflecting the broader spectrum of progressive and conservative viewpoints among potential popes (29:04). This historical perspective underscores the enduring complexities and political maneuverings inherent in the selection of a new pope, mirroring the tumultuous elections of the past but within a more regulated and less fractious framework.

Tariff Troubles: Historical Lessons on Modern Trade Wars

The episode intricately explores the resurgence of global tariffs, particularly focusing on recent high tariffs imposed by the United States on international goods. Frank Trentmann, a professor of history at Birkbeck University of London, draws parallels between contemporary trade policies and historical precedents. He references Joseph Chamberlain’s tariff policies in pre-World War I Britain, noting that Chamberlain’s attempt to implement scientific tariffs ultimately proved ineffective as economic weaponry (03:12). Trentmann points out that modern debates around tariffs are deeply political, viewing economic strength as intertwined with national power rather than purely economic terms (04:00).

Hannah Skoda expands on the historical context by recounting the 1379 murder of Genoese merchant Janus Imperial in London, which was fundamentally a clash between consumer interests favoring freer trade and producer interests intent on maintaining restrictive tariffs through the Calais staple system (06:06). She illustrates how such tensions between consumer and producer power have long shaped trade policies and societal structures.

Rana Mitter, an expert on Modern Chinese history, adds another layer by discussing China's historical engagement with tariffs, highlighting the role of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service established by the British (18:29). She explains how tariff autonomy became a symbol of national sovereignty and resistance against foreign domination, drawing a line to current nationalist uses of tariffs as expressions of national identity.

Trentmann synthesizes these perspectives by asserting that history shows tariffs often fail to sustain themselves as effective economic tools and tend to resurface when hegemonic powers are challenged. He suggests that the current global trade environment, with shifting hegemonies and rising powers like China, is reminiscent of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Britain’s economic dominance waned (26:53).

First All-Female Space Crew: Celebrating Progress and Reflecting on History

The podcast also celebrates a significant milestone in space exploration: the launch of an all-female crew aboard Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket, marking the first such achievement since Valentina Tereshkova's solo mission in 1963. Rana Mitter reflects on the historical importance of Tereshkova’s flight, noting that despite the progress made, she remains the only woman to have flown solo into space (35:45). Mitter underscores the broader context of the Cold War space race, where Tereshkova became a Soviet icon and a symbol of female capability in a male-dominated field.

Hannah Skoda intriguingly offers a medieval parallel by referencing the apocryphal tales of Alexander the Great ascending to the heavens in a basket powered by birds, as depicted in numerous medieval manuscripts (41:53). She draws a moral lesson from these stories about the perils of excessive ambition and pride, subtly contrasting them with the modern pursuit of space exploration driven by scientific progress and human curiosity.

Mitter humorously comments on Katy Perry’s choice of song during the spaceflight, appreciating her tasteful selection of Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” over her own hit “Firework” (35:45). This anecdote serves to humanize the historic event, blending contemporary culture with the grandeur of space achievement.

Concluding Reflections

Throughout the episode, Matt Elton skillfully navigates through diverse historical topics, weaving together discussions on trade tariffs, papal elections, and space exploration. By integrating expert insights and historical anecdotes, the podcast not only informs but also engages listeners in understanding the complexities of past and present events. Trentmann’s assertion that “historians can tell us more than economists” (26:53) encapsulates the episode’s overarching theme: history provides invaluable lessons and perspectives that transcend immediate economic analyses, offering deeper insights into the socio-political dynamics that shape our world.

Notable Quotes

• Frank Trentmann (03:12): “You can't easily make a tariff work as an economic weapon.”

• Frank Trentmann (04:00): “Economic strength is seen as part of political strength, great power strength.”

• Hannah Skoda (06:06): “Janus Imperial was trying to establish a Genoese trading post in Southampton to bypass the Calais staple.”

• Frank Trentmann (26:53): “Historians can tell us more than economists, because if you believe most economists, tariffs are counterproductive and costly in almost all situations.”

• Hannah Skoda (29:04): “These elections have the potential to be extremely interesting debates in the papal conclave, but hopefully without the results of the 1378 schism.”

• Hannah Skoda (41:53): “Medieval manuscripts telling us that Alexander sailing up into the heavens is the epitome of excessive human pride.”

Conclusion

The episode of the History Extra podcast masterfully intertwines historical analysis with contemporary issues, offering listeners a rich tapestry of insights into how past events and debates continue to influence and inform today's headlines. Whether exploring the enduring complexities of papal elections, the cyclical nature of trade tariffs, or the symbolic achievements in space exploration, the podcast provides a comprehensive and engaging summary that caters both to history enthusiasts and those seeking to understand the roots of current affairs.

Transcript

[Matt Elton]

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[Matt Elton]

Hello and welcome to our monthly series History behind the Headlines. I'm Matt Elton. In each episode, an expert panel will be exploring the historical news stories that have caught their eye and the history that will help you make sense of what's going on in the world. Each month I'll be joined by our two regular panelists.

[Hannah Skoda]

I'm Hannah Skoda. I'm fellow and tutor in medieval history at St John's College in Oxford.

[Rana Mitter]

Rana I'm Rana Mitter, I'm St. Lee Chair in US Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and I'm a specialist on Modern Chinese history.

[Matt Elton]

So we're kicking off this month with a subject you're unlikely to have missed in recent weeks which is the subject of tariffs. The US has been making global waves with the announcement of high tariffs on goods from around the world, some of which at the time of recording, have subsequently been paused. I'm delighted to say that to guide us through some of this, we're joined by Frank Trentman, who's professor of history at Birkbeck University of London. Frank, thank you so much for being with us US today.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Great to talk to you.

[Matt Elton]

We spoke at the end of March for a separate History Extra podcast on the history of tariffs. There's a link to that in this podcast description. But to bring us up to speed, are there any historical episodes or incidents that you think help explain how this particular war has evolved in recent weeks?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, yes. I would point probably to two contexts that widen the discussion, which at the moment really has been primarily about the economic fallout. I mean, the first is to point out that in Britain in the years before the First World War, Joseph Chamberlain, a liberal unionist who was allied to the Conservatives, had pretty much the same idea that Trump has now, namely to have a scientific tariff which gives preferential treatment to certain countries and hits out hard against other countries. And Chamberlain convened a so called tariff commission which set over several years and heard, I don't know, hundreds, thousands of people from industry and business. And the end result was really more or less proof that you can't easily make a tariff work as an economic weapon. So the second lesson really is to remind us that it's about politics. I think ultimately also for Trump, economic strength is not seen just in economic terms, but it's seen as part of political strength, great power strength. And what's missing, I think from the current debate in the newspapers and media is a realization that really what has changed is the political context. So how societies react politically to Trump, not Trump's actions, but how we, including British political society, responds. And in the past, one response has been to mobilize consumers and to rely on their voice as citizens. We see very little of this at the moment. There's some talk about what's happening in the financial markets. Pension funds are suffering, bonds are falling in value, the dollar is declining. That's all true, but the big difference is I think there's not much of a popular political movement against tariffs either in Europe or in the U.S. it comes from big institutions, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, but it's not actually a grassroot opposition.

[Hannah Skoda]

I was wondering, actually following on from that, whether you could tell us a little bit more about the history of tariffs and sort of popular reactions to the idea of tariffs. I was really interested listening to your last interview and this sense of how far this is a kind of popular move and how groundswell's support deals generally with this sense of tension between, on the one hand, a sense of sort of protectionism and nationhood and that kind of thing, and on the other hand, a sense that there are going to be significant losses and significant hardship as a result of this.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes, no, absolutely. I mean, the question of who benefits and who hurts from tariffs in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century was tied up to question who's listened to in society. So you have debates about producer power versus consumer power. And in some countries, primarily in Britain, the consumer came to be defined and even idolized as the national interest, because ultimately we're, of course, all consumers and producers, say steel workers or auto workers are just one section of the community. Against that, you always had a counter argument which defined a country's national strength in terms of its productive power and that looked towards workers. So some of the debates we see now in the United States and elsewhere, which is about let's restore jobs, ultimately the debates about let's restore industrial jobs, which were male jobs. So it's tied to a crisis of masculinity. And you have similar things in the late 19th and early 20th century where the fear was that foreign imports, by pushing domestic male workers into unemployment or perhaps even forcing them to migrate, will undermine a patriarchal male centered, familial order in society. And you needed to stop that. So there's this tension between consumer power and producer power, and that's ultimately tied into what kind of modern society or democratic society you should have. So the free trade argument against tariffs was always that tariffs are bad economically. But on top of that, tariffs were seen to produce corruption because it creates lobbies and special interests and undermine a parliamentary democracy where old elites and new elites enrich themselves at the expense of the people. I mean, it's very interesting, the American debate right now, I think, because lots of things are going on which are tied to an undermining of the American Constitution, more authoritarian presidential powers. And those are all criticized in the hands of protests. But it's very rare that tariffs are seen in this particular, in this sort of political angle. So I think on the weekend in the demonstrations against Trump, when people had sort of songs in their protests, there was one song which referred to tariffs. So based on Bob Marley's song Don't Shoot the Sheriff, and it was something like Don shoots the markets. So, you know, Trump's tariffs are seen as bad for the markets, but it's not translated into bad for citizens or citizenship. And the American Democrats right now are very ambivalent because they don't want to be associated with Wall street or as critics of hardworking people in the auto industry. So it's democracy. I think that's the big difference is 100 years ago, 150 years ago, the whole thing we're talking about was tied to a debate about what is democracy, about who counts as a citizens, including people without the vote, who are also consumers. Is trade good for international relations in terms of peace as well as domestic stability and domestic peace? And I think the debate now has been more narrowly conducted as an economic costs and benefits analysis.

[Rana Mitter]

Frank, I'm speaking to you from the United States. One of the most interesting voices that's been heard in, in the last few weeks in the context of the new world of tariffs is a political theorist called Oren Cass, who works for a conservative think tank called American Compass. But I say conservative in some ways. His worldview is one that a lot of conservatives, Both in the US and UK 30 years ago would have found very unlike their own thinking. Because he's a great fan of tariffs, he argues very strongly in favor of them. And in his book, the Once and Future Worker, he very much does see them as a way in which manufacturing could be brought back to the US So that's a story that's now quite well known. What interested me about his writing is that he is one of the first people I've seen for a long time, and certainly one of the first people who had put himself on the right who talks about producer interests over consumer interests, in a sense. I mean, he uses that term a lot. And it had me thinking of, in a sense, the originator of so much of this, a man called Karl Marx, who would not have regarded himself, I think, as being very close to an American conservative. And yet, in some ways, these arguments about production consumption have a longer intellectual history. How important are those 19th century debates about production? I mean, Marx is perhaps the most famous thinker in that vein, but not the only one. And should I be thinking it's ironic that it's the American conservative movement today that talks in those terms along. To be fair, with people like Senator Bernie Sanders, who of course comes much more from the American left.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think you identified then a very interesting line of helping us see current divisions. I mean, the Marxists and Marx himself were divided over the issue of Free trade. And in the late 19th and early 20th century split in many countries. So German Social Democratic Party had a wing which was fervently free trade oriented, sort of making peace between societies, but they also had a wing which favored the producer interest over the consumer interest. So some of these divides go back a long time. I think what it boils down to is partly value. So where does value come from and where does growth come from in our societies? And part of Trumpism is a sort of nostalgic view of the post war boom in which the producer is the real generator of growth and wealth and American power. And you could argue that there's some truth to that. The question of course is can you revive that lost time period? Can you actually bring back lost industries and lost jobs? And the follow on question is, do people actually want these lost jobs? I mean there's a kind of nostalgic view what it's like working in a coal mine or working in an auto plant in the 1960s. I'm not so sure. Actually many people want to go back to these old jobs, so that's a problem. The other thing is what gets, I think lost in a simple producer consumer divide is that there are other sources of wealth and growth and indeed well being. So most people in modern societies for the last 30, 40 years are not working in industrial jobs. I mean, we've become mostly service oriented economies. Even Germany, which still has the largest industrial sector in Europe, the vast majority of people work in services, but somehow we haven't. I mean, perhaps Britain is an example where people appreciate services and a lot of wealth is tied up with financial services. But somehow I think in our minds we still have these 19th century ideas where somehow someone who produces something produces something more valuable than someone who sits in the service sector. Maybe one reason why we academics have find it so hard to increase our work conditions and our pay, because we're also in the service sector.

[Hannah Skoda]

I thought listeners might be interested to know that these kinds of debates do have medieval precedents as well, in rather different forms. But this sense of distinct interests amongst producers and consumers and conflicts and tensions around thinking about expanding trading connections and sort of closing things down. These are debates which are very, very live in the 13th, 14th, 15th centuries. I was looking at a rather brutal murder of a Genoese merchant called Janus Imperial in London in 1379. And initially the story just came out that he tripped up two London men with his foot as they were walking past and they got so angry they punched him and he punched them back. And there was a big brawl and he was killed in the brawl. But the case came to King's Bench, which is the High Court of the land. So clearly something much more serious was going on. And it turned out that Janus Imperial was trying to establish a Genoese trading post in Southampton to establish trading links directly between Genoa and Southampton, bypassing the Calais staple. The Calais staple was established in 1363 as the sole port for wool exports. So all tariffs and customs which were paid on wool exports and cloth imports were supposed to go via Calais. And it turned out that the two men who'd murdered Janus Imperial were most probably pushed to do so by the Calais staplers, the merchants who had an enormous investment in making sure that those tariffs remained. At the same time, the King was absolutely livid about this because he wanted to bypass this, because he would get a different set of customs if it came in via Southampton. Consumers seem to have been really quite in favour of Janus Imperial and this idea of these more freely available trading connections because they wanted the goods that would be produced. And likewise, cloth producers also wanted the opening up of these trade routes because it would give them access to the kinds of dyes that they needed. So out of this little episode involving someone tripping another pair of men up with his foot emerges this whole sort of landscape of competing interests and very, very different views around the value of imposing limits and tariffs on trading goods abroad.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's fascinating, Hannah. And I think it also is a link to probably the one sort of missing period we should insert now is the early modern period, where you have a divide between what's called republicanism with an idea of the good citizen who has a stake in the country, who's bolted down in his community, and thus a valuable, productive member of the community, versus people who are in commerce, who are moving around, who can be seen as kind of shifty characters without loyalty to a particular place in time. So that's sort of the crucial divide. And I think it really takes the 18th century to make a case for what people at the time called the douceur of commerce. So the polishing, the civilizing touch of commerce, where commerce is seen as making us better humans, not just because we pursue material gains, but we're interested in exchange and dialogue with other people. One more thing, perhaps, to say about the us, which is so interesting also from a point of history of consumption, is the United States is, of course, distinctive in having a very disproportionate high share of consumption. So one reason why there are these Trade imbalances are not just because other countries have tariffs against US Goods, but because lots of Americans buy lots of stuff and save very little.

[Rana Mitter]

China, the country which I do most research on, has a really, I think, very, very twisting and turning, but fascinating history of engagement with trade and tariffs in the 20th century. I mean, I want to do a shout out here to one of the great historians, actually, of China's consumer culture, Carl Gurth, based at the University of California, San Diego. He's written several books on how Chinese consumerism emerged, the 20th century and the emergence of brands, the emergence of a mass public that buys. That's a very important development. But I also want to, in the question of tariffs, because actually, tariffs can do lots of things, but one of the things that Donald Trump is using them for is basically as an expression of nationalism, the idea that national identity can be tied to the idea of what you let in and what you don't let into your country's market. And this was an idea that absolutely made sense in China during the period from, let's say, the late 19th century to the mid 20th, many people know, but just worth reminding ourselves, a period of great turmoil and turbulence in China, the Opium wars begin. A period when the outside world is not kind to China. The doors are smashed open for the selling of opium, the spreading of Christianity, and all sorts of other trends that come from the west. But in 1854, a bloke from Northern Ireland, a man called Robert Hart, from Porter down, ships out to China and essentially, well, he ships out to China before that. But at that point, he basically sets up the institutions which becomes essentially dominant in shaping the tariffs on goods coming into China for the next century, or so it's called at that point, the Imperial Maritime Customs Service. It changes its name slightly over the course of the next century, but basically it's a very unusual, very, very historically anomalous institution. It's not quite unique, but it's very unusual in that it's an institution of the Chinese government, but set up under almost entirely British control for decades and decades. And what it does is to set tariffs on goods coming into China, provides a regular stream of income which the Chinese governments, first the Qing dynasty, which rules China up to 1912, and then the governments of the various Chinese Republican governments that come after that. They really want that income stream because it's reliable and enables them to fund, you know, their armies or their bureaucracies, whatever it is they want to do. And yet they're very resentful because to have an institution that's essentially run by Brits, you know, actually Brits who are quite efficient in certain ways. But an imperial structure on your territory is humiliating. It's not the way in which you want one of the most important purposes of any state fiscal capacity to be run. And so one of the big war cries, or at least metaphorical war cries, of the early 20th century in China is tariff autonomy. In other words, that China's governments need to wrestle with the Western powers to get the right to impose their own tariffs back. Something that Donald Trump would have been very sympathetic with, I think, if he'd been living in 1920s China rather than 2000s America. And finally, it happens in 1930 under the government of Chiang Kai Shek, whose Nationalist Kuomintang government is in power at the time. They don't have very long to enjoy it because World War II breaks out in China in 1937, and then the Nationalist regime is kicked off the mainland by the Communists. But then, fast forwarding to closer to our modern era, even though the tariff regime of the early 20th century disappears with the arrival of the Communists, go to the 1990s. Sixty years later, the Communist Party is still in power. And if you wandered around, as I did, the streets of Beijing in the late 1990s, you'd see people with T shirts on, and they were saying, give China a chance. Let China enter the wto, the World Trade Organization. In other words, this was the era when the United States and China both were still looking to get China into the international trading order at the top table and in the wto. And this was such a big popular movement that literally, you know, teenagers in T shirts would wear these slogans as they were walking around town. I mean, I can't imagine anyone in a Western country wearing T shirts about tariff autonomy. Well, having said that, I suppose people actually pro and against the EU referendum in Britain in 2016 might well have worn T shirts, which were at many things, but they were also about trade and tariffs. But China got into the WTO in 2001. And it's a reminder that trade nationalism can also change. Because the one thing I think that American policymakers would do now in the2020s, if they had a kind of retrospective time machine, is probably not to let China into the wto, which they regard as the source of the crisis that is making Donald Trump in the 2020s, in his mind, put up tariffs against Chinese goods.

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[Ryan Reynolds]

I think that's fascinating, Rana, and it reminds me that there is an analogy when it comes to consumer power, because in the years or decades when China did not have control over its trade and trade policy, organizing Chinese consumers to buy Chinese products, or worse, even smash shops selling British and other foreign goods in Shanghai was a kind of substitute to the tariff. So there was consumer power and consumer boycotts in a way that is a little bit similar to what we see now in Canada but also in Denmark, where people are called on to buy national goods rather than buy American. But that's in a way its own kind of nationalist movement. I think the second analogy about the Chinese T shirts and the wto, you would have seen the opposite in fact in Western countries in the anti globalization protests. And that again makes a big difference to the political constellation now to how it was a century ago. Because globalization, especially among progressives and radicals, acquired sort of a bad reputation. So free trade was seen to enrich the few at the expense of the people. And that doesn't make it easy to sort of drum up up popular support to the more democratic aspects of free trade.

[Rana Mitter]

Frank, what do you think? History shows us the patterns of the last 200, 300 years, which you looked at very carefully in terms of how long Tariff regimes last, because the impression you seem to be giving us is that they come, people always have the same idea that this would be great, and then they're implemented and then it doesn't really work out very well. And then people go to something that looks more like what we call free trade, and then tariffs come round yet again, as they have done at the moment. Do you think we can learn anything about when this might change or if it will?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, the first thing we learn is that historians can tell us more than economists, because if you believe most economists, tariffs are counterproductive and costly in almost all situations. But of course, as everyone here and everyone listening knows, the opposite is the case in most of world history, which has had countries pursuing tariff policies. So the thing we really learn is that countries don't follow that route in situations where you have one dominant world power, or hegemon, as the political scientists call it. And those two periods really in the modern era are the middle mid late 19th century when Britannia ruled the waves, and then the decades after the Second World War when the US stepped in. And the moment that hegemony comes under pressure, late 19th, early 20th century and now the last 10 years, really, the ability to have free trade arrangements and to defend and bolster a rule based order comes under enormous pressure. And, and I think we're in that period now, so we're a little bit. People always make this comparison to 1933, but actually I think a much more interesting and perhaps relevant comparison would be to think about the years before the First World War when we had the hegemony of Britain starting to fade with rising economic powers. Then Germany and the United States, today China.

[Matt Elton]

Frank, that was all fascinating. I believe you have to head off now, but thank you so, so much for being with us and sharing your thoughts.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Thank you all. Very good to see you.

[Matt Elton]

Another big story that's been making headlines recently is the announcement that Pope Francis, the first Latin American leader of the Roman Catholic Church, died on Easter Monday at the age of 88. Following his funeral, the process of choosing the next pope will begin. Hannah, what does history tell us about this selection process?

[Hannah Skoda]

Well, papal elections are obviously a big feature of medieval history. In 1059, the College of Cardinals was sort of appointed as the body of electors. Before that, there was a much wider kind of involvement in choosing a new pope. 10:59 is the crucial date, sort of beginning of the sort of process that we see now. The phrase the papal conclave comes from the Latin cum clave, meaning that they're locked in with a key. And that effectively dates from 1274, Second Council of Lyon, when they were really trying to make sure that there would be less political involvement in these papal elections and that the election really would be in the hands of the cardinals. Essentially. These elections and the way the process developed over the course of the Middle Ages, was designed to try to limit political influence over the choice of a new pope, which, of course was in itself a highly political act. It was about trying to reach prompt decisions, and it was about trying to reach uncontested decisions. So in the 1270s, it had become such an issue that some of these elections took so long that Pope Gregory IX decided that after the fourth, and then after the ninth days, if the cardinal still hadn't elected somebody, the food they were given would be limited, and after that, they'd only be allowed bread and water in ever diminishing quantities to try and speed the process up. Sounds like quite a good idea for meetings generally, I think, anyway, from my perspective as a medievalist, the most dramatic papal election is that of 1378, when everything went wrong, really. So if the point of a papal election is to limit political influence to reach a prompt decision and have an uncontested decision, 1378, they fail on all those counts. So this is the moment when the papacy, from the beginning of the 14th century, really had been based in Avignon, in what is now France, partly because Rome was so unsafe and conflicted, and partly because of the influence of the French king. Papacy had been in Avignon for most of the 14th century, and they're desperately trying to get them back to Rome and finally manage it. In 1377, Pope Gregory XI managed to move back to Rome and promptly died. The College of Cardinals got together to elect a new pope and they chose Urban vi. Popes always choose a new name. On becoming pope, he called himself Urban because he was there in the city, the urbs of Rome. Anyway, as soon as they elected him, they realized that Urban VI was an extremely unpleasant character, that he was extremely partisan towards the Romans and also very keen on reforming the College of Cardinals. So there was general sort of panic at what they'd done, and the French cardinals then got together and did another election and chose Pope Clement vii. But, of course, Urban was not willing to back down and resign. So they ended up with two highly politically partisan popes. And this was the beginning of the papal schism and in a Christendom at the time where belief in the ultimate authority of the papacy and belief in the unity of Christendom as brought together by a single pope was paramount. The schism was really catastrophic. So we see different polities throughout Europe aligning themselves with different popes and a general sense of really complete fracture and division. And there are various attempts to resolve this. In 1409, they summon a council at Pisa in Italy to try to sort out the schism, and they elect a new pope, but they fail to depose the two existing popes. So then they end up with three popes. They send another council at Constance on the Bourdenseee, late Constance in 1415, and they elect Martin V in 1417. And they just about manage to depose the other popes, though not everybody thinks they're deposed. But still, it's just about resolved. But that then raises another really, really interesting question. In holding these elections over and over again, and then in deposing existing popes, the College of Cardinals and all those who've been involved in the council are taking on themselves a huge amount of authority that was supposed to lie only within the hands of the papacy. And this leads to a movement in the 15th century known as conciliarism, where there's then a huge debate within the Church about the role of councils and the authority of councils as a group of learned men within the church and the authority of the pope himself, and where that kind of relative authority lies. And politically, that's a really crucial moment in the development of thinking about the relationship between authority is vested in a single individual and authority is vested in those who select that individual anyway. So I don't think that the current election is likely to result in a papal schism, and I guess we all hope not. But I think it will be an extremely interesting election because they have potential popes who are on the progressive side of things, and then potential popes who seem to be more conservative. So it's certainly an extremely interesting debate which will be taking place in the papal conclave, but one, hopefully, without the results of the 1378 schism.

[Rana Mitter]

Hannah, I have to ask, have you seen the hit movie Conclave starring Ralph Fiennes as the kind of aspirational cardinal who's organizing a papal election out a few months ago?

[Hannah Skoda]

No, I'm sad to say that I haven't, but it's on my list to watch this weekend.

[Rana Mitter]

In fact, I was about to say I'd moved up the priority list. I think that the rental numbers on Netflix are gonna be going up quite a bit this weekend after this. I mean, again, very sad that, you know, a very, very impressive figure Like Pope Francis passed away. But having said that, I suspect that very quickly in Rome attention will have turned to, you know, the real life jockeying of the, in the horseradish for the papacy. And I suspect a lot of people will be downloading that particular film, which I have to say, not being paid, but it is actually an excellent watch and well worth watching as well.

[Matt Elton]

We just have time to talk about one final story this month, which is that April saw six women, including the pop star Katy Perry, reach space aboard the Amazon owner Jeff Bezos blue origin rocket. That marks the first time that an all female crew reached space since 1963. Rana, what historical thoughts occurred to you when you were reading about and watching this story?

[Rana Mitter]

Well, I have to say one particular thought occurred to me which was Katy Perry was given a hard time for singing Louis Armstrong's Wonderful World while up in space, which I thought struck me as rather charming, actually much better than singing her own hit Firework, which I think would not have been an appropriate thing to sing in a rocket when you're a long way off the surface of the Earth. So I say, you know, good on her for choosing something tasteful. I would also say that some people were saying that the brief but, you know, impressive trip up into space by these six women was the first all female crew. Technically that's not true if you count a crew of one, because way back more than half a century before on 16 June 1963, a young woman, 26 years old named Valentina Tereshkova blasted off in Vostok 5, one of the missions in the Soviet space program, which was of course one of the major parts of the Cold War scientific competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, the space race. Bear in mind that 1963 is actually in some ways quite a moment when the Soviet Union seems to be doing pretty well. You've had Sputnik, famously the satellite sent into orbit by the Soviet Union in 1957 that suddenly gives a huge wake up call to the Western world that Soviet technology is getting, going farther and going faster than much the west realized. Perhaps an echo of what's happening with China today in, in some ways. And then of course, you have brave and extraordinary bold astronauts from both sides, John Glenn, Yuri Gagarin and others involved in doing ever more daring and ever more dangerous attempts to get further into space. And Yuri Gagarin, also another hero of Soviet space flight as well. So this is one of the things that really motivates John F. Kennedy, who's the US President at that time, to say, well, if there's one thing the United States is going to be able to do, we're going to put someone on the moon. And as we know, 1969, Neil Armstrong achieved that. But we shouldn't use that, I think, to bypass the achievement of Valentina Tereshkova, because she remains to this day the only woman to have flown solo into space. She did that mission, at least in terms of the Vostok V capsule, on her own. There were other people involved in the Vostok mission. It took several days to complete. She had a very good time. She sent back, of course, radio reports to Earth, said everything was going fine. Her call sign, which again was rather lovely, I think, was Chaika, which means seagull. It's also the title, actually, of a famous play by Chekhov, but it was also, I think, meant to give a sort of slightly homely feeling to this extraordinary piece of technological development that she was involved in. And Tereshkova successfully completed the Vostok mission and blasted back down to Earth and became a hero like any other, in some ways, of the Soviet cosmonauts who were part of that generation. I should say, actually, that the story tells it that she actually did. She took part in what you call it, a custom that had emerged amongst the cosmonauts, which Yuri Gagarin had also done, which was before, in the truck that was taking you to the rocket base, you would have a quick pee on the back tyre as a sort of good luck gesture. And apparently Valentina Tereshkova also took part in this particular custom, as well, as Yuri Gagarin had done before. So very much invented tradition, as some historians would put it. Her life was never the same again. Or I should say, actually has been never the same again. Because I should say that as of the time of recording, Valentin Tereshkova is still alive. She's in her late 80s, living in Russia, but really her moment of greatest fame would have been, you know, that long period in the 60s and 70s, because as the only woman to travel solo in space, do a solo space mission, and actually one of the relatively few women at that time to have any involvement with the space program, she became quite a celebrity. And the Soviet Union used her, understandably, in some ways, to make it clear that even if the Americans were putting men into space, it was the Soviets who had put the first woman into space. And this was used in many cases as she traveled around the world as a sort of celebrity to make the case. I think in India, in South Asia, she was there. And the case was made that Russia, the Soviet Union, was pushing forward the cause of feminism with figures like Valentina Tereshkova in a way that other countries should try and emulate as well. She was very keen actually from all accounts to get, get back into space. But they never let her because she was too valuable as a sort of space ambassador, so to speak. They wanted her traveling the world and speaking in terms about the superiority of the space mission. And she became a real Soviet celebrity during that time. Through much of the late 1960s, she traveled the world, not just communist countries. In 1964 she visited Britain and in fact met Queen Elizabeth young Queen Elizabeth at that, at that point. So there was a sort of cross cultural encounter there. She became an Air Force officer. She also entered politics, became very dedicated member of the Communist Party. That continued even in later life. I would say that her fame probably dipped somewhat by the 1980s. There were sort of new boundaries in, in the space race. And the Soviet Union also, of course, fell. But she did sit in the State Duma, the parliament in Russia in the 1990s. And even today, you know, she's pretty supportive, I think, of Vladimir Putin, perhaps the. That's not surprising for Russian politicians these days. Not so high profile, of course, in any way as she would have been in the 60s and 70s. But whatever one thinks about her current political affiliations or later life, one has to say that she will always have that accolade of being the first woman in space and first woman to crew a solo mission on Vostok 5. And that is quite an achievement, which even Katy Perry, I suspect, would acknowledge was impressive and worthy perhaps of a song.

[Hannah Skoda]

Can I perhaps surprisingly, offer a medieval parallel as well? I don't think listeners will be expecting spaceflight to be a thing in the Middle Ages. And I don't have any women involved in spaceflight, sadly, but rather wonderfully, this is an example which is actually mentioned on the NASA website, which I was very happy to see. It's about Alexander the Great, whose dates are 356 to 323 BC. But I'm not talking about the life of Alexander the Great himself, but about the medieval retellings of the story. In the 4th century Jerusalem Talmud, there is an account of how Alexander the Great decided to rise up into the heavens. And Rabbi Yonah writes, he used to rise higher and higher until he saw the world look like a ball and the sea like a dish. And then by the 8th century, we have lots and lots of retellings in Christian Europe of this story. Of Alexander sailing up into the heavens. And the way he does it, apparently, is by having a large basket constructed, which he climbs into, and then four large sticks with big slabs of meat on the end. And then he has four huge birds tied to each corner of the basket. And all he has to do is hold up his sticks with the slabs of meat on the end and the birds fly after these slabs of meat, lift his basket up into the air and up goes Alexander until he can see the whole world spread out underneath him. And it's told in many medieval romances. We have a lot of wonderful manuscript illustrations of this extraordinary contraption. There's a painting, a medieval fresco in the church of Charney Bassin in Oxfordshire, just a little parish church, of Alexander in his basket going up into the heavens. There's a Byzantine relief at St. Mark's in Venice. There's Misericords in Gloucester and Lincoln Cathedrals. There are so many of these images of Alexander going up. And there are lots of moralizations of the story. And these medieval writers draw various lessons from it. Partly they're interested in just how Alexander is such a great explorer, and he's interested in exploring the whole known world. Sometimes they're interested in the idea of him looking down and putting his worldly accomplishments into perspective. But the most common moral which is drawn is one of greed. Greed and cruelty, apparently, which is demonstrated by his ambition of sailing up into the heavens and pride and hubris. So again and again, we find these medieval manuscripts telling us that Alexander sailing up into the heavens is the epitome of excessive human pride.

[Rana Mitter]

Let's hope that no one accuses anyone involved with this recent space flight of being on the same thing. I'm sure it was all done for the greater scientific good of humankind.

[Matt Elton]

And that brings us safely into land for another episode. Thank you both for being here. Hannah and Rana, we'll be back at the end of May. Until then, thank you.