Pope John XXI
1215 CE–1277 CE · Lisbon
Born Pedro Julião in Lisbon, John XXI was the only Portuguese pope and a rare scholar-pope. Traditionally identified with Petrus Hispanus, author of the widely used logic textbook Summulae Logicales and medical treatises, he had a distinguished academic career before entering the Curia. Elected in 1276, he favored learning and disputation, and is the only pope Dante placed in Paradise. His brief reign ended when the ceiling of a study he had built at the papal palace in Viterbo collapsed upon him; he died of his injuries days later. His numbering reflects a medieval counting error.
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LisbonליסבוןPortugal
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About Lisbon
# Lisbon In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Lisbon stood as the jewel of the Portuguese maritime empire, its harbors crowded with caravels returning from African voyages and Indian spice routes under the House of Aviz. The city perched on a dramatic confluence of river and sea, its steep hills and narrow alleys climbing toward the Moorish castle, while ocean winds carried salt and ambition through streets thick with merchants and translators. The Jewish community of Lisbon was among Europe's most prosperous and learned, numbering several thousand souls despite increasingly restrictive royal policies—rabbinical families possessed both wealth from banking and commerce and an intellectual heritage stretching back through medieval Spanish Jewry. This was a city where Torah learning flourished in an atmosphere of precarious splendor; Jewish philosophers, legal authorities, and biblical commentators gathered in academies while simultaneously facing mounting pressures from a monarchy veering toward forced conversion and Inquisitorial scrutiny. The famous Judariá, or Jewish quarter, pulsed with the energy of a community producing some of the era's most significant halakhic and mystical works, even as Portugal's golden age gradually darkened for its Jews, culminating in expulsion decrees that would scatter this vibrant diaspora to the Ottoman lands and beyond.
In the same place & time
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