Catsidhe

This is in relation to a conversation with tcpip over here.

I will say at the outset that bibliophilia is a curse and a blessing. A curse, because when you think of a piece of information, you think to yourself, "I've read that... I'm sure I've got the book that's in ... somewhere ...", the blessing is when you look up one thing in a book you haven't looked at in ages for a specific nugget of data, and then browse to find something else, even more interesting.

Here is one such case. Last night, while Mim and I were watching the semi-hagiography of the then Cardinal Ratzinger and his Vatican, someone (probably the narrator) mentioned "2000 years of the Papacy". Mim looked at me and queried this 'fact'. I pointed out that the first Bishop of Rome was Rocky Peter. He could not have been such any earlier than about 29AD¹, however, so the '2000 years' was out by about 24 years.
"Ah," said Mim, "but who was the second Pope? The third?"

In the freshly inspired curiosity over the subject of the first few Popes, I pulled out the only reference I could think of that might have that sort of info: An Encyclopedia of Religion, Virgilius Ferm, ed. (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1945). Much to my dissappointment, there was no list of Popes, although there were several pointers to other references which would have them. Nevertheless, I discovered the line "A very ancient poem "Adversus Marchionem", written at the beginning of the III century, refers to Peter as having passed on to Linus "the chair" (cathedra: cf. "chair of St. Peter") "on which he himself had sat" (Migne, PL II, 1077).

Having discovered this, I started to browse, and discovered that entries exist for philosophers as well, insofar as their thoughts touch on religion. One such entry was this:

( Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm )