(Roughly) Daily

John Paul I, “The Barack Obama of Popes“

Mark Peters–“the Ms. Pacman of language columnists,” also known as wordlust on Twitter–can be found at Good Magazine, Oxford University Press Blog, Visual Thesaurus, and Wordlustitude (and is eminently worth finding in them all)…

Mark can now be found at his newest endeavor as well:  The Rosa Park of Blogs…

Everybody is the Rosa  Parks of something—or at least the Michael Phelps, Cap’n Crunch, Dick Cheney, Elmer Fudd, or Paris Hilton of whatever. This blog collects examples of the adaptable idiom “X is the Y of Z”, which is a snowclone. Feel free to use these descriptions when discussing your beautiful children, longtime companions, sworn enemies, favorite foods, and elected congressvermin. And if you need even more absurd comparisons, then you’re in luck.

As we argue over whether Chile’s Lake District or Ecuador’s highland is “the Switzerland of South America,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1328 that Antipope Nicholas V, a claimant to the papacy, was consecrated in Rome by the Bishop of Venice, with the support of Louis IV, the Holy Roman Emperor.

Nicholas V was the last “Imperial Antipope”– that is, Antipope set up by a Holy Roman Emperor.  It didn’t work out for Nicholas:  he was excommunicated by John XXII in April 1329, and sought refuge with Count Boniface of Donoratico near Piombino.  Assured of a pardon, he presented a confession of his sins first to the archbishop of Pisa, and then at Avignon on 25 August 1330 to John XXII, who did indeed absolve him– after which,   Nicholas lived in “honourable imprisonment” in the papal palace at Avignon until his death in October, 1333.

Antipope Nicholas V (source)