papicide

plural papicides · alternative papacide

1. countableuncommonuncountableThe killing of a pope.

   If Bernard Bec, Peire de Castanet and Arnaud Garsie were, as it seems, telling the truth, it is possible that there occured^([sic]) at Perugia on 7 July 1304 indeed a case of papicide most foul.

   2000, Alan Friedlander, chapter 9, in The Hammer of the Inquisitors: Brother Bernard Délicieux and the Struggle against the Inquisition in Fourteenth-Century France, published 2021, →ISBN, page 287

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   The story, which would certainly have moved to tears the readers of Fr Bresciani’s feuilletons, smacked too much of invention and was too oozing with edification to be credible. If only there had been an actual attempted papicide with witnesses!

   1964, Carlo Falconi, translated by Muriel Grindrod, “Part I: The Build-up”, in Pope John and the Ecumenical Council: A Diary of the Second Vatican Council, September - December 1962, Cleveland, Oh.: World Publishing Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 86

2. countableuncommonOne who kills (or attempts to kill) a pope.

   The ineffable self-satisfaction displayed by the young Turkish papicide during his interrogation and trial was not unreasonable.

   1982, Polish Perspectives, volume XXV, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Wspólczesne RSW Prasa-Książka-Ruch, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 40

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   Ilmari? First name of a would-be Turkish papicide? A Libyan omnicide? No, merely that of an apparently mild-mannered Finn whose studies put him at the crossroads of the major influences so patently reflected in his music—those of Rachmaninoff and of the French Impressionists.

   1985, Fanfare, volume 8, Tenafly, N.J.: Fanfare, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 222

   “Do you remember the curiously sudden death of John Paul I, Monsieur le Baron?” August spoke loudly. The Grand Master started, then interjected, “This young man must have his little joke,” he said as if to excuse his young friend. “His is a delicious tongue, but really of papicides, my family has none.”

   1993, Alain Arias-Misson, “Foul Play”, in The Mind Crime of August Saint: A Novel, Boulder, Colo.: Fiction Collective Two, →ISBN, page 240