Miserable cold, windy day, the kind of day that has you chase your trash cans down the street early in the morning, after crossing parts of your driveway that threaten to slip you up. While groggy, because recent days have been such an intense combination of rain, snow, and meltage that your trusty sump pump works very hard to remove water from the lower reaches of your house — and decides to noisily kick in just after midnight. Keeping you (me) awake long past the point at which you (I) wanted to be awake.

But at least I heard about an historic event today, something that hasn’t happened in almost 600 years; rarer than a Transit of Venus, though the resignation of a pope could be more common if the popes wanted it to be. Naturally, that sent me to reference works to look up the likes of Gregory XII, the last pontiff to voluntarily kick off the shoes of the fisherman. That was during the Great Schism, something you don’t hear much about in the news (it’s old news, after all).

The fine Historical Atlas of the World (Barnes & Noble Everyday Handbooks, 1970) has a map called the Great Schism 1378-1417 on half a page, and it’s instructive in the way maps can be. Some areas are purple: “Adherents to the pope in Rome,” such as England, all the Scandinavian kingdoms, Hungary, Poland, and the Italian states. In green, “Adherents of the pope in Avignon,” including Castile, Aragon, France, Scotland, and the Kingdom of Naples. The sprawling, non-centralized Holy Roman Empire is in gold, listed as a region of “Undecided Allegiance.” No surprise there, but Portugal is also undecided. I don’t remember the reason for that, but maybe they were trying to annoy their fellow Iberians in Castile and Aragon.

So who’s to be the next pope? Does Benedict XVI want to be alive to influence the choice? Perhaps to push for a “nephew” for the job? No, papal intrigue isn’t quite what it used to be. What about the next papal name? I still think Sixtus the Sixth would be a good choice.