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    • 978-1-5255-1075-5
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  • Keywords
    • Papa Luna,
    • Benedict XIII,
    • Antipope,
    • Pedro Martínez de Luna,
    • Avignon papacy,
    • Western Schism,
    • Papa Luna novel

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Searching for Papa Luna
A Modern Day Mystery
by Gordon K. Greene


In this novel, a modern-day music historian, Richard Taylor, stumbles across a clue that may lead to the journals of Pope Benedict XIII (1328-1423), a.k.a. “Papa Luna”, who was one of three popes claiming legitimacy during the troublesome Western Schism in the Church. The journals were hidden away by Papa Luna’s servant, a loyal Templar knight, in a cave at Montserrat Abbey, near Barcelona. The clue is in the form of a poem set to music. But Richard is not the only one looking for the journals. He wants to reveal their contents to the world. Two rivals want to claim personal ownership, one in order to benefit privately, the other to destroy them, for fear they may reveal Benedict’s claim to the papacy was legitimate after all. While Richard races to decipher the cryptic message, tragedy strikes, creating a murder mystery, with Richard and his companions the prime suspects. Papa Luna was declared an antipope during the Schism. His justification for refusing to capitulate lay in the fact he was the last living cardinal created by Gregory XI, who was the last Supreme Pontiff recognized by the entire Church. As the only undisputed cardinal, Benedict argued, he was the only legitimate candidate for the papacy. However, at age eighty-seven at the Council of Constance, Benedict’s logic was rejected, and he was forced to flee for his life. Based on true events, this novel is a companion to Gordon Greene’s previous novel, Papa Luna, in which he documents Benedict’s life and Papa Luna’s journals expose an entirely different perspective on the Western Schism.

www.gordongreene.ca


Gordon Greene, a music historian, was drawn to Pope Benedict’s circumstances while transcribing and publishing five volumes of French secular music of the fourteenth century for the Paris publisher Oiseau-Lyre. The assignment involved researching the courts and events of that time. The papal court in Avignon featured prominently in his research, since the popes were in residence there, not in Rome, during most of the fourteenth century. While transcribing fourteen old paper folios at Montserrat Abbey some years ago, the idea occurred to Greene that a fictitious discovery of Papa Luna’s journals could serve to clarify the troublesome Western Schism period with multiple popes. This book and Greene’s companion novel, Papa Luna, are the result of that initial insight. The author, now retired, taught music history in universities and served as Dean of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. His wife claims he still lives in the fourteenth century.


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Gordon K. Greene


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