|Current Pope Benedict IX hamming it|
it up for the cameras. Try not to
pinch that cheek.
By the 16th century, the Papal States of Rome had become a powerful entity able to field armies and exert massive amounts of pressure on the monarchs of Western Christendom through the threat of holy interdictions and excommunication. So, when Pope Clement VII took the holy chair, his political pandering was nothing new. In fact, he had inherited a responsibility from his predecessors to intervene over the affairs of Europe’s warring monarchs in order to ensure stability and secure the power of the Catholic Church. What Pope Clement VII is remembered for is how poorly he did it.
In an attempt to play his enemies off of one another, His Holiness flip-flopped more times than a stoner staring at a drive-thru menu. In the process of his indecision he made many powerful enemies, ultimately undermining the Church’s social and political influence and alienating all his allies. As a result Rome was brutally sacked and occupied multiple times during his reign. His ineffectualness added to the growing view of the Catholic Church’s culpability and strengthened support of Protestantism throughout Europe. By not accepting Henry VIII’s request for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Clement VII convinced the English monarch to break away from the Vatican and establish the Protestant Church of England.
Perhaps Clement VII is merely an unfortunate figure. He came to the pulpit during a tumultuous period of war in which he was forced to play too many factions. Whatever the case, his reign will forever more be remembered with scorn. However, he isn’t a character completely devoid of appeal. In his later years he was known for his long beard, worn in mourning for the ravages Rome had suffered in his lifetime, a fashion that became papal tradition well into the next century despite the previous forbiddance of facial hair mandated by canon law. He died quietly in his palace only days after commissioning Michelangelo to paint his Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel.
Of all the rotten men to have cheated, deceived, and fought their way to the papal throne, none are pettier than Pope Stephen VI. Immediately after being elected, he committed an atrocity so great it was to become the defining episode of his short reign. Stephen VI had his late rival and predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed from his grave. Formosus’ corpse, still dressed in rich burial attire, was seated before a courtroom and put on trial. In a rather one-sided case, Stephen VI had Formosus condemned and all of his acts as pope annulled. As posthumous punishment, Formosus’ clothes were stripped, the three fingers from his right hand (those used in consecrations) were cut off, and his body thrown into the Tiber River. However, Formosus’ body was rescued by a faithful monk and later reinterred.
Stephen VI was to pay dearly for the vicious treatment of his dead enemy. After the scandal he was imprisoned by those he had offended. Ironically, he in turn faced trial which ended in a rather heavy sentence. He was strangled, and like his opponent before him, cast into the Tiber River.
You might have noticed something strange about this pope already—he occurred three times. Out of the hundreds of popes who have taken office, he is the only one to have reigned more than once. His first term commenced when he was eighteen to twenty years old after his father, an influential Italian noble, finagled the papal throne for him. You might expect a spoiled aristocrat’s son to be unprepared for the responsibilities of guiding the entirety of God’s flock, but the extent of Benedict IX’s immaturity was shocking.
The young pope used the power that his father had bought him to dictate petty personal murders and force himself on other men’s wives. His contemporaries had nothing good to say of him. In one account, St. Peter Damian calls him a “demon from hell in the disguise of a priest,” while Pope Victor III writes, “His life as a pope was so vile, so foul, so execrable, that I shudder to think of it.”
The opponents of Benedict IX became so appalled they forced him out of Rome and elected a new pope. He returned that year with an army, no doubt after pandering to his father’s powerful allies, and deposed of his replacement.
Benedict IX’s impropriety is no further demonstrated than when he sold the holy office only one year after winning it back. In a notorious case of Indian-giving, Benedict IX decided he missed being pope and re-demanded his purchased seat. I guess his staff and hat looked more fun when somebody else was playing with them.
Although, Benedict IX was formally declared deposed along with his rivals, and a new pope was elected to start afresh, the wayward pope would not relinquish his claim, to the extent that when Clement II died after a very brief reign, Benedict IX marched on the city and seized the Lateran Palace. The very next year, Benedict IX was removed from office by armed men and never made another attempt for the papacy.
Born Octavianus, Pope John XII took to the papal throne at the prodigious age of eighteen. You might be wandering how he proved himself worthy of the holy chair. Was it his generosity and compassion? Or maybe his gentleness and mercy? Perhaps it was an immense spiritual strength that empowered him to abstain from a life of indulgence to enjoy one of modesty, celibacy, and devotion? Not very likely from a man who was later accused of robbing pilgrims, wearing swords, and committing more adulteries than Tiger Woods and Jon Gosselin combined. Actually, he was only made pope after his aristocratic father called in some favors and made a few threats. In a time when the papal throne could be so easily bought, it’s hardly a surprise that a delinquent like Pope John XII could come to power.
Like Pope Clement VII he failed miserably at politics by flip-flopping allegiances, something that got him deposed by German emperor Otto I. When John XII returned at the head of an armed host, he seized Rome and kicked his replacement out. Before Otto I could make it back to deal with him, John XII was found dead, murdered by the vengeful husband of one of his mistresses. His death ended a dismal period of papal corruption which scholars have come to refer to as the Pornocracy, or Reign of the Whores, in which prostitutes were thought to have imparted significant influence over the Pope.
Interestingly enough, Pope John XII’s womanizing seems to have given rise to a legend of a female pontiff, Pope Joan. In the legend, Joan rises to the top of the Church hierarchy by disguising herself as a man. But she could not keep her feminine tendencies suppressed forever and, while riding a horse in procession, she fires a baby out of the oven and a mob kills her. Supposedly, this Joan is based off one of the prostitutes that John XII kept at the Vatican by the same name, who exercised considerable influence over his decisions. Her legend long served as a fable to discredit the value of female leadership. Even stranger, the legend is thought to have given rise to the use of the sedia stercoraria (dung chair), a chair with a hole in the seat used in the process of enthroning new popes. When the incumbent pope sat down, the cardinals would peer up and determine whether or not he was in fact a man.
The same year Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the most depraved pope in recorded history took his papal vows. Pope Alexander VI represents the pinnacle of ecclesiastical corruption. Though the record of crimes committed by earlier popes sometimes suffer from obscurity, incompleteness, and exaggeration, the details of this tyrant’s reign are extensive. What’s even more amazing is the public disclosure of his sins and his unapologetic indifference to them.
Alexander VI had twelve illegitimate children whom he openly claimed as his own. While still a cardinal, Alexander VI arranged daytime liaisons with the married daughter of his chamberlain. As a result of the affair, Cesare Borja was born, his birth certificate acknowledging the scandalous details of his conception. Cesare would become Alexander’s favorite and second-in-command, a clever, cruel and savage individual who helped lead the depredations of the Borgia dynasty. While still a teenager, Cesare murdered the chamberlain (his mother’s father) and arranged his head on a pole before Alexander with an inscription that read, “This is the head of my grandfather who prostituted his daughter to the pope.” Alexander arranged for Cesare to become a bishop and subsequently a cardinal. Later, he made Cesare the head of the Vatican military in Alexander’s campaign to extend the power of the Papal States.
Of all the statements you can utter about Alexander, you can’t say he didn’t love his kids. You could, however, say he loved them a little too much. He partook in a long-term sexual relationship with his daughter Lucrezia, and even fathered children by her. He also openly abused his authority by extorting titles, wealth, and power for his many children to a degree of unmatched hyper-nepotism.
Alexander held sumptuous parties, dances, and plays in the holy palace. He also hosted a great deal of sexual perversions and entertainments. Cesare often brought courtesans to the holy palace so that he, his father and his entourage could partake in lavish orgies. One in particular has been recorded in great detail and become a thing of infamy. During what has become known as the Night of Chestnuts—an evening begun by feasting and obscene dances—lighted candles were placed on the floor of the holy palace and chestnuts strewn about. Prostitutes crawled about naked among the candles picking chestnuts up with their mouths, and after the pope had awarded them with prizes of clothing and jewelry for their efforts, everyone took partners, Cesare, Lucrezia, and Alexander included.
Maybe worse yet was Alexander’s policy on the production of art and literature. As one might imagine, people were at this time becoming disillusioned by the Church, and manuscripts started circulating that discussed the place of the Vatican in its representation of the Christian faith. Alexander’s fear-induced reaction to this challenge was to issue a holy edict that demanded any publication had to pass ecclesiastic inspection. This act of censorship led to innumerable, priceless manuscripts and works of art being burned. Alexander also used it as an opportunity to carry out brutal executions on anyone who even modestly criticized his authority.
The full laundry list of this guy’s sins is beyond the scope of this blog, but some of the notables include his validation of slavery in Africa and the New World in a bid to profit from it, as well as his justification of institutional sodomy within the Church and among European nobility as an ancient Greek tradition. Wow, I know.
If it makes you feel better, he died horrifically. One of the Borgia family’s favorite ways of dealing with people was to poison them with the use of trick drinking vessels. These goblets had compartments with toxic components that could be activated after the drink had been poured. It has been suggested that Cesare accidentally poisoned himself and his father after both of them took ill at a meal together. After an intense illness Cesare recovered, but the then seventy-two-year-old Alexander did not. His stomach and limbs swelled with fluid, his skin turned red and started to peel off, and his bowels bled profusely. Alexander died after a week of agonized coughing and convulsive fits. When the body was displayed to the people the next day it was so dark and grotesquely swollen it didn’t even resemble a human being. Even in death he was a stubborn bastard. It took a tremendous deal of effort to jamb his bloated corpse into its coffin, the whole while putrid gases came squealing out of every orifice. He was so unpopular, only four attended his Requiem Mass. As a final insult to his reign, his body was later moved from St. Peter’s Basilica to a church in Spain where he was from.