Roots of the Reformation XVIII: The Papacy of Whores

The Pope and his curia
medieval manuscript, Krakow

The papacy was in terrible decline from the 9^th century onwards –result of its immense wealth and the contentiousness to control it that made the papacy a pawn of several great Roman families that wanted to manipulate the wealth and power attached to the papacy for their own uses.  But this totally wiped out the moral credibility of the papacy and, at this stage of development of the doctrine of papal power, loss of moral credibility meant loss of power. 

The main power brokers for a long time were the family of Counts of Tusculum.  Two of the women of this family—Marozia and her mother, Theodora—prostituted themselves to different popes and schemed to put their sons and grandsons on the throne of Peter.  Marozia, the younger of the two women, while still only 15 was the mistress of Pope Sergius III.  Sergius seems to have been rather young  himself at the time of his being made pope, and he owed the papal office to Theophylact, the Count of Tusculum and father of Marozia.  Theophylact was the vestarius (treasurer) to the popes—a position which gave him access to the papal wealth.  There was a lot of confusion in the papacy at this time.  Leo V had been forcibly dethroned and imprisoned to be succeeded by Christopher.  Modern Church historians consider Christopher an anti-pope—but as recently as the early twentieth century he had been included on the list of legitimate popes and his picture is among the papal mosaics stretching from Peter to John Paul II decorating the basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.   In any event, his reign was quite short as after four months Sergius III—the “boyfriend” of Marozia—drove him from office and had him imprisoned in the Castle Sant’Angelo.  Both Leo and Christopher were strangled in Prison—some sources claiming that Christopher had Leo strangled and Sergius had Christopher so dispatched; others saying that Sergius ordered the murder of both in order to remove any counter-claims to his own papacy.  So you’ve got a fellow who was made pope by his girl-friend’s father and who has murdered—or ordered murdered—his predecessor(s).  We haven’t even begun yet.  In 910 Marozia and Pope Sergius have a son who, twenty years later, will himself become pope as John XI.  Sergius was long dead, of course, but Marozia was still around and engineered the election.  Marozia had a long string of lovers—some sources say including one or more of the intervening popes—and several husbands.  One of the husbands—Guy of Tuscany—attacked Rome where he and Marozia murdred pope John X and installed a succession of popes—Leo VI, Stephen VII, and her son by Sergius, John XI—who were no more than her puppets.  When Guy died, Marozia persuaded his brother, Hugh of Arles, to abandon his wife and marry her.  Alberic II, Marozia’s  son by her first husband, Alberic of Spoleto, had enough of her, however, and led a rebellion, putting both her and his half-brother, Pope John XI, in prison where they were murdered.  Lest you think that Alberic II was a good guy protecting the Church from all these evil people—he married his stepsister and then nominated his son to be pope.  The son, at age 17, became pope in 955 as John XII.  here is what was written of him:

Then, rising up, the cardinal priest Peter testified that he himself had seen John XII celebrate Mass without taking communion. John, bishop of Narni, and John, a cardinal deacon, professed that they themselves saw that a deacon had been ordained in a horse stable, but were unsure of the time. Benedict, cardinal deacon, with other co-deacons and priests, said they knew that he had been paid for ordaining bishops, specifically that he had ordained a ten-year-old bishop in the city of Todi... They testified about his adultery, which they did not see with their own eyes, but nonetheless knew with certainty: he had fornicated with the widow of Rainier, with Stephana his father's concubine, with the widow Anna, and with his own niece, and he made the sacred palace into a whorehouse. They said that he had gone hunting publicly; that he had blinded his confessor Benedict, and thereafter Benedict had died; that he had killed John, cardinal subdeacon, after castrating him; and that he had set fires, girded on a sword, and put on a helmet and cuirass. All, clerics as well as laymen, declared that he had toasted to the devil with wine. They said when playing at dice, he invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons. They even said he did not celebrate Matins and the canonical hours nor did he make the sign of the cross.

Whoa boy, ya think ya seen it all.  But wait—what happened to Theodora, the mama bear in this adorable family of adulterous murderers.  (And why didn’t Sister even tell us about this in sixth-grade history?)   Oh, by the way, before I go further: Pope John XII is a great, great, great, great, great, great, grandson of Charlemagne—through his mother.  Not that that is relevant.  It isn’t.  Just a little fact of history.  Theodora was not idle through all this.  She was a senetrix (a lady Senator) of Rome—more a title in those days than an actual position.    But Lady Senators were most rare and in fact it was a title that legitimized her immense political power.   Theodora was mistress to John X whom Marozia and Guy of Tuscany had killed.  Was Marozia jealous of her mother’s power?  Did that inspire the murder?  Who knows, it is all a mess.

Some modern historians claim that the various sources (Luitprand of Cremona, the Liber Pontificalis, and other contemporary histories)  portray Theodora and Marozia harshly, even falsely, because they were jealous of females exercising the political power that these women managed to wield.   That could—to a certain extent—be true; all historians have bias and there are no true “facts” in history.  The very tone of voice prejudices the student to the teacher’s point of view.  Nonetheless, these ladies and the accompanying popes are no candidates for canonization.  This period, known by the pejorative but wonderful appellation: the Pornacracy (the Rule of Whores), marks the most morally deprived period on the history of the popes.  Trust me when I say that this entry has only skimmed over the murders, adulteries, sodomies, bribes, simonies, blasphemies, and only the devil knows what else that has adorned the papal throne.  While great saints have sat in Peter’s chair, its history is not one of holiness.  But the question arises—and it is a question not only for the tenth century—who can reform the papacy when it needs reform?  What happens when the man on Peter’s throne is a depraved whoremaster?  Or, even more serious, what happens when the man on Peter’s throne is only a puppet for some figure, male or female, in the shadows who has control of the Church?  Don’t say it can’t happen—it has and more than once.   And it may have happened much more recently than you might think.  Hmmm.  Very recently.  The man in the window may not be the man with the power. 

History of St. Peter's Basilica: Orgies, murders, and family fun in the Vatican

Alexander VI in one of his more pious moments

Well, if you read yesterday’s entry and heard about the pope who died while eating melons and being sodomized by a page boy or the pope with sixteen illegitimate children who was worried about witchcraft in Germany or the one who was a pen-pal of Dracula’s, you may have thought they represented an all time papal low, but never think it can’t be worse.  (Actually go back to the entry about Pope Formosus and the entry about the lovely mother-daughter team of papal harlots, Theodora and Marozia,  on January 24 and 15 respectively and you will find what must be the all time low in papal morals—not to mention pontifical weirdness.)  Nevertheless, the debauchery and violence of the 9^th and 10^th centuries didn’t discourage 15^th century popes from trying for the distinction as we will see today.   We had left off with Innocent VIII—Innocent of the sixteen bastards and paranoia about German warlocks. Well, Innocent—bad as he was—was succeeded by Alexander VI  Borgia.  Borgia!  Does the name ring a bell?

the lovely Lucrezia

Born in Spain in 1431, Rodrigo Llançol y Borja was brought to Italy to study by his maternal uncle, Alfons de Borja, who had been made a Cardinal by Eugene IV in gratitude for Borja’s diplomatic efforts with the King of Aragon.  When the uncle became pope Callistus III (we spoke of him yesterday—he was the pope who was pushing the Portuguese Slave Trade and posthumously retrying Joan of Arc), Rodrigo was made a bishop, then a Cardinal, and then named vice-chancellor of the Holy Roman Church, vice being the operative word and any illusions that the Roman Church was holy were soon dispelled by this fellow.  After his uncle’s death, Cardinal Rodrigo served the next four popes—while acquiring vast power and making himself quite wealthy. No one knows quite how much he spread around in bribes in order to be elected pope in the 1492 conclave, but his arch-rival, Giuliano de Medici was bankrolled ( by the King of France and the Republic of Genoa) to the tune of 300,000 ducats (which is worth almost fifty million dollars in today’s gold).  O well, as they say it takes money to make money.  Borja was supported by various kings as well, notably Spain and Portugal and it was he who issued the Bull  Inter Caetera in 1493, dividing colonization rights in the newly discovered worlds of Asia and the Americas between Spain and Portugal—which did not make the English, French, or others very happy.  

Alexander (Rodrigo’s’s regnal name as pope) had had a long-time lady friend, Vanozza dei Cattani, who lived just around the corner from the Borja palace and there raised his four children: Juan, Caesare, Lucrezia, and Gioffre.  They were real darlings—as we will see.  By the way you can still see both Vanozza’s home in the Piazza Sforza Caesarini and Rodrigo’s palace in the courtyard of the palazzo just the other side of the Via Sforza Caesarinni today.  Juan, the oldest son, was made Duke of Gandia in Spain—though he continued to live in Rome and was also given various fiefs in Italy.  Caesare was made a Cardinal, a singularly inappropriate choice for a budding young satyr with sociopathic tendencies.  Alexander carved out fiefs from the papal domain and stole others fromm neighboring states not only for the Duke of Gandia but for his youngest son, Gioffre as well.  Lucrezia was subjected to a series of political marriages. The first of her marriages, to an illegitimate scion of the Sforza family—rulers of Milan—ended in divorce and annulment when the husband proved to be a political liability.  Caesare didn’t want to bother with an annulment; murders were easier to arrange and much less expensive, but someone warned the husband (possibly Lucrezia) and he fled.  The second marriage ended with the husband murdered, presumably by his brother-in-law, Caesare, who was jealous because his sister was happy in the marriage and he, Caesare felt displaced in her affections.  He was such a sensitive soul!  The third marriage with the Duke of Ferrara lasted and she became a respectable Renaissance Duchess, though never a faithful wife, carrying on with a number of men—all men of quality, of course—she was a Duchess not a tramp.  Of course her being such a fine lady never dispelled allegations of incest between Lucrezia and both her father, the pope, and her brother Caesare.   The former are probably untrue, the affair with her brother—well, I wouldn’t rule it out.  When it comes to the Borja’s you can’t rule anything out.     

Caesare Borja was a first class sociopath. (By the way, the name in Italian is Borgia.)  A rageaholic, Caesare could make even his father quake in fear.   Named a bishop at 15 and a Cardinal at 18, both he and his brother Juan were lovers of the third brothers’ wife—Sancha of Aragon.  She was another one of those easy-going women in the family.  When Juan was murdered in 1497, Caesare was suspected of fratricide (because of his reputed jealousy of Juan for both his political power and the affections of sister-in-law Sancha).  The charges were never followed through; Caesare was protected by his father—whose favorite child he seemed to have been, although Alexander was way over-indulgent with each of his children.  Similarly if he were the father of a child born in 1497 and rumored to be Lucrezia’s illegitimate son, that too was covered up. Alexander acknowledged paternity of the child though Lucrezia’s maternity was not acknowledged.  It was also Caesare who organized the Banquet of the Chestnuts on October 30, 1501—a dinner in the Vatican palace where the diners were entertained by having the clothes of fifty prostitutes auctioned off their backs and then cheering on the same ladies—naked—as they scrambled along the floor of the banquet room in the Vatican for chestnuts thrown them by the guests.  The entire event turned—by design—into a huge orgy where prizes of expensive clothing and other gifts where handed out to those guests who showed the most sexual proficiency.   This was the jolly side of Caesare—far worse was the angry and vengeful side that caused a series of murders and disappearances among the Roman nobility and hierarchy with Caesare seizing their estates to finance his various plots and plans.   

At the same time Alexander was giving his children free reign for debauchery, fratricide, sacrilege, and murder, he was also busy trying to expand papal power in Italy by playing the French off against the Aragonese in Naples.  It was a disastrous policy.  The pope was not above handing out divorces and annulments to various royals and nobles in return for support in his military policies. All it ever led to was bloodshed, war, and violence.  When the Florentine Dominican, Girolamo Savonarola called for Reform of the Church, Alexander excommunicated the preacher and then turned on Florence and demanded the death of the critic.  Florence complied rather than risk war. 

In his papal years, Alexander dumped Vanozza dei Cattani for Giula (Giula Bella) Farnese—said to be the most beautiful woman in Rome, making her brother, Allesandro, a cardinal.  He would later reign as Paul III—one of the reforming popes, though he only became a reformer after a long life of decadence.  We will look at him some other time.

When Alexander died his body immediately began to rot in the most noxious fashion with gasses and foul smelling fluids emitting from every orifice.  The corpse swell so much that the papal master of ceremonies, John Burchard,  recorded in his diary that he had to jump on the body to squeeze it into its coffin.  The canons of St. Peter’s Basilica—the old basilica, still falling down—refused to allow the body to be brought into the church for burial.  The papal troops had to force their way into the church with the corpse.  His successor, Pius III, forbad masses to be said for the dead pope since he was “already damned.”  One good thing that can be said about the pope is that when the Jews were expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, Alexander welcomed them to Rome and gave them freedom to practice their religion without harassment.  Of course that was good business practice, but he was one of the few rulers in Europe to treat the Jews fairly.  And through all the naked courtesans, rolling chestnuts, poisoned rings, unsolved murders, simonical bishops—the old Basilica kept crumbling down.    

De Maistre, the Savoyard philosopher-historian wrote the opinion that we only judge Alexander so harshly because he was a pope and had he been a secular prince his vices would be overlooked.  The popes, he wrote, “are forgiven nothing, because everything is expected from them, wherefore the vices lightly passed over in a Louis XIV become most offensive and scandalous in an Alexander VI.”  Well De Maistre would make a gentle confessor indeed and perhaps we are wrong to overlook vices in kings and presidents (I am going to do a Henry VIII series soon), but at the end of the day while we should expect more of our civic rulers than we do—except for Bill Clinton, of course—I do think it is fair to expect the pope to have some higher standards than we found with ol’ Al Borja.   At least he could have patched up that tumbling town church next door.