The Popes

Excerpted from the forthcoming book:
Copyright © 2006, 2009

"Ultra-wittily cynical"
Mark Tucker - Veritas Vampirus - progdawg@hotmail.com

Ship of Fools (detail) © Charles Bragg
Illustration provided courtesy of Charles Bragg
"America's foremost social satire artist"
www.charlesbragg.com

He who would act the angel
becomes the beast.
Blaise Pascal

THE SUPREME PONTIFF. The Vicar of Christ. The Bishop of Rome. The Servant of the Servants of God.
Whichever of his many titles one might prefer, over a billion people look to the pope as their spiritual leader. Spanning the early days of the Roman Empire to the present day, the papacy is the oldest continuous institution in human history.
Arguably, it is also the most influential. Popes have helped shape civilizations, plunged the world into wars, and acted as the moral standard-bearers for nearly a hundred generations of Roman Catholics.
Although popes traditionally hold the office for life, over 260 men have sat on the papal throne over the two millennium-
long history of Christianity. Let's take a brief tour now of about a fifth of them. For good measure, we'll add two of the forty-odd "antipopes" who once claimed the title, only to later be struck from the official list. (Often with scant justification.)
If our 52 "legitimate" popes were a pack of playing cards, we might call our pair of antipopes the jokers in the deck.
As we shall see, it wasn't just the jokers who were wild.

Crock of Ages
PETER (32-67?) is considered to have been the first pope. Never mind that for the first few centuries of Christianity, there actually was no "pope". (In fact, there may have been no "Peter": There are no non-
Christian contemporary accounts of his existence.)
The line of succession of the early papacy was devised in the third century, to legitimize the pope as the heir of the apostle Peter to the "keys to the kingdom of heaven". Peter's Greek name was petros, or rock. By having Jesus call Peter the rock on which he would build his church - no doubt the most fateful pun in history - Rome claimed superiority over numerous other equally worthy Christian centers.
Many scholars believe the biblical Jesus is himself a fabrication. A first century historian reports no fewer than 19 "christs" - or saviors - named Jesus wandering around the Holy Land. From a multitude of competing son/sun-god cults, the Church gradually forged a uniform Christian dogma, and anyone who dared to question it was ruthlessly eliminated. Ironically, the biblical Jesus himself forbade anything resembling a papacy when he said:
"Call no man your father upon the earth."

Original Spin
CALLISTUS I (217-222) was the 16th pope. The slave of a Christian living in the imperial house, Callistus ran off with funds collected for the care of widows and orphans. Arrested for extortion and sent to break rocks in the quarries of Sardinia, he was released after the emperor's mistress intervened on his behalf.
Pope Zephrynus relied on the resourceful Callistus as his enforcer in the rough streets of third century Rome. After succeeding him as pope, Callistus befriended the teenaged emperor Elagabalus, a wigged-out transvestite who worshiped a sacred black stone (probably a meteorite). Elagabalus was lynched in a riot, probably along with Callistus.
The Church glorified its early popes as saints and martyrs through centuries of blatant forgeries. But St. Jerome described the actual Church of the time as a cesspool of vice, its clergy self-indulgent, greedy and utterly corrupt. Even during the "great persecutions", few Christians were martyred - most simply renounced their faith. The first thirty-odd popes were in reality mediocre men who barely managed to hold their tiny, widely-despised church together until a man named Constantine would change the course of history.

Emperor's Errand Boy
MILTIADES (311-314) was the 32nd pope. In 313, Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, issuing the Edict of Milan and ending 250 years of sporadic Roman persecution. Although only about one out of twenty of Constantine's subjects professed to being Christians, when a warrior-king converted, his example was persuasive: 500 years later, Charlemagne would behead 4,500 Saxons in a single day for refusing baptism.
It wasn't Christ's pious lifestyle that attracted Constantine. (The Church's moral code was still rather lax in 313. Sex with animals was only outlawed the following year.) Constantine's conversion was a military and political tactic. Seeing a vision of a cross of light in the sky on the eve of a decisive conflict, Constantine viewed Christ as a talismanic war god who would ensure him victory on the battlefield.
Constantine moved the center of the Roman empire to Constantinople. He moved Miltiades out of his drab papal lodgings, installed him in the Lateran Palace and showered him with gifts. In return, Miltiades indulged Constantine's every whim. And thus began the papacy's long slide down-
ward into corruption and preoccupation with earthly power.

The Pope Who Stole Xmas
DAMASUS I (366-384) was the 37th pope. By this time, the Roman Empire was well in decline, under invasion by hordes of Huns from Central Asia. Within Rome, rival clerics engaged in petty turf wars. Damasus cunningly played both sides of the street, working for Pope Liberius as well as for his enemy, the antipope Felix II. When Liberius died, a faction loyal to him elected Ursinus as pope, while a faction loyal to Felix elected Damasus.
Damasus was short on diplomatic skills. To resolve the confusion about who was the true pope, he hired a gang of thugs to attack Ursinus's conclave, slaughtering many of his supporters. Most of those who escaped holed up in the Liberian Basilica. Damasus had his gang bar the main door of the building, break hole in the roof, and shower the helpless clerics below with broken tile and stones. When the three-day siege ended, 137 dead clergy were dragged from the shattered church, and Damasus was pope.
To help erase the embarassing way he assumed the papacy, Damasus cunningly superimposed the birthday of Christ onto the wildly-popular pagan mid-winter solstice festival, expropriating in the process much of its trappings and ritual.

The Great Torturer
LEO I (440-461) was the 45th pope. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. But far from unifying the Roman world under a single faith, Christianity's triumph sowed division and conflict. In 435, Theodosius II outlawed all non-Christian religions except Judaism, sparking two centuries of Christian persecution against pagans, far more brutal than what the early Christians had themselves endured.
Leo was the first pope to claim "universal and supreme authority" over the Church, for which he is one of only two popes called Great. Historians of the day, however, called him "warped and sadistic " for commending the torture and execution of heretics. When Leo demanded a long list of banned books be burnt, the heads of the Church in Spain went one further, burning their authors too.
In 447, Leo convened the Council of Toledo, which continued the theft of pagan symbology by expropriating the ancient goat-god Pan.The joyful god of nature, music and lust became a "monstrous apparition with horns on his head, cloven hooves...an immense phallus and sulpherous smell".
In other words, the Devil.

The Devil Made Me Do It
VIGILIUS (537-555) was the 59th pope.
An unscrupulous, unpopular Roman official, Vigilius forged a secret pact with the powerful Empress Theodora, agreeing to be her pawn in return for the papacy and 700 pieces of gold.
The previous pope, Boniface II, had written a decree naming Vigilius as his successor, but an angry mob forced him to burn it. When Vigilius's rival, Silverius, was elected pope, Theodora had him deposed and deported to Constantinople.
Silverius was ordered back to Rome by Emperor Justinian, but by the time he arrived Vigilius had already taken over. To avoid a trial and possible reinstatement of Silverius, Vigilius had him kidnapped and once again exiled. (This time, however, he was also imprisoned and starved to death.)
Vigilius was the first pope to be excommunicated, after he unwisely challenged Justinian in a theological dispute. Justinian had Vigilius deported to a remote Greek island. Broken and ill after years in exile, Vigilius finally recanted, claiming he had been deluded by "the wiles of the devil".
Thoroughly loathed in Italy, he escaped a likely public lynching only by dying of gallstones en route back to Rome.

Felonious Monk
GREGORY I (590-604) was the 64th pope, the second of only two popes to be called Great. The first monk elected, Gregory accepted with reluctance, having to be forcibly carried to his consecration. The sex-obsessed Gregory - a bisexual pedophile - wrote meticulous lists meting out punishments for various forbidden sexual practices. (Coitus interruptus was worse than sex with one's mother, requiring ten years penance.)
Considered by the Church to be one of the kindest of popes, Gregory declared that unbaptized babies who died during childbirth "go straight to hell and suffer there for all eternity."
After Gregory issued an edict enforcing strict clerical celibacy, priests scrambled to distance themselves from their multitude of illegitimate offspring. When Gregory later ordered a fishpond outside the Lateran Palace drained, the skulls of 6,000 drowned children were found at the bottom.
The greedy Gregory invented Purgatory, initiating the sale of "indulgences" to those who could afford to buy their way into Heaven. Destitute pilgrims paid to venerate fake relics of saints in hopes of gaining pardons. Even so, upon his death Gregory was himself somehow miraculously declared a saint.

See No Evil
LEO III (795-816) was the 96th pope.
The common-born Leo aroused the ire of the Roman nobility, who by then considered the papal throne reserved for themselves. In 799, a hired gang ambushed Leo on his way to Mass, attempting to cut out his eyes and tongue. Mutilated, deposed and imprisoned, Leo managed escape to the court of the Frankish king, Karl, who brought Leo back to Rome to be tried for adultery. Although Leo had sired nine children with numerous wives and mistresses, the court accepted his claim that no earthly authority could sit in judgment of a pope. Leo mercifully had the condemned conspirators exiled rather than executed.
Two days later, a fumbling, half-blind Leo placed the crown of the Roman Empire on Karl's head as the king knelt beside Peter's tomb. Karl reportedly turned "black with wrath." Although he coveted the crown, Karl - thereafter known as Charlemagne - had been duped by Leo into appearing to derive his secular authority from the Church. The Holy Roman Empire which followed would endure for a millennium.
After Charlemagne died, Leo's enemies resumed plotting, but the pope got wind of it. This time they were executed.

Corpse Delicti
FORMOSUS (891-896) was the 111th pope. Formosus is known not so much for what happened during his life as for what happened nine months after he died at age 80. A deranged rival, Pope Stephen VI, had his rotting corpse exhumed, propped it up on a throne in full papal regalia, and presided over a macabre mock trial known today as the "Cadaver Synod."
Predictably, Formosus - whose Latin name, ironically, means "handsome" - was found guilty of the trumped-up charges. His body was reburied - minus the two fingers once used to give blessings. An angry mob dug it up, dragged it through the streets of Rome, and tossed it unceremoniously into the Tiber River. A monk later fished it out and gave it a quiet reburial, before Pope Theodore II reinterred it in St. Peter's. (An act of loyalty that probably caused Theodore to join Formosus in Eternity after only 20 days as pope.)
Some accounts have Formosus being exhumed yet again by Pope Sergius III. What remained of the battered corpse was re-condemned, beheaded and reconsigned to the Tiber. Miraculously, it got entangled in a fisherman's net, and was returned to St. Peter's for a fifth - mercifully, final - burial.

Godfathers
STEPHEN VI (896-89) was the 113th pope. Pope John VIII was poisoned and clubbed to death in 882, the first pope to be (officially) murdered. He was followed just three years later by Hadrian III, probably also poisoned. (Hadrian arguably earned his fate, having ordered the wife of a rival Roman dignitary to be whipped and dragged naked through the streets of the city.)
Rome was enveloped in a series of bloody vendettas, as powerful families vied to control the coveted papacy.
Stephen VI became pope after Boniface VI died after only 15 days in office, possibly at the hand of Stephen himself. Although pope for only a year, the certifiably insane Stephen immortalized himself by presiding over the infamous Cadaver Synod. Fatefully, at the very moment Stephen emerged from the Lateran Palace after his posthumous humiliation of Formosus, the Basilica of St. John collapsed in an earthquake. The superstitious rabble of Rome took this as an ill omen, and rumors circulated that Formosus's charmed corpse was now performing miracles. Stephen fell out of favor and was strangled on orders of his successor, Pope Romanus. (After which Romanus may have also been murdered.)

Beauty and the Beast
SERGIUS III (904-911) was the 119th pope. Elected in 897, Sergius was exiled, but returned seven years later to over-
throw antipope Christopher. Sergius then murdered both Christopher and his rival, Pope Leo V. (One account has Sergius personally strangling them both while blessing their necks during confession.)
By this time, there had been nine popes in as many years - at least four of them murdered - and the papacy had become a plaything of what most of Rome considered a pair of ambitious whores: Theodora - wife of the chief senator of Rome - and her beautiful daughter, Marozia.
As a cardinal, Sergius had played a leading role in Pope Stephen's Cadaver Synod. Theodora brought seven-year old Marozia along to witness the festivities, and when Sergius handed Theodora the severed fingers of her arch-enemy, Formosus, his eyes fatefully met the bewitching Marozia's. Marozia was 15 when she bore a son by Sergius, 30 years her senior and now the pope. Sergius was reportedly "the slave of every vice and the most wicked of men." He died after a corrupt, bloody pontificate of 7 years, but his bastard son by Marozia would go on to become Pope John XI.

Papal Pornocracy
JOHN X (914-928) was the 122nd pope.
Sergius was followed by Anastasius III and Lando, who reportedly "consumed the greatest part of his life amongst lewd women, and was at last consumed," having reigned for just seven months. Theodora's lover (and Lando's illegitimate son) followed him as Pope John X.
By now, The "Papal Pornocracy" was in full swing, with Theodora and her daughter Marozia effectively running the papacy while Theodora's husband ran Rome. (John had his own illegitimate son by Theodora's other daughter.)
Fearing the powerful Alberic family as a potential threat, John had Marozia marry the senior Alberic, Guido, in a bid to keep the family under papal control. This was a mistake. Spurred on by Marozia, Guido was killed in a premature attempt to seize control of Rome. John's beloved brother Peter was murdered before his eyes, and the grief-stricken pope forced Marozia to view Guido's mutilated corpse. Another mistake. Having witnessed the Cadaver Synod, Marozia knew all about revenge. She seized power in a coup de etat, had John imprisoned and smothered to death, and appointed her new lover - Leo VI - as pope.

Family Feud
JOHN XI (931-935) was the 125th pope.
The next two popes after John X had brief tenures, installed by Marozia to keep the papal throne warm until John, her son by Pope Sergius, came of age. Both were probably murdered as soon as Marozia grew tired of them.
Finally, 20 years old and groomed for the papacy by a "sensuous and totally immoral life," John was ready.
As Pope John XI, one of John's first official acts was to officiate at the wedding of his widowed mother, Marozia and Marozia's brother-in-law, King Hugo. No matter that the incestuous marriage was illegal in the eyes of the Church. The plan was for John's uncle Hugo to become emperor and Marozia empress. But the scheme unraveled after Hugo insulted Alberic Junior - Marozia's son by her first marriage - at the wedding banquet. Alberic left in a huff, returning with an armed mob and taking over Rome. Hugo fled Rome in disgrace, hidden in a basket wearing only his nightshirt.
Alberic installed himself in the Lateran Palace, making John his personal slave until he died four years later. Alberic installed his mother, Marozia, in a dungeon in the Castel Sant'Angelo, where she remained until she too died.

Friend Of The Devil
JOHN XII (955-964) was the 130th pope.
The next few popes were all short-lived puppets of Alberic. One, Stephen VIII, unwisely became involved in a conspiracy against him. Alberic had Stephen's hands, ears, nose and tongue removed. Another, Agapitus II, was forced to swear an oath that he would be succeeded by Alberic's illegitimate teenage son, Octavian.
As Pope John XII, Octavian went on to become one of the most corrupt popes in history. He hacked off the heads or limbs of scores of opponents, castrated a cardinal, ran a harem in the Lateran Palace, and committed incest with his mother, two sisters and a niece. Even the jaded Romans had enough of John after he toasted the devil at the altar of St. Peter's while saying Mass. Fearing for his life, John fled with the Church treasury. Declared guilty of incest, murder and a holy host of other crimes and deposed, he returned a year later to overthrow his successor, Leo VIII.
Weeks later, John XII died in the act of sex. Although it was probably a stroke, rumors circulated that a jealous husband dispatched him with a hammer after finding him in bed with his wife. Roman wags called it the climax of his career.

It's Getting Old, Guys
JOHN XIII (965-972) was the 133rd pope. The Romans elected Benedict V after John XII was murdered. But they reinstated Leo VIII a month later, after Otto I threatened to starve the city if they didn't hand over Benedict. Leo stripped the groveling Benedict of his vestments and broke his pastoral staff over his head. One account has Benedict then fleeing after dishonoring a young girl, returning only to be murdered by yet another jealous husband, his corpse dragged through the streets of Rome and thrown into a cesspool. Regardless of his actual fate, a later pope judged Benedict "the most iniquitous of all the monsters of ungodliness." Pope Leo VIII survived less than a year before dying in the act of committing adultery. He was succeeded by John XIII, from the powerful Crescenzi family of Rome. One historian of the time reports that John "tore out his enemies eyes and put half the population to the sword." John was attacked, imprisoned and exiled after only three months in office, but Otto I had him reinstated. He went on to reign for seven years before dying in a - now hardly shocking - manner:
He was murdered in the act of adultery.

Evil-doer
BONIFACE VII (983-984) was the 15th antipope. Next up after John XIII was Benedict VI, the illegitimate son of Hildebrand the monk - who would later become Pope Gregory VII.
After Benedict's protector, Otto I died, Boniface strangled him and installed himself as pope. Otto II stormed Rome, but Boniface fled with the Church treasury.
After the next pope, Benedict VII, died, Otto II installed John XIV. No sooner was John in office than Otto II died in his arms. The empress left Rome to defend the claim of three-year old Otto III to his father's crown. Left defenseless against Boniface, John was imprisoned and murdered.
But the fickle Romans soon turned against Boniface, changing his name from "Bonifatius" (doer of good) to "Malefatius" (evildoer). After a mob attacked and murdered him, his naked body was flayed, dragged through the streets of Rome and dumped in front of the Lateran Palace, where a joyous congregation trampled it and stabbed it with spears.
Described as "a monster who in criminality surpassed all mankind", Boniface remained a legitimate pope until he was quietly dropped from the Church's official list in 1904.

Musical Thrones
BENEDICT VIII (1012-1024) was the 143rd pope. Of the next six popes after John XIV, three were murdered and two forced to abdicate. The Crescenzis put the papal tiara up for sale, to be purchased by a rich Greek who became antipope John XVI.
Little Otto III, now 17, had enough of all this chicanery and assembled an army to march on Rome. John XIV was mutilated, paraded around the city on a donkey, and thrown into a monastery to die. The elder Crescenzi endured similar treatment before being hanged in the Castel Sant'Angelo.
The next pope, Sergius IV - nicknamed "bucca porci" (pig's snout) - was probably murdered by his successor, Benedict VIII. Benedict was the great grandson of Marozia, still influencing the papacy long after her death in prison.
Benedict spent the majority of his pontificate engaged in military campaigns, but found time to be accused of numerous "rapes, murders and other unspeakable acts". Despite having had illegitimate children by two of his nieces, he was the first pope to be required to sit in the famous "pierced chair", so that a cardinal lurking below could verify his gender before he was elevated to the papacy.

Demon From Hell
BENEDICT IX (1032-1048) was the 145th pope. The next pope, Benedict VIII's younger brother, John XIX, died suspiciously after bribing his way into the papacy. John's 12-year-old nephew then became Pope Benedict IX. Accused of murder, plunder and routine bestiality, the precocious and pansexual Benedict went on to "surpass all previous popes in immorality and extravagance." One saint called him "a demon from hell in the guise of a priest." A later pope described Benedict's life as a pope "so vile, so foul, so execrable, that I shudder to think of it." Benedict survived an attempt to strangle him at the altar and a coup that was interrupted by an earthquake. He served three separate terms, on one occasion abdicating after his godfather, Gregory VI, bribed him to briefly take his place, before being himself forced to abdicate.
Benedict returned to the papacy a third time when Gregory's successor, Clement II, died of lead poisoning. (Since lead was used in those times as a cure for venereal disease, Clement's demise may have been self-inflicted.)
Dante, who consigned many popes to the fires of Hell in The Divine Comedy, considered Benedict rock-bottom for the papacy.

Giant Midget
GREGORY VII (1073-1085) was the 155th pope. A midget named Hildebrand who walked on stilts, Gregory VII became one of the most powerful popes in the history of the Church. Claiming universal authority over all of Christianity, Gregory declared that the pope "can be judged by no one on earth" and demanded even kings and princes be obliged to kiss his feet. He employed a veritable school of forgers to falsify ancient Church documents in order to justify his claim to power.
Gregory excommunicated kings like Henry IV with impunity, condemning all those who had gained power "by means of pride, violence, bad faith, murder, and almost every other kind of crime." (He might just as well have been referring to his papal predecessors.) His scheming sowed rebellion and civil war throughout Europe. When Gregory outlawed clerical marriages, thousands of disgraced wives of priests were made virtual prostitutes, many driven to suicide. But the uproar which followed forced him to end his celibacy crusade, lest it wipe out the entire Catholic Church. Gregory declared himself and all other popes to automatically become saints upon their demise, but he wasn't officially canonized until 1606.

Canon Fodder
URBAN II (1088-1099) was the 157th pope. Urban arrived at the papacy via the bed of the countess Mathilda, the former mistress of his two predecessors.
Urban's sermon launching the First Crusade in 1095 is considered perhaps the most effective speech in European history. Calling upon the Franks to free the Holy Land from the bondage of Arab "barbarians," it began five centuries of bloody holy wars. (Never mind that the Muslim world was more civilized than Christendom.)
While the cheering masses implored the pope to personally mount the campaign, Urban was presumably too busy mounting Mathilda, and called upon the Frankish King William to lead the charge. (William dutifully rode off to battle with a nude portrait of Mathilda painted on his shield.)
The First Crusade was an unmitigated disaster, with tales of babies being eaten by the starving pilgrim army on the hundred-day trek. 30,000 poorly-equipped foot soldiers got as far as Constantinople, only to be hacked to pieces by well-armed Turks. They left behind a "mountain of bleached bones", which were later mixed with lime and used to build the walls of many of the castles of the region.

Ruler of the World
INNOCENT III (1198-1216) was the 174th pope. The self-proclaimed "Ruler of the World", during his reign he was indeed the most powerful man in the world. Innocent was also - contrary to his name - one of bloodiest popes in history.
Innocent wrote a pious, still highly-regarded work entitled On the Miserable Condition of Man. It was a sentiment that, as pope, he did everything he possibly could to confirm.
Innocent launched a disastrous Fourth Crusade to recapture the Holy Land. It was hijacked into sacking Constantinople, capital of the rival Eastern Church. Along with the standard fare of murder and mayhem, holy relics were plundered, nuns raped, and the greatest church in Christendom - the Santa Sophia - desecrated. During his crusade against heretics in France, the entire Christian population of some cities was slaughtered by Innocent's "soldiers for Christ."
In a preview of the coming Inquisition, whole monasteries of monks were impaled on red-hot spikes for the "heresy" of condemning the Roman Church's rampant corruption.
His thirst for blood undiminished, a dying Innocent implored: "Sword, sword, sharpen thyself and exterminate."

Master of the Universe
GREGORY IX (1227-1241) was the 176th pope. Gregory was a nephew of Innocent III, himself a nephew of Clement III. (In those days "nephew" was a common euphemism for "bastard son.") Gregory's own "nephew" would later become Pope Alexander IV.
Pope Innocent's title "Ruler of the World" was insufficient for Gregory. Proclaiming himself "Lord and Master of the Universe," he claimed dominion not only over all people, but also over all things. Emperor Frederick - excommunicated by Gregory for dallying in mounting a Sixth Crusade - preferred calling him a "hypocrite seated on the chair of pestilence, anointed with the oil of wickedness." He was being charitable. By establishing the Inquisition, Gregory began what one historian called "the most elaborate, widespread and continuous legal barbarities in civilized history".
Gregory chose a sadistic priest named Konrad to interrogate suspected heretics in Germany. In just one town, 80 men, women and children confessed under torture to consorting with Lucifer and were burned at the stake. Untroubled that a tormented person might confess to anything, Konrad continued his terror campaign until he himself was murdered.

One Brothel, Under God
INNOCENT IV (1243-1254) was the 178th pope. When Gregory IX died, the ruling Roman senator, Orsini, locked the cardinals in a decrepit palace and ordered them to choose a successor. Despite oppressive heat, stench from overflowing lavatories, and one cardinal who dropped dead, the conclave dragged on for months. When Orsini threatened to dig up Gregory IX and have him join them, the cardinals settled on Celestine IV. But the ailing Celestine died two weeks later from the ordeal. Innocent IV was chosen to replace him - by absentee ballot.
Innocent is chiefly remembered for allowing the Inquisition to officially use torture. The number of extracted confessions rose dramatically, confirming fears that the Church was under siege by a rapidly-multiplying scourge of witches and demons. (Not an altogether bad thing, since the Church split the assets of the convicted 50-50 with the inquisitors.)
Forced to flee Rome, Innocent took up temporary residence in Lyons, France. On his departure six years later, one cardinal boasted that while the city offered only a few brothels upon the pope's arrival, "we leave behind but one. But it extends without interruption from the eastern to the western gate."

Celestine's Prophecy
CELESTINE V (1294) was the 190th pope. When his predecessor died, rival families were unable to agree on a successor. Finally, Cardinal Gaetani produced a letter from a revered hermit named Peter Morrone, demanding an end to the two-year stalemate. The ambitious Gaetani assumed the chastened conclave would choose him as the new pope. To his dismay, it elected the 85-year old Morrone himself, who became Pope Celestine V. The cardinals soon realized their mistake in elevating a genuinely devout man to the papacy, when Celestine began giving away the vast wealth of the Church to the poor.
The austere Celestine had been content living in a mountain cave, so Gaetani had a wooden shack built for him inside the papal palace. Through a hole in the wall, he implored the pope in the dead of night to abdicate. Convinced he had heard the voice of God, Celestine donned his hermit rags and rode off on a donkey. Gaetani had himself elected pope and had Celestine captured and imprisoned. Before dying of starvation (or murder), Celestine predicted that Gaetani, having "leaped on the throne like a fox," would in the end "die like a dog."
For once, a pope's proclamation would prove infallible.

The Black Beast
BONIFACE VIII (1295-1303) was the 191st pope. Having hoodwinked Celestine V into abdicating, Cardinal Gaetani became Pope Boniface VIII.
The megalomaniacal Boniface declared every human being subject to the pope for salvation. During the first papal jubilee in 1300, he could be found sitting on his throne dressed in imperial regalia, endlessly chanting "I am pontiff! I am emperor!" The jubilee brought two million pilgrims to Rome, further enhancing the Church's riches. (One-quarter of which Boniface gave to his relatives.) Convicted by the rival Colonna family for murdering Celestine, Boniface retaliated by razing their ancestral city - Palestrina - to the ground, killing its 6,000 citizens.
For this heinous crime, Dante branded Boniface the "Black Beast" and condemned him to hell in The Divine Comedy. Boniface was eventually captured by the Colonnas and died miserable and alone, just as Celestine had predicted.
A confirmed atheist, Boniface had said he had "about as much chance of being reborn as a roasted chicken." Pope Clement V may have taken him a bit too literally. He exhumed Boniface's body and burned him at the stake as a heretic.

Friday the Thirteenth
JOHN XXII (1316-1334) was the 194th pope. Pope Clement V moved the papacy to France in 1308, initiating the seven decade "Babylonian Captivity" in Avignon. On Friday, Oct. 13, 1307, Clement had the leading Knights Templar arrested, tortured and burnt at the stake as heretics. (Hence our unlucky Friday the 13th.)
After Clement died, an aged, sickly shoemaker's son was elected. Expected to be transitional, John XXII surprised everyone by reigning for 18 years. Clement V's lavish lifestyle had emptied the Church treasury, so John imposed new taxes on everything from incest to sodomy. By the time he died, he was purportedly the world's richest man.
John had a passion for war, and spent most of the Church's revenues arming it against a growing flock of enemies.
One poetic observer claimed the blood shed by the pope would have turned a large lake crimson, and "the bodies of the slain would have bridged it from shore to shore."
To confiscate their estates, John allowed heresy charges to be brought against the dead. He was accused of heresy himself when he insisted that the saints do not see God until the Final Judgment, making prayers to them futile. But he relented on his deathbed, perhaps thinking it might help to have a few saints around on his own judgment day.

Rack of Lambs
BENEDICT XII (1335-1342) was the 195th pope. An unlikely candidate, upon being named pope, he reportedly exclaimed "You have elected a jackass!" The scholar Petrarch described Benedict's Avignon court as "the shame of mankind, a sink of vice, a sewer where is gathered all the filth of the world." In fairness, Petrarch held a slight grudge. His brother had sold their beautiful sister to Benedict after Petrarch refused the pope's offer to trade her for a cardinal's hat.
As a bishop, Benedict had earned a reputation as an indefat-
igable inquisitor. On one favorite device - the rack - a victim was bound by the hands and feet and stretched and beaten until every joint in their body was broken. (The rack was actually considered one of the milder forms of torture by the Church, whose arsenal of persuasion included such charmingly-named devices as the skull crusher, the vaginal - or rectal - pear, the Judas cradle and the iron maiden.)
Inquisitors who employed such horrors on innocent victims were hardly racked by guilt themselves. Torture was considered an instrument of "Christ's loving kindness", bringing the wretched heretics closer to God.

Hell's Bells
CLEMENT VI (1342-1352) was the 196th pope. Declaring "My predecessors did not know how to be popes," Clement ushered in an era of unbridled papal luxury.
His new palace at Avignon - the finest in the world - was largely given over to the Inquisition. Clement would often cavort with his mistresses in the top room of the tower, unperturbed by the screams of victims being tortured below for such heinous crimes as eating meat during Lent.
To finance his extravagance, Clement made the Church into the most efficient tax-collecting machine in history. He purchased the entire town of Avignon from Queen Joanna, generously pardoning her for the murder of her husband. From 1347-1349, the Black Death swept through Europe, killing over a third of its population. Many Christians blamed the Jews for the plague, inciting widespread persecution and massacres. Thousands of Jews were burnt at the stake. Clement claimed that a planetary conjunction was the cause, but many blamed the pope himself, believing his multitude of sins had brought divine retribution. In 1352, lightning struck the tower of St. Peter's, melting its bells. Clement's death shortly afterward was greeted with immense celebration.

The Mad Pope
URBAN VI (1378-1389) was the 200th pope. A predecessor, Urban V, attempted to return the papacy to Rome in 1367. Finding the city in ruins and the Lateran Palace infested with bats, he returned to Avignon only three years later. Gregory XI had no better luck. His ambassador to Cesena, Roberto Visconti - faced with reprisals against his gangbanging mercenaries - persuaded the angry townspeople to lay down their arms. His army then slaughtered 4,000 people, half Cesena's population. Outrage at the massacre forced Gregory to abandon Rome. When he died, Urban VI was elected under pressure from a mob who demanded the mostly-French cardinals choose a Roman. (Or at least an Italian.) The same cardinals then had a change of heart and elected antipope Clement VII: None other than Visconti, the "Butcher of Cesena."
Once pope, the formerly pious Urban became an arrogant, abusive drunkard, prone to outbursts of rage. He ordered five cardinals involved in a plot to oust him to be brutally tortured, stuffed into sacks and hurled into the sea. Urban - the "Mad Pope" - eventually fell off his mule and met his maker, although his injuries were probably assisted by poison.

Simony Says...
BONIFACE IX (1389-1404) was the 201st pope. The "Great Schism" provoked by Urban VI lasted 40 years, during which time rival popes in Rome and Avignon routinely excommunicated each another. Simony - the sale of church positions and privileges - reached dazzling new heights, as the two popes competed for revenues not only with scores of avaricious princes and kings, but now also with each other. But even in a era of blatant money-grubbing, Boniface IX was exceptional. Probably the greatest simoniac in history, Boniface increased church taxes exorbitantly, openly sold offices to the highest bidder, and charged fees for everything from indulgences to authentication of relics like Christ's foreskin. (Several of which were making the rounds at the time.) When Boniface discovered a plot against him, he used it to justify abolishing the venerable Roman republic, setting himself up as a virtual dictator. The papacy had long since strayed far from its origins in the humble teachings of an itinerant Jewish carpenter. When a band of white-robed, ascetic penitents wandering across Europe reached Rome, Boniface had their cross-dragging leader burnt at the stake.

Unholy Trinity
GREGORY XII (1406-1414) was the 203rd pope. Boniface's successor, Innocent VII, continued to rebuff all efforts to resolve the split between Rome and Avignon, now ruled by antipope Benedict XIII. Innocent was followed in Rome by Gregory XII, an octogenarian chosen because he was, as one cardinal put it: "too old and frail to be corrupt".
Gregory's first act as pope was to pawn his tiara to pay his gambling debts. He proceeded to sell everything in Rome that wasn't nailed down, and - not stopping there - sold Rome itself, to the King of Naples. The cardinals who chose Gregory (or "Gregorius") began calling him "Errorius". They formed a conclave in Pisa, where - thinking it might at last end the schism - they elected antipope Alexander V, a renown glutton who kept 400 female servants. Unfortunately, both Gregory and Benedict refused to step down, leaving the church now with not only two, but an unprecedented three popes, all claiming supreme authority and all merrily excommunicating one another. A new version of the church's trinity creed began to make the rounds:
"I believe in the three Holy Catholic churches..."

Bad Ass
JOHN XXIII (1410) was the 36th anti-
pope. When Alexander V died, cardinal Baldassare Cossa proclaimed himself pope. Never mind that Cossa was accused of murdering Alexander, or that he was a mass fornicator with over 300 nuns under his belt. (Not to mention being a former pirate, rapist, adulterer, blackmailer, pimp, and...well, you get the idea.) Cossa, who took the name John XXIII, was elected by a conclave surrounded by his armed and loyal troops.
But when John began to divest his cardinals of fingers, hands and noses, they convened a council to press charges. The 70 offenses he was accused of were charitably reduced to a mere five, prompting one historian to remark that "the most scandalous charges were suppressed: the Vicar Of Christ was only accused of piracy, rape, sodomy, murder and incest." After demands grew that he be not merely deposed but burnt at the stake, John prudently resigned.
When another pope took the name John XXIII in 1958 - even though the council that deposed the first John XXIII had still recognized him as a legitimate pope - many churches hastened to remove the earlier John from their papal rosters.

Execrable
PIUS II (1458-1464) was the 208th pope. After John XXIII abdicated, Gregory XII, now in his 90th year, was likewise persuaded to pack his bags. Benedict XIII refused to join him, so the council declared him a heretic and deposed him. Finally, the council unanimously elected Martin V, and once again the church had but one pope. Martin, who would quickly become a skilled liar, simoniac and nepotist, hastened back to Rome before any more serious reforms could be acted upon.
After a few more unremarkable popes, Pius II - an adulterer with as many as 12 illegitimate children - was elected. The printing press had been around less than a decade, but Pius was already a well-read author, having penned a series of ribald bestsellers. Pius's literary claim to fame, however, was to be his papal bull entitled Execrabilis. To ensure that a counsel of disgruntled cardinals would never again succeed in challenging a pope, Exacrabilis affirmed the pope as positively and forever superior to any council on earth.
Still in effect today, Pius's bull is why popes can unfortunately no longer be impeached. (Regrettably, Execrabilis is Latin for "accursed" rather than simply for "crappy".)

The Good Fryer
SIXTUS IV (1471-1484) was the 210th pope. Pius II was followed by Paul II, a vain, gay playboy infamous for torturing the historian Bartolomeo Platina. (Platina unwisely complained about the loss of his day job when Paul downsized his staff of papal scribes.)
Paul's successor, Sixtus IV, is famous for commissioning the Sistine Chapel. Less well known is the way in which he funded it: by licensing the 50,000 prostitutes of Rome, taxing priests for their mistresses, and introducing the sale of indulgences for the souls of the dead in Purgatory. (Never mind that Purgatory has no basis whatsoever in Scripture.)
While not engaging in incest with his two favorite 'nephews', Sixtus made one a millionaire by plundering the papal treasury. The other would go on to become Pope Julius II.
Sixtus established the Spanish Inquisition, which would spread - literally - like fire, and keep inquisitors (and woodcutters) hysterically busy for the next 350 years. He confirmed the most famous Grand Inquisitor, the Dominican friar Torquemada, responsible for over 10,000 being burned at the stake. Universally reviled, Sixtus was said to embody "the utmost possible concentration of human wickedness."

Golden Age of Bastards
INNOCENT VIII (1484-1492) was the 211th pope. The first pope to openly acknowledge his illegitimate children, Innocent sired 16 of them, and spent most of his pontificate arranging their marriages into royalty to solidify his power. His reign, appropriately, was known as the "Golden Age of Bastards".
Innocent's papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus served as the forward to Kramer and Sprenger's infamous "Witch's Hammer" - a veritable handbook of torture and very likely the most bloodthirsty book ever written. It sat on every judge's bench in Europe for the next three centuries.
Innocent also authorized the "Tariff of Torture", which standardized the costs a victim's family was required to pay for various procedures. It would now cost five times as much, for example, to have someone's tongue ripped out and red hot lead poured into their mouth as to administer a simple flogging. Money rolled in to the pope's coffers.
Three young boys were tricked into sacrificing their lives to provide blood transfusions to the ailing pope, but to no avail. Innocent's last words on his dying bed were a shamefully bad pun: "I come to You, Lord, in my Innocence."