CBR18 Bingo – Sheep: These guys are shepherds.
The Bad Popes by E. R. Chamberlin is aggressively non-religious. If I read this book without knowing about Catholicism, I wouldn’t have picked up that ‘pope’ is supposed to be a religious role. Although I don’t think anyone has ever read this book without knowing about Catholicism or what a pope is.
The popes in the book weren’t selected because they were the worst (but they might have been). They were selected because their reigns directly led to the Reformation and the 1527 Sack of Rome. Some were bad, some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sucks to be Pope Clement VII.
The first bad pope we get is Stephen. Pope Stephen oversaw the infamous Cadaver Synod. He dug up the corpse of his predecessor, put it on trial, and threw it in the Tiber when found guilty.
After Stephen, their badness started to run together. Most bad pope actions were garden variety murder, simony, nepotism, etc. They were basically just incredibly corrupt politicians. Nothing stood out to me until the rumors that Pope Alexander VI was sleeping with his daughter. He probably wasn’t, but he was bad in other ways. Not as bad as his son, who was just evil.
What about the fact that the pope isn’t supposed to have children? That seemed about as forbidden as ripping off mattress tags. Like I said earlier, the book doesn’t present them as religious figures. The author’s note said it’s impossible to know what they actually believed. Their dictator behavior was earthly, so is the book.
I would have liked more context about what was going on because I know less about the papacy than I did before. But whatever.
The best part of the book was the words. He talks about “learned pornographers” and popes being descended from noted debauchees. ‘Debauchee’ is my new favorite word, by the way.
He mentions Pope Joan and my favorite part of the female pope myth – the papal toilet theory. Chamberlin says,
Even the fact that a newly crowned pope seated himself upon a species of marble commode — theoretically allowing a physical examination to be made — was adduced as infallible authentication of the story.
I just like how this guy writes.
