A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest Weirdest Most Wanton Kings Queens (27 page)

Peter’s followers made much of the fact that while their hero was rotting away in his squalid prison, “he to whom he had left the Papacy reposed like a god on a couch adorned with purple and gold.” Peter himself made a remarkably accurate prophecy after his capture. “You have entered like a fox,” he told Boniface. “You will reign like a lion and you will die like a dog.”

Boniface wasn’t listening. With his rival out of the way, the new pope was ready to enjoy life as the greatest monarch in the world. He certainly played the part well, dressing in the finest robes of purple and erecting statues of himself all over Rome. His imperial arrogance alienated nearly everyone who came into contact with him. “The cardinals all desire his death and are weary of his devilries,” wrote Gerald of Albalato, an envoy from the king of Aragon. “Cardinal Lanbulf says that it is better to die than to live with such a man. He is all tongue and eyes but as the rest of him is rotten, he won’t last much longer.”

As the last of the great medieval popes in the line of Gregory VII and Innocent III, Boniface VIII made claims of papal supremacy that rivaled his predecessors in sheer pomposity. “The breast of the Roman Pontiff is the repository and fount of all law,” he decreed. “This is why blind submission to this authority is essential to salvation.” But the pope who could say without blushing, “We declare, announce and define that it is altogether necessary for salvation for every creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff,” was lacking in any religious or moral beliefs himself. What he had to say privately was in distinct contrast to his grand public pronouncements.

“Why, there is no more to going to bed with women and boys than in rubbing one hand against the other,” he said on the subject of sexual morality, and his true feelings about the immortality of the soul would have gotten him burned at the stake if he weren’t pope: “A man has as much hope of survival after death as that roast fowl on the dining table there.”

Spiritual salvation was not high on Boniface’s agenda—getting rich was. A Spanish diplomat summed him up well: “This pope cares for only three things: a long life, a rich life, and a well-endowed family around him.” To achieve these ends—at least the last two—Pope Boniface used the treasure of the Church to snatch up land and cities all around Rome. He planned for a Gaetani dynasty that would rival any of Rome’s greatest families. The aggrandizement of the Gaetanis, however, came at the expense of the Colonnas, whose property and ancient prerogatives were ruthlessly trampled. The ensuing conflict would result in Boniface’s total humiliation and the end of the imperial papacy.

It started with a bold robbery. Stephen Colonna, a younger member of the clan, hijacked a wagon carrying a hoard of gold the pope intended to use to buy even more land for his family. When two Colonna cardinals heard of this dangerous affront to the pope, they appeared before him and begged his forgiveness. Boniface’s answer was a demand that the loot be returned, which seemed more than reasonable. But his further demand that all Colonna possessions around Rome be put under the control of papal garrisons was an outrage.

Instead of bowing to this term, the Colonnas declared war. Leaflets were spread all over Rome calling into question the legitimacy of Boniface’s pontificate and accusing him of stealing it from the hermit pope, Celestine V. The pope was up to their challenge. He excommunicated the entire clan, “even unto the fourth generation.” This was not simply a spiritual weapon. Excommunication meant that a person was outside the protection of the law, and his life and property were fair prey for anyone who wished to take them. Doing so, in fact, was considered a blessed virtue.

Boniface went even further. He actually called for a holy crusade against the Colonnas. Though few ended up joining the pope’s transparent effort to benefit himself, there were enough supporters to crush the family and devastate their lands and cities. All that was left was the ancient city of Palestrina, where the entire clan gathered in their defeat. It was clear that they could hold out indefinitely behind Palestrina’s impenetrable walls, but Boniface was able to entice them out. He tricked them into believing that all would be forgiven if they would simply yield the city and submit to him.

Throwing themselves down before the pope, the leaders of the family kissed his feet and begged for pardon. Boniface, however, wasn’t through with them yet. As a final blow, he committed an act that would be bitterly recalled in Dante’s
Inferno
(where Boniface ended up, along with several other popes, in the eighth circle of hell—face first in a fissure). The pope ordered the entire city of Palestrina annihilated. Nothing was spared of this magnificent town filled with priceless antiquities and noble history—not even the palace of Julius Caesar. With a wave of the pope’s hand it was all flattened and salt was thrown into its furrows to leave it irretrievably barren. Boniface VIII had won—or so he thought. The Colonnas would get their revenge with a little help from Philip IV of France.

The clash between the pope and King Philip was all about money. Both of them needed lots of it—Philip to strengthen his hold on a kingdom just beginning to emerge from feudal divisions, and Boniface to fund his ever-expanding territorial ambitions. The pope tried to stop the king from pillaging the coffers of the French Church that they both relied so heavily upon for cash, and grew enraged at Philip’s continual defiance. “Our predecessors have deposed three kings of France,” Boniface warned. “Know we can depose you like a stable boy if it prove necessary.”

What the pope failed to realize, however, was that the era of papally controlled monarchs was coming to a rapid close. Instead of meekly bowing to Boniface’s threats and commands, Philip called a council to condemn him as a criminal and funded a secret expedition against him. In September 1306, a band of armed men entered the town of Anagni, the birthplace of the pope and his favored retreat from Rome. Led by a senior member of the Colonna family, the gang stormed the papal palace there and confronted Boniface as he sat regally upon his throne waiting for their arrival.

The sight of the arrogant pope who had destroyed his family enraged Colonna and he moved to strike his nemesis with a dagger. He was restrained at the last moment by a companion who no doubt feared the Divine wrath that would have resulted in such a sacrilege. Boniface’s life was saved, but not his dignity. Colonna and his cohorts stripped the pope of all his vestments and led him away in chains. For three days he was held prisoner, during which time it was said that he lost his mind. And though he was eventually freed by Gaetani family forces, Boniface was not the same. Broken and in despair, the last of the mighty medieval popes died a month later.

 

 

H
aving crushed Boniface VIII, King Philip IV was now master. With a French pope, Clement V, as his virtual puppet, he commenced what came to be known as the Babylonian Captivity. The papacy was moved from its ancient seat in Rome—the burial place of St. Peter, the first pope—to the fortified city of Avignon in France.

For nearly a century, a succession of popes ruled from the luxurious papal palace on the Rhone River, which came complete with its own state-of-the-art torture chamber. The great scholar Petrarch described the court there as “the shame of the world.” Maybe he was just upset that that Pope Benedict XII was reportedly sleeping with his sister. Avignon, after all, was no worse than Rome.

Eventually the Eternal City beckoned home the papacy, leading to the Great Western Schism that lasted from 1378 to 1417. The returning cardinals, who were mostly French, were terrorized by the Roman mob into electing an Italian pope. Anxious to quell the mob’s fury, they quickly settled on Bartolemeo Prignano, who became Pope Urban VI in 1378. He was not a good choice.

The man the cardinals elected happened to be a madman with a drinking problem. “I can do anything, absolutely anything I like,” Urban barked after donning his new papal vestments. This self-ordained license included the torture and murder of six cardinals who dared defy him. Realizing they had a complete maniac on their hands, the princes of the Church elected a new pope to replace Urban, Clement VII.
³⁷
The French cardinals then scurried back to Avignon with Clement. The only problem was, Urban had no intention of budging from his throne in Rome. Instead, he appointed his own cardinals and ruled from there.

Now there were two duly elected popes and two colleges of cardinals: one in France, one in Italy. With the Great Schism, all of Christendom was divided in loyalty. France and Scotland, for example, officially submitted to Clement VII, while England, Germany, and the kingdoms of central Europe declared their allegiance to Urban VI. Even saints took sides. St. Catherine of Sienna supported Urban and St. Vincent of Ferrar went with Clement. It was a mess that was about to get even messier.

When Urban VI died in 1389, the Roman side chose Boniface IX, who promptly excommunicated Clement VII. Then Clement died and a new Avignon pope was elected in his place. And so on it went—pope versus antipope—until finally the cardinals on both sides had enough. Gathering together in 1409, they deposed Gregory XII (the Roman pope at the time) and Benedict XIII (the Avignon pope). In their place, the united cardinals elected Pope Alexander V. Only hitch was, neither of the old popes was willing to step down. Now there were THREE popes!

The situation was ultimately resolved at the Council of Con-stance, where everybody was deposed in favor of Martin V in 1417—just in time for the papacy to freshen itself, gather its strength, and face the coming Renaissance.

 

 

T
he rebirth of culture and learning that was sweeping Europe in the fifteenth century was not entirely lost on the papacy. It’s just that many popes found it difficult to completely let go of the Dark Ages. Sixtus IV, for example, commissioned the magnificent Sistine Chapel—right around the time he gave his blessing to the Spanish Inquisition and anointed the murderous Torquemada to run it. His nephew, Julius II, patronized Michelangelo and Raphael—when he wasn’t dressed in full armor and slaughtering his enemies. “Now let’s see who has the bigger balls,” Julius once hollered on the battlefield, “the king of France or the pope.”

Innocent VIII seemed poised to modernize the papacy when he became the first pontiff to openly acknowledge his illegitimate children. Before he came along, papal bastards were always euphemistically referred to as “nephews.” Any promise Innocent may have shown as a modern son of the Renaissance, however, was quickly extinguished when he gave his seal of approval to what may be the most destructive book in history.

His papal bull entitled
Summis Desiderantes Affectibus
gave new life to the persecution of witches and served as the preface to
Malleus Maleficarum
, or
The Witches Hammer
, a handbook for the discovery and punishment of witches written by two of the Church’s most ruthless Inquisitors, Heinrich Kraemer and Johann Sprenger.

“Men and women straying from the Catholic faith have abandoned themselves to devils,
incubi
and
succubi
[demonic male and female sexual partners],” Innocent wrote, “and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed offenses, have slain infants yet in the mother’s womb . . . they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving, whence husbands cannot know their wives nor wives receive their husbands.”

If it hadn’t been used for centuries to come as a key instrument in the torture and burning of thousands,
The Witches Hammer
might have gone down in history as one of the more laughable studies in stupidity. A memorable passage from the book concerns “a venerable Father from the Dominican House of Spires, well known for the honesty of his life and for his learning.”

“One day,” the priest says, “while I was hearing confessions, a young man came to me and, in the course of his confession, woefully said that he had lost his member. Being astonished at this, and not being willing to give it an easy credence, since in the opinion of the wise it is a mark of light-heartedness to believe too easily, I obtained proof of it when I saw nothing on the young man’s removing his clothes and showing the place. Then, using the wisest counsel, I asked whether he suspected anyone of having so bewitched him. And the young man said that he did suspect someone but that she was absent and living in Worms. Then I said: ‘I advise you to go to her as soon as possible and try your utmost to soften her with gentle words and promises,’ and he did so. For he came back after a few days and thanked me, saying that he was whole and had recovered everything. And I believed his words, but again proved them by the evidence of my eyes.”

After his zealous advocacy of witch hunting, Innocent VIII must have had a moment of clarity at the end of his life, perhaps realizing all the misery and harm he had caused with it. As he lay dying in 1492, the pope reportedly prayed that a better man than he would succeed him. Alas, the prayer went unanswered as Rodrigo Borgia charged his way to the throne.

 

 

T
he Borgia clan of the fifteenth century could very well qualify as the prototypical Mafia family. Like any good Gambino or Genovese, they looked out for their own, used ill-gained wealth to get whatever they wanted, and killed without blinking. Of course there was also the religious hypocrisy. Few mobsters ever missed a Mass. Rodrigo Borgia became the pope. As Alexander VI, he ruled as the ultimate godfather, and his reign—marked by murder, greed, and unbridled sex—was one of the most infamous in papal history. But it was his rise to power that provided the most lurid chapter of Alexander’s checkered career.