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Chapter three The Popes of the Middle Ages

Pope John XIX or XX -? -1034

The history and chronology of the popes is obscure in the tenth and eleventh centuries. So many were deposed, then reclaimed, or attempted to reclaim the papacy, while others were killed, that it is difficult to know for sure just where some of them are to be placed in the chronology.

John XX, who was the son of Count Gregory of Tuscany, procured the papal throne by violence and bribery, after the death of his brother Benedict VIII.1 This John was considered to be imbecilic by those who disliked him, and he practiced simony constantly throughout his ten year reign.

It is said of him that he was so engrossed in the pursuit of money, for religious placements, that he came near to disposing of the Roman supremacy over the whole Eastern Church, at that time, for some pecuniary remuneration.2 In other words he would sell any office for money with scarcely a second thought.

Clement II -?-1047

Clement died suddenly and some writers believe he was poisoned. Poison seems to be one of the more common ways in which popes were removed from office during the Middle Ages.

Clement was the first German pope and was installed through the power of the Emperor Henry III. He tried to use the power of the papacy to crush his enemies. He put the city of Benevento under the Interdict. But he did not have much time to inflict his wrath upon those who opposed him, for he died on Oct. 9, 1047 after just being installed on Dec. 25, 1046. So he did not last a year in office giving rise to the suspicion of poison causing his untimely end.

Clement was installed as a replacement of Benedict IX who was one of the worst of the popes. Since he was able to reclaim the papal chair after the death of Clement II, he may well have had him dispatched to render the papal throne vacant.

Benedict IX 1021 -1054

Benedict IX was known as the “boy” pope, and one of the worst monsters ever to sit upon the papal throne.3 He engaged in ceaseless immorality and was deposed at least three times from the papal chair by his opponents.

In AD 1045 he asked to be deposed from the papacy that he could marry an Italian princess who was also his cousin. Johannes Gratianus was installed in his place after he bought him out with a large sum of money. So he, in essence, sold the papal chair for money.

Silvester III had already replaced him earlier. So there were now three popes all living at the same time. Rome, during this time, was filled with brawls and murders.

The German King, Henry the Black, called for a general council to try to remedy the situation. Clement II was then installed as pope by the council. However, he died within a few months of his installation and Benedict came back to the papacy for the third time. He held office until AD 1048 when he was deposed again and this time it proved to be final. He died in AD 1054 a profligate to the end of his young life.

Innocent III 1161-1216

This particular Innocent has been praised by some evangelicals in recent years as one of the greatest Christians of church history. So it is important then to look at some of his major achievements.

Almost from the very start of his pontificate he sought to make the Roman See the throne of a world dictatorship. “Universal Supremacy” for the See of Rome and the pope of Rome was his never ending pursuit. He managed to make the papacy the temporal ruler of most of the civilized world, as well as its spiritual dictator.

He worked incessantly to bring the entire world to his feet and under his personal control. When the imperial throne became vacant he had a prefect appointed whom he made to swear allegiance to himself. He was able to expel Conrad, and Marcualdus, and to take over their provinces in the name of the Roman See. He put himself in as regent when the king of Sicily died so that he was able to control that kingdom also.

He also was able to get various important cities such as Tuscany and Pisa to throw off their allegiance to the empire and come under his jurisdiction. It was this occasion which called forth one of the famous letters of Innocent III.

He wrote,

As God has created two luminaries, one superior for the day, and the other inferior for the night, which last owes its splendor entirely to the first, so He has disposed that the regal dignity should be but a reflection of the splendor of the papal authority, and entirely subordinate to it.

It was in the affairs of Germany that Innocent manifested the greatness of the papal power over the world of that time. Otho and Philip were in a contest for the imperial crown. Innocent decided in favor of Otho and excommunicated Philip. Philip fought back but was assassinated. Innocent’s triumph in Germany was thus complete and Otho became a vassal of the pope.

Otho tried later to rebel against the authority of the papacy and was himself then excommunicated and Innocent’s hand picked successor put in his place. So Innocent had shown the world that he controlled Germany and the empire by making his own man the new emperor.

He was able to excommunicate some of the most powerful men in the world and they were powerless to act against him. He was also able to put various countries under the papal interdict and they had to submit to him and the papacy before the formidable ban could be lifted.

He constantly claimed that he was head of a papal theocracy and that the Pope was the Vicegerent of God on earth. He also said that he was “intrusted by St. Peter (to govern) not only the whole church, but the whole world.”5

Next to God, he was to be so honored by princes that their claim to rule was lost if they failed to serve him.”6 In short all the prerogatives which had once been attached to the emperors were wrested from them, and transferred, with additions, to the popes.

Innocent was one of the greatest persecutors of true believers who ever lived. To him, every heresy was a rebellion which it was his duty to repress and extirpate. So when the Albigenses refused to take the oath of allegiance to the papacy, Innocent sent two papal legates to root out and put an end to such heresy. The two legates were given the title of Inquisitors.

One of them, Castelman, was a cruel and severe persecutor who was murdered near Toulouse. When Innocent heard that his Inquisitor had been so rudely treated he ordered a crusade against the Albigenses in that whole territory in order to uphold his idea of an ideal “Christian” republic.

He addressed himself to all the faithful Roman Catholics exhorting them to fight against the old serpent and promising them the kingdom of heaven as a reward. He sent two legates to accompany the crusade and to report back to Rome as to its success. The report by the legate Arnaldus speaks of the taking of the city of Beziers in which the massacre of 30,000 men, women, and children took place. Zoe Oldenbourg, a modern writer recounts in details the horror of this massacre in her book Massacre at Montsegur.

She also gives us an insight into the character of Innocent III.

In November 1215 the Pope’s Ecumenical Council was at last assembled as the Fourth Council of the Lateran. It was a veritable international conference, and had entailed upward of two years’ preparation… the problem of heresy, and the means by which it was to be fought, possessed a burning immediacy. It was to defend the Church against this danger that the Council established its definitions of the (Roman) Catholic faith and of orthodoxy. Heretics, whether Cathars or Waldensians… were unconditionally condemned and anathematized…

Those temporal rulers who failed in this duty would be stripped of their rights by the Pope; he would be free to bestow their domains upon any Catholic seigneur that desired them. The Council could have hardly underwritten the work of the Crusade more explicitly (this was the crusade in which the massacre at Beziers had occurred) or defined the Church’s theocratic attitude with greater clarity. The Pope might not command the actual battalions to unseat kings; but through the decision of the Council he had arrogated to himself the legal right to do so –thus proclaiming the Church’s absolute supremacy over secular law.8

Innocent wanted to rule the world. Anyone who stood in his evil way was to be annihilated and those who did the annihilation would be generously rewarded for their trouble. The fact that he went to such pains for two years to prepare for an ecumenical council with the desired object of eradicating heretics shows just how determined he was to crush any dissenter from the See of Rome.

Innocent also used the powerful weapon of the papal Interdict against France and England. The Interdicts varied with different popes but the main issue usually was the cancellation of all public worship. When this happened in the middle ages it usually created a great impression and brought the person who had incurred the interdict, such as the king, into great disrepute and weakened his position as ruler of the country.

With the dawning of modern intelligence just around the corner, and beginning to raise its head, Innocent went to great lengths to stop it. He created the Mendicant Orders with the express purpose of stopping and purifying the church from the “spirit of modern independence and modern intelligence.”

He also wrote letters to the Emperor Alextus with the view of inducing him to acknowledge the See of Rome and thus bring the whole eastern Empire under the papacy. So he constantly strove to bring the entire world to the foot of the pope of Rome. McClintock and Strong note that “His pontificate may be fairly considered to have been the period of the highest power of the Roman See.”9

Nicholas III-?-1280

His name was John Cajetanus and he was born into a noble family. He took the name Nicholas when he became pope. He is known in papal history as Nicholas the Accomplished, because he had a lot of ability. However, he was one of the most ambitious popes who ever sat in the papal chair. His ambition was his undoing. He is known in history as a Nepotist. He worked to bring large sums of money to Rome to build splendid palaces and used his relatives to discharge many duties of his pontificate. They were merely interested in enriching themselves and their families.

One of the sources of his plunder was the Inquisition. He loved the Inquisition and is said to have made much of his large fortune from those who were hauled before it, who were either executed or imprisoned. In either case Nicholas made their possessions his. He was also involved in the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers. So Dante, in his Inferno, puts him head down in hell with his feet on fire.

Boniface VIII 1217-1303

This evil man started his rule in the papal chair by whispering through a hidden tube to the ruling pope, “Celestine, Celestine, lay down your office.” When he did this in response to what he thought was the voice of God he was locked up in prison and starved to death. Boniface claimed he was both pope and emperor. He, as McClintock and Strong note, “carried his schemes for the enlargement of the papal power to the verge of frenzy.”10

He fought with the powerful Colonna family which led him to destroy the city of Palestrina, killing 6,000 citizens. He also issued his famous Bull Unam Sanctam in which he claimed that the Pope was ruler over both spiritual and temporal powers and which enabled him to wear the Triple Tiara signifying such powers.

He robbed and plundered while having immoral affairs with his mistress and her daughter. Philip le Bel of France against whom Boniface had pointed his Unam Sanctam, caused him to be seized and imprisoned in 1303. He was later liberated by an armed insurrection and returned to Rome only to become insane. He was placed in solitary confinement where he died.

John XXIII or XXII-?-1419

This John was a worthless character by all accounts and is linked to the poisoning of Alexander V while he was still a cardinal. He called for a crusade against Ladislaus, King of Naples, because Ladislaus had driven him out of Rome. He got into a struggle with the general council he had called to meet at Constance. Sixty charges were laid against him at this council and he was deposed. He was the last pope to take the name John for many years. The name had been associated with debauchery, murder, simony, and other crimes. So the name was not chosen again until the middle of the 20th century when Pope John the XXIII or (XXIV as the case may be) was elected. The confusion in chronology is demonstrated by the fact that some historians view Cardinal Cossa as Pope John the XXII and others view him as Pope John the XXIII making the 20th century pope by that name Pope John the XXIV. Whatever the chronology Baldassare Cossa could not be saved from the charges brought against him at the Council of Constance. His court magician, Abramelin could not even save him although he tried. The 60 charges were reduced to five: lust, murder, rape, sodomy, and piracy.1 11He was found guilty and deposed.

Alexander VI 1431 -1503

His mother, Jane Borgia was the sister of Pope Calixtus III. He was originally called Rodrigo Lenzoli but later changed his surname to Borgia. McClintock and Strong euphemistically describe his youthful years as very dissolute. The fact is he had several mistresses; the main ones being Vannoza Cattanei and Guilia Farnese.

He committed his first murder at the age of twelve and fathered at least 10 illegitimate children. He bought himself the papacy. It has been said of him that he single-handedly justified the Reformation. He died after being poisoned by a draught he had prepared to poison two new cardinals, when he himself drank it by accident. He also had Savonarola the man who cried out against the sins of the papacy executed.12

He bought the papal chair by giving various Cardinals all kinds of gifts so they would vote for him. He gave Cardinal Orsino the castles of Monticello and Savriani. He gave to the Cardinal of Colonna the rich abbey of St. Benedict. To the Cardinal of St. Angelo, he gave the bishopric of Porto, and the tower which was dependent upon it, and a cellar full of wine. He also dispensed various other gifts to several other cardinals to secure his nomination to the papal chair. He became pope in 1492 and took the title Alexander VI.

His pontificate was a particularly evil one. He made everything subservient to the raising of his ten illegitimate children. Again, McClintock and Strong try to shield their readers from the coarseness and vulgarity and immorality and debauchery of this pope. They noted the following:

Of the crimes alleged against Alexander and his children, this is not the place to speak in detail; it is enough to say that his pontificate rivaled the worst years of the Roman Empire in debauchery, venality, and murder.13

His death certainly seemed to be the judgment of God upon him. He requested from Cardinal Corneto the use of his magnificent palace for a great feast to celebrate his illegitimate daughter’s marriage. All the Cardinals and nobility were invited to this great feast at which some of the Cardinals were to be poisoned. By mistake, (some might be forgiven if they thought on purpose,) Alexander was given the poisoned wine and died the same night.

McClintock and Strong also point out that even for such a monster as Alexander VI there have been those who sought to defend him and his papal reign.

Among those who doubt, or affect to doubt, the stories of his great crimes, are Voltaire, Roscoe, the Biographie Universelle of Michaud, and Appleton’s Cyclopedia. But the evidence of contemporary writers is not to be shaken by the kind of criticism employed by those who would whitewash the Borgias. See as the chief authorities. (They then give a list of the main authorities which establish their facts.) 14

References

1. McClintock and Strong, Vol. IV., p. 981.

2. Loc.clt.

3. Op.cit., Vol. I.,p. 743.

4. Op.cit., Vol. IV., p. 590.

5. Ibid., p. 591.

6. Loc.cit.

7. Loc.cit.

8. Ibid., p. 592.

9. Oldenburg, Zoe, Massacre at Montsegur, Dorset Press, NY, NY, 1990, pp. 177-178.

10. Op.cit., Vol. I., p. 849.

11. Kelly, Sean, Rogers, Rosemary, Who in Hell, Villard Books, Toronto, Canada, 1996, p. 128.

12. Op.cit., Vol. I., p. 146.

13. Loc.cit.

14. Loc.cit.