“The works of the flesh are manifest, it is impuderly, impurity, dissolution, idolatry, magic, enmity, quarrels, jealousies, animosities, disputes, divisions, sects, envy, drunkard, excess table and similar things. (…) Those who commit such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. ” Alas, the holy words of the apostle Paul in theEpistle to the Galatians (5: 19-21) were contradicted by the escapades of many pontiffs. Indeed, there were few popes to lead the life of frugality and compassion advocated by the New Testament.
It is at the dawn of the new millennium that the situation of the Holy See is the most degraded. Toe Century, corruption and nepotism reigned supper in the Vatican: aristocrats manage to order their cardinal children by a pretty bridge pot (from mass), while popes finance their luxurious lifestyle by selling ecclesiastical graces. The Vatican’s official list counts no less than twenty-four popes during this century alone, proof of mandates shortened by the prison, the scandal … or the murder (at least three of them died murdered: Étienne VII, Benoît VI and John XIV).
“Pontifical Pornocracy”
In his Ecclesiastical annals (published at the end of the 16the century), Cardinal Caesar Baronius draws up an overwhelming assessment of the papacy of the year Mil. “What a horrible aspect did not then have the Holy Roman Church. (…) We no longer talked about the election of the clergy: the guns, the decrees of the popes, the old traditions, the sacred rites were buried in the deepest forgetfulness; The most frantic dissolution, the worldly power, the ambition to dominate, had taken their place. ” A powerful Roman senator, Théophylate Ier From Tusculum, then controls the supreme election of the pope, so much so that his daughters place their lovers or their children on the throne of Saint Peter. This form of nepotism is then called “pontifical pornocracy” and is used during the first half of the Xe century.
It is therefore the Roman courtesans who make and defeat the “vicars of Christ”. In 955, Octavian of Tusculum, the great-grandson of Théophylacte, was pushed to the front of the stage: on his deathbed, his father ordered that he is the next on the list. Despite the centuries -old traditions of the Catholic Church, which defends this type of practice, its wish is immediately granted. Elected pope from his eighteenth anniversary, Octavian adopts the name of Jean XII, a surname called to remain in the memories.
The beginnings of his reign (955-964) illustrate his teenage enthusiasm. When he does not hunt, he declared war on Italian duchies to add them to the constellation of pontifical states. But diplomacy is not its strong point. His hormones have other projects. According to the time chroniclers, Octavian is a notorious depraved and a sexual predator. Reporting the warnings of the Italian bishop Liutprand de Crémone (920-972), the British historian of the 18th centurye century Edward Gibbon tells that we prevented “Women to go to pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Peter, where they could have, in this act of devotion, be raped by his successor”.
A crisis of faith
Admittedly, at the time, the pontifical standard was not chastity and illegitimate births are legion … But the zeal with which John XII seems to indulge in the thing earned him the reproaches of the emperor of the Holy Empire Otton Ierwhich he himself crowned in 962. “You have been accused not by a small number of people, but by all the ecclesiastics and by all the laymen (sic), homicide, perjury, sacrilege and incest, committed both with women your relatives and with two sisters. They add, what one cannot hear without horror, that you have drank the health of the devil and that by playing the dice, you invoked Jupiter, Venus and the other demons ”,
Details Otton Ier in a letter addressed to Jean XII in 963.
If the accusation seems too scabrous to be true, the epilogue of the mandate of His Holiness John XII is no less. Fallen into disgrace, the Lubric Pope died on May 14, 964, at the age of 28. According to the rumor, he was surprised in the arms of a lover by her husband’s cuckold, who would have murdered him at the foot of the marital bed … unless the interested party himself died of a heart attack. Historians have not decided.
If one can doubt the veracity of some of these anecdotes, today unverifiable, the calamitous reign of the X Popese century will have a consequence of the most concrete in the Middle Ages. It is to restore the moral authority of the Holy See that will be started, in the middle of the XIe century, Gregorian reform. Now, laity can no longer name religious dignitaries, nor ecclesiastics to sell pardons … It was also at this time that it is imposed, to temper the abuses of the flesh, the celibacy of the priests. Ironically, it is today regularly pointed out in the sexual scandals that periodically shake the Catholic Church.
