The Criminal History of the Papacy pt1-3 (Nexus Magazine articles) by Tony Bushby.pdf

T HE C RIMINAL H ISTORY

OF THE P APACY

M ost Catholics go through life and never hear a word of reproach for any pope

or member of the clergy. Yet the recorded history of the lives of the clerical

hierarchy bears no resemblance to its modern-day portrayal, and the true

stories of the popes in particular are among the most misrepresented in

religious history.

The Catholic historian and Archbishop of New York, John Cardinal Farley (d. c. 1916),

subtly admitted that the "old legends of their dissolute lives may be partly true...that they

didn't sternly insist upon sexual virtue and injustice was a general licence of the papal

court, but it is probable that moral improvement was at the vanguard of their thinking"

( Catholic Encyclopedia , Pecci ed., 1897, iii, p. 207). The real character of the popes as a

rule has been so falsely represented that many people don't know that so many popes were

not only decadent but were also the most savage and perfidious of military strategists ever

known. Cardinal Farley added this comment:

"The popes were temporal rulers of the civil territory and they naturally had recourse to

force the re-establishment or extend the States of the Church until the conclusion of peace

was confirmed ... their attempts to purify particularly the Duchy of Rome caused them

considerable distress and the need to resort to violence, but always on the side of mercy ...

lives were lost in the service of truth but the legal basis for the Christian Church to hold

and transmit properties for the benefit of revenues was given to them [the popes] by

Emperor Constantine in 312."

The papal office has

an unparalleled

record of

corruption and

criminality over the

centuries, and the

true history of the

popes is one of

scandals, cruelty,

debauchery, reigns

of terror, warfare

and moral

depravity.

( Catholic Encyclopedia , Pecci ed., ii, pp. 157–169)

The comments of the cardinal warrant our attention, for within them rests a little-known

story of the leaders of the Christian religion and reveals that today's presentation of popes

as incorruptible moral oracles is untrue. The hidden history of doctrinal foundations that

permitted a papal alliance with conflict and licentiousness, and to what degree decadence

among the clergy is "partly true", provides for an extraordinary story—one that has no

precedent or parallel in the history of world religions. In the preface to an official papal

record commissioned for publication by the Holy See, called The Popes: A Concise

Biographical History , the Christian reader is tactfully prepared for some upcoming and

unpleasant facts about popes with this apologetic admission:

"Some Catholics may find surprises when they read the papal biographies in this book.

The part we are accustomed to think of the pope playing in the Church may need a little

adjustment."

Part 1 of 3

( The Popes: A Concise Biographical History , Eric John, ed.,

Burns & Oates, Publishers to the Holy See, London, 1964, p. 19,

published under the imprimatur of Georgius L. Craven)

by Tony Bushby

This comment provides readers with a note of caution in dealing with papal history, but

in this biographical history the Holy See did not think it prudent to publish full details of

the true nature of the papal court. Its real history is intermingled with "centuries of

trafficking in ecclesiastical appointments, deceit, scandals, immorality, aggression, frauds,

murder and cruelty, and the true disposition of the popes is knowingly falsely presented

by the Church today" ( A History of the Popes , Dr Joseph McCabe [1867–1955], C. A.

Watts & Co., London, 1939).

For centuries, the Church maintained a comprehensive account of the lives of the popes

who, up until the 11th century, called themselves "ecumenical patriarchs", and amazing

Correspondence:

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excesses are recorded. Official Catholic records provide

extraordinary confessions of wickedness in the whole Christian

clergy, and the implications surrounding this knowledge begin to

assume major new proportions when considered in light of the

central Church claim of unquestionable piety in the clerical

hierarchy.

The editorial committees of the Catholic Encyclopedia c l a i m

that their volumes are "the exponent of Catholic truth" (preface),

and what is presented in this overview is assembled primarily

from those records and without prejudice . In the same spirit, we

also have available several papal diaries, letters and reports from

foreign ambassadors at the Holy See to their governments,

monastic documents, senatorial Roman records as well as access

to the official and ancient registers of the ecclesiastical courts of

London. Also of great help in this investigation was the

availability of an original version of

Diderot's E n c y c l o p é d i e , a tome that Pope

Clement XIII (1758–69) ordered destroyed

immediately after its publication in 1759.

These documents uniformly report a

condition of centuries of extraordinary

debasement in the papal hierarchy and, when

considered in conjunction with the

circumstances of their production, their

contents can only be classed as astounding.

The pretended holiness and piety of popes as

publicly presented today is not represented in

the records of history, and that provides

proof of the dishonesty of the Church's own

portrayal.

Pious Catholic historian and author

Bishop Frotheringham extended this

summary of Christian leaders up to his

time:

"Many of the popes were men of the

most abandoned lives. Some were

magicians (occultists); others were

noted for sedition, war, slaughter and

profligacy of manners, for avarice and

simony. Others were not even

members of Christ, but the basest of

criminals and enemies of all godliness.

Some were children of their father, the

Devil; most were men of blood; some

were not even priests. Others were

heretics. If the pope be a heretic, he is ipso facto no pope."

( The Cradle of Christ , Bishop Frotheringham, 1877;

see also Catholic Encyclopedia , xii, pp. 700-703, passim,

published under the imprimatur of Archbishop Farley)

presentation of their character, and in trying to portray them with

a pious past the Church developed a doctrinal façade that brazenly

and deceptively presents them as devout.

With the late-20th-century model of the papacy in one's mind, it

is difficult to imagine what it would have been like in the 16th or

14th centuries, let alone the 10th or the eighth. The now-called

expounders of "Christian virtue" were brutal killers, and "crimes

against the faith were high treason, and as such were punishable

with death" ( Catholic Encyclopedia , Farley ed., xiv, p. 768).

Popes waded through rivers of blood to attain their earthly

objectives and many personally led their episcopal militia into the

field of battle. The Church ordered its "secular arm" to force its

dogma upon humanity by "mass murder" ( The Extermination of

the Cathars , Simonde de Sismondi, 1826), and "the clergy,

discharging in each district the functions of local state officials,

seem never to have quite regained the

religious spirit" ( Catholic Encyclopedia ,

Farley ed., i, p. 507). Apologetic

contributors to Christian history vainly try to

portray an air of sophistry about a papal past

that scandalised Europe for centuries and

one that is clearly unsophisticated and

primitive.

As the line of popes begins obscurely, we

shall begin our assessment in the year 896

when "a body of nobles with swinish and

brutal lusts, many of whom could not write

even their own names" (Annals of Hincmar,

Archbishop of Reims; pub. c. 905), captured

the papacy and drew it to a close 631 years

later in 1527 when, under the

subterfuges of Pope Clement VII

(1523–1534), Rome fell to the army of

Emperor Charles V.

In this brief evaluation of just a few

popes of these centuries, we read:

"On the death of Pope Formosus

(896) there began for the papacy a time

of the deepest humiliation, such as it

has never been experienced before or

since. After the successor of

Formosus, Boniface VI, had ruled only

fifteen days, Stephen VII [VI] was

raised to the papal chair. In his blind

rage, Stephen not only abused the

memory of Formosus but also treated his body with indignity.

Pope Stephen was strangled in prison in the summer of 897, and

the six following popes (to 904) owed their elevation to the

struggles of the rival political parties. Christophorus, the last of

them, was overthrown by Sergius III (904–911)."

( Catholic Encyclopedia , ii, p. 147)

The pretended

holiness and piety of

popes as publicly

presented today is not

represented in the

records of history, and

that provides proof of

the dishonesty of the

Church's own

portrayal.

And heretics they were, with many popes publicly admitting

disbelief in the Gospel story, as we shall see. These facts are well

known to Catholic historians who dishonestly tell their readers

that the popes were virtuous and competent men with "soaring

religious minds" ( The Papacy , George Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Ltd, London, 1964). The reality of the matter is that they were

intent only upon their own interests, not those of God, and

cultivated a system of papal vice more assiduously than Catholic

writers of Church history dare to reveal openly. They were

resented by the laity and, when better economic conditions

awakened the minds of a developing European middle class, there

was widespread rebellion against them. Christian records show

that popes were clearly a long way removed from the modern-day

Such periods of "deepest humiliation" to the papacy were quite

recurrent, and have been even into the 21st century when the

extent of priesthood paedophilia was publicly exposed (Apology

of Pope John Paul II, March 2002). It was Pope Stephen VII (VI),

"a gouty and gluttonous old priest" (Bishop Liutprand of

Cremona, c. 922–972), who ordered the rotting corpse of Pope

Formosus to be exhumed from its grave of eight months, tied

upright in a chair and put on trial for transgressions of the canons.

In front of his putrefying body and dressed in purple and gold

regalia stood the pope, his bishops, the nobles of Rome and

Lamberto of Tuscany.

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The "trial" was a grotesque and obscene farce. The pope paced

backwards and forwards and shrieked at the corpse, declaring it

guilty. A deacon, standing beside the decomposing body of the

ex-pope, answered on its behalf. In this macabre incident, today

piously called the "Cadaver Synod", the deceased pope was duly

condemned, stripped of his vestments, three fingers cut from his

right hand and his remains dumped into the River Tiber.

"In this disgusting business, he [Pope Stephen VII (VI)] cannot

be excused for what followed. In declaring the dead pope

deposed he also annulled all his acts, including his ordinations.

His grim and grisly role provoked a violent reaction in Rome, and

in late July or early August Pope Stephen was imprisoned and

later strangled."

( The Popes: A Concise Biographical History , ibid., p. 160)

Theodora then married Guido, Marquis of Tuscany, and together

they carried out a coup d'état against John X. Theodora died

suddenly by suspected poisoning, and John X entered into a bitter

quarrel with Marozia and the leading nobles of Rome. John had

brought his brother Peter to Rome, raised him to the rank of

nobility, and heaped upon him the profitable offices which the

elder nobles had come to regard as their preserve. It was an

internal struggle for power. The nobles, led by Marozia, drove

Peter, Pope John and their troops from the city. The pope and his

brother increased their army and returned to Rome, but a body of

Marozia's men cut their way into the Lateran Palace and murdered

Peter before the pope's eyes. John was captured, declared

deposed in May 928 and smothered to death with a pillow in the

Castel Sant' Angelo.

Marozia and her faction then appointed Leo VI (928) the new

pope, but replaced him seven months later with Stephen VIII

(VII). He ruled for two years and then Marozia gave the papacy

to her son, John XI (c. 910–936; pope 931–35). He was

illegitimately fathered by Pope Sergius III, as "confirmed by

Flodoard, a reliable contemporary writer" ( The Popes: A Concise

Biographical History , ibid., p. 162). Sergius had previously taken

the papacy by force with the help of Marozia's mother, Theodora.

Both Theodora and Sergius took a leading part in the earlier

outrage on the corpse of Formosus, and Sergius was later accused

of murdering his two predecessors. The Church defended itself,

but in doing so revealed that he wasn't the only pope sexually

involved with Marozia:

"It is commonly believed that Pope Sergius, although a middle-

aged man, formed a union with the young Marozia and by her had

a son, the future Pope John XI. Most of the information we have

on the career of Marozia and the Roman scandals in which she

and a series of popes were involved is derived from hostile

sources and may be exaggerated."

( The Popes: A Concise Biographical History , ibid.)

Morbid in its realism, the mental limitations of ancient popes is

thus shown. From these and similar displays, we understand why

the monks at the Eulogomenopolis monastery, today called Monte

Cassino, described the Asinarian Station (later renamed the

Lateran Palace) as "an abode of wrath, a charnel-house...a place of

exotic vice and crime".

The Unholy Reign of the Whores

Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, whose Antapodosis treats papal

history from 886 to 950, left a remarkable picture of the vice of

the popes and their episcopal colleagues, maybe with a little

jealousy: "They hunted on horses with gold trappings, had rich

banquets with dancing girls when the hunt was over, and retired

with these shameless whores to beds with silk sheets and gold-

embroidered covers. All the Roman bishops were married, and

their wives made silk dresses out of the sacred vestments." Their

lovers were the leading noble ladies of the city, and "two

voluptuous Imperial women", Theodora and her daughter

Marozia, "ruled the papacy of the tenth century" ( A n t a p o d o s i s ,

ibid.). Renowned Vatican historian

Cardinal Caesar Baronius (1538–1607)

called it the "Rule of the Whores", which

"really gave place to the even more

scandalous rule of the whoremongers"

( Annales Ecclesiastici , folio iii, Antwerp,

1597). All that Bishop Liutprand reveals in

detail about Theodora is that she compelled

a handsome young priest to reciprocate her

passion for him and had him appointed

Archbishop of Ravenna. Later, Theodora

summoned her archiepiscopal lover from

Ravenna and made him Pope John X (pope

914–928, d. 928).

John X is chiefly remembered as a

military commander. He took to the field in

person against the Saracens and defeated

them. He indulged in nepotism, or the

enrichment of his family, and his conduct

prepared the way for a deeper degradation

of the papacy. He invited the Hungarians,

who at this time were still half-civilised

Asiatics, to come and fight his enemies and

thus he brought a new and terrible plague

upon his country. He had no principles in

his diplomatic, political or private conduct.

He spurned Theodora and enticed the

charming young daughter of Hugh of

Provence into his papal bedroom. Spurned,

This rare painting is reproduced from a 17th-century edition of A n t a p o d o s i s , a

1,000-year-old text written by Bishop Liutprand of Cremona who died c. 972. It

purports to show Pope Stephen VII (VI) overseeing the exhumation of Pope

Formosus's corpse in readiness for its trial. An interesting aspect of this painting is

the pope's headgear, reminiscent of the "crown of horns" worn by the Caesar clan.

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NEXUS • 35

With sacerdotal dictatorship, Marozia ruled Christianity for

several decades from the papal castle near St Peter's, and dealt

with everything Christian except routine matters. She could not

sign her own name, yet she was the head of the Christian

Church—a fact known to historians who have at least an

elementary acquaintance with the papal record. She was

amorously aggressive, callous, densely ignorant and completely

unscrupulous. She appointed ruthless warrior-bishops to

strengthen her factions, and she triumphed in her rule over

opponents. To translate the words of the Roman people literally,

they called her "the Popes' whore" (plural) and she was directly

responsible for selecting and installing at least four popes.

Modern-day apologists say her promotions were "scandalous", but

those popes are now accepted by the Church as "legitimate"

successors of St Peter. At the time, however, large bodies of good

folk deeply resented the obscene farce the papal religion had

become and turned upon it with disdain and

anger.

Later in his papacy, Pope John XI took ill

and Marozia temporarily installed an elderly

monk in the papal chair. He subsequently

refused to resign and was forcibly removed

to a prison cell to be starved to death. John

XI then resumed his position and exhausted

his remaining wealth hiring soldiers to

restore order in Rome. The city was heavy

with a feeling of revolt against the Church

and the appalling clerical morals that existed

throughout Italy. John XI then set out to

recover and secure the rich temporal

domains of the papacy, but in 936 he died.

Thus, in this condensed description, we

learn with amazement of the days

when loose women ruled the Holy See

and a Christian doctrine had not yet

been developed.

average life of a pope was two years, he held the throne for 10

years. However, his life came to a sudden and violent end when,

according to pious chroniclers, he was killed by the Devil while

raping a woman in a house in the suburbs. The truth is that the

Holy Father was thrashed so severely by the enraged husband of

the woman that he died of injuries eight days later. Emperor Otto

then demanded that the clergy select a priest of respectable life to

succeed John XII, but they could not find one. The new pope,

Leo VIII (963–965), was a layman drawn from the "civil service

who was put through all clerical orders in one day" (ibid.). Leo

VIII is reckoned by the modern-day Church to be "a true Pope",

but "his election is a puzzle"—one that canonists have not cared

to unravel (ibid.).

The Catholic Encyclopedia gives additional accounts of papal

debasement:

"The Popes 'Benedict' from the fourth to the ninth inclusive

(IV–IX) belong to the darkest period of

papal history... Benedict VI (973) was

thrown into prison by the anti-pope Boniface

VII (d. 983), and strangled by his orders in

974. Benedict VII was a layman and became

pope by force, and drove out Boniface VII.

Pope Benedict IX [c. 1012–1055/1065/1085;

pope 1032–45, 1047, 1048] had long caused

scandal to the Church by his disorderly life.

His immediate successor, Pope Gregory VI

[1044–46], had persuaded Benedict IX to

resign the Chair of Peter, and to do so

bestowed valuable possessions on him."

( Catholic Encyclopedia , i, p. 31)

...according to pious

chroniclers, he was

killed by the Devil while

raping a woman in a

house in the suburbs.

The truth is that

the Holy Father was

thrashed so severely by

the enraged husband

of the woman that he

died of injuries eight

days later.

Anti-pope Boniface VII was

described by Gerbert (to become Pope

Sylvester II, 999–1003) as "a horrible

monster that in criminality surpassed

all the rest of mankind", but the

"scandal" of Pope Benedict IX

deserves special mention. His name

was Grottaferrata Teofilatto

(Theophylact, in some records) and in

1032 he won the murderous scramble

for the wealth of the papacy. He

immediately excommunicated leaders

who were hostile to him and quickly

established a reign of terror. He

officially opened the doors of "the

palace of the popes" to homosexuals and turned it into an

organised and profitable male brothel ( The Lives of the Popes in

the Early Middle Ages , Horace K. Mann, Kegan Paul, London,

1925). His violent and licentious conduct provoked the Roman

people, and in January 1044 the residents of the city elected John

of Sabine, under the name of Pope Sylvester III, to replace him.

But Sylvester was quickly driven out by Benedict's brothers and

fled for his life into the Sabine hills.

Benedict IX then sold the papacy to his godfather, Giovanni

Graziano, who assumed the papal chair as Pope Gregory VI, but

in 1047 Benedict reappeared and announced he was reclaiming

the papacy. The Church added that he was "...immoral...cruel and

indifferent to spiritual things. The testimony to his depravity

shows his disinterest in religious matters, and his disrespect for an

ascetic life was well known. He was the worst pope since John

XII" ( The Popes: A Concise Biographical History , ibid., p. 175).

Upon his death, undertakers refused to build him a coffin. He was

The Papacy Sold amidst New

Depths of Wickedness

As incredible as it may seem, the

papacy then sank to a lower depth of

wickedness and remained in this

condition for nearly a thousand years.

Christian historians airily brush aside

the true nature of the popes, saying that

they never regarded them as

"impeccable" and ignoring the fact that they committed outrages

against every standard of human decency.

Pope John XII (Octavian, c. 937–964, pope 955–964, T h e

Popes, A Concise Biographical History , ibid., pp. 166-7) was

another in the succession of impious popes and he opened his

inglorious career by invoking pagan gods and goddesses as he

flung the dice in gambling sessions. He toasted Satan during a

drinking spree and put his notorious mistress/prostitute Marcia in

charge of his brothel in the Lateran Palace ( A n t a p o d o s i s , ibid.).

He "liked to have around him a collection of Scarlet Women",

said the monk-chronicler Benedict of Soracte, and at his trial for

the murder of an opponent his clergy swore on oath that he'd had

incestuous relations with his sisters and had raped his nuns

(Annals of Beneventum in the Monumenta Germaniae , v). He

and his mistresses got so drunk at a banquet that they accidentally

set fire to the building. It would be difficult to imagine a pontiff

who was farther removed from saintliness, yet in an age when the

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