The Popes of Rome – By Ronald Cooke
Chapter two Some of the Early Popes
Contents
Pope Damasus I
Malachi Martin, who is a Roman Catholic writer, gives us a glimpse into the early days of the papacy:
At the election of Pope Damasus I in AD 366, thirty seven corpses littered the environs of the Liberian Basilica after a fracas between the followers of Damasus and his archrival Ursinus.1
Malachi Martin also recounts the actions of Pope Stephen who had his archrival brought before him with broken knee-caps, (the IRA practiced the same cruelty) and had him whipped and his eyes carved out. He then elaborates:
Within a year Pope Stephen will have used Duke Desiderius to get Christophorus, Sergius, and Gratiosus imprisoned, first their eyes cut out, then their lives ended. He will then turn on Desiderius and by December of 771 will encompass his ruin and death.2
Martin again:
The high point of Marozia’s career came at the end of her very long life when she was visited in her Roman prison by an emperor who had just seized possession of the city –Otto III, a successor of Charlemagne. He had only one reason for visiting Marozia –to lay eyes on the woman who was the mother of a pope, whom she had conceived by another pope, and who was the aunt of a third pope, the grandmother of a fourth pope, and with the help of her own mother, the creator of nine popes in eight years, of whom two had been strangled, one suffocated with a cushion, and four deposed and disposed of in circumstances that have never come to public light.3
The catalogue of evil associated with the various popes can not be matched by any other organization in the history of man. Here are a few more examples of men who claimed to be the Vicar of Christ in the early years of church history.
Formosus I -? -896
The story of Formosus is one of the most bizarre tales of the papacy. He was installed as pope in AD 891 and reigned for five years. He tried to take Spoleto by force at the head of an army but died of a stroke on the way or may have been poisoned. He was buried in AD 896 in Rome.
When Pope Stephen VII, a man who was insane and subject to violent outbreaks, was installed as pope he at the instigation of Agiltruda had his rotten corpse dug up. Martin relates the rest of this story.
Formosus had been dead and buried for over eleven months. On Agiltruda’s suggestion, Pope Stephen had the rotting corpse dug up, and brought to the Lateran Palace, clothed in pontifical vestments, placed sitting on a papal throne, and then tried for capital crimes by Stephen and his cardinals and bishops. This was the famous Corpse Synod…
Pope Stephen himself and a papal accuser cross- questioned the rotting corpse (a trembling eighteen year old deacon stood beside the corpse and answered for the voiceless Formosus). . . At the crucial confession, Cardinals Sergius, Benedict, Paschalis, Leo, John, and the others rushed on the corpse, ripped the pontifical vestments from it, tore off the first three fingers of the right hand (Formosus, like every pope, gave the papal blessing with those three fingers), and then dragged the corpse from the hall.
Marozia was there as the cardinals and clergy dragged the corpse out of the palace and along the streets. The shouts of the crowd, the smell of putrefying flesh, the stones and the mud she and the others threw at the corpse did not let up at all. And then there was the dull splash as they threw the remains of Formosus into the River Tiber. 4
Pope John XII -? -964
This is the pope who was a former gang member who carried on various affairs with his mother, his sister, and his father’s mistress. He had many mistresses and one called Joan. Since she exercized such control over him at one point, she in effect was pope. Others claim that there was an actual woman pope called Pope Joan. There certainly seems to be some authority for such a claim.
John it is claimed made a pact with the Devil and was charged with open Devil worship. But in answer to the charges John threatened the group of cardinals with excommunication, He was caught in the act of adultery by an irate husband who beat him to death with a hammer. He was then all of 27 years old.
Before his death John was also charged with the crimes of murder, adultery, and perjury, before a council convened by Otho
I. He was summoned to appear but the “Vicar of Christ” refused. He was deposes Dec. 4, 964. Leo VIII was declared his successor. John merely came to Rome later and declared the other council null and void and reinstated himself. Otho I then prepared to march on Rome again and deal with John once and for all. But he died some say of apoplexy while engaged in an “adulterous intrigue.”5 Others maintain he was dispatched by an angry husband. BonifaceVII-?-985
He is not considered a legitimate Pope by some but his name appears in the list of popes given in some chronological tables. He was Cardinal Francone before changing his name to Boniface the VII. He was elected in a riot which followed the strangling of Benedict VI in 974. 6 He was deposed a year later because of his licentiousness and cruelty. However, he was able to return to Rome in 985 and had enough power to put pope John XIV in prison where he died of starvation. When Boniface VII died his corpse was not shown any dignity and treated with disdain and disrespect.
Martin writes of this period of church history as follows:
Each of the succeeding popes from Leo III to Boniface VI
(896) were elected in a tortuous fashion. The Roman factions battled among themselves and with the ordinary people. A candidate emerged from these always rough, frequently bloody, often fatal encounters between the various contending parties who used money as well as arms and sexual subversion to enforce their wishes.7 The men who claimed to be the Vicar of Christ, at this juncture of history, were men who used bloody and fatal encounters to come to the papal throne and attempt to hold it against their opponents. In other words, MURDER was an acceptable weapon to gain the papal throne and wield power as the “Vicar of Christ” on earth!
References
1. Martin, Malachi, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, Bantam Books, N.Y.N.Y., 1981, p. 43. 2. Ibid., p. 70. 3. Ibid., p. 99. 4. Ibid., pp. 101-102. 5. McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. IV, Baker Book House, Reprint, Grand Rapids, Ml, 1981, p. 980. 6. Op.cit., Vol. 1,p. 849. 7. Martin, op.cit., p. 81. -12