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

by Farquhar, Michael

  “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.

  8

  Will the Real Pope Please Rise?

  Having 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.

  9

  Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

  The 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 pope
s 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.

  10

  All the Holiness Money Can Buy

  The 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.

  Rodrigo Borgia indicated early on that he had the makings of a great Renaissance pontiff. He was only twelve when he reportedly committed his first murder, stabbing to death another boy his age. His uncle, Pope Callistus III, assured Rodrigo’s place in the Church by making him a cardinal when he was twenty-five and vice-chancellor of the Holy See a year later. Thanks to the offices provided by Uncle Cal, Rodrigo soon became a very rich man.

  “He is enormously wealthy,” a contemporary wrote, “and through his connections with kings and princes, commands great influence. He has built a beautiful and comfortable place for himself between the bridge of Sant’ Angelo and the Campo di Fiori. His revenues from his papal offices, his abbeys in Italy and Spain, his three bishoprics of Valencia, Portus, and Cartagena, are vast. . . . His plate, his stuffs embroidered with silk and gold, his books are all of such quality as would befit a king or pope. I hardly need mention the sumptuous bed-hangings, trappings for his horses and similar things of gold, silver, and silk, nor the vast quantity of gold coin which he possesses.”

  Rodrigo Borgia’s money would later come in handy when he set out to buy himself the papacy. In the meantime, he settled into his luxurious lifestyle as a prince of the Church with his mistress, Vannozza de’ Catanei. In addition to the children he had from previous affairs, Vannozza bore him four more illegitimate children over the next twenty years. Two of them, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, would become as infamous as their dad.

  Much as he loved Vannozza, however, Rodrigo eschewed monogamy as vigorously as he had celibacy. His extravagant sex life was greeted with a wink by his uncle Pope Callistus, but after Callistus died in 1458, his successor Pius II took a less favorable view. No slouch in the sack himself, having sired two children of his own, Pius was nevertheless shocked by Cardinal Borgia’s behavior.

  “Beloved Son,” the pope wrote Rodrigo after hearing of a particularly lusty evening. “We have heard that, four days ago, several ladies of Sienna—women entirely given over to worldly frivolities—were assembled in the gardens of Giovanni di Bichis and that you, quite forgetful of the high office with which you are invested, were with them from the seventeenth to the twenty-second hour. With you was one of your colleagues whose age alone, if not the dignity of his office, ought to have recalled him to his duty. We have heard that the most licentious dances were indulged in, none of the allurements of love were lacking and you conducted yourself in a wholly worldly manner. Shame forbids mention of all that took place—not only the acts themselves but their very names are unworthy of your position. In order that your lusts might be given free rein the husbands, fathers, brothers and kinsmen of the young women were not admitted. . . . All Sienna is talking about this orgy. . . . Our displeasure is beyond words. . . . A cardinal should be beyond reproach.”

  Between the orgies, Cardinal Borgia continued to accumulate vast wealth. He made lots of money selling pardons for all manner of crimes, even the most heinous. After hearing protests over his paid reprieve of a father who murdered his daughter, he retorted, “It is not God’s wish that a sinner should die, but that he should live—and pay!”

  Borgia had more than enough money to take a stab at the papacy. Although popes were no longer elevated to the office by powerful Roman families or Christian emperors, the palms of the cardinals who elected them took plenty of greasing. In the conclave of 1484, after the death of Sixtus IV, Borgia lost the coveted crown to Innocent VIII, the great witch hunter. After Innocent died in 1492, however, Borgia was determined that he would not be cheated of the world’s ultimate throne again. He nearly bankrupted himself in the process.

  It was a tight race, but Borgia had plenty of money. He even boasted that he had sacks of gold enough to fill the Sistine Chapel. And though he was a hated foreigner (both Borgia and his uncle Callistus III were Spanish), the price was right for many of the obdurate Roman cardinals.

  One persistent rival stood in his way, however. Cardinal Ascario Sforza was also enormously wealthy and came from the ruling dynasty of the Duchy of Milan, which would give him much support. Taking Sforza aside, Borgia bluntly asked him what it would take to withdraw. Sforza settled for the lucrative office of vice chancellor and a huge cash payment. The next day, four mule
-loads of bullion were on their way to Sforza’s palace. Now Borgia needed only one more vote, which was purchased from the cardinal of Venice. Though the amount was a pittance compared to what Borgia had spent on the others, it was certainly more than the ninety-six-year-old cardinal could ever hope to spend in the time he had left.

  The election was held and, as expected, Rodrigo Borgia won. The new Alexander VI could barely contain his glee. “I am pope, I am pope,” he exclaimed as he donned his sumptuous new papal vestments. “We are now in the clutches of perhaps the most savage wolf the world has ever seen,” remarked Giovanni di Medici, the future Pope Leo X. “Either we flee or he will, without a doubt, devour us.”

  After an extravagant, debauched coronation ceremony that bordered on the pagan, Alexander VI settled right into his new position. He traded his long-term mistress Vannozza for the much younger and fresher Giulia Farnese, who was about sixteen at the time; the pope was pushing sixty. Giulia was immediately dubbed “the Pope’s Whore” and “the Bride of Christ” by the snickering Roman populace, but her position garnered power and she was able to get her brother, the future Pope Paul III, a plush position as a cardinal.

  Usually the office was very expensive to acquire, and Alexander VI fed his coffers by constantly making new cardinals. After they paid for the position, the pope was known to have them poisoned to make room for more. (One exception was Alexander’s teenage son, Cesare, who got his post for free.) Ironically, Pope Alexander himself fell victim to a deadly potion, most probably intended for someone else. His grotesque demise in 1503, at age seventy-three, was vividly recorded by his aide John Burchard.