The Bad Popes
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The Bad Popes is a 1969 book by E. R. Chamberlin documenting the lives of eight of the most controversial popes (papal years in parentheses):
- Pope Stephen VI (896-897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber[1]
- Pope John XII (937-964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife. Modern evidence suggests he never lived at all, but was in fact several people posing as one.
- Pope Benedict VIII (1012-1024), who is lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy
- Pope Benedict IX (1032-1044,1045,1047-1048), who "sold" the Papacy
- Pope Urban VI (1378-1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.[2]
- Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503), who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.[3]
- Pope Leo X (1513-1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors reserves on a single ceremony[4]
- Pope Clement VII (1523-1534), also a Medici, whose power-politiking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.
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