A Dark History: The Popes
Brenda Ralph Lewis
Number of quotes: 24
Book ID: 5 Page: 10
Section: 3A4A
By the ninth century, papacy and popes were the playthings of noble families.
Quote ID: 78
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 15
Section: 2A3,3A2A
The Dark Workings of HatredIn January 897 CE, Stephen announced that a trial was to take place at the church of St John Lateran, the official church of the pope as Bishop of Rome. The defendant was Pope Formosus, now deceased for nine months, for whom Stephen had developed a fanatical hatred.
Quote ID: 79
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 5 Page: 15/16
Section: 2A3,3A2A
…the posthumous trial of Pope Formosus some time in January 897 then nine-months dead.The dead pope was not tried in his absence. At Agiltrude’s promptings, Formosus – or rather his rotting corpse, which was barely held together by his penitential hair shirt – was removed from his burial place and dressed in papal vestments. He was then carried into the court, where he was propped up on a throne.
Quote ID: 80
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 5 Page: 17
Section: 2A3,3A2A
…Formosus was found guilty on all the charges against him. Punishment followed immediately.….
At Stephen’s command, his corpse was stripped of its vestments and dressed instead in the clothes of an ordinary layman. The three fingers of Formosus’ right hand, which he had used to make papal blessings, were cut off.
…
Finally, Pope Stephen ordered that Formosus should be reburied in a common grave. This was done, but there was a grisly sequel. Formosus’ corpse was soon dug up, dragged through the streets of Rome, tied with weights and thrown into the River Tiber.
Quote ID: 81
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 17
Section: 2A3,3A2A
…a monk who had remained faithful to the dead pope’s memory asked a group of fishermen to aid him in retrieving Formosus’ much misused remains. Afterwards, Formosus was buried yet again, this time in an ordinary graveyard. Like the rescue itself, the burial had to be kept secret.
Quote ID: 82
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 20
Section: 2A3,3A2A
Ten years later, Sergius III, who was elected pope in 904 CE, dug up Pope Formosus and put him on trial all over again.
Quote ID: 83
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 20
Section: 2A3,3A2A
This time, Sergius restored the guilty judgement and added some ghoulish touches of his own. He had Formosus’ corpse beheaded and cut off three more of his fingers before consigning him to the River Tiber once more.
Quote ID: 84
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 20
Section: 2A3,3A2A
Not long afterwards, Formosus’ headless corpse surfaced again when it became entangled in a fisherman’s net.
Quote ID: 85
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 32
Section: 3A2A
John XII was doing so much damage to the papacy, which was still reeling from the crimes and sins of his predecessors, that a special synod was called to deal with him.….
They called witnesses and heard evidence under oath and finally decided on a list that added even more misdeeds to John’s already appalling record. Some of these were outlined in a letter written to John by the holy Roman Emperor Otto I of Saxony.
Everyone, clergy as well as laity accuse you, Holiness, of homicide, sacrilege, incest with your relatives, including two of your sisters and with having, like a pagan, invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons.
….
In spite of the threatened excommunication, the Emperor Otto deposed John and a new pope, Leo VIII, was put in his place. John, of course, would have none of this. When he eventually returned to Rome in 963 CE, his vengeance was infinitely worse than he had threatened. He threw out Pope Leo, but instead of excommunication, he executed or maimed everyone who sat in judgement on him at the synod.
Quote ID: 86
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 37
Section: 3A2A
Tolerance, today considered a virtuous trait, was a dirty word in medieval Europe. This was particularly true of Christian belief, which developed into a straight and narrow path from which it was dangerous, and frequently fatal, to stray.
Quote ID: 87
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 37
Section: 3A2A
One thirteenth-century pope, Innocent III, actually made it a crime to tolerate the presence of heretics in a community.
Quote ID: 88
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 37
Section: 3A2A
Within the Church, it was felt that the only way to overcome these rivals was to treat their beliefs and practices or, indeed, any dissent that cast the smallest doubt on received wisdom, as heresy or the work of the Devil. The punishments incurred were fearful.
Quote ID: 89
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 62
Section: 3A2A
Four years later, the Albigensian Crusade came to its close after the French defeated Raymond VII of Toulouse, son of Raymond VI. It was reckoned that in the 20 years it lasted, around one million people were killed as the horrors of Béziers and Carcassonne were repeated over and over again.
Quote ID: 90
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 63
Section: 3A2A
At this time, the hunt for Cathars and other heretics was entering a new and much more deadly phase. Gregory IX who was elected pope in 1227 was not content, as previous popes had been, to call for a crusade and then leave it to the military to do the dirty work. He had a better, though much more chilling idea. He reinvented the Episcopal (bishops’) Inquisition, as a method of dealing with heretics that was first introduced in 1184 but had never quite fulfilled its purpose.
Quote ID: 91
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 63
Section: 3A2A
The new, papal or Roman Inquisition introduced by Pope Gregory was not only meant to discourage such abuses, but to bring better organization, more efficiency and greater dedication to the business of saving souls from heresy, and punishing – severely – anyone who refused to recant. In this more retributive form, the Inquisition became, and remained for centuries, a byword for torture, terror and unimaginable suffering.
Quote ID: 92
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 92
Section: 3A2A
Early on the morning of 16 March, a procession of 221 men and women began to wind down the path that led from the summit of Montségur to the bottom of the slope. The Cathar leaders went barefoot, wearing nothing but their coarsely woven robes. When they reached the burning ground, they climbed the ladders and were bound together onto the stakes in pairs, back to back. The rest followed until row upon row of men and women filled the enclosure.Pastor John’s note: 1244 A.D.
When all was ready, Archbishop Amiel gave the signal for flaming brands to be thrown in among them. The soft murmur of praying was audible, only to be drowned out by the crackle of the fire as it climbed up the stakes and set everyone and everything alight.
….
By the time it was all over and the Cathars were history, it had taken 112 years, the reigns of 19 popes and thousands of violent deaths before the Church of Rome, its crusaders and its inquisitors and torturers finally prevailed.
Quote ID: 93
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 98
Section: 3A2A
One of the most devilish of torture devices and the most widely used was the strappado, described by Philip Limborch in his History of the Inquisition published in 1692:The prisoner has his hands bound behind his back, and weights tied to his feet and then he is drawn up on high, until his head reaches the pulley. He is kept hanging in this manner for some time, so that all his joints and limbs may be dreadfully stretched… Then suddenly, he is let down with a jerk, by slacking the rope, but kept from coming quite to the ground, by which terrible shake his arms and legs are all disjointed.
The strappado and other instruments of torture were sometimes blessed by priests to acknowledge the ‘holy’ work they were doing in revealing heresy.
Quote ID: 94
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 100
Section: 3A2A
Innocent IV made torture official papal policy in 1252 and unleashed some outlandish confessions. Old women, whose ugliness and often crooked physique created an image of witches still standard today, owned up to having sex with the Devil and producing invisible children.….
In the fevered climate of the witch-hunt, the fact that no one had ever seen their ‘children’ did not cast doubt on their existence; it just made them all the more sinister.
Quote ID: 95
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 108
Section: 3A2A
The mood was very different when Pope Innocent VIII was contemplating the problem of witchcraft and heresy in Germany in 1484. There was no chance of clemencyhere...
Quote ID: 96
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 108
Section: 3A2A
What followed was nothing short of a massacre masterminded by two Dominicans specially chosen for the task by the pope himself. They were Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, also known as the Apostle of the Rosary. These two became the joint authors of Malleus Maleficarum, usually known as The Witches’ Hammer.
Quote ID: 97
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 113/114
Section: 3A2A
A Tariff Of TorturesThe real refinements, which came later, were listed on a tariff of tortures drawn up by Hermann IV of Hesse, Archbishop of Cologne. One option involved cutting out a victim’s tongue and then pouring hot metal into their mouth. Another entailed cutting off a hand and nailing it to the gallows, presumably before the condemned witch was hanged. None of this came free, though. The victim’s family was charged a fee for the privilege and they also had to pay for the expense of a celebratory feast if the victim died under torture.
A German chronicler left a graphic account of the ghastly suffering caused by an instrument of torture known as The Wheel, which, he wrote, turned its victims into a sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in rivulets of blood, a puppet with four tentacles, like sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh mixed up with splinters of smashed bones.
One woman, whose name remains unrecorded by history, showed remarkable endurance, which must have proved extremely frustrating to Kramer and Sprenger. She was tortured no fewer than 56 times, but failed to confess.
Quote ID: 98
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 116
Section: 3A2A
Tragically, many hundreds, including scores of small children, died in mass burnings, yet the evil remained. One bishop in Geneva, Switzerland, apparently burnt 500 victims within three months. In Bamburg in northern Bavaria another bishop disposed of 600 people, and in Würzburg, also in Bavaria, 900 perished at the stake. And so it went on. In 1586, a century after The Witches’ Hammer was first published, 118 women and two men were burned to death for casting a magic spell that made the winter last longer.
Quote ID: 99
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 118
Section: 3A2A
Bodin was one of the most outstanding political theorists of the sixteenth century and ranked high among its greatest scholars.….
…he believed that the ordinary rules of prosecution could not apply to witchcraft. He wrote:
Proof of such evil is so obscure and difficult that not one out of a million witches would be accused or punished if regular legal procedures were followed.
Instead, Bodin advocated the use of torture, even on children and the disabled, as the way to agonize confessions out of suspects. In this way, Bodin believed, it was impossible for any witch to escape punishment.
….
In Bodin’s world, anything – absolutely anything – was justified as long as it uncovered witches and witchcraft. Children could be forced to betray their parents, and once a charge of witchcraft had been laid, the accused must always be found guilty.
Quote ID: 100
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 5 Page: 120
Section: 3A2A
During the Spanish Inquisition, a latecomer to the scene in 1478, the mass burning of heretics at the auto da fé (act of faith), became a public entertainment complete with the Mass, processions, the full pageantry of the religious and civic authorities and hundreds, sometimes thousands of spectators.….
Unlike its papal predecessor, though, the Spanish Inquisition did not operate under the aegis of the pope, but on the authority of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. This came about after King Ferdinand blackmailed Pope Sixtus IV into allowing him to create an inquisition by threatening to withdraw Spanish military support at a time when the Muslim Turks were endangering Rome.
Quote ID: 101
Time Periods: 7
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