Bad Pope #1 - Octavian (John XII) - the "Pope King"

Bad Pope #1 - Octavian (Pope John XII) - 955 - 964

The Pope-King

1 - He [Alberic] died, and Octavian took his place as prince. A year later the reigning pope also died and the Romans, obedient to Alberic’s last command elected the 16 year old as pope. Thus, both offices were again combined in one person, causing a critical mass that must in time explode.

2 - On his coronation, young Octavian took the name John XII, establishing the enduring custom of a papal name.

3 - The military life was plainly not for him, and he returned to Rome and embarked upon a course of living that startled even the not particularly impressionable Romans.

4 - The return of temporal power to the papacy had again thrown the tiara to the mob. The factions, dormant for twenty years, rose again, and murder, arson, and rape returned to the streets as casual incidents of everyday life.

5 - John encouraged faction as much as his father suppressed it — a rowdy young noble striving to overtop the rowdiest of his companions, and succeeding.

6 - He was the son of the heroic Alberic, but he was the grand son of Marozia and Hugh of Provence, the two most accomplished debauchees that Italy had seen in many years. It was their malign strain that swiftly dominated his nature already under corrupting influence of absolute power, and smothered whatever might have been noble.

7 - The city that his father has cherished John saw as a city to be plundered, he himself protected by the swords of a faction for whom he could do no wrong so long as he maintained it in power.

8 -The power of the city lay wholly in the hands of great families, ensconced with private armies in indestructible  castles. John was able to draw upon the revenues of the Papal States to maintain his own armed gangs.

9 - In his relationship with the Church, John seems to have been urged toward a course of deliberate sacrilege that went far beyond the casual enjoyment of sensual pleasures.

10. - It was as if the dark element of his nature goaded him on to test the utmost extent of his power, a Christian Caligula whose crimes were peculiarly horrific by the office he held.

11 - Later, the charge was specifically made against him that he turned the Lateran into a Brothel; that he and his gang had violated female pilgrims in the very basilica of St. Peter; that the offerings of the humble laid upon the altar were snatched up as casual booty.

12 - He as inordinately  fond go gambling, at which he invoked the names of those discredited gods now universally regarded as demons. 

13 - His sexual hunger was insatiable — a minor crime in Roman eyes. What was far worse was the casual occupants of his bed were rewarded not with casual gifts but with land. One of his mistresses was able to establish herself as a feudal lord “for he was so blindly in love with her that he made her governor of cities — and even gave her the golden crosses and cups of St. Peter himself.”

14 - Then, rising up, the cardinal priest. Peter testified that he himself had seen John XII celebrate Mass without taking communion

15 - John, bishop of nary, and John, a cardinal reason, professed that they themselves saw that a deacon had been ordained in a horse stable, but were unsure of the time.

16 - Benedict, cardinal deacon, with other co-deacons and priests said that they knew that he had been paid for ordaining bishops, specifically that he had ordained a ten-year-old bishop in the city of Todi…

17 - They testified about his adultery, which they did not see with their own eyes, but nonetheless knew with certainty: he had fornicated with the widow of Rainier, with Stephan his father’s concubine, with the widow Anna, and with his own niece, and he made the sacred palace into a whorehouse.

18 They say that he had gone hunting publicly; that he had blinded his confessor Benedict, and thereafter Benedict had died; that he had killed John, cardinal subdeacon, after castrating him.

19 - All clerics as well as laymen, declared that he had toasted the devil with wine. They said when playing at dice, he invoked Jupiter, Venus, and other demons. They even said he did not celebrate Matins at the canonical hours, nor did he make the sign of the cross.

20 - John XII was worthy of being the rival of Elagabalus…a robber, a murderer, and incestuous person, unworthy to represent Christ upon the pontifical throne…This abominable priest soiled the chair of St. Peter for nine years and deserved to be called the most wicked of popes.

21 - John’s pleasurable career was brought to a sudden halt. Behind him were citizens on the brink of riot, before him a ruthless enemy who was also a skilled soldier. The mantle of prince fell from him, displaying only a frightened young man whose one thought was to save his life, and if possible,  his pleasures too. He was now prince in name only; but he was still pope, and as supreme head of the Christian Church he could appeal to the deepest and noblest instincts of all her children.