Habemus Papam!

So, as the pithy Latin saying goes, we have a Pope!



As both a medievalist and a feminist I have mixed feelings about this. The latter part of me wants to wave my hands impatiently because I find it difficult to get excited about an institution that privileges straight men quite as sanctimoniously as the Roman Catholic Church does. Pope Joan would NOT approve (nor, for that matter, Mary Magdelene, the Virgin Mary or St. Bridget). This argument that the Big Guy Himself didn't have disciples does not hold water with me--any way you read the Gospels, Mary Magdelene was a privileged follower of Christ [and in fact was the first one to see the risen Christ on Easter. She also stayed at the Cross when pretty much all the rest of the dudebros had bailed. Take THAT, St. Peter!]. Another strong feminine presence in the early church was St. Bridget who was either officially ordained as a bishop or did an awfully good imitation of one, running what was essentially a co-ed monastery and bossing all the monks around. Gotta love those headstrong Celtic women during the Dark Ages!


On the other hand...as an historian, I find the whole business FASCINATING--papal history is chock FULL of piping hot dish. I've talked before about the skanktastically dysfunctional Borgias but they are just one episode in what needs to be a trashy reality show on the History Channel: The Real Vicars of Christ [or as post-1534 Henry VIII might call it, The Real Bishops of Rome. Oooh, SNAP, Henry]. One of the most awesomely gruesome chapters in papal history has to be the Shake 'n' Bake Papal Viewing of Pius XII in 1958. Pius had a couple of questionable characters in his household: a VERY devoted housekeeper known as La Popessa who ruffled bishopric feathers by controlling who got to speak with Pius, as well as an outright quack who had a great idea after the Pope's death--let's preserve the earthly body of the Holy Father with this newfangled spray-on embalming process! We'll put him in a plastic bag with herbs and oils and spices--that sounds perfectly legitimate and not sketchy at all. Only he forgot about Rome's heat--the corpse turned black and literally cooked in the coffin, which resulted in the bier's actually CRACKING OPEN from...gasses. The Swiss Guard had to be spelled every few minutes as they were fainting from the stench, and Pius's nose fell off.

But even that shitshow has to pale next to the Cadaver Synod, aka Zombies on Trial. I'll leave that for another post, along with the Pornocracy--yes, there really was a period in papal history called the Pornocracy, the Rule of Whores. [I like to imagine Mary Magdalene up in heaven, hiding a giggle behind her hand after so many centuries of being trashed as a prostitute. The Da Vinci Code's history was, uh, creative at best but it was certainly right about that slander.] And if the new Pope seems a bit uptight compared to his colorful predecessors, let us imagine Alexander Borgia slapping a goblet of wine into his hands and saying impatiently

Who Put the Fun in Family Dysfunction?

The other night I caught the premiere of the latest gorgeously shot, historical guilty TV pleasure, The Borgias, about the notorious Spanish papal dynasty.   

As I told my friend, "They had better not try to rewrite too much history--there is no possible way they could top what the Borgias actually did!"  My specialty being English history, I knew little about this family until I read William Manchester's A World Lit Only By Fire--a problematic book to be sure,* but worth a reading if only for his rundown of all the latest Borgia on-dits of the early 16th century.  The head of the family was Roderigo--later Pope Alexander Sextus [commence adolescent giggling here], who had four acknowledged children by his mistress, Vannozza.  Yes, you heard correctly--a Catholic prelate admitted having a mistress and children.  So much for chastity!  Of the children, the two best known are Cesare [who inspired Macchiavelli's Prince] and the lovely Lucrezia.

Detail from a mural in the Vatican--painted by Pinturicchio,
 the painter in Episode I for whom Guilia Farnese sits.
  Lucrezia was known as dolce ciera, "sweet face," in her youth.  
The Borgias must have had some Spanish Celtic blood way back--
that hair had to come from somewhere!

I must confess to being a bit of a Lucrezia fangirl.  She seems like a Renaissance version of Elizabeth Taylor, impossibly gorgeous but you can just tell she must've gotten sick of all the fawning and papal politics and just wanted to kick back with margaritas with her girl-peeps.  (She was close friends with her father's mistress, Giulia Farnese.)  And she's gotten an unfair historical rap (although the scholarship on this has been changing)--as deliciously scandalous as the image of the icy blonde femme fatale mixing her poisons may be, she was a pawn of her family more than anything.  15th/16th century Italian noblewomen had very little agency.


BUT.   Let's get to the juicy stuff--which alllll goes back to Il Papa.  As Cracked.com puts it in their article "The Five Biggest Badass Popes," 


Any story you've ever heard about crooked popes started with this guy. He bought the papacy with four mule loads of silver. He nailed Rome's most eligible bachelorettes. He made his 17-year-old bastard son an archbishop. He started wars, poisoned cardinals and took their money, and probably ate live frogs while feeding people to the Rancor.


 And--the Banquet of Chestnuts.  This was a Borgia gala right out of the movie Bachelor Party, "with chicks and guns and fire trucks and hookers and drugs and booze!"**  The guests included courtesans and high-ranking clerics--to get the action going, chestnuts were thrown onto the floor and the courtesans (whose clothing had conveniently been auctioned off) had to crawl on their hands and knees after them.  I'll leave it to you to imagine what happened next.  There were even observers standing off to the side, recording who and how and how long.  The only thing missing was a mule!

A Borgian orgy!

Oh, and that hint of incest between Cesare and Lucrezia you caught in the first episode?  Is based on fact.  Yes, Cesare and Lucrezia were the 15th century Italian version of Christopher and Cathy (shut up, I loved those books).  I'll leave the "Infans Romanus" affair to another post but suffice it to say, the Borgias kept it in the family.

*As fascinating as is his theory that the Pied Piper was actually a forest-dwelling murderer who preyed on children, there is no compelling documentary evidence to support it.  And no CITATIONS!  Bad Manchester!

**Okay, maybe not fire trucks.