Tonight I've been reading about the madness and degeneracy of a series of popes around the end of the first millenium. This was a period of papal depravity and fear of the apocalypse, and these popes came from leading Roman families; a completely corrupt system where one is made pope through his father's bribery, and another abdicates in favour of his godfather in return for a large cash sum and inflated pension. Anyway, here's an example:
"Stephen VI, elected in 896, was insane. He dug up the corpse of his predecessor Formosus, dressed it in full pontificals, placed it on the Lateran throne, and personally interrogated it at the so-called Cadaveric Synod. Stephen charged Formosus with fraud in being elected pope while still holding another bishopric; a teenage deacon, chattering with fear, replied on behalf of the deceased. The corpse was duly found guilty. Stripped of all but a hair shirt, the two fingers with which it had administered apostolic blessings lopped off, it was flung into the Tiber. The body was recovered from the river by admirers and quietly reburied. Stephen was deposed by a Roman mob and strangled in prison in 897. There were six popes in the next eight years. The last of them, Sergius III, having murdered his immediate predecessor, had the unfortunate Formosus exhumed again. This time the corpse was beheaded and three more fingers were removed. Fishermen caught it in their nets, and it was finally laid to rest in St Peter's."
+++ The Faith: A History of Christianity by Brian Moynahan (Pimlico 2003)
