John Bellairs’s long-time friend from college, Alfred Myers, shared with us once how he and John were both “attracted to the rogues, eccentrics, and general foul balls of the papacy than the much more numerous austere, competent and virtuous examples.” Bellairs wrote a few fictional hagiographical studies of popes belonging to the former categories in Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies (1966) (title character pictured).
In that spirit, the recent list of the 10 Outrageous Acts Committed by Renaissance Popes caught our eye.
Some popes had taken mistresses before, and loose morals were no scandal in Renaissance society. But the relationship between Alexander VI (1431–1503), the former Rodrigo Borgia, and Giulia Farnese, probably the most beautiful woman of the time, raised many eyebrows: Giulia was forty years younger than her lover. People mockingly called her the “bride of Christ.”
It’s good to remember the Renaissance covered the 14th and 17th centuries because I still don’t think anything tops the Pope Formosus trial. But that was back in the 9th century so we’re safe.
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