The papacy may claim divine authority, but its history often reads like a medieval fever dream. Power struggles, murder plots, and moral scandals played out beneath the frescoes of Rome, turning spiritual leadership into something closer to a soap opera.
For all its divine ceremony and centuries of solemn tradition, the papacy has never been immune to the far less heavenly forces of ambition, ego, and human folly. Behind the gilded altars and Latin benedictions lies a history that’s equal parts faith and farce.
Over the centuries, popes have inspired miracles, shaped empires, and occasionally lost the plot entirely. So, let’s take a brief, incense-scented stroll through the Vatican’s more chaotic chapters – a highlight reel of pontiffs who turned the keys of Saint Peter into props in one of history’s longest-running dramas.
The pope who put a corpse on trial
Pope Stephen VI holds the kind of legacy that makes The Exorcist seem tame. His claim to infamy was the “Cadaver Synod”, an event that reads like the world’s worst courtroom drama.
In 897AD, Stephen decided that his predecessor, Pope Formosus, should be tried for alleged crimes against the church. There was the small logistical issue of Pope Formosus being dead and buried, but Stephen didn’t let that stop him – he simply ordered that his rival be exhumed. The corpse was dressed in papal robes, propped up on a throne, and interrogated in front of an (understandably) horrified clergy.
Naturally, the late Formosus did not mount a spirited defence, even with Stephen shouting a barrage of questions at him. The court declared Formosus guilty, stripped him of his vestments, and mutilated his remains by cutting off the three fingers on his right hand that he had once used to bless the faithful. His acts and appointments were annulled under damnatio memoriae, effectively erasing his papacy from the record. Finally, his desecrated corpse was thrown into the Tiber River, where a monk later retrieved it.
Historians generally agree that Stephen’s macabre stunt was less about theology and more about politics. Roman noble families had been using popes like pawns for years, and Stephen was simply the latest piece in their game. Unfortunately for him, public revulsion was swift, and within months, he was deposed, imprisoned, and strangled.
As cautionary tales go, “don’t put your predecessor’s corpse on trial” remains solid advice.
When three popes were two too many
If you think church politics today are complicated, spare a thought for the late 14th century, when Europe had not one, not two, but three popes, each of which thought the others should (quite literally) go to hell.
It began in 1378 with the death of Pope Gregory XI. His passing left the papal seat open and tensions high. The cardinals elected Urban VI, a man described with medieval tact as “temperamental, suspicious, and reformist”. Unsurprisingly, these qualities did not make him universally popular.
Soon, a faction of cardinals packed their robes and fled Rome, electing their own pope in protest: Robert of Geneva, who became Clement VII and set up shop in Avignon. Thus began the Western Schism, a theological custody battle that split the Church and Europe along political lines.
But the story didn’t end there. In 1409, the Council of Pisa convened to settle the matter of who was the “real” pope. Instead, it somehow managed to make things worse by introducing a third claimant, Alexander V, in Northern Italy. The result was three popes, three papal courts, three entourages of loyalists and one deeply confused Christendom.
Each pope excommunicated the others, effectively dooming all of them to hell by their own hand. It was the medieval equivalent of a divine slap fight, with every participant insisting they were the true heir to Saint Peter while declaring the others heretics.
This ecclesiastical farce dragged on until 1417, when after eight years of wrangling, the Council of Constance finally elected Pope Martin V. His appointment ended the schism and restored (some) unity to the Church.
The teenage pope who treated the Vatican like a nightclub
We all do dumb things when we’re teenagers, which is why most of us aren’t elected to lead churches when we’re young. So in the case of Pope John XII, you have to wonder who was more at fault – the 18-year-old pope, or the people who put him in charge.
Elected in 955AD, he was a teenager in charge of the world’s largest religious institution and he behaved accordingly. By most accounts, he turned the Lateran Palace into a venue for gambling, adultery, and what one chronicler described as “a brothel in every sense but pricing structure”.
Even his contemporaries were appalled. Emperor Otto of Saxony once wrote to him, “Everyone accuses you, Holiness, of homicide, perjury, sacrilege, and incest with your relatives, including two of your sisters”. John XII’s end came in the most on-brand way possible: he was beaten to death by the husband of a woman he was caught sleeping with. The moral here is that divine protection, apparently, does not extend to jealous spouses.
The boomerang pope
If you think Pope John XII was too young to hold a position of power, then wait until you hear about Benedict IX.
Installed as pope around the age of twelve (twelve!), Benedict’s papacy was less “spiritual leadership” and more “reality show with murder subplots”. His contemporaries described him as “a demon from hell”, which, while harsh, seems proportionate given Benedict’s reign quickly became notorious for its depravity. Contemporary accounts accused him of theft, adultery, murder, sodomy, and even bestiality. The reformer Peter Damian, in his Liber Gomorrhianus, described the young pontiff as a man whose vices would “make the angels blush”.
His time on the papal throne was as unstable as his reputation. He was briefly forced out of Rome in 1036, only to return with the backing of Emperor Conrad II. In 1044, his debauchery again provoked rebellion, and he fled while his rival, Sylvester III, claimed the papacy. A few months later, Benedict marched back into the city, ousted Sylvester, and resumed his seat only to decide, soon after, that he’d rather get married.
In 1045, he struck a remarkable deal with his godfather, the devout priest John Gratian: in exchange for a payment to “reimburse election expenses”, Benedict would resign and hand over the papacy. Gratian agreed, becoming Pope Gregory VI and making Benedict IX the only man in history to sell the papacy.
But he wasn’t finished yet. Regretting the sale, he returned once more, reclaiming Rome and calling himself pope again, while both Gregory VI and Sylvester III continued to press their claims. The chaos grew so severe that Emperor Henry III was begged to intervene. At the Council of Sutri in 1046, Benedict and Sylvester were deposed, Gregory was persuaded to resign, and a new German pope, Clement II, was appointed.
Even then, Benedict refused to quit. When Clement died in 1047, Benedict seized the Lateran Palace and declared himself pope for a third time – the only person in history ever to do so – before being finally expelled by German forces the following year.
By the end of his scandal-ridden career, the papal throne had changed hands so often it might as well have been fitted with a revolving door. If the Church had a “most dramatic” award, Benedict IX would have won it three times running.
The pope who tried to exorcise Hitler
Fast-forward to the 20th century, and you might think the papacy had outgrown its flair for the bizarre. Then comes Pope Pius XII – remembered by some for his wartime diplomacy, and by others for the truly extraordinary rumour that he attempted a long-distance exorcism on Adolf Hitler.
According to Vatican documents declassified in 2006, Pius XII tried to banish the devil from Hitler’s soul from the quiet of his private chapel. Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist for over twenty years, later confirmed the story, adding (with the weary authority of experience) that exorcisms don’t work remotely, and certainly not without the possessed party’s consent.
If true, it’s one of the odder moments in papal history: the head of the Catholic Church effectively trying to Zoom-call the devil out of Hitler. It didn’t work (clearly), but as wartime strategies go, it’s hard to top for sheer theological audacity.
A conclave of contradictions
The enduring fascination with centuries of papal misadventures lies in the paradox at the heart of power. The pope, after all, is meant to be the vicar of Christ on earth, but the men who have worn the tiara have been as gloriously flawed, fallible, and occasionally unhinged as the rest of us.
For every saint, there’s a schemer. For every reformer, a rogue. And for every devout theologian, at least one man who thought, “You know what this papacy needs? A corpse on trial”.
Holiness, it seems, has always existed uncomfortably close to human nature – and that’s precisely what makes it such an enduringly good story.
About the author: Dominique Olivier
Dominique Olivier is the founder of human.writer, where she uses her love of storytelling and ideation to help brands solve problems.
She is a weekly columnist in Ghost Mail and collaborates with The Finance Ghost on Ghost Mail Weekender, a Sunday publication designed to help you be more interesting. She now also writes a regular column for Daily Maverick.
Dominique can be reached on LinkedIn here.
