Pauselijke weetjes

Hier nog een foto van die akelige 'pornopaus' Sergius III :


En dan nog zo'n gezellige kerkvader, Leo X (1513 - 1521):


He began his papacy with the words "Now I can really enjoy myself."

To fund his reckless gambling and lavish parties he sold at auction more than 2000 papal appointments.
A flamboyant homosexual, Leo ran his own bawdy theatre (for which he wrote risque plays) and kept a pet elephant.

He had no interest in religion but did excommunicate a troublesome priest called Luther.


Julius II (1503 - 1513):


affectionately known as "Il Terribile", subjected Italy to almost continuous warfare.
Scandal was, he enjoyed "unnatural vice" with the gay sculptor Michelangelo and "pressured" him into painting the Sistine Chapel.

Gangster hires Pimp to write Bible!


_{Pope Damasus I (366-385) – The ambitious gangster cleric who stole 'Christmas'.}


Damasus I gained the papal throne in circumstances that Christians would rather not talk about.
When Pope Liberius died in 366 AD, an ambitious presbyter named Damasus had his sights on the papal throne.
Unfortunately for Damasus, a rival presbyter called Ursinus got in first and had his supporters elect him pontiff.
Not one to give up easily, Damasus had himself declared pope a week later, and the two rival claimants locked horns.

To better his rival, Damasus had his partisans besiege the Ursinus gang, holed up in the basilica of Mary Major.
Unable to break in, they climbed onto the roof of the building, forced a hole and began raining masonry onto the heads of their rivals.
When the Ursinus clan capitulated after three days, one hundred and seventy seven dead and dying were brought out from the wrecked church.
And thus the one true pontiff emerged.
Ursinus himself, however had not been taken and the gangland rivalry would last another fifteen years, from time to time arbitrated by the pagan city prefect and forcing Damasus to move about the city with armed bodyguards.

The charge of murder hung over Damasus for years.
His name was further blackened in the eyes of many when he become an to run Rome's city brothels!
The philandering Damasus gained a name as the 'matronarum auriscalpius' ('ladies' ear-tickler').

Damasus set about redeeming his somewhat tarnished image as the Vicar of Christ.
He first hit upon the idea of 'Apostolic Succession.'
The incumbent Pope, he announced, was the lineal successor of St. Peter himself!
Though no one had noticed it before, Peter, it seems, had been the founding Bishop of Rome! Armed with this self-elevating theory, Damasus had martyrs' tombs dug from Rome's catacombs to prove the point (and he forced 'obstinate schismatics' to pay for their restoration and adornment!). His claim gained imperial recognition: the Roman see was acknowledged as the equal of Constantinople in the definition of the faith.

With his authority placed on a firmer footing, Damasus hit upon a way of ingratiating himself with the Roman public: the expropriation of the ancient mid-winter solstice festival.
Throughout the Roman world, and especially in Rome, the great celebration was called 'Saturnalia', which lasted for several days on December 25th.
The immense popularity of this pagan festival clearly caused agonies for the Church.
The early Christians, for at least a century, had lacked even a story of a divine birth for their hero, let alone celebrated it.
Damasus's artful response was to superimpose a Christian festival on the pagan one.
As the early Christians had had absolutely no idea of the day, month or even year of Jesus's supposed nativity, it was a relatively easy matter to replace the birthday of one sun god by another.
Thus December 25th became Christ's birthday – thanks to the notorious party-loving Bishop of Rome Damasus I !

Not long after his takeover of Saturnalia, Damasus came up with an even grander idea: a new edition of the Bible itself!
Until his own pontificate the bishops of Rome had nearly all been Greek speakers.
They thus had no particular problem with the version of the Old Testament scripture translated from Hebrew into Greek by the Jews of Alexandria –the Septuagint.
But how much better to have a version in Latin translated directly from the Hebrew without the involvement of perfidious Jews!
Latin would in future be the language of the mass.
Damasus turned to a member of his entourage once notorious for his womanising and gifted with languages.
Eusebius Hieronymus – a.k.a. Jerome – entered the stage of history.

By all accounts Jerome was a bad tempered sleaze, and a pimp.
He had originally been forced out of Rome by a sex scandal.
He had organised a 'women's group' and one of its members, a girl, had died, possibly of anorexia.
Jerome had gone at first to Greece but had been so 'troubled' by his visits to the "flesh pots of Corinth" that he had fled to the deserts of Palestine to quieten his passions.
Here were to be found many pious Christian hermits, seeking the divine by solitude and penance. Jerome joined them – though not quite alone.
He took along three or four young boys to act as his 'secretaries.'
In his letters he confessed:

"I could not endure against the promptings of sin and the ardent heat of my nature.
I tried to crush them by frequent fasting, but my mind was always in a turmoil of imagination.
I often found myself surrounded by bands of dancing girls."

He spent three years in his desert retreat, receiving regular letters from rich friends in Antioch.
Jerome returned to Rome at a most opportune time (382) for he was just the man that Damasus needed to re-write the 'authentic' Bible, the very words of God himself!
The result of Jerome's scholarly labour was the Vulgate (vulgata versio or 'common version'), the Bible in Latin that was to guide Holy Mother Church for the next thousand years.

Gangland rivalry forced Jerome to leave Rome shortly after his boss's death in 385.
The Ursinus gang, running Milan under city-boss Bishop Ambrose, got an ecclesiastical commission to order Jerome out of Rome.
In the company of a couple of wealthy 'professional virgins' he returned to Palestine.
Here, at the very start of biblical tourism, he set up an extensive rural retreat and guesthouse for pilgrims.
He completed further biblical revisions before his death in 420.

Both the gangster Damasus and the pimp Jerome made the sainthood and, presumably, now sit at God's right hand