The following are quoted from William Manchester's "A World Lit Only by Fire- The Medieval Mind and The Renaissance"..Little, Brown & Company, 1992
"Once he became Pope Alexander VI, Vatican parties, already
wild, grew wilder. They were costly, but he could afford the lifestyle of a
Renaissance prince; as vice chancellor of the Roman Church, he had
amassed enormous wealth. As guests approached the papal palace, they were
excited by the spectacle of living statues: naked, gilded young men and women in erotic
poses. Flags bore the Borgia arms, which, appropriately, portrayed
a red bull rampant on a field of gold. Every fete had a theme. One, known
to Romans as the Ballet of the Chestnuts, was held on October 30, 1501. The
indefatigable Burchard describes it in his Diarium.
After the banquet dishes had been cleared away, the city's fifty most beautiful whores
danced with the guests, "first clothed, then naked." The dancing over,
the "ballet" began, with the Pope and two of his children in the
best seats.
Candelabra were set up on the floor, scattered among them were chestnuts, "which", Burchard writes, "the courtesans had to pick up, crawling between the candles." Then the serious sex started. Guests stripped and ran out onto the floor, where they mounted, or were mounted by, the prostitutes. "The coupling took place," according to Burchard, "in front of everyone present." Servants kept score of each man's orgasms, for the Pope greatly admired virility, and measured a man's machismo by his ejaculative capacity. After eveyone was exhausted, His Holiness distributed prizes- cloaks, boots, caps, and fine silken tunics. "The winners", the diarist wrote, "were those who made love with the courtesans the greatest number of times."
About the Pope and his daughter, Lucrezia:
"His daughter had just turned seventeen and was at the height of her
beauty. We now know that he was, in fact, her lover. ..Here, however,
the tale darkens. Romans had scarcely absorbed the news that the father
lusted for his daughter when they learned even more. Lucrezia was
said to be unavailable to her father because she was already deeply
involved in another incestuous relationship, or relationships- a
triangular entanglement with both her handsome brothers.
The difficulty,
it was whispered, was that although she enjoyed coupling with both of them,
each, jealous of the other, wanted his sister for himself.
On the morning of June 15, 1497, Juan Borgia's corpse was found floating in the Tiber mutilated by nine savage dagger wounds.
"Borgia's enjoyment of the flesh was enhanced when the woman beneath him was married, particularly if he had presided at her wedding. Breaking any commandment excited him, but he was partial to the seventh. As priest he married Rosa to two men. She may have actually slept with her husbands from time to time- since Borgia always kept a stable of women, she was allowed an occasional night off to indulge her own sexual preferences- but her duties lay in his eminence's bed. Then, at the age of fifty-nine, he yearned for a more nubile partner. His parting with Rosa was affectionate. Later he gave her a little gift- he made her brother a cardinal."
There were critics of the corruption in the church, and they invariably
met gruesome deaths. Girolamo Savonarola, (1452-1498) gave marathon
sermons denouncing the church's hypocrisy saying "The Papal Palace had
literally become a house of prostitution where harlots sit upon the
throne of Solomon and signal to the passersby. Whoever can pay enters
and does what he wishes."
At last, "the Pope condemned him as a heretic,
sentenced him to torture, and finally had him hanged and burned in
the Plaza della Signoria."
The "Age of Faith", the 1000 years of the Dark Ages, was
marked by a very low standard of living for most people. They lived in
filth, sanitation being considered too sensual to be pious. The average
life expectancy was only 25 or 30, and Bubonic Plague, Typhus and
a host of other diseases regularly decimated hundreds of thousands
of people. In the winter of 1349, 120,000 people died in England, one
out of every three. Continental Europe had similar death counts during
the 1300's, recurring waves of plague sweeping the countrysides,
whole towns dying in days. The church encouraged ignorance: "Saint Bernard of
Clairvaux (1090-1153), the most influential Christian of his time,
bore a deep distrust of the intellect and declared
that the pursuit of knowledge, unless sanctified by a holy mission, was a
pagan act and therefore vile."
"The distinction between devotion and superstition has always been unclear, but there was little blurring here. Although they called themselves Christians, medieval Europeans were ignorant of the gospels. The Bible only existed in a language they could not read. The mumbled incantations at Mass were meaningless to them. They believed in sorcery, witchcraft, hobgoblins, werewolves, amulets, and black magic, and were thus indistinguishable from pagans. Scholars as eminent as Erasmus and Sir Thomas More accepted the existence of witchcraft. The church encouraged superstitions, recommended trust in faith healers, and spread tales of satyrs, incubi, sirens, cyclops, tritons, and giants, explaining they were all manifestations of Satan."
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin was a real man, but there was nothing enchanting about him. Quite the opposite: he was horrible, a psychopath and pederast who, on June 20, 1484, spirited away 130 children in the Saxon village of Hammel and used them in unspeakable ways. Accounts of the aftermath vary. According to some, his victims were never seen again; others told of dismembered little bodies found scattered in the forest underbrush or festooning the branches of trees."
The depravities of the Catholic church bred the Protestants, and the invention of mass printing during the same time brought a dawn of knowledge, a re-nascence of thinking that had been put down 1000 years before. The Protestants stripped the Christian philosophy of all of the colorful Catholic trappings, bringing us the sanitized, cinder-block Baptist church of today, more prudish, still scorning intellect and learning.
Bloodshed in the Name of Mercy
A Heretic's Final Journey Torture and the Spanish Inquisition. Very disturbing; not for everyone.
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