Pope Pius II
Claims to fame: Roman Catholic Pope; author; pornographer; fornicator; “dissolute sinner with bastard children all over Europe” (Rotten.com); Muslim-hater
Moral apex #1: Fathered at least a dozen illegitimate children.
Pius II was born in Central Italy with the name Enea Silvia de’ Piccolomini in 1405, one of 18 children. As a young man, he was quite the libertine, fathering the first few of what would eventually be a dozen illegitimate children. Although he had deep and powerful spiritual feelings, they were outweighed by his deep and powerful urge to stick his crozier into any available narthex, as the kids say.
crosier, crozier: a staff surmounted by a crook or cross carried by bishops as a symbol of pastoral office
narthex: The narthex of a church is the entrance or lobby area, located at the end of the nave, at the far end from the church’s main altar.
Moral apex #2: Wrote a dirty novel.
Rotten.com:
One of his most famous works was a Latin novel called De Duobus Amantibus, the Tale of Two Lovers, an erotic story that became a bestseller after Enea’s ascension to the papacy. The story lays out a painfully long and chaste courtship between a man and the married woman he loves, before the two finally consummate the act in an act of passion that was described with a memorable amount of detail… but only if you keep in mind that the author later became the pope. …The eroticism of the story is frankly overrated, even by the standards of the day, but its authorship made it notorious. At times, Enea’s protagonists engage in protracted acts of metaphor which are barely recognizable as sex — “They spread their sails for Cythara; and when Venus wearied of the journey, Ceres refreshed her, and Bacchus.” But Enea wasn’t always so oblique.
In a feeble attempt to dismiss Pius’s indiscriminate shagging as well as his erotic writings, the ever-so-quaint Catholic Encyclopedia whitewashes thusly:
There have been widely divergent appreciations of the life of Pius II. While his varied talents and superior culture cannot be doubted, the motives of his frequent transfer of allegiance, the causes of the radical transformations which his opinions underwent, the influences exercised over him by the environment in which his lot was cast, are so many factors, the bearing of which can bejustly and precisely estimated only with the greatest difficulty. In the early period of his life he was, like many humanists, frivolous and immoral in conduct and writing. More earnest were his conceptions and manner of life after his entrance into the ecclesiastical state. As pope he was indeed not sufficiently free from nepotism, but otherwise served the best interests of the Church. Not only was he constantly solicitous for the peace of Christendom against Islam, but he also instituted a commission for the reform of the Roman court, seriously endeavoured to restore monastic discipline, and defended the doctrine of the Church against the writings of Reginald Peacock, the former Bishop of Chichester. He retracted the errors contained in his earlier writings in a Bull, the gist of which was “Reject Eneas, hold fast to Pius”. St. Catherine of Siena was canonized during his pontificate.
Moral apex #3: Was excommunicated — but, really, it was no big deal.
Rotten.com:
In 1439, Enea became involved with an antipope (Felix V), who had broken from the church over political considerations and a desire for self-aggrandizement. He ran an alternate papacy out of Switzerland for a couple of years before everyone realized that nothing particularly interesting ever happens in Switzerland and abandoned the project.Felix was excommunicated, but Enea emerged from the fiasco relatively unscathed. He reconciled with Rome in 1445 and was finally prevailed on to become a priest and abandon his wanton ways (overtly, at least). Thanks to his political connections, he became a bishop almost immediately and acted as a diplomatic envoy to Roman emperor for several years before becoming a cardinal.
In 1458, amid the miasma of arcane Renaissance politics, Enea became Pope Pius II, beating out a field of competitors for the pontificate that included a scheming French cardinal named Guillaume. …
In the great tradition of the papacy, Pius decided to throw a crusade. Unfortunately, no one came.
The Catholic Encyclopedia fills in the details in its ever-so-quaint, anti-Muslim way:
The central idea of his pontificate was the liberation of Europe from Turkish domination. …The prevalence of … discord in Christendom left but little hope for armed opposition to the Turks. As rumours had been circulated that the sultan doubted the faith of Islam, the pope attempted to convert him to the Christian faith. But in vain did he address to him in 1461 a letter, in which were set forth the claims of Christianity on his belief. Possibly the transfer with extraordinary pomp of the head of St. Andrew to Rome was also a fruitless attempt to rekindle zeal for the Crusades.
We say: Thank bloody God.
Memorable quote:
Lucretia was wearing a light robe which clung to her body without a wrinkle, concealing neither her breasts nor her hips, and displayed her limbs exactly as they were. Her throat was snowy white, her eyes shone with the radiance of the sun; her glance was happy, her face animated, and her cheeks like lilies mixed with crimson roses. Laughter that was sweet and modest filled her mouth. She was deep-bosomed, and her breasts swelled out on either side like two pomegranates, so that one longed to touch them.— Pius II
De Duobus Amantibus
(The Tale of Two Lovers)
Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Pius II:
A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.— Deuteronomy 23:2
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