Posted on 02/15/2023 10:43:02 AM PST by CheshireTheCat
Around this time in 904, Pope Sergius III allegedly had one or both of his deposed predecessors put to death in prison.
Sergius held the throne of St. Peter for seven years, which was a longer incumbency than achieved by his seven immediate predecessors combined:* they march speedily through the Vatican’s annals like so many third-century Caesars, acclaimed by one faction within Rome’s political vipers’ nest only to offer flesh for their rival factions’ fangs; most are eminently forgettable save when they are utterly insane.
So pell-mell turned the scepter from one pretender to the next that the Church has even waffled in its official histories on just who was legitimate. Officially, Leo V is considered Sergius’s immediate predecessor; in reality, Leo was deposed and imprisoned two months after his July 903 election by a fellow named Christopher who was counted as a pope on canonical papal rolls until the 20th century. Today, he’s considered an antipope who was illegitimately elected...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Couldn’t find the Pope-in-the-Pizza?.....................
Pornocracy is a term that should return to the vernacular.
The resulting stability (relatively speaking) was the ascent with Sergius of the so-called “pornocracy”, or “Harlot State”. The harlots in question are the Theopylacti women in a vicious bit of historiographical branding sourced ultimately (since there are very few to choose from) to the highly partisan histories of Liutprand of Cremona...
As Marozia grew into womanhood, she would succeed as the de facto ruler of Rome, and become for propagandists the principal Pornocrat: “inflamed by all the fires of Venus,” gaped Liutprand; “a shameless whore … [who] exercised power on the Roman citizenry like a man.” She married the Duke of Spoleto and later the Margrave of Tuscany and was reputed to have manipulated numerous other paramours with her charms.
“A more inquisitive age would have detected the scarlet whore of the Revelations,” mused Edward Gibbon.
So it's called a "pornocracy" because a woman held influence over her husbands... and Gibbons faults people for not seeing her as the whore of Babylon? Why in God's name did anyone ever take Gibbon seriously?
OK, this one was really fascinating. I don’t know about ANY of that stuff.
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