"Whoever," writes Pius II., "has not felt the fire of love is either a
stone or a beast.
Who is it, at the age of thirty, that has not committed a crime for the
sake of love?
Many women have I courted and loved: and as soon as I had possessed
them, I was filled with loathing for them."
(The Infallible Pius II. lived in the 15th century.)
Inasmuch as the courtesans raised one boy of eighteen, and another of
twelve, to the "throne of Saint Peter," you can imagine what sort of
lives they led in that gilded brothel, the Pope's palace.
(Pope John XII. was 18 years of age. Pope Benedict IX. was a lad of 12
years. Both were monsters of lust.)
This being the general picture of the Popes, _after_ they quit taking
wives, we are not surprised to learn that their mistresses and their
bastards were as well known, and as socially respectable, as those of
the kings and emperors, who married because it was a duty, and
Lotharioed because they found pleasure in it. The illegitimate children
of the Vicars of Christ were as undenied and undeniable as were those of
Henry of Navarre, Augustus of Saxony, Louis XIV. of France, and Charles
II., of England. Don John of Austria, was not more proudly the "woods
colt" of Charles V. of Germany, than was Cæsar Borgia the son of His
Holiness, Alexander VI. The Duke of Berwick was not better known as the
bastard of James II. and Arabella Churchill, than were two of the
reigning belles of Rome, not many years ago, recognized as the winsome
daughters in the flesh of His Holiness, Pope Pius IX.
To complete the picture, history tells us that Pope John XII., who was
made God-on-earth at the age of eighteen, met his death by the hand of
an outraged husband, at the age of twenty-five. The furious husband
broke into the Pope's bed-room, in the Lateran palace, and slew the
adulterer in the arms of the faithless wife.
Even Platina mentions this horrible fact, in his Lives of the Popes,
written at the request of Pope Sixtus IV., and published in the year
1479.
Platina was a devout Catholic and was Superintendent of the Vatican
Library, Rome, Italy.
In the biography of Petrarch by Jerome Equarciafico, we learn that this
poetic dawn-bird of the Renaissance had a beautiful sister, named
Selvaggia. Upon this lovely girl, Pope Benedict XII. looked with the
eyes of desire. He made infamous proposals to Petrarch, while the poet
scornfully rejected. Then His Holiness caused it to be whispered to
Petrarch that the Inquisition felt inclined to question him concerning
the orthodoxy of his faith. "The Question," meant torture, and Petrarch
fled from Avignon for his life. But a younger brother of Selvaggia was
more of "a man of the world," as the world went in those days of
all-powerful popery; and this brother gave ear to the Pope's temptings.
By his connivance, the girl was seized one night, as she slept, and
carried into the bedroom of the Vicar of Christ.
When this girl of sixteen realized what was intended, she fell on her
knees, and piteously begged the Pope, the Holy Father, to take pity on
her.
The raging lusts of the Pope were only maddened the more by the sight
and the touch of her charms, and he threatened her with eternal
damnation if she persisted in her obstinacy. The weeping, despairing
child _did_ persist, and "_he had recourse to force_"
("Love Affairs of the Vatican." Page 154.)
* * * * * * *
Petrarch, as I have said, may be fairly regarded as the dawn-bird of the
Renaissance, that marvellous Easter of Literature, when European
_Intellect_, which popery had buried and set the soldiers of the
Inquisition to guard, heard the golden trumpet of Resurrection sounded
by the Byzantine scholars--fleeing from Moslem invasion--and threw off
the shroud of a degrading superstition, defied the terrors of the stupid
fanatic, and said to all the world--
"_I will be free again, even though I die for it._"
Petrarch was the purest of ten thousand pure, a lover who lived in the
glory of the sentiment, without even the temptation to plunge the sacred
torch into the stream of sensuality--a poet who sang as the bird sings,
because Nature put music in his brain and heart and throat.
Petrarch was a devout Christian; and to be a Christian at that time,
meant to be a Catholic. You may be sure that it was no heretic whom the
Romans publicly honored in Rome, in the year 1342, and crowned with the
laurels that Virgil had not worn more worthily.
Surely, Petrarch's description of the Pope's morals and the Papal Court
will not be spurned as the libel of an abominable heretic.
"You find there the terrible Nimrod, Semiramis, armed * * * the
scandalous monument of the most infamous amours.
Confusion, darkness and horror, vice and crime dwell within these
precincts. I am only describing to you what I have seen with my own
eyes.
The hope of future life is looked upon as a vain illusion--what is
being told of hell as a mere fable. * * * Love of truth is considered
eccentricity; chastity, prudishness. Licentiousness is considered
broadness of soul, whilst prostitution here leads to fame and prestige.
The more vice one accumulates, the greater the glory. Virtue is
considered ridiculous. * * *
I shall not speak of violation, rape, adultery and incest. _They are
trifles at the Pontifical Court._
I shall not relate that the husbands whose wives have been abducted,
_are forced to silence and exile_. * * * I shall not dwell upon the
cruel insult by which the outraged husbands are being compelled to
receive in their houses _their wives who had been prostituted,
especially when they carry in their wombs the fruit of the criminal
love_."
Great God! What a picture of the Papal Court!