Benedict IX Sold the Papacy Upon His Retirement
Benedict IX (circa 1012 – 1056) was another real life Young Pope, who became the Holy Father in 1032 at the age of 20. He holds the distinction of being the only person to have ever been pope on more than one occasion. He also held the distinction of being the only pope to have ever resigned the papacy, until Benedict XVI resigned and went into retirement in 2013. Unlike his modern successor, however, Benedict IX holds the – still – unique distinction of being the only pope to have ever sold the papacy on his way out.
A nephew of his immediate predecessor, Pope John XIX, Benedict’s father used bribery to secure his election to the papacy in 1032. He was a complete disaster as a pope, who stood out for his moral unfitness even in an era when few popes were paragons of moral virtue. Church leaders accused him of adulteries and murders. Like John XII, he hosted orgies in the Lateran Palace, and as if competing to live down to that predecessor’s reputation, he raped men, women, boys, and girls. He was also a sadist who enjoyed torturing, burning, drowning, and flaying to death those who angered him.
His behavior led to an uprising, and he was forced to flee Rome within a year of his election as pope. He was brought back and reinstated by the armies of Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II. In 1044, he was again forced out of the city, and a new Pope, Sylvester III, was elected in his place. Benedict returned with an army, captured Rome, forced Sylvester to abdicate, and had himself elected pope for the third time.
In short, Benedict IX was greatly disliked by contemporaries, and he finally tired of the cycles of getting ousted, then fighting his way back to the papal throne. So in 1045, not long after his third election as pope, he decided to retire. To fund his retirement, he sold the papacy on his way out to a priest, who became Pope Gregory VI. He was charged by the church for that and other misdeeds, and excommunicated. Saint Peter Damian described him as “a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest“. Pope Victor III referred to Benedict IX having a “life as a pope so vile, so foul, so execrable, that I shudder to think of it“.
