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Really Inappropriate Deaths in History

Khalid Elhassan December 19, 2020 32 min

18. History’s Most Degenerate Pope Died While Strenuously Loving Another Man’s Wife

More than a millennium before Jude Law played a scandalous pope in TV’s The Young Pope, the actual youngest Pope ever, John XII (937 – 964), presided over an even more scandalous real-life papacy. History’s real Young Pope was elevated to the Holy See in 955 at age seventeen or eighteen.

In what should have surprised no one, making a callow teenager Holy Father was not a good idea. John XII’s years as pope were as farcical and venal as one could expect from a person thrust into a position of power and influence for which he was clearly unprepared and unqualified. The young pope was violent, vicious, dangerous, and a degenerate fiend to boot. Somewhat aptly, he died while loving up another man’s wife.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.