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Really Inappropriate Deaths in History

Khalid Elhassan December 19, 2020 32 min

33. Back to the Holy See

Pope Leo VIII’s patron, Emperor Otto I. Wikimedia

Pope John XII did not enjoy his return to the papacy for long. Just a few months after resuming office, he was killed by an angry husband who caught him having intimate relations with his wife – a turn of events discussed further down this list. The Romans elected another pope, Benedict V, but Leo VIII’s benefactor, Emperor Otto I, besieged Rome, took the city and forced the Romans to reinstall Leo as pope.

Leo VIII did not enjoy the papacy for that long, and followed his former mentor John XII’s manner of shuffling off the mortal coil. On March 1^st, 965, the pope was happily exerting himself in a sexual bout, but seems to have overdone it and exerted himself too much. In the midst of carnal enjoyment of the flesh, he suffered a fatal heart attack.

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.