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The Dark Side of Great Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan December 11, 2020 33 min

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony - Elizabeth Cady Stanton — Susan B. Anthony, left, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. NJTV

22. A Pope Who Saved the Catholic Church Despite Being a Great Pervert

sack of rome by francisco javier amerigo 1884. biblioteca museu victor balaguer — ‘The Sack of Rome’ by Francisco Javier Amerigo, 1884. Biblioteca Museu Victor Balaguer

Paul III was pope from 1534 until his death in 1549, during one of the Roman Catholic Church’s roughest stretches. When he ascended the papal throne, the papacy was at a nadir. It was mired in corruption, faced a vigorous challenge from the Protestant Reformation, and Rome itself had been recently sacked by an army of the Holy Roman Emperor. Paul III encouraged reforms that saved the church.

The irony is that he saved the church despite being a corrupt pervert. Born Alessandro Farnese, he began his career as a protege of Giovanni de Medici, the future pope Leo X. He ended up in Rome, where he pimped out his sister to become the mistress of the corrupt cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, the future Pope Alexander VI. When Borgia made him a cardinal, Farnese was mocked as “Cardinal Fregnese” (Cardinal C-u-n-t), while his sister was mocked as “the Bride of Christ”.

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.