voted to condemn him for heresy because he sold indulgences, bishoprics and benefices—they themselves bought these things from him and did a good business in selling them over again. John of Leitomysl sought twice to purchase the see of Prague for money. Why did the cardinals elect him pope when they knew well that he was a homicide and killed the most holy father? Here Huss was referring to Alexander V, whom it was charged John had murdered. Why did prelates on bended knee adore him, kiss his feet and call him holy father—sanctissimus pater—when they knew he was a heretic and a sodomite? Why did they suffer him to practise simony at the very moment he was exercising the functions of supreme pontiff?
Seldom has there been a more terrific characterization of the papacy as committed to bad hands. Though nowadays John XXIII is seldom, if ever, given a place by Roman Catholic historians in the list of legitimate popes; nevertheless, he was elected by cardinals, an œcumenical council was convened by his call and he was accepted by the council of Constance as pope and deposed by it as a true pope. Other popes had been as bad, some of whom Huss points out in his writings on the church. John XII, 954–964, an illegitimate son, made pope at sixteen, was charged by a Roman synod with every crime of which depraved human nature was capable—murder, fornication, perjury. He was killed in the very act of committing adultery and was said to have drunk the health of the devil. Of some of the popes of the tenth century even a Catholic historian, Möhler, has said that they were horrible popes, whose crimes alone secured for them the papal dignity. Benedict IX, 1033–1046, elected as a mere boy, is pronounced by Gregorovius more boyish than Caligula and more criminal than Heliogabalus. It seems, he says, as if a demon from hell, in the guise of a priest, were occupying St. Peter’s chair.[1] Alexander VI, 1492–1503, was yet to
- ↑ Hist, of the City of Rome, 4: 42, 47 sq.
