EssayClub.com - Free College Essays and Term Papers

A World Lit Only By Fire

Consider this quote from William Manchester (A World Lit Only By Fire):

"Once he became Pope Alexander VI, Vatican partices, already wild, grew wilder. They were costly, but he could afford the lifestyle of a Renaissance prince; as vice chancellor of the Roman Church, he had amassed enormous wealth. As guests approached the papal palace, they were excited by the spectacle of living statues: naked, guilded young men and women in erotic poses… One [fete] known to Romans as the Ballet of the Chestnuts, was held on October 30, 1501… [According to Burchard's Diarium] After the banquet dishes had been cleared away, the city's fity most beautiful whores danced with guests, "first clothed, then naked." The dancing over, the "ballet" began, with the pope and two of his children in the best seats. Candelabra were set up on the floor; scattered among them were chestnuts, "which," Burchard writes, "the courtesans had to pick up, crawling between the candles." Then the serious sex started. Guests stripped and ran out on the floor, where they mounted, or were mounted by, the prostitutes. "The coupling took place," according to Burchard, "in front of everyone present." Servants kept score of each man's orgasms, for the pope greatly admired virility and measured a man's machismo by his ejaculative capacity. After everyone was exhausted, His Holiness distributed prizes - cloaks, boots, caps, and fine silken tunics. The winners, the diarist wrote, were those "who made love with those courtesans the greatest number of times." [p. 79]

This sort of activity, unthinkable today, is part of the church's legacy. The point is not that papal leaders were any more depraved than the rest of society - they probably weren't, although they were certainly more wealthy and powerful.

It is also important to remember that the church forbade the teachings of Galileo (and in his time all the teaching of Copernicus) until 1822! In other words, the church was wrong - patently and openly and...