I picked up this book because I thought the title was funny. Having only a vague understanding of the history of the Catholic church (and European politics during the Middle Ages), I got a fair amount out of this book. It's probably not a great work of history, but I found it well written in an elevated-gossip style. Some of these popes were ... pretty bad! (So were some of the non popes.). Another thing I found interesting was that there were periods of years where it's not really clear whose was in charge of the church. One criticism I had was that Stephen VI, who exhumed his predecessor and put him on trial (the Cadaver Synod), wasn't profiled outside a few paragraphs in the introduction. ( )

For me, the book provided an excellent opportunity to glance at the other side of papacy, the side which the Roman Catholics do not want to talk about, i.e. the totally secular istitution void of spiritual aspirations (sure, there were other popes as well, especially before the Great Schism of 1054, who worthily wore the mitre of the bishops of Rome). One would only wish that the stress of the book was placed not only on the popes' political and financial escapades. The book simply alludes to the pagan or satanic interests of some of the popes but doesn't go into details.
Also, the book focuses on a handful of popes, while remarking that there were others no less curious than the ones the reader is presented with. All in all, the book is very informative and is a fast read. ( )

A scintillating look at some of the exemplars of ugliness in medieval Catholicism.

The author focuses on the Theophylacts, Boniface VIII, Urban VI and the Avignon difficulties, Alexander VI, and the Medicis: Leo X and Clement VII.

The stories of simony, corruption, sex, murder, politicking, foreign policy, etc. are told in great detail. The author would seem to tell these stories in order to advance the thesis that the combination of spiritual authority along with the "donation of Constantine" and the Papal States led to the terrible condition of the Papacy and the ultimate divisions manifest in the Reformation.

But it seems really to be just an opportunity to gawk at the immorality of the medieval papacy. ( )

If you thought the Catholic Church was bad already, just read this and you'll realize that the corruption and criminality was built in from the beginning. This is a fascinating tale of seven bad popes, nepotism, murder, lust for money and power, orgies, you name it. Somehow the author seems to maintain some sort of sympathy for the church throughout it all. He shows how the selection of popes was based on nothing more than who could best bribe the selection committee. This book is fascinating, but the reader will benefit from at least a little prior knowledge of history. ( )

A compendium of sordid medieval fables and debauched grandiosity that could have been the inspiration for Frederick Rolfe’s megalomaniacal alter-ego Hadrian the Seventh. The contrivers of cruel fortune in Greek tragedy or Shakespeare have nothing on the bad popes—some of whom were contemporaries, and subjects, of Petrarch, Dante, and Machiavelli. Even the virtues of a man like Clement VII, writes Chamberlin, were more disastrous than the vices of other men.

Chamberlin’s prose style is well-suited to the material: he recounts episodes of papal avarice, depravity, and self-aggrandizement with a keen detachment and a dry, sardonic wit. Chamberlin’s historiography is also commendable: he carefully situates the authors of the extant source material in relevant proximity to events, and is appropriately skeptical toward accounts by aggrieved enemies and dynastic partisans. It is trivial to note that truth is stranger than fiction, unless the writing is as good as it is here.

The interment of the bones of an early Christian martyr in a pagan cemetery on Vatican Hill and the collusion of Carolingian kings and Roman bishops in the bogus sacralizing of the Donation of Constantine set the stage for the blend of mysticism, mythology, and materialism that came to be embodied by the occupant of the chair of St. Peter. No one can be shocked by the corruption and depravity of those in positions of power within religious institutions, but we can be entertained (as long as the stories are of long-ago, and well told). A few highlights:

Gregory II’s rejection of Byzantine iconoclasm in 726 triggered a war so frightful and bloody that for six years thereafter the inhabitants of the Po valley abstained from eating the fish of the river for fear of involuntary cannibalism.

In an episode known as the Synod horrenda, Pope Stephen VII put on “trial” the corpse of his immediate predecessor Formosus, which was propped on a throne in sacerdotal robes, cursed, found guilty, stripped, hacked away from the three fingers of benediction on the right hand, and finally tossed in the Tiber.

The military campaign of Charles V of Spain against Clement VII was backed by the bottomless coffers of Europe’s greatest banking house, the Fuggers.

In these pages, popes lie, steal, cheat, fornicate, torture, and die grisly deaths. But, writes Chamberlin, the spiritual capacity of each remained unaffected by his temporal activities since, according to Church teachings, “the waters of divine grace continued to pass through him unaffected by the possible foulness of the conduit.”

Chamberlin ends with the sack of Rome in May 1527, at the hands of the enemies of the last Medici pope, and just before the power and fury of the Church was renewed by the Counter-Reformation and the Inquisition. And we all know how that turned out. ( )