Saturday, November 24, 2007

Some Interesting Pope Trivia

While browsing the Wikipedia, I came across this fascinating piece of trivia:

Popes who died during sex

Catholic Popes who were said to have died during sex: Pope Leo VII (936–939) died of a heart attack, Pope John XII (955–964) was bludgeoned to death by the husband of the woman he was with at the time, Pope John XIII (965–972) was also murdered by a jealous husband.


Fascinating indeed.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the kind of thing that makes me LOVE Wikipedia.

Kate said...

That's fascinating!

mister anchovy said...

I hate when that happens

running42k said...

It gives them something to confess.

tweetey30 said...

Um I could have this all wrong but I thought Popes werent allowed to have sex..

zydeco fish said...

Tweetey: Celibate used to mean not married, as far as I understand it. Anyway, as I have often said, the Priesthood should not be restricted to men, and, as priests (or the pope, for that matter), they should be permitted to marry a person of whatever sex they choose.

Anonymous said...

You know Wikipedia is such a wealth of knowledge... I guess that's kind of the point, no?

zydeco fish said...

Some complain that the Wikipedia has many errors, but, even if that is true, I think it's an impressive undertaking. Information should be free. I hear that the Britannica has mistakes too.

Kate said...

I think that keeping open will eventually lead to less mistakes because everyone can challenge the information.

And yes, I bet lots of other sites have mistakes. And as a teacher, free is very, very good. I can't afford to pay for every good site. Even if I can't believe everything on wikipedia, it's always a good place to start.

tweetey30 said...

Oh Ok. Thanks for the explanation.

tshsmom said...

Cool!
I'll have to tell my daughter about these. She has a whole collection of priest no-no's.

Unknown said...

I think it's one thing to use Wikipedia to cite sources for papers, essays, homework assignments, and another thing to use it for general reference and as a jumping off point to other sites. Not to mention you can find things on Wikipedia that you won't find anywhere else.

Also: I just bought 5 People Who Died During Sex and 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists by Karl Shaw, and he mentions Pope John XII

"Known as John "the bad," the pope was bludgeoned to death with a hammer by an irate husband who caught HIs Holiness in bed with his wife. When news of the death reached Rome, it was noted that Pope John was lucky to have died in bed (even if it wasn't his own).

Now, Shaw gets a lot of other 'facts' in the book wrong, so I don't know how accurate that description is, but I still got a kick out of it.

I came here via Tweetey, by the way.
:P

zydeco fish said...

Courtney,

That sounds like a fascinating book. I might order it for our library :-)