Hey, so real quick, when you picture the Pope, you're probably imagining a kind old man in white

robes, waving from a balcony, blessing things, pigeons, children, the occasional tourist.

What you're probably not picturing is a man who threw a banquet you genuinely cannot describe on

YouTube, or a guy who literally put a dead body on trial. And yet, here we are.

The Catholic Church has held spiritual authority over hundreds of millions of people for nearly

2,000 years, and tucked inside that long, mostly sincere history is a short, absolutely unhinged

highlight reel of men who somehow ended up running the whole operation.

We're talking nepotism, power grabs, family feuds that make the Kardashians look like a book club,

and a level of political scheming that would make a Renaissance playwright weep with joy.

This isn't a hit piece on faith, it's just honest history, and honest history is sometimes

deeply, deeply weird. Tonight we're walking through some of the most remarkable, and let's say

morally creative, figures to ever wear the papal tiara. Before we dive in, drop a comment right now.

Where are you watching from? What time is it there?

I want to know if someone in Tokyo is learning about a medieval pope at 3am, respect, by the way.

Let's get into it. Before we get to the individuals, the genuinely spectacular cast of

characters waiting in the chapters ahead, we need to spend some time with the world

they were born into, because none of what you're about to hear makes any sense without understanding

what the papacy actually was in the 9th and 10th centuries, and what it was, to put it

diplomatically, was not great. We have a tendency to imagine the medieval Catholic Church as a monolithic,

all-powerful institution, stone walls, solemn

chants, unquestioned authority radiating outward from Rome like a divine signal tower.

That image isn't entirely wrong, but it belongs mostly to a later period.

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