This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A Production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

What would you consider to be a good legacy? For all of human history, people have wondered this.

Is it an estate to leave to your children, grandchildren, and so on? Is it a name that your descendants can be proud of? Is it a statue or a monument?

You don't have to be a king or a head of state to have this kind of thought.

Death is certain, so we all hope that some part of us can live on, if not through our family

or our work, then through the ways in which we are remembered by our communities.

Or to quote the great Bruce Lee, the key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

But when you achieve a position of great influence, this question is practically decided for you.

Whether you do good or great evil, you will always appear on some list of royalty or prime minister or

generals. A title for better or worse is a guarantee that you are an exceptional person. If you go to

Rome and you visit the papal basilica of St. Paul outside of the walls, you will see a ring of mosaic

portraits lining the walls. Each of these shows, in order, the line of

popes leading back to the early 400s. It's an impressive piece of work, but I would draw

your attention to one of these portraits, the Pope between Benedict the 6th and Benedict

the 7th. He's known as Pope Donis II, and he reigned sometime in the 970s.

And this was, to put it mildly, a pretty chaotic time for papal history.

All throughout the Middle Ages, conflict within the Christian faith led to several so-called

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