The popes played a vicious game of power and pleasure. No crime was too diabolical for these heirs of St Peter. In the early tenth century, the papacy became dominated by one aristocratic family, the debauched and merciless House of Theophylact. The scurrilous chronicler of their rise to power was Bishop Liudprand of Cremona. Liudprand doesn't exactly hold back, especially with the women of the family, who he described, without exception, as a tribe of sex-mad megalomaniacs. He says Count Theophylact's wife Theodora was a "shameless harlot", and that her two daughters were, if anything, "faster in the exercise of Venus". The most infamous was Marozia. A wily politician and a murderous man-eater, Marozia must have been as gorgeously depraved as she was dynastically effective. She seduced or married an entire apostolic succession of popes and kings, and managed to dominate Rome for years. Drawn deeper into the mire, Rome's once-mighty popes became pawns in the cesspit of local politics.


教皇玩弄权势，这是一场死亡游戏而他们却乐在其中。彼时这些圣彼得的继承人变成了魔鬼，他们的罪行令人发指。在十世纪早期，教皇的职权为圣保禄世家所掌控。圣保禄世家以生活糜烂、手段残忍而著称。克雷莫纳主教利乌普特兰德，是他将圣保禄家族变得兴旺发达，权势熏天。而这位主教却是一个卑鄙无耻的小人。他从来不是什么清心寡欲，他和各种女人有染，尤其是自己家族的女眷。而圣保禄家族的女眷也不守妇道，她们被描述为为性生活所疯狂的女人。教主利乌普特兰德认为利乌普特兰德伯爵的夫人西奥多拉是“不知廉耻的妓女”，而她的两个女儿，若是说她们和母亲有什么不同的话，那就是她们在爱情“动作”中更“快”。圣保禄家族中臭名昭著的是马洛吉亚，她是一个满脑子阴谋诡计的政客，一个凶残的食人者，她是在掌控了帝国实权的荣光中堕落的。她和所有的教皇继承人、皇位继承人有染。多年来她通过床笫间事来把持罗马帝国的权力。而教皇，罗马昔日的辉煌，却深陷本国政治的臭泥潭，成为权利角逐的棋子。