Selling licenses for keeping mistresses
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This book emphasizes on the attitude of the popes towards the sex lives of their priests. Many popes were concerned with the celibacy of their priests and forbade marriage for priests. However, they used to sell them licenses for keeping mistresses. Usually, they were prepared to tolerate priests who kept incestuous relations with female relatives or raped women in the church. "When a woman fainted during confession and the priest seized the opportunity to rape her, the Inquisition found that this, technically, was not a case of soliciting." The pope's only concern was that priests would defile the sacrament when handling it afterwards.
The passages about the sex lives of the popes themselves are mainly based on hearsay. Cawthorne accuses several popes of incest with either their sisters or bastard daughters, like pope Alexander VI Borgia, who retired with his daughter to "an interior room and remained locked up together for more than an hour". In secret she gave birth to a baby that was hidden, but that doesn't prove that her father was the father. Many other popes seem to have had preferences for young boys, prostitutes or sex-and-food orgies in general.
Despite many unproven accusations, the book clearly shows that many popes were mainly concerned with their own pleasures and did not give a damn about Christian values. Anyway, the book is good reading stuff.
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