The Rule of the Harlots

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And upon her forehead [was] a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

There once was a nation run by prostitutes!

The so-called “Rule of the Harlots” was a period that took place during the first half of the tenth century. It began with the installation of Pope Sergius III in A.D. 904. This strange period in the history of the Papacy lasted for sixty years, ending only with the death of Pope John XII in 964.

“The Rule of the Harlots”, sometimes called a pornocracy, was a nation of prostitutes and a government dominated by them. It all revolved around a Roman woman called Marozia or Mariuccia, who was given the title of senatrix and patricia of Rome by Pope John X. Up until that point, there were no women in the Roman senate. Marozia was teh daughter of the Roman consul Theophylact, Count of Tusculum and of Theodora, a real mover and shaker in Rome, a woman charecterized later by historians as a “shameless whore”. By many lights, it was Theodora herself who really controlled both the city of Rome and the Papacy.

Throughout the “rule of the Harlots”, Pope John Xii(955-963), who was a grandson of Marozia, was guilty of every lewd crime. He violated widows and virgins, took up with his father’s mistress, and turned the Papal Palace into a brothel. Pope John XII met his end when he was killed while caught in the act of adultery by the woman’s enraged husband.

source: 101 things you didn’t know about sex
Eve Marx
Adams Media, 2009
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