You're Dead to Me - Early Medieval Papacy

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Greg Jenner is joined by guests Prof Brett Whalen and comedian Alison Spittle in 9th-century Rome to explore the early medieval papacy. As the political heart of the papacy is plunged into chaos, we step into a world consumed by debauchery and a thirst for power and hear about perhaps the most unhinged courtroom trial of all time.Research by Jessica Honey Written by Emma Nagouse, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Project Management: Isla Matthews Audio Producer: Steve HankeyYou’re Dead To Me is a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster and today we are donning our fanciest vestments and going on pilgrimage to 9th century Rome to learn all about the early medieval papacy,

when the political heart of the Catholic Church was plunged into such chaos that historians have called it the Papal Dark Ages. And that's not even the meanest thing they've said. And to help me shed some light on this tantalisingly tumultuous time, I am joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, he's a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he works on Christian intellectual and cultural history during the Middle Ages. He has published on the Crusades, apocalypticism and pilgrimage. And luckily for us, he literally wrote the book on the medieval papacy. It's Professor Brett Whelan. Welcome,

Brett. Thank you so much for having me. And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, writer, radio producer and actress. You might have seen her hilarious stand-up shows or seen her sitcom Nowhere Fast. Maybe you've heard her on the Guilty Feminist podcast or her BBC show Wheel of Misfortune. She's podding fabulous. It's Alison Spittel. Welcome, Alison. Hello. I'm so excited about being here. And what a subject, first of all. The Papal Dark Ages sounds like an entry for Finland in Eurovision. It's an incredible band I would love to see. Me too, absolutely.

Alison, this is your debut performance on the show, which means I have to contractually ask you the basic question. Do you like history? Did you like it at school? I did. I loved history. I had a great history teacher. So yeah, I've always been very interested in history. Today we're doing medieval history. Yes, I know. It's quite far back and it's quite specific as well.

And I know you were raised Catholic, you're comfortable with the history of Catholicism, but perhaps less so with medieval papacy, the political papacy. Do you know anything about it? No, I know nothing about it. Being former Catholic, I was very big into saints. For me, popes are administration people. Saints for me were like the superheroes and popes were like the guys in the FBI supporting them quietly. So for medieval popes as well, it's interesting because we have democracy in a way in Catholicism with this voting and the colour of smoke and stuff

like that. And I would love to know how that came about. There must have been some absolute skullduggery, I'd say. I don't know. I don't want to predict, but I want drama. Do you know what I mean? I want this to be a mini series on an American network TV show with Jeremy Irons in it or something like that. I can promise you today, there's a lot of drama. This is an extraordinary story and some serious shenanigans happening. So, what do you know? That brings us on to the first segment of the podcast called the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what our listener might know about today's subject.

I'm guessing you know what the Pope is, you know where the Vatican is, but the power struggles of the papacy a thousand years ago, yeah, that's not going to register, is it really? In terms of pop culture, or rather, I guess, in terms of Pope culture, there aren't loads of TV shows or films I can point to. I mean, there's the sort of Dan Brown, Angels and Demons. If you have to read that or watch that, I'm so sorry. There's Jude Law and the Young Pope. There are some TV series that sort of bounce around in this era, things like The Last Kingdom, but that's all about kings and princes and warriors, not popes.

So I reckon the so-called papal dark ages is pretty dark and dingy for non-specialists, which is a shame because it was extremely chaotic and debauched and corrupt to the point that some historians have even dubbed it the Pornocracy. What? Yeah, the Pornocracy, Alison. Wait, wait, wait. Your accent is lovely. Are we talking P-O-R-N?

We are talking P-O-R-N, yeah. My ears refuse to believe. I thought it was like porn. No, not porn as in chess piece, Pornocracy as in what you find on the internet. So we're going to find out, is that name justified? So let's crack on. First of all, papal history is all about popes. And the popes, of course, are the Bishop of Rome, head of their worldwide Catholic Church, the Supreme Pontiff.

They have more names than the Mother of Dragons. So Alison, how many popes have there been since the very beginning, do you think? Oh, OK. So people lived for a short time before i'm gonna go for 10 000 popes like that's another name of a band that i would love that does sound like the name of a band they're like so solid crew we don't know how many people are in them it's innumerable but no i'm i don't know that's 2 000 Jesus. OK, let's go for 916. Hey, it's a very generous guess. The Vatican says 266 popes.

That's less people that's been on RuPaul's Drag Race. There are more RuPaul's Drag Girls than there are popes. I'm happy with that. Brett, in terms of setting the papal stage, was St. Peter the first pope or is it a political office constituted after his death? Where do we start papal history? I mean, it sort of depends on where you look at it. You know, on one level, the pope is just the bishop of Rome. He's the leader of the local church in the city. And there were certainly Christians in Rome back in the first century, back in the days of St. Peter.

And they presumably had a bishop pretty early on. And there were Christians with bishops spreading all around the Roman Empire. All those bishops were sometimes called popes, by the way, papa in Latin. But what's going on different in Rome is the fact that the idea that Jesus Christ, in the Gospel of Matthew 1618, made the apostle Peter his kind of deputy, right? He was the rock that Jesus founded the church on, and he gave him the keys to the kingdom Peter his kind of deputy, right? He was the rock that Jesus founded the church on, and he gave him the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And then according to tradition, Peter went to Rome and actually founded the church there and handed down that power to the next bishop, his successor, according to some of the lists, named Linus. It gets passed down, this power,

down through the ages, right? All the way up to Francis nowadays. So by the second, third centuries, what you start to see are bishops like Victor, he's Pope around the year 199, weighing in on controversies in the church. There was a big controversy about the correct way to date Easter at the time. And they start to claim a power that isn't just about being the Bishop of Rome, but as a universal power over the entire church. So, you know, four or 500 years after the time of St. Peter, you start to see the title of Pope being reserved for not all bishops, but just the Bishop of Rome. And that's when he's really becoming like the Pope. That's fascinating. I didn't know that. No one was keeping a list of

Popes in the first, second century. And I think in the third and fourth century, people kind of retroactively made these nice, tidy lists. So I think we can be, you know, appropriately suspicious of the exact number of popes. And Alison, do you know why the papacy is based in Rome? It's not just the gelato. It only occurred to me today, where does the term Roman Catholic come from? Tell me why. I'm trying to think of something funny, but the curiosity has overtaken my brain. St. Peter's critical here. And also St. Paul, you get two for the price of one here, because there's a tradition that St. Paul also went to Rome. It's the capital of the Roman Empire. It's the heart of the Roman world. And so the idea that these two really important apostles went there and they founded the church there, I think, you know,

I guess nowadays we call it an origin story, right? The tomb of St. Peter's supposed to be under the St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City. So even if it's really murky, you really get this well-established idea that the connection of Peter to Rome, it's the fundamental basis of where the Pope's power and authority comes from. So that is the origin story, as you said, which is a lovely phrase. But today we're looking at the early medieval European situation. So we're scrolling forward into the sort of 800s and 900s. We've got this massively important religious and political institution, but it descends into absolute infamy. The papal dark ages is the nice way of describing what happens. So I want to jump to Christmas Day in the year 800, Alison, when famously, what happens?

They have a lovely Christmas dinner using something that isn't a turkey because they were in America at the time. Good knowledge. Yeah thank you. So a really big chicken they're just stuffing a really big chicken full of packs so because I'm sure that was there at that time. It is the coronation of a fella by the name of Charlemagne. You heard of Charlemagne Alison? No I know the Katie Lang song though that's about it. Do you want to sing it for us? No, it's fine. Brett, I mean, I'm half French. So growing up, Charlemagne is a big name in my household. So who is he? What's the Holy Roman Empire? And why are we starting our story here? Yeah, there's a building in Brussels, part of the European Union. It's called the Charlemagne Building, right? And there's this kind of idea that he was the father of Europe, which I wouldn't

go that far. But still, Charlemagne is a Frankish ruler, one of these kingdoms that comes about after the so-called fall of the Roman Empire. He's a member of what becomes known as the Carolingian dynasty and ruling over this vast part of Europe, include modern day France, parts of Germany, parts of Northern Italy. It's really the biggest empire since the Roman Empire. And it's the Pope, Leo III, that crowned Charlemagne on Christmas Day in Rome. This is one of these iconic moments, right? The historians never get sick of talking about that the Roman Empire is back. And it raises some really interesting questions for the papacy and for Charlemagne, right? The Pope puts the crown on his head and makes him emperor. Does that mean that the Pope is giving him his imperial power? And there's some gritty stuff going on behind the pageantry, right?

Leo is actually on the outs with these aristocratic families in Rome. He apparently almost gets blinded and is driven out of the city. And in 799, he actually goes and meets up with Charlemagne, who helps him come back and get control in Rome. And then a month later, Leo crowns him as emperor. So Leo wasn't exactly like in a position of strength when he puts that crown on Charlemagne's head. It sounds like he's having to ask for help from the emperor rather than the emperor having to ask for help from the pope. So the power dynamic

there maybe is the pope is the weaker one. When you say crowned, did they have a crown or was it like a fancy hat back in the day? Because popes have fancy hats. Popes have the tiara, which is based on the crown of the Roman emperors, actually. The style of the Roman emperors really gets adopted into a lot of the papal regalia. But Charlemagne had a real crown. He didn't have a funny hat. It was a proper crown for a proper Roman emperor. This friendship between them has only just blossomed because there's been some passive-aggressive, well, I was going to say letters and mosaics.

But what is a passive aggressive mosaic, Brett? Yeah, there's a long backstory where Charlemagne's grandfather and his father Pippin were involved with the Pope. Pippin? Yeah, Pippin or Pepin, depending. Wow. So Charlemagne does exchange these letters with Popes. And there's one actually that I really enjoy. It's in 796. And it's one actually that I really enjoy. It's in 796.

And it's right after Leo III become pope. And Charlemagne sends him a letter that basically makes it pretty clear, like, I'm the king. I'm the one who's in charge of defending the church. And your job basically is to pray for me. That's what you need to do. The mosaic is one of my favorite things of this whole time period. In 798 in Rome, in the Lateran, it's the papal headquarters, Leo had this mosaic made. It shows in the center St. Peter, and then on his right, you see Pope Leo kneeling, and he's

receiving his pallium, which is this vestment that symbolizes a bishop's power. He's getting that from Peter. Charlemagne is on the left, and he's receiving this banner that symbolizes his kind of worldly military power. And it says in the inscription, Peter gives life to the Pope and victory to the king. But if you look at this, and I always wonder, like, in 799 or Christmas, you know, 800, did Charlemagne walk by and see this mosaic? And Peter's at the center of the mosaic, right? And so the suggestion here is that true power derives from God, from Jesus, down through Peter. So there is this kind of idea here that ultimately the Pope's authority

is superior to that of the emperor. I love the idea of a passive-aggressive mosaic tastefully left in the corner for you to walk past. So it's all a bit Mean Girls, but then obviously Charlemagne switches into hero mode, rescues him from the playground bullies, and Leo crowns Charlemagne, and that's our famous event, Christmas Day 800. Are they sort of, you know, sick as thieves, good friends from this point? Yeah, happily ever after. I mean, no, it's interesting. Charlemagne never goes back to Rome after the coronation. Oh, really? He saw the mosaic.

No, he never goes back. Before he dies, he crowns his son, Louis, co-emperor, and Charlemagne crowns Louis. Eventually, Louis goes andperor, and Charlemagne crowns Louis. Eventually, Louis goes and gets his crown from the Pope, too. But still, you get this idea that Charlemagne, maybe he was uncomfortable with the idea of getting his crown from the Pope. And generally speaking, after Charlemagne dies, things do start to go downhill for the Carolingian Empire. Louis the Pious has three sons who rebel against him. You start to see all these new pressures in medieval Europe, invasions from the outside. This is the era of the Vikings, for example, and kind of lesser known than the Viking raids,

but you see these raids in the Mediterranean. They're called Saracens, which is a pejorative word in medieval sources for Muslims. I can just call them like North African pirates. They're raiding in southern France and Spain, and even in Italy in August 846, some of these pirates sail up the Tiber and actually attack Rome. They loot the city and according to some of these chronicles, actually steal the altar

above St. Peter's burial site. The Carolingian rulers at that point, they're dealing with all their civil war and their Vikings and they're not there to help protect Rome. Things aren't going great when you've got pirates stealing one of the most holy objects in the middle of Christendom and carting it off. Yeah, and they've probably melted it down for pirates. It's probably fixed someone's wheel. So it's a bit chaotic. I know the Pope at the time in 879, Pope John VIII said that Rome was under attack by pagans as well as by wicked Christians,

who I'm guessing are not the best kind of Christians. So I guess the papacy feels like it's under siege from everyone now. There's pirates, there's pagans, there's bad Christians. Wicked Christians sounds like another band, actually. But we do eventually, in 881, we get Emperor Charles III showing up to try and defend the papacy. It's basically a sequel. So you've got the Pope crowning another emperor. This Pope is called John VIII. What do you think happens to him pretty soon after, Alison?

He retires after a good job well done. Oh. Has a rotisserie chicken and reflects on life. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Yeah. Brett, was Alison close with her rotisserie chicken retirement? Well, I mean, if you consider having your head bashed in with a hammer a form of retirement, it might be. That's going to mess up a picnic, Brett.

That's really going to mess up a picnic. Some of these are stories of the grain of salt, but there's the Annals of Fulda. They're one of these medieval chronicles, right? And it says something to the effect of, like, John by name was poisoned by his relatives and then struck with a hammer until his skull was bashed in and died. Wow. That's an extreme game of Cluedo, isn't it? Poisoned by your relatives and then hammered to death. I mean, I have felt like I've been poisoned after getting hammered quite a few times.

So we have here a pope being bludgeoned to death with a hammer, which is a horrific death. And, I mean, Leo got his eyes nearly plucked out, but now we have a pope Pope being bludgeoned to death with a hammer, which is a horrific death. And I mean, Leo got his eyes nearly plucked out. But now we have a Pope who's been murdered. It's really ramping up, Alison. This sounds like a dangerous job. This sounds like the Pope should ring up a hotline and go, have you been bludgeoned by a workmate? Why not call no wind, no fee?

It is a dangerous job, I think. And we get the kind of fizzling out of the Carolingian Empire. Charles III dies and the empire just splinters into small kingdoms. Popes are now vulnerable to violence. But I suppose I have to ask a slightly more straightforward question, Brett. I mean, the papacy is a political office. I loved what Alison said in terms of it being a bunch of bureaucrats, but also the day-to-day running of the church in terms of the souls of tens of millions of Christians, in terms of monasteries, in terms of paperwork, that's all still happening, right?

Yeah. And I agree. Alison, I thought your description of the popes as administrators was actually spot on. Even if some monasteries are getting plundered by Vikings, there's still pilgrims going to Rome. The pope is seen as the final court of appeals in the church. There's an important point there, actually, that people all around medieval Europe, when it's kind of to their advantage, will make appeals to the Pope and get a papal judgment in their favor. And a lot of it does have to do with, yeah, just like arguing over properties and church offices.

And so, yeah, there's all this kind of mundane business. But there's a sense of disruption going on, too. They had this chronicle, it's called the Book of Popes. Amazing name. Isn't it? Dan Brown, I feel, would have written that. The Book of Popes. I think that runs from about the 6th to the 9th century, and it gives these little mini papal biographies. But after the 9th century, it kind of trails off. No one writes another

papal biography for like 100 years. So for 300 years, they've done the papal biographies and then they get to the crisis and they're like, you know what, we haven't got time. We haven't got time. There's another pope in. So the popes are like the sugar babes in the way that like the middle sugar babes are not really talked about that much. It's just Siobhan. Justice for Amel, that's what I say. I know. I mean, the Book of Popes is a

lovely name. Can you think of a better one, Alison? It's a bit like Popeymon in a way, you know what I mean? Popeymon is good. I choose you, Linus. Gotta collect them all. Exactly, exactly. Okay, we reached the late 800s and we're getting to the juicy stuff now, Alison. I promised you scandal and drama. What? We've had heads caved in, nearly blinded, and now you're giving me the juice. How? That was the sort of appetizer. Teaser.

We're now the main meal. So now we're into the papal dark ages. Okay. And historians, we don't like to use the phrase dark ages for medieval eras, but the papal dark ages is a phrase that's sort of commonly used by historians to talk about this period where politically speaking, the papacy is weak and vulnerable and chaotic. And I know what you're thinking, Alison, we've had the bludgeonings already, but things do get really wild now because now we have to talk about formosis. Alison, you ever heard of formosis? I've never heard of formosis before. Is it a type of yogurt? Alison, you ever heard of Formosus? I've never heard of Formosus before.

Is it a type of yoghurt? It sounds like it would keep my blood pressure down. Formosus in Latin means handsome. Do we get a handsome pope? You get a handsome pope. The Jude Law Pope. The young pope. Young pope.

He is handsome, undeniably. He's handsome for a bit and then it goes a bit wrong. Brett, can you tell us about Pope Formosus and the notorious thing that happens to him? Formosus is a bishop. He's the bishop of Porto, which is just outside Rome. The Pope Nicholas I sends him up to Bulgaria on a mission to convert the Bulgarians. And he does a good job. He's a successful missionary.

Later on, though, he gets tangled up again in these kind of local nasty Roman politics. He's deposed at one point by Pope John VIII, the guy who later gets his head bashed in with a hammer. Whoa. Yeah, he's excommunicated. He's sort of cast out. John accuses him actually of like conspiring with the Bulgarian king against the papacy. He gets accused of basically being like a traitor to the Carolingian rulers. He gets accused of basically being like a traitor to the Carolingian rulers. But, you know, after John VIII dies, all of this gets kind of smoothed over.

Formosus gets reinstated as a bishop. And eventually he actually manages to become pope himself. This is in 891. He's now holding the top spot in the church. But, again, he gets caught up in this political infighting, including this question of who's going to be the next king of Italy. He dies, apparently of natural causes, in 896. There's a pope right after him, Boniface VI, but he's only pope for like 15 days, so we don't really need to worry about him.

The pope after that, Stephen VI, is not a fan of Formosus. And some things happen from there that are a bit shocking some things happen is a very very kind way of describing what is about to happen alison in 897 we get the most unhinged courtroom drama you can possibly imagine how do you think pope stephen the sixth continues his beef with pope for moses who by this point is dead. This is like Varney versus Rudy. They're going to dig him up, aren't they? Good job. Is this what's going to happen?

I knew, okay, okay, cool, cool, cool. Oh, wow. I mean, you've got to have a special type of spite to dig as well. You know, what did he do? Okay, tell me, tell me, tell me. Pope Stephen VI orders the exhumation of the corpse of Formosus, and he is put on trial. So it is

called... It is called the Cadaver Synod, and Brett, do you want to give us the lurid details? This is amazing. This is amazing. How do you try a rotting corpse? Weekend at Bernie's just popped into my head.

So there's this great painting by Jean-Paul Laurent. It's from 1870. It's not medieval at all, but it's one of these great, I think one of the more famous representations of the cadaver synod. So Formosius' rotting body is after nine months in the tomb. He was dug up. He's dressed up in the full papal regalia. He's propped up on the throne and his body is put on trial.

Pope Stephen VI is there leveling the charges against him and kind of interrogating him. And supposedly there was a deacon off to the side or behind him acting like a ventriloquist. No! Yeah, speaking for Hermosius. Oh, I'd love to see that on Britain's Got Talent. So he put his hand into the back of the head. I don't know if he literally like shoved his hand in and moved his jaw. That would be really a bridge too far.

Okay. There's definitely someone giving answers on behalf of Formosus, who is a rotting shell of a man. But anyway, Alison, that is the scene. So, I mean, can you imagine that as a TV drama now? How does the defendant plead? Dead, Your Honour. Dead. I can't see it? Dead, Your Honour. Dead.

I can't see it being like Ali McBeal. Everyone was quite good looking in Ali McBeal and there was romances there. For most, this meant handsome, Alison. He was the best looking corpse ever put on trial, I am confident. I don't care how good looking you are. Seven months in a tomb.

Nine months in a tomb. Yeah, nine months. Nine months. Oh my God. Because those two months make all the difference. Men are supposed to age like wine, aren't they? Especially in a tomb. You got that salt and pepper look. Alison, you mentioned saints before. There are these stories in the Middle Ages that you would open up a saint's tomb, you know, a year later and their body would be absolutely uncorrupted and smell like sweet oils and fragrant flowers as a sign of their sanctity. I don't think that was the

case with Fort Moses. There's nothing Catholics loved more than corpses that didn't decompose. Yeah. So Stephen is yelling his questions. The deacon is doing the corpse ventriloquism. The corpse is found guilty, obviously, of course he is, because they're not going to be like, oh, he got off on a technicality. Clearly they're finding him guilty. What do you think his posthumous punishment is? Please say it's death again. Please. It has to be.

This is double death. Death squared. It can't be nine months on community service. He's not going to be able to sweep up. He's a corpse. It has to be death. It's a sort of reputational sweep up. He's a corpse. It has to be death. It's a sort of reputational death. So he was hashtag cancelled.

Oh no. All of his acts as Pope were nullified. He was stripped of his papal vestments that they put on him. Remember those robes they put on him when they took him off again, ceremonially. They snapped off his three fingers he had used to bless people. Whoa.

And then they reburied him in a commoner's grave. And Stephen said it was because Formosus had committed perjury, coveting the papacy, violating the laws of the church. So those are the sort of crimes he's accused of. This is crazy that they are holding the Pope to account. When you're supposed to be, you were the voice of God, isn't it? God speaks to you.

So because we're hearing about him now, was there like a retrospective on this? Is it from Brosea? From Moses? Was there kind of like a renaissance for him? Because why do we know so much about him? Great question. Thinking like a historian, Alison, very nice. He's reburied in a commoner's grave and then the chaos is not over yet, is it, Brett? Yeah, we've been talking about saints, right, and opening up tombs. Pope Stephen seems to get concerned that some of Formosa's supporters might actually dig up the body and kind of turn it into like a martyr or almost like a saint, right? Get the relics and turn those into a focal point for devotion. Stephen orders the body to be dug up again. And according to some of these

chronicles, he gets thrown in the Tiber. The cult of relics was a really big deal in the Middle Ages, and it still is now in Catholicism. I mean, I visited St. Valentine's Bones. There's an incredible thing in Dublin where you can look at like wish books. And I'm no longer Catholic. Love the iconography. I won't lie. Love sitting in a church.

But like, yeah, this is so interesting to me. Sorry, I totally interrupted you there. No, no, no. With my enthusiasm, Brett. Continue, continue, continue. No, you're spot on. And you're the one who first brought up saints at the beginning of the show. That's really helpful to remember that there's this whole kind of culture around dead bodies in the Middle Ages,

breaking them up into little bits and sending them around and putting them into altars. That's what they do to Formosus, though, that they throw him in the river because they want to make sure that no one gets their hands on his body and turns it into a saintly relic. And yet the bones do not wash away. Do you know what happens to them? Oh, OK. OK. Does this dude become a saint?

And one of these miracles is what happens to his bones? I think I'm on the right path. You're hopeful. I can see the enthusiasm in your face. I know know i'm so excited okay did he end up in like a kfc family bucket where do these bones end up so the story goes brett well there's two stories actually aren't there you mean the sort of the monk versus the fisherman type yeah situation here he doesn't become a saint but uh okay there are stories here that a monk or other stories, it's like a fisherman who's in the Tiber. Imagine that, you're like fishing in the Tiber.

You know, you poke the Pope's corpse. Wow, where'd that come from? It's the Pope. And the body does get rediscovered, right? And some sympathetic supporters of Formosius get their hands on it. To do it, I think Stephen was probably worried about. There's this one priest, actually, yeah, this other story, Auxilius of Naples is this guy. He's writing at the time, he says there was a thunderstorm. So this is where maybe God was getting involved and it caused the Tiber to rise up. And at that point, the body was discovered. According to another story, this monk had a prophetic dream.

Of course. Yeah, the ghost of Formosius told them that. These are signs that Formosius was wrongly, I think, convicted, right? Clearly. And Cogzilius, by the way, is one of these priests who was ordained, made into a priest by, guess who? By Formosius. So I think he has his own vested interest in wanting to be team Formosius. And when Formosius' acts are all nullified, that would send these kind of ripples through the whole church if you just nullified everything a pope did. And so someone like Auxilius, I think, probably had his own reasons for wanting to rehabilitate Pope Formosius.

So I guess Stephen has failed in his quest. He buried him, then threw him in the river, and both times it's gone wrong. What do you think happens to Pope Stephen VI, Alison? Do you think it all ends very nicely for him? Does he get tried when he's dead? Sweet justice. He doesn't get tried in a court of law, but he gets his comeuppance, doesn't he, Brett? And it's a pretty violent comeuppance. Yeah, I mean, so people like Auxilius of Naples have it out for Stephen after this all goes down, and he gets pushed out of power not too long after. And he's stripped of his vestments.

He's demoted to being a monk, kind of on a house monastic arrest. And he's eventually strangled to death. There's so much bloodlust for these popes. Alison, your mouth is wide, is agape with horror and shock. And I am aghast. I'm from Ireland. They love popes there. If you held up a sign saying, I don't love the pope,

you'd be, never mind caving one's head in. This is absolute blasphemy. We've had a pope already hammered to death. We've had a pope strangled to death. We've had one put on trial after death. There's more to come, Alison. We are not done. Oh my gosh.

So thank you for that, Brett. That's an excellent summary of the cadaver synod and its consequences. So karmic justice for Stephen. Then we get the new guy, Pope Romanus. Now he's got a good name. It's Rome. He's called Romanus. I've got a good feeling about him.

Does he do well? I'm sorry. Yeah, he gets overthrown pretty quickly and trundled off to a monastery and dies four months later. What of? We think maybe poisoned. But I've got a really strong feeling that Pope Theodore II, the best of the chipmunks, he's going to nail this. How long does he last, Alison? Let's go two years.

Three weeks. No! Yeah. When I say three weeks, that's the generous version of the story, because the other story is that he dies within 12 days. So Theodore II has not gone great. No. He's murdered by foul play.

But Brett, he is still linked to the cadaver synod. He's still linked to Formosus, isn't he, Theodore? Yeah, I mean, already Romanus had already started this process of actually annulling Stephen VI's acts, right, and kind of rehabilitating Formosius. Romanus held a synod reinstating Formosius and condemning Stephen. And then, yeah, Theodore keeps this process going. It's interesting, right? There's like multiple synods by multiple popes after condemning Stephen VI's actions and overturning the verdict of the cadaver synod. So putting a corpse on trial, it wasn't really a winning move in the long run.

No, it makes you look petty, I have to say. It's really petty. Yeah. Okay, so we have Theodore dies after only three weeks maximum. He's then replaced by another pope. Things are unfortunately not massively improving allison we asked you at the beginning to guess how many popes there were in total i'm now going to ask you to guess how many popes were there in the eight years between 896 and 904 i'm gonna go for 18 i love the way you embrace the chaos it was nine nine popes in eight years. Which is still pretty bad.

But not all of those did one year. Some of those were doing just a few months. There were some caretaker popes involved in this. Some definite caretaker popes, some sort of custodial. You sit there and try not to die. Oh, he's dead. He's a safe pair of hands. Oh, no.

These popes being elected, you know, inverted commas, but there's actually an awful lot of sort of sinister underhand politics happening here. We have some very powerful families with wonderful names, the Theophylacti, the Crescentii and the Tusculani. Great family names. They are the kind of medieval mafia mob bosses of papal politics, aren't they? You can't understand what's happening without really thinking about these powerful Roman families. politics, aren't they? You can't understand what's happening without really thinking about these powerful Roman families. And so they're putting their own on the throne. And then within a few months or a year, that Pope is bumped off, murdered, deposed. So many Popes were killed or deposed. We don't even have time to list them, Alison. That's how many it was.

So we're going to focus instead on one of them, who is a particular baddie, the worst of a bad bunch, perhaps. Oh, is he a bad boy? He's a bad boy. He's like the J out of five, like has a little bit of an eyebrow piercing. You're loving your boy band and girl band references today. I really am. He's a bad boy. He's called Pope John XII. And according to the not entirely reliable book called The History of Emperor Otto, which is our source for this, Pope John XII was accused of numerous crimes. So I'm going to ask you a little mini quiz here alison which of these crimes did he not do celebrated mass without taking communion oh go hunting publicly sleeping with several widows a widow's niece and his own father's mistress killing a

cardinal subdeacon by amputating his genitals invoking the help of pagan gods jupiter and venus and various demons to help him while gambling at dice. Which of those do you not think he was accused of? Oh my gosh. I mean, I do know, like, I've played dice before. I've called out a few favours. From demons? Some demons, yeah.

OK, I'm going to go for a mass without communion. Was that the one he wasn't accused of? It's a good guess. I'm afraid we tricked you, actually. All of them were true. What? He was accused of doing all of these. That's not all of the list of crimes, supposedly.

This sounds like a Quentin Tarantino film. Well, this is sort of Kill Bill 1 and 2 here because I've got a sequel. So you've got ordaining a deacon in a horse's stable, profiting financially from the ordination of bishops, turning the Holy Lateran Palace into a house of ill repute, brackets, a brothel. A brothel.

Blinding his spiritual advisor who then died from his wounds, committing arson, drinking wine while proclaiming a love for the devil, wearing a sword, helmet and breastplate, not celebrating the matins properly, nor protecting himself with the sign of the cross. These are all things he was accused of doing. Arson, murder, talking to devils and demons, sleeping with various women. I mean, it's extraordinary stuff.

But Brett, very quickly, why is hunting in public in this list of crimes? I think the problem there is that that's what lay people do. Dukes and counts and princes and kings, not members of the clergy. Same thing with wearing a sword and armor and a helmet. Priests, bishops, and I guess especially the Pope, right, aren't supposed to behave in that kind of worldly fashion. Let's put it that way. It's very interesting to me to turn the church into a place of ill repute to say a brothel. How did they collect their money? Was it like collection plate?

Like what are we going with here? PayPal. Sorry. Classic pun. No, don't be. You gotta have a good pun. I mean, the one thing I wanted to ask you, Alison, is based on this list of supposed crimes, and as I said, it's a slightly unreliable book the history of the emperor otto but these are the crimes that pope john the 12th are accused of how old do you think he was as a pope oh to get all those crimes in i'm thinking 52 52 okay uh he was 18 so that might be one of the reasons he's gambling and fighting and

sleeping around and uh committing arsonson. He's a teenage boy. Yeah, when I was 18, I used to drink cans and fields. I didn't, you know, cheer us to the devil and create a house of ill repute in a church. But you seem nice, Alison, whereas he clearly is a piece of work. But there we go. We are not done with Pope John XII, our 18-year-old arsonist and renowned shagger. His story, I mean, his story gets complicated. Brett, do you want to talk us through the kind of messy end

of Pope John the Teenage Sex Fiend? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, he lives a long, peaceful life and dies a natural death. Now, I mean, he's, yeah, you know, I mean, it's maybe not going to come as a shock to you at this point in the show, but he actually gets deposed by the next pope, Leo VIII.

Then he actually manages to get back into power and chases Leo out of the city. Whoa. But after that, he winds up dying. And, you know, again, maybe this is too good to be true, but the story is that he died in a married woman's bed. One chronicler says he was killed by a blow to the head from the devil while in the act of carnal relations.

The devil's getting too involved in that threesome there that he gives the Pope the back of the head, you know? That's not good etiquette. Imagine having a threesome with the Pope, the devil. Maybe it was the jealous husband who killed him, you know? So Pope John XII is murdered in bed while having sex with a married woman. And next up, we get Pope Benedict V. I've got a good feeling about him. He lasted barely a month. Oh, never mind. Did he invent hollandaise sauce with English muffins? He loved his eggs. He loved his eggs. Yeah. So the papacy clearly is in dire

straits here, Brett. The obvious question, I suppose, is are various kings and princes and rulers and political decision makers, have they just given up on the papacy? No, I don't. I mean, Rome still, it is still such a touchstone point, right, with its spiritual authority in it. It's still the court of final appeals, as we talked about before.

And popes still have this layering of legitimacy. They're the only ones that can bestow. You can be a really powerful king, but if you want to really have the imperial title and have people recognize it as meaningful, you need a pope to be the one to hand that crown over. So it's like a verified blue checkmark on Twitter. Yeah. Just to give you an example, there are these rulers in Germany in the late 900s, conveniently named Otto I, Otto II, and Otto III.

They become really powerful, powerful enough that they want to reclaim the imperial title. So, yeah, Otto goes down, I think around, it's like 955. He goes down to knock some heads in northern Italy and actually meets with the pope and gets crowned as emperor. The Ottonians, as they're called, the Ottonian dynasty, donates properties to the papacy. Emperor Otto III is interesting. He works really closely with Pope Sylvester II, who was his former tutor, actually. And they seem to have these big, ambitious plans to kind of bring back the glory of the Roman Empire. They both die at 100202 and 10.03,

like within a year of each other. And nothing much comes of this partnership. And it takes another decade or so before another emperor is crowned. But no, they don't. These rulers don't walk away from the appeal of Rome. Okay. But there's clearly a crisis going on. So Alison, if you were the chief exec of the papacy,

we've reached the year 1000 here. So what reforms would you be putting in place to try and protect the brand? Is there celibacy now or is that later on in the... It's theoretically on the books at this point, but not always observed. Let's put it that way. It's a great question. I would get the devil out of the church. That would be my big thing if I was pope.

Step one. Step one. Brett, how do you remove the devil from the church? How do you reform the papacy? After 200 years of absolute crisis, we've reached the early 1000s. Are there going to be reforms coming down the pipeline? The 11th century, I'm certainly not the first medieval historian to talk about, sometimes called like the papal reform movement, where people are trying to sort of clean house your bet. One example of this is in 1049, you get a new pope, Leo IX. He's generally considered the first reformer pope of the 11th century. And he's more or less installed by the emperor at the time,

Henry III. But when he shows up, actually shows up in Rome to take up the papal office, he comes, it's described in some accounts, in the manner of a pilgrim. He's barefoot. He's humble. He tells the people of Rome that if he's not worthy to be their bishop, he'll leave, right? So you actually brought up earlier the puff of smoke in the papal elections. And they don't do the puff of smoke thing in this time period. But in 1059, you see this election decree reform, where they start to come up with these new rules that the cardinal bishops, these really important bishops and priests, the cardinals, the College of Cardinals, we call it now, would elect the pope. And then in the 1070s, you get to Pope Gregory VII. And he left such a stamp on this new spirit

of reform. It's sometimes actually called the Gregorian papacy. And to your point, he wants to get priests to be celibate. He wants priests to stop getting married and passing their church property on to their kids. He wants to get rid of simony, which is the idea that you can buy a bishop or buy a position as an abbot. He wants clergy to stop bearing weapons and do things like hunting we were talking about. Fair. Yeah. And so there really is this idea they want to get the Pope out from under the thumb of lay people, which includes kings and emperors, by the way, and really broadcast the idea that the papacy is the ultimate spiritual head of the Christian world.

And that's how you're going to reform the church, is by the Pope stepping up into this role. So is it given to Pope ultimate power? In some ways, I think when we think of the papacy as being a big deal in the Middle Ages, it's really the 11th century when that starts to happen. But that's interesting, Brett, because the great reforming Pope, Gregory VII, great name. Anyone called Gregory, obviously, is an excellent person. He clashes with an emperor. We've got Henry IV here, our sort of Germanic king ruler emperor, and they have tension, don't they? It's quite a famous moment. That could be a whole other show, the so-called investiture controversy. You see Gregory VII

gets into this big fight with Henry IV over who can invest a bishop, that is, give the bishop the symbols of their office, the ring and the staff, and who gets to appoint bishops. And there's a point where they reconcile. Gregory excommunicates Henry. And then Henry shows up at Canossa in northern Italy. And he's like barefoot. Again, we have another barefoot person, right, in the snow, begging the pope's forgiveness. And the pope forgives him.

And they patch it up. But then they fall out again. And Henry actually sets up with an anti-pope. Clement III is his name. Wait, what? Anti-pope? An anti-pope. Reverse? This sounds amazing. It happens more than you might think in the Middle Ages.

It's like Spider-Man, right? There's multiple popes at once and they're all in the same movie. In the pope universe. The Marvel pope universe. Brett, what is an anti-pope? No one ever thinks they're the anti-pope i mean they think they're the real okay right but then you know we talked earlier in the show right about how the papacy as an institution is really keen to have this nice tidy list of uh what was it 266 popes right and so eventually somebody figures out there's like a winner and a loser, and the loser becomes the anti-pope. Oh, wow. Okay, so things get complicated in 1084. We've got Emperor Henry marching on Rome.

It's marching against the pope, isn't it, Brett? So yeah, I mean, Henry goes to Rome and no one's decided necessarily who the anti-pope is, right? Some of the Roman families line up, probably for their own reasons, behind Clement III. Gregory has to hole up in the castle of San Angelo, which is in the city. And we have another crowning, right? Clement crowns Henry IV as emperor. And then later that year, these Normans, you all know the Normans, 1066 and all that. They were also down in Southern Italy. These Norman mercenaries had gone down there and set up their own kingdom. And some of these Normans come up to Rome and drive the Germans out of the city. And they kind of like rescue slash capture Gregory.

And they take him. When they leave Rome, they take the Pope with them. They take the Pope. They take the Pope with them. I mean, at that point, he's lost control of Rome. I mean, the Pope is a briefcase. He's probably one of your armaments. He put things in his papal tiara.

He sort of turned it upside down and stabbed it. He's a sort of portable pope. There's this great tradition about Gregory that he's in Salerno, south of Rome. And at 1088, supposedly on his deathbed, he's dying. And he says, I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore, I die in exile. Good line. Good line.

Okay. So just to be clear, Alison, an anti-pope is not a plate of delicious meat and cheeses. It is a rival pope claiming to be the legit pope. So we've got two popes all at once. Wow. And, I mean, Alison, what would you do if you were the successor to Pope Gregory? Are you going to continue with the reforms, given that he's been kidnapped? Or would you sort of go, all right, all right, all right, we'll go back to the old ways? If I was Pope, I would kill all anti-Popes. That would be my thing. I'm quite bloodlusty.

I mean, logic will probably say that they're going to go back to the old ways, aren't they? After a reformer. But if it was me, personally, I'd reform up to the eyeballs. I mean, Brett, do we have reform up to the eyeballs? I think Gregory VII would approve of your answer, Alison. So you wind up with Clement, and then you have a series of popes over the following decades. We're basically kind of popes in exile, right? They're not actually in Rome. But they have a lot of support.

There are people who don't like Henry IV who line up behind them and support them. So everyone's looking to build their alliances. And you see the popes, a series of popes, what was it, sticking with the reform up to their eyeballs. And one of the interesting ones is Urban II. He's elected pope in 1088. Pope Urban, that's a genre of music that was happening in the mid-2000s. Have you heard of Urban, Alison? Does that name ring any bells? I haven't. They relate to Keith Urban, the husband of Nicole Pittman. Yeah, Karl Urban, Pope Urban, and Keith. They're all the same Urban.

All the same family. He's an important Pope. He's savvy. He gathers a lot of support from different European rulers and bishops. And by the way, in the 1090s, things start to go a little south for Henry IV. Back in Germany, he has a rebellion on his hands. His own son rebels against him and basically becomes an anti-king. No, hang on, hang on.

We've got anti-popes. We've got anti-kings now as well. Yes, there's a lot of anti-things happening at this point. So we've got popes and emperors falling out, and emperors falling out with emperors, and popes falling out with popes. But Pope Urban II is one of the most famous popes from history. He's going to do something very very

famous do you know what it is allison it's in the 1090s oh i'm all right i'm gonna give a hint okay please orlando bloom orlando bloom the calcium kid does he become a boxer does he become a boxer or is he a pirate you've gone two pirates of the caribbean brett we should have gone the other way we should have gone with ridley scott oh yes yes kingdom of heaven so kingdom of heaven okay cool so is he a tough pope he calls the first crusade ah yes okay which is a huge moment in global history it's obviously gonna be a horrifically violent religious war brett this is in terms of medieval christianity this is a sort of watermark moment, isn't it, for the papacy? Because this is an assertion of strength.

I think so. You know, here's Urban. He's in the middle still of this ongoing fight with Henry IV. He can't even really go to the city of Rome, but he's out working the crowd sometimes, literally. In 1095, he preaches this sermon in Clermont in France and calls for Christians to go. And as he sees it

liberate the holy city of Jerusalem and this becomes known as the first crusade at the time and certainly in retrospect the kind of show-stopping demonstration of the pope's authority on a I guess we now we might call it like an international level in the crusade it actually captures Jerusalem in July 1099 and Pope Erwin II dies just like a few weeks before news reaches Rome that the Crusaders had actually, after this three-year campaign, managed to capture the city. Urban's very symbolic of a kind of a new direction with the papacy, I think. We now get into a new phase where the papacy is still political,

it's still controversial, but there is more strength in the office, I suppose. Was Urban looking for that war to get the Europeans against like what they would perceive as a common enemy and give these rich people something to do rich also inviolent yeah the peace of god is happening at the same time and there's this idea like stop killing each other and start killing other people sadly yeah go go kill go go kill the so-called infidels as they view as they view. Yeah, I mean, that's a whole other episode, Alison. But, you know, that's brought us to the end of our conversation, to the end of the papal dark ages.

The nuance window! This is where Alison and I spend our two minutes reburying a pope we've just dug up, while Brett has two uninterrupted minutes to tell us something we need to know about today's conversation. So my stopwatch is ready, Brett. If you are ready, the nuance window, please. Yeah, great. And you know, you've made this, Alison, particularly, I think with all of your great comments, you've made this pretty easy. I think we've really grabbed a hold of some of the nuance of the situation, right? So I'll be the first to admit

that something like the cadaver synod, you can see it as a sign of the fact that the Middle Ages were the Dark Ages, and it was irrational, it was grotesque, it was barbaric. But I do think we need to avoid this impulse, right? I think of it as like a historical confirmation bias, if you see what I mean, for the way we view the medieval as opposed to the modern world. But we saw on the show today, right, bishops around medieval Europe, like the popes of Rome, were deeply enmeshed in political life, right? Like when Leo crowned Charlemagne, they really involved the popes in Italian politics. The pope is the biggest landlord in medieval Italy, after all. And they're certainly involved in local politics with these families that Greg mentioned earlier, struggling for control of the city. And this was

really the case after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, like we talked about. Governing institutions of all different kinds were really under new kinds of pressure. In that context, the cadaver synod kind of makes sense, so to speak. It has its own kind of internal logic. On the other hand, keep in mind, contemporaries knew the cadaver synod was outrageous, right? This wasn't just like, another day in the crazy Middle Ages. I mean, people in the 9th century knew that this isn't how the successor of St. Peter is supposed to act, with the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And the same thing goes for, like, being murdered with a hammer or sleeping with your mistress or using church property for your own personal gain.

So even in the middle of these struggles and in the middle of these troubles, you see these calls for reform, which really pick up steam in the 11th century, to get the Roman popes out from under the thumb of these local families, out from under the thumb of emperors, and really do things differently. And, you know, that leads to something like Urban II being in a position to stand up as the leader of Christendom and call for the First Crusade. So from that kind of more nuanced perspective, I think that the people of dark ages, and I'm making air quotes here with my fingers, really become less sensationalistic and more historically important because, you know, they allow us to kind of see and track these broader changes in medieval european history as a whole thank you

so much brett that's a fascinating allison any thoughts on that i feel nuanced up to the eyeballs my mind has been opened so hard like with medieval ages i just thought it was like eating large drumsticks and jousting but this has been so so great well thank you for having joined us and there was some jousting and there were some drumsticks but there was a yeah it's a lot more complex too and there's a lot of stuff happening a treason with the devil and the pope like and that's what I'm gonna walk away from this another good song so what do you know now this is our quick fire quiz for allison to see how much she has remembered a lot of my self-worth years wrapped up in this i've been very distracted by a lot of writing and violence like the dates are not going to

stick in when we've had people's heads caved in. And a threesome. So we'll see. Sorry. In fairness, some of the questions are about that stuff. So you might be all right. You might be okay. Are you feeling confident or are you feeling like this could be tricky? I genuinely feel it's going to be a bit tricky.

We've got a lot of popes. There's a lot of Linuses. There's a lot of, I was going to say Ambrosia, not the Pope of Rice Pudding. But there's a lot of popes to take in. I'll see how I do. I'm really excited about it. Okay, here we go. We've got 10 questions.

Okay, hit me. Question one. Which apostle described in the Bible as the rock upon which the church is founded? Is the papal office descended from? I'm going to go Peter. It is Peter, St Peter. Yes. Question two. Why is the, St Peter. Yes. Question two.

Why is the papacy based in Rome? It was because it's a real cool place. It's because of the Roman emperor. Yeah, that's it. It's a pretty central place for power. Absolutely. And Peter and Paul have both established communities there. But I liked it's a pretty cool place.

That's a pretty good answer. Question three. On which day of the year in 800 did Pope Leo III make history by crowning Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor? Why, it's Christmas Day, sir. It is. Get me the biggest pope you can get. You boy.

You boy. Get me a pope. Question four. In August 846, Rome would face attack from which group of pirates who looted precious artefacts from St Peter's Basilica? We're going to go with Saracens, isn't it? Is that what you're going to say? That was the sort of the name that used. Yeah. North African pirates. Yes, absolutely. Question five. Name three ways that popes were killed during the period known as the Papal Dark Ages. Oh, boy. Well, we could go for poisoned, but didn't quite work.

So they got their head caved in. I think that was one of them. Yeah. Having a threesome with the devil. And unfortunately, that going awry and getting your head caved in. And let's go for plain old strangulation. A bit of vanilla. Oh, very good.

Question six. What was the cadaver synod? You said, Brett, there was like three synods or something like that that were held in the century after. It's Stephen the Petty. I'm going to name him that. Stephen the Petty got that lad from Brosia. Formosus, yep. Dug him up and put him on trial.

Even though he was dead. Very good. Question seven. What happened to Pope Formosus' bones when they were chucked in the River Tiber? There's the monk or the fisherman. Some dude had a dream. He was like, I think I'm going to get his bones. Voila! He got his bones.

You're doing very well so far. Seven out of seven. Thank you. Oh my God. Question eight. Pope John XII, the 18-year-old, was murdered in bed while caught having sex with a married woman. Can you name three of the many crimes he was accused of doing?

Oh, yes. Haunting, turning a church into a place of ill repute, like so brothel. There was also, what was it? Cheersing to the devil. And also said he got involved with Jupiter and Venus and the devil because he was burning. And probably financial irregularities as well. Absolutely. Fraud, murder, arson, all of it. Question nine.

In an attempt to rebrand the papacy, what did Pope Leo IX wear to his election in Rome? And remember, he went low-key. So he took off his shoes.

He did. He went meagre clothing like a pilgrim. Okay, this is a perfect score, Alison. You've done so well. Okay. In question ten,

as a sign of papal power, what famous war did Pope Urban II launch in 1095? The Crusades. 10 out of 10. I feel so clever. Yeah, yeah. Oh, God, I'm relieved.

Nailed it, Alison. It was all the compliments you were giving me, Brett. You brought up my self-esteem and the knowledge came in. It was great. Fabulous. Fabulous. Well, thank you so much, Alison. Thank you so much, Brett.

And listener, if after today's episode you want to know about the Crusades, why not go listen to our episode on Saladin? Or if Pope's behaving very badly is your bag, then check out our episode on the Borgias, who were also pretty raucous. You will find all these episodes and many, many more on BBC Sounds. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends, make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound

so you never miss an episode. But all that's left for me to do is say a huge thank you to my guests. In History Corner, we had the fantastic Professor Brett Whelan from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Thank you, Brett. Thank you so much. Thank you, Alison. I had such a great time. Thanks. Me too, Brett. You're a legend. Thanks so much.

And in Comedy Corner, we had the awesome Alison Spithel. Thank you, Alison. Greg, Brett, everybody else. It's been knowledgeable and beautiful. Thank you. Pleasure. Thanks for coming. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we excitedly exhume more forgotten historical subjects

and then put them on trial. But for now, I'm off to go and change my name to Corpus Ventriloquist. Bye! Bye! the project manager was Isla Matthews and the audio producer was Steve Hankey. I'm Paris Lees. Welcome to The Flipside from BBC Radio 4. In each episode, I'll tell two stories from opposite sides of the coin and use science to ask questions about elements of the human experience that we sometimes take for granted.

Turns out that this person that I soldered my apartment to, he was, you know, a scammer. I feel like now I am the person that I was when I was on the internet at 13. It's lies and it's covered with lipstick and glitter. Subscribe to The Flipside with me, Paris Lees, on BBC Sounds.