Been reading about popes, as one does. Here's a few things I've learned:
My boy St. Anterus was only pope for 43 days before he kicked it.
The last pope to be born in Africa (St. Gelasius I) was pope way back in 492 CE.
The practice of popes not using their real names when they become pontiff originated from one pope (St. John II) who didn't want to use his birth name (Mercurius) because of its association with a "false" god. The practice wouldn't become mainstream though until Pope Gregory V in 985.
Stephen/Stephanus/Stephen II was named pope and 3 days later he died. It was so short that he didn't even officially take office and most lists don't count him.
Formosus was on trial 7 months after he died. He was being tried for perjury and allegedly ascending to the papacy illegitimately by a later pope, Stephen VI. Formosus was found guilty and sentenced to execution (despite already being dead) and they annulled all of his acts as pope. They buried him in a cheap grave, then dug his body up and threw it in a river where it later washed up on shore. This pissed off everyone else so much that they later had to rebury him with Christian rites and Stephen then got sentenced to prison where he got strangled. The whole thing was so embarrassing that later, Pope Theodore II convened another synod that annulled the synod that annulled Formosus's papacy. Even later than that, Pope John IX held two different synods, both agreeing with Theodore and annulling Stephen's trial -then went further and prohibited all future trials of corpses. AND THEN Pope Sergius III held ANOTHER Synod and overturned the rulings of both Theodore and John, reaffirmed Formosus's conviction, and had a new epitaph inscribed on the tomb of Stephen praising him for his work.
All the stuff above was so embarrassing and so many new popes kept getting elected that nobody respected the papacy for almost a century. The popes became super corrupt and got rules by a small group of aristocrats paying them off. This era becomes known as the "Pornocracy" and "Rule of the Harlots" which just sounds sick as hell (but was actually very bad for everyone).
The first pope to canonize a saint didn't take office until 985 CE (this was Pope John XV and he canonized Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg in 993).
Adrian IV is the only pope to have been English (Anglo-Saxon specifically).
