Place Your Papal Bets

A history of gambling on who will be the next pope

Being left-handed combined with right-eye dominant, I learned at an early age the folly of gambling due to my repeated failures at winning a stuffed animal at the local fair. Betting on my inability to sink a basket is safe, but gambling on who will be the next pope is far riskier. It also has a long history.

Prior to betting on who would be the next pope, it was more of a dead pool. Prior to the fifteenth century, if the pope owed people money, they might take out a life insurance policy on him to ensure they got paid should he go off to the Great Certainty. Being it was a time where people frequently passed from *checks notes* living in medieval times where you could die unexpectedly from an ear infection or a goddamn ingrown toenail, placing a bet that someone was gonna dirt nap had a fair potential of paying off. Thus, morbid fuckers with no vested interest in the pope remaining above ground would nevertheless take out insurance policies on him as well, hoping for him to soon be pushing up papal daisies so they could collect. In the early fifteenth century the pontiff had a popely apoplexy over people gambling on his imminent expiration, and various European cities began banning the proffering of pontifical life insurance.

But the willingness to wager shall not be denied. The next phase of speculating on the Holy See’s separation from his meat sack involved who would be the next one after the current occupant passed through the Pearly Gates. Although if we’re being historically accurate so many popes were right bastards that if their book club is actually true then many of them are currently getting pitchforks jammed into posterior orifices. Anyfuckingway, people began betting on the papal conclave.

The first recorded example of place-your-bets-on-who-shall-be-pontiff took place in 1503, although it was supposedly a known practice long before this. On August 18 of that year, Pope Alexander VI left behind not only this world, but a host of bastards via his various mistresses. He was also the same guy who gave the thumbs up to Spain and Portugal to genocide and enslave the absolute shit out of the Americas in the name of making it more Christian. Like I said, pitchforks in posteriors.

The 1503 conclave was the largest yet in history, which caught the attention of risk-takers seeking financial reward. It wasn’t some shady bookie operating out of the local tavern; the gambling was handled by banking houses, and odds were given based on the various candidate’s favorability.

One thing that wasn’t favorable was the life expectancy of the dude they elected. Pope Pius III won in 1503 and sat the papal throne a mere twenty-six days prior to noping out for the rest of eternity. I expect the gambling addicts were all fuck yeah I can recover my losses. This time it’s a sure thing, babe. Don’t worry about the second mortgage. It’s a sure thing!

Sometimes it did seem a sure thing, due to insider betting because attendants to the cardinals were selling information about which way the poll was going. And so, in 1549 the banking houses taking the bets said yeah sure that pope won, but did he beat the spread? To combat the insider betting, a certain cardinal candidate didn’t just have to win, he had to win by a lot for you to collect.

Gregory XIV became pope on December 5, 1590, and he must have known his reign would be truncated and he wanted people being properly pensive over his passing rather than imagining how they might profit from it. Resultingly, prior to his October 16, 1591, expiration, he banned betting on the results of the conclave upon pain of excommunication. Being that this was a time when most people were more worried over getting into heaven than where their next meal was coming from, it was indeed deemed a harsh punishment. Not being permitted to do the Jesus stuff was social death. It didn’t stop the gambling but rather drove it underground. The ban was finally lifted in 1918 by Pope Benedict XV.

People loved betting on the conclave so much they were getting mighty tired of waiting for John Paul II to depart his protoplasm. In 1981, three years into his reign, an assassin shot him four times with a 9mm pistol, and the dude just refused to fucking die, lasting another twenty-four goddamn years. Even though he didn’t cross the Rainbow St. Angelo Bridge until 2005, betting houses were taking gamblers’ money on who the next pope would be five whole years before JP2 finally died.

For the upcoming conclave, I made clear I’m not a gambling man, but I do have a favorite. While I’m not Catholic, I understand the power the Church wields in this world, and the progressive choice is Luis Antonio Tagle.

That’s the end of the story, but I have another quick bit of information I wish to relay.

You may have noticed I have posted very few free stories in the past year. The reason is that I was mired in writing the most challenging project of my life, working on a world history book tentatively titled Greedy Sexist Religious Bigots: A History of Humanity. And good news! I just submitted that fucker to my editor yesterday. There is of course plenty of back and forth to come with my publisher during the editing process, but the ordeal of writing the book is done and I finally have time to get back to writing free posts for you folks, so expect to see a lot more from me moving forward.

Looking backward, one thing I didn’t stop doing was writing lots of stuff for my paid subscribers. You can get a free trial to check that stuff out here:

You can also share this post:

Finally, I have two volumes of my books On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down that make great gifts. Seventy per cent of my readers are women, and Mother’s Day is coming soon. You know she wants it. Links to purchase are here.