Bizarre relationships

Pope Pius IX

Relationship: Pope and kidnapped son

On the evening of 23 June 1858, in Bologna, then part of the Papal States, police arrived at the home of a Jewish couple, Salomone (”Momolo”) and Marianna Padovani Mortara, to seize one of their eight children, six-year-old Edgardo, and transport him to Rome to be raised as a ward of the state. The police had orders from Holy Office authorities in Rome, authorized by Pope Pius IX. Church officials had been told that a 14-year-old Catholic servant girl of the Mortaras, Anna Morisi, had baptized Edgardo while he was ill because she feared that he would otherwise die and go to Hell. Acorrding to Catholic Church doctrine, Edgardo’s baptism, even if illicit under canon law, was valid and made him a Christian. At the time, non-Christians could not raise a Christian child, even their own. Edgardo was taken to a house for Catholic converts in

Rome, maintained at state expense. His parents were not allowed to see him for several weeks, and then not alone. Pius IX took a personal interest in the case, raising the child as his son (albeit a kidnapped one), and all appeals to the Church were rebuffed. Church authorities told the Mortaras that they could have Edgardo back if they abandoned their faith and converted to Catholicism, but they refused.

Despite international protests (including those from the United States government), Pope Pius IX did not relinquish Edgardo who eventually went on to become a priest. He was also a vehement supporter of the Vatican taking the first steps towards making Pius IX a saint. You can read his testimony here and you can see the incorrupt corpse of Blessed Pius IX here (his face has a protective mask of silver on which is removed for veneration). Pictured above is Mortara as a priest on the right, and his mother seated.

 Kenneth Pinyan

Relationship: Man and horsies (but so much worse than number 6)

Kenneth Pinyan (June 22, 1960 – July 2, 2005) was a Boeing engineer residing in Washington who engaged in receptive anal sex with full-size stallions at a farm near the city of Enumclaw. He videotaped those sex acts and distributed them informally under the name Mr Hands. During a July 2005 sex act, videotaped by a friend, he suffered a perforated colon and later died of his injuries. Other factors surrounding the death were apparently that the deceased, concerned about appearing in a hospital with an unusual internal injury and the effect on his security clearance as an engineer for aerospace company Boeing, had apparently refused his friends’ urging to go to the hospital for several hours after being aware he was internally injured, and was either beyond treatment or dead when he finally reached the ER. The story was reported in the The Seattle Times and was one of that paper’s most read stories of 2005.

 Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer

Relationship: Woman and wall

Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, 54, whose surname means Berlin Wall in German, maarried the concrete structure in 1979 after being diagnosed with a condition called Objectum-Sexuality. Mrs Berliner-Mauer, whose fetish is said to have its roots in childhood, claimed she fell in love with the structure when she first saw it on television when she was seven. She began collecting pictures of the wall and saving up for visits. On her sixth trip in 1979 they tied the knot before a handful of guests. While she remains a virgin with humans, she insists she has a full, loving relationship with the wall. While the rest of mankind rejoiced when the Wall, erected by the Soviets in 1961 to halt an exodus from East to West Berlin, was largely torn down in 1989, its “wife” was horrified. Having gotten over the “death” of her husband the wall, Eija-Riitta has finally found love again and is dating her garden fence.

 Carl Tanzler

Relationship: Man and corpse

Carl Tanzler or sometimes Count Carl von Cosel (February 8, 1877 – July 23, 1952) was a German-born radiologist at the United States Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida who developed a morbid obsession for a young Cuban-American tuberculosis patient, Elena Milagro “Helen” de Hoyos (July 31, 1909 – October 25, 1931), that carried on well after Hoyos succumbed to the disease. In April, 1933, Tanzler removed Hoyos’ body from the mausoleum, carted it through the cemetery after dark on a toy wagon, and transported it to his home. Tanzler attached the corpse’s bones together with wire and coat hangers, and fitted the face with glass eyes. As the skin of the corpse decomposed, Tanzler replaced it with silk cloth soaked in wax and plaster of paris. As the hair fell out of the decomposing scalp, Tanzler fashioned a wig from Hoyos’ hair that had been collected by her mother and given to Tanzler not long after her burial in 1931. Tanzler filled the corpse’s abdominal and chest cavity with rags to keep the original form, dressed Hoyos’ remains in stockings, jewelry, and gloves, and kept the body in his bed. Tanzler also used copious amounts of perfume, disinfectants, and preserving agents, to mask the odor and forestall the effects of the corpse’s decomposition.

In October, 1940, Elena’s sister Florinda heard rumors of Tanzler sleeping with the disinterred body of her sister, and confronted Tanzler at his home, where Hoyos’ body was eventually discovered. Florinda notified the authorities, and Tanzler was arrested and detained. After a preliminary hearing on October 9, 1940 at the Monroe County Courthouse in Key West, Tanzler was held to answer on the charge, but the case was eventually dropped and he was released, as the statute of limitations for the crime had expired.

Caligula

Relationship: Man and horse

On the previous bizarre relationships list we mentioned the unusual relationship that Caligula had with his sister Drusilla, but he also had a strange thing going on with his horse Incitatus. Caligula loved his horse (though most likely not in a sexual way) so much that he bent over backwards to give it a life fit for the emperor himself. According to Suetonius’s Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Incitatus had a stable of marble, with an ivory manger, purple blankets (the imperial color), and a collar of precious stones. Others have indicated that the horse was attended to by eighteen servants, and was fed oats mixed with gold flake. Suetonius also wrote that Caligula planned to make Incitatus a consul (though modern historians believe this may just have been a move to anger the politicians of the day). Caligula even procured him a wife, a mare named Penelope. The horse would “invite” dignitaries to dine with him in a house outfitted with servants there to entertain such events.