5.
Period
900 – 1000 CE
Pope Sergius III
The first pope of the 10th century was Benedict IV (900-03). His successor, Leo V, reigned for just one month when he was seized and imprisoned by a usurper, Cardinal Christopher. Meanwhile Cardinal Sergius who had tried for the papal office some seven years earlier now tried again. His supporters got both Leo and Christopher murdered and their leader became Pope Sergius III in 904.
Sergius had taken part in the Synod Horrenda and one of his first acts as pope was to honour Pope Stephen VII with a handsome epitaph and to overturn the judgment that had re-instated Pope Formosus’ character. In fact, Sergius had Formosus, now ten years dead, re-exhumed and condemned once again. The corpse was then beheaded, three more fingers cut off and thrown into the river Tiber. The headless body was caught in a fisherman’s net and returned a second time to St Peter’s.
Pope Sergius lll had the 10-year old corpse of Pope Formosus
re-exhumed. It was then beheaded, had 3 more fingers cut off and thrown into
the river Tiber.
Theodora & Marozia
At the time one Theophylact was the senator of Rome (and civic head of the city). He had supported Sergius’ party in the battles that followed the Synod Horrenda and the family (wife Theodora and daughters Marozia and Theodora) came to know Sergius well. It is believed that Sergius seduced Marozia in the Lateran Palace and she became his mistress around 905 (the year after he became Pope) when she was 15 and he was 45. She soon had a son by him who was later to become pope. Meanwhile her mother Theodora’s influence had grown and it was her nominees who became the next two popes, Anastasius III and Lando. One of her lovers was reportedly John, Bishop of Bologna. Under her infuence, he rose to become Archbishop of Ravenna. According to a contemporary, Bishop Liudprand of Cremona, she missed John’s absences in Rome. “Thereupon Theodora like a harlot fearing she would have few opportunities of bedding with her sweetheart forced him to give up his bishopric and take for himself - Oh, monstrous crime - the papacy of Rome.” The bishop of Ravenna became Pope John X in 914.
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Pope John Xll kept a harem at the Lateran
Palace… and rewarded his paramours with golden chalices taken from St
Peter’s. |
At this time, a northern soldier of fortune, Alberic, bearing the title marquis of Camerino came to Rome. He was a good ally to Theophylact, and Theodora got him married to her daughter Marozia. After the deaths of Theodora and Alberic (both around 928), Marozia had Pope John (her mother’s lover) imprisoned and reportedly suffocated to death. The next two popes, Leo VI and Stephen VIII, reigned for less a year and three years respectively. Both disappeared mysteriously.
Marozia’s first son (by Pope Sergius) became Pope John XI in 931. She married again and when her second husband died, she married his half-brother King Hugo of Provence, a wedding officiated by her son Pope John XI in 932. Meanwhile her second son called Alberic after his father was feeling increasingly left out. He came to know that Hugo had planned to render him helpless by blinding him. Alberic appealed to the Romans to rise against Hugo, an outsider. When the Romans responded and got ready for battle, Hugo abandoned his wife and fled.
Alberic put the pope (his half-brother) under permanent arrest in the Lateran Palace and imprisoned his mother Marozia in Hadrian’s mausoleum where she remained for over 50 years. Alberic’s greatest achievement was to strip John XI (and his successors LeoVII, Stephen IX, Marinus II and Agapitus II) of all temporal power. This allowed the popes to concentrate on their spiritual duties and the good effects were felt far and wide. Alberic died in 954 at the age of 40 but not before he had made the nobles swear at the tomb of St Peter that they would make his son Octavian pontiff on the death of Agapitus II.
Pope John XII
And so Octavian became Pope John XII in 955 about the age of 18. He promptly assumed temporal powers, again making the papacy a lucrative position to aspire to. Dormant factions became active and street battles and intrigues became commonplace. John XII became one of the most profligate popes known. He was a great gambler and kept a stud farm of 2000 horses which were fed on almonds and figs soaked in wine. He pilfered pilgrims’ offerings and violated female pilgrims in the basilica of St Peter. He kept a harem at the Lateran Palace and rewarded his paramours with golden chalices taken from St Peter’s and even land. Women were warned not to enter St John Lateran if they prized their honour. King Otto of Germany (936-73) came to John’s aid when Berengar II, king of Italy, occupied the papal states. John made him emperor of the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ in 962.
Otto asked John to mend his ways. Fearing both the wrath of the people of Rome and Otto’s imminent arrival, John fled to Tivoli after plundering the treasury of St Peter’s. Otto promptly called a Synod at which 16 cardinals and numerous bishops were present, in effect to try John. Bishop Liudprand of Cremona read out a list of the pope’s misdeeds: celebrating mass without communion, charging for ordinations, fornicating with numerous women, blinding his spiritual director, castrating a cardinal etc.
King Otto then communicated the decisions of the Synod to John:
|
Table of
Popes
(118 - 140 ) |
|
|
118) Benedict IV 900-03 |
119) Leo V 903 |
|
120) Sergius III 904-11 |
# Christopher 903-04
121) Anastasius III 911-12 |
|
122) Lando 913-14 |
123) John X 914-28 |
|
124) Leo VIII 928 |
125) Stephen VIII 928-31 |
|
126) John Xl 931-35 |
127) Leo VII 936-39 |
|
128) Stephen IX 939-42
130) Agapitus II 946-55 |
129) Marinus II 942-46
131) John XII 955-63 |
|
132) Leo VIII 963-64 |
133) Benedict V 964 |
|
134) John XIII 965-72 |
135) Benedict VI 973-74 |
|
|
# Boniface VII 974 |
|
136) Benedict VII 974-83 |
137) John XIV 983-84 |
|
138) John XV 985-96 |
139) Gregory V 996-99 |
|
|
# John XVI 997-98 |
|
140) Sylvester II 999-1003 |
Note: Rival
popes indicated by # |
“Everyone, clergy as well as laity, accuses you, Holiness, of murder, perjury, sacrilege, incest with your relatives including two sisters and of having invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons.”
Pope John wrote back promptly.
“To all the Bishops:
We hear that you wish to make another Pope. If you do, I excommunicate you by Almighty God and you have no power to ordain or to celebrate Mass.”
John was warned to return and when he didn’t, he was formally deposed by the Synod and Otto proposed Leo VIII (a German) as the next pope. The Romans were not pleased and John was persuaded to return. Thereupon Leo fled to Germany and was excommunicated. Several of those responsible for deposing him were summarily maimed or executed.
John then resumed his old ways. One night he was caught in bed with another’s wife by the husband. The latter is reported to have taken a hammer and killed him on the spot by smashing the back of his head. John was only about 26 and it was his 8th year as pope.
There was a dispute about John’s successor. The Romans chose Benedict V while Emperor Otto who insisted that choice of pope needed his approval preferred Leo VIII, whereupon Benedict knelt at Otto’s feet, stripped off his papal garments and agreed that Leo was the lawful successor. Both Leo and Benedict lasted no more than a year. Otto then selected John XIII as the next pope. The Romans found this pope provoking wars and treating his enemies with extreme cruelty (for example, gouging out their eyes). They packed him off to Germany whereupon Otto sent him back. John XIII remained pope was seven years. He was followed by Benedict VII. Like John XII, he was noted for his sexual excesses and is believed to have died in the act of adultery.
All these years Marozia languished in prison. In 986 when she was in her mid-90s, she was at last released by order of Pope John XV and King Otto III (grandson of Otto I). A bishop exorcised her of any demons she possessed and she was absolved from her sins. She was then executed.
The same Otto III became Holy Roman Emperor in 996 at the age of 16. He went to Rome and appointed his cousin Bruno as Pope Gregory V and when Gregory died in 999 made his former tutor Gerbert pope as Sylvester II, the last pope of the 10th century.
Dark Period of the Papacy
Historians agree that the 10th
century was one of the darkest periods of the papacy. Cardinal Baronius, the
church historian who wrote Ecclesiastical
Annals in the 16th century called the pontiffs of this period: “invaders
of the Holy See, less apostles than apostates…vainglorious Messalinas filled
with fleshy lusts and all sorts of wickedness governed the Chair of St Peter
for their minions and paramours.”
Cardinal Bellarmine of the 17th century was a great defender of the papacy but he considered John XII to be abominable. Nevertheless, he wrote in his book De Romano Pontifice: “The Pope is the supreme judge of faith of morals…If the Pope were to err by imposing sins and forbidding virtues, the church would still have to consider sins as virtues and virtues as vices…”
Europe Christianised by 1000 CE
With the collapse of Roman Empire in the West, the area of today's Europe was made up of numerous entities and diverse in religion, culture and polity. Christianity bonded the medieval kingdoms into a Holy Roman empire whose mainspring was the Christian religion. The authority of the Roman Church extended into every court, castle and village with Latin as the universla language. Without the unifying force of Christianity, it is likely that a fragmented Europe would have succumbed to the Moors, Mongols and Turks.
BY about 1000 CE, most of Europe had been converted from paganism and the few like Lithuania that held out were brought into the fold two or three centuries later. For more, see refs 4 and 5 below.
1.
Peter de Rosa,
Vicars of Christ, Corgi Books 1994
2.
E R
Chamberlain, Bad Popes, Barnes &
Noble 1993
3. History of the Popes, Cheetham, Nicholas, 1992
4. The Rise of Western Christendom, Peter Brown, 1996
5. The Conversion of Europe 371-1386, Richard Fletcher, 1997