800-1073 - Charlemagne To Gregory VII
Under the successors of Charlemagne, the Western Empire began to decline. The German princes were so much occupied at home that Italy was neglected. One of the most distinguished popes of this period was Nicholas I (858-867), who, like a "second Elias," engaged in a fierce conflict with immoral princes and unworthy prelates. He defended the indissolubility of marriage against Lothaire II, king of Lorraine, who had put away his lawful wife, Theutberga, and married Waldrada. Nicholas also enforced his authority against the schismatical Photius, and labored with great zeal for the progress of the Church in Bulgaria.
There exists a fable about the papal throne having been occupied by a woman, "Pope Joan," in the years 855-858. It is a story which first appeared in the thirteenth century, four hundred years after the alleged fact. Moreover, we have the testimony of contemporary writers, such as Hincmar of Rheims, that Pope Leo IV, who died in 855, was succeeded by Benedict III in the same year. Further, documents and coins were issued under Benedict III, and dated in the year 855.
The tenth century witnessed a sad condition of things in Rome and throughout Christendom generally. The inroads of Slavs, Saracens and Normans, the constant feuds of Christian princes, the seizing of ecclesiastical property, and the intruding of unworthy men into benefices and positions of authority, brought about decline of monastic discipline and corruption of the hierarchy. The Roman factions disposed of the papacy as the pretorians of old had disposed of the imperial throne. At one time two notorious women, Theodora and Marozia, seemed influential enough to elevate, remove, and even murder, popes at will.
The condition of Europe in the tenth century was truly appalling. On all sides Northmen, Slavonians, Hungarians were ravaging the country whilst there seemed grave danger of Italy, and Gaul, being submerged under the flood of Mohammedanism. Slowly and gradually was the tide turning, partly owing to the fact that the fortified feudal castles offered a refuge during the constant raids of the barbarians, and also to the vigour shewn by the Christian mission. Of this age it may truly be said that the castle and the monastery proved the salvation of the embers of civilization. The rise of a strong German dynasty contributed to this end when the Dukes of Saxony established themselves as sovereigns. Henry the Fowler (920-936) and his son, Otto I, defeated the Danes, Slavonians and Hungarians; and Otto was finally crowned as Emperor at Rome. His power continued under his sons and namesakes Otto II (978-983) and Otto III (9831002), and the period during which they laboured to restrain the disorders of Italy and restore the order and glory of Charles the Great is often known as the "age of the Ottos." The rise of the house of Saxony in Germany gave things a turn for the better, but it was only temporary, and its extinction gave further proof of the indispensable need of the Roman Church for the support of a strong Emperor living outside Italy.
Several vicious men occupied the papal throne, notably John XII (955-964), elected at the age of eighteen, and Benedict IX (1032-1044), elected at the age of twelve. John XII, who had been called Octavian, was the first pope to assume a new name on his election; and in the eleventh century this custom became general.
John XII (955-963) was never more than a boy during his, for this century, long pontificate. He was in the difficult position of a Pope with an hereditary'claim to rule the Romans, and he was fitted neither by his character nor his abilities for the task. Accordingly, in 961, he sought the aid of the German King, as his predecessors had summoned Pippin and Charles two centuries before. But he lacked the moral dignity of the second and third Gregories, or Zacharias. He has been described as a perfect monster of iniquity, but his chief traducer Liutprand, Bishop of Cremona, delights too much in scandal to be trusted implicitly. But after making every allowance for John XII, as a lad placed on the papal throne without experience, he seems to have been vicious and unprincipled, totally unfit for the humblest clerical office. Otto came as the saviour of Europe and the reformer of the Church. He delivered the Pope from his domestic enemies, but insisted upon a certain decency being maintained.
The Pope was denounced by the clergy to the Emperor. He was accused of turning his palace into a brothel, of ordaining a deacon in a stable, of saying Mass without himself communicating, of simony, of consecrating a boy of ten a bishop, of wearing armour, of hunting publicly, of calling on the Demons Venus and Mercury, when playing dice, of not saying Mass or the canonical hours, of not using the sign of the cross in blessing himself, and of arson. The strange mixture of gross sins and trivial offences is characteristic of the age.
The conduct of John XII was such that he was finally deposed by the emperor, Otto the Great (936-973). An imperial nominee was consecrated pope as Leo VIII; but when Otto left Rome, John XII called a rival council at which many of his own accusers were present and, with their consent, launched counter anathemas against his enemies.
Less than two years after John XII's death, Otto appointed John, Bishop of Narni, a man of learning and experience, who reigned from 965 to 972. By him Otto I was crowned Emperor on Christmas Day 967. That all popes of this century cannot be involved in one general condemnation is shewn by John XIII who was known as "the Good." Otto I himself died on May 7, 973; and, as illustrative of the ferocity of the Romans, when the strong hand of the emperor was removed, the successor of John XIII, Benedict VI, was murdered within about a year. Indeed nothing can better illustrate the insecurity of the popes than the fact that between 955 and 985, less than thirty years, Benedict V died in exile in Germany, Benedict VI was murdered, John XIV died in prison, and his rival Boniface VII was supposed to have been poisoned, and his dead body was certainly foully outraged. Three popes only died a natural death. At the close of the century Otto III decided to try the experiment of infusing fresh blood into Rome by procuring the election of a German pope. He selected a kinsman of his own, Bruno, son of the Duke of Carinthia, a great-grandson of Otto I. This pontiff was educated at Worms, and he was able to preach in German and Italian - almost the first notice of the language - as well as in Latin.
But Rome could not tolerate a German pope and an attempt was made by Crecentius, perhaps a descendant of the famous Marozia, to establish a Republic. He even entered into negotiations with Constantinople to place Rome in the hands of the Greeks and actually selected an antipope, John Philagathus, Bishop of Piacenza, who took the title of John XVI. In the end the revolution was put down. The terrible fate of the antipope again lets light upon the barbarity of the times. Those who arrested him "fearing he might not be sufficiently punished," cut off his nose and ears and plucked out his eyes and tongue. In this awful condition he was dressed in his vestments and publicly degraded. The Romans then put him on an ass with his face to the tail and drove it through the city shouting, "Thus let the man suffer who has endeavoured to drive the pope from his See." He was then imprisoned in a monastery; and actually lived for fourteen years. In justice to the age, S. Nilus, one of the few saints of the time, refused to hold further intercourse with the Emperor who had allowed such a thing to happen. The next German pope was the celebrated Gerbert, who took the title Sylvester II, implying thereby that he and the emperor would restore the Church like Constantine and Sylvester I.
But the Roman factions soon gained control again; and towards the end of the tenth century the Crescentian family practically owned the papacy. Their rule was ended by the interference of the emperor, Otto III (983-1002), who appointed the first German pope, Gregory V. (996-999), and then the first French pope, Sylvester II (999-1003). Sylvester, previously known as Gerbert, possessed the reputation of being the most learned man of his time. But Otto III, the idealistic youth who had hoped to do so much, died in 1002, and Sylvester in the following year, and for nearly fifty years an even darker day set in for the See of Rome.
The intervention of the Ottos had been powerless to raise the Papacy from its degradation; for, on the extinction of the Saxon dynasty, the popes' condition was worse than it had been before its intervention in Italy. The Chair of Peter, in fact, became the private property of the Counts of Tusculum, descendants, like so many others, of Marozia, and three successive memebers of this family occupied the Chair of St. Peter. Two of them, Benedict VIII (1012-1024) and Jonn XIX (1024-1033), if not pious bishops, were at least energetic and capable rulers; but the third may safely be placed among the worst of the popes.
Appointed as a child of ten or twelve years old Benedict IX is said to have behaved like one of the more monstrous pagan Emperors. Wearied by his infamies the Romans chose an antipope, Sylvester III; and in 1046 Benedict IX, tired of his office, shamelessly put it up for sale. The purchaser was the arch-presbyter John, who took the name Gregory VI, a wealthy man, who was perhaps guilty of a wrong act with not altogether unworthy motives. At any rate he tried to recover the papal estates for the See and to repress the flagrant robbery of the pilgrims who still flocked to the disorderly, but still holy, city. Benedict IX's family did not acquiesce in his nefarious bargain, and reinstated him as pope, and Gregory from St. Peter's denounced his rival Benedict in the Lateran. Thus matters stood in 1048 when the Emperor Henry II made Sylvester III a prisoner for life in a monastery, and forced Benedict VIII to resign all his claims to the See. Gregory was also deposed and taken to Germany and interned in a monastery with his friend Hildebrand, destined years later to take the name of the simoniacal pope, and to wage unrelenting war against the sin of Simon Magus.
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