Part 5

§ 96.1. =The Romish Pornocracy and the Emperor Otto I., † A.D. 973.=--Among the wild struggles of the Italian nobles which broke out after the Emperor Arnulf’s departure (§ 82, 8), the party of the Margrave Adalbert of Tuscany gained the upperhand. His mistress Theodora, a well born and beautiful, ambitious and voluptuous Roman, wife of a Roman senator, as well as her like-minded daughters Marozia and Theodora, filled for half a century the chair of St. Peter with their paramours, sons and grandsons. These constituted the base and corrupt line of popes known as the pornocracy. =Sergius III.=, A.D. 904-911, Marozia’s paramour, starts this disgraceful series. After the short pontificates of the two immediately following popes, Theodora, because Ravenna was inconveniently distant for the gratification of her lust, called John, the archbishop of that place, to the papal chair under the title of =John X.=, A.D. 914-928. By means of a successful crusade which he led in person, he destroyed the remnant of Saracen robbers in Garigliano (§ 81, 2), and crowned the Lombard king Bernard I., A.D. 916-924, as emperor. But when he attempted to break off his disgraceful relations with the woman who had advanced him, Marozia had him cast into prison and smothered with a pillow. The two following popes on whom she bestowed the tiara enjoyed it only a short time, for in A.D. 931 she raised her own son to the papal throne in the twentieth year of his age. His father was Pope Sergius, and he assumed the name of =John XI.= But her other son Alberich, who inherited the temporal kingdom from A.D. 932, restricted this pope’s jurisdiction and that of his four successors to the ecclesiastical domain. After Alberich’s death his son Octavianus, an arch-profligate and blasphemer, though only in his sixteenth year, united the papacy and the temporal power, and called himself by the name of =John XII.= A.D. 955-963--the first instance of a change of name on assuming the papal chair. He would sell anything for money. He made a boy of ten years a bishop; he consecrated a deacon in a stable; in hunting and dice playing he would invoke the favour of Jupiter and Venus; in his orgies he would drink the devil’s health, etc. Meantime things had reached a terrible pass in Germany. After the death of Louis the Child, the last of the German Carolingians, in A.D. 911, the Frankish duke =Conrad I.=, A.D. 911-918, was elected king of the Germans. Although vigorously supported by the superior clergy, the Synod of Hohenaltheim in A.D. 915 threatening the rebels with all the pains of hell, the struggle with the other dukes prevented the founding of a united German empire. His successor, the Saxon =Henry I.=, A.D. 919-936, was the first to free himself from the faction of the clergy, and to grant to the dukes independent administration of internal affairs within their own domains. His greater son, =Otto I.=, A.D. 936-973, by limiting the power of the dukes, by fighting and converting heathen Danes, Wends, Bohemians and Hungarians, by decided action in the French troubles, by gathering around him a virtuous German clergy, who proved true to him and the empire, secured after long continued civil wars a power and reputation such as no ruler in the West since Charlemagne had enjoyed. Called to the help of the Lombard nobles and the pope John XII. against the oppression and tyranny of Berengarius [Berengar] II., he conquered the kingdom of Italy, and was at Candlemas A.D. 962 crowned emperor by the pope in St. Peter’s, after having really held this rank for thirty years. Thus was the =Holy Roman Empire of German Nationalities= founded, which continued for centuries to be the centre around which the history of the church and the world revolved. The new emperor confirmed to the pope all donations of previous emperors with the addition of certain cities, without detriment, however, to the imperial suzerainty over the patrimony of St. Peter, and without lessening in any degree the imperial privileges maintained by Charlemagne. The _Privilegium Ottonis_, still preserved in the papal archives, and claiming to be an authentic document, was till quite recently kept secret from all impartial and capable investigators, so that the suspicion of its spuriousness had come to be regarded as almost a certainty. Under Leo XIII., however, permission was given to a capable Protestant scholar, Prof. Sickel of Vienna, to make a photographic facsimile of the document, the result of which was that he became convinced that the document was not the original but a contemporary official duplicate, a literally faithful transcript on purple parchment with letters of gold for solemn deposition in the grave of St. Peter. Its first part describes the donations of the emperor, the second the obligations of the pope in accordance with the _Constitutio Romana_, § 82, 4.--But scarcely had Otto left Rome than the pope, breaking his oath, conspired with his enemies, endeavoured to rouse the Byzantines and heathen Hungarians against him, and opened the gates of Rome to Adalbert the son of Berengarius [Berengar]. Otto hastened back, deposed the pope at the synod of Rome in A.D. 963, on charges of incest, perjury, murder, blasphemy, etc., and made the Romans swear by the bones of Peter never again to elect and consecrate a pope, without having the emperor’s permission and confirmation. Soon after the emperor’s departure, however, the newly elected pope =Leo VIII.=, A.D. 963-965, had to betake himself to flight. John XII. returned again to Rome, excommunicated his rival pope, and took cruel vengeance upon the partisans of the emperor. On his death soon afterwards, in A.D. 964, the Romans elected Benedict V. as his successor; but he, when the emperor conquered Rome after a stubborn resistance, was obliged to submit to humiliating terms. Leo VIII. had in =John XIII.=, A.D. 965-972, a virtuous and worthy successor. A new revolt of the Romans led soon after his election to his imprisonment; but he succeeded in making his escape in A.D. 966. Otto now for the third time crossed the Alps, passed relentlessly severe sentences upon the guilty, and had his son, now thirteen years of age, crowned in Rome as Otto II., A.D. 967.

§ 96.2. =The Times of Otto II., III., A.D. 973-1002.=--After the death of Otto I., since Otto II., A.D. 973-983, was restrained from a Roman campaign in consequence of Cisalpine troubles, the nobles’ faction under Crescentius, son of Pope John X. and the younger Theodora, again won the upperhand. This party had in A.D. 974 overthrown Pope =Benedict VI.=, A.D. 972-974, appointed by Otto I., and cast him into prison. But their own anti-pope Boniface VII. could not maintain his position, and fled with the treasures of St. Peter to Constantinople. By means of a compromise of parties =Benedict VII.=, A.D. 974-983, was now raised to the papal chair and held possession in spite of manifold opposition, till the arrival of the young emperor in Italy in A.D. 980 obtained for him greater security. Otto II. again restored the imperial prestige in Rome in A.D. 981, but in A.D. 982 he suffered a complete defeat at the hand of the Saracens. He died in the following year at Rome, after he had in =John XIV.=, A.D. 983-984, secured the appointment of a pope faithful to the empire. His son Otto III., three years old, was at the council of state, held at Verona, by the princes of Germany and Italy, there gathered together, elected king of both kingdoms. During the German civil wars under the regency of the Queen-mother Theophania, a Byzantine princess, and the able Archbishop Willigis, of Mainz, who, through his firmness and penetration saved the crown for the royal child Otto III., A.D. 983-1002, and maintained the existence and integrity of the German empire, Rome and the papacy fell again under the domination of the nobles, at whose head now stood the younger Crescentius, a son of the above mentioned chief of the same name. In A.D. 984 the anti-pope =Boniface VII.=, who had fled to Constantinople, made his appearance in Rome, won a following by Greek gold, got possession of John XIV. and had him cast into prison, but was himself soon afterwards murdered. The new pope =John XV.=, A.D. 985-996, who was thoroughly venal, was an obedient tool of the tyranny of Crescentius, which, however, soon became so intolerable to him, that he yearned for the restoration of imperial rule under Otto III. At this same time great danger threatened the imperial authority from France. Hugh Capet had, after the death of the last Carolingian, Louis V., in A.D. 987, taken possession for himself of the French crown. He insisted upon John XV. deposing the archbishop Arnulf of Rheims, who had opened the gates of Rheims to his uncle Charles of Lorraine, the brother of Louis V.’s father. The pope, who was then dependent upon German power, hesitated. Hugh then had Arnulf deposed at a synod at Rheims in A.D. 921, and put in his place Gerbert, the greatest scholar (§ 100, 2) and statesman of that age. The council quite openly declared the whole French church to be free from Rome, whose bishops for a hundred years had been steeped in the most profound moral corruption, and had fallen into the most disgraceful servitude, and Gerbert issued a confession of faith in which celibacy and fasting were repudiated, and only the first four œcumenical councils were acknowledged. But the plan was shattered, not so much through the apparently fruitless opposition of the pope as through the reaction of the high church party of Clugny and the popular esteem in which that party was held. Gerbert could not maintain his position, and was heartily glad when he could shake the dust of Rheims off his feet by accepting an honourable call of the young emperor, Otto III., who in A.D. 997 opened new paths for his ambition by inviting the celebrated scholar to be with him as his classical tutor. Hugh’s successor Robert reinstated Arnulf in the see of Rheims. John XV. called in Otto III. to his help against the intolerable oppression of the younger Crescentius, but died before his arrival in A.D. 996. Otto directed the choice of his cousin Bruno, twenty-four years of age, the first German pope, who assumed the name of =Gregory V.=, A.D. 996-999, and by him he was crowned emperor in Rome. Gregory was a man of an energetic, almost obstinate character, thoroughly in sympathy with the views of the monks of Clugny. The emperor having soon returned home, Crescentius violated his oath and made himself again master of Rome. Gregory fled to Pavia, where he held a synod in A.D. 997, which thundered an anathema against the disturber of the Roman church. Meanwhile Crescentius raised to the papal throne the archbishop John of Piacenza, formerly Greek tutor to Otto III., under the title of John XVI. It was not till late in autumn of that year that the emperor could hasten to the help of his injured cousin. He then executed a fearfully severe sentence upon the tyrant and his pope. The former was beheaded, and his corpse dragged by the feet through the streets and then hung upon a gallows; the latter, whom the soldiers had cruelly deprived of his ears, tongue, and nose, was led through the streets seated backward on an ass, with the tail tied in his hands for reins.--From Pavia Gregory had issued a command to Robert, the French king, to put away his queen Bertha, who was related to him in the fourth degree, on pain of excommunication. But he died a suspiciously sudden death before he could bring down the pride of this king, which, however, his successor accomplished.

§ 96.3. =Otto III.= now raised to the papal chair his teacher Gerbert, whom he had previously made Archbishop of Ravenna, under the title of =Sylvester II.=, A.D. 999-1003. Already in Ravenna had Gerbert’s ecclesiastical policy been changed for the high church views of his former opponents, and as pope he developed an activity which marks him out as the worthy follower of his predecessor and the precursor of a yet greater Gregory (VII.). He energetically contended against simony, that special canker of the church, and by sending the ring and staff to his former opponent, Arnulf, made the first effort to assert the papal claim to the exclusive investiture of bishops. But he had previously, as tutor of Otto, by flattering his vanity, inspired the imaginative, high-spirited youth with the ideal of a restoration of the ancient glory of Rome and its emperors exercising universal sway. And just with this view had Otto raised him to the papal chair in order that he might have his help. The pope did not venture openly to withdraw from this understanding, for in the condition of Italy at that time in a struggle with the emperor, the victory would be his in the first instance, and that would be the destruction of the papal chair. So there was nothing for it but by clever tacking in spite of contrary winds of imperial policy, to make the ship of the church hold on as far as possible in the high church course and surround the emperor by a network of craft. The phantom of a _Renovatio imperii Romani_ with the mummified form of the Byzantine court ceremonial and the vain parade of a title was called into being. On a pilgrimage to the grave of his saintly friend Adalbert in Gnesen (§ 93, 13) the emperor emancipated the Polish church from the German metropolitanate by raising its see into an archbishopric. He also, in A.D. 1000, released the Polish duke Boleslaw Chrobry (§ 93, 7), the most dangerous enemy of Germany, who schemed the formation of a great Slavic empire, from his fealty as a vassal of the German empire, enlisting him instead as a “friend and confederate of the Roman people” in his new fantastic universal empire. In the same year, however, Sylvester, in the exercise of papal sovereignty, conferred the royal crown on Stephen the saint of Hungary (§ 93, 8), appointed the payment by him of a yearly tribute to the papal vicar with ecclesiastical authority over his country, and made that land ecclesiastically independent of Passau and Salzburg by founding a separate metropolitanate at Gran. Though Otto let himself be led in the hierarchical leading strings by his papal friend, he yet made it abundantly evident by bestowing upon his favourite pope eight counties of the States of the Church, that he regarded these as merely a free gift of imperial favour. He also lashed violently the extravagances as well as the greed of the popes, and declared that the donation of Constantine was a pure fabrication (§ 87, 4). The emperor, however, had meanwhile thoroughly estranged his German subjects and the German clergy by his un-German temperament. The German princes denounced him as a traitor to the German empire. Soon all Italy, even the much fondled Rome, rose in open revolt. Only an early death A.D. 1002 saved the unhappy youth of twenty-two years of age from the most terrible humiliation. With him, too, the star of the pope’s fortunes went down. He died not long after in A.D. 1003, and left in the popular mind the reputation of a dealer in the black art, who owed his learning and the success of his hierarchical career to a compact with the devil.

§ 96.4. =From Henry II. to the Synod at Sutri, A.D. 1002-1046.=--After the death of Otto III., =Henry II.=, A.D. 1002-1024, previously duke of Bavaria, a great-grandson of Henry I. and as such the last scion of the Saxon line, obtained the German crown--a ruler who proved one of the ablest that ever occupied that throne. A bigoted pietist and under the power of the priests, although pious-hearted according to the spirit of the times and strongly attached to the church, and seeking in the bishops supports of the empire against the relaxing influence of the temporal princes, yet no other German emperor ruled over the church to the same extent that he did, and no one ventured so far as he did to impress strongly upon the church, by the most extensive appropriation of ecclesiastical property, especially of rich monasteries, that this was the shortest and surest way of bringing about a much needed reformation. Meanwhile in Rome, after the death of Otto III., Joannes Crescentius, the son of Crescentius II., who was beheaded by order of Otto, assumed the government, and set upon the chair of Peter creatures of his own, John XVII., XVIII., and Sergius IV. But as he and his last elected pope died soon after one another in A.D. 1012, the long subjected faction of the Tusculan counts, successors of Alberich, came to the front again, and chose as pope a scion of one of their own families, =Benedict VIII.=, A.D. 1012-1024. The anti-pope Gregory, chosen by the Crescentians, was obliged to retire from the field. He sought protection from Henry II. But this monarch came to an understanding with the incomparably nobler and abler Benedict, received from him for himself and his Queen Cunigunda, subsequently canonized by Innocent III., the imperial crown, in A.D. 1014, and continued ever after to maintain excellent relations with him. These two, the emperor and the pope, were on friendly terms with the monks of Clugny. They both acknowledged the need of a thorough reformation of the church, and both carried it out so far as this could be done by the influence and example of their own personal conduct, disposition, and character. But the pope had so much to do fighting the Crescentians, then the Greeks and Saracens in Italy, and the emperor in quelling internal troubles in his empire and repelling foreign invasions, that it was only toward the close of their lives that they could take any very decided action. The pope made the first move, for at the Synod of Pavia in A.D. 1018, he excommunicated all married priests and those living in concubinage, and sentenced their children to slavery. The emperor entertained a yet more ambitious scheme. He wished to summon a Western œcumenical council at Pavia, and there to engage upon the reformation of the whole church of the West. But the death of the pope in A.D. 1024, which was followed in a few months by the death of the emperor, prevented the carrying out of this plan. After the death of the childless Henry II., =Conrad II.=, A.D. 1024-1039, the founder of the Franconian or Salic dynasty, ascended the German throne. To him the empire was indebted for great internal reforms and a great extension of power, but he gave no attention to the carrying out of his predecessor’s plans of ecclesiastical reformation. Still less, however, was anything of the kind to be looked for from the popes of that period. Benedict VIII. was succeeded by his brother Romanus, under the name of =John XIX.=, A.D. 1024-1033, as void of character and noble sentiments (§ 67, 2) as his predecessor had been distinguished. When he died, Count Alberich of Tusculum was able by means of presents and promises to get the Romans to elect his son Theophylact, who, though only twelve years old, was already practised in the basest vice. He took the name of =Benedict IX.=, A.D. 1033-1048, and disgraced the papal chair with the most shameless profligacy. The state of matters became better under Conrad’s son, =Henry III.=, A.D. 1039-1056, who strove after the founding of a universal monarchy in the sense of Charlemagne, and by a powerful and able government he came nearer reaching this end than any of the German emperors. He was at the same time inspired with a zeal for the reformation of the church such as none of his predecessors or successors, with the exception of Henry II., ever showed. Benedict IX. was, in A.D. 1044, for the second time driven out by the Romans. They now sold the tiara to Sylvester III., who three months after was driven out by Benedict. This pope now fell in love with his beautiful cousin, daughter of a Tusculan count, and formed the bold resolve to marry her. But the father of the lady refused his consent so long as he was pope. Benedict now sold the papal chair for a thousand pounds of silver to the archdeacon Joannes Gratian. This man, a pious simple individual, in order to save the chair of St. Peter from utter overthrow, took upon himself the disgrace of simony at the bidding of his friends of Clugny, among whom a young Roman monk called Hildebrand, son of poor parents of Soana, in Tuscany, was already most conspicuous. The new pope assumed the name of =Gregory VI.=, A.D. 1044-1046. He wanted the talents necessary for the hard task he had undertaken. Benedict having failed in carrying out his matrimonial plans, again claimed to be pope, as did also Sylvester. Thus Rome had at one and the same time, three popes, and all three were publicly known to be simonists. The Clugny party cast off their protégé Gregory, and called in the German emperor as saviour of the church. Henry came and had all the the three popes deposed at the =Synod at Sutri=, A.D. 1046. The Romans gave to him the right of making a new appointment. It fell upon Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who took the name of =Clement II.=, and crowned the king emperor on Christmas, A.D. 1046. The Romans were so delighted at having order restored in the city, that they gave over to the emperor with the rank of patrician the government of Rome and the right of papal election for all time, and swore never to consecrate a pope without the emperor’s concurrence. Henry took the ex-pope Gregory along with him, back to Germany, where he died in exile, at Cologne. Hildebrand, his chaplain, had accompanied him thither, and after his death retired into the monastery of Clugny.