The Dark Ages, 476-918

by Charles Oman

In his despairing search for an emperor who should save Rome and Italy, pope John finally crowned Charles the Fat, the most unpromising candidate upon whom he could possibly have pitched. But the incapable and unwieldy monarch soon returned to Germany, and even took with him for northern wars the Lombard levies which John had fondly hoped to use for the extirpation of the Campanian Moslems (881).

Next year John VIII. died. He was the last of those able pontiffs of the ninth century who did their best to defend Italy from the infidel, and to strengthen and extend the Papal power over the Frankish kings and the Frankish church. After his decease the same blight which had already fallen on the house of Charles the Great seemed to descend on the bearers of the Roman keys. Three Popes died in eight years, and men of mark ceased to appear on the papal throne. The last fifteen years of the century saw the first of those scandalous prelates who were for a century to be the disgrace of Christendom.

The inglorious reign of Charles the Fat was no less fatal to Italy than to the rest of the Frankish realms. The Moors of Sicily and their colonists on the Garigliano sent their expeditions farther and farther afield; their vessels were seen as far north as Pisa and Genoa. |The Moors of Fraxinet, 888-975.| Another band from Spain descended on the Provençal coast at the same moment, and seized the sea-girt fortress of Fraxinet, where they established a strong colony, which lasted nearly a hundred years (888-975). The raids of the Moors of Fraxinet reached far inland, in despite of the kings of Arles and Upper Burgundy. We read, to our surprise, of incursions which devastated the whole valley of the Rhone, and reached as far as Lausanne and St. Maurice in Switzerland. On one occasion a band of Provençal Saracens and a band of Magyars from the Danube met and fought at Orbe in the land of Vaud. It seemed as if the enemies of Europe had met at her central point, and that Christendom was doomed to succumb.

After the deposition of Charles the Fat no more Karlings of legitimate blood survived. Italy, like the other Frankish realms, had to seek a new royal house. Two princes courted the suffrages of the Lombard Diet and the blessing of the Pope—Wido, duke of Spoleto, the most powerful and the most turbulent of the nobles of central Italy, and Berengar, margrave of the march of Friuli, the Italian borderland toward the Slavs of Illyria. Both claimed Karling blood on the spindle side. Berengar was the son of Gisela, a daughter of Lewis the Pious and the empress Judith; Wido’s mother was a daughter of Lothair I. and a sister of the good emperor Lewis II. At first there appeared some chance that the two competitors might not come to blows, for Wido had the bold idea of crossing the Alps to seize the Lotharingian dominions of his grandfather Lothair, in the general break-up of the empire which followed the deposition of Charles the Fat. He agreed to allow Berengar to be crowned king of Italy if he himself was aided in his Transalpine schemes. The margrave of Friuli, therefore, was duly elected by the Lombard Diet, and anointed king by the archbishop of Milan, while duke Wido entered Burgundy, and got himself crowned at Langres. |Wars of Wido and Berengar.| But after a short struggle with Odo of France the Spoletan prince abandoned his hopes beyond the Alps and fell back on Italy. Then, disregarding the oaths he had sworn to Berengar, he commenced to intrigue with the counts of central Italy, and soon laid claim to the crown. There followed four years of bitter war between Berengar and Wido, the former supported by Lombardy, the latter by Tuscany and all central Italy and backed by the Pope. Pretending that the archbishop of Milan ought not to have crowned Berengar, the privilege belonging to the Papal See alone, Stephen V. anointed Wido, and proclaimed him Emperor as well as King of Italy (891). The struggle between the rival kings ended in the victory of Wido, who took Pavia, drove Berengar back into his own duchy of Friuli, and ruled all the Lombard realm for three years. He made pope Formosus crown his son Lambert as co-regent emperor with him, and thought that his dynasty was firmly established.

|Arnulf invades Italy, 894.| The humbled Berengar sent over the Alps to ask aid from Arnulf, king of Germany. That prince had always claimed the primacy among the various rulers who now shared the empire of Charles the Great between them, and was only too glad of an opportunity to interfere in Italy. He crossed the Alps in 894, was joined by Berengar, and laid siege to Bergamo, the strong cliff-built city which dominates the Lombard plains from the last spur of the Alps. The Germans stormed the town, and Arnulf hung count Ambrosius, the governor, in his armour before the gate, after massacring the whole garrison. The terror of this deed cowed the partisans of Wido, and all Italy north of the Po did homage to Arnulf. The Spoletan emperor retired southward to prepare to defend the line of the Apennines. There he died, leaving his claims to his son Lambert.

Next year Arnulf returned in force, passed triumphantly through Tuscany, and though disease much thinned the ranks of his army, appeared before the walls of Rome. Not Lambert of Spoleto, but his mother Engeltrud defended the Eternal city. |Arnulf takes Rome, 895.| Inspirited by her the Romans held out for some days, but when Arnulf had stormed the ‘Leonine City,’ the new quarter beyond the Tiber, the empress and her warriors fled, and the Pope opened the gates. Formosus, who had always opposed the Spoletans, looked on Arnulf as a deliverer, and crowned him emperor with joy; but the violence and rapine of the conquering soldiery disgusted the populace of Rome, whose confidence had not been won by Arnulf’s first act—the beheading of thirty citizens who had favoured the cause of Wido and Lambert.

Attacked by fever and a paralytic stroke, Arnulf returned to Germany without having conquered Lambert’s hereditary duchy in the Umbrian Apennines. The moment he was gone all central Italy rose in favour of the Spoletan. Pope Formosus, Arnulf’s chief supporter, died at this moment, and the new pope, Stephen VI., a rabid supporter of the faction of Lambert, violated his predecessor’s sepulchre, declared him an antipope and usurper, and cast his corpse into the Tiber (896).

Arnulf, stricken down by disease, returned no more to Italy, and in his absence Berengar of Friuli once more became master of Lombardy, while Lambert of Spoleto was acknowledged in Rome, Tuscany, and Umbria. |Berengar sole king of Italy, 900.| Fortunately for Italy, Lambert died eighteen months later, killed by a fall from his horse, and his mother Engeltrud sent to Berengar to recognise him as sole king, making no claim in behalf of her young grandchild, the son of Lambert. Arnulf died a year later, and thus in the last year of the century (900) Berengar was left without competitors.

That his reign was not likely to be happy may be gathered from the preceding pages. The Saracens of Campania were still in the field; a new scourge, the Magyars from the Danube, appeared for the first time in Italy in 899, and raided as far as Verona, showing by their brutal cruelty that Christendom might have even worse foes than the Moslem. Rome meanwhile was a prey to anarchy; six Popes died in four years, nor was their loss much to be deplored. Boniface VII. had been twice deposed from the priesthood for profligacy. For Stephen VI., who showed his disposition by his horrid treatment of the corpse of Formosus, we need not much grieve, when we read that his enemies caught him and strangled him in prison. Of the other Popes, creatures of a few months’ reign, we know so little that it is hard to take any interest in their fate. They represented nothing more than parties among the citizens of Rome or the barons of Latium.

So closed the ninth century, with prospects as black for Italy as for the other kingdoms which a hundred years before had joined in saluting Charles the Great as emperor. The only favourable point in the outlook was the hope that a national Lombard kingship might be once more restored in the person of Berengar.