JOHN X. AND THE IRON CENTURY
The next great stride in the development of the Papacy is taken by Gregory VII., the true successor of Nicholas I. and Gregory I. Europe seemed, indeed, entirely prepared for that last development of the Papal system which we connect with the name of Hildebrand, and a student of its essential growth may be tempted to pass at once from the ninth to the eleventh century. But to do so would be to omit one of the most singular phases of the story of the Papacy and leave in greater obscurity than ever one of its most interesting problems. How comes it that a Century of Iron, as Baronius has for ever branded the tenth century, falls between the work of Nicholas and the still greater work of Gregory? May we trust those modern writers who contend that the devout father of ecclesiastical history was gravely unjust to the Papacy, and that we may detect the play of a romantic or a malicious imagination in the familiar picture of Theodora and Marozia controlling the chair of Peter and investing their lovers or sons with the robes of the Vicar of Christ? Some consideration must be given to this phase, and it will be convenient to take John X. as its outstanding and characteristic figure.
I have already observed that few really unworthy men sat in the chair of Peter until the close of the ninth century. Among the hundred Popes who preceded Nicholas I. there had been, it is true, few men of commanding personality, but there had been still less men of ignoble character. They had been, on the whole, men whose real mediocrity is not obscured by the fulsome praises of their official panegyrists, yet, for the most part, men of blameless life. In the ninth century we see a gradual deterioration. Hadrian II. tries, with equal sincerity though less personality, to play the great part of Nicholas, and it is from no fault of character that he fails to coerce princes and prelates. John VIII. plays a not ignoble human part during the calamitous decade of his Pontificate, though there is more soldierly ardour than religious idealism in his defence of the Papacy. After him, in quick succession, come five Popes of little-known character, and then we have that famous Stephen VI. who digs the half-putrid body of a predecessor, Formosus, from its grave and treats it with appalling outrage. In the gloom which now descends on Rome, we follow with difficulty the passionate movements of the rival parties, but we know that after Formosus there were nine Popes in eight years (896-904). With Sergius III. (904-911), the Century of Iron fitly opens, and his name and that of John X., who became Pope in 914, are chiefly associated with the names of Theodora and Marozia.
The general causes of this deterioration are easily assigned. In that age of violent character, uncontrolled by culture, a multiplication of small princedoms was sure to lead to bloody rivalries. To this the dissolution of the Empire of Charlemagne and the feebleness of his descendants had led, especially in Italy, where the weakness of a sacerdocracy—that is to say, its liability, if not obligation, to use temporal resources for religious rather than military and civic purposes—soon became apparent. The Papacy had the further weakness that, being nominally independent yet unable to defend itself, it was ever on the watch for another Pippin—a monarch who would protect it and not govern it—and it dangled its tawdry imperial crown before the eyes of the kings of Italy, France, and Germany, to say nothing of the smaller princes of Italy. Hence arose the factions which rent a degraded Rome. We must remember, too, that this was a fresh period of invasion and devastation: the waves of Saracen advance lapped the walls of Rome from the south and the fierce Hungarians reached it from the north.
These general causes of decay are substantial, yet we must not be too easily contented with them. Some day a subtler or more candid science will tell the whole story of the making of the Middle Ages. I need note only that the disorder existed in Rome, and often burst its bonds, long before the time of Stephen VI. Even under Hadrian I. we saw relatives and friends of the Pope promoted to high office, yet in the end betraying characters of revolting brutality. We remember also a certain legate of Nicholas I., Bishop Arsenius, who handled anathemas with such consummate ease. This man's nephew abducted the daughter of Pope Hadrian II., and, when he was pursued, murdered her and the Pope's wife. There was some taint in the blood—or the brain—of this new Roman aristocracy which gathered round the Lateran. Under John VIII., the strongest successor of Nicholas, they broke into appalling disorders. "Their swinish lust," says one of the most conservative and most reticent of recent writers on the Popes, speaking of the leading Papal officials of the time, "was only second to their cruelty and avarice."[178] Hadrian II. had the widow of one of these officials whipped naked through the streets of Rome, and had another official blinded. Under Stephen VI. and Sergius III. these corrupt Roman families come into clearer light, and the domination of Theodora and Marozia is merely one episode in this lamentable development, which has been recorded more fully because of the piquancy of this feminine ascendancy in a nominal theocracy.
The period with which we are concerned really opens with Pope Formosus, a not unworthy man, who looked for support to Arnulph of Germany. The Italian faction, which looked to Guido of Spoleto and Adalbert of Tuscany, regarded this "treachery" with the bitterest rancour and imprisoned the Pope. One of the leaders of this section was the deacon (later Pope) Sergius. Arnulph came to Rome, and swept the Tuscan-Spoletan faction, including Sergius, out of the city. Formosus died in 896, his gouty successor followed him within a fortnight, and Stephen VI. was elected. As soon as Arnulph had left Rome, the Pope surrendered to the Italian faction, and the Lateran witnessed that ghastly outrage of the trial of the mouldering corpse of Formosus: on the nominal charge of having exercised his functions after being deposed and having passed from another bishopric to that of Rome. There seems to be some lack of sense of moral proportion in historians who, knowing these far graver things, make elaborate efforts to disprove the love-affairs of one or two Popes of the period. Three not unworthy Popes filled, and soon quitted, the Roman See after Stephen. The last of these, Leo V., was dethroned and imprisoned by the cardinal-priest Christopher, who seized the Papacy. Sergius and his friends in exile now entered into correspondence with the dissatisfied Romans, mastered the city with an army, and threw Christopher in turn into a dungeon. This was the rise to power of Sergius III.; the beginning of what has been called, with more vigour than accuracy, the Pornocracy.[179]
With the weakening of the Empire, the Roman nobles had wrested from the Popes the political control of the city, and we gather from the titles assigned to them that there was a debased restoration of the old republican forms. The head of one of the leading families, Theophylactus, is described as Master of the Papal Wardrobe, Master of the Troops, Consul, and Senator. His wife, Theodora, called herself the Senatrix: their elder and more famous daughter Marozia is named the Patricia. The family belonged, of course, to the Tuscan-Spoletan faction which triumphed with Sergius. Culture had now fallen so low at Rome that there is no writer of the time able or willing to leave us a portrait of these remarkable ladies; the nearest authority, the monk Benedict of Soracte, is so far from artistic feeling that it would be literally impossible to write a grosser and more barbarous Latin than he does. From some documents of the time it appears that there were ladies of this great family who could not write their names, and we may presume that this was their common condition. But it is uniformly stated that they were women of great beauty and ambition: it is certain that Marozia was the mother of John XI., and that she put him on the Papal throne: and it is claimed that Sergius was the father of John XI., and that John X. was the lover of Theodora.
These stories of amorous relations would not in themselves deserve a severe historical inquiry, but they have been made a test of the accuracy or inaccuracy of our authorities. The older ecclesiastical historians admitted them without demur. In the pages of Baronius Theodora is "that most powerful, most noble, and most shameless whore" and Sergius is the lover of that "shameless whore" Theodora. Pagi and Mansi reproduce these words, and they are complacently prefixed to the collection of John's letters in the Migne edition.[180] More recent writers like Duchesne and Dr. W. Barry admit the charge against Sergius; but the learned Muratori boldly questioned the whole tradition, and various modern Italian writers have attempted to support his case.[181]