The claim that we have discovered, since the days of Baronius, new documents which materially alter the evidence, must at once be set aside. Of the Formosian writers of the time whose pamphlets have been recovered, the priest Auxilius throws no light on this subject and the grammarian Vulgarius is unreliable. We have letters and poems in which Vulgarius hails Pope Sergius as "the glory of the world" and "the pillar of all virtue," and professes a profound regard for the matchless virtue and the "immaculate bed" of Theodora.[182] The fact is that Vulgarius had previously indicted Sergius in lurid terms and had been significantly summoned to Rome by that vigorous Pontiff. His charges of murder and outrage then changed into the most fulsome flattery, to which we cannot pay the slightest regard. His earlier charges are more serious, as, writing only six years after the events, he appeals to the still fresh recollection in the minds of the Romans that Sergius had had his two predecessors murdered in prison.[183]
We have no serious reason to differ from Baronius. Liutprand, Bishop of Cremona, is the chief accuser. As servant of the court of Berengar II. and then of Otto I., he often visited Rome in the first half of the tenth century, and he knew the city well during the Pontificate of John XI., the son of Marozia. He says that Theodora, "a shameless whore," was all-powerful at Rome: that she was the mistress of John X., whom she promoted to the See of Ravenna and then to that of Rome: that her daughters Marozia and Theodora were more shameless than she: and that John XI. was the son of Sergius and Marozia.[184] Liutprand would hardly scruple to reproduce gossip, and he is often wrong, so that one reads him with caution. Yet his statement about Sergius is so far confirmed that so careful a writer on the Popes as Duchesne is compelled to accept it.[185]
Benedict of Soracte, a very meagre and confused chronicler, gives Marozia a dark character in his Chronicle.[186] Her son Alberic was, he says, born out of wedlock: presumably before she married the father, Alberic I. Flodoard, the most respectable chronicler of the time, tells us in his Annals (year 933) that John XI. was the son of Marozia and the brother of Alberic II.; but neither there nor elsewhere does he mention the father, and the omission is significant. Flodoard, a deeply religious monk, under personal obligations to the Papacy, was not the man to repeat scandalous Roman gossip; yet in his long poetic history of the Papacy he brands Marozia as an incestuous woman united to an adulterer, and he describes John XI., whom he disdains, as so puny a thing that we can scarcely conceive him as a son of the vigorous Alberic.[187] Lastly, the one-line notice of John XI. in the Liber Pontificalis says that he was "the son of Sergius III." We do not know when or by whom this was written, but recent attempts to represent it as an echo of Liutprand have failed. We must agree with Duchesne that it is a distinct testimony and "more authoritative" than that of Liutprand.
I have analyzed afresh the original evidence on this not very important point merely in order to show the futility of recent attempts to rehabilitate the age of John X. Pope Sergius, the chief ecclesiastic of the Italian faction to which John belonged, was a violent and unscrupulous man. He resigned a bishopric, and returned to the rank of deacon, in order that he might have a better chance of the Papacy. He was Anti-Pope to John IX. in 898, and was excommunicated and driven from Rome; and he forced his way back at the point of the sword. The charge that he was responsible for the death of his two predecessors cannot be disregarded, and he certainly dealt violently with his opponents. The charge of loose conduct is not more serious than these things, and it rests on strong evidence.
To this party John X. belonged. His early career is not very plain, but he appears first as a deacon at Bologna. He was chosen to succeed Bishop Peter of that city, but, before he was consecrated, Archbishop Kailo of Ravenna died, and John passed to Ravenna and occupied its See. Nine years later, in 914, he was elected Bishop of Rome. It was scarcely thirty years since his party had foully treated the body of Formosus, partly on the charge of passing from another bishopric to that of Rome. One naturally suspects ambition in John and powerful influence in his favour at Rome. We know, in fact, that he was on excellent terms with Theophylactus and Theodora,[188] and no one now doubts that they secured his election. We are therefore not wholly surprised, considering the age, when Liutprand assures us that he was a charming man, and that Theodora, meeting him during one of his missions to Rome, conceived a passion for him.
It is neither possible nor profitable to linger over the subject, and the impartial student will probably neither assent to nor dissent from this unconfirmed statement of the Bishop of Cremona. Liverani ridicules it on the ground that Theodora must have been far from young, since her daughter Marozia married Albert of Camerino about the year 915. It is curious to find a native of Italy, where girls are often mature at twelve, and were in the old days often mothers at thirteen, raising such an objection. Theodora may quite well have been still in her thirties in 915. I would, however, rather call attention to the moral condition of Europe at the time. The pious Bishop of Verona, Ratherius, gives us an extraordinary picture of the life of some of his episcopal colleagues.[189] They rush through their mass in the morning, don gorgeous dresses and gold belts, and ride out to hunt on horses with golden bridles: they return at night to rich banquets, with massive goblets of good wine, and dancing girls for company, and dice to follow: and they retire, too often with their companions, to beds that are inlaid with gold and silver and spread with covers and pillows of silk. Bishop Atto of Vercelli gives us a corresponding picture of the lives of the lower clergy and their wives and mistresses.[190] The proceedings of the Council of Troslé, in the year 909, confirm and enlarge this remarkable picture.[191] Assuredly no historian who knows the tenth century will find the charges against Sergius and John implausible.
Whatever may be their value, John was no idle voluptuary. He found the Saracens still devastating southern Italy and he helped, in 915, to form a great league against them. When the Duke of Capua led out his troops, and the Spoletans and Beneventans fell into line at last, and even the Greeks sent a fleet, the Roman militia was marshalled, and John rode at their head beside the fiery young Alberic of Camerino. He was not the first of the many fighting Popes: John VIII. had built a Papal navy and dealt the Saracens some shrewd blows. But John X. was the first Pope to take the field in person, and we lament that the wretched scribes of the time have left us no portrait of the consecrated warrior. We know from his letters that he exposed himself on the field, and from the chronicles that he fired the troops. The Saracens were at last pinned in their camp on a hill near the mouth of the Garigliano, and, after a long blockade, were annihilated.
John and the Marquis Alberic enjoyed a splendid ovation at Rome, and it was probably at this date that the hand of Marozia was bestowed on Alberic. But the victory had its price. John had to surrender some of his patrimonies to the Duke of Gaeta and to confer the imperial crown on King Berengar for his assistance. When Berengar came to Rome, and promised to maintain all the rights and properties of the Papacy as other Emperors had done, and received the crown from the hand of the Pope, it must have seemed that a brighter day had dawned at last on Italy. But the restless factions murmured, and in a few years Rudolph II. of Burgundy was invited to come and seize the crown. Berengar brought the half-civilized Hungarians to his aid, and a fresh trail of blood and fire marred the face of Italy. He lost, and was assassinated (924); but Rudolph, who won only the crown of Italy, was not left long in peaceful possession of it, and the next movement of Italian politics shows John in a singular situation at Rome.
An earlier chapter of this history was enlivened by the amours of Lothair of Lorraine and Waldrada. They left behind them an illegitimate daughter, Bertha, who had all the spirit and more than the ambition of her mother. There were many women of commanding personality (and, usually, little scruple) in the early Middle Ages, and the story of Theodora and Marozia must not be regarded as very exceptional. Bertha made vigorous efforts to win Italy for her favourite son, Hugh of Provence, and, when she died in 925, his sister, Irmengard, a fascinating woman who maintained the domestic tradition, won the bishops and nobles of Lombardy for him by an unsparing use of her charms. He was presently invited to come and drive the Burgundians out of Italy. John X. joined in the invitation and went to Mantua to meet him.
It is recorded that the Pope made some obscure bargain with him at Mantua, and there can be little doubt that he asked Hugh's aid against Marozia. Theophylactus and Theodora were dead, and Marozia was at deadly feud with the Pope. Her first husband seems to have died about 925, and she had married Guido of Tuscany. Whether her quarrel with John began before her marriage we do not know, but Liutprand tells us that she and Guido wanted to depose the Pope. Both Liutprand and Benedict[192] make the cause of the quarrel clear. John had called his brother Peter to his side at Rome, and the power he gave to his brother, and therefore withdrew from the lay nobles, infuriated his earlier supporters. He turned, as so many Popes had done, to a distant prince, and his career soon came to a close.