[963-964 A.D.]
The emperor summoned an ecclesiastical council; it was attended by the archbishops of Aquileia (by deputy), of Milan, of Ravenna, and Hamburg; by two German and two French metropolitans; by a great number of bishops and presbyters from Lombardy, Tuscany, and all parts of Italy. The whole militia of Rome assembled as a guard to the council round the church of St. Peter. The proceedings of the council mark the times. Inquiry was made why the pope was not present. A general cry of astonishment broke forth from the clergy and the people: “The very Iberians, Babylonians, and Indians have heard the monstrous crimes of the pope. He is not a wolf who condescends to sheep’s clothing; his cruelty, his diabolical dealings are open, avowed, disdain concealment.” The calmer justice of the emperor demanded specific charges. The cardinal presbyter rose and declared that he had seen Pope John celebrate mass without himself communicating. Another, that he had ordained a bishop in a stable; that he had taken bribes for the consecration of bishops, and had ordained a bishop of Todi who was but ten years old. “For his sacrileges, all eyes might behold them;” they alluded, probably, to the dilapidation of the churches, which were open to the weather, and so much out of repair that the worshippers could not assemble from fear lest the roofs should fall on their heads.
Darker charges followed, mingled with less heinous, in strange confusion, charges of adultery, incest, with the names of the females, one his father’s concubines, another a widow and her niece; he had made the Lateran palace a brothel; he had been guilty of hunting; charges of cruelty, the blinding of one dignified ecclesiastic, the castrating another, both had died under the operation; he had let loose fire and sword, and appeared himself constantly armed with sword, lance, helmet, and breast-plate. Both ecclesiastics and laymen accused him of drinking wine for the love of the devil; of invoking, when gambling, heathen deities, the devils Jove and Venus. He had perpetually neglected matins and vespers, and never signed himself with the sign of the cross.
The emperor could speak only German; he commanded the bishop of Cremona to address the assembly in Latin. Liutprand warned the council, he adjured them by the blessed Virgin and by St. Peter, not to bring vague accusations, nor such as could not be supported by accredited testimony, against the holy father. Bishops, deacons, clergy, and people with one voice replied, “If we do not prove these and more crimes against the pope, may St. Peter, who holds the keys of heaven, close the gates against us; may we be stricken with anathema, and may the anathema be ratified at the day of judgment!” They appealed to the whole army of Otto, whether they had not seen the pope in full armour on the other side of the Tiber; but for the river he had been taken in that attire.
Letters were sent summoning the pope to answer to these accusations; accusations some of them so obscene that they would have been thought immodest if made against stage-players. If the pope dreaded any assault from the enraged multitude, the emperor answered for the security of his person. The pope’s reply was brief, contemptuous: “John, the servant of God, to all the bishops. We hear that you design to elect a new pope; if you do, in the name of Almighty God, I excommunicate you; and forbid you to confer orders or to celebrate mass!”
Thrice was Pope John cited before the council. Messengers were sent to Tivoli; the answer was, “The pope was gone out to shoot.” Unprecedented evils demand unprecedented remedies. The emperor was urged to expel this new Judas from the seat of the apostle, and to sanction a new election. Leo, the chief secretary of the Roman see, was unanimously chosen, though a layman, in the room of the apostate John XII.
But the army of Otto, a feudal army, and bound to do service for a limited period, began to diminish; part had been injudiciously dispersed on distant enterprises; the Romans, as usual, soon grew weary of a foreign, a German yoke. The emissaries of Pope John watched the opportunity; a furious insurrection of the people broke out against the emperor and his pope. The valour of Otto, who forced the barricades of the bridge over the Tiber, subdued the rebellion (964). He took a terrible revenge. The supplications of Leo with difficulty arrested the carnage. Otto soon after left Rome, and marched towards Camerino (Camerinum) and Spoleto in pursuit of King Adalbert. The king Berengar and his wife Willa were taken in the castle of St. Leo, and sent into Germany.
[964-966 A.D.]
Hardly, however, had Otto left the city when a new rebellion, organised by the patrician females of Rome, rose on the defenceless Leo, and opened the gates of the city to John. Leo with difficulty escaped to the camp of Otto. The remorseless John re-entered the city, resumed his pontifical state, seized and mutilated the leaders of the imperial party; of one he cut off the right hand, of another the tongue, the nose, and two fingers; in this plight they appeared in the imperial camp. An obsequious synod reversed the decrees of that which had deposed John. The Roman people had now embraced the cause of the son of Alberic with more resolute zeal; for the emperor was compelled to delay till he could reassemble a force powerful enough to undertake the siege of the city. Ere this, however, his own vices had delivered Rome from her champion or her tyrant, Christendom from her worst pontiff. While he was pursuing his amours in a distant part of the city, Pope John XII was struck dead (May 14th, 964), by the hand of God, as the more religious supposed; others, by a more natural cause, the poniard of an injured husband.
But it was a Roman or Italian, perhaps a republican feeling which had latterly attached the citizens to the son of Alberic, not personal love or respect for his pontifical character. They boldly proceeded at once, without regard to the emperor, to the election of a new pope, Benedict V. Otto soon appeared before the walls; he summoned the city, and ordered every Roman who attempted to escape to be mutilated. The republic was forced to surrender. Benedict, the new pope, was brought before the emperor. The cardinal archdeacon, who had adhered to the cause of Leo, demanded by what right he had presumed to usurp the pontifical robes during the life-time of Leo, the lawful pope. “If I have sinned,” said the humbled prelate, “have mercy upon me.” The emperor is said to have wept. Benedict threw himself before the feet of Otto, drew off the sacred pallium, and delivered up his crosier to Leo. Leo broke it, and showed it to the people. Benedict was degraded to the order of deacon and sent into banishment in Germany. He died at Hamburg.