CHAPTER XVIII

THE POPES OF THE EMPIRE

 

 

TOWARDS the month of March 965, the Holy See was once more without an occupant. The Romans dared not run the risk of an election, and communicated with the Emperor Otto, whose choice fell upon a relation of Pope John XII, named John, Bishop of Narni, son of Theodora II, and nephew of the celebrated Marozia. It was a return to the family of Theophylact, but with the imperial countenance. John XIII was installed on the 1st October, but in less than three months a rebellion broke out at Rome, caused, it was said, by the severity of the new Pope, but, in reality, directed against the imperial authority. John, after having suffered ill-treatment and insults, was imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo, and finally banished from Rome. He took refuge in Lombard territory, at Capua, and then returned by way of the Abruzzi, Sabina, and Tuscany, at the head of such an imposing army, that the Romans decided to receive him back. He made his re-entry with much pomp on 14th November 966. This change of front was in great part due to the report that the Emperor Otto had crossed the Alps, and was advancing for the fourth time on Rome. The monk of Mt. Soracte saw his army pass, and thereupon terminated his chronicle with lamentations on the decline of Rome, once mistress of the world, and now in bondage to the Saxons.

He was quite right. The Saxons had abolished the ancient form of the papal elections, and the Romans had now to learn what remained to them of the political power.

The chief instigator of the revolt, Count Rofred, had been killed in the reaction which followed, but some of his associates were still left at Rome. Several “consuls” were arrested, and banished to the other side of the Alps, and the twelve district chiefs were sent to the gallows, to serve as deputies for the common people. The prefect, who was deeply implicated, was handed over to the Pope for punishment. John had his beard shaved, and ordered him to be hung by the hair to the caballus Constantini, the celebrated equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which at that time adorned the Lateran palace. After having been made to ride a donkey, face backwards, with the animal’s tail between his hands, he was cast into prison until the departure of the emperor, when he was also banished to Germany. Finally Otto had the bodies of Rofred and the vestiarius Stephen exhumed, and thrown into the public sewer.

Thanks to these severe methods of repression, the authority of John XIII was maintained without any further difficulty. In April 967 he held a synod at Ravenna in conjunction with the emperor, who then restored to him (in theory) his trans Apennine territories, which had long been outside the power of the Holy See. On Christmas Day of the same year the young Prince Otto II received the imperial coronation at the hands of the Pope in the basilica of St. Peter. John XIII passed peacefully away on 6th September 972, and Otto appointed in his stead Benedict, a cardinal deacon, whose ordination did not take place until January 973. This long interval is the only existing proof of the imperial intervention on this occasion, but, considering the circumstances, it is quite conclusive.

The great Otto died in Germany, 7th May 973. The Romans, at first, did not make any disturbance, but a fresh revolution broke out a year later, when the young Otto II was occupied in contending against the Duke of Bavaria and other of his vassals. The leader of the rebellion at Rome was Crescentius, the son of Theodora, and brother of John XIII. Benedict VI was taken prisoner and confined in the castle of St. Angelo, and replaced by a so-called “national” Pope Boniface VII, son of Ferruccius, and formerly the deacon Franco. All in vain did the imperial missus, Count Sicco, protest against the turn affairs were taking; his objections only served to hasten matters. By order of the usurper, Benedict was strangled in his prison. Sicco, nevertheless, managed to gain the mastery, and succeeded in ejecting Boniface VII. In place of the unfortunate Benedict VI, they elected a new Pope, who adopted the name of Benedict VII. Franco, sometime afterwards, fled from Rome, and took refuge at Constantinople.

This was already the third time since the accession of Leo VIII that the Romans had openly rebelled against the new order of things. They strongly objected to having their Popes appointed for them, and had not yet come to an end of their powers of resistance. Benedict VII had a tolerably easy time of it during his reign, which lasted until his death on 10th July 983. The Emperor Otto came to Italy at the end of 980, and from that time he often stayed at Rome, making it the headquarters for his campaigns in Southern Italy. He died there on 7th December 983, just as he was preparing to avenge a serious defeat sustained the year before in Calabria.

On the death of Benedict VII Otto had appointed in his place a bishop of his kingdom of Italy, the Chancellor Peter, who took the name of John XIV. This new Pope attended him on his deathbed, and permitted his interment in the atrium of St. Peter s, a ceremony which was the precursor of sad days to come. There were only two representatives of the imperial family, a child of three years old, proclaimed in Germany under the name of Otto III, and the Greek Princess Theophano, widow of Otto II, and grand-daughter of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Theophano was a strong-minded woman, as was soon made manifest. But circumstances did not allow her to stay at Rome; she was obliged to hasten to rejoin her son in Germany, leaving the Pope to the mercies of the Romans.

Franco thought that his chance had come; in April 984 he came back from Constantinople, seized upon John XIV, and threw him into prison at St. Angelo, where the wretched victim died four months later, possibly from hunger. Boniface still regarded himself as the rightful Pope, and reckoned the years of his pontificate from the deposition of Benedict in July 985. Rome put up with him for more than a year, and in July 985 he died unexpectedly. His death gave rise to a temporary reaction; his corpse was treated with disrespect, dragged through the town, and finally left in a nude condition in front of the “horse of Constantine”.

Crescentius, who had raised him (974) to the papal throne, and played an important part in his restoration (984), had died immediately after the latter event. His epitaph is still to be seen at St. Alexis. The authority was boldly seized by his son Crescentius, who assumed the new qualification of patricius Romanorum. There was no longer any prospect of a complete independence. Though the emperor was but a child, the empire remained solid, and to attack it too severely would have been indiscreet. Crescentius, in adopting the title of patrician, appears to have posed as a kind of lieutenant or provisional manager during the interregnum. His name appears, together with the Pope’s, in certain documents of the time; possibly it figured on the coins as well, but of this there is no evidence.

John XV, who succeeded Boniface VII, probably owed his promotion to Crescentius, but we have very little accurate information as to the pontifical history of this period. At the close of 989 the Empress Theophano reappeared at Rome, comporting herself as if she were the sovereign. The documents are dated with her imperial year, and sometimes even dignify her with the masculine title of emperor. As we hear of no resistance, it is reasonable to suppose that she was on good terms with Crescentius, and did not dispute his patriciate.

John XV seems to have shed as dim a luster round the papal throne as did the Pope appointed by Marozia and Alberic. But meanwhile the young king of Germany was growing up, and when, in 996, he reached his majority, he made up his mind to visit Italy where his presence was greatly desired. The Pope himself, who was beginning to weary of Crescentius, had invited him to come to Rome. He had not, however, the pleasure of receiving him there, for he died at the beginning of April 996, when Otto III had got no further than Pavia.

Crescentius did not venture to appoint John’s successor, and a solemn embassy was dispatched to Otto at Ravenna, begging him to undertake the responsibility. The young emperor was at this time barely sixteen years old, and he selected one of his cousins, Bruno, son of the Duke of Carinthia, to take the vacant post. He was a clerk, a young man of only twenty-three. His consecration took place at Rome, on 3rd May, under the title of Gregory V, and then, on the 21st of the same month, he celebrated the imperial coronation of his cousin. Though this was not the first time that the Romans had suffered the infliction of a young and immature pontiff, it was the first time that they had had one of transalpine origin foisted upon them by the Roman court. After Gregory V came Sylvester II, so that, thanks to Otto III, the chair of St. Peter was occupied successively by the first of the German and the first of the French Popes.

Otto’s arrival heralded the fall of Crescentius, who had to render an account of his misdeeds before the imperial tribunal. His trial resulted in a sentence of banishment, which, however, through the ill-advised intervention of Gregory V, was never carried out.

Three months after the emperor’s departure, when he had only just crossed the Alps on his homeward way, a rebellion broke out against the German Pope. The latter was probably not altogether blameless : a contemporary writer, John Caneparius, speaks of him as multum fervidae juventutis. But it is evident that the old national leaven was fast fermenting. The movement was headed by Crescentius himself, and Gregory V fled ignominiously. The emperor was just then busy fighting against the Slavs, and the Pope was not in a position to do more than hurl denunciations against the insurgent. A council was held at Pavia, in February 997, at which Crescentius was solemnly anathematized. He, however, in no way disconcerted, brought forward a rival to Gregory V in the person of Philagath, Bishop of Piacenza, who was passing through Rome on his way back from Constantinople, where he had been sent on an imperial embassy. He was a Calabrian Greek, who owed everything to the favor of Theophano and her son, but at the instigation of Crescentius he consented to turn traitor to his benefactors, and, in the month of April 997, he was installed as Pope under the title of John XVI.

But, less than a month afterwards, Otto came back, in company with the German Pope. Rome opened her gates; Philagath took flight, and Crescentius shut himself up in the castle of St. Angelo. While they were preparing to besiege it, according to rule, the unfortunate John XVI was caught on one of the Campanian roads. His captors hastened to cut off his nose and his ears, and to tear out his eyes and tongue. In this pitiable plight he was brought before a council at the Lateran, formally deposed and delivered over to the populace, who subjected him to the humiliating process of riding backwards on a donkey. In vain did the venerable St. Nilus, the patriarch of the Greek monks of Southern Italy, intercede on his behalf. His life was spared, but that was all. He managed to survive his ill-treatment for another fifteen years, when he died, probably at the abbey at Fulda, in the year 1013.

To return to Crescentius. The assault on the castle of St. Angelo was successful, so that on 29^th April 998 the fortress was seized by the Germans. Crescentius, taken prisoner, was beheaded on the battlements, and then his body and those of twelve other Romans were hanged upon gibbets erected on Mte. Mario (mons Malus, mons Gaudii).

But this torture did not succeed in suppressing the patrician race. There still remained, in addition to the collateral branches, a son called John Crescentius, of whom we shall presently hear more. The Romans had been profoundly impressed by the hardy resistance and tragic death of Crescentius, who soon passed into a legendary hero.

Otto, from that time, made Rome his permanent abode. His presence was absolutely necessary to keep the Romans within bounds, although he applied himself to winning them over by means of all kinds of flattering attentions, and by reviving for their benefit a sort of imperial court in the fashion of bygone days. On 18th February 999 Gregory died, either from poison, or in some even more tragic way. Otto thereupon raised to the pontificate his former tutor, Gerbert, at that time archbishop of Ravenna. Sylvester II, as he was called, does not appear to have been any more at ease than his predecessor as chief shepherd of the Roman flock, and no sooner did Otto leave him for a moment than he implored him to come back.

The young emperor had a propensity for pious companions, and he devoted much time to pilgrim ages. Close to his residence on the Aventine arose the convent of Saints Boniface and Alexis, just then in all the first fervor and enthusiasm of its foundation. Otto was on terms of friendship with the monks there, some of whom were compatriots of his own. He was known to perform his devotions at Beneventum before the shrine of the Apostle Bartholomew; at Monte Cassino and at Monte Gargano amid the solitudes of Campania, where St. Nilus, hunted out of Calabria by the Saracen invasion, had found a temporary refuge. At Ravenna he visited another monkish patriarch, St. Romuald. Sometimes these devout pilgrimages led him farther still to Aix-la-Chapelle, allured by memories of Charlemagne, or to Gnesen, in the south of Poland, where reposed the remains of his friend St. Adalbert of Prague, who had been murdered on the shores of the Baltic by the uncivilized Prussians.

These journeys seemed very long to Pope Sylvester, but they had no disastrous consequences. The danger lay in another quarter. In the immediate neighborhood of Rome there were at that time several important seigniories. Various branches of the family of Theophylact were in possession of large estates, of which Tusculum, on Monte Albano, Praeneste, Arci in Sabina, and Galera on the Tuscan road, were the chief centers and fortresses. The abbot of Farfa was likewise a baron of the first rank. But the one and only city which lived its own life was Tivoli. Thanks partly to a certain degree of preservation in the municipal institutions of ancient Tibur, as well as to the progress of the local organization under the auspices of the bishop, Tivoli was of considerable importance. Not only did she exist by the side of Rome, but she also had the power of irritating the Romans by the very fact of her existence and prosperity. The Romans loathed Tivoli, as, later on, they loathed Tusculum, with a loathing as deadly as it was irresponsible. When, in 1001, the inhabitants of Tivoli were misguided enough to rebel against the imperial authority, the emperor, assisted by the Romans, who hoped for a share of the spoil, set out to quell them. The Pope and Bishop Bernard of Hildesheim  urged the rebels to submit, and the emperor, having them at his mercy, spared their lives. This was the very step to displease the Romans, and, soon after his return to Rome, Otto III saw the rebellious populace surging to the very doors of his palace in the Aventine. With difficulty he succeeded in escaping to Ravenna, taking with him the Pope Sylvester. This was on 16th February 1001, and from that time Otto never went back to Rome, although his military expeditions against the southern provinces must sometimes have led him to pass within sight of the ramparts. On 24th January of the following year, he died at Paterno, near Mt. Soracte. Rome, the city which he so loved, was closed against him, so that his body could not find a resting-place by the side of his father, Otto II, and they were obliged to take it to Aix-la-Chapelle. As he had never been married, the male issue of Otto the Great was now extinct, and the Germans rallied round Henry, Duke of Bavaria, grand-nephew of the great emperor.

Italy, for the last time, appointed a national king, Arduin, Marquis of Ivrea, who was proclaimed at Pavia on 15th February. At Rome the power, without any pressure from outside, became once more centered in the family of Crescentius. It is probable that John Crescentius, son of the criminal executed in 998, had been in some way connected with the rebellion of 1001, and that from that time the Romans had vested the chief authority in him. After Otto’s death he assumed the title of Patricius Romanorum, which he maintained without any difficulty.

History was repeating itself. For thirty years Ottos and Crescentiuses had succeeded one another alternately. Though the actual individuals varied, it was always the same conflict between the national chief and the foreign prince.

Sylvester II returned to Rome, where the patrician allowed him to die in peace. This event took place on 12th May 1003, and the next Pope appointed was John XVII, who, after a reign of six months, was succeeded by John XVIII. This latter occupied the papal See until the year 1009, when his place was taken by Sergius IV (Buccaporca), who, from being the son of a Roman shoe maker, had risen to the rank of bishop of Albano. He died on 12th May 1012, the patrician having preceded him to the grave by a few weeks.

Owing to the party strife among the aristocracy the vacancy of the Holy See gave rise to a double election. In opposition to the Crescentius family was the increasing influence of the Counts of Tusculum, who were connected with the family of the great Prince Alberic, as well as with the far-away ancestor Theophylact. Gregory, the head of the house, figures in the time of Otto III under the title of praefectus navalis. To him, doubtless, was due the restoration and transformation of the acropolis of the old Latin city, which had been abandoned for centuries. He was the father of three sons, Alberic, Romanus, and the Cardinal Theophylact. There can be no doubt that this influential family had long cherished the ambition of succeeding the Crescentii in the government of the Roman state. But there were obstacles in the way. The power was in the hands of the Crescentii, who represented the tradition of independence, as far as this had been possible, since the advent of the Saxon kings in Italy. According as the German authority was strong or weak, the Crescentii regulated their behavior, resigning themselves or objecting, as the occasion seemed to demand. In one way or another they managed to express the attitude of the people, or rather of the aristocracy, the only class which had any weight at that time. The Tusculans, in order to counter-check them, assumed a special devotion to the German interests, but, in point of fact, this was very little beyond assumption, though it undoubtedly made them more favorably regarded on the other side of the Alps.

The patrician of the Romans being no longer alive, the two papal candidates, Gregory, supported by the waning Crescentian influence, and Theophylact, the third son of the Count of Tusculum, turned to King Henry II. This latter had already made a campaign in Northern Italy in 1004, and had even gained an entry into Pavia, but the old Lombard capital had risen up in arms against him, so that, although the rebellion was checked by fire, Henry had thought it wiser to curtail his sojourn in the Italian kingdom. After his departure, Arduin, the national king, had regained his footing, and the internal difficulties of the German kingdom, combined with the diplomacy of John Crescentius, had sufficed to keep Henry II on the north of the Alps. The present position of affairs seemed more promising. Henry spoke encouraging words to Gregory’s ambassadors, but withheld his decision, which was clearly affected by the fact that Theophylact, who, through the influence of his father and brothers, had been proclaimed Pope under the title of Benedict VIII, had succeeded in consolidating his position.

At the end of February 1013 Henry II made his entry into Italy, thus causing Arduin to disappear from public view. On 1 4th February of the following year, the king of Germany and his wife, Queen Cunegunda, were crowned by Benedict VIII at St. Peter’s. Arduin made a last effort to reassert himself a little while afterwards, but with so little success that he was reduced to entering a monastery, where he spent the remainder of his days.

Pope Benedict VIII, who reigned twelve years to the 7th April 1024 left behind him a satisfactory record. He seems to have always maintained amicable relations with the emperor. He led a naval expedition against the Saracens, who had seized upon Luni (1016), paid a visit to Germany in 1020, accompanied the emperor to the south of Italy in 1022, and the same year united with him in holding a synod at Pavia, where the long-forgotten regulations concerning celibacy were once more brought to light.

Benedict had plenty of time to occupy himself with religious matters. The burden of the temporal government was assumed by his brother Romanus, who bore the title of Senator omnium Romanorum, revived in the time of Alberic, so that the whole power of the papacy, spiritual as well as political, was vested in the nobles of Tusculum. They had, however, to reckon with the supreme authority of the emperor as far as temporal affairs were concerned. Like the Crescentii, they were in the position of vice-governors, or permanent missi, rather than that of independent princes. Alberic had been free from any such restraint, for there had been no emperor in his day to impose it upon him. But the situation had utterly changed since the consecration of 962. Under the Crescentii, especially the first two, the lay chiefs of the Roman aristocracy had tried to resist the imperial authority, but with the Tusculans things were on a more friendly footing. When the emperor, as constantly happened, was away from Rome, the governing power was left in the hands of the Tusculum family; but when he was in the city, he naturally took the headship of affairs, presiding at the courts of justice, and modifying the legislation if necessary. Thus we have an edict of the Emperor Conrad II addressed to the Roman judges, by which the personal right of the Lombards over Roman territory is annulled. This point of personal right had not been inserted in the privilege of Otto I, which reproduced so many conditions of the constitution of 824. Nevertheless, the abbot of Farfa, in an action brought before Otto III, appealed successfully to the Lombard law. But the curious documents from which we derive our information concerning this suit show how very few and far between were the Roman magistrates who really understood the Lombard legalities. Conrad brought things into better order, and commanded ut quaecumque negotia mota fuerint tam inter Romance urbis maenia quam etiam deforis in Romanis pertinentiis, actore Langobardo vel reo, a vobis dumtaxat Romanis legibus terminentur.

This fact demonstrates how the emperors of the eleventh century, like those of the ninth, regarded themselves as genuine monarchs at Rome, particularly in connection with legislation. Certainly the privilege documents give no hint of this degree of authority, but that only proves how little these are to be relied upon in a question of defining the precise circumstances. Henry II issued one for the benefit of Benedict VIII on the occasion of his consecration, and that is an exact reproduction of the privilege of Otto. It is probable that a document of this kind was produced at every imperial consecration.

When Benedict died, the senator, without more ado, calmly established himself in his place, taking the name of John XIX. It was the counterpart of the accession of John XII (the family traditions were being carried out). The new Pope, who, according to one of the chroniclers, uno eodemque die praefectus fuit et papa, was not well adapted to fulfill the ideas of Benedict VIII, or rather of the Emperor Henry II, on ecclesiastical reform, and the old abuses cropped up again more vigorously than ever. John XIX reigned until 1032, the most conspicuous event of his pontificate being the coronation of the Emperor Conrad II, successor to Henry.

The only survivor of Count Gregory’s three sons was the eldest, Count Alberic, who had no inclination to assume the papal authority. He had four sons. On one of them, Gregory, he bestowed the temporal government, together with the title of Consul Romanorum; another, bearing, like his distant ancestor and Benedict VIII, the name of Theophylact, was appointed to succeed his two uncles in the pontifical chair. That he was only twelve years old was no obstacle, and he was proclaimed Pope under the title of Benedict IX. To the German princes there was nothing objectionable in this hereditary transmission of the Apostolic Chair. They had recognized John XIX, who, though a layman, was a full-grown man, and they tolerated Benedict IX, a mere urchin, who was before long to become actively offensive.

Indeed, as time went on, the young Pope revived at the Lateran the rule of revelry which had flourished under his ancestor John XII, eighty years before. Conrad II, who understood how to manage this papal puppet, not only encouraged him, but over whelmed him with attentions. He benefited by this attitude in his struggle against the archbishop of Milan, when, on two occasions, at Cremona 1037, and at Spello 1038, Benedict went to meet him, and at his request, pronounced sentence of excommunication against the Archbishop Heribert. Not until seven years had passed did Henry III, who succeeded Conrad in 1039, interfere and put a stop to the gross scandals over which every earnest minded person in Christendom was obliged to lament in helpless silence.

The Romans themselves were the first to grow weary of their Pope’s proceedings. During the autumn of 1044 they rose in rebellion and expelled him from his See, together with his brother the consul, and all connected with the House of Tusculum. However, the pontifical party succeeded in maintaining their own in the Trastevere, while Rome herself and the Leonine city remained in the power of the rebels. The latter, on 7th January 1045 made an onslaught on the Trasteverans, but were put to flight by the vassals of Tusculum, under the leadership of Gerard, Count of Galeria. They fell back in disarray on the Saxon gate, which, however, was not forced, so the Romans, emboldened, elected a successor to Benedict. This was John, Bishop of Sabina, who took the name of Sylvester III. The chief electors had been heavily bribed, but, as far as the new Pope was concerned, it was money wasted, for at the end of forty-nine days Rome had succumbed to her besiegers, and Sylvester returned to his bishopric. In order for him to live peacefully in Sabina, which was in the country of the Crescentii, the powerful members of his flock must have defended him against the re-established Pope, Benedict IX. There is every reason to suspect a revival of the Crescentian influence in the revolt of 1044 and the election of Sylvester III.

Benedict, forcibly reinstalled, and yet not able to prevail against the discontented attitude of the Romans, made up his mind to resign the pontificate. This he did on 1st May, in favor of his godfather, John Gratian, Archpriest of St. John-before-the- Latin-Gate. A charter of resignation was drawn up, but that probably did not prevent a counterfeit election. The new Pope, who took the title of Gregory VI, was not a cardinal, but he had other greater disqualifications than that. Benedict had not yielded the papal seat for nothing, and Gregory had been obliged to pay down ready money as the price of his promotion. The papacy had been sold, and that not by the electors as had been done some times before, but by the actual Pope himself.

Gregory VI, who was an elderly man, found no difficulty in leading a steadier life than his predecessor had done. He took Hildebrand under his protection, so that the chroniclers connected with the latter speak of him with respectful consideration.

His accession was, at any rate, welcomed by people worthy of respect. From the recesses of his convent in the Apennines, St. Peter Damian wrote greeting him as the dove bringing back the olive branch to the Ark; Hildebrand, who was at that time residing in the monastery founded by Alberic on the Aventine, became his chaplain and adviser. These friendships do him credit, and we can only suppose that these worthy persons were, at first, ignorant of the simony involved in his promotion. Moreover, it cannot be denied that the papal morality had fallen to such an extremely low level under John XIX and Benedict IX, that people were not now disposed to criticize Gregory VI too severely.