The two commissioners, Zachary of Anagni and Rodoald of Porto, reached Constantinople in April 861. From the moment of their arrival they found themselves under formidable pressure from Photius, swept up into a ceaseless round of ceremonies, receptions, banquets, and entertainments while the patriarch himself remained constantly at their side, dazzling them with his erudition, captivating them with his charm. Well before the Council was to hold its opening session in the Church of the Holy Apostles, Photius had satisfied himself that they would give no trouble. As for Ignatius, they were not allowed so much as to clap eyes on him until he was led into the church to give his evidence. He was then obliged to listen while seventy-two witnesses testified that his former appointment had been invalid, being due to the personal favor of the empress rather than to any canonical election. At the close of the fourth session his deposition was confirmed by a formal document at the foot of which, prominent among the signatories, were the names of Zachary and Rodoald.
When the prelates returned to Rome, the pope left them in no doubt of his displeasure. Their task, he reminded them, had been to discover the facts, not to appoint themselves judges. In doing so, they had betrayed the interests of the Church, succumbing to Byzantine blandishments in a manner more like that of innocent children than of senior ecclesiastics. They had allowed themselves to be made dupes by the patriarch and had shown themselves unworthy of their rank and position. He would consider their futures later. Meanwhile, they could go.
At this point there arrived in Rome an archimandrite1 named Theognostus who, having escaped from close surveillance in Constantinople, regaled Nicholas with tales of the iniquity of Photius and his friends and the sufferings which the unfortunate Ignatius had been obliged to endure, ending with his enforced signature to his act of abdication. The pope hesitated no longer. In April 863 he summoned a synod at the Lateran which divested Photius of all ecclesiastical status, restoring Ignatius and all those who had lost office in his cause to their former positions. Zachary and Rodoald were dismissed from their sees. In Constantinople, however, as might have been expected, the papal ruling was ignored, and the quarrel rumbled on. Up to that point, Nicholas’s firmness had served only to show how powerless he was in the East, but now, quite unexpectedly, there came a stroke of good fortune—from, of all places, Bulgaria.
THE BULGARS UNDER Khan Boris I were at this time a rising power in the Balkans, and in September 865 the formerly Catholic Boris had traveled to Constantinople, where he had been baptized by the patriarch in St. Sophia, the emperor himself standing sponsor. Pope Nicholas was predictably furious, and the fact that Boris had had little choice—the Byzantine fleet was lying off his Black Sea coast, and his country was in the grip of the worst famine of the century—did little to assuage the papal anger. But less than a year after his conversion, Boris was already having second thoughts. Suddenly he had found his country overrun with Greek and Armenian priests, frequently at loggerheads with each other over abstruse points of doctrine incomprehensible both to himself and to his bewildered subjects. Moreover, wishing to keep his distance from Constantinople, he had requested the appointment of a Bulgarian patriarch—and had been refused.
In this refusal Photius had made a disastrous miscalculation. Now it was the khan’s turn to be furious. He was happy to be the emperor’s godson, but he had no intention of being made his vassal. Fully aware of the state of affairs between Rome and Constantinople and the consequent possibility of playing one off against the other, in the summer of 866 he sent a delegation to Pope Nicholas. It carried a list of 106 points of Orthodox doctrine and social custom which conflicted with Bulgarian traditions, suggesting that much of the opposition to the new faith might be overcome if the latter were permitted to continue and inquiring as to the pope’s views on each.
When Boris had put these points to Photius, they had either been rejected or simply ignored; for Nicholas, here was the chance he had been waiting for. He quickly set Anastasius to work, then dispatched to the Bulgarian court two more bishops, bearing a remarkable document in which he gave thoughtful and meticulous answers to every one of the points on Boris’s list—showing consideration for all local susceptibilities, making all possible concessions, and, where these could not be granted, explaining the reasons for his refusal. Trousers, he agreed, could certainly be worn, by men and women alike; turbans too, except in church. When the Byzantines maintained that it was unlawful to wash on Wednesdays and Fridays, they were talking nonsense, nor was there any reason to abstain from milk or cheese during Lent. All pagan superstitions, on the other hand, must be strictly forbidden, as must the accepted Greek practice of divination by the random opening of the Bible. Bigamy, too, was out.
The Bulgars were disappointed about the bigamy but on the whole more than satisfied with the pope’s answers and, perhaps equally important, by the obvious trouble that he—or more accurately Anastasius—had taken over them. Boris at once swore perpetual allegiance to St. Peter and, with every sign of relief, expelled all the Orthodox missionaries from his kingdom. The Roman Catholic Church was back in the Balkans once more.
NICHOLAS I MARKS a watershed: he was the last pontiff of any ability or integrity to occupy the chair of St. Peter for a century and a half. His successor in 867, an elderly cleric who took the name of Hadrian II, squandered, in only five short years, virtually all that Nicholas had gained, yielding to Archbishop Hincmar, restoring Communion to King Lothair—now back with his mistress—and allowing Bulgaria to slip back into Orthodoxy. Not content with undoing virtually all the hard work of Anastasius, he even accused the librarian of complicity in the murder of his—Hadrian’s—former wife and daughter, excommunicating him for the second time in his career.2
But even Hadrian was a paragon in comparison with his successors. Charlemagne’s empire was gone, dissolved among the ever-bickering members of his family; without it the popes were left defenseless against the local Roman aristocracy—principally the Crescentii and the Tusculani—who established complete control over the Church and made the Papacy their plaything. Hadrian’s successor, John VIII (872–882), was at least energetic, but he also had the dubious distinction of being the first pope to be assassinated—and, worse still, by priests from his own entourage. According to the Annals of the Abbey of Fulda, they first gave him poison; then, when this failed to act quickly enough, they hammered in his skull. The enthronement of his successor, Marinus I, in 882 is said to have been marked by the murder of a high Roman dignitary, that of Hadrian III two years later by the victim’s widow being whipped naked through the streets. On Hadrian’s death on his way to Germany in 885 foul play was also suspected. The next two popes, Stephen V and Formosus, died in their beds, but on the orders of his successor, Stephen VI,3 the body of Formosus was exhumed in March 896, eight months after his death, clothed in pontifical vestments, propped up on a throne, and subjected to a mock trial on charges of perjury and of coveting the Papacy: he was said to have accepted the see of Rome while still bishop of another diocese (no crime today). Not unpredictably, he was found guilty: all his acts, including his ordinations, were declared null and void, a judgment which caused indescribable confusion; finally his body—minus the three fingers of his right hand that he had used to give blessings—was flung into the Tiber.4
Almost immediately afterward the Basilica of St. John Lateran was largely destroyed by an earthquake—a disaster that was widely interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure at Pope Stephen’s conduct. But supernatural portents were hardly necessary; to every Roman it must have been abundantly clear that the pope had overstepped the mark. Six months later he was deposed, stripped of his papal insignia, and thrown into prison, where he was shortly afterward strangled.
After six popes in seven years, a parish priest from the unfortunately named village of Priapi was elected as Leo V in 903. How this came about is unclear, but it hardly matters: after a month there occurred a palace revolution, in the course of which a cleric called Christopher overthrew
him, flung him into prison, and had himself proclaimed and consecrated. Christopher—who has gone down in history as an antipope—fared better than Leo, lasting four months instead of one; but he in turn was toppled early in 904 by an aristocratic Roman who had taken an active part in the “trial” of Formosus and who now assumed the name of Sergius III. Christopher was sent to join Leo in jail. Not long afterward—moved, as he claimed, by pity—Sergius had them both strangled.
At this point there appears in papal history the ravishingly beautiful but sinister figure of Marozia, senatrix of Rome. She was the daughter of the Roman Consul Theophylact I, Count of Tusculum, and his wife, Theodora; Bishop Liudprand of Cremona described her as “a shameless strumpet … who was sole monarch of Rome and wielded power like a man.” The two daughters of this unlovely couple, Marozia and another Theodora, were, he continues, “not only her equals but could even surpass her in the exercises beloved of Venus.” He may well have been wrong about the younger sister, of whom little is known; but for Marozia it was an understatement. Lover, mother, and grandmother of popes—“a rare genealogy,” sniffs Gibbon—she was born in about 890 and at the age of fifteen became the mistress of Sergius III, her father’s cousin. (Their son was to be the future Pope John XI.) In 909 she married an adventurer named Alberic who had made himself Duke of Spoleto and by whom she had a second son, Alberic II. By this time the papal Curia, which had long been the effective government of Rome, had come completely under the control of the local aristocracy, of whom she was by far the most powerful representative; the Papacy was in her hands.5
Of the five popes intervening between Sergius and John XI, two were puppets of Marozia; together they reigned for less than three years. The third, John X, was of a very different caliber: it was he, together with Theophylact of Tusculum and Alberic I, who inflicted a decisive defeat on the Saracens at the Garigliano River in June 915. But Marozia hated him. Her hatred may partly have been due to the fact that he had been her mother’s lover—when he had been appointed Bishop of Ravenna, the elder Theodora had actually summoned him back to Rome and thrust him into the papal chair—but can best be explained by her own ambition. John was too tough, too intelligent, and when, toward the end of 927, he began to show serious signs of opposition and even appeared, with his brother Peter, to be threatening Marozia’s authority, she moved against him. Peter was struck down in the Lateran before his brother’s eyes, and soon afterward Marozia, with her second husband, Guy, Margrave of Tuscany,6 had the pope himself deposed and imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo, where he was soon afterward smothered to death with pillows.
THE REASON FOR Marozia’s actions was not only to eliminate a rival; it was also to leave the papal throne vacant for her son. Unfortunately, the boy was still only about eighteen, so she put in two elderly puppets as stopgaps before having him installed as John XI in the early spring of 931. By that time she had disposed of Guy in favor of a far more promising prize: Hugh of Provence, who had recently been elected king of Italy and had been duly anointed by the unfortunate John X. True, Hugh had a perfectly good wife already, but she now conveniently died, just in time to allow the marriage to take place. More of an obstacle was the fact that Guy had been Hugh’s half brother, which made the projected marriage incestuous; Hugh simply declared Guy and his half brother, Lambert, Margrave of Tuscany, bastards—one can imagine what their mother thought about that—and, when Lambert raised his voice in protest, had him blinded and thrown into prison, where he died shortly afterward. Few couples presenting themselves for marriage had so much blood on their hands. Unsurprisingly, their wedding ceremony in 932 was not even celebrated in church, but in the Castel Sant’Angelo. On the other hand, it was performed by the pope himself—the first and last instance in history of a pope officiating at the marriage of his mother. Once the knot was tied, the couple seemed to carry all before them; nothing, as far as could be seen, now stood between them and the imperial throne of the West.
But Marozia had miscalculated. She had forgotten another of her sons. Alberic, the pope’s half brother, had, with each of his mother’s subsequent marriages, found himself pushed further into the background. He had seen Hugh’s way of dealing with unwanted relatives and had received an unmistakable warning during a feast in Castel Sant’Angelo when his new stepfather had struck him across the face. His only hope was to act while there was still time. The Romans had no love for Hugh, whose cruelty and general boorishness were already notorious; besides, they were always ready for an uprising. In December 932 a mob stormed the castle. Hugh managed to escape through a window; Marozia and her son the pope found themselves in prison cells. Of the formidable senatrix of Rome nothing more is heard; John XI seems to have been later released, though he was kept under what amounted to house arrest in the Lateran, where, according to Bishop Liudprand, Alberic treated him as his personal slave.
Alberic was now undisputed master of Rome, which he was to rule for the next twenty years, on the whole wisely and well, successfully resisting by various means—including a diplomatic marriage to Hugh’s daughter—repeated attempts by Hugh to return to power. He effectively appointed the next five popes, three of whom treated him with the respect that he demanded. The first exception was Stephen VIII, who after two years of obedience seems in some way to have fallen foul of his master. What actually occurred is uncertain, but there is little doubt that the pope was brutally mutilated and died of his injuries. The last of the five was Octavian, Alberic’s bastard son, still in his teens. Stricken by a mortal fever in the summer of 954, aged barely forty, Alberic had himself carried to the altar above the tomb of St. Peter, where he gathered the leading Romans around his deathbed and made them swear on the bones of the Apostle that on the death of the reigning pope, Agapetus II, they would elect Octavian supreme pontiff. It was his last action. On August 31 he died.
It says much for Alberic’s authority—if little for their wisdom—that the Romans agreed. Octavian, of course, immediately succeeded his father as temporal ruler of Rome; on the death of Agapetus in December 955 he changed his name to John7—and was duly elected pope. The choice could not have been more calamitous. Not only was the young Holy Father supremely uninterested in matters spiritual; he was to mark the apogee of the papal pornocracy. No one has put it better than Gibbon:
we read, with some surprise, that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in public adultery with the matrons of Rome; that the Lateran Palace was turned into a school for prostitution; and that his rapes of virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims from visiting the shrine of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they should be violated by his successor.
Not for nothing was John XII the grandson of Marozia, one of the most shameless debauchees of her age. He allowed the city—indeed he encouraged it—to slide into chaos, using its wealth as well as that of the Papal States to gratify his own passion for gambling and for every kind of sexual license. Rome’s political position began to deteriorate fast; moreover, a dangerous new enemy was threatening, in the person of Hugh of Provence’s nephew the Margrave Berengar of Ivrea. Berengar had been the uncrowned but effective king of Italy since Hugh’s return to Arles in 945 and had been making trouble ever since; in 959 he had seized the Duchy of Spoleto and had now begun to ravage the papal territories to the north of Rome. By the autumn of 960 John had no alternative but to appeal to the German King Otto of Saxony—offering him, in return for his help, the imperial crown.
OTTO ASKED NOTHING better. All his life he had been guided by a single dream—to resurrect the empire of Charlemagne. As an earnest of this intention he had even arranged his German coronation in Charlemagne’s beautiful circular church at Aachen. He had welded Germany together as a single state; outside Augsburg in 955 he had inflicted an overwhelming defeat on the Huns, after five hundred years still the scourge of Europe; his name was known and respected across the continent. On receipt of the pope’s appeal he crossed the Alps at the head of a sizable army, reaching the Holy City in Janu
ary 962, and on Candlemas Day, February 2, he and his queen, Adelaide of Burgundy, with their official sword bearer standing guard immediately behind them, knelt before the young reprobate thirty years their junior and were crowned in St. Peter’s, the pope swearing on his side to give no support to Berengar. So it was that one of the most contemptible of all the pontiffs restored the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne, which was to last for a further nine and a half centuries.
Otto left Rome two weeks later, after treating John to several patronizing homilies urging him to reform his scandalous ways. Ever since the day of his coronation he had insisted on addressing the pope as a refractory schoolboy, and relations between the two had fast deteriorated; even so, he cannot have expected John to enter into negotiations with Berengar’s son Adalbert as soon as his back was turned. Why John did so passes comprehension, and at the outset Otto himself seems to have been incredulous. When the report was brought to him, he was busy besieging Berengar in the Apennines; his first reaction was to send a mission of inquiry to Rome. The mission returned with juicy details about the pope’s innumerable mistresses, fat and thin, rich and poor: the one whom he had made governor of cities and loaded with church treasure; another who had been his father’s paramour before him, whom he had made pregnant and who had died of a hemorrhage; of the pope’s indiscriminate seizure of female pilgrims. “The palace of the Lateran,” they reported, “which had once sheltered saints, was now a harlot’s brothel.”
Even now the emperor tended toward an indulgent view. “He is only a boy,” he is reported as saying, “and will soon alter if good men set him an example.” Deciding to give John one more chance, he dispatched another envoy, more high-powered than his predecessors: Liudprand, Bishop of Cremona.
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