§ 65. The Second Degradation of the Papacy from Otho I to Henry III. a.d. 973-1046

I. The sources for the papacy in the second half of the tenth and in the eleventh century are collected in Muratori's Annali d' Italia (Milano 1744-49); in Migne's Patrol., Tom. CXXXVII.-CL.; Leibnitz, Annales Imp. Occid. (down to a.d. 1005; Han., 1843, 3 vols.); Pertz, . Mon. Germ. (Auctores), Tom. V. (Leges), Tom. II.; Ranke, Jahrbucher des deutschen Reiches unter dem Sächs. Hause (Berlin 1837-40, 3 vols.; the second vol. by Giesebrecht and Wilmans contains the reigns of Otho II. and Otho III.). On the sources see Giesebrecht, Gesch. der deutschen Kaiserzeit, II. 568 sqq.

II. Stenzel: Geschichte Deutschlands unter den Fränkischen Kaisern. Leipz., 1827, 1828, 2 vols.

C. F. Hock (R.C.): Gerbert oder Papst Sylvester und sein Jahrhundert. Wien, 1837.

C. Höfler (R.C.): Die deutschen Päpste. Regensb., 1839, 2 vols.

H. J. Floss (R.C.): Die Papstwahl unter den Ottonen. Freib., 1858.

C. Will: Die Anfänge der Restauration der Kirche im elften Jahrh. Marburg, 1859-'62, 2 vols.

R. Köpke und E. Dümmler: Otto der Grosse. Leipz. 1876.

Comp. Baronius (Annal.); Jaffe (Reg. 325-364); Hefele (Conciliengeschichte IV. 632 sqq., 2d ed.); Gfrörer (vol. III., P. III., 1358-1590, and vol. IV., 1846); Gregorovius (vols. III. and IV.); v. Reumont (II. 292 sqq.); Baxmann (II. 125-180); and Giesebrecht (I. 569-762, and II. 1-431).

The reform of the papacy was merely temporary. It was followed by a second period of disgrace, which lasted till the middle of the eleventh century, but was interrupted by a few respectable popes and signs of a coming reformation.

After the death of Otho, during the short and unfortunate reign of his son, Otho II. (973-983), a faction of the Roman nobility under the lead of Crescentius or Cencius (probably a son of pope John X. and Theodora) gained the upper hand.²⁸⁷ He rebelled against the imperial pope, Benedict VI., who was murdered (974), and elected an Italian anti-pope, Boniface VII., who had soon to flee to Constantinople, but returned after some years, murdered another imperial pope, John XIV. (983), and maintained himself on the blood-stained throne by a lavish distribution of stolen money till he died, probably by violence (985).²⁸⁸

During the minority of Otho III., the imperialists, headed by Alberic, Count of Tusculum, and the popular Roman party under the lead of the younger Crescentius (perhaps a grandson of the infamous Theodora), contended from their fortified places for the mastery of Rome and the papacy. Bloodshed was a daily amusement. Issuing from their forts, the two parties gave battle to each other whenever they met on the street. They set up rival popes, and mutilated their corpses with insane fury. The contending parties were related. Marozia's son, Alberic, had probably inherited Tusculum (which is about fifteen miles from Rome).²⁸⁹ After the death of Alberic of Tusculum, Crescentius acquired the government under the title of Consul, and indulged the Romans with a short dream of republican freedom in opposition to the hated rule of the foreign barbarians. He controlled pope John XV.

Gregory V.

Otho III., on his way to Rome, elected his worthy chaplain and cousin Bruno, who was consecrated as Gregory V. (996) and then anointed Otho III. emperor. He is the first pope of German blood.²⁹⁰ Crescentius was treated with great leniency, but after the departure of the German army he stirred up a rebellion, expelled the German pope and elevated Philagathus, a Calabrian Greek, under the name of John XVI. to the chair of St. Peter. Gregory V. convened a large synod at Pavia, which unanimously pronounced the anathema against Crescentius and his pope. The emperor hastened to Rome with an army, stormed the castle of St. Angelo (the mole of Hadrian), and beheaded Crescentius as a traitor, while John XVI. by order of Gregory V. was, according to the savage practice of that age, fearfully mutilated, and paraded through the streets on an ass, with his face turned to the tail and with a wine-bladder on his head.

Sylvester II.

After the sudden and probably violent death of Gregory V. (999), the emperor elected, with the assent of the clergy and the people, his friend and preceptor, Gerbert, archbishop of Rheims, and then of Ravenna, to the papal throne. Gerbert was the first French pope, a man of rare learning and ability, and moral integrity. He abandoned the liberal views he had expressed at the Council at Rheims,²⁹¹ and the legend says that he sold his soul to the devil for the papal tiara. He assumed the significant name of Sylvester II., intending to aid the youthful emperor (whose mother was a Greek princess) in the realization of his utopian dream to establish a Graeco-Latin empire with old Rome for its capital, and to rule from it the Christian world, as Constantine the Great had done during the pontificate of Sylvester I. But Otho died in his twenty-second year, of Italian fever or of poison (1002).²⁹²

Sylvester II. followed his imperial pupil a year after (1003). His learning, acquired in part from the Arabs in Spain, appeared a marvel to his ignorant age, and suggested a connection with magic. He sent to St. Stephen of Hungary the royal crown, and, in a pastoral letter to Europe where Jerusalem is represented as crying for help, he gave the first impulse to the crusades (1000), ninety years before they actually began.²⁹³

In the expectation of the approaching judgment, crowds of pilgrims flocked to Palestine to greet the advent of the Saviour. But the first millennium passed, and Christendom awoke with a sigh of relief on the first day of the year 1001.

Benedict VIII., and Emperor Henry II.

Upon the whole the Saxon emperors were of great service to the papacy: they emancipated it from the tyranny of domestic political factions, they restored it to wealth, and substituted worthy occupants for monstrous criminals.

During the next reign the confusion broke out once more. The anti-imperial party regained the ascendency, and John Crescentius, the son of the beheaded consul, ruled under the title of Senator and Patricius. But the Counts of Tusculum held the balance of power pretty evenly, and gradually superseded the house of Crescentius. They elected Benedict VIII. (1012-1024), a member of their family; while Crescentius and his friends appointed an anti-pope (Gregory).

Benedict proved a very energetic pope in the defence of Italy against the Saracens. He forms the connecting link between the Ottonian and the Hildebrandian popes. He crowned Henry II, (1014), as the faithful patron and protector simply, not as the liege-lord, of the pope.

This last emperor of the Saxon house was very devout, ascetic, and liberal in endowing bishoprics. He favored clerical celibacy. He aimed earnestly at a moral reformation of the church. He declared at a diet, that he had made Christ his heir, and would devote all he possessed to God and his church. He filled the vacant bishoprics and abbeys with learned and worthy men; and hence his right of appointment was not resisted. He died after a reign of twenty-two years, and was buried at his favorite place, Bamberg in Bavaria, where he had founded a bishopric (1007). He and his chaste wife, Kunigunde, were canonized by the grateful church (1146).²⁹⁴

The Tusculan Popes. Benedict IX.

With Benedict VIII. the papal dignity became hereditary in the Tusculan family. He had bought it by open bribery. He was followed by his brother John XIX., a layman, who bought it likewise, and passed in one day through all the clerical degrees.

After his death in 1033, his nephew Theophylact, a boy of only ten or twelve years of age,²⁹⁵ ascended the papal throne under the name of Benedict IX. (1033-1045). His election was a mere money bargain between the Tusculan family and the venal clergy and populace of Rome. Once more the Lord took from Jerusalem and Judah the stay and the staff, and gave children to be their princes, and babes to rule over them.²⁹⁶

This boy-pope fully equaled and even surpassed John XII. in precocious wickedness. He combined the childishness of Caligala and the viciousness of Heliogabalus.²⁹⁷ He grew worse as he advanced in years. He ruled like a captain of banditti, committed murders and adulteries in open day-light, robbed pilgrims on the graves of martyrs, and turned Rome into a den of thieves. These crimes went unpunished; for who could judge a pope? And his brother, Gregory, was Patrician of the city. At one time, it is reported, he had the crazy notion of marrying his cousin and enthroning a woman in the chair of St. Peter; but the father of the intended bride refused unless he abdicated the papacy.²⁹⁸ Desiderius, who himself afterwards became pope (Victor III.), shrinks from describing the detestable life of this Benedict, who, he says, followed in the footsteps of Simon Magus rather than of Simon Peter, and proceeded in a career of rapine, murder, and every species of felony, until even the people of Rome became weary of his iniquities, and expelled him from the city. Sylvester III. was elected antipope (Jan., 1044), but Benedict soon resumed the papacy with all his vices (April 10, 1044), then sold it for one or two thousand pounds silver²⁹⁹ to an archpresbyter John Gratian of the same house (May, 1045), after he had emptied the treasury of every article of value, and, rueing the bargain, he claimed the dignity again (Nov., 1047), till he was finally expelled from Rome (July, 1048).

Gregory VI.

John Gratian assumed the name Gregory, VI. He was revered as a saint for his chastity which, on account of its extreme rarity in Rome, was called an angelic virtue. He bought the papacy with the sincere desire to reform it, and made the monk Hildebrand, the future reformer, his chaplain. He acted on the principle that the end sanctifies the means.

Thus there were for a while three rival popes. Benedict IX. (before his final expulsion) held the Lateran, Gregory VI. Maria Maggiore, Sylvester III. St. Peter's and the Vatican.³⁰⁰

Their feuds reflected the general condition of Italy. The streets of Rome swarmed with hired assassins, the whole country with robbers, the virtue of pilgrims was openly assailed, even churches and the tombs of the apostles were desecrated by bloodshed.

Again the German emperor had to interfere for the restoration of order.

§ 66. Henry III and the Synod of Sutri. Deposition of three rival Popes. a.d. 1046.

Bonizo (or Bonitho, bishop of Sutri, afterwards of Piacenza, and friend of Gregory VII., d. 1089): Liber ad amicum, s. de persecutione Ecclesiae (in Oefelii Scriptores rerum Boicarum II., 794, and better in Jaffe's Monumenta Gregoriana, 1865). Contains in lib. V. a history, of the popes from Benedict IX. to Gregory VII., with many errors.

Rodulfus Glaber (or Glaber Radulfus, monk of Cluny, about 1046): Historia sui temporis (in Migne, Tom. 142).

Desiderius (Abbot of M. Cassino, afterwards pope Victor III., d. 1080): De Miraculis a S. Benedicto aliisque monachis Cassiniensibus gestis Dialog., in "Bibl. Patr." Lugd. XVIII. 853.

Annales Romani in Pertz, Mon. Germ. VII.

Annales Corbeienses, in Pertz, Mon. Germ. V.; and in Jaffé, Monumenta Corbeiensia, Berlin, 1864.

Ernst Steindorff: Jahrbucher des deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich III. Leipzig, 1874.

Hefele: Conciliengesch. IV. 706 sqq. (2d ed.).

See Lit. in § 64, especially Höfler and Will.

Emperor Henry III., of the house of Franconia, was appealed to by the advocates of reform, and felt deeply the sad state of the church. He was only twenty-two years old, but ripe in intellect, full of energy and zeal, and aimed at a reformation of the church under the control of the empire, as Hildebrand afterwards labored for a reformation of the church under the control of the papacy.

On his way to Rome for the coronation he held (Dec. 20, 1046) a synod at Sutri, a small town about twenty-five miles north of Rome, and a few days afterwards another synod at Rome which completed the work.³⁰¹ Gregory VI. presided at first. The claims of the three rival pontiffs were considered. Benedict IX. and Sylvester III. were soon disposed of, the first having twice resigned, the second being a mere intruder. Gregory VI. deserved likewise deposition for the sin of simony in buying the papacy; but as he had convoked the synod by order of the emperor and was otherwise a worthy person, he was allowed to depose himself or to abdicate. He did it in these words: "I, Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, do hereby adjudge myself to be removed from the pontificate of the Holy Roman Church, because of the enormous error which by simoniacal impurity has crept into and vitiated my election." Then he asked the assembled fathers: "Is it your pleasure that so it shall be?" to which they unanimously replied: "Your pleasure is our pleasure; therefore so let it be." As soon as the humble pope had pronounced his own sentence, he descended from the throne, divested himself of his pontifical robes, and implored pardon on his knees for the usurpation of the highest dignity in Christendom. He acted as pope de facto, and pronounced himself no pope de jure. He was used by the synod for deposing his two rivals, and then for deposing himself. In that way the synod saved the principle that the pope was above every human tribunal, and responsible to God alone. This view of the case of Gregory, rests on the reports of Bonitho and Desiderius. According to other reports in the Annales Corbeienses and Peter Damiani, who was present at Sutri, Gregory was deposed directly by the Synod.³⁰² At all events, the deposition was real and final, and the cause was the sin of simony.

But if simony vitiated an election, there were probably few legitimate popes in the tenth century when everything was venal and corrupt in Rome. Moreover bribery seems a small sin compared with the enormous crimes of several of these Judases. Hildebrand recognized Gregory VI. by adopting his pontifical name in honor of his memory, and yet he made relentless war the sin of simony. He followed the self-deposed pope as upon chaplain across the Alps into exile, and buried him in peace on the banks of the Rhine.

Henry III. adjourned the Synod of Sutri to St. Peter's in Rome for the election of a new pope (Dec. 23 and 24, 1046). The synod was to elect, but no Roman clergyman could be found free of the pollution of "simony and fornication." Then the king, vested by the synod with the green mantle of the patriciate and the plenary authority of the electors, descended from his throne, and seated Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, a man of spotless character, on the vacant chair of St. Peter amid the loud hosannas of the assembly.³⁰³ The new pope assumed the name of Clement II., and crowned Henry emperor on the festival of Christmas, on which Charlemagne had been crowned. The name was a reminder of the conflict of the first Clement of Rome with Simon Magus. But he outlived his election only nine months, and his body was transferred to his beloved Bamberg. The wretched Benedict IX. again took possession of the Lateran (till July 16, 1048). He died afterwards in Grotto Ferrata, according to one report as a penitent saint, according to another as a hardened sinner whose ghost frightened the living. A third German pontiff, Poppo, bishop of Brixen, called Damasus II., was elected, but died twenty-three days after his consecration (Aug. 10, 1048), of the Roman fever, if not of poison.

The emperor, at the request of the Romans, appointed at Worms in December, 1048, Bruno, bishop of Toul, to the papal chair. He was a man of noble birth, fine appearance, considerable learning, unblemished character, and sincere piety, in full sympathy with the spirit of reform which emanated from Cluny. He accepted the appointment in presence of the Roman deputies, subject to the consent of the clergy and people of Rome.³⁰⁴ He invited the monk Hildebrand to accompany him in his pilgrimage to Rome. Hildebrand refused at first, because Bruno had not been canonically elected, but by the secular and royal power; but he was persuaded to follow him.

Bruno reached Rome in the month of February, 1049, in the dress of a pilgrim, barefoot, weeping, regardless of the hymns of welcome. His election was unanimously confirmed by the Roman clergy and people, and he was solemnly consecrated Feb. 12, as Leo IX. He found the papal treasury empty, and his own means were soon exhausted. He chose Hildebrand as his subdeacon, financier, and confidential adviser, who hereafter was the soul of the papal reform, till he himself ascended the papal throne in 1073.

We stand here at the close of the deepest degradation and on the threshold of the highest elevation of the papacy. The synod of Sutri and the reign of Leo IX. mark the beginning of a disciplinary reform. Simony or the sale and purchase of ecclesiastical dignities, and Nicolaitism or the carnal sins of the clergy, including marriage, concubinage and unnatural vices, were the crying evils of the church in the eyes of the most serious men, especially the disciples of Cluny and of St. Romuald. A reformation therefore from the hierarchical standpoint of the middle ages was essentially a suppression of these two abuses. And as the corruption had reached its climax in the papal chair, the reformation had to begin at the head before it could reach the members. It was the work chiefly of Hildebrand or Gregory VII., with whom the next period opens.