PROTESTANTS take a malicious pleasure in pourtraying the court of Rome in the tenth century, and in extracting from Liutprand a contemporary author, the unedifying details with which he has filled up the ecclesiastical and political history of this period. But without examining whether the relations of this writer are as faithful as they are satirical, we may say with Fleury¹⁰⁸ that Rome under these unworthy popes ceased not to be the centre of Christendom. We may add with other theologians, that so many abuses not having drawn after them the destruction of the Holy See, their very excess serves to manifest the care of Providence to maintain this visible focus of Catholic unity.

For the rest, the private lives of the popes is not the object which claims our attention; we shall only consider their political relations with secular governments. In confining ourselves to this view, we shall not be troubled with unravelling the thread of succession, somewhat confused, of thirty popes, who, in the course of this century, have occupied, more or less legitimately, the chair of St. Peter. When two shall start up at the same moment, we shall not stop to inquire which of them is the true one; we shall not take on us to decide between Baronius, who never wishes to recognize save the worthiest or the most canonically elected, and those authors who adhere to the most effective, that is, to the man who has more decisively exercised the pontifical power: these are delicate questions, requiring long discussions, and the investigation of a multitude of petty circumstances, foreign to the history of those great disputes between the pontiffs and kings. In the midst of those things and of those changes, two points appear to us incontrovertible; one, that the Holy See was at this period reckoned in the number of temporal governments; the other, that occupied with its own affairs, and the interior troubles which agitated it, it lost, without, a large portion of the influence and power which the preceding century had bequeathed to it. The first of these consequences is confirmed by Constantine Porphyrogenites, the Greek Emperor, who, previous to the middle of the tenth century, digested a sort of statistical table of the east and of the west: he in it represents the popes as ‘sovereigns of Rome’.

Even in modifying this incorrect expression, we must admit, that this text places the bishops of Rome in the rank of princes who immediately governed states. As to the second conclusion, it followed almost of course: pleasure ever extinguishes the fire of ambition, discord shackles power, and the intrigues which employ us within, suspend our exterior projects; he who is compelled to defend himself in the bosom of his palace never meditates distant attacks. The excommunications so familiar to Gregory III. to Nicholas I. and to John VIII. menace, therefore, less frequently crowned heads. Theological opinions themselves become less exposed to anathemas. We find no general council, no new heresy in the tenth century.

This century may be divided into four epochs. The first would terminate in 932; it would be characterised by the influence of Theodore and her daughters. The second would present the administration of Alberic, and of his son, up to 962. The third would open with the coronation of Otho as emperor, and would terminate with the death of this prince in 973. The consulate of Crescentius would designate the fourth.

The inhabitants of Rome had never ceased to nourish ideas of independence; old customs led them back to republican forms. Their city did not belong to the kingdom of Italy; it held only from the imperial crown, which the pontiff himself had so far the disposal of, as occasionally to keep it in reserve. We have noticed examples of this interregnum of the empire, under John VIII. and John IX. p 906, when the eyes of Louis III. who on this account was called: the Blind, had been put out, the Romans ceased to insert his name in the public acts; and although this, unfortunate prince persevered in assuming the title of emperor, the imperial dignity actually remained vacant, until the coronation, of Berengariusin 916.¹⁰⁹ During these interregnums, Rome accustomed herself to consider, her pontiff, alone as her sovereign, or rather her own, citizens, nobles, priests, or; sometimes even plebeans. This, collective sovereign, created popes, and sometimes unmade them. There had been seven or eight of these elections, or revolutions, in the course of the first fourteen years of the tenth century; and each time two factions were seen attacking each other, into which the Roman nobility was divided, from the time of the proceedings against the memory of Formosus. Some authors discover at this era, the origin of the Guelphs, and Ghibelins: we must confess, we only behold as yet the families which disputed the papacy, or these influence exercised, as well over the electors as over the elected.

A party in favour of the Western Emperors is the least to be distinguished in the midst of these troubles; we rather have to remark a tendency, weak at first, towards the Greek emperors, but which disposition became much more evident towards the close of this century. From the year 907, Rome behaved with complaisance to Leo VI. called the Philosopher, whose fourth marriage had been censured by the patriarch of Constantinople. The power of the clergy was, at this period, more formidable at a distance from Rome than in the capital of Christendom. William of Aquitaine, in founding the abbey of Cluni, about the year 910, declared, that these monks should never be subject to him, to his relatives, or descendants, nor to any earthly power.¹¹⁰ In Northern and Western Europe the monks inherited, without being inherited of, and the edifice of their formidable opulence rapidly a rose. They made not such a hasty progress in the Roman State, where, under ephemeral popes, the elective chiefs of a species of republic, the intrigues attached to such a system occupied every mind. In the midst of these political movements, three female patricians arose, provided with all the resources of influence with which rank, talents and beauty could arm ambition. Theodora, the mother of the other two, seduced the nobles, calmed faction, subjected to her authority the Church itself, and finally softened public manners by corrupting them.

One of her lovers, at first bishop of Bologna, she raised to the archbishopric of Ravenna, and, subsequently, to the sovereign pontificate, which he filled under the name of John X. from 914 to 928. We cannot make a favorable report of the holiness of this pontiff, but in his character, as head of a state, he merits fewer reproaches. He did not dispute the rights of other sovereigns; he acknowledged that it belonged to kings alone to invest bishops¹¹¹ he reconciled the princes whose rivalries destroyed Italy: on placing the imperial crown on the head of Berengarius, he endeavoured to ally him with the Greek Emperor against the Saracens, their common enemies: he himself marched against these Mahometans, fought them with more bravery than belongs to the office of a pope, and drove them from the neighbourhood of Rome.

It appears that Theodora died previous to the year 928. Marosia, one of her daughters, after having united herself in second marriage with Guy of Tuscany, dethroned John and cast him into prison, where in a short time he died, no doubt a violent death. He had for successors, a Leo VI. and a Stephen VII.. creatures of Marosia’s, and finally John XI. a young man of twenty to twenty-five years of age, of whom she herself was the mother, and whom she had borne to Pope Sergius II. according to Fleury¹¹² Baronius¹¹³ Sigowus¹¹⁴ and many others, who adopt on this head the relation of Liutprand.¹¹⁵ Muratori¹¹⁶ makes Alberic, the first husband of Marosia, the father of John XI. However it be, this woman governed Rome, under the pontificate of her son, to the year 932, the era of a new revolution. Marosia in her third nuptials took for husband Hugues king of Provence, maternal brother of Guy of Tuscany. This third spouse being disposed to maltreat Alberic, another son of Marosia’s, a party devoted to young Alberic put him at the head of affairs: Hugues was driven from the city, and John XI. continued to fill in form, but without any actual power, the chair of St. Peter.

At this period commenced, in Rome, a secular government which continued about thirty years. Alberic with the title of consul or patrician, selected the popes, ruled them, and held them in dependence. Out of the city, the popes only possessed the property in the land; which they had infeoffed in order to secure a part. An armed nobility had arisen in their domains, which were now no longer part of their states, or which had never so been. They were ignorant, in those barbarous ages, of the art of distant government, the art of establishing over extensive territories an energetic system of unity, subordination, and connection. This art has been perfected only in modern times; and its absence in the middle ages, was probably a principal cause of the establishment and progress of feudal anarchy. They knew not how to retain an empire of any extent, but by parcelling it out to vassals, who were desirous of becoming independent, wherever the personal weakness of their liege lord permitted them to become so. The pope, therefore, from 932 till towards 966, was but bishop of Rome, without any secular power, and his spiritual influence was very much restricted. Properly speaking, the Emperor of the West had also disappeared: for Henry the Fowler did not assume this title in his diplomas: he characterised himself only as ‘patron’ or ‘advocate’ of the Romans:¹¹⁷ and this vain title, below even that of patrician, embraced no authority, no duty, no political relation. With what independence Alberic ruled his fellow citizens, we can judge: he convoked them periodically in national assemblies; he preserved or renewed in the midst of them, the republican forms he supposed favourable to the support of his personal authority. Alberic died in 954; and his son Octavian, who succeeded him, thought it requisite to strengthen the civil power by re-annexing it to the pontifical dignity: he became pope in 956, and took the title of John XII. This double power would have been adequate to the restoration of the Holy See, if the extreme youth of John, the mediocrity of his talents, and the enterprises of Berengarius II. king of Italy, had not led to the re-establishment of the imperial dignity. John having need of Otho King of Germany to oppose to Berengarius, he crowned him emperor in 962.

Berengarius and his son Adalbert were deposed: Otho reunited to his kingdom of Germany, that of Italy, and the imperial crown. In order to acquire such extensive power, he made most magnificent promises to the Roman Church, and received in return the oaths and the homage of the pope. These documents of Otho’s and of John are still in existence: Gratian has delivered them to us in his canonical compilation; and if their authenticity be disputed, the source is unquestionable.¹¹⁸ Otho confirmed the donations of Pepin, of Charlemagne, and of Louis I. he extended them perhaps, but expressly reserving to himself, the sovereignty over the city of Rome and all the ecclesiastical domains: “saving in every respect, he says, our own power and that of our son and our successors.”¹¹⁹

The constitutions which required the emperor’s consent in the installation of a pope were renewed: Otho considered himself even invested with a right to depose the Roman pontiffs, and deferred not to lay hold on an occasion for exercising it. Scarcely had he left Rome, when John XII. measuring with terror the extent of the imperial authority, repented having re-established it, and conceived the idea of getting rid of it: Berengarius and Adalbert, with whom he had promised to hold no intercourse, were to assist him in this undertaking. The emperor who was soon apprised of it, received at the same time some relation respecting the private conduct of the pontiff: it was not the most edifying. Otho, appeared to pay but little attention to these recitals:

John received very ill these paternal counsels; he drew Adalbert to Rome, affected receiving him with pomp, collected troops, and openly revolted against the emperor, in defiance of the approach of this prince and his army. But the forces were too unequal: John was compelled to fly to Capua with Adalbert.¹²⁰

Otho entered Rome, and after receiving from the Romans an oath not to recognize any pope not approved of by the emperor, he wrote to John XII. a letter, which Fleury¹²¹ relates in these words:

In reply the pope declared that he would excommunicate the bishops who should dare to co-operate in the election of a sovereign pontiff. This menace did not impede the council assembled by Otho, from deposing John XII, and electing Leo VIII., notwithstanding some nobles attached to the family of Alberic excited two seditions, one under the very eyes of the emperor, the other immediately after his departure. The second of these commotions replaced John on the pontifical throne, which he stained on this occasion with the most horrible vengeance: he confined himself not to excommunications, but caused to be executed or mutilated all who had concurred in his deposition. His sudden death suspended the course of these cruel executions: he perished from a stroke on the temple, applied at night by the hand of some secret enemy, no doubt by one of the husbands outraged by the Holy Father¹²² The Romans in contempt of all the oaths they had taken to the emperor, gave him a a successor in Benedict V: but Leo VIII. who had taken refuge with Otho, was soon led back to Rome by this prince; and Benedict the true pope according to Baronius¹²³ acknowledged himself the antipope at the feet of the head of the empire, stripped himself of his pontifical vestments, sought pardon for having dared to assume them, and finally offered his homage to Leo as the legitimate successor of St. Peter¹²⁴ The German publicists¹²⁵ have no doubt of the authenticity of an act, which Otho caused Leo to subscribe at the time, addressed to the clergy and people of Rome: it is stated in it, that no person for the future shall have the privilege of electing the pope, or other bishop, without the emperor's consent; that the bishops elected by the clergy and the people shall not be consecrated until the emperor shall have confirmed the election, with the exception, however, of certain prelacies, the investiture of which the emperor cedes to the archbishops; that Otho, king of the Germans, and his successors in the kingdom of Italy, shall have the power in perpetuity of selecting those who shall reign after them; and that of nominating the popes, as well as the archbishops and bishops who receive from these princes their investiture “by the cross and the ring.”

With the exception of these last words the act is delivered down to us in Grotius’s decree; yet some Italian authors consider it apocryphal, without, assigning any other reason for this opinion than the enormous extent¹²⁶ which this constitution seems to confer on the imperial power. We may, however, assert in this place, that though the authenticity of this text be not very rigororously insisted on, the testimony of contemporary historians¹²⁷ invariably proves, that Otho obliged Leo VIII. to subscribe an explicit recognition of the imperial rights.

The recent revolt of John XII. sufficed to excite in the emperor an anxiety for this new guarantee: and Leo, his own creature, had no power of placing restrictions to it. The act was such as Otho willed it to be and this prince, a conqueror and a benefactor, would not rest satisfied with an ambiguous formula.

Leo VIII. and Benedict V. died in 965; the commissioners of Otho caused the election of John XIII. but the Romans revolted against this new pope, and banished him. Otho was obliged to return into Italy, and hasten to Rome to subdue the seditious and restore the pontiff. John could forgive none of his enemies: he signalized his return by atrocious vengeances, of which the emperor condescended to become the accomplice and the instrument. They have tarnished the glory of this prince, and justified the indifferent reception, at this period, of one of his ambassadors to the Greek emperor, Nicephoras Phocas.:

The ambassador to whom this discourse was addressed, was the historian Liutprand, who himself relates it.

Otho, however, was not cruel by nature; in this instance he only yielded to the importunities of the vindictive John.

The successes of Otho the Great, his excursions to Rome from the year 962 to 966, laid the foundation of the power of the German emperors, his successors. He wished the imperial dignity to become forever inseparable from the united kingdoms of Germany and Italy; that Christendom in its full extent might form a republic which should recognize in the emperor its sole temporal head; that it should be the privilege of this supreme chief, to convoke councils, command the armies of Christendom, establish or depose popes, to preside over, and to create kings. But in order to elevate himself to such a pinnacle of greatness, he had need to manoeuvre the German bishops; they, therefore, received from him enormous concessions. He distinguished the cities into two kinds, prefectorial, and royal, since imperial, and confided the government of the latter to the bishops, who laboured hard to render them episcopal. The bishops became Counts and Dukes with royal prerogatives, such as the administration of justice, privilege of coining money, collecting customs, and other public revenues. It was by the title of fiefs, and on condition of following him in his military expeditions, that Otho gratified them with such power and wealth: but these dangerous benefactions, in abridging the domains of the crown and the revenues of the State, served the ends of future anarchy and revolution. The clergy, as well the secular as regular, required in most of the countries of Europe a formidable power, which would have been further encreased, if already some symptoms of rivalry between these two bodies had not fettered their common aggrandizement. Converts multiplied from day to day, and enriched themselves almost beyond bounds. The Church’s period of 1000 years was about to expire; and donations to the church, especially to monasteries, passed for the most certain assurance against eternal damnation. From the retirement of the cloisters arose important personages, before whom the thrones of the world were humbled. Dunstan, from Glastonbury Abbey, sprung forward to govern Great Britain, to insult queens, and subject kings to penance. Otho the Great was at this period the only prince of Christendom who fully ruled the ecclesiastical authority: and if there remained among any people, ideas or ‘habitudes’ of civil independence, it was among the Romans in the centre of Christianity itself.

The reign of Otho the Great, is the era to which we would willingly refer the origin of the two factions, the papal and imperial, since called those of the Guelphs and Ghibelins. But in the tenth century, the partisans of the pope, were only citizens, emulous of obtaining the independence of their city or republic, and to withdraw their elective head from all domination. Some would have even preferred a civil magistracy simply, as that of Alberic; they united rather in opposition to the emperor, than in favor of the pontiffs chosen without, or in defiance of, his authority. Such were the elements of the factions, which revolted with John XII. which nominated Benedict V. and which repelled, as far as in their power, Leo VIII. and John XIII. The emperor had no partizans at Rome save his personal agents, and a few of the inhabitants; the rest were subjected only by his presence or his arms. Thus this pontifical faction which, in the sequel, appears to have supported the most monstrous excesses of pontifical ambition, was originally but a republican party, that more than once, it had been easy to engage in the destruction of the temporal power of the popes, by conferring on the Romans, and on some others of the cities of Italy, a suitable government.

Otho died in 973; and from his death to the pontificate of Gerbert or Sylvester II. the most remarkable events are, the accession of Hugh Capet to the throne of France, the excommunication pronounced against his son Robert, and the attempts of Crescentius to force Rome from the yokes of Otho II. and Otho HI. the feeble successors of Otho the Great.

Crescentius was the son of Theodora, and, according to Fleury, of Pope John X. We behold him governing Rome in quality of Consul towards 980; but it is probable that from the year 974, he exercised a considerable influence; stormy or weak pontificates restored the civil magistracy. Benedict VI. the successor of John XIII. had been dethroned, imprisoned, and strangled, or condemned to die of hunger. Boniface VII. the usurper of the Holy See, after having plundered the churches, fled with his booty to Constantinople: they hesitated not to fill his place, and the imperial influence determined the election in favor of Benedict VII. who belonged to the family of Alberic, now counts of Tusculum; a powerful family, by whom the Emperor Otho II. and his agents, strengthened the German party. But this emperor occupied in a war with the Greeks in the Duchy of Beneventum, feared to displease the Romans by taking too active a part in their affairs. He therefore prevented not Crescentius, who had obtained their confidence, from ruling both the city and its bishop. In 983, when Benedict VII. died, the Romans and their consul elected John XVI. Boniface, however, returned from Constantinople, made himself master of Rome and of the person of John, caused him to perish in a dungeon, and maintained himself during the space of eleven months, at the head of the city and of the church. There is reason to think that Crescentius contributed to the fall of Boniface, whom a sudden death snatched from the vengeance of the people. John XV. elected in 985, had disputes with the consul, who exiled him, and did not agree to see him until the pope had promised to respect the popular authority. In despite of this promise, Otho III. was called into Italy by John, who submitted with reluctance to the ascendancy of Crescentius. John died at the moment he expected to see himself delivered from this governor. Otho III. nominated for pope a German, who took the name of Gregory V.: this foreign pontiff elected by the influence of the Counts of Tusculum, on the approach of the imperial army, odious on every account to the Romans, became still more displeasing to them from German manners and hauteur¹²⁸ It was at this moment Crescentius formed the project of replacing Rome under the sovereign authority of the Greek emperors, masters at once more gentle and more remote, accustomed to respect the privileges of the people, and under whose protection the Neapolitans and Venetians breathed freely and prospered. Greek ambassadors proceeded to Rome under pretence of fulfilling a mission to the court of Otho; they conferred with the consul, who deferred not to expel Gregory, and to replace him by a Greek named Philogathus, who from being bishop of Placentia, became pope or anti-pope under the name of John XVI. But Otho came to Rome, and laid hold of this new pontiff, whom Gregory condemned, in spite of the prayers of St. Nil, to lose his life by a series of the most horrible torments. Crescen-tius had retired to the wall of Adrian; they affected to treat with him, they pledged themselves to respect his person: he relied on this promise given by the emperor, quitted the fortress, submitted himself to Otho, and was instantly beheaded with his most faithful partisans.

It was John XV. who filled the chair of St. Peter, when in 987 Hugh Capet dethroned the Carlovingian race, and made himself king of France. This prince knew how to make this necessary revolution acceptable to the French nobles and bishops; it proceeded without commotion, and above all without the intervention of the Roman Court. Hugh did not apply to John as Pepin before had done to Zachary; and the happiness of not being indebted to the Holy See, for his elevation, was without doubt, one of the causes of the security of Hugh, the long duration of his dynasty, and the propagation of those maxims of independence, which have distinguished and done honour to the Gallican church. These maxims were proclaimed from the reign of Hugh, by a bishop of Orleans, and by Gerbert archbishop of Rheims¹²⁹ It was in the affair of an archbishop of this same city of Rheims, named Arnoul, who had betrayed the new king, and whom this prince had deposed. John wished to re-establish Arnoul and annul the election of Gerbert; but the monarch was firm, and, while he lived, Gerbert remained in the See of Rheims, and Arnoul in the prison of Orleans.

Robert, son of Hugh, did not resist with equal success the attempts of Gregory V. Robert had married Bertha, although she was his relative in the fourth degree, and that he had been godfather of a son that she had by the Count of Chartres, her first husband. They exclaimed against a marriage made in contempt of two such serious impediments. Too much terrified by these clamours, Robert resolved to restore Arnoul to the See of Rheims: this complaisance by which he hoped to reconcile himself to the See of Rome, appeared but an indication of his weakness. The pope did not hesitate to declare the marriage void; he excommunicated the two spouses, and Robert, compelled to part Bertha, married Constance. This pliability has been much urged against him; but after the re-establishment of Arnoul, a perseverance in retaining Bertha would have led almost infallibly to fatal consequences. We must consider that Robert was the second king of his family; that this new dynasty had scarcely reigned ten years; that Gerbert, one of the most judicious men of this epoch, had left the King of France in order to attach himself to Otho III.; that this emperor had appeared at the council in which Gregory V. had excommunicated the son of Hugh; and finally, that these anathemas were then so dreadful, that at the present day we can scarcely avoid suspecting exaggeration in what is related to us of their effects.¹³⁰ It was the first time France beheld herself placed under an interdict, and that she received the injunction to suspend the celebration of the divine offices; the administration of the sacrament to adults, and religious sepulture to the dead. We are assured that Robert, when excommunicated, was abandoned by his courtiers, his relations, his household, and that even two servants who remained with him caused to pass through the fire the things which he had touched.

This Gerbert whom we have mentioned, became pope after Gregory V. by the name of Sylvester II. It was he who, being archbishop of Rheims, and seeing himself condemned by John XV. had expressed himself in these words:¹³¹

Driven from Rheims, Gerbert was received by Otho the III., who created him, first, archbishop of Ravenna, then head of the church in 998. He died in 1002, after having in this short pontificate, confirmed as far as in his power, the imperial authority at Rome, and refused the indications of independence which had agitated her citizens.

We cannot take leave of the 10th centuiy, without lamenting the gross ignorance into which Europe was plunged. Possessions were regulated by custom, and transactions pursued by remembrance alone. In the midst of these people, these nobles, these kings, who knew neither how to read nor write, the rudest instruction was, in the clergy suffered to put them in possession of the civil administration.¹³²

They alone could spell ancient writings, and trace some letters. They assumed the dictating of wills, the regulation of marriages, contracts, and public acts; they extorted legacies and donations, they freed themselves from the secular jurisdiction, and endeavoured to subject all things to a jurisprudence of their own.¹³³