The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections (8 page)

Marinus I, who succeeded John VIII, seems to have been elected without significant controversy, though he made history by being the first bishop to be elected pope, strictly speaking in contraven- tion of church law (a bishop was said to be wedded to his diocese and could not, as it were, change wives, though the provision against diocese-swapping was being less and less observed). Because Marinus was a bishop he did not need to be consecrated, which was the moment in the process when the elected candidate became Bishop of Rome. Instead there was an “enthroning.” All this took place without consulting the emperor, though the pope went to see him about six months after his election, and he is recorded as having decreed that only the votes of the clergy and people of Rome had any significance in papal elections. Marinus’s

Descent into Chaos
47

policies rather reversed those of his predecessor – Formosus and his supporters came back to Rome and George of the Aventine was put in charge of the city’s army. Marinus’s pontificate was relative- ly short however (December 882 to May 884), and he was followed by Hadrian III, who had inherited John VIII’s attitudes, including his opposition to Germany and hence to the Formosan party. There were riots at the time of Hadrian’s election and he estab- lished his authority in Rome by taking drastic action against his opponents among the nobility: he had one noblewoman whipped through the streets and George of the Aventine was blinded. Hadrian died outside Rome, at an abbey near Modena, in some- what mysterious circumstances; it is possible that he was murdered by a member of George of the Aventine’s family. The late pope’s body was despoiled of anything valuable by the monks of the abbey, while in Rome, as had become the custom, the mob plundered their way through the Lateran.

Perhaps to counteract all the chaos Stephen V (VI) was elected by the clergy and nobility promptly and with acclaim – so promptly that the Emperor Charles the Fat was not consulted and objected, but Stephen managed to persuade him that no o
ff
ense had been intended. But at the Emperor Charles’s death in January 888 (he had abdicated a couple of months earlier) Stephen turned not to Charles’s nephew Arnulf, who had become ruler of Germany, but to Guy of Spoleto, who was crowned emperor in February 891, thereby introducing a new factor into the politics of papal elections.

Then, at long last, in October 891, Bishop Formosus was elected to the papacy. There seems to have been a modicum of opposition from a deacon called Sergius, who was leader of the party which supported Guy of Spoleto – as Formosus himself had once done. But eventually, after Guy’s death, Pope Formosus bestowed the imperial crown on Arnulf.

After Formosus, Boniface VI was pope for a fortnight before he died of gout. There followed the pontificate of Stephen VI (VII),

48
The Conclave

which lasted a year and a half and included one of the most macabre events in papal history. The political background to the story is unclear: it may very well have been that Stephen was a partisan of the Spoletans, and opposed to Formosus’s alliance with Arnulf. Whatever the reason, Stephen was a bitter foe of the late pope. Early in 897 a synod was called in Rome, Formosus’s body was exhumed, dressed in pontifical vestments, placed on a throne before the assembly and accused of various crimes, including that of moving from one bishopric to another, contrary to Church law. The odd thing was that Stephen himself had done likewise, having been created Bishop of Anagni by Formosus himself. It is possible that Stephen was having qualms of conscience. One way of solving this was to declare Formosus’s election to the bishopric of Rome illegitimate and therefore all his acts null and void – including the consecration of Stephen. In due course Formosus’s corpse was found guilty, and therefore the sacraments he had bestowed invalid. The corpse was now stripped of its vestments, two fingers from the hand with which the late pope had given blessings were cut o
ff
, and his body thrown into the River Tiber – from which it was rescued and given a dignified, but nonpapal, burial by a hermit. Unfortunately for Stephen, not only had this extraordinary behav- ior aroused the hostility of the Roman mob, but Formosus’s remains were reported to be working miracles. Moreover, the con- comitant collapse of the Lateran basilica was interpreted as a sign of God’s displeasure. There was a rising, Stephen was imprisoned – possibly in a monastery – and shortly afterward strangled. Rome and the papacy were descending into chaos.

One sign of this is that little is known of the lives, and extremely short reigns, of the next couple of popes, though both Romanus and Theodore were of the party of Formosus. So was John IX, who followed Theodore, despite the e
ff
orts of the anti-Formosans to elect Sergius, Bishop of Caere; the bishopric had been imposed upon him by Formosus, possibly to dampen his papal ambitions. If so, the ploy did not work. Sergius briefly occupied the Lateran, but

Descent into Chaos
49

with the help of the Spoletan emperor was turned out by the Formosus faction. John, the Spoletan choice, was a monk of Lombard descent who had been ordained priest by Formosus.

John called a synod in 898 which not only rehabilitated Pope Formosus and forbade any future posthumous trials, but enacted a decree to regulate papal elections. In e
ff
ect it revived that of Lothair in 824 (cf. above, p. 41). The electors were to be the sen- ior clergy – the bishops, priests, and deacons – of Rome, but in the presence of the senate (the nobility) and the people of the city. Imperial interests were to be served by the presence of rep- resentatives of the emperor. The preeminent role of the clergy, the cardinals, was preserved; the laity’s task was to look on and, in the case of the imperial emissaries, to confirm. The role of the cardinals had been growing throughout the ninth century. In 853 Leo IV had laid down for them a weekly meeting – it later became fortnightly – to oversee the ecclesiastical discipline of Rome, including their own standards of behavior. Now they were to dominate papal elections.

If these proposals were meant to bring peace to the city, they did not work. The aristocratic Benedict IV, also of the Formosan party, followed John but such was the confusion of the age that little is known about him, not even the date of his election. He reverted to supporting French candidates for the imperial title, in 901 crowning Louis the Blind of Provence. This was a disastrous choice, because the emperor was defeated and forced out of Italy, leaving the papacy without a protector. The date of Leo V’s election is also unknown, but it is insignificant because within the month he was ousted from o
ffi
ce and thrown into jail. It is not clear why or how he aroused such hostility so soon after being the choice of the electors. It may be that, for the first time, they had not chosen someone who was a member of the Roman clergy – Leo had served as priest in a town nearly forty kilometers south of Rome. It may be that the electors chose an outsider because they could not agree on a local candidate for bishop.

50
The Conclave

There was still Sergius waiting in the wings, but first the usurper of Leo installed himself. He was Christopher, cardinal priest of the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso, about whom nothing significant is known before he seized the papal throne. He lasted a month. Like Leo, Christopher had been a supporter of Formosus. The fact that Christopher unseated Leo suggests that the Formosan party was falling apart, which heartened the anti-Formosans who had Sergius as their leader. Sergius had continued to think of himself as the rightful pope ever since his election in 897. In exile he had cultivated the Spoletans, and with the support of Spoleto’s troops he entered Rome, threw Christopher into jail along with Leo (and then, though the evidence is not entirely compelling, probably had them murdered), and installed himself as pope.

Among Sergius’s first acts as pope was once more to condemn Formosus and declare all his acts unlawful – which included the ordination of bishops and, consequently, the ordination of priests who had been ordained by the now illegal bishops. It was a mad situation of vindictiveness which was brutally enforced. Perhaps the only reason Sergius managed to survive so long – over a decade, compared to the few months of his immediate predeces- sors – was the support of Theophylact.

The name Theophylact indicates Byzantine ancestry. The head of the family was a leading member of the Roman aristocracy who by 904 had become head of the papal treasury and, soon after, commander of the militia. In 915 he was declared “senator of the Romans,” suggesting a particularly elevated status among the other noble families of the city. Theophylact lived with his wife Theodora on the via Lata. She was faithful, pious, and politically astute. They married o
ff
their daughter Marozia to the powerful Duke Alberic of Spoleto, though not before (a somewhat scurrilous chronicler alleged) Marozia had borne a son, the future Pope John XI, to her lover Pope Sergius III. The same chronicler even claimed, though it is highly unlikely, that as a young woman Theodora had been the mistress of Archbishop John of Ravenna. What was certainly the

Descent into Chaos
51

case was that Sergius and John of Ravenna were close allies of Theophylact, and it was the influence of Theophylact as the lead- ing member of the Roman aristocracy that returned Rome to rela- tive calm – albeit a calm which entailed isolating the city as far as possible from the power politics of Italy and the wider Europe. This meant reining in the pretensions of the papacy as they had been displayed by a number of popes in the tenth century, includ- ing Formosus.

Because of the presumed immorality of the age, and particularly because of the involvement of Theodora and her daughter in papal a
ff
airs, this period has been called “the pornocracy.” The great historian, Cardinal Cesare Baronio, writing a history of the Church toward the end of the sixteenth century, called it “the dark age” – partly because of the lack of documents but also because of its immorality. It is all a little unfair. The charges of immoral behavior come from a chronicler who clearly wanted to damage the reputa- tion of the Theophylact family in order to exalt the reforms in the papacy which began later in the century.

There was another aspect of the politics of Rome which seems to have influenced the house of Theophylact and other leading Roman aristocrats. The papacy had reestablished the Western Empire in the person of Charlemagne, but by the beginning of the tenth century the imperial power had waned. Rome was the sole remnant of the Western Empire and proud of it – hence the revival of titles from ancient Rome like those enjoyed by Theophylact. The papacy’s horizons had been expanded by the link with the Empire; the Roman aristocracy was now set on ensuring that Rome would survive as an independent duchy within Italy, without the backing of any imperial power from outside. This was made all the more problematic because Saracens from North Africa were now firmly established in Sicily; they were a constant menace to Southern Italy and to Rome itself.

These were all factors which a
ff
ected the way in which popes were made and unmade in the first half of the tenth century. After

52
The Conclave

Sergius III, who died in April 911, Anastasius III, a Roman, and Lando, son of a Lombard count, were both created by Theophylact. So was John X, who had been Archbishop of Ravenna, but he proved to be much more his own man. It was a risky choice: Theophylact’s enemies could claim, rightly, that John had twice changed dioceses contrary to the prescriptions of church law, and could spread the rumor that the only reason he had been invited to take over the papacy was because he had been the lover of Theophylact’s wife. A very much more likely reason, however, was that he alone seemed capable of dealing with the Saracens – which he did, very e
ff
ectively, at one point taking personal charge of the Christian armies.

John survived Theodora and Theophylact, but he failed to sur- vive Marozia. Marozia’s husband, Alberic of Spoleto, had become a Roman hero after organizing a coalition to defeat the Saracens at the battle of the River Garigliano in 915, but had been lynched by a Roman mob when, sometime later, he was accused of having brought in Hungarian mercenaries in an attempt to seize power in the city. Pope John appointed his brother to the now vacant dukedom, but this threatened the ambitions of Marozia, who had married Guy of Tuscany and in 928 managed to take over the city of Rome with Guy’s help. To make her control absolute she had to dispose of Pope John – which she did by throwing him into a prison cell in Castel Sant’Angelo (once the massive tomb of the Emperor Hadrian and still to be seen close to the Vatican), where he was su
ff
ocated.

Her plan was to place her own son on the papal throne, but he was still somewhat young. Leo VI and Stephen VII (VIII) were e
ff
ectively appointed by Marozia, but they died (of natural causes) having reigned less than two years between them. John XI, Marozia’s son by (if the chronicler is to be believed) Sergius III, was then elected pope on his mother’s instructions although he was only in his twenties. But as he was appointed by Marozia, so he also fell with her. His nemesis was his (half) brother, Alberic of

Descent into Chaos
53

Spoleto. Alberic was the son of Marozia by her first marriage. Though John X had given the dukedom of Spoleto to his own brother after Alberic I was lynched, it was recovered by Marozia’s son, who acted decisively when his mother was about to marry for the third time. Her new husband was Hugh of Provence, King of Italy, who, Alberic reasoned, was intent on annexing Rome to his dominions.

The wedding ceremony took place in Castel Sant’Angelo. Alberic summoned the Roman militia and attacked the fortress. Hugh was allowed to escape, but Marozia, Alberic’s mother, was imprisoned in a convent for the remainder of her life; Alberic and the Roman nobility were not prepared to have their city in thrall to a foreigner. Pope John XI survived, but only just. It was Alberic who ruled the city and from then on appointed popes. Leo VII, Stephen VIII (IX), Marinus II, and Agapitus II were all appointees of Alberic, who had assumed the title of Prince of Rome. The people of Rome were, however, content, or so it seems. Though the city itself was largely cut o
ff
from the outside world, it was secure and peaceful. Religious life was vastly improved under the tutelage of reformed monks imported from elsewhere. The popes had little room for personal initiative.