Papal Resignations! III

As I have written in other postings, I am reluctant to call the bishops of Rome “popes” until the beginning of the fifth century, not because I don’t think they exercised a leadership role that extended beyond the Church of which they were bishops, but for several reasons, not least of which is that the title “pope” was not used in its modern sense of the Universal Pastor of the Church at least until the time of Leo I.  The Roman Church—and its bishop—certainly had an influence that extended throughout the Christian communities of the vast Roman Empire from at least the end of the first century, but the word “pope” gets very much overloaded with significance and authority, and power that becomes part of that office only later is too often projected back upon the Roman bishops of the first centuries making them retroactively something that does not fit the historical facts.   This is a problem with those who do “Church history” which is a branch of apologetics rather than “history of the Church” which is held accountable to the same standards of factual accuracy as the history of any secular institution.  Nevertheless, if one is looking at the subject of papal resignations, we can certainly begin by looking at the resignation of Pontian who was the Roman bishop from 230 until 235. 
Pontian was Bishop of Rome during a time of relative peace for the Church during the reign of Alexander Severus.   He held a synod that condemned Origen though I am not sure on precisely which counts as much of Origen’s work survives in orthodoxy while some of his ideas are clearly heretical.  More to our point, at the death of Alexander Severus the new Emperor, Maximinus the Thracian, initiated a persecution of the Church and Pontian was deported to the mines of Sardinia. Rather than leave the Roman Church without a shepherd, Pontian resigned the See.  Anterus, a Greek freedman, was elected to replace him in Rome. Pontian was to die after only a month or so in the mines.  His remains were brought back to Rome by Fabian, his successor but one, two years after his death.    
A less noble figure to resign the papal See was Benedict IX.  He was young—barely 20 and maybe not even that, but he came from the family of the Counts of Tusculum—a noble family that dominated the papacy in much of the ninth and tenth centuries and put the porno into what is called the papal pornocracy. (See entries for Jan 15 and June 6 2011.)  Benedict’s father was Alberic III, Count of Tusculum and the great-grandson and great-great-grandson respectively of Marozia and Theodora, who were in their day each mistresses of various popes. Two uncles, brothers of his father, had been Popes Benedict VIII and John XIX.  Benedict VII and John XI were also apes in this family tree. Benedict was cut of a somewhat different bolt of cloth than his ancestors—not that he was virtuous but more that this preference in lovers ran to men rather than to the ladies and he delighted in having orgies in the Apostolic Palace.  He was forced from Rome in 1044 and Sylvester III was elected in his place.  There is no record of Benedict’s resignation at this point, yet Sylvester is recognized as Pope and not called an anti-pope by historians.  I am not sure why.  The following year, however, Benedict’s godfather, a pious man and a cardinal, John Gratian, persuaded Benedict to resign.  He gave Benedict a handsome endowment on which to live.  Gratian was then elected as Gregory VI. 
Gregory VI was soon to resign himself.  Benedict rethought his resignation and tried to reclaim the papal throne.  So now you have three men claiming to pope—Sylvester III, Benedict IX, and Gregory VI.  The Emperor, Henry III, convoked a council at Sutri which deposed Sylvester and Benedict.  Gregory was acknowledged as true pope but asked to resign because in providing the endowment for Benedict to live on in retirement, it appeared that he, Gregory, had “bought” the papacy—paid Benedict for it.  Gregory resigned the papacy and was taken to Germany by the Emperor to remove him from Rome and interfering with his successor, Clement II.

The German Popes

Leo IX--one of the
German Reform Popes

When Gregory VI resigned under pressure from the Synod of Sutri in 1046, the Emperor Henry III nominated Suidger of Morsleben and Hornburg, the Archbishop of the newly founded Archdiocese of Bamberg, to be Pope as Clement II.  This will begin a series of German Popes appointed by the Emperor.  Clement had a short reign, less than a year.  The Emperor then appointed Poppo of Brixen as Damasus II but there was a challenge to the succession.  Benedict IX, the dissolute gay-rapist-adulterer who had sold the papacy to his godfather, Gregory VI, tried to make a comeback and actually took control of Rome before the new pope could travel down from Germany and take possession of his See.   Henry had to send troops to Rome to clear out Benedict and when Damasus was able to be installed, he reigned only twenty-three days before dying—most likely of malaria, though some thought he had been poisoned by the anti-Reform party.  Rome was notorious for malaria in the early and central Middle Ages because of the swamps that surrounded the city.  On the other hand, poison was a reasonable suspicion given the politics of the day.  Benedict, you may recall, was a member of the Theophylact clan which had dominated the papacy during the pornacracy of the tenth century and while his uncle Benedict VIII had been a reform pope, Benedict the nephew represented the old fashioned corrupt popes dominated by the Roman mobs who, in turn, were driven by the various noble houses—the Theophylacts (Dukes of Spoleto/Counts of Tusculum) and the Crescentii.  The Emperors had long fought these rival factions for control of the papacy as a means of trying to reform the Church.  Thus the imperial appointees were generally reform popes and the traditionally elected popes were, for the most part, the anti-reform party.  This is important to note, because the equation will change during the course of the Gregorian Reform. 
     Upon hearing of the death of Damasus II, Henry III appointed Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg pope and this was confirmed by a synod at Worms.  Notice that the Roman clergy and people had no voice in this election—it was pure appointment by the Emperor.  This practice of Imperial appointment was an innovation introduced by Henry.  Even the Ottonian emperors had gone through the motions of a traditional election to get their candidates into office.  Henry III was a good man and had the good of the Church at heart.  Indeed, he saw that involving the Roman clergy and people in the election as had been their right from the earliest days of the Church only ran the risk of very unsuitable men being made pope.  He also, as did the Emperors of the East as well as the West, saw that he—the Emperor—was Vicar of Christ and head of the Church—and the pope was his viceroy in matters ecclesiastical.  Keep this in mind as it will become a source of tension.  In any event, Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg understood the significance of this change of procedure and despite having been appointed by the Emperor, insisted on a proper canonical election before he took office.  Thus the Roman clergy met and chose their candidate—not surprisingly (given the Emperor’s army sitting there) the imperial nominee—the Roman faithful gave their acclamation of assent, and the bishops of the Sees surrounding Rome (the so-called suburbican sees) approved and Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg became Leo IX. 
     Leo was a very busy pope; a model of a reforming pope.  Although he reigned only six years, he customarily held an Easter Synod of the clergy at Rome to pass important reform legislation.  He was concerned about the celibacy of the clergy, the conservation of Church property, and the elimination of the practice of the buying and selling of church offices.  When he was not busy reforming the Roman Church, he kept himself occupied travelling throughout northern Italy and Germany-Austria holding local synods to bring the various Churches of the Empire into conformity with Roman reform practices. 
     A new political threat appeared on the scene as the Normans conquered much of southern Italy.  This was both good and bad for the Roman Church.  This area had been held by the Byzantine Empire and the Church in Sicily and Southern Italy followed the Greek practices.    
     The Normans, originally Scandinavian pirates—that is to say, Vikings—had been converted to Christianity when they began to settle along the northern French coast in what is now Normandy.  An inherently restless—and warlike—people, they continued their conquests spreading down into the Mediterranean fighting Greeks and Arabs alike for the rule of Sicily and Southern Italy.  (This explains why there are so many Sicilian red-heads, supposedly more than in Ireland.)   In conquering these lands they brought the Church in those regions into Western rather than Eastern practices, saving the Christians there for Catholicism rather than the Orthodoxy they would have practiced had they remained under Greek influence.  But the news was not all good for the pope found his southern boundaries manned not by a distant Emperor in Constantinople but very near and very aggressive warriors who might recognize his spiritual leadership but not his political domination.  The day would soon come when the Normans would save the papacy, but initially they were a threat to the pope’s political power. 
     Leo led a German army against the Normans and not only lost, but was taken captive.  The Normans treated their prisoner with all the respect due to the Pope, but kept him prisoner none the less.  Eventually freed, he died shortly after his return to Rome.  The Emperor Henry then appointed the fourth German pope in a row, Egbert of Calw, who reigned as Victor II.  
     In the final months of his reign, Leo IX sent an embassy to Constantinople to protest to the Emperor the interference of Michael Caerularius, the Patriarch, in the Western Church.  It was a disaster, but we will deal with that topic at another time.