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.

Cluny: Seedbed of Reformation

A model of the Third Abbey Church of Cluny, the

largest Christian Church ever constructed; except for

one tower and part of a transept it was destroyed

after the French Revolution. 

  Before we look at the Gregorian Reform, I want to take a look at the Abbey of Cluny which many historians credit with launching the Gregorian Reform.  Actually, while I am not so sure that I see the connection, at least a direct connection, between Cluny and the Gregorian Reform, I must admit that Cluny is too important to overlook in any event as it certainly set the “gold standard” for monastic life which in turn would inspire many of the Reformers of the eleventh century in their goal of purifying the Church from the decay it had fallen into.      
     Duke William of Aquitaine founded the Abbey on his Burgundy estates in 910, inviting  a monk named Berno to serve as abbot and—and this is remarkable for the period—giving the abbey independence from any civil or ecclesiastical oversight, making it answerable only to the pope.  This was not particularly auspicious as Sergius III, “possibly the only pope known to have ordered the murder of another pope and the only pope to have fathered an illegitimate son who later became pope (John XI)…”  was pope at the time of Cluny’s foundation.  Sergius’ mistress—and mother of John XI—was Marozia whom you may remember from our entries on the “pornacracy.” (See the entries for January 15, June 6, 9, 18.)  John XI himself when he came to the throne became a great benefactor of the Abbey during his papacy—though otherwise he was a pretty worthless pope.  He was bullied by his older brother, Alberic II, Duke of Spoleto, who used his younger brother’s papacy as an opportunity to control not only the Papal States but the Church itself to his own interests.   Nevertheless, bad people often do good things and John’s granting of so many privileges to Cluny was indeed a very good thing. 
      In any event, Berno had a history of reforming and founding abbeys and was a very capable administrator as well as a man of personal holiness.  He had a definite philosophy of monastic life, shaped by the ninth-century monastic regimen of Benedict of Aniane.  Berno saw the essence of the monastic life in the perfection of liturgical prayer and that the monastery, as a “heaven on earth” was to engage as far as possible in the laus perennis—the unceasing praise.  The ideal would be a continuous, never-ceasing, round of ceremonial worship that continued twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week—the monks working (that is to say, praying) in shifts.  Such an ideal would be all but impossible, of course, to realize but Cluny was to come close with its long and splendid ceremonials. 
       In his dependency on Benedict of Aniane for the monastic vision, Berno made Cluny a bridge spanning the Carolingian Reformation—of which Benedict of Aniane was a key player—the Ottonian (to which Cluny style monasticism would contribute Gerbert of Aurillac aka the reforming Pope Sylvester II)and leading to the Gregorian Reform which it was to inspire. (Just to be clear, Gerbert’s home monastery was not part of the Cluniac federation, but like many Benedictine houses of the time modeled its observance on the Cluniac practices.) 
      I must admit I have always had a weak spot for Cluny and its monks.  Regretfully I have yet to visit the site, perhaps someday.  But to return to our story—William’s endowment of his new Abbey was so generous that the monks were substantially freed of the need for any manual labor to support themselves and thus were free to give themselves almost entirely to the project of continuous worship.  The more they chanted psalms and processed around their church and burned incense and turned donations into chalices and chandeliers, the more donations poured into their coffers and vocations into the abbey.  And the  more monks and money, the more elaborate and all-consuming became the liturgy.  Benefactors would bequeath to the Abbey manors and farms, mills and tolls, weirs and orchards and vineyards.  Everything came with a price.  “Here is a manor, but we want a weekly mass said for the deceased of our family.”  “Here is an orchard, but you must have a procession each year on the anniversary of grandmama’s death.”   “Here is a toll on the Rhone bridge, but you must sing a Litany in honor of Saint Anne four times a year.”  Wealth piled up, ceremonies piled up.  Vocations piled up.  Cluny founded daughter houses, but unlike other Benedictine Abbeys never granted the daughter houses independence.  By keeping them subject to the Abbey of Cluny, the Abbot of Cluny had a right to come into each foundation and insure that they were not slacking on the monastic observance.  It was this innovation that created the modern concept of a religious order. 
      The Cluniac Order—for they were an Order and not merely a federation of independent monasteries—became famous throughout Europe for its high standards of monastic life and worship.  Cluny had a succession of phenomenal Abbots in leadership of the movement: Odo, Maiolus, Odilo, Hugh I, Hugh II, Peter the Venerable among them.  In a Church that was in great decay, Cluny set a standard for monastic life that was a beacon for reform.   Not all monasteries adopted the Cluniac program, but it did trigger a movement of monastic reforms that in turn would trigger a generation of monk reformers who brought the same enthusiasm for integrity and reform to the larger church.  
 

Roots of the Reformation XIX--Cluny--a Reform from below

The former Cluniac Priory Church
in Paray le Monial, a miniature of the
Mother Abbey of the Congregation at

Cluny

At the very time that the papacy was at its all  time low in the tenth century, up in the Aquitaine, in what is today France, a great reform movement was taking shape at the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny.  Sergius III was sitting on the throne of Peter when he wasn’t lying in the arms of his lover, Marozia—and indeed the very year she gave birth to his son, the future pope John XI—when Benno and a small group of monks settled on lands at Cluny donated by Duke William of Aquitaine for the establishment of what would become the most important monastic foundation in Europe.  Incidentally, John XI, a very weak pope who was totally dominated by his mother Marozia until both he and she were overthrown by his half-brother Alberic II, put into prison and murdered, was a great benefactor of the reformed Abbey at Cluny.  Even the wicked sometimes support good causes; and even saints sometimes endorse wickedness.  But that is another story. 

Duke William “the Pious” established the Abbey in 910 and he granted it exemptions from any secular entanglement.  He renounced any rights over the abbey that he or his heirs might claim.  It was normal at the time when establishing a monastery that the benefactor retained the right to name the Abbot or to demand that in time of war the monks furnish a certain number of knights to fight for the benefactor.  It was even usual that the benefactor founding the monastery could claim a certain percentage of future donations—but William renounced any such claims.  Only the popes had any claim to the Abbey’s loyalty and they, fortunately (given the state of the papacy at the time) were far away. 

The monks, for their part, were determined to devote themselves entirely to the opus Dei—the Work of God—which meant prayer.  In the original vision of Saint Benedict for monks, the life of the monastery was to be divided between prayer and work—ora et labora.  At Cluny the life was almost entirely prayer—the laus perennis, unceasing praise.  The ceremonies were very elaborate and carried out with exquisite perfection; thus they consumed most of the monk’s day.  The solemnity of the worship drew many generous gifts on behalf of patrons who wished the monks’ prayers for themselves and for their deceased loved ones.  The generosity of their benefactors permitted the monks to commission beautiful vestments, vessels, and decorations for their church.  It also permitted them to hire workers to do the manual work of the monastery and free the monks for prayer.  The Abbey Church—actually the third Abbey Church which was built between 1080 and 1130 was the largest church yet built; it was mostly destroyed in the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. 

Cluny drew huge numbers of vocations which enabled them to make many new monastic foundations.  Traditionally among Benedictine monasteries, such daughter houses themselves become independent abbeys, but Cluny devised another system in which the Abbot of Cluny was superior of all the foundations and each daughter house sent representatives to an annual chapter at Cluny which made legislation for all the houses affiliated to it.  This is where the idea of a “religious order” develops in the Western Church and it permitted  a uniform standard of religious observance to be maintained among all the houses.  Many independent abbeys, including those of nuns, voluntarily surrendered their independence to Cluny and became part of this monastic congregation.     

Cluny was not known for austerity as some later religious orders such as the Cistercians or the Carthusians would be, but neither was their life lax.  The focus of Cluniac life was the maintenance of a dignified and all-encompassing public prayer that seemed never to end, the monks taking shifts in the Church to enable the elaborate services to be carried out in meticulous detail.  Nevertheless, in a Church that had sunk into such great decay of morale and morals Cluny was a bright shining light of clergy who were seeking something other than their own personal power, wealth, pleasure, and comfort.  It would provide generations of Church leadership that would be responsible for the reform and renewal, not only of monastic life but of the Church itself in the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries.  Their foundation at a time when the Church, from the papacy down to the village priests, was pretty rotten is a lesson that Reform and Renewal do not have to come from above but most effectively come from personal renewal of ordinary men and women.  

Roots of the Reformation XVIII: The Papacy of Whores

The Pope and his curia
medieval manuscript, Krakow

The papacy was in terrible decline from the 9^th century onwards –result of its immense wealth and the contentiousness to control it that made the papacy a pawn of several great Roman families that wanted to manipulate the wealth and power attached to the papacy for their own uses.  But this totally wiped out the moral credibility of the papacy and, at this stage of development of the doctrine of papal power, loss of moral credibility meant loss of power. 

The main power brokers for a long time were the family of Counts of Tusculum.  Two of the women of this family—Marozia and her mother, Theodora—prostituted themselves to different popes and schemed to put their sons and grandsons on the throne of Peter.  Marozia, the younger of the two women, while still only 15 was the mistress of Pope Sergius III.  Sergius seems to have been rather young  himself at the time of his being made pope, and he owed the papal office to Theophylact, the Count of Tusculum and father of Marozia.  Theophylact was the vestarius (treasurer) to the popes—a position which gave him access to the papal wealth.  There was a lot of confusion in the papacy at this time.  Leo V had been forcibly dethroned and imprisoned to be succeeded by Christopher.  Modern Church historians consider Christopher an anti-pope—but as recently as the early twentieth century he had been included on the list of legitimate popes and his picture is among the papal mosaics stretching from Peter to John Paul II decorating the basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.   In any event, his reign was quite short as after four months Sergius III—the “boyfriend” of Marozia—drove him from office and had him imprisoned in the Castle Sant’Angelo.  Both Leo and Christopher were strangled in Prison—some sources claiming that Christopher had Leo strangled and Sergius had Christopher so dispatched; others saying that Sergius ordered the murder of both in order to remove any counter-claims to his own papacy.  So you’ve got a fellow who was made pope by his girl-friend’s father and who has murdered—or ordered murdered—his predecessor(s).  We haven’t even begun yet.  In 910 Marozia and Pope Sergius have a son who, twenty years later, will himself become pope as John XI.  Sergius was long dead, of course, but Marozia was still around and engineered the election.  Marozia had a long string of lovers—some sources say including one or more of the intervening popes—and several husbands.  One of the husbands—Guy of Tuscany—attacked Rome where he and Marozia murdred pope John X and installed a succession of popes—Leo VI, Stephen VII, and her son by Sergius, John XI—who were no more than her puppets.  When Guy died, Marozia persuaded his brother, Hugh of Arles, to abandon his wife and marry her.  Alberic II, Marozia’s  son by her first husband, Alberic of Spoleto, had enough of her, however, and led a rebellion, putting both her and his half-brother, Pope John XI, in prison where they were murdered.  Lest you think that Alberic II was a good guy protecting the Church from all these evil people—he married his stepsister and then nominated his son to be pope.  The son, at age 17, became pope in 955 as John XII.  here is what was written of him:

Then, rising up, the cardinal priest Peter testified that he himself had seen John XII celebrate Mass without taking communion. John, bishop of Narni, and John, a cardinal deacon, professed that they themselves saw that a deacon had been ordained in a horse stable, but were unsure of the time. Benedict, cardinal deacon, with other co-deacons and priests, said they knew that he had been paid for ordaining bishops, specifically that he had ordained a ten-year-old bishop in the city of Todi... They testified about his adultery, which they did not see with their own eyes, but nonetheless knew with certainty: he had fornicated with the widow of Rainier, with Stephana his father's concubine, with the widow Anna, and with his own niece, and he made the sacred palace into a whorehouse. They said that he had gone hunting publicly; that he had blinded his confessor Benedict, and thereafter Benedict had died; that he had killed John, cardinal subdeacon, after castrating him; and that he had set fires, girded on a sword, and put on a helmet and cuirass. All, clerics as well as laymen, declared that he had toasted to the devil with wine. They said when playing at dice, he invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons. They even said he did not celebrate Matins and the canonical hours nor did he make the sign of the cross.

Whoa boy, ya think ya seen it all.  But wait—what happened to Theodora, the mama bear in this adorable family of adulterous murderers.  (And why didn’t Sister even tell us about this in sixth-grade history?)   Oh, by the way, before I go further: Pope John XII is a great, great, great, great, great, great, grandson of Charlemagne—through his mother.  Not that that is relevant.  It isn’t.  Just a little fact of history.  Theodora was not idle through all this.  She was a senetrix (a lady Senator) of Rome—more a title in those days than an actual position.    But Lady Senators were most rare and in fact it was a title that legitimized her immense political power.   Theodora was mistress to John X whom Marozia and Guy of Tuscany had killed.  Was Marozia jealous of her mother’s power?  Did that inspire the murder?  Who knows, it is all a mess.

Some modern historians claim that the various sources (Luitprand of Cremona, the Liber Pontificalis, and other contemporary histories)  portray Theodora and Marozia harshly, even falsely, because they were jealous of females exercising the political power that these women managed to wield.   That could—to a certain extent—be true; all historians have bias and there are no true “facts” in history.  The very tone of voice prejudices the student to the teacher’s point of view.  Nonetheless, these ladies and the accompanying popes are no candidates for canonization.  This period, known by the pejorative but wonderful appellation: the Pornacracy (the Rule of Whores), marks the most morally deprived period on the history of the popes.  Trust me when I say that this entry has only skimmed over the murders, adulteries, sodomies, bribes, simonies, blasphemies, and only the devil knows what else that has adorned the papal throne.  While great saints have sat in Peter’s chair, its history is not one of holiness.  But the question arises—and it is a question not only for the tenth century—who can reform the papacy when it needs reform?  What happens when the man on Peter’s throne is a depraved whoremaster?  Or, even more serious, what happens when the man on Peter’s throne is only a puppet for some figure, male or female, in the shadows who has control of the Church?  Don’t say it can’t happen—it has and more than once.   And it may have happened much more recently than you might think.  Hmmm.  Very recently.  The man in the window may not be the man with the power. 

The Pornocracy--shady ladies and promiscuous popes

When it is mentioned—ever so rarely—in a “Church History” class, it is referred to as the “saeculum obscuram” –the dark century, but I have always preferred the title “the pornacracy”—the “rule of whores.” I have heard that this term is attributed to Luitprand of Cremona, a bishop and court historian to the emperor Otto I, and indeed it might be. Luitprand had a vicious tongue and a streak of self—righteousness that makes his being the alleged coiner of this term plausible, but I have also heard that the term originated with sixteenth century Lutheran historians, anxious to discredit the papacy. That theory actually makes less sense, for while in the heat of the Reformation polemics were the menu du jour, Lutheran scholars were meticulous in the exactness of their work, Admiuttedly Martin Luther himself reportedly had a flair for vulgar language but it was pretty much limited to the table banter with his friends. The great Reformer, while he might have been able to “swear like a sailor,” could also write stirring prose (his sermos and German translation of the Bible) and powerful hymns. The Greek roots of the word pornacracy being porne (whore, harlot) and kratein (to rule) might indicate its sixteenth-century roots where the Renaissance had revived a knowledge of Greek but, while Greek was all but unknown in the 10th century, Luitprand had served as Imperial ambassador on at least one occasion at the Court of Constantinople and would certainly had some knowledge of the language. After all “prostitute,” “harlot, “whore” is one of the first words men try to remember when learning a language, if only so one can tell jokes. In any event, I suppose I could plow through his works and see if indeed he used the term, but frankly I am too lazy.
Well, enough of those trivialities. Who cares who coined the term; it’s a great attention grabber. Where to begin? This is always the problem because history is this great interlocking puzzle where part of the story is always part of a previous story and there is rarely a clear place where one can nicely cut into the cake. Behind the pornacracy is the fascinating (if ghoulish) story of the “Cadaver Synod” but we will go there some other time. Let’s begin with a young lady by the name of Marozia and who had been born in 890. By the time she was fifteen she was the mistress of Pope Sergius III (reigned 904-911). Today that would be called “child abuse” but in the ninth century it was not uncommon for people to be married at fourteen or fifteen. Nevertheless, given the probable age difference (we don’t know the year of Sergius’ birth but he would most likely have been at least in his thirties as pope and given his death in 911 may have been even in his fifties or sixties) it is a bit creepy. But then Sergius was a particularly creepy man with three distinctive marks
1. The only pope known to have murdered his predecessor (plus a rival claimant to the throne of Peter)
2. The only pope whose bastard son himself became pope (John XI)
3. And the first pope to wear—or at least the first to be depicted wearing—the papal tiara.

We will talk more about Marozia in a future posting. As I said this was the “rule of harlots” not the rule of “a harlot.” So let’s meet whore #2. Presenting, Theodora, wife of Theophylact, count of Tusculum and mother of …guess who? None other than whore# 1, yes, Marozia. Theodora is the mistress of Pope John X (reigns 914-928), successor but two to her daughter Marozia’s old flame, Sergius III. So what we have here is a Mother-Daughter prostitution ring in the Lateran Palace. (The popes didn’t live in the Vatican at the time, but in the palace adjoining the Lateran Basilica.)
Well, you might think, what is the poor count of Tusculum to do? How can one resist the power of the pope if he want your wife or your daughter. Poor Theophylact, how can a count resist the Ruler of Rome? Well, that’s the irony. These popes—indeed all the popes in this particular period—were zero’s when it came to power. If anything, they owed their power to Theophylact who was the de facto ruler of Rome. in fact, ol’ John X was only a deacon in Bologna when Theodora “noticed” him—i.e. took a fancy to him—and persuaded her husband to make her boy-toy first bishop of Bologna and then Archbishop of Ravenna from which it was only a hop, skip, and a jump to the papacy.
There obviously is something going on here besides sex. What is it? Well, I will come back to the saga of Theophylact clan, our sort of "Desperate Housewives of the Dark Ages" and we will find out more. Meanwhile, just as a teaser—Marozia holds the rare distinction of being the mistress of one pope, mother of a second, and grandmother of a third. I am sure she made Theodora and Theophylact proud.

Today's image is Theodora by Jean-Joseph Benjamin Constant. The only problem is that this is the wrong Theodora--this is Justinian's wife and we will do some posting on her too--she is a fascinating character. But in the meantime, this picture works both Theodoras had their shady-lady pasts.