Foundations of the Anglican Church VIII

Counts of Tusculum Family Tree

during the pornacracy of the 10th

and 11th centuries showing members
of the family who held the papacy.

In 735 Gregory III  sent the pallium to Egbert, thus raising the See of York to Metropolitan status—in recognition of the leadership the Bishops of York had exercised in the days of the first Christian communities in Roman Britain.  The Bishop of York had been one of the English bishops present at the synod of Arles in 314. 
In 747 the English bishops held a synod at the instance of Pope Zacharias and a second synod held forty years later was presided over by two papal legates.  That same year Pope Adrian elevated the See of Lichfield to Archiepiscopal status at the request of King Offa of Mercia.  Leo III, in 803, reduced Lichfield to the status of an ordinary diocese, leaving Canterbury and York as the only metropolitan sees. 
Alfred the Great, the King who drove out the Danish invaders and united the diverse Saxon kingdoms at the end of the ninth century had a strong devotion to the Church in his realm and supported the distribution of the Regula Pastoralis of Pope Saint Gregory the Great to his bishops for the formation of their clergy.  Alfred also restored the payment of the Peter’s Pence.  Nevertheless, I think it is important to distinguish between the King’s support of the Church and his support of the papacy itself.  Alfred’s prime interest was in the reform of the Church in his kingdom, most notably in the restoration of the monasteries after the Danish invasion and in improving the education and morals of the clergy which he saw as vital to the educational and cultural improvements of his kingdom.
Despite the corruption of the papacy at this time several Archbishops of Canterbury, most notably Wulfhelm, Aelfsige,  and St.Dunstan made the journey to Rome to receive it personally.  The other Archbishops did not make the journey but had the pallium sent to them.     Pope Formosus had sent the pallium to Archbishop Plegmund (archbishop 890-923) and when Sergius III annulled the ordinations and appointments of Formosus, Plegmund had to make the journey to Rome to beg its new grant. Sergius III was the pope whose mistress was Marozia during the so called pornocracy and Sergius was the father of John XI by Marozia.  Plegmund was not the only Archbishop of Cantrbury to be exposed to the moral sludge of the papal court.  Saint Dunstan journeyed to Rome in 960 and received the pallium from John XII—perhaps the most immoral man to have ever sat in the Chair of Peter.  John XII was the grandson of the aforementioned Marozia by her first husband, Alberic of Spoleto.  Luitprand of Cremona, the historian, alleges that John had turned the papal palace “into a whorehouse.”  John was to meet his end at the hands of a jealous husband—one of scores whom he had cuckolded.  In addition to his sexual proclivities, John was given to hunting, gambling, and drinking bouts while at the same time ignoring his sacred duties as Pope.  One can only wonder what men like Dunstan thought when they came to the papal court though it does permit us to see that the English were able to have a deep and lasting devotion to Saint Peter while distinguishing the Prince of the Apostles from his unholy successors.    
In 1015 the Danish Prince Canute invaded England and held the crown from 1016 until his death in 1035.  In 1018 he would succeed to the throne of Denmark and 1028 take the crown of Norwary thus building for himself quite an empire.   He was a most fervent convert to Christianity and advanced the cause of the Church in all his realms.  In 1026 he made a pilgrimage to the Rome of John XIX.  He was crowned there as King of the English, Danes, Norwegians and “some of the Swedes.”  The purpose of his trip, other than to receive the papal blessing on his empire, was to negotiate with the Emperor about safe passage for English pilgrims going to Rome and to negotiate with the Pope about lowering the fees for which the English Archbishops had to pay to receive the pallium.  By the third decade of the eleventh century there was reform in the air in Rome—the Emperors Otto were doing their best to clean up the cesspool of the Roman pornacracy, but the Pope at the time of Canute’s visit was not a reform Pope but a member of that notorious family of the Counts of Tusculum.  John does not seem to have led a particularly scandalous life though he was far from pious but Canute would not have been one to scruple at the sexual idiosyncrasies of his peers, however, as he himself lived in open concubinage with several women while married to Emma of Normandy. 

Valid Orders?

The Posthumous trial of Pope Formosus known as

the Cadaver Synod

Not too long ago I did an entry on the Third Lateran Council, an Ecumenical Council recognized by the Western Church (not by the Eastern Churches) held in 1179 that among other things, condemned Peter Waldo as well as the Cathars, reaffirmed the mandate for clerical celibacy, forbad charging fees for administration of the sacraments, condemned usury, and decreed that clergy guilty of sodomy should be deposed from their offices.  All well and good.  But there was another decree that I want to explore and that is that the Third Lateran Council decreed the ordinations performed by anti-popes Victor IV, Pascal III, and Callixtus III were “null and void.”  I want to look at the subject of “valid” and “invalid” orders as it has repercussions on the Church today.  
     Basically what the Council was saying was that priests, bishops, and deacons (as well as subdeacons and the minor orders in use at the time) ordained by these three false claimants to the papacy were invalidly ordained to their respective Orders.  Why?  Were they ordained according to a defective rite?  No, the rite was the same rite used by the Bishops of Rome in ordinations.  Did the candidates or the ordaining prelates have faulty intention?  No, the ordaining bishops intended to ordain the men according to the mind of the Church regarding the sacraments and the men being ordained presumably had sound intentions as well.   The only reason for declaring the rival ordination as null and void was to challenge the authority of the papal rivals.  You can be sure that these various antipopes had challenged the validity of the ordinations of Alexander III who is today recognized as having been the legitimate claimant to the papal throne but who, in his own time, was initially recognized by only a minority of bishops while Victor and his successors, Pascal and Callixtus,  were thought by many of their contemporaries to have the most authentic claim to the Chair of Peter.  You may remember the papal imbroglio at the time of Pope Formosus (reigned 891-896) when the dead Pope was exhumed by his successor but one, Stephen VI, who convoked a synod, had Formosus posthumously deposed, and declared that the ordinations he had performed were null and void.  Stephen’s successor but one, Theodore II, (reigned for twenty days in December 897), declared the ordinations of Formosus to have been valid and those of Stephen to have been null and void.  The next two popes, John IX and Benedict IV, upheld the ordinations of Formosus—in fact John had been ordained priest by Formosus—but then Sergius III came along (904-911) and declared the ordinations of Formosus to have been null and void.  What is going on???  It has nothing to do with sacramental theology but with claims of legitimacy and political power.  
       The undermining of opposition within the Church by declaring the ordinations of the opposition leaders was not new to the tenth century any more than it was to the Church at the time of Lateran III.  In the debates of the second through the sixth centuries with the various factions such as the Montanists and the Donatists claimed exclusive validity of the sacraments and denied the validity of the ordinations in the “Great Church” (the mainline Church in which both Orthodoxy and Catholicism have their roots) and these splinter groups in turn had their ordinations condemned as invalid by the bishops who clung to the Apostolic faith.  
      All this is by way of saying that at the time of the Protestant Reformation, the papacy pulled out this canard once again in declaring “invalid” the ordinations of the various "Protestant” Churches.  By this point they had to do more than declare; they needed to give a rationale and the development of scholastic theology with its breakdown of matter, form, and intention gave them a theological apparatus by which they could rationalize this but it was still basically a political and not a theological decision.  It was only by devising a theological justification robbing the Churches of the Reformers of sacramental character that they could undermine the confidence of the believers in the Reformed Churches.  Now, I am not going to say that all “Protestant” Churches have maintained a continuity of apostolic succession in their clergy.  For many—especially in the second and later waves of the Reformation—this was not even a concern, but the case of the Scandinavian (Lutheran)  and Anglican Churches merits very close study.  Furthermore, while the Council of Trent taught that only a bishop possesses the “fullness of the priesthood” and thus only a bishop can ordain priests, there are historical instances of presbyteral ordination (ordination of priests by priests), recognized by Rome, at least up to the thirteenth century.  I seem to recall an instance as late as the sixteenth century of a Bull authorizing presbyteral ordinations in the Spanish missions of Mexico, but it may have been authorizing a priest to ordain deacons which would be a somewhat different question.  If presbyteral ordination can be shown to have a legitimate place in the history of the Church, that also opens the door to German Lutheran as well as Reformed Church orders.  Again, I only write from a historical perspective and make no claims to theology but perhaps in future entries we will look more closely at Catholic objections to Anglican and Lutheran Orders and even the very concept of Sacramental Validity—from a historical perspective.

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.