The Historians' History of the World 08

But during the papacy of Sergius rose into power the infamous Theodora, with her daughters Marozia and Theodora, the prostitutes who, in the strong language of historians, disposed for many years the papal tiara, and not content with disgracing by their own licentious lives the chief city of Christendom, actually placed their profligate paramours or base-born sons in the chair of St. Peter. The influence obtained by Theodora and her daughters, if it shows not the criminal connivance of Pope Sergius, or a still more disgraceful connection with which he was charged by the scandal of the times, proves at least the utter degradation of the papal power in Rome. It had not only lost all commanding authority, but could not even maintain outward decency. Theodora was born of a noble and wealthy senatorial family, on whom she has entailed an infamous immortality. The women of Rome seem at successive periods seized with a kind of Roman ambition to surpass their sex by the greatness of their virtues and of their vices. These females were to the Paulas and Eustochiums of the younger and severer age of Roman Christianity, what the Julias and Messallinas of the empire were to the Volumnias and Cornelias of the republic.

[911-928 A.D.]

It must be acknowledged that if the stern language of Tacitus and Juvenal may have darkened the vices of the queens and daughters of the cæsars, the bishop of Cremona,s our chief authority on the enormities of Theodora and her daughters, wants the moral dignity, while he is liable to the same suspicion as those great writers. Throughout the lives of the pontiffs themselves we have to balance between the malignant license of satire and the unmeaning phrases of adulatory panegyric. On the other hand it is difficult to decide which is more utterly unchristian—the profound hatred which could invent or accredit such stories; the utter dissoluteness which made them easily believed; or the actual truth of such charges.

Liutprands relates that John, afterwards the tenth pope of that name, being employed in Rome on some ecclesiastical matters by the archbishop of Ravenna, was the paramour of Theodora, who not only allowed but compelled him to her embraces. John was first appointed to the see of Bologna; but the archbishopric of Ravenna, the second ecclesiastical dignity in Italy, falling vacant before he had been consecrated, he was advanced by the same dominant influence to that see. But Theodora bore with impatience the separation of two hundred miles from her lover. Anastasius III had succeeded Sergius (911) and occupied the papacy for rather more than two years; after him Lando for six months (913). On the death of Lando (914) by a more flagrant violation of the canonical rule than that charged against the dead body of Formosus, John was translated from the archiepiscopate of Ravenna to the see of Rome. But Theodora, if she indeed possessed this dictatorial power, and the clergy and people of Rome, if they yielded to her dictation, may have been actuated by nobler and better motives than her gratification of a lustful passion, if not by motives purely Christian. For however the archbishop of Ravenna might be no example of piety or holiness as the spiritual head of Christendom, he appears to have been highly qualified for the secular part of his office. He was a man of ability and daring, eminently wanted at this juncture to save Rome from becoming the prey of Mohammedan conquest, organising a powerful confederacy of neighbouring dukes to accomplish this purpose.

He placed himself at the head of the army, and for the first time the successor of St. Peter, the vicar of the Prince of peace, rode forth in his array to battle. And if success, as it doubtless was, might be interpreted as a manifestation of divine approval, the total discomfiture of the Saracens and the destruction of the troublesome fortress on the Garigliano seemed to sanction this new and unseemly character assumed by the pope. Even the apostles sanctioned or secured by their presence the triumph of the warlike pope.

For fourteen years (914-928), obscure as regards Rome and the pontificate, this powerful prelate occupied the see of Rome. If he gained it (a doubtful charge) by the vices and influence of the mother Theodora, he lost it, together with his life, by the no less flagrant vices and more monstrous power of the daughter Marozia.

THE INFAMOUS MAROZIA

[925-931 A.D.]

Theodora disappears; and Pope John X is found engaged in a fierce contest for the mastery of Rome with Marozia and her lover or husband, the marquis Alberic, by whom she had a son of the same name, afterwards tyrant of the city. The vigorous and martial pontiff succeeds in expelling Alberic from the city; Alberic probably met his death soon after (925). It is said that he was murdered by the Romans in revenge for some secret alliance entered into with the Hungarians, who were then wasting Italy, and had reached the very frontiers of Calabria.