The Historians' History of the World 08

The death of her husband increased rather than weakened the power of Marozia. Her personal charms, and her unscrupulous use of them, are said to have multiplied to an infinite extent her adherents. Her paramours made a strong party. The empire was vacant. There was no potentate to whom the pope could appeal. Marozia seized the castle of St. Angelo, and with this precious dowry, which commanded Rome, she sought to confirm her power by some splendid alliance. Guido, the duke of Tuscany, the son of Adalbert the marquis, did not disdain the nuptials with a profligate woman who brought Rome as her marriage portion.

John X was left to contest alone the government of Rome with Marozia and her Tuscan husband. Neither Rome nor the mistress of Rome regarded the real services rendered by John X to Christendom and to Italy. The former lover, as public scandal averred, of her mother, the saviour of Rome from the Saracens, was surprised in the Lateran palace by this daring woman. His brother Peter, as it appears, his great support in the contest for the government of Rome, and therefore the object of peculiar hatred to Guido and Marozia, was killed before his face. The pope was thrown into prison, where some months after he died (929) either of anguish and despair, or by more summary means. It was rumoured that he was smothered with a pillow. No means were too violent for Marozia to employ even against a pope.

Marozia did not venture at once to place her son on the papal throne. A Leo VI was pope for some months; a Stephen VII for two years and one month. That son may as yet have been too young even for this shameless woman to advance him to the highest ecclesiastical dignity; her husband Guido may have had some lingering respect for the sacred office, some struggling feelings of decency. But at the death of Stephen, Marozia again ruled alone in Rome; her husband Guido was dead, and her son was pope. John XI (according to the rumours of the time, of which Liutprand,s a follower of Hugo of Provence, may be accepted as a faithful reporter) was the offspring of Marozia by the pope Sergius; more trustworthy authorities make him the lawful son of her husband Alberic. But the obsequious clergy and people acquiesced without resistance in the commands of their patrician mistress; the son of Marozia is successor of St. Peter.

But the aspiring Marozia, not content with having been the wife of a marquis, the wife of the wealthy and powerful duke of Tuscany, perhaps the mistress of one, certainly the mother of another pope, looked still higher in her lustful ambition; she must wed a monarch. She sent to offer herself and the city of Rome to the new king of Italy, Hugo of Provence, who was not scrupulous in his amours, lawful or unlawful. Through policy or through passion he was always ready to form or to break these tender connections. The cautious Marozia would not allow his army to enter the city, but received her royal bridegroom in the castle of St. Angelo. There was celebrated this unhallowed marriage.

REBELLION OF ROME

[931-953 A.D.]

A Bishop of the Tenth Century

But though the Romans would brook the dominion of a Roman woman, they would not endure that of a foreigner. The coarse vices, the gluttony of the soldiers of Hugo offended the fastidious Italians. The insolence of Hugo himself provoked a rebellion. The nobles were called upon to perform menial offices, usual probably in the half feudal transalpine courts but alien to Italian manners. Alberic, the son of Marozia, was commanded to hold the water in which King Hugo washed his hands. Performing his office awkwardly or reluctantly, he spilled the water, and received a blow on the face from the king. Already may Alberic have been jealous of the promotion of his brother to the popedom, and have resented this devotion of his mother to her new foreign connections. He was a youth of daring; he organised a conspiracy among the nobles of Rome; he appealed to the old Roman pride: “Shall these Burgundians, of old the slaves of Rome, tyrannise over Romans?” At the tolling of the bell the whole people flocked to his banner, and attacked the castle of St. Angelo before Hugo could admit his own troops. Alberic remained master of the castle, of his mother, and of the pope. These two he cast into prison, defied the king of Italy, who made an ignominious retreat, and from that time remained master of Rome.