284 FOUETH PEKIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
powerful marquises of Tuscany and the Counts of Tusculum acquired control over the city of Rome and the papacy for more than half a century. And what is worse (incredibile, attamen verum), three bold and energetic women of the highest rank and lowest character, Theodora the elder (the wife or widow of a Roman senator), and her two daughters, Marozia and Theo dora, filled the chair of St. Peter with their paramours and bas tards. These Roman Amazons combined with the fatal charms of personal beauty and wealth, a rare capacity for intrigue, and a burning lust for power and pleasure. They had the diabolical ambition to surpass their sex as much in boldness and badness as St. Paula and St. Eustachium in the days of Jerome had excelled in virtue and saintliness. They turned the church of St. Peter into a den of robbers, and the residence of his successors into a harem. And they gloried in their shame. Hence this infamous period is called the papal Pornocracy or Hetserocracy.1
1 Liutprandi Antapodosis, II. 48 (Pertz, V. 297; Migne, CXXXVI. 827): "Theodora, scortum impudens . . . (quod dictu etiamfcedissimum est), Romance civitatis non inviriliter monarchiam obtinebat. Quce duas habuit natas, Marotiam atque Theodoram, sibi non solum cotvquales, verum etiam Vcneris exercitio promptiores. Harum Marotia ex Papa Sergio — Joannem, qui post Joannis Ravcnnatis obitum Romance Ecclesice obtinuit dignitatem, nefario genuit adulterio," etc. In the same ch. he calls the elder Theodora "meretrix satis impudentissima, Veneris calore succensa."
This Theodora was the wife of Theophylactus, Koman Consul and Senator, probably of Byzantine origin, who appears in 901 among the Koman judges of Louis III. She called herself " Senatrix." She was the mistress of Adalbert of Tuscany, called the Rich (d. 926), and of pope John X. (d. 928). And yet she is addressed by Eugenius Vulgarius as " sanctissima et venerabilis matrona f (See Diimmler, I. c. p. 146, and Hefele, IV. 575.) Her daughter Marozia (or Maruccia, the diminutive of Maria, Mariechen] was the boldest and most suc cessful of the three. She was the mistress of pope Sergius III. and of Alberic I., Count of Tusculum (d. 926), and married several times. Comp. Liutprand, III. 43 and 44. She perpetuated her rule through her son, Alberic II., and her grandson, pope John XII. With all their talents and influence, these strong-minded women were very ignorant ; the daughters of the younger Theo dora could neither read nor write, and signed their name in 945 with a -}-. (Gregorovius, III. 282 sq.) The Tusculan popes and the Crescentii, who con trolled and disgraced the papacy in the eleventh century, were descendants of the same stock.
The main facts of this shameful reign rest on good contemporary Catholic
\ 63. DEGRADATION OF THE PAPACY IN TENTH CENTURY. 285
Sonic popes of this period were almost as bad as the worst emperors of heathen Koine, and far less excusable.
Sergius III., the lover of Marozia (904-911), opened the shameful succession. Under the protection of a force of Tuscan soldiers he appeared in Home, deposed Christopher who had just deposed Leo V., took possession of the papal throne, and soiled it with every vice; but he deserves credit for restoring the venerable church of the Lateran, which had been destroyed by an earthquake in 896 and robbed of invaluable treasures.1
After the short reign of two other popes, John X., archbishop of Ravenna, was elected, contrary to all canons, in obedience to the will of Theodora, for the more convenient gratification of her passion (914-928).2 He was a man of military ability and daring, placed himself at the head of an army — the first warrior among the popes — and defeated the Saracens. He announced the victory in the tone of a general. He then enauthorities (as Liutprand, Flodoard, Ratherius of Verona, Benedict of Soracte, Herbert, the transactions of the Councils in Rome, Rheims, etc.), and are frankly admitted with devout indignation by Baronius and other Roman Catholic historians, but turned by them into an argument for the divine origin of the papacy, whose restoration to power appears all the more wonderful from the depth of its degradation. Mohler (Kirchengesch. ed. by Gams, II. 183) calls Sergius III., John X., John XI., and John XII. "horrible popes," and says that "crimes alone secured the papal dignity." Others acquit the papacy of guilt, since it was not independent. The best lesson which Romanists might derive from this period of prostitution is humility and charity. It is a terrible rebuke to pretensions of superior sanctity.
1 Baronius, following Liutprand, calls Scrgius "homo vitiorum omnium srrvus" But Flodoard and the inscriptions give him a somewhat better character. See Hofelc IV. 570, Gregorovius III. 200, and von Reumont II. 273.
2 Gfrorcr makes him the paramour of the younger Theodora, which on chronological grounds is more probable ; but Ilefele, Gregoroyius, von Reu mont, and Greenwood link him with the elder Theodora. This seems to be the meaning of Liutprand (II. 47 and 4S\ who says that she fell in love with John for his great beauty, and actually forced him to sin (secumque hunc scortari non solnm rnhtit, vcrum ctinm atqite etiam compulit). She could not stand the separation from her lover, and called him to Rome. Baronius treats John X. as a pseudnpapa. Muratori, Duret, and Ilefele dissent from Liutprand and give John a somewhat better character, without, however, denying his relation to Theodora. See Ilefele. IV. 579 sq.