298 FOUETH PEEIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
mere money bargain between the Tusculan family and tne venal clergy and populace of Rome. Once more the Lord took from Jerusalem and Judah the stay and the staff, and gave children to be their princes, and babes to rule over them.1
This boy-pope fully equaled and even surpassed John XII. in precocious wickedness. He combined the childishness of Cali gula and the viciousness of Heliogabalus.2 He grew worse as he advanced in years. He ruled like a captain of banditti, com mitted murders and adulteries in open day-light, robbed pilgrims on the graves of martyrs, and turned Eome into a den of thieves. These crimes went unpunished; for who could judge a pope? And his brother, Gregory, was Patrician of the city. At one time, it is reported, he had the crazy notion of marrying his cousin and enthroning a woman in the chair of St. Peter ; but the father of the intended bride refused unless he abdicated the papacy.3 Desiderius, who himself afterwards became pope (Victor III.), shrinks from describing the detestable life of this Benedict, who, he says, followed in the footsteps of Simon Magus rather than of Simon Peter; and proceeded in a career of rapine, murder, and every species of felony, until even the people of Rome became weary of his iniquities, and expelled him from the city. Sylvester III. was elected antipope (Jan., 1044), but Benedict soon resumed the papacy with all his vices (April 10, 1044), then sold it for one or two thousand pounds silver4 to an archpresbyter John Gratian of the same
l!sa.3:l-4.
2 Gregorovius, IV. 42, says : " Mil Benedict IX. erreiehte das Papstthum jenen aussersten Grad des sittlichen Verfalh, welcher nach den Gesetzen der menschlichen Natur den Umschlag zum Bessern erzeugt."
3Bonitho, ed. Jaffe p. ^0: "Post multa turpia adulteria et homicidia manibus suis perpetrata, postremo cum vellet consobrinam accipere coniugem, filiam scilicet Girardi deSaxo, et ille dicer et: nullo modo se daturum nisi renunciaret pontificatui ad quendam sacerdotem Johannem se contulit." A similar report is found in the Annales Altahenses. But Steindorff and Hefele (IV. 707) discredit the mar riage project as a malignant invention or fable.
* An old catalogue of popes (in Muratori, Script. III. 2, p. 345) states the sum as mille librce denariorum Papensium, but Benno as librae mille quingentce. Others give two thousand pounds as the sum. Otto of Freising adds that Benedict
\ 66. HENRY III. AND THE SYNOD OF SUTRI. 299
house (May, 1045), after he had emptied the treasury of every article of value, and, rueing the bargain, he claimed the dignity again (Nov., 1047), till he was finally expelled from Rome (July, 1048),
GREGORY VT.
John Gratian assumed the name Gregory VI. He was revered as a saint for his chastity which, on account of its extreme rarity in Rome, was called an angelic virtue. He bought the papacy with the sincere desire to reform it, and made the monk Hildebrand, the future reformer, his chaplain. He acted on the principle that the end sanctifies the means.
Thus there were for a while three rival popes. Benedict IX. (before his iiual expulsion) held the Laterau, Gregory VI. Maria Maggiore, Sylvester III. St. Peter's and the Vatican.1
Their feuds reflected the general condition of Italy. The streets of Home swarmed with hired assassins, the whole country with robbers, the virtue of pilgrims was openly assailed, even churches and the tombs of the apostles were desecrated by blood shed.
Again the German emperor had to interfere for the restoration of order.
§ 66. Henry III. and the Synod of Sutri. Deposition of three rival Popes. A. D. 1046.
BONIZO (or Bonitho, bishop of Sutri, afterwards of Piacenza, and friend of Gregory VII., d. 1089) : Liber ad amicum, s. de persecutlone Ecclesice (in CEFELii Scriptorcs rerum Boicarum //., 794, and better in JAFFE'S Monmncnta Greyoriana, 18G5). Contains in lib. V. a history of the popes from Benedict IX. to Gregory VII., with many errors.
RODULFUS GLABEII (or Glaber Rudulfus, monk of Cluny, about 1046): Historia sui temporis (in Migne, Tom. 142).
reserved besides the Peter's pence from England. See Giesebrecht, IT. 643, and Hefele IV. 707.
1 Migne, Tom. 141, p. 1343. Steindorff and Hefele (IV. 708) dissent from this usual view of a three-fold schism, and consider Gregory as the only pope- But all three were summoned to the Synod of ttutri and deposed; consequently they must all have claimed possession.