The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections (9 page)

Agapitus exercised a little initiative. He made contact with Otto of Saxony, King of Germany and the most powerful ruler in Europe, who in 952 made the King of Italy his vassal. However, Otto treated Alberic with considerable respect. The Prince of Rome was determined to keep Otto out of his city and Otto obedi- ently stayed away, biding his time. But in 954 Alberic died, still a comparatively young man.

As he was dying he summoned a meeting of Rome’s leading cit- izens in St. Peter’s. He made them swear that they would elect his son Octavian, who became prince on his father’s death, as pope on the death of Agapitus. Agapitus died in 955 and in keeping with the oath they had sworn and contrary to all the canons, the Romans elected Octavian as Bishop of Rome in December 955.

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Octavian thus combined in himself both the secular and the spiritual governance of Rome; he was, in all probability, only twenty years of age or thereabouts, not even of canonical age to hold the o
ffi
ce of bishop.

Octavian, who changed his name to the more Christian- sounding John XII (the practice of popes changing their names became common from then on), continued his father’s religious policies but was morally dissolute and wholly unsuited to the o
ffi
ce to which he had been elected and consecrated. And unlike Alberic, but in line with his predecessor Agapitus, in political a
ff
airs he felt he needed the assistance of King Otto. Otto was consequently invited to Rome, and on 2 February 962 John crowned him emperor, after he had taken an oath to protect the pope. Otto – with good reason – did not trust the pope and had a bodyguard standing beside him with a drawn sword throughout the cere- mony. In return for the emperor’s protection the pope had to agree to the “Ottonian Privilege.” According to this document – a copy of which is still to be found in the papal archives in the Vatican – Otto accepted the terms of the “Donation of Constantine” (the late eighth-century forgery in which Constantine was purported to grant extensive lands in Italy and elsewhere to the papacy). Otto insisted, however, that, although he would guarantee an election free of political interference, once the pope had been elected and before his consecration, the pope had to take an oath of loyalty to the emperor in the presence of imperial representatives.

The terms of the agreement were, however, promptly put to the test and observed by neither party. No sooner had Otto left Rome than John started negotiations with the emperor’s Italian adversaries and with Byzantium. Otto came storming back and John had to flee. He was summoned before a synod and deposed for apostasy, abandoning his see, and immorality. The same synod, under the direction of Otto, then elected Leo VIII to the papacy. Leo was an o
ffi
cial in the Lateran, and still a layman. He was raised from the lay state to the rank of Bishop of Rome in two days.

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After quelling riots against his high-handed intervention in papal a
ff
airs, Otto left Rome again. John came back and deposed and excommunicated Leo; it was now Leo’s turn to flee. That was in February 964. John reinstated himself in the Lateran but he did not survive long; he died on 14 May 964. Accounts of the manner of his death vary, but none are edifying: he may have had a heart attack while committing adultery, or alternatively he was stabbed by a cuckolded husband.

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John’s unedifying demise left an obvious contender for the papal throne – Leo VIII, elected by acclaim and with the approval of the Emperor Otto in December 963 while the disreputable John was still alive. He now wanted to make a comeback, still supported by Otto, who felt his authority was on the line. But the Romans them- selves did not want him. They preferred the learned deacon Benedict and proceeded to elect him in the accustomed manner. Otto was not amused. He besieged Rome and reduced its inhabi- tants to starvation before they surrendered. Otto promptly held a synod in the Lateran, had Benedict deposed and reduced back to the rank of deacon, and Leo himself broke the papal sta
ff
of o
ffi
ce over Benedict’s head as he lay in submission on the floor of the basilica. Benedict was then taken o
ff
to Hamburg by the imperial armies and spent the rest of his life there – which was not long. He had been pope a month and died two years after his humiliating deposition.

Some Romans wanted Benedict back when Pope Leo died in March 965, but his election had upset the emperor and he was unwilling for the cardinal deacon to return as ponti
ff
. Instead he sent two bishops to represent him at the forthcoming election. It was a long-drawn-out a
ff
air; for six months there was no Bishop of Rome as the imperial representatives on the one side and the noble Roman families on the other struggled to get their own can- didate chosen. John XIII was eventually chosen and installed on

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1 October, although two months later a riot all but overthrew the new pope. John had to rely upon the forces of the Empire to hold on to his o
ffi
ce. His opponents seem to have been the Roman nobility who were unhappy with the compromise struck with the Empire.

To talk about the “nobility” as if it were a single entity is, by this

time at least, a mistake. When John XIII died, one noble family, the Crescentii, related to the house of Theophylact (the founder of the dynasty, Crescentius I, was the son of Theodora the Younger, a daughter of Theophylact), put forward a candidate of their own, one Franco, a cardinal deacon. Others among the aristocracy, but mainly the imperial party, proposed Benedict VI, who was duly elected and installed. But Franco, who had renamed himself Boniface VII, would not give up. When the new emperor Otto II was otherwise occupied, a Roman independence party of sorts, together with a reemergence of a Byzantine faction anxious to take down the emperor, rose in support of Franco/Boniface, who was triumphantly returned to power. Benedict was thrown into prison in Castel Sant’Angelo where he was murdered on Boniface’s instructions, apparently by a priest called Stephen with the help of Boniface’s brother.

The assassination of Pope Benedict VI was a step too far, even for tenth-century Romans. After first taking refuge in Castel Sant’Angelo, Boniface had to flee the city for Byzantine territory, carrying o
ff
with him the contents of the papal treasury. He was afraid not so much of the Romans themselves but of the Count of Spoleto, also related to the Theophylacts, who descended on Rome as the imperial representative.

A new election had to be held in October 974, this time in the presence of the Count of Spoleto. It was inevitable, therefore, that a pro-imperial pope should be elected. But Benedict VII was also a member of the Roman aristocracy, related through Alberic II to the Crescentii and consequently acceptable to the nobility of the city as well as to the emperor. Benedict had, for the tenth century,

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a relatively long time in o
ffi
ce, dying in July 983, but his reign was disturbed by an attempted comeback by Boniface in the summer of 980; more than six months passed before Benedict, with Otto’s help, could recover the city.

When Benedict died Otto chose a successor. He had first tried to persuade a saintly abbot of Cluny to take on the task of pope, but the abbot refused. Otto’s alternative was Peter, Bishop of Pavia, who changed his name to John XIV to avoid having the same title as the Apostle Peter, who was regarded as the first Bishop of Rome. But John was simply imposed; there was not even a pretense of an election, and the Romans resented it. When Otto died – in John’s arms – the power vacuum was quickly exploited by Boniface, backed by Byzantine money and the support of the Crescentii. He returned to Rome in April 984 and consigned Pope John – whom he declared deposed – to Castel Sant’Angelo; he died there a few months later, either starved to death or strangled on the orders of Boniface.

Boniface had a year more to live after his assassination of his predecessor. He, too, died suddenly. There is no evidence that he was murdered, but it is entirely possible, indeed likely; there were riots after his death and his corpse was stripped of its papal vestments and flung down just outside the Lateran, where it was mutilated by the crowds. His successor, John XV, was another appointee – not of the emperor, because there wasn’t one at the time, but of John Crescentius, who did a deal with the aristocracy over the heads, it seems, of the Roman clergy, who resented being left out and showed themselves hostile to their bishop. John XV was well aware of his indebtedness to the Crescentii and wished it otherwise; so he made (relatively successful) overtures to the German court. One element of this policy was the canonization of Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg, the first canonization by a pope of someone from outside his diocese.

These moves not surprisingly proved unwelcome to the Crescentii and the Roman nobility in general. John was driven

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from Rome and sought the aid of the young Otto III. Otto marched on Rome, no doubt to reinstate Pope John, but John died suddenly – of natural causes – and Otto was faced with choosing a new pope. He opted for his 24-year-old cousin, Bruno, who took the name Gregory V out of reverence for Pope Gregory the Great, whom he took as his model. The Roman nobility accepted the imposition of a foreigner, the first German to become pope, with all the grace they could muster. They had little choice. Otto himself was soon in the city and was con- secrated emperor by his papal relative. There was no escaping the fact that Gregory had been imposed, and this was resented by the Roman aristocracy. When the pope was in Northern Italy and Otto safely back in Germany, there was a coup in the city, led by Crescentius. Gregory was declared deposed and, in the presence of an Eastern imperial representative, the Roman nobility and clergy proceeded to the election of one John Philagathos, a Greek from Southern Italy, who had nonetheless served in a number of important positions in the Western Empire. That was in February 997. It was not until February 998 that Gregory, with the support of Otto, was able to reenter Rome. John Philagathos (he had taken the title John XVI) fled south, but was brought back and, blinded and mutilated, was led through the streets sit- ting backward on an ass. He spent the rest of his life locked up in a monastery. John Crescentius was executed.

But the Crescentii were a large family. When Gregory V died unexpectedly of malaria in 999 and Otto imposed another pope, it was John II Crescentius who led the opposition. The new pope (a Frenchman this time), Gerbert d’Aurillac, had been tutor to Otto III and was rather more distinguished as a scholar than as a prelate. He took the name Sylvester II. Sylvester I had been pope under Constantine, and Gerbert took the name to signify the close relationship which existed between himself and the Emperor Otto. The relationship, and Sylvester’s foreign origins, annoyed the Romans, and both pope and emperor were driven out of the city in

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February 1001. Otto determined to recover it, but died before he could do so. This time the Crescentii did not attempt to foist a pope of their own choosing while Sylvester was still alive – he was allowed back and continued to govern the Church until his death in 1003 – but at that point John II Crescentius appointed John XVII, a relative who lasted less than a year, John XVIII, another relative who lasted five and a half years, and then Sergius IV, who survived just under three years. Sergius had been Bishop of Albano and before his election had the unlikely name of Peter Os Porci, Peter Pig’s Snout. Although from apparently humble origins – his father was a shoemaker – he, too, may have been related to the Crescentii through his mother.

In all these instances there was no question of election; all three successive popes were imposed by John II Crescentii and each of them attempted, by making contact with the German King Henry II, to free the papacy from total domination by the Crescentii. This happened a touch dramatically in May 1012 when first Sergius and then John II Crescentius died within a week of each other. Their deaths were so close that there must be suspicions that they had been assassinated by the Crescentians’ arch-rivals, the Tusculani. They promptly acted the day before John Crescentius actually died and, amid all the turbulence in the city, they promoted the election of Theophylact, second son of the count of Tusculum, who was at the time of his election still a layman, the first of three to be elected in succession. Theophylact took the name Benedict VIII. The same day, 17 May, the Crescentians, though in some disarray, managed to push through the rival election of one of their own faction, who became Gregory VI, but Gregory was unable to hold a power base in Rome and had to flee, first to Sabina then, when attacked by Benedict, to the German court. King Henry showed himself sympathetic but favored his rival. Gregory disappeared from history while Benedict went on to crown Henry II as emperor in 1014 – the new emperor declaring that elections to the papacy should be made freely by the clergy and people of Rome.

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Benedict reigned as pope for a dozen years. He was succeeded in o
ffi
ce in 1024 by his own brother, Romanus (the only time such a thing has ever happened), who took the name John XIX and was, like Benedict, still a layman – the rapidity of his elevation to Bishop of Rome from the rank of layman in a single day gave rise to scandal. He was, naturally, a member of the Tusculani, but while he strength- ened his own family’s hold over the papacy he nevertheless made some e
ff
ort to conciliate the rival Crescentii – though not as far as handing the papacy over to them. At John’s death in 1032 the Tusculani, by means of bribes, had another of their members elected to the papacy – Theophylact, the son of Alberic, John XIX’s brother. Theophylact, who took the title Benedict IX, was therefore a nephew of his two predecessors in o
ffi
ce. He, like them, was still a layman at his election and very young, probably in his twenties. The chroni- clers depict him as personally dissolute and wholly unfi for the o
ffi
ce, but he nevertheless handled it reasonably well, at least at fi

While Benedict looked after religious a
ff
airs, his brother Gregory, Count of Tusculum, controlled the city of Rome with a severity which gave rise to considerable disquiet, a disquiet which in September 1044 exploded into open revolt. The Pope was forced to flee to Frascati, and though he returned in January 1045 to set up a base in Trastevere, at the same time a branch of the Crescentii engineered the election of a rival pope, John, Bishop of Sabina, who took the name Sylvester III. Sylvester III did not last long. He was driven out of Rome by Benedict within a couple of months, but Benedict’s own power was by now distinctly circumscribed by his dependence on the nobility who had put him back in o
ffi
ce.

At this point it seems that Benedict decided to sell the papacy to his godfather, the archpriest John Gratian, who took the name of Gregory VI. Why John Gratian should have committed simony (the sinful act of selling holy “things,” in particular church o
ffi
ces) to obtain the o
ffi
ce of Bishop of Rome is unclear. By all accounts he was a man eager for reform of the Church – the great reformer Hildebrand, the future Pope Gregory VII, was one of his chaplains.

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Perhaps he thought he could contribute to cleaning up the papacy, and it seems he insisted on an election in due form, even though the outcome was ensured by the dispersal of considerable sums of money; it is possible that John Gratian was a member of a wealthy banking family, the Pierleonis.

There were now three men with claims on the papacy: Benedict IX, Sylvester III, and Gregory VI. At this point the German king Henry III took a hand. He wanted to be crowned emperor by the pope – but which pope? He wanted one whose title to the o
ffi
ce would be unchallenged. He summoned the three contenders to a synod held at Sutri on 20 December 1046. Gregory and Sylvester turned up and were deposed from o
ffi
ce. Benedict stayed away, but was likewise deposed at another synod held in Rome on 23 December. The following day, Christmas Eve, Henry imposed a German bishop in his entourage, Suidger of Bamberg, as pope. Suidger accepted the papacy, though he never gave up the bishopric of Bamberg, and without more ado was installed on Christmas Day as Pope Clement II. He then obediently proceeded to the coronation of Henry as emperor. He also conferred on the emperor the title of “patrician,” along with the right to confirm all papal elections; the Romans had to swear never to choose a pope without imperial approval.

Clement’s pontifi was short: he died in October 1047. At this point Benedict IX decided to make a comeback with the sup- port of Count Boniface of Tusculum, the assistance of bribery, and Roman ill-feeling toward the imperial court. Others in Rome, however, remembering they had agreed always to seek the emperor’s approval, sent an embassy to him asking him to appoint a successor to Clement. He chose Poppo, Bishop of Brixen, who took the name Damasus II. That was on Christmas Day 1047, but he was unable to take up his post because Benedict was back in Rome. He was eventually installed on 17 July 1048, after Count Boniface had been persuaded by imperial threats to expel Benedict from the city. This time he disappeared for good, though he did not die until some