money bargain between the Tusculan family and the 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.^296
This boy-pope fully equaled and even surpassed John XII. in precocious wickedness. He
combined the childishness of Caligala and the viciousness of Heliogabalus.^297 He grew worse as
he advanced in years. He ruled like a captain of banditti, committed murders and adulteries in open
day-light, robbed pilgrims on the graves of martyrs, and turned Rome 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.^298 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 silver^299 to an archpresbyter John
Gratian of the same 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 VI.
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 final expulsion) held
the Lateran, Gregory VI. Maria Maggiore, Sylvester III. St. Peter’s and the Vatican.^300
Their feuds reflected the general condition of Italy. The streets of Rome 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 bloodshed.
Again the German emperor had to interfere for the restoration of order.
that Benedict was eighteen when elected. In the second ed. (p. 706) he corrects himself and makes him twelve years at his
election.
(^296) Isa. 3:1-4.
(^297) Gregorovius, IV. 42, says: "Mit Benedict IX. erreichte das Papstthum aussersten Grad des sittlichen Verfalls, welcher
nach den Gesetzen der menschlichen Natur den Umschlag zum Bessern erzeugt."
(^298) Bonitho, ed. Jaffé p. 50: "Post multa turpia adulteria et homicidia manibus Buis perpetrata, postremo cum vellet
consobrinam accipere coniugem, filiam scilicet Girardi de Saxo, et ille diceret: nullo modo se daturum nisi renunciaret
pontificatui ad quendam sacerdotem Johannem se contulit." A similar report is found in the AnnalesAltahenses. But Steindorff
and Hefele ([V. 707) discredit the marriage project as a malignant invention or fable.
(^299) An old catalogue of popes (in Muratori, Script. III. 2, p. 345) states the sum as mille librae denariorum Papensium,
but Benno as librae mille quingentae. Others give two thousand pounds as the sum. Otto of Freising adds that Benedict reserved
besides the Peter’s pence from England. See Giesebrecht, II. 643, and Hefele IV. 707.
(^300) 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 Sutri and deposed; consequently they must
all have claimed possession.