Italy was invaded by Hungarians and Saracens, and distracted by war between rival kings
and petty princes struggling for aggrandizement. The bishops and nobles were alike corrupt, and
the whole country was a moral wilderness.^274
The Demoralization of the Papacy.
The political disorder of Europe affected the church and paralyzed its efforts for good. The
papacy itself lost all independence and dignity, and became the prey of avarice, violence, and
intrigue, a veritable synagogue of Satan. It was dragged through the quagmire of the darkest crimes,
and would have perished in utter disgrace had not Providence saved it for better times. Pope followed
pope in rapid succession, and most of them ended their career in deposition, prison, and murder.
The rich and 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 Theodora,
filled the chair of St. Peter with their paramours and bastards. 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 Hetaerocracy.^275
Some popes of this period were almost as bad as the worst emperors of heathen Rome, 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 Rome, deposed Christopher who had just
(^274) Höfler (I. 16) asserts that every princely family of Italy in the tenth century was tainted with incestuous blood, and
that it was difficult to distinguish wives and sisters mothers and daughters. See his genealogical tables appended to the first
volume.
(^275) Liutprandi Antapodosis, II. 48 (Pertz, V. 297; Migne, CXXXVI. 827): Theodora, scortum impudens ... (quod dictu
etiam foedissimum est), Romanae civitatis non inviriliter monarchiam obtinebat. Quae duas habuit natas, Marotiam atque
Theodoram, sibi non solum coaequales, verum etiam Veneris exercitio promptiores. Harum Marotia ex Papa Sergio-Joannem,
qui post Joannis Ravennatis obitum Romanae Ecclesiae 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, Roman Consul and Senator, probably of Byzantine origin, who appears
in 901 among the Roman 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!" (See Dümmler, l.c. p. 146, and Hefele, IV. 575.) Her daughter Marozia (or Maruccia, the diminutive of Maria,
Mariechen) was the boldest and most successful 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 Theodora could neither read nor write, and signed their name in 945 with a +. (Gregorovius,
III. 282 sq.) The Tusculan popes and the Crescentii, who controlled 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 authorities (as Liutprand, Flodoard, Ratherius
of Verona, Benedict of Soracte, Gerbert, 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. Möhler (Kirchgesch.
ed. by Gama, 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.