POPEDOM 497 church had canonical validity unless it had been summoned with the sanction of the holy see. The assertion of this theory rendered it necessary considerably to extend the practice of appointing papal legates (legati a latere), who now became the ordinary channels of communication between Rome and the Western churches, and through whom all affairs of importance were transacted. The legate convened the provincial councils and presided over them, taking precedence even of the metropolitan. Such encroachments enable us at once to understand how it was that Henry I. of England deemed it necessary to demand from Paschal II. a promise that no legate should be sent into the kingdom until the royal assent had been previously obtained. From the pontificate of Nicholas we date a notable diminution in the power of the metropolitans. The false decretals have been described as the source to which we may trace that great revolution in the relations of church and state which now gradually supervened. The pontificate of HADRIAN II. (867-872) is especially notable for the application which he sought to make of some of the principles which they laid down. When Lothair, king of Lotharingia, died without heirs, Hadrian claimed the right to bestow the crown on the emperor Louis. Christian Europe, however, was not as yet prepared to accept this bold extension of the papal prerogatives. The kingdom was seized by Charles the Bald, and Hadrian was reminded in a manifesto drawn up by the bishops of Germany that he could not at once be "universal pope and universal king." But the weakness of Charles s claim was unde niable, and we accordingly find him, five years later, con senting to receive the imperial crown at the hands of JOHN VIII. (872-882), not as his heritage but as a gift from the pope. During the dark and stormy period that intervened between the death of Charles the Bald and the coronation of Otto the Great at Rome (962), the Carlovingian empire broke up, and the results that followed were disastrous both for the popedom and the empire. The Saracens occu pied southern Italy, and menaced on more than one occasion the capital itself ; the Normans poured in successive waves over Frankland ; the ravages of the Magyars were yet wider spread and not less terrible. Alike in the civil and the ecclesiastical world the elements of strife and insub ordination were let loose ; and, while the feudal lords defied the authority of their king, and the power of the French monarch sank to the lowest ebb, the bishops in like manner forsook their allegiance to the Roman pontiff. The archbishops of Ravenna and Milan appeared indeed as his rivals, and the political influence which they com manded more than equalled his : the 10th century has been designated " the noon-day of episcopal independence." The history of the curia at this period is marked by the deepest moral degradation and the most revolting scenes. The papal jurisdiction was limited almost entirely to the capital itself, and even the succession of the pontiffs them selves is with difficulty to be traced. The office, indeed, was sometimes disposed of by the influence of immoral women. The pontificate of STEPHEN VI. (or VII., 896-897) is remembered only for the inhuman manner in which he treated the lifeless corpse of his predecessor Formosus ; that of SERGIUS III. (904-911) for the virtual reign of Theodora and her daughter, the two most notorious courte zans of the age ; STEPHEN IX. (939-942) was disi gured for life by the brutal treatment which he received at the hands of the Roman mob. In the dismembered empire, the kingdom of Germany first exhibited signs of returning order and cohesion ; and at the solicitation of Pope JOHN XII. (955-963) King Otto led an army into Italy, rescued the land from its cruel oppressor, Berengar, the feudal lord of the realm, and was anointed emperor at Rome. John, however, who was one of the worst of the pontiffs, ill repaid the service rendered to the see; and, foreseeing that the restoration of justice and law was likely to prove fatal to his own misrule, he proceeded to plot the emperor s overthrow. He was summoned to appear before a council presided over by the latter, to meet the accusations brought against him, and, having failed to appear, was formally deposed. On the same occasion the imperial right to confirm the election to the papal office (which had been for some time in abeyance) was formally restored. Of the pontiffs whose names stand in the subsequent succession two were anti- popes, BENEDICT V. (964) and BONIFACE VII. (984-985), set up by the party in rebellion against the imperial power. With the restoration of law and order the ancient re gard for the popedom regained its hold on the minds of men. Under the guidance of the celebrated Gerbert, the Gerbert youthful enthusiasm of Otto III. aimed at making Rome and Otto once more the centre of political dominion and the seat of the imperial power. Hugh Capet, too, professed himself the " defender of the church." A strong sense began also to find expression of the infamy attaching to the associa- ! tions of the curia. At the first of the two councils convened i at Rheims in 991 it was formally demanded, by what decree it was that " numberless priests of God, famed alike for learning and virtue, were subjected to the rule of monsters of iniquity wanting in all culture, whether sacred or profane." The French monarchs were glad, however, to purchase the support of the papacy to aid them in their struggle with the rebellious chieftains by whom the very existence of their authority was menaced, and, until the action of the papal legates again roused the spirit of national resistance, the Capetian dynasty was loyal to the Roman see. That it was so was in no small measure due to the virtues and abilities of GREGORY V. (996-999), the kinsman of Otto III., a young man of considerable attain ments, austere morality, and great energy of purpose, who succeeded to the papal chair at the age of twenty-four. He was succeeded by Gerbert, Pope SILVESTER II. (999-1003), from whom Otto III. derived, as already stated, his ideas of Italian and papal regeneration. But in Germany neither the nobility nor the episcopal order could contemplate with equanimity the projects of either pontiff or emperor, and Otto s schemes were met with a stubborn and paralysing resistance. Then the feudal princes of the Roman states rose in insurrection ; and the ardent young reformer was taken off it was believed, by poison at the age of two and twenty, to be followed in the next year by his faithful preceptor on the pontifical throne. With the disappearance of these two eminent men the Ascen- popedom relapsed into its former degradation. The feudal ^ enc Y f nobility that very " refuse " which, to use the expression ^ffity ^ of a contemporary writer, it had been Otto s mission " to sweep from the capital " regained their ascendency, and the popes became as completely the instruments of their will as they had once been of that of the Eastern emperor.
- A leading faction among this nobility was that of the
counts of Tusculum, and for nearly half a century the popedom was a mere apanage in their family. As if to
mark their contempt for the office, they carried the election
of Theophylact, the son of Count Alberic, a lad scarcely | twelve years of age, to the office. BENEDICT IX. (1033- 1045), such was the title given him, soon threw off even the external decencies of his office, and his pontificate was disgraced by every conceivable excess. As he grew to manhood his rule, in conjunction with that of his brother, who was appointed the patrician or prefect of the city, resembled that of two captains of banditti. The scandal attaching to his administration culminated when it was known that, in order to win the hand of a lady for whom he had conceived a passion, he had sold the pontifical office
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