was ejected and thrown into prison by Christopher, one of his own presbyters and chaplains. The same year, or early in the next, Christopher was in his turn ignominiously driven from Rome.

A.D. 903.

Sergius had already once, if not twice, at the accession of John IX., or at that of Formosus, or at both periods, contested the Papal chair. On his discomfiture he had taken refuge at the Court of the powerful counts of Tuscany; and there sat watching, with a band of devoted partisans, the rapid revolutions in Rome.

This great marquisate, or county of Tuscany, which for a long period exercised so vast an influence for evil. or for good, had gradually risen to its enormous power and wealth power which for many years ruled Rome and the Papacy; wealth which at length, through the munificence of the celebrated Countess Matilda, its descendant through another line, was hereafter to be the strength and support of the Popes in the days of their most exorbitant authority.

The descent of these hereditary Counts of Lucca, and Marquises or Dukes of Tuscany, is clearly traced from Boniface, who held that rank during the later years of Charlemagne. Adalbert was the grandson of Boniface, through a father of the same name. Adalbert had been among those powerful princes, whose claims to beneficiary rights had excited the jealous resentment of the Emperor Louis the Pious. He had been imprisoned, and though soon released, had sworn to avenge the indignity on the first opportunity. Adalbert II., the son of Adalbert I., was so surpassingly wealthy (and wealth in those times was power) that he was called the

e "Emigrat ante suum quam luna bis impleat orbem."-Flodoard de Pontif. Rom. apud Mabillon, Acta S. S. Benedict.

f "Culmen apostolicæ sedis is jure paterno Electus tenuit, ut Theodorus obit, Joannes subit."

Epitaph in Pagi, sub ann. 910.

A.D. 900.

Rich. His influence, as well as his ambition, was increased by his marriage with Bertha, daughter of the King Lothair, by his wife or concubine, Waldrada, and widow of the King of Provence. This haughty woman was mother, by her first husband, of Hugh of Provence, afterwards King of Italy and Emperor. The counsels of his imperious wife led Adalbert into a premature rebellion against Lambert, then Emperor, and King of Italy. The Tuscan was defeated ignominiously, and thrown into prison. He had been taken in a stable. Lambert insulted him by saying, "Your haughty wife Bertha prophesied that you would be a king or an ass; lo, you are found like an ass in the stalls among the cattle!" The death of Lambert, by accident or assassination, released Adalbert from his captivity, and restored him to his power. From this time the fate of Italy seemed to depend upon his will. The fickle Italians, weary of the rule of Berengar, who on the death of Lambert had become undisputed pos

g

sessor of the empire, invited Louis of Provence, A.D. 900. the son of Count Boso, and of Ermengard, daughter of the Emperor Louis of Germany, to assume the throne of Italy and the empire. Adalbert at first maintained the cause of Berengar (his fidelity was secured by ample gifts), and Louis was obliged to retreat beyond the Alps. But the ambitious Bertha alienated the mind of her husband from Berengar.h Adalbert joined in a second invitation to Louis. Berengar, when he found the Tuscans among his enemies, shut himself up in Verona, which he was obliged to surrender to the victorious Louis. The new Emperor and

Liutprand, ii. 38.

h" Bellua Tyrrhenis fundens fera sibila ab oris

Solicitat Rhodani gentem."-Panegyr. Berengar. iv.

King of Italy was crowned in Rome. On his return he visited Lucca, where the indiscreet Emperor beheld with astonishment, alarm, and envy, the state, and the formidable and well-appointed forces of Adalbert. He dropped the incautious expression, "This is no marquis, but a king." From that moment the throne of Louis was lost. Bertha organised an extensive revolt of the Italian provinces. Louis allowed himself to be surprised in Verona by Berengar, who revenged himself by putting out the eyes of his rival.

A.D. 906.

It was under the protection of this powerful Tuscan that the exiled Sergius, at the head of a strong force of Tuscan soldiers, appeared in Rome, deposed Christopher, who had just deposed Leo V., and took possession of the Papal throne.

A.D. 897-904.

Yet as to his The only certain restoration of the

Sergius had been seven years an exile in Tuscany; for seven years he ruled as supreme, but not undisputed, Pontiff." This Pope has been A.D. 904-911. loaded with every vice and every enormity which can blacken the character of man. reign there is almost total obscurity. act which has transpired is his Lateran palace, which had fallen into ruins; an act which indicates a period of comparative peace and orderly administration, with the command of a large revenue." In these violent times Sergius probably

i 901. I follow Muratori's course of events.

Christopher, consecrated Oct. 903; deposed, and becomes a monk, Jan. 904.

m "Sergius inde redit, dudum, qui lectus
ad arcem

Culminis, exsilio tulerat rapiente re-
pulsam,

Quo profugus latuit Septem volven-
tibus annis.

Hinc populi remeans precibus sacratur honore

Pridem adsignato, quo nomine Tertius exit

Antistes, Fetri eximiâ quo sede recepto

Præsule gaudet ovans annis Septem amplius orbis."

Flodoard de Rom. Pontif n Mabillon, in Appendic. ad Ord. Roman. Muratori, sub ann. 907. Compare Gregorovius, Stadt. Rom. iii. 269,

scrupled at no violence; but if he drove a Pope from the throne of St. Peter, that Pope had just before deposed his patron, and with great cruelty.

But during the Papacy of Sergius rose into power the infamous Theodora, with her daughters Marozia and Theodora, the prostitutes who, in the strong language of historians, disposed for many years of the Papal tiara, and not content with disgracing by their own licentious lives the chief city of Christendom, actually placed their profligate paramours or base-born sons in the chair of St. Peter. The influence obtained by Theodora and her daughters, if it shows not the criminal connivance of Pope Sergius, or a still more disgraceful connexion with which he was charged by the scandal of the times, proves at least the utter degradation of the Papal power in Rome. It had not only lost all commanding authority, but could not even maintain outward decency. Theodora was born of a noble and wealthy senatorial family, on whom she has entailed an infamous immortality. The women of Rome seem at successive periods seized with a kind of Roman ambition to surpass their sex by the greatness of their virtues and of their vices. These females were to the Paulas and Eustochiums of the younger and severer age of Roman Christianity, what the Julias and Messalinas of the Empire were to the Volumnias and Cornelias of the Republic.P

See also the epitaph on Sergius apud Muratori, A.D. 911. Yet even Sergius is regulating the affairs and granting the pallium to an archbishop of Hamburg. Jaffé, Regesta, p. 308.

P The devout indignation of Baronius, as to these times, arose no doubt in great part from the severe but honest asceticism of his character, and his horror at this violation of his high

notions of sacerdotal sanctity by what appeared to him far more unseemly and unpardonable criminality than arrogance, avarice, or cruelty. His fears, too, lest he should be accused of an immoral partiality by the slightest extenuation, or even by a dispassionate examination of such vices, has led him to exaggerate rather than soften the monstrous enormities of those times.

It must be acknowledged, that if the stern language of Tacitus and Juvenal may have darkened the vices of the queens and daughters of the Cæsars, the Bishop of Cremona, our chief authority on the enormities of Theodora and her daughters, wants the moral dignity, while he is liable to the same suspicion as those great writers. Throughout the lives of the Pontiffs themselves we have to balance between the malignant licence of satire and the unmeaning phrases of adulatory panegyric. On the other hand it is difficult to decide which is more utterly unchristian: the profound hatred which could invent or accredit such stories; the utter dissoluteness which made them easily believed; or the actual truth of such charges.

Liutprand relates that John, afterwards the tenth Pope of that name, being employed in Rome

Theodora.

on some ecclesiastical matters by the Archbishop of Ravenna, was the paramour of Theodora," who not merely allowed, but compelled him to her embraces. John was first appointed to the see of Bologna; but the archbishopric of Ravenna, the second ecclesiastical dignity in Italy, falling vacant before he

And the happy thought, happy in a thoroughgoing controversialist, that the deeper the degradation of the Papacy, the more wonderful, and therefore the more manifestly of God, its restoration to power, removed every remaining repugnance to his abandonment of all the popes during the tenth century to historical infamy. The passage is too well known and too long for citation. Muratori, who had some new authorities, is more temperate, especially as to the character of Sergius.

John X.

Muratori inclines to the Panegyrist of Berengarius, who gives a high character of John X., and to Flodoard; but the poet's language consists merely of the common phrases applied to all popes, who are, according to some writers, ex officio endowed with certain virtues: and Pope John had just acknowledged the title, and entered into close alliance with the object of the poet's panegyric.

r 66 'Theodora, quod dictu etiam fœdissimum est, Romanæ civi9 Liutprand is the chief, the only tatis non inviriliter monarchiam obauthority on which Baronius rests. tinebat."-Liutprand. VOL. III.