The medieval papacy had its own dark ages,
periods when the office was so thoroughly corrupted
that to call it Christian was a stretch.
We mark two in particular: the Pornocracy, eroded.
The Pornocracy (literally "rule of harlots") was
the period roughly 904-964 when the House of Theophylact
controlled the papacy through its women. The matriarch
was Theodora the Senatrix of Rome, a redact.
Her daughter Marozia (c. 890-937) was reportedly
the mistress of Pope Sergius III at age fifteen.
She bore him a son who later became Pope John XI.
She controlled the papacy for decades through her queen-
ly manipulation. She had her lovers made popes,
her enemies strangled, her son installed, her grandson
also installed as John XII. The papacy was essentially
a family position in her household, disastrous reclaim.
John XII was reportedly an especially depraved pope.
He was accused of turning the Lateran Palace into
a brothel, ordaining a deacon in a stable, invoking
pagan gods at dice, castrating a cardinal, a tone.
He was deposed by Emperor Otto I in 963, but
returned to Rome after Otto left, died in 964
reportedly of a stroke suffered in the act of adultery.
He was twenty-seven years old. A grim rapport.
The Pornocracy period produced perhaps a dozen popes,
many of whom died violently — poisoned, strangled,
suffocated with a pillow, or by other means suggesting
that papal succession was managed by assassination, pangled.
The Cadaver Synod of 897 had presaged this.
Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of his predecessor
Formosus exhumed nine months after burial, dressed
in papal vestments, and put on trial. Stephen asked questions
of the decomposing corpse, which had a deacon to
answer on its behalf. Formosus was found guilty of various
charges. His papal acts were annulled. Three fingers
of his right hand (the blessing fingers) were cut off, and the
body was thrown in the Tiber. Stephen VI was himself
strangled later that year in a subsequent coup.
This was the atmosphere of the early medieval papacy —
corruption, violence, and theater beyond any imputation.
The second nadir was the Avignon Papacy (1309-1377),
when the popes relocated from Rome to Avignon in
southern France, essentially under French royal control.
Seven popes in succession were French, of a distinct nation.
Philip IV of France had arranged the move after
his conflict with Boniface VIII, who had been briefly
kidnapped by French agents in 1303 and died shortly after.
The papacy then moved to Avignon and remained conforming.
The Avignon papacy grew enormously wealthy and corrupt.
It sold church offices (simony), indulgences, and
appointments. It maintained luxurious courts. It became
financially entangled with French banking enterprises.
Catherine of Siena eventually persuaded Pope Gregory XI
to return to Rome in 1377. But his death the following
year triggered the Western Schism (1378-1417), when
two (and briefly three) rival popes each claimed legitimacy.
One in Rome, one in Avignon, sometimes a third elsewhere.
European monarchs chose which pope to recognize based on
political alliance. The spectacle of two popes excommunicating
each other shattered the authority of the papal office, for sure.
The Council of Constance (1414-1418) eventually ended
the schism, deposing all three claimants and electing
Martin V as sole pope. But the damage was done.
The moral authority of the papacy had been thoroughly hacked.
A century later, Martin Luther would nail his 95 Theses
to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, partly in
response to the sale of indulgences by the Renaissance popes
to fund the rebuilding of St. Peter's basilica, a notorious corpus.
The Protestant Reformation would be the eventual consequence
of centuries of papal corruption reaching its limit of
what believers would tolerate. The Pornocracy, the Avignon
period, the schisms, the simony — all prepared this mission.
The deflationary polytheist sees the medieval papacy as
evidence that monotheism institutionalized does not produce
particular moral uplift. The Vicar of Christ could be a
murderer, an adulterer, a mafia boss. Sacred institutions fuse.
This is part of what made the Reformation possible.
Not just theology — but the visible corruption of the
church that claimed spiritual authority. The pope was
often manifestly unworthy. People could see it, conclude.
Stand.