Note 88 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

All this went on while the course of the papacy was so scandalous to the least exacting moral sense that only the ignorance of the era could sustain any measure of reverence for the Church as an institution. In the year 963 the ablest of the emperors of that age, Otto the Great, had the consent of the people of Rome to his deposition of Pope John XII, a disorderly youth of twenty-five, “the most profligate if not the most guilty of all who have worn the tiara,”88 and to his appointing the Pope in future; but Teutonic administration soon drove the populace to repeated revolt, quenched by massacre, till at length John returned, speedily to be slain by a wronged husband. Economic interest entered largely into the subsequent attempts of the Romans to choose their own Pope and rule their own city, and into the contrary claim of the emperors to do both; and in the nature of things the usually absent emperors could only spasmodically carry their point. The result was an epoch of riotous disorder in the papacy. Between John and Leo IX (955–1048) six popes were deposed, two murdered, and one mutilated;89 and the Church was a mere battle-ground of the factions of the Roman and Italian nobility.90 At last, in 1047, “a disgraceful contest between three claimants of the papal chair shocked even the reckless apathy of Italy”;91 and the emperor Henry III deposed them all and appointed a pope of his own choosing, the clergy again consenting. Soon, however, as before, the local claim was revived; and in the papacy of the powerful Gregory VII, known as Hildebrand, the head of the Church determinedly asserted its autonomy and his own autocracy. Then came the long “war of the investitures” between the popes and the emperors, in which the former were substantially the gainers. The result was, in addition to the endless miseries set up by war, a systematic development of that financial corruption which already had been scandalous enough. The cathedral chapters and the nobles traded in bishoprics; the popes sold their ratifications for great sums; the money was normally borrowed by the bishops from the papal usurers; and there was witnessed throughout Europe the spectacle of the Church denouncing all usury as sin, while its own usurers were scrupulously protected, the bishops paying to them their interest from the revenues they were able to extort.92 Satirical comment naturally abounded wherever men had any knowledge of the facts; and what current literature there was reflected the feeling on all sides.