Papal Rivalries and the Separation of Church and State - Pt One

On the Papacy and the Fall of Rome, Constantinople, and the Rule of Harlots

With the news of Pope Francis’ passing, I thought it would be topical to pull together a few thoughts on the Papacy, Papal States, and Papal Elections. However, sometimes the cursor races across the screen with a will of its own, and what I intended as a few anecdotes and colorful highlights quickly thrown together, turned into something much broader. The Papacy as an institution has a remarkable history that sits at the center of a great many events over the last two millennia. The main theme I’m exploring here is the Papacy and its rivalries over the centuries, and how a multipolar world after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire helped create many of the divisions between church and state that we still take for granted today. This will be part one of a three-part series (part two is finished, and will follow in a few days).

The Western Patriarchy

Traditionally, the early church had five major patriarchies. These bishoprics were the largest and most prestigious of the several hundred dioceses in the Roman Empire, and wielded an outsized influence at church councils and synods. Rome, as the old imperial capital and Seat of Peter was obviously important, but so also were Constantinople (the new imperial capital), and Alexandria and Antioch (both wealthy and intellectual cities). Jerusalem was actually a bit of an honorary patriarchate; symbolically important, but practically less influential than you might think (Jerusalem simply wasn’t very big, and wasn’t on a coast). For much of the most tumultuous periods of the early church councils in the 4th and first half of the 5th century (chiefly Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon), Alexandria was arguably the most important bishopric in the entire empire.

The Roman Empire in the 4th century. Notice that Rome is the only Patriarchy in the Western Empire.

In 452, when Attila the Hun invaded Italy, and the shambolic remnants of the Western Empire’s governing institutions were unable to stop him, it was Pope Leo the Great who rode out to meet Attila. Whether you believe the later medieval legends about Sts. Peter and Paul holding drawn swords hovering above Leo’s head, or if you think Leo paid off Attila with collected church wealth, the important historical observation should be that the Papacy as an institution was sliding into the power vacuum left by collapsing imperial authority. Along with Leo claiming an influential and authoritative role at the Council of Chalcedon (something vigorously disputed by the Eastern Church), modern historians have dubbed Leo “the first Pope,” in the sense of starting the process of creating the Papacy as the institutional powerhouse we come to think of in the middle ages.

The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila - by Raphael. Vatican - Wikimedia

Notice that, of the five patriarchates, Rome was the only city in the Western Empire (Christianity was more popular and influential in the more urbanized Eastern Mediterranean for most of antiquity). Which meant that, along with the theological claims to Petrine authority its bishops carried, Rome was geographically positioned to become a focal point for religious and spiritual leadership during and after the collapse of the Roman Empire. This was most clearly demonstrated by Pope Gregory the Great, who laid institutional building blocks for the Papacy by relying on monks for an administrative staff, and using the prestige and influence of both Rome (the city) and the seat of Peter to push for improved pastoral care and clerical standards even outside of his immediate jurisdiction. In the early church, bishops were mostly autonomous, and elected by their congregations. As the urbanized life of the ancient world collapsed (much more in the West than the East, it should be noted), the Papacy began to take on more and more authority, oversight, and direction throughout Western Europe.

By the time you get to medieval history and the big fights between crown and papacy, you tend to take it for granted that Popes were now routinely appointing bishops, which was unheard of in the early church. In many parts of western Europe, the educated and organized large-scale urbanized life that had supported early church dioceses simply no longer existed, or was co-opted by Germanic warlords. Over time, the Papacy gradually stepped further and further into this gap, taking an increasingly direct role in church governance. The Papacy’s claim to be a living inheritance of Roman civilization wasn’t only supported by the fact that the Pope still bore the title of Pontifex Maximus (claimed by every pagan emperor before being passed on to the bishop of Rome). In a world where every Germanic king desperately claimed some sort of real (or imagined) legitimacy bestowed upon him by Rome (or Constantinople), the Papacy continued to represent a real and living link to Roman authority. Using this authority, Popes tried to protect the independence of the church, and worked with the Germanic kings to send out missionaries to the rest of Europe.

Rome and Constantinople

The Popes also fought with Constantinople. Constantly. In fact, this was one of the main preoccupations of the Papacy, and probably one of the greatest power-struggles of the entire early middle ages. Western audiences tend to forget or overlook this, but the Eastern Roman Empire continued to be, well, the Roman Empire, and as such, needed unity with the Papacy. However, Rome was increasingly distant from Constantinople and the seat of imperial power. From a distance, Pope and Patriarch vied for pre-eminence, and the emperors in Constantinople frequently triangulated between them; sometimes protecting the Patriarch’s prerogatives as an extension of their own, and sometimes appealing to the Papacy in an attempt to force compromises on fractions within the Eastern church. Pope vs. Patriarch, Pope vs. Emperor (of Constantinople), and sometimes, Pope and Emperor vs. Patriarch (and the rest of the Eastern Church).¹

In my opinion, this is one of the larger blindspots that Western audiences and readers tend to have about Church History in the Middle Ages (including even among many religious adherents and those interested in church history and theology). But it’s vital to understanding the next period of Papal growth as an institution. Part of the problem is that Byzantine history remains somewhat underrated and underappreciated (though less so than many Byzantine history aficionados would like to tell you). But also, after the Great Schism between East and West, and after the decline of the Eastern Mediterranean world and eventual Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, the Papacy didn’t need to labor in justifying and asserting itself over the Eastern Church, which was no longer a rival power-center in Christendom (note, it is Eastern Orthodox partisans who are far more likely to remember all the various schisms, failed reunions, and excommunications during this period).

So take, for instance, the most famous forgery of the middle ages; the Donation of Constantine. Ostensibly written by Constantine himself to Pope Sylvester I in the early 4th century, and fortuitously “found” in the Vatican during the 8th century, the Donation explicitly asserted Rome’s hegemony over Constantinople. The Donation was used to great effect by early and high medieval Popes in various battles with Constantinople, and to bolster Papal prestige in Western Europe. But during the Renaissance, it was a papal scholar in the Vatican archives who realized that the letter contained historical anachronisms, and was written in medieval ecclesiastical Latin rather than classical Latin. The Papacy deserves credit for rediscovering and owning up to its own forgery (although conveniently, after Constantinople had ceased to be a serious rival).

The history of the Papal alliance with the Franks, the Donation of Constantine, and the imperial coronation of Charlemagne, won’t fully make sense to a student of history until we reorient our perspective of the medieval map, and realize that Constantinople still loomed as the largest city (materially and symbolically) in the early medieval world. It wasn’t an accident that Charlemagne hired Byzantine artists and architects to construct his famous court chapel at Aachen, done in imitation of the stunning Byzantine church of San Vitale in Ravenna. And a major part of the justification for Pope Leo III’s coronation of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, 800 AD, was that the throne in Constantinople happened to be occupied by a woman, Empress Irene. According to Leo III and Charlemagne, this meant that the Roman throne was empty.²

Charlemagne and Leo III - Encyclopedia Britannica

So, in the 8th and 9th century, a Frankish-Papal alliance established the Papal States and created a rival “Roman” empire to the Byzantine/Roman Empire in the East. The establishment of the Papal States was theoretically supposed to make the Pope independent and secure, free from outside influence. In practice, it embroiled the Papacy in Italian and Imperial (German) politics, leading to one of the most sordid periods in church history.

The Rule of Harlots and Gregorian Reform Movement

The period from the end of the 800’s, into the early 1000’s in Papal history, is known by a few titles. It is sometimes called the Saeculum Obscorum (“The Dark Age”), as well as “The Rule of Harlots,” or even just, “The Pornocracy.” This colorful period saw the Papacy become the center of a multi-side power struggle between the Church hierarchy, Italian nobility, Roman populace, and Imperial Germany, complete with a host of intrigues, assassinations, coups, invasions, and antipopes. Multiple conflicts saw rival claimants to the Papacy at the same time, backed by various Italian factions or German Emperors. In 987, Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of Pope Formosus dug up, invested in the full papal regalia, put on trial for corruption and heresy, and then mutilated and thrown in the Tiber. This event became known as The Cadaver Synod, but it is not even the most scandalous event in the century. That honor probably goes to the career of Marozia Theophylact, the daughter of one of Rome’s most powerful families, who became the mistress, power-broker, and likely mother of several different popes in turn (in fairness, some of the most salacious details about Marozia come from Liutprand of Cremona, who is one of the better historical axe-grinders out there as far as primary sources go). At the end of the 10th century, the German Emperor Otto III would invade Rome, depose the Antipope John XVI, gouged out his eyes, and parade him on a donkey facing backwards through the streets of Rome. Will Durant’s account of this period in his magisterial Story of Civilization series makes for page-turning reading. I haven’t even mentioned what John XII was accused of.

The Cadaver Synod. Jean Paul Laurens: Le Pape Formose et Etienne VI. 1870 - Wikimedia

The factional strife in Northern Italy lasted into the high middle ages and in some sense straight through to the Renaissance, constantly bound up in fights between church, civic politics, and the Holy Roman Empire. Dante would be exiled as a Guelph, and wished for a Julius Caesar figure to strengthen Italy, in a sentiment later shared by Machiavelli. But while Italian Nationalism was a long way away (and would also find itself in rivalry with the Pope), the Papacy did manage to turn a corner and extricate itself from the worst of the political bullying (at least, until the Renaissance). Because the Gregorian Reform movement was at hand.

What is remarkable to me about Christian church history is not the sordid and often sinful nature of Christians, and I am not interested here in any sectarian point-scoring for or against the Papacy. If one is a christian, then most any outrage is to be expected in a fallen world; and if one is not a Christian, then the hypocrisy makes little difference amongst powerful elites seeking to manipulate every institution to their advantage. What is remarkable to me about Christian church history, however, is the capacity for reform and cleaning house. Generally speaking, Christian church institutions have demonstrated a strong capacity for this (although often after letting things sink quite abysmally). The Byzantine Empire frequently saw ascetic monks emerging from the wilderness or climbing down from pillars like wild-eyed prophets come to excoriate wealthy and worldly prelates, and the Roman church saw multiple reform movements originating out of waves of monasticism. Protestantism has its own legacy, first as an attempted reform movement within the Western church and then again within itself (for example, Wesleyanism as an evangelical response to the moribund nature of the 18th century Church of England).

In the 11th century, the Papacy found renewal from within Monasticism, which was, by design, sheltered (though by no means immune) from the outside world, and a ready-made institution with its own hierarchies and networks. The resulting Gregorian Reform movement did much to create the “Imperial Papacy” that we still tend to think of as the default version of the Papacy as an institution. This era also emphasized a stark reform of clerical standards, and is when clerical celibacy in the West became not just a norm, but a legal requirement. It’s worth highlighting the mutually strengthening relationship in the Western Church between Papacy and Monasticism, running back to Gregory the Great. Whereas the Eastern Church generally remained more urbanized and cosmopolitan (with monasticism more secluded and sheltered away from the world), clerical roles in the Western Church frequently borrowed more from the monastic life. Secondary histories of the Middle Ages frequently have to emphasize “secular” clergy as distinct from monastic clerics. Monks staffed the church bureaucracy, influenced the expectations of priestly life, and founded the schools that would go on to become universities. We still call paperwork “clerical work” for a reason.

Once again, however, one set of institutional developments would lead to a new set of conflicts, in this case, the Investiture Controversy, which we’ll explore next time. We’ll also attempt to reframe the power struggles between Pope and early modern kingdoms, still obscured by the legacy of narratives too focused on the Reformation, and consider how different modern papal elections are from those of the Renaissance.

1. Anthony Kaldellis’ excellent The New Roman Empire covers this well.

2. While the Papacy and Charlemagne claimed that the throne was empty, Byzantine law held that a woman would rule in her own right, though this was not common. Irene of Athens was one of many remarkable, and remarkably dangerous, Byzantine imperial women. Irene helped end iconoclasm in the East and called the second Council of Nicaea. She also tussled with her own son, Constantine VI repeatedly for control of the empire. Irene finally had Constantine overthrown, and his eyes gouged out.