Pope Benedict III (855-858)

A transitional pope between Leo IV and Nicholas I

Benedict III belongs to a particular generation: the one that inherited the Rome rebuilt by Leo IV after the Saracen sack of the Vatican basilica in 846, and that prepared the magisterial pontificate of Nicholas I the Great. Leo IV had built the civitas Leoniana, the wall enclosing Saint Peter's, and fortified Ostia; Nicholas I would set the weight of Rome against Byzantine Caesaropapism and Carolingian divorces. Between them, Benedict III had to continue material reconstruction, Frankish diplomacy and liturgical government without yet possessing the doctrinal prestige of his successor.^[6]

The result is a pontificate less brilliant than the two that frame it, but more important than it first appears. Under him Rome tested, for the first time after 846, its capacity to receive a major Western pilgrim, the king of Wessex, and to dialogue with the patriarchate of Constantinople at the very moment when the tensions that would become, under Photius, the Photian crisis were beginning.

The pope against whom the Pope Joan legend breaks

A few centuries later, Dominican chroniclers, John of Mailly around 1255 and then Martin of Troppau in the third recension of his chronicle (1265-1277), would insert between Leo IV and Benedict III an invented figure:^[7] "Pope Joan", a woman disguised as a man who supposedly reigned for two and a half years before dying in childbirth.^[8] The story became one of the most popular legends of late medieval culture, then one of the favorite targets of classical anti-Catholic polemic.

The historical defeat of this legend does not rest only on theological arguments: it rests on the chronological dossier of Benedict III himself. Contemporary sources, coinage, Carolingian diplomacy and Byzantine memory converge on one material point: there is no room in the calendar between Leo IV (d. July 17, 855) and Benedict III's consecration (September 29, 855): as early as October 7, 855, Benedict confirmed the privileges of Corbie Abbey, and Hincmar of Reims reports that the messenger sent to Leo IV, having learned of his death on the way, handed his petition to Benedict III, who judged it (Hincmar, letter 40, PL CXXVI, 85).^[9] The Roman coins associating Benedict III with Emperor Lothair I — who died on September 29, 855^[10] — point in the same direction without proving anything by themselves: described by Garampi (De nummo argenteo Benedicti III, Rome, 1749), they add to a convergent body of evidence that makes any insertion of a female pope for two years mechanically impossible.^{[11] [12]}

A gentle pope faced with state violence

The third interest of Benedict III is spiritual. Confronted by an armed seizure of the Lateran by the antipope Anastasius and the imperial missi, stripped of his see, locked in a palace room, publicly displayed as deposed, he would be restored four days later by popular resistance and, immediately afterward, would treat his rival with unusual clemency. The Liber Pontificalis notes that Anastasius was left alive, kept in lay communion, and that no blood reprisal was carried out.^{[13] [14]}

This gentleness makes Benedict III a precious pastoral figure at a moment when the papacy was learning to survive armed interventions by Roman and Carolingian political parties.

Leo IV's death and the first election

Leo IV died in Rome on July 17, 855.^{[15] [16]} His pontificate had been marked by two major achievements: maritime defense against the Saracens, who had plundered Saint Peter's in 846, and the construction of the Leonine City, the enclosure protecting the Vatican basilica and the pilgrims' quarter. At his death, Rome no longer feared an immediate Muslim raid, but it remained caught between Roman Carolingian parties, favoring either Lothair and his son Louis II or Charles the Bald, and the old aristocratic families of the city.

The first choice of the clergy and people was, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Popes, a certain Hadrian — cardinal-priest of the title of Saint Mark, the future Adrian II —, who refused the honour.^[17] The second choice was then Benedict, cardinal-priest of Saint Callistus, already noticed by Leo IV for his learning and asceticism. The election was unanimous according to the official biographer; the underlying rivalries cannot be denied, but they are not enough to call Benedict's legitimacy into question.^[18]

The role of Arsenius of Orte and the legates

In keeping with Carolingian custom, the Romans sent legates to Emperor Louis II, son of Lothair I and co-emperor, to obtain imperial confirmation of the electoral decree. This is where the drama begins. Treccani recalls that the missi imperiali sent to the emperor were Counts Adalbert and Bernard, and that the Roman legates were infiltrated by supporters of Bishop Arsenius of Orte, one of the most forceful leaders of the pro-imperial party in Rome and, above all, Anastasius's uncle.^[19]

Arsenius persuaded them to betray Benedict and plead before the emperor in favor of Anastasius. The Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes it bluntly:

"The legates betrayed the trust reposed in them and allowed themselves to be won over by the ambitious Cardinal Anastasius, who had been excommunicated; the imperial missi, won over in turn, tried to impose Anastasius on the Roman Church." — Horace K. Mann, Catholic Encyclopedia, art. Pope Benedict III^[20]

Anastasius was not unknown. A former cardinal-priest of the title of San Marcello, nephew of Arsenius of Orte, he had been excommunicated in 850 by a Roman synod for fleeing Rome, then anathematized and deposed in 853 by another synod under Leo IV. He was therefore a canonically fallen cleric, supported by a family base in Orte and by a pro-imperial network in Rome.^[21]

The attack on the Lateran and Benedict III's imprisonment

On September 20, 855, Anastasius entered the Leonine City with imperial troops. Treccani dates the event precisely: "On September 20, access to the Leonine City was forced."^[22] The Lateran palace fell; according to the account of the pontifical biographer taken up by Treccani, Anastasius's men removed the inscriptions and images commemorating the councils of 853 at the doors of Saint Peter's, and sacred images — even those of Christ and the Virgin — were broken up and burned; and Benedict III, dispossessed, was shut up in a room of the palace where the clerics were accustomed to meet.^[23]

"Benedict was insulted and imprisoned. Most of the clergy and people, however, remained faithful to him, and the missi had to yield." — Horace K. Mann, Catholic Encyclopedia^[24]

The scene was not a simple ecclesiastical quarrel. It was a political trusteeship imposed by force: the emperor, or rather his misled legates, wanted to impose the candidate of the family of Orte. A chronicle noted by the Liber Pontificalis speaks of an armed irruption into the episcopal palace and of violence inflicted on the legitimate pope.^[25]

Roman resistance at the titulus Emiliana

For four days, resistance organized itself. According to Treccani, the Roman clergy and people gathered at the titulus Emiliana, the ancient church known as the Four Crowned Saints (SS. Quattro Coronati), halfway between the Lateran and the Colosseum. Three days of fasting, constant public pressure and a popular rising in favor of the legitimate pope forced the missi to change position.^[26]

On September 24, 855, the imperial legates abandoned Anastasius, freed Benedict III and expelled the antipope without death or bloody proscription.^[27] On Sunday, September 29, 855, Benedict III was consecrated at Saint Peter's, probably by the suburbicarian bishops, according to Roman usage (the Catholic Encyclopedia gives "September 29 or October 6, 855").^[28]

"The following Sunday, September 29, 855, Benedict was finally consecrated at Saint Peter's." — Ottorino Bertolini, Enciclopedia dei Papi, art. Benedetto III^[29]

The synod and Benedict III's clemency

A Roman synod immediately condemned Anastasius and canonically deposed him. But Benedict III refused to demand bodily punishment or execution. The sentence reduced Anastasius to the lay state, but remained personally clement: according to the Liber Pontificalis and the Catholic Encyclopedia, the antipope was admitted to lay communion, meaning that he could continue to receive the Eucharist as an ordinary faithful Christian.^{[30] [31]}

"Although his rival was condemned by a synod, Benedict admitted him to lay communion." — Horace K. Mann, Catholic Encyclopedia^[32]

This measure was not weakness. It was coherent with ancient Roman theology, which distinguishes disciplinary judgment from the judgment of the soul. And in the long run it would prove providential: Anastasius, who lived until about 879, would be rehabilitated by Nicholas I as an adviser, then appointed librarian of the Holy See by Adrian II, and would become one of the greatest Greek-Latin translators of his century, indispensable to dialogue with Byzantium.^[33] Benedict III's gentleness, by avoiding blood punishment or definitive exile, left the Church the possibility of later using the talents of a dangerous man.

A city still traumatized by 846

To understand Benedict III, one must remember that Rome was sacked by the Saracens on August 23, 846. Arab sailors came up the Tiber, stormed Saint Peter's and Saint Paul Outside the Walls, plundered the confession of the Apostle, profaned the altar and carried away the sacred silver. Leo IV took maritime defense in hand, fortified Ostia, organized the naval victory of 849 and surrounded the Vatican with a wall, the civitas Leoniana.^[34]

When Benedict III was elected in 855, that wall had existed for less than three years. Saint Peter's was still convalescent; some churches plundered in 846 or damaged by the fire of 847, which destroyed the Saxon quarter, had not yet been fully restored. Benedict's program would therefore be, from the first months, to resume his predecessor's work of sacred reconstruction.

A politically fragmented Christendom

The political context was no less heavy. Lothair I, son of Louis the Pious and Western emperor since 840, died on September 29, 855, the very day of Benedict III's consecration, after retiring gravely ill to the Abbey of Prüm on September 23, where he divided his empire among his three sons.^[35] His empire immediately broke apart among them: Louis II kept Italy and the imperial title, Lothair II received Lotharingia, and Charles received Provence. In the west, Charles the Bald ruled West Francia; in the east, Louis the German ruled East Francia.

The pope had to deal with this five-Carolingian game: he intervened in succession quarrels, refused to let one party crush the other, and required bishops to respect ecclesial communion above political borders. Benedict III's surviving correspondence must be read within this framework.

An Eastern Church already on edge

Finally, in Constantinople, Patriarch Ignatius had recently come to the throne (847), supported by the party of the Studite monks and by the regent Theodora. He strongly opposed several Byzantine bishops, including Gregory Asbestas, metropolitan of Syracuse, whom he deposed and refused to commune. This was the beginning of what would become, under Photius (858) and still more under Photius restored (877), the Photian schism, the first great direct confrontation between the Roman papacy and the patriarchate of Constantinople.^[36]

Under Benedict III, this conflict was still only a small cloud. But it would force the pope to formulate, for the first time after Leo IV, the Roman doctrine of primacy applied to major Eastern cases.

Restoring the Roman basilicas

The Liber Pontificalis, like all 9th-century papal biographies, devotes a significant part of Benedict III's life to his gifts to Roman churches and his restoration works. According to Treccani's summary, he was responsible in particular for:

Source: Treccani, art. Benedetto III.^[37]

These works were not merely decorative. In Roman liturgical theology, to rebuild a baptistery is to rebuild the door of the Church; to restore an apse is to rebuild the place of Eucharistic Presence; to equip a lectionary with silver is to rebuild the chair of the Word. Benedict III thus continued, on his own scale, the material work of Leo IV: to make Rome once again a liturgically intact city after the violence of the mid-century.

Reconstituting the lost lectionary

The most moving detail reported by the documentation concerns the lost lectionary that Benedict III had recopied and adorned.^[38] This book contained "the texts of Saint Paul, of the other apostles and of the prophets", that is, the liturgical epistolary used every day at the Roman Mass. Its cover was fitted with "silver plates of admirable workmanship".

Here again the gesture is theological: to restore to the Roman Church the continuity of public reading of Scripture, in material conditions worthy of the mystery celebrated.

Receiving Æthelwulf of Wessex and the future Alfred the Great

The most famous pilgrimage of the pontificate is that of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, who arrived in Rome in the spring of 855, before Leo IV's death, accompanied by his very young son Alfred, the future Alfred the Great, then five or six years old, and by a large retinue. He stayed there a full year, thus spanning the pontificates of Leo IV and Benedict III.^{[39] [40] [41]}

The gifts the king presented to the Chair of Peter are reported by the Liber Pontificalis (life of Benedict III, § XXXIV) and by the Annals of Saint-Bertin: a gold crown of four pounds, two golden chalices, a sword with a gold mounting, four silver-gilt bowls, two silk tunics, two veils woven with gold, as well as distributions of gold to the clergy and silver to the Roman people.^{[42] [43]}

The restoration of the Schola Anglorum, the Saxon quarter near Saint Peter's where English pilgrims stayed, which the fire of 847 had destroyed, is the work of Benedict III, who brought it to completion.^[44] Æthelwulf's largesses — precious gifts to Saint Peter's, gold and silver distributed to the clergy and the Roman people — more broadly accompanied this recovery of Rome: at the pope's request, the king accepted that a stable contribution from the Anglo-Saxon treasury durably support the Roman Church, a first step toward what would be associated with Peter's Pence.^[45]

"Benedict received King Æthelwulf of Wessex and his son Alfred; he completed the restoration of the Schola Anglorum, destroyed by the fire of 847." — Horace K. Mann, Catholic Encyclopedia^[46]

On his return, Æthelwulf passed through the court of Charles the Bald and, on October 1, 856, married Judith of Francia, sealing the Carolingian-Anglo-Saxon alliance.^[47] But the Roman memory of the young Alfred, raised by a Catholic king in the presence of the Apostolic See, would leave lasting traces in the future great king of England, translator of Saint Gregory the Great.

Regulating Frankish conflicts: Hubert, Ingeltrude, Soissons

Benedict III received, in less than three years, a considerable number of Frankish requests. The preserved documentation, about ten letters collected by Jaffé in his Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, covers several dossiers.^[48]

Source: Treccani, Enciclopedia dei Papi.^[49]

The Hubert dossier is revealing. Brother of Queen Theutberga, wife of Lothair II, Hubert had irregularly obtained the abbey of Saint-Maurice d'Agaune in present-day Switzerland and was plundering neighboring monasteries. Benedict III wrote to the Provençal bishops demanding his deposition and threatening excommunication.^{[50] [51]} The brigand subdeacon would only fall in 864, under Nicholas I, but the procedure had been initiated by Benedict.

The Ingeltrude dossier, involving a notorious concubine in the Carolingian entourage, anticipates the great matrimonial cases that Nicholas I would later investigate against Lothair II over his repudiation of Theutberga.

Finally, the confirmation of the Council of Soissons (853) officially validated Hincmar of Reims's position against the clerics deposed by the previous archbishop Ebbo. It was a capital decision for the stability of the Frankish episcopate.^[52]

Refusing the fait accompli in Constantinople

The most important Eastern affair of the pontificate was that of Gregory Asbestas, metropolitan of Syracuse, deposed by Patriarch Ignatius as soon as he came to the Constantinopolitan throne in 847.^[53] Gregory appealed to Rome. Patriarch Ignatius sent Benedict III a golden letter and a gold-bound Gospel book, carried by the monk Lazarus, asking for simple confirmation of his sentence.

Benedict III refused to ratify the deposition without examination. He demanded that the case be judged in Rome or that the full evidence be produced to him, thereby reaffirming the ancient doctrine, codified especially by Pope Gelasius I, according to which the papacy is the final court of appeal for major causes of the universal episcopate.^{[54] [55]}

"Benedict refused to confirm the deposition of Gregory of Syracuse without examining the evidence; the case had to be investigated at Rome." — Treccani, Enciclopedia dei Papi, art. Benedetto III^[56]

Under Nicholas I, this same affair would lead to the great confrontation with Photius, of whom Gregory Asbestas would be one of the main supporters. But the Roman principle, "no deposition of a metropolitan without a canonical trial verified at Rome", had already been laid down by Benedict III.

How the legend arose in the 13th century

No contemporary source of Benedict III mentions a female pope. The first references appear four centuries later, in the Dominican world:

• John of Mailly, Chronica universalis Mettensis, around 1255: the story of an unnamed female pope, placed around 1099, not yet in the 9th century (text: MGH, Scriptores 24, p. 514, ed. Waitz).^[57]
• Stephen of Bourbon, De septem donis Spiritus Sancti, around 1260: a reprise of John of Mailly's account.
• Martin of Troppau (Martinus Polonus), Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, third recension, between 1265 and 1277 (Martin died in 1278): the definitive and most widely diffused version. The female pope is named John Anglicus of Mainz; she is placed between Leo IV and Benedict III; she is said to have reigned "two years, seven months and four days"; she supposedly died in childbirth while going from the Vatican to the Lateran, between the Colosseum and Saint Clement (text: MGH, Scriptores 22, p. 428, ed. Weiland).^{[58] [59]}

The story became a commonplace in the late Middle Ages. It was repeated by Boccaccio, by Gallican preachers, by German chroniclers, then by the entire anti-Roman polemic of the 16th century.

Why chronology leaves no room

This is where the documentation on Benedict III becomes decisive. Leo IV died on July 17, 855. Benedict III was consecrated on September 29, 855. Between the two: seventy-four days.^{[60] [61]}

But the legend requires a reign of two years, seven months and four days for "Pope Joan". Mechanically, that is impossible: Leo IV would have had to die around 853, which is contradicted by the Frankish Annals and by Hincmar's correspondence; or Benedict III would have had to be consecrated around 858, which is contradicted by his own correspondence dated 855-858.

"Scarcely needs painstaking refutation today, for not only is there no contemporary evidence for a female Pope at any of the dates suggested for her reign, but the known facts of the respective periods make it impossible to fit one in." — J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes^[62]

Why the coins alone close the case

The chronological argument is joined by material evidence: there are Roman coins bearing both the name of Benedict III and that of Emperor Lothair I, described by Garampi (De nummo argenteo Benedicti III, Rome, 1749). But Lothair I died on September 29, 855 — the very day of Benedict III's consecration —, after withdrawing to the monastery of Prüm on September 23. Any coin associating the two names was therefore struck at the very end of Lothair's reign, at the precise moment when Benedict succeeded Leo IV: a convergent clue, not an isolated proof.^{[63] [64]}

This means two things. First, Benedict III was recognized as legitimate pope before September 29, 855, therefore from the expulsion of Anastasius on September 24, or even from his unanimous election in late August or early September. Second, the physical documentation (datable coins preserved in European collections) excludes any intermediate reign.

"One of his coins proves there was no Pope Joan between Leo IV and himself." — Horace K. Mann, Catholic Encyclopedia, art. Pope Benedict III (1907 wording, to be read as a convergent clue — not as a proof by itself)^[65]

Why contemporary silence is deafening

To these material proofs one must add an eloquent silence.

• Hincmar of Reims addressed a petition to Leo IV; on the way, his messenger learned of Leo's death and handed the petition directly to Benedict III, who judged it (Hincmar, letter 40 to Nicholas I, PL CXXVI, 85). No female pope appears in this procedure: the succession is immediate.^{[66] [67]}
• Anastasius Bibliothecarius — to whom part of the historiographical tradition attributes the continuation of the Liber Pontificalis for the neighboring pontificates (Nicholas I, Adrian II)^[68] — and who had himself been the antipope of 855, never mentions any female pope. Yet he had every reason to do so, out of hostility to the opposing party, if the matter had been real.
• On the Byzantine side too, no contemporary source — not even in Photius's Constantinople, though in open rupture with Rome after his enthronement at the end of 858 — inserts a female pope between Leo IV and Benedict III: the silence is general, in East as in West.^[69]
• No Byzantine chronicler, no Frankish annalist, no Muslim source (the Saracens knew a great deal about Rome), no Coptic, Syriac or Armenian document mentions the slightest female pope.

How Catholics and Protestants agree on the refutation

This is a rare dossier: it was closed not only by Catholic apologists, but also by the best Protestant scholars.

• On the Catholic side, around 1600-1601, the Sienese bust inscribed Johannes VIII, Femina ex Anglia was altered and replaced by a masculine figure (Pope Zachary); modern syntheses report a 1601 declaration by Clement VIII setting aside the legend, though no formal pontifical act (bull, brief or decree) has been identified in the sources consulted.^[70] Florimond de Raemond, a jurist from Bordeaux, published in 1587 his Erreur populaire de la papesse Jane, dismantling the legend by humanist textual criticism. In the 17th century, the historian Cesare Baronio, in his Annales Ecclesiastici, treated the legend as a fable.
• On the Protestant side, the Calvinist minister David Blondel published in 1647, in Amsterdam with Blaeu, his Familier esclaircissement de la question si une Femme a esté assise au Siege Papal de Rome entre Leon IV, & Benoist III (title cited in its original spelling), in which he demonstrated the impossibility of Pope Joan from the very sources of the 9th century.^[71]

The current consensus is unanimous, as summarized by The Oxford Dictionary of Popes: Pope Joan is a medieval fiction, datable to the 13th century, made impossible by the documented pontificate of Benedict III.

"David Blondel, a Protestant scholar, effectively demolished the legend in the 17th century by detailed source analysis, showing the impossibility of the story." — Oxford Dictionary of Popes^[72]

Why this is not embarrassing for the Church

The episode is interesting for more than one reason. First, because it shows the resilience of popular imagination: the legend seduced readers for three centuries even though no source supported it. Second, because it shows the critical rigor of the Catholic Church: Catholics were the first to refute the fable, out of concern for historical truth, long before it became an anti-Roman cliché. Finally, because it shows that the true history of Benedict III is, in itself, dense enough to make any extra fiction unnecessary.

Was Anastasius one man?

The Catholic Encyclopedia mentions a historiographical controversy between Hergenröther (who identifies the antipope of 855 and Adrian II's librarian as the same person) and Langen (who makes them two different persons).^[73] The modern consensus, followed by Wikipedia, Treccani and the Oxford Dictionary, retains the identification: Anastasius Bibliothecarius, the antipope of 855, and the great Greek-Latin translator under Nicholas I and Adrian II are the same man, nephew of Arsenius of Orte, trained in Greek by Eastern monks, former cardinal-priest of San Marcello.^[74]

This identification reinforces the clemency attributed to Benedict III: by not executing Anastasius, by not definitively exiling him, the papacy gave itself, a few years later, one of its finest Orientalist servants.

The exact date of Benedict III's death

The very great majority of sources, the official Holy See page, the Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia.com, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes and Wikipedia, date Benedict III's death to April 17, 858.^{[75] [76] [77]} The Italian Treccani notice gives, in an isolated formulation, the date April 7, 858, after Louis II's departure from Rome.^[78] The divergence is minor and probably linked to a liturgical-calendar calculation; the canonical reference date remains April 17, 858, retained by the Holy See.

Was Benedict III a great pope?

If by "great pope" one means a magisterial legislator comparable to Leo I or Nicholas I, the answer is no: Benedict III neither promulgated a major dogmatic decree nor fought a universal battle. If one means a pope who assumed the daily burden of a wounded see, restored its basilicas, sustained its diplomacy, welcomed its pilgrims and preserved its primacy in the East, the answer becomes clearly positive.

The historian who measures him on the scale of his century sees in him a strong transitional pope: he stabilized the papacy after a violated election, transmitted the Carolingian dossiers intact to Nicholas I, and planted the first Roman marker of the future Photian conflict. His gentleness allowed the later use of Anastasius; his firmness maintained the Roman principle of appeal; his piety rebuilt the Roman baptisteries.

A death as the Photian crisis was approaching

Benedict III died on April 17, 858, after less than thirty-two months of pontificate.^{[79] [80]} The sources mention no precise cause. The context was tense: in Constantinople, Ignatius would undergo his own deposition in November 858, and Photius would be consecrated patriarch within a few days from the lay state. The great Photian crisis would erupt before the papacy had time to reorganize.

It was Nicholas I, elected soon afterward and consecrated on April 24, 858, who would inherit this crisis and turn it into the occasion for one of the greatest pontificates of the 9th century. But it was Benedict III who had, without knowing it, planted the first marker, by refusing Ignatius automatic confirmation of Gregory of Syracuse's deposition.

A burial at the doors of Saint Peter's

Benedict III was buried before the principal door of the Vatican basilica, ante fores beati Petri.^{[81] [82]} According to the chronicle relayed by Treccani, Benedict's body was carried on men's shoulders from the Lateran to the basilica of the prince of the apostles by the deacons, and Nicholas himself, with his own hands, placed the mortal remains in the tomb prepared ante fores beati Petri.^[83]

This manual translation, from the Lateran to Saint Peter's, by the future Nicholas I in person, is not anecdotal. It speaks of the continuity of priestly friendship between the two popes: Nicholas — "dearest friend" and "most faithful counsellor" of Benedict according to Bertolini — himself placed his predecessor's body in the prepared tomb.^[84]

"Nicholas, with his own hands, placed the mortal remains of the deceased in the tomb prepared before the doors of blessed Peter." — Ottorino Bertolini, Enciclopedia dei Papi, art. Benedetto III^[85]

A forgotten pope, except as a chronological witness

In popular memory, Benedict III is today mostly "the pope who proves that Pope Joan did not exist". This reduction is both unjust and revealing. Unjust, because it masks the real density of his pontificate: basilica restorations, Frankish diplomacy, defense of Roman primacy. Revealing, because it underlines the historiographical weight that a patiently documented dossier can acquire over the long term: coins, dated letters, contemporary sources.

The Catholic Church has, paradoxically, benefited from the Pope Joan legend: by forcing its historians to argue point by point, it allowed them to document in detail a pontificate that earlier chroniclers' silence might have left in obscurity.

A hinge toward Nicholas I the Great

More deeply, Benedict III prepared two gestures that Nicholas I would carry to their historical magnitude.

The first is the defense of Roman primacy. By refusing automatic confirmation of Gregory of Syracuse's deposition, Benedict III reaffirmed an ancient principle: the case of a metropolitan cannot be closed by the Eastern patriarch alone. Nicholas I would take up this principle on a much wider field, against Photius.

The second is moral vigilance in Carolingian affairs. By resisting Hubert and Ingeltrude, by confirming Hincmar at Soissons, Benedict III set the tone for a papacy that knew how to intervene in the discipline of Frankish courts. Nicholas I would carry this vigilance as far as refusing to recognize Lothair II's divorce and the famous conflict with Archbishop Gunther of Cologne.

Without Benedict III, Nicholas I would not have found the table already set before him.

A gentleness that disarms memory

Finally, Benedict III leaves Catholic spirituality a small story of pastoral gentleness: a pope beaten, imprisoned, humiliated for four days; a persecuting antipope; and the decision to let the persecutor live, admit him to lay communion, and make future fidelity possible for him. Twenty years later, this gentleness would find its historical proof in the service of Anastasius as librarian of the Holy See.

Benedict III was neither a major doctrinal pope nor a great spiritual prince. He was a pope of crucial months: thirty-two months that saw the armed attack on the Lateran by an antipope, Roman resistance at the titulus Emiliana, clemency toward a rival, the reception of an English king with his son, the future Alfred the Great, the restoration of Roman basilicas, the confirmation of Hincmar, refusal of the fait accompli in Constantinople, and a discreet death at Saint Peter's.

His place in history is measured neither by the length of his pontificate nor by the mass of his decrees: it is measured by the density of the dossiers he handled and by the continuity he maintained between Leo IV and Nicholas I. And, by an ironic return of history, his name has become, in collective memory, the most effective chronological argument against one of the most tenacious fables of the late Middle Ages.

Related articles

• Pope Leo IV
• Saint Nicholas I the Great
• Anastasius Bibliothecarius
• Pope Adrian II
• Alfred the Great
• The Photian schism
• Hincmar of Reims
• Council of Soissons (853)
• The Papal States
• The Leonine City

Main sources

• Holy See, official file Benedict III, list of the sovereign pontiffs: 104th pope, September 29, 855 - April 17, 858, born in Rome.
• Liber Pontificalis, life of Benedict III, ed. Louis Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis, vol. II, Paris, 1892, pp. 140-150; trans. Raymond Davis, The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool University Press, Translated Texts for Historians vol. 20, 1995.
• Ottorino Bertolini, art. Benedetto III, Enciclopedia dei Papi, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, 2000.
• Horace K. Mann, art. Pope Benedict III, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2, Robert Appleton Company, 1907; New Advent transcription.
• Philipp Jaffé, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, 2nd ed. Wattenbach-Loewenfeld, Leipzig, 1885-1888, vol. I, nos. 2663-2673 (letters and acts of Benedict III; nos. 2674 ff. already belong to Nicholas I).
• MGH Epistolae, Epistolae Karolini Aevi, vol. V (9th-century papal letters).
• Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. CXV (Epistolae Benedicti III) and vol. CXXIX (Anastasius Bibliothecarius).
• J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, Oxford University Press, 1986; for the clarification on Pope Joan.
• Carolyn M. Edwards, Valerie R. Hotchkiss, The Myth of Pope Joan, Columbia University Press, 2001 (critical study of the legend).
• Annales Bertiniani, ed. MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Hanover, 1883 (for Æthelwulf and Frankish diplomacy).