Pope Stephen IX (1057-1058)

Eight months continuing the reform of Leo IX

A pontificate of eight months might seem negligible. Stephen IX left neither a great encyclical, nor an ecumenical council, nor a doctrinal corpus — fewer than twenty bulls are attributed to him.^[8] Yet the New Catholic Encyclopedia ranks him, alongside Leo IX and Nicholas II, among the decisive personalities of the beginnings of the Gregorian reform.

"Despite his brief pontificate he may be accounted with Leo IX and Nicholas II as one of the decisive personalities in the early stages of the gregorian reform." — J. Gilchrist and U.-R. Blumenthal, New Catholic Encyclopedia, entry "Stephen IX (X), Pope"^[9]

This place is explained by the moment he occupies. Between the death of Victor II in July 1057 and the election of Nicholas II in 1058-1059, the Roman Church went through a hinge period: it was precisely in those months that the idea matured of a pontifical election removed both from Roman factions and from imperial tutelage. Stephen IX is the bridge between the imperial reform of Leo IX and the properly Gregorian reform.

The last pope of the house of Lorraine, legate of the schism of 1054

Frederick of Lorraine was no unknown thrust forward by chance. He had seen at close hand the weightiest event of the century for Christian unity: the rupture with Byzantium. In 1054, he was part of the Roman legation to Constantinople, alongside Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida and Archbishop Peter of Amalfi.^[10][11]

"He was sent by Leo IX on the famous embassy to Constantinople (1054) which terminated in the final separation of the Eastern and Western Churches." — Horace K. Mann, The Catholic Encyclopedia, article "Pope Stephen (IX) X"^[12]

To then bear the tiara was to entrust the government of the Latin Church to a man who had personally experienced how fragile and divided Christendom was. This experience marked his policy: prudent openness toward Byzantium against the Normans, firmness on discipline, defense of the Roman liturgy.

An abbot of Monte Cassino on the See of Peter

Finally, Stephen IX is the first of the three popes that the famous monastery of Monte Cassino would give to the Church within sixty years — before Victor III (1086-1087) and Gelasius II (1118-1119).^[13] Once elected pope, he kept the abbey, a sign that the 11th-century reform was rooted in reformed Benedictine monasticism as much as in the pontifical court. Monte Cassino, guardian of an immense library and of a spiritual prestige unequalled in Italy, thus became one of the laboratories of the reform.

A son of the ducal house of Lorraine

Frederick was born around 1020, into one of the greatest princely families of the Empire. He was the son of Gozelo, duke of Lower Lotharingia, and the younger brother of Godfrey the Bearded, duke of Lorraine.^[14][15] The house belonged to the line of the counts of the Ardennes, which the old notices even traced back to the Carolingians through Louis the Stammerer.^[16]

On the maternal ancestry, caution is required. The Catholic Encyclopedia names a mother "Junca, daughter of Berengar II, king of Italy," but the scholarly Treccani notice leaves the mother unnamed.^[17][18] The honest historian will retain the certain — a great Lotharingian prince, brother of the future margrave of Tuscany — and flag the debated rather than embroider an unverifiable maternal genealogy.

Canon and archdeacon of Liège

Destined for the Church from a very young age, Frederick received his formation at Liège, one of the great intellectual centers of the Empire. There he became a canon, then archdeacon of the cathedral chapter of Saint Lambert, under the episcopate of the famous Bishop Wazo, who died in 1048.^[19][20]

Liège is no detail. The school of Liège then trained an elite of cultivated clerics, versed in law, Scripture, and theology. Frederick therefore arrived in Rome not as a courtier, but as an educated archdeacon, already practiced in the ecclesiastical government of a great imperial diocese. This Liège formation even earned Frederick the first scholarly monograph ever devoted to this pontificate: the archivist-paleographer Ulysse Robert, a former student of the École des chartes, published in 1876 a first study and then, in 1892 in Brussels, a History of Pope Stephen X which he significantly entitled A Belgian Pope — a tribute to these Liège origins, even though Belgium itself would only exist as a state eight centuries later.^[21] Belgian historiography would return to it a century later: the historian Georges Despy devoted in 1953 to those same Lotharingian years a more narrowly focused archival study.^[22]

Chancellor and librarian of the Roman Church

Around 1050-1051, his cousin Leo IX, the first great reforming pope of the century, noticed him and drew him to Rome. He made him librarian and chancellor of the Roman Church — the highest office of the pontifical chancery.^[23][24] Pontifical documents bear his signature from March 9, 1051 to December 21, 1053.^[25]

This office placed him at the heart of the reforming machine. He accompanied Leo IX on his apostolic journeys across Europe, his itinerant synods against simony, his struggle for the discipline of the clergy. It was there, in the immediate entourage of the Lotharingian pope, that Frederick was trained in the cause he would defend all his life.

Legate to Constantinople in 1054

At the beginning of 1054, Leo IX designated Frederick as one of the three legates charged with a mission to Constantinople: to settle the dispute between Rome and Patriarch Michael Cerularius, against a background of liturgical quarrels (unleavened bread, the Filioque, discipline) and political tensions in southern Italy. The delegation brought together Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, an uncompromising theologian, Archbishop Peter of Amalfi, and Frederick, the chancellor.^[26][27]

The mission turned into tragedy. On July 16, 1054, Humbert laid on the altar of Hagia Sophia a bull of excommunication against the patriarch, who replied with an anathema. Leo IX having died in the meantime, the canonical value of the act is debated, but the event consecrated a lasting rupture between the two Churches.^[28] Frederick's personal role in the legation remains, for its part, less documented than Humbert's; the sources place him in the delegation without detailing his own action.^[29]

Monk, then abbot of Monte Cassino

On his return from the East, Frederick was robbed on the road by a count of the Abruzzi — the Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of the count of Chieti.^[30] Above all, the death of Leo IX (1054) deprived him of his protector. To escape the suspicions of Emperor Henry III, who distrusted a great Lotharingian prince, brother of the turbulent Godfrey, Frederick withdrew to Monte Cassino and became a monk there toward the end of 1055.^[31][32]

After the death of Henry III (1056), the way cleared. In the spring of 1057, the community elected him abbot of Monte Cassino — the date of May 23, 1057 is put forward for his abbatial election — and Pope Victor II created him cardinal-priest of San Crisogono in June 1057.^[33][34] Within weeks, Frederick thus passed from the cloister to the Sacred College, and soon to the throne of Peter.

A Roman election without imperial approval

Victor II died at Arezzo on July 28, 1057.^[35] A few days later, at Rome, the electors chose the abbot of Monte Cassino. The crucial point is the procedure: for the first time in a long while, the pope was chosen without seeking the prior agreement of the imperial court.^[36][37] The scene itself remained famous: out of regard for propriety, Frederick had first put forward the name of Hildebrand, then absent from Rome; but nobles, clergy, and people, impatient, rushed in mass to the Palatine from August 2 and demanded the abbot of Monte Cassino himself, who was elected on the spot and led in triumph to the Lateran before being ordained the next day.^[38]

The context made this gesture possible. Henry III had died in 1056, leaving the Empire to his son Henry IV, a child placed under the regency of the Empress Agnes. The imperial minority weakened the Germanic tutelage over Rome, and the new elect's brother, Godfrey the Bearded, now master of Tuscany, offered weighty protection. Rome itself welcomed the news with enthusiasm; the imperial court, for its part, received the news of this free election with displeasure.^[39]

The scope of the gesture must nevertheless be qualified. Frederick almost immediately sent the deacon Hildebrand to seek, from the regent Agnes, recognition of his election — recognition which was indeed subsequently granted.^[40] According to Gilchrist and Blumenthal, to read in this episode a first step deliberately aimed at freeing the papacy from the Empire would therefore be exaggerated: the immediate concern was doubtless less to defy the Empire than to set aside the interference of the Roman nobility and to secure Godfrey's military protection.^[41] The election of Stephen IX nonetheless remains a precedent in fact, from which the 1059 decree reserving the election to the cardinals would draw the institutional consequences.

The choice of the name Stephen

Elected on August 2 and consecrated on August 3, 1057, Frederick took the name Stephen, in honor of the saint celebrated that day — Pope Saint Stephen I (martyr of the 3rd century), commemorated on August 2.^[42][43] The choice was not insignificant: a Lotharingian prince become an Italian abbot inscribed himself in the memory of the Roman martyr popes, a way of claiming the continuity of the apostolic see.

Stephen IX or Stephen X?

The reader will meet this pope under two numbers: Stephen IX or Stephen X. The divergence comes from another Stephen, elected in 752 but who died before his episcopal consecration, who was for a time counted in the list, then removed. Depending on whether he is included or not, ours becomes the ninth or the tenth Stephen.

Today, the Holy See officially retains Stephen IX, while mentioning the old numbering in parentheses ("Stephen IX/X").^[44] Works prior to the 1960s most often call him Stephen X. A piquant detail: he remains, to this day, the last pope to have borne the name Stephen.

The struggle against simony and Nicolaitism

Having become pope, Stephen IX continued without break the work of Leo IX.^[45][46] He gathered several synods against the three evils of the time: simony, Nicolaitism (marriage or concubinage of clerics), and consanguineous unions.^[47] The notices stress his zeal in strengthening the discipline of ecclesiastical celibacy.^[48]

This firmness is not an isolated moral detail. For the 11th-century reformers, a clergy bought and married is a clergy enslaved to lay powers and family interests. Restoring celibacy and fighting simony meant giving the Church back her freedom. Stephen IX inscribed his short pontificate in this logic.

Peter Damian, cardinal-bishop of Ostia

The most striking act of government of Stephen IX is doubtless the promotion of Peter Damian. In the autumn of 1057, the pope imposed on the hermit of Fonte Avellana — one of the greatest spiritual masters and one of the harshest scourges of clerical corruption of the century — the office of cardinal-bishop of Ostia, first of the cardinal-bishops.^[49][50]

Peter Damian, who aspired to solitude, accepted only reluctantly, under the pressure of obedience; his own letters preserve the trace of this resistance.^[51] By placing such a man at the summit of the cardinal hierarchy, Stephen IX gave the reform one of its strongest voices. Peter Damian would be, under the following pontificates, one of the doctrinal pillars of the Gregorian cause.

Hildebrand, Humbert, and the reforming circle

Around Stephen IX gravitated the circle that would make the Gregorian reform. In it were found Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, companion of the 1054 legation; Anselm of Lucca; and above all Archdeacon Hildebrand, the future Gregory VII, whom the pope employed in the most delicate missions.^[52][53]

"The pope and his closest adviser intended to continue the work of reform begun by Leo IX, which they had both supported, working together with two other leading figures such as Peter Damian and Anselm of Lucca." — Enciclopedia dei Papi, entry "Stefano IX"^[54]

The bond between Stephen IX and Hildebrand was so close that, dying, he would command that no successor be elected before the return of the future Gregory VII. The brief pontificate of 1057-1058 is, in this sense, a dress rehearsal for the great reform to come.

The defense of the Roman liturgy at Monte Cassino

As guardian of Monte Cassino, which he continued to administer, Stephen IX also watched over liturgical unity. Tradition reports that he made Romano-Gregorian chant prevail over Ambrosian chant in the abbey, a mark of his concern to bind the great Benedictine monastery firmly to the usage of Rome.^[55][56]

This concern for the Roman liturgy prolongs the logic of all his action: centering the life of the Church on the See of Peter, against the particularisms that local powers like to maintain.

The Norman question and the opening toward Byzantium

On the political plane, Stephen IX inherited the great problem of Leo IX: the Normans carving up southern Italy, by whom Leo IX had suffered defeat and captivity at Civitate (1053). The new pope took up again the plan to drive them from southern Italy.^[57][58]

For this, he envisaged an alliance resting on the Tuscan power of his brother and, perhaps, on a rapprochement with Byzantium — the Greek Empire having the same interest in containing the Normans. He dispatched to Constantinople, as legate, Desiderius, the future abbot of Monte Cassino and future Pope Victor III; but the mission, having reached Bari, was interrupted by the news of the pope's death.^[59] The anti-Norman plan would remain unfinished.

Godfrey the Bearded, duke and margrave of Tuscany

Stephen IX cannot be understood without his brother. Godfrey the Bearded, one of the greatest feudatories of the Empire, long in revolt against Henry III, had married in April 1054 Beatrice of Lorraine, widow of Margrave Boniface of Tuscany.^[60] Through this marriage, Godfrey became master of Tuscany and of the immense Canossa patrimony — the very one from which, a generation later, the famous Matilda of Canossa, Godfrey's stepdaughter, would come.

This alliance made the house of Lorraine the first power of central Italy. When Frederick became pope, a whole princely network thus deployed itself behind the See of Peter: a brother margrave of Tuscany, a considerable patrimony, and the capacity to protect Rome against factions and against the Normans.

An imperial plan?

Several sources lend Stephen IX a daring design: to make his brother Godfrey an emperor, or even to confer the imperial crown on the house of Lorraine, taking advantage of the minority of Henry IV.^[61][62] At the beginning of 1058, the pope was moreover heading toward Tuscany, and some notices mention a plan for a fraternal coronation. The hypothesis rests notably on a dated fact: in the wake of the election, the margrave of Tuscany annexed Spoleto and Camerino, bringing under his authority almost all the territory from Mantua and Ferrara to the Roman lands. "What more natural," wrote the historian Ferdinand Gregorovius, "than to think that the new pope intended the imperial crown for his brother — that Frederick had been made pope solely with this object?"^[63]

This point must be treated with measure. The reality of a genuine "imperial plan" is debated among historians: how far the pope was ready to go is unknown, and the premature death froze everything in hypothesis. What is certain is that the boundary between spiritual reform and dynastic ambition was, at that time, narrow — and that the reforming papacy would precisely have to learn to free itself from family interests to win its freedom.

The treasure of Monte Cassino

In March 1058, a revealing episode preceded the pope's death. Stephen IX ordered the provost of Monte Cassino to send to Rome the gold and silver of the abbey — doubtless to finance his political and military plans. But the Romans opposed it and seized the treasure by force; seized with scruple or yielding to pressure, the pope ended by restoring it to the monastery.^[64][65]

The anecdote, transmitted by the chronicle of Monte Cassino, shows the tensions of the moment: a reforming pope mobilizing the resources of his abbey, and a Roman city jealous of its own interests. It also illuminates the material fragility of a papacy still far from fully sovereign.

The oath imposed on the Romans concerning Hildebrand

Before leaving Rome for Tuscany, Stephen IX, already ill, took a capital precaution for the future of the reform. He made the Roman clergy and people swear that, in the event of his death, no successor would be elected before the return of Hildebrand, then on legation to the German court.^[66][67]

"Seeing death approaching, he asked that after his passing they should not proceed to the election of the new pope before the return of Hildebrand." — Enciclopedia dei Papi, entry "Stefano IX"^[68]

This oath says everything about the dying pope's confidence in the future Gregory VII — and about his fear of seeing the Roman factions regain the upper hand. What followed proved him right: barely was he dead when the Tusculan aristocracy had the antipope Benedict X elected, before the reformers restored order with Nicholas II.^[69]

Illness, rumor of poison, and the end at Florence

Struck by a grave illness from which he only partially recovered, Stephen IX made his way to Florence, to his brother Godfrey. There he died on March 29, 1058, after less than eight months of pontificate.^[70][71] Tradition reports that he was assisted on his deathbed by Hugh of Cluny, the great Cluniac abbot.^[72] The contemporary German chronicler Lambert of Hersfeld regretted that this early death disappointed all those who, for years, had seen no one take in hand the government of the Roman Church with more general satisfaction, nor amid a more unanimous expectation of a glorious reign.^[73]

As often for the popes of this troubled period, a rumor of poisoning circulated — but it deserves to be precisely situated. It is not the modern encyclopedic notices that report it: it is the Annales Romani, a chronicle hostile to the reformers, which recount that the Romans, having seized a treasure that Stephen IX was said to have brought back from Constantinople, sent in pursuit of him a certain Braczutus of Trastevere to poison him as he left the city, indignant.^[74] Modern historiography judges this account severely: it comes from a partisan source hostile to the Gregorian cause, confuses the episode — quite real — of the Monte Cassino treasure claimed a few days earlier, and slanders in passing a known partisan of Hildebrand.^[75] The poison rumor must therefore be held as a calumny without probative value; the hypothesis of an illness remains the soberest and most probable.

A burial recovered during the works of 1357

Stephen IX was buried in the Florence cathedral of that time, the church of Santa Reparata.^[76][77] Nearly three centuries later, in August 1357, excavations conducted for the building of the new Duomo — the present Santa Maria del Fiore — brought to light, near the altar of Saint Zenobius, a tomb which the funerary inscription made it possible to identify without difficulty as that of Pope Stephen. The Florentine chronicler Matteo Villani reports that the body still wore the pontifical clasp adorned with precious stones, a mitre on the head, and a ring on the finger; the relics were then entrusted to the canons for an honorable burial, without its ever being known whether it took place.^[78]

Whether one sees in it a simple fact of funerary archaeology or a trace of the pious memory attached to this pope, the episode tells of the lasting memory left by this passing pontiff: a Lotharingian prince, an Italian abbot, dead far from Rome, whose pontifical insignia rested, three centuries long, in the heart of Florence.

The Gregorian reform before Gregory VII

The first lesson is that the Gregorian reform did not begin with Gregory VII. It was already entirely in germ under Stephen IX: struggle against simony and Nicolaitism, promotion of the great reforming figures (Peter Damian, Humbert, Hildebrand), defense of the Roman liturgy, will for freedom with regard to lay powers. Stephen IX did not invent the reform — Leo IX launched it — but he ensured its continuity at the most fragile moment, that of an imperial vacancy.

The emancipation of the Apostolic See

The second lesson is institutional. By having himself elected without the approval of the imperial court, then by organizing his succession around the oath concerning Hildebrand, Stephen IX set a milestone toward the electoral autonomy of the papacy. The 1059 decree of Nicholas II, which would reserve the election of the pope to the cardinals, would only codify what the pontificate of Stephen IX had begun in fact.^[79]

This eight-month pope is therefore less an accident than a decisive link. He holds the See of Peter exactly where the Church learns to choose for herself, to free herself from Roman families as from Germanic tutelage, and to prepare the great combat for the freedom of the Church embodied by the Investiture Controversy.

• Pope Saint Leo IX — Frederick's cousin and protector, the first great pope of the reform.
• Pope Victor II — The immediate predecessor, the last pope in the direct orbit of Henry III.
• Pope Nicholas II — The legitimate successor, author of the 1059 decree on pontifical election.
• Pope Saint Gregory VII — The Hildebrand whose return the dying Stephen IX made them await.
• Gregorian Reform — The great movement of purification of the Church of which this pontificate is a link.
• Investiture Controversy — The conflict in which the Church would defend her freedom to appoint her pastors.