Pope Stephen V (885-891)

The last pope of the Carolingian age

Stephen V closes Mann's Carolingian volume: after him comes Formosus, then Boniface VI, Stephen VI and the grim Cadaver Synod. Mann ends his chapter by writing that "the last of the Carolingian emperors died during the pontificate of Stephen VI" — the last of the Carolingian emperors died during Stephen's pontificate.^[5] He means Charles III the Fat, deposed in November 887 and dead in January 888: the last ruler of the reunified Carolingian Empire, since strictly speaking a Carolingian, Arnulf of Carinthia, would still be crowned emperor in 896. The political horizon grows so dark that it prepares the long storm of Italian anarchy.

The phrase must not turn Stephen into a mere chronological threshold. He lived the rupture firsthand. In 885, Charles the Fat still held the imperial title; in 891, Stephen crowned Guy of Spoleto emperor, not because Guy truly dominated the whole of Italy, but because Rome needed a nearby defender in a world where the Empire no longer protected anyone.^[6][7]

A pope of charity in a starving Rome

The first scene preserved by Mann is almost evangelical. At Adrian III's death, Rome suffered from drought and an invasion of locusts. The Romans saw in Stephen's holiness a hope of relief. People, bishops, clerics, senators, nobles and a crowd of both sexes went to his house, forced the doors, tore him from his refusal and led him from Santi Quattro Coronati to the Lateran.^[8]

"The bishops and clergy, the senators and nobles, the people and a crowd of both sexes unanimously declared that they wanted Stephen to be their bishop." — Horace K. Mann, summarising the Liber Pontificalis^[9]

The pontificate thus begins in an atmosphere of scarcity. The Liber Pontificalis, as Mann reports it, describes an almost empty pontifical treasury: sacred vessels, altar ornaments, precious objects, cellars and granaries were lacking.^[10] The cause was not mere ordinary poverty: pontifical residences were often plundered on the death of their holders, and the nomenclator Gregory — the nomenclator being a high officer of the pontifical palace — had already carried off a large share of the Roman treasures under John VIII.^[11]

Stephen answered with his family fortune. His father, Adrian, belonged to the Roman aristocracy; the pope drew on that inheritance to relieve the poor, ransom captives and repair churches.^[12][13] The gesture was not decorative: it shows that, in crisis, the papacy is not reducible to an abstract institution. The pastor commits his own goods when the goods of the Church have been dissipated.

A firm authority without ideological brutality

Stephen V is often eclipsed by the more dramatic popes around him. Yet his style of government has a coherence: he was neither weak nor violent. He let Emperor Charles the Fat calm down after an unauthorised consecration, but held his ground; he sent episcopal candidates to the competent metropolitans, but consecrated Theutbald himself when the archbishop of Lyons violated the rights of Langres; he condemned Photius, but demanded conflicting evidence before ruling on clerics ordained by him.^[14][15][16]

That line is precious in an age of factions. Stephen lacked the power of John VIII, but he did not abandon the Roman function: to be the recourse against arbitrariness, superstition, local oppression and doctrinal confusion.

The available sources

The numbering: Stephen V or Stephen (V) VI?

The ambiguity comes from the pope-elect Stephen of 752, who died before his consecration and was long counted or not according to the lists. The Holy See's current list calls our pope Stephen V; New Advent titles him Pope Stephen (V) VI.^[17][18] The notes sometimes keep "Stephen VI" when quoting Mann, who follows the old numbering.

This clarification is needed to avoid two confusions. The first is mistaking him for Stephen IV, pope from 816 to 817, sometimes called Stephen V in old works. The second is mistaking him for Stephen VI, pope of the Cadaver Synod, who belongs to the next generation.

Origin and formation

Stephen was born in Rome in the aristocratic district of the Via Lata. Mann presents him as the son of Adrian, a man of the Roman aristocracy, and stresses that his conduct would confirm the nobility of his birth.^[19] His education was entrusted to a kinsman, Bishop Zachary of Anagni, librarian of the Apostolic See, a figure already active in the dossiers of the ninth century.^[20][21]

Adrian II noticed his piety and his application to study, ordained him subdeacon and installed him in the Lateran palace. Mann, following the Liber Pontificalis, sums up his early reputation in a series of traits: chastity, goodness, cheerful countenance, prudence, generosity, talent, love of the poor and needy.^[22]

Santi Quattro Coronati

Marinus I ordained Stephen deacon and then priest of the title of Santi Quattro Coronati, near the Lateran.^[23] This church is not a topographical detail. It places Stephen in a Lateran Rome, close to the administrative centre of the papacy, but also in a zone laden with martyrial memory.

The future pope thus does not appear as a man suddenly emerged from obscurity. He belonged to the Roman personnel trained by Adrian II and Marinus I, two popes who had lived through the heaviest dossiers of the ninth century: Photius, the Slavs, Formosus, the Carolingians, the Italian aristocracies.

A unanimous election in the rain

Adrian III's death left Rome hungry. Mann's account, following the Liber Pontificalis, gives the election a popular force: bishops, clergy, senators, nobles, people and a crowd of both sexes wanted Stephen. They went to his house with John, bishop of Pavia and imperial envoy, forced the doors and carried him off despite the protests of father and son.^[24]

The rain that fell during the march to the Lateran was interpreted by the people as the sign of better times. In a Rome struck by drought, that detail has a spiritual and concrete value: in Roman memory, the election is associated with a hope of mercy.

Consecrated without waiting for the emperor

Stephen was consecrated the following Sunday by Formosus, then bishop of Porto.^[25] The consecration took place without waiting for the consent of Charles the Fat. The emperor, powerful only where no one resisted, first wanted to depose the new pope and sent Liutward of Vercelli with other bishops to carry out that will.^[26]

The attempt failed. Stephen was too solidly borne up by Roman affection. He then soothed Charles by sending him the election decree, signed by more than thirty bishops, cardinal priests, cardinal deacons, the lower clergy and the leading laymen.^[27] The event shows the real balance of 885: the emperor could protest, but the unanimous Roman election, already consecrated, prevailed.

"Stephen was too firmly seated in the affections of the people." — Horace K. Mann, on the failure of the imperial attempt against the election^[28]

The empty pontifical treasury

The Liber Pontificalis describes Stephen going through the palace with his bishops, the imperial legate and the honourable senate to establish the real state of the pontifical patrimony. The finding was humiliating: sacred and profane treasures were missing, liturgical vessels and altar ornaments had vanished, cellars and granaries stood empty.^[29]

Mann connects the fact with a scandalous practice: the plundering of pontifical or episcopal dwellings on the death of their owners. John IX's Roman council, in 898, would have to forbid that custom under pain of civil and religious sanctions.^[30]

The family fortune in the service of the poor

Faced with famine, Stephen turned to his father and relieved the needy with his family's resources.^[31] New Advent sums up the gesture in three directions: feeding the poor, ransoming captives and repairing churches.^[32]

This point deserves emphasis: in the history of the popes, personal charity is no private detail. It manifests the unity between office and person. Stephen could have invoked the state of the treasury to defer aid; he did the opposite. He paid out of his own house so that the Church could go on serving.

The locusts: human remedies and prayer

The agricultural crisis was tied to an invasion of locusts already begun under Adrian III. Stephen first tried a material means: he offered five or six denarii for every pint of locusts brought in.^[33] The measure set off a gathering activity, but did not suffice to stop the scourge.

The pope then turned to prayer. Mann reports that Stephen went to the oratory of Saint Gregory, near Saint Peter's, where the saint's couch was kept; he prayed with tears, blessed water, entrusted it to the mansionaries — the guardian-sacristans in charge of the basilica — and ordered that it be given to the people for sprinkling the fields while imploring divine mercy.^[34] The Liber Pontificalis account says the plague ceased.

To a modern reader, the episode may seem strange. Yet it must not be flattened. Stephen did not set natural means against supernatural ones: he tried both. That is precisely the traditional Catholic logic in the face of calamities: act as far as possible, then ask of God what human action cannot master.

Silence in the house of God

The spiritually strongest passage of the pontificate is the sermon preserved against chattering in churches and against magical practices. In it Stephen recalls that the church is the house of prayer, the place where graces are poured out on those who approach with piety, and not the space for vain conversations.^[35]

"When you assemble in the place of prayer, remain in a recollected silence, your heart intent on supplication to God." — Pope Stephen V, sermon reported by the Liber Pontificalis^[36]

The formula is simple, but it touches a very concrete point of Christian life. In a restless city, starving and politically unstable, Stephen begins by restoring the meaning of the sanctuary: the church is no profane forum. It is the place where the sinner asks pardon and where the priest offers the suffrages of the people.

Against incantations

The same sermon condemns incantations and the consulting of demons. Stephen cites Scripture against sorcerers and takes up Saint Paul's question: what fellowship has light with darkness, what accord has Christ with Belial?^[37] The tone is grave because the stakes are baptismal: to turn to demons is to act as if Christ were not enough.

"He who, despising Christ, returns after the manner of the pagans to consult demons, thereby avows himself not to be a Christian." — Pope Stephen V, sermon reported by Mann^[38]

This preaching gives the article its spiritual centre. Stephen V was not only an administrator; he was a pope who spoke to the people during Mass to correct concrete sins: liturgical irreverence, idle words, superstition, magic. The ninth-century pastor here meets very present-day battles: the Catholic faith tolerates no double allegiance to Christ and to occult practices.

The deposition of Charles III

In November 887, Charles III the Fat was deposed at the diet of Tribur by his nobles, under the leadership of Arnulf of Carinthia. Mann describes an emperor physically and intellectually diminished, unable to hold the enlarged Empire he had inherited.^[39] Charles died on 13 January 888.

His fall burst the West into several powers. Arnulf became king of Germany; the West Franks chose Odo, count of Paris, to the detriment of Charles the Simple; Cisjurane and Transjurane Burgundy structured itself around Boso, then Rudolf; Italy tore itself between Berengar of Friuli and Guy of Spoleto.^[40]

Guy of Spoleto: an Italian choice, a choice of necessity

Guy of Spoleto belonged to a Frankish lineage settled in central Italy and grown ever more autonomous. Close to Rome by his position, backed by networks such as that of Fulk of Reims, he had already been adopted by Stephen as his "only son" around 886.^[41]

After battles against Berengar, Guy had himself proclaimed king of Italy at Pavia at the end of 888 or the beginning of 889. The assembly's first decrees affirmed that the honour of the holy Roman Church must be preserved, for it would be absurd that the head of the whole Church and the refuge of the weak should be harassed.^[42]

On 21 February 891, Stephen crowned Guy emperor.^[43][44] That coronation did not mean Guy was master of the whole West. Berengar still held his duchy with Arnulf's backing; the Saracens remained active in the south; the Greeks advanced in southern Italy. But for Rome, Guy was the available protector.

Louis the Blind and Provence

Stephen also intervened in the Provençal dossier. After Boso's death in January 887, his son Louis was still a minor; his mother, Ermengard, sought the recognition John VIII had refused Boso. The acts of the council of Valence of August 890 affirm that Pope Stephen, "on whom rests the care of all the Churches", exhorted by word and by writing the bishops of Cisalpine Gaul to elect Louis king, moved even to tears by the telling of the region's miseries.^[45]

That intervention did not make the papacy a merely Italian player. Even weakened, Rome remained a centre of legitimation for kingdoms seeking a form of Christian order after the death of the Carolingian emperor.

The reversal after John VIII

John VIII had approved Methodius's Slavonic liturgy in Industriae tuae in 880, while framing it.^[46] Under Stephen V, the situation changed. Britannica sums up the result harshly: against the Moravian Church, Stephen endorsed the ban on the Slav liturgy previously sanctioned by John VIII, which pushed the Slavs toward the Christian East.^[47]

Mann gives the context: Stephen's letter to Svatopluk condemned the use of the Slavonic tongue in the sacred liturgy, while praising the prince for choosing the vicar of Saint Peter as his chief patron among the princes of the world.^[48]

A decision to re-read with the neighbouring articles

The risk would be to caricature Stephen as an enemy of the Slavs, or John VIII as a liturgical revolutionary. The historical substance is more complex: the Moravian mission was caught between Germanic bishops, the memory of Methodius, Svatopluk's politics, vernacular liturgy and competing jurisdictions.

The certain fact must be retained: Stephen V did not extend John VIII's opening in the same terms. That inflexion contributed to the Latin failure in Moravia and to the spread of Methodius's disciples toward Bulgaria, where the Slavonic tradition would find another future.

The letter to Basil I

Adrian III had received from Emperor Basil a stern letter, inspired according to Mann by Photius, attacking notably the election of Marinus I because he had been bishop of Caere before Rome. Stephen answered that letter firmly.^[49]

The reply affirmed a classical distinction between temporal and spiritual power: the emperor had received earthly affairs from God; the pope, through Peter, had received spiritual solicitude. Stephen therefore asked Basil not to make himself judge of bishops or of the holy Roman Church.^[50]

"As you have been by God set over worldly affairs, so through Peter, prince of the apostles, have we been placed by God over spiritual concerns." — Pope Stephen V, letter to Basil I after Mann^[51]

The text was no abstract theory of primacy. It was born of a very concrete question: could the Byzantine emperor invalidate or ridicule the election of a Roman pope? Stephen answered no, while also asking for naval aid against the Saracens — a sign that Rome did not confuse spiritual autonomy with political isolation.^[52]

Leo VI deposes Photius

When the letter reached Constantinople, Basil was dead. His son Leo VI the Wise, unfavourable to Photius, used the occasion to depose him, exile him and install his young brother Stephen as patriarch.^[53] Ignatius's partisans then wrote to Rome to ask how to treat those who had received Photian ordinations under constraint.

Stylianus of Neocaesarea's letter called Stephen "most holy and most blessed", "Lord and oecumenical Pope", then "sacred and venerated head". It asked mercy for those who had accepted Photius not freely, but under pressure from princes.^[54]

Stephen refuses hasty judgment

Stephen replied that he was not surprised at Photius's expulsion, already condemned, but that he wanted to understand the truth: the bishops' letter spoke of expulsion, the emperor's of resignation. Before pronouncing, he asked that bishops of both parties be sent to Rome.^[55]

"The Roman Church has been set as a model and example to the other Churches. What she defines must remain inviolable for ever; it is therefore right that she should pronounce only after careful examination." — Pope Stephen V, reply to Stylianus according to Mann^[56]

That passage gives one of the finest traits of the pontificate. Stephen strongly affirmed Rome, but refused arbitrariness. Primacy is no licence to judge quickly; on the contrary, it obliges one to judge better, after inquiry hearing both sides. The dossier would still be open at his death and would pass to Formosus.^[57]

Langres against the arbitrariness of Aurelian of Lyons

The Langres case shows Stephen as a recourse against metropolitan abuse. On the death of Isaac, bishop of Langres, Archbishop Aurelian of Lyons consecrated Egilon without consulting clergy or people. After Egilon's death, clergy and people unanimously elected the deacon Theutbald and asked the pope to consecrate him.^[58]

Stephen began by respecting the metropolitan's rights: he sent Theutbald back to Aurelian, asking for a consecration if the election was canonical and without impediment. Aurelian temporised, then furtively imposed another stranger. This time the people of Langres returned to Rome; Stephen consecrated Theutbald and wrote to Fulk of Reims to install him.^[59]

The lesson is clear: Rome does not first suppress local rights; it protects them against those who violate them. The pope appears here as guarantor of clergy, people and canonical order against an intermediate authority grown arbitrary.

Bordeaux, Ravenna and the discipline of translations

In canon law, a "translation" is the transfer of a bishop from one see to another: it is this point of discipline that the next two cases put at stake.

Stephen also dealt with the case of Frotar of Bordeaux, authorised under John VIII to occupy Bourges because of Norman ravages, but who had since become a usurper of Poitiers and ill received at Bourges. The pope decided he must return to his original see or incur excommunication.^[60]

At Ravenna, he blamed Romanus for wanting to elect his own successor against the canons; but he also explained to his successor Dominicus that the consecration of a bishop of Piacenza during Ravenna's vacancy had not been meant to diminish Ravenna's rights.^[61] Here again the line is constant: correct the abuse without stealing legitimate rights.

The world of Atenulf

The end of the pontificate was darkened by the disorders of southern Italy. Greeks, Saracens, Lombard princes and local ambitions mingled. Mann uses Erchempert to tell the career of Atenulf, who seized Capua, dealt with Athanasius of Naples, sought Guy of Spoleto's backing, then turned to Stephen promising to submit to the Roman See, restore Gaeta and help against the Saracens of the Garigliano.^[62]

Erchempert dryly adds that Atenulf forgot every one of his promises.^[63] He then plundered Monte Cassino's goods in Capuan territory. Abbot Angelarius sent Erchempert to Rome; he returned with the pontifical blessing, a privilege for the monastery and letters of exhortation addressed to the despoiler.^[64]

A papacy that protects monasteries

The episode lacks the grandeur of imperial coronations, but it says something essential: even in Italian chaos, recourse to Rome kept its force. Monte Cassino had been destroyed by the Saracens in 883 and began to be rebuilt in 886; facing local lords, the abbey sought in the pope a moral and juridical protector.^[65]

Stephen had no army sufficient to pacify southern Italy. But he could bless, confirm, write, recall the law, support the monks. In an age of violence, that protective authority was already much.

An answer to Liutbert of Mainz

One decree attributed to Stephen V is particularly important. Consulted by Liutbert, archbishop of Mainz, on the use of hot iron or boiling water in a given case, Stephen answered negatively. Mann judges that the principles invoked amount to condemning the whole system of ordeals, so beloved of the northern peoples.^[66]

"It is ours to judge of crimes that are known either by the confession of the culprit, or by the testimony of witnesses. What remains wholly hidden must be left to the judgment of Him who alone knows the hearts of the children of men." — Pope Stephen V, reply to Liutbert of Mainz^[67]

A profoundly Christian juridical intuition

That answer deserves a place apart. The ordeal claims to wrest from God a judicial manifestation through physical trial. Stephen refused: the human judge must judge what is known through confession or testimony; what remains hidden belongs to God. The distinction is simple, but it protects both human justice and divine transcendence.

Mann notes that the Church did not abolish ordeals at a stroke, any more than she abolished slavery in a single rupture. But under her direction, life-endangering trials were first set aside, then the appeal to "judgments of God" was gradually abandoned.^[68]

Alfred's alms

Stephen's pontificate finally shows the permanence of the English link with Rome. Despite the hardships of the journey, the Anglo-Saxons kept sending alms to Saint Peter's. Mann quotes the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: in 887, Æthelhelm bore to Rome the alms of the West Saxons and of King Alfred; in 888, Beocca did the same, while Queen Æthelswith died on the way and rests at Pavia; in 889, there was no journey, save two couriers sent by Alfred with letters; in 890, Abbot Beornhelm bore the alms.^[69]

That continuity extends the dossier already visible under Marinus I, who had exempted the Schola Anglorum from tribute at Alfred's request.^[70] For Christians of Wessex, Rome remained Peter's tomb, the centre of communion and the place where royal almsgiving took on a spiritual dimension.

A sign of lived catholicity

On a fragmented political map, those pilgrimages give another image of Europe: not only rival kingdoms, but peoples still looking toward Rome. Stephen received English envoys, letters from the East, appeals from Langres, requests from Provence and promises from southern Italy. Even weakened, the papacy remained the place where distresses converged.

Death and epitaph

Stephen died in Rome on 14 September 891 according to the Holy See's current entry and Britannica.^[71][72] Mann, who gives no exact day, notes his tomb in the portico of the old Basilica of Saint Peter.^[73]

His epitaph, preserved by Mallius, asks the visitor coming to pray to Peter to look upon the place where a holy body rests. It affirms that Stephen ruled "twice three years" the people and the City, did what pleased God, and that his gentle soul rose triumphant to heaven.^[74]

"This tomb holds the sacred remains of the great pontiff Stephen V, who for twice three years ruled the people and the City, and did what was pleasing in the sight of God." — Epitaph of Stephen V, preserved by Mallius^[75]

What he hands on to Formosus

Stephen handed on to Formosus an almost ungovernable world: divided Italy, Roman factions, the unclosed Photian dossier, Saracens in the south, Greeks expanding, imperial rivalries. Formosus would inherit those contradictions and become himself, after his death, the symbolic victim of Roman chaos.

Yet it would be unjust to reduce Stephen to that transition. His own legacy holds in four points:

1. Charity: he gave his family fortune for the poor, captives and churches.
2. Roman freedom: he held his election despite Charles the Fat's reaction.
3. Prudent primacy: he affirmed Rome against Basil and Photius, but demanded inquiry before judging.
4. Christian justice: he refused ordeals as a means of forcing God's judgment.

Mann's phrase on the end of the Carolingian age thus remains true: after Stephen, the horizon darkened. But this pope was not the cause of the darkening. He was one of the last pastors who, in the gathering night, held together prayer, law, charity and Roman authority.

• Pope Saint Adrian III (884-885) — immediate predecessor, died on the way to Charles the Fat.
• Pope Marinus I (882-884) — context of Formosus, Photius and Charles the Fat.
• Pope John VIII (872-882) — great preceding figure, Slavonic liturgy and defence of Rome.
• Pope Formosus — Stephen V's successor, future centre of the Formosan crisis.
• Cadaver Synod — extreme consequence of the war of Roman factions after Formosus.