Pope John VIII (872-882)

The pope who crowns three emperors in seven years

Seven years after his election, John VIII had already placed the imperial crown on three successive Carolingian heads: Charles the Bald on December 25, 875 at Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, Louis the Stammerer in September 878 during his French exile, and Charles the Fat on February 12, 881 in Rome.^[10][11] No pope before him had been engaged to this point in the effective designation of the temporal head of the West - Leo III had crowned Charlemagne in 800 in a unique scene; John VIII made the imperial coronation an ordinary act of pontifical government.

This policy has a logic. The Carolingian Empire broke up into three kingdoms by the Treaty of Verdun of 843; each branch claimed imperial inheritance upon the death of Louis II of Italy (August 12, 875). John VIII chooses the candidate who can, in each generation, protect Italy against the Saracens and guarantee to the Holy See the territories recognized by Carolingian donations.^[12] What posterity will call Sacrum Imperium Romanum takes, with John VIII, its lasting face: an emperor of the West who must receive his crown from the bishop of Rome.

The pope of the armed defense of Rome

John VIII is also the first medieval pope to personally lead a maritime war. Faced with the inability of the Carolingians to protect central Italy, he founded a pontifical fleet of dromones and sent it to sea.^[13] In March 877, his fleet confronted the Saracens near Cape Circe, in alliance with the ships of Amalfi and Byzantium: eighteen Muslim galleys captured, six hundred galley slaves released.^[14][15] He fortified a veritable rampart around the basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, giving birth to the “city of John”, Joannispolis, still mentioned in the 13th century.^[16]

“In front of the very gates of Rome, the Saracens ravaged the vineyards, burned the farms, took the poor into slavery. Pope John fortified the basilica of the Doctor of Nations, surrounded it with a wall, and called this new city by his own name. "

• Summary of the Catholic Encyclopedia according to the Annales Bertiniani and the Liber Pontificalis^[17]

This is not an anecdotal detail: it is the invention of the medieval papacy as a territorial power capable of defending, by arms, its own lands when civil powers fail. The doctrine is sober - the pope does not fight to conquer but to protect the poor and the pilgrims - but it prepares, distantly, the crusades.

The pope who opens the Slavonic liturgy (Industriae tuae, 880)

The Moravian file is the other great fact of the pontificate. When Nicholas the Great welcomed the brothers Cyril and Methodius, the liturgy in the Slavonic language remained suspect in the eyes of the Bavarian bishops. In 870, Methodius had been imprisoned by the Frankish episcopate. John VIII learned of the imprisonment in the summer of 873, had him released, then received him in Rome in 880 when the Latin clergy attempted a second time to oust him.^[18]

The bull Industriae tuae, dated June 880 and addressed to the Moravian prince Svatopluk, states:

“It is in no way contrary to the true faith or doctrine to sing the liturgy, to read the Holy Gospel and the Holy Readings of the New Testament in the Slavonic language, provided that they are well translated and interpreted. He who created the three main languages-Hebrew, Greek, and Latin-also created all other languages ​​for his praise and glory. "

• Pope John VIII, Industriae tuae, June 880, to Svatopluk of Moravia^[19][20]

It is one of the oldest magisterial acts in favor of the liturgical plurality of vernacular languages. The pope recalls, however, that the Gospel and the Epistle must be read “in Latin first” in assemblies where Slavs and Latins coexist - the freedom granted is not linguistic separatism. A thousand years later, Saint John Paul II will take up the gesture of John VIII in his encyclical Slavorum Apostoli (1985) to make Cyril and Methodius the co-patrons of Europe with Saint Benedict.^[21]

The pope who reconciles Rome and Photios

In 869-870, the IVth Council of Constantinople condemned Photios, the patriarch imposed by the Byzantine court, and restored Ignatius. On the death of Ignatius (877), Photios again became patriarch with the agreement of the people and the clergy, and the emperor Basil I the Macedonian asked Rome for official recognition of the new patriarchate.

John VIII accepts. In 879 he sent three legates: Pierre, cardinal of Saint-Chrysogonus, Paul, bishop of Ancona, and Eugene, bishop of Ostia.^[22][23] The council of Hagia Sophia, held in Constantinople in November 879 - March 880, reinstates Photios, condemns any addition to the Symbol of Nicea-Constantinople (targeting in particular the Filioque as it began to be added in Spain and Francia), and restores communion between the two Churches.

The council itself was not recognized as ecumenical by the later Latin Church, but John VIII accepted its disciplinary resolutions. Later, the Catholic historiography of the 20th century, under the influence of the Jesuit Francis Dvornik (1893-1975), recognized that Photios died "in visible and perfect communion with the Roman Church".^[24]

The first pope probably assassinated

On December 16, 882, John VIII died in his Roman palace. The Annales Fuldenses, written in Mainz in a quasi-contemporary Carolingian environment, report that the pope was poisoned by those close to him, then - death taking a long time to come - struck to death with a hammer.^[25] No pope before him had suffered such a violent fate.

The detail of the hammer has long been disputed. At the beginning of the 20th century, the philologist Arthur Lapôtre defended the historicity of the Fuldensian story; other historians saw it as a polemical construction of Frankish circles hostile to the Byzantine memory of the pope. The debate remains open, but most modern historians at least admit that John VIII died in violent conditions, probably by conspiracy.^[26][27] The most active pontificate of the 9th century ended in a scene of horror which heralded the Roman crisis of the 10th century.

Before going into the details of each of these files, here is the synthesis of the six simultaneous fronts that John VIII was able to maintain for ten years - reference table to which we will return section after section.

The Holy See and the official chronology

The official file of the Holy See places John VIII as 107th pope, born in Rome, pontificating from December 14, 872 to December 16, 882.^[28] The chronology is confirmed by the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) under the pen of Horace Kinder Mann, who notes the rapid election after the death of Adrian II and the presence of a long prior career in the Roman diaconia.^[29]

This administrative continuity is important. John VIII did not arrive at the pontificate as an unknown: he served under Leo IV (847-855), Benedict III (855-858), Nicholas I (858-867) and Adrian II (867-872), and he knows in detail the mechanics of the files opened by his predecessors: Lothair II, Photios, the Bulgarians, Hincmar of Reims, the Moravians.

The Liber Pontificalis and the Vita Iohannis VIII

The Liber Pontificalis gives a notice dedicated to John VIII, written in a Roman environment. It describes his father Gundus, his diaconal career, his military action in Rome and the organization of defense against the Saracens, but the Vita Iohannis VIII is briefer than those of Nicholas I or Leo IV - the violent death of the pope and the Roman crisis that followed probably shortened the official writing.^[30]

To fill the silences of the Liber, historians resort to the epistolary register of John VIII, which is one of the most exceptional medieval sources on a pontificate of the 9th century.

The Registrum Iohannis VIII (MGH Epp. VII, Caspar ed.)

The great doctrinal and political instrument of the pontificate is its correspondence. The Monumenta Germaniae Historica publishes the letters of John VIII in the volume Epistolae VII (Karolini aevi V), under the direction of Erich Caspar and Gerhard Laehr (1912-1928). The Registrum Iohannis VIII papae occupies pages 1-272; the Epistolae passim collectae brings together the scattered letters found outside the Roman register, pages 273-312; the Epistolae dubiae follow.^[31][32]

The register of John VIII is, with that of Gregory the Great and that of Gregory VII, one of the three great pontifical registers preserved from the Early Latin Middle Ages. It allows you to follow, file by file, the daily action of a pope over ten years: letters to Charles the Bald, to Boson of Provence, to Methodius and Svatopluk, to Frankish bishops, to Byzantine emperors, to Neapolitan dukes, to Muslim emirs for tribute negotiations.

The Annales Bertiniani, Fuldenses and Vedastini

For the events seen from Francia, the three great Carolingian annals are the reference sources:

• the Annales Bertiniani, written in Western Francia (notably by Hincmar of Reims from 861), closely follow the trip of John VIII to France and the Council of Troyes;
• the Annales Fuldenses, written in Eastern Francia (Mainz-Fulda), give the starkest version of the assassination of John VIII;
• the Annales Vedastini, attached to the abbey of Saint-Vaast d'Arras, complete the chronology for the decade 870-880.^[33][34]

These three annals are not kind to John VIII: they write from Frankish courts often hostile to his Italian and Byzantine policies. It is precisely this hostility that makes them critical sources of the first order - they have no interest in embellishing a pope who antagonizes their masters.

The Council of Hagia Sophia 879-880 (Greek sources)

For the Byzantine file, the acts of the Council of Hagia Sophia (879-880) are preserved in the Mansi collection, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. XVII A. The letters of John VIII to the legates and to Photios, preserved in the register, complete the file.^[35]

Catholic historiography on Photios was renewed in the 20th century by the work of Francis Dvornik (1893-1975), a Czech Jesuit theologian, whose book The Photian Schism: History and Legend (Cambridge, 1948) remains the academic reference on the file.^[36] Dvornik showed that the legend of a "second Photian schism" fabricated by certain Latin polemicists of the 11th century does not correspond to historical sources: the communion between Rome and Constantinople was real and lasting between 880 and the end of the pontificate of Photios.

Origin and formation

John was born in Rome during the first quarter of the 9th century. His father's name is Gundus, a Germanic name which suggests either a Longobard-Roman family or a Carolingian imperial lineage established in Rome.^[37][38] Like Nicholas I before him, he was educated in the Roman clerical environment, in the immediate vicinity of the Lateran and the pontifical curia.

The precise date of his birth remains unknown. The Catholic Encyclopedia places him "in the first quarter of the 9th century" - that is to say between approximately 800 and 825 - on the basis of a diaconal career visible from 853.^[39] At the time of his election in December 872, he was therefore probably between his fifties and sixties.

Archdeacon under Leo IV, Benedict III, Nicholas I and Adrian II

The documented career begins in 853, where he appears as archdeacon of the Roman Church in the proceedings of a synod held under Leo IV. He is attested again as archdeacon in 869, under Adrian II, in the context of the acts of the 8th ecumenical council (Constantinople IV, which condemns Photios).^[40]

An archdeacon, in Rome in the 9th century, is not a second-rank dignitary. He is the main collaborator of the pope for the administration of Roman diakonia - that is to say the organization of charity, hospitals, subsidies for the poor, the stational liturgy - and he often takes part in government decisions. That John served in this position twenty years before his election means that he saw from the inside the four pontificates that shaped Roman doctrine and policy in the second half of the 9th century.

The election of December 14, 872

Adrian II died in Rome in December 872, after five years of a pontificate marked by the immediate continuation of the Nicolasian program (Lothaire II affair, Photian continuation, first contacts with Cyril and Methodius). On December 14, 872, John was elected, consecrated and enthroned.^[41][42]

The election encountered immediate opposition: that of Formosus, bishop of Porto - former Roman legate to the Bulgarians under Nicholas I, probable candidate for the pontificate himself. Formosus will remain the internal adversary of John VIII throughout the reign; he will be excommunicated at the Council of Troyes in 878, exiled to Francia, then reconciled at the last minute. This Roman tension, latent since the last years of Adrian II, will weigh on the conduct of the pontificate.

The context of the Muslim raids in Southern Italy

Since the middle of the 9th century, the Saracenic Emirate of Sicily and the Muslim garrisons of North Africa have launched naval raids on the Italian coasts. The sack of Saint Peter's and Saint Paul Outside the Walls in 846 under Leo IV had been the founding shock - the Holy City desecrated for the first time since the fall of the Western Empire.^[43]

Leo IV responded with the construction of the Leonine City (848-852), a fortified enclosure around Saint Peter's. But Saint Paul Outside the Walls and the via Ostiense remained unprotected. The raids continued: in 869 under Adrian II, in 875-876 under John VIII, the Saracens ravaged Campania, Latium, the Sabine hills, burned the villas, took the peasants and pilgrims into slavery.^[44]

Joannispolis: fortifying Saint Paul Outside the Walls

John VIII decides to complete the Leonian program. Around the basilica of Saint Paul, the monastery and the neighboring village, he built a powerful fortified rampart. The new city received, in homage to the pope, the name Joannispolis - the “city of John” - still mentioned in the chronicles in the 13th century.^[45]

The gesture has a theological as well as military significance. Saint Peter's and Saint Paul, the two apostolic founders of the Church of Rome, must also be defended: the Leonine city for one, the Johannine city for the other. The papacy cannot accept that one of the two major sanctuaries remains at the mercy of the invaders.

The papal fleet and the victory at Cape Circe

To carry the war to sea, John VIII raises a pontifical fleet - the first in papal history known by contemporary sources.^[46] He equips dromones (heavy oared galleys used in the Byzantine Mediterranean), recruits sailors, negotiates the alliance with the maritime republics of Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta, and obtains the assistance of the Byzantine fleet.

In March 877, the allied squadron confronted the Saracens off the coast of Cape Circe (between Terracina and the promontory of Monte Circeo). The battle turned into a Christian victory: eighteen Muslim galleys captured, six hundred Christian slaves freed.^[47] The pope announced the victory by letters to the Frankish churches and offered a spiritual indulgence to those who fought - a gesture typical of Roman doctrine on the armed self-defense of the faithful.

The League of Traietto (877)

In 877, five cities of southern Italy sent their delegates to Traietto (present-day Minturno) to conclude, under the aegis of the pope, a defensive alliance: Salerno, Capua, Naples, Gaeta, Amalfi.^[48] Each city undertakes not to negotiate separately with the Saracens, to coordinate its naval forces, to free the captives.

The league did not last long - local rivalries resumed upon the death of Charles the Bald (October 877) - but it marked, for the first time since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, an Italian inter-regional cooperation under the moral presidency of the Pope. It is the embryo of what would be, in the 11th century, the pontifical role of arbiter of Mediterranean Christianity.

The tribute paid to the Saracens

Despite the victory at Cape Circe, John VIII ended up having to pay a tribute to the Saracens to obtain a precarious peace. The sources agree on the figure of 25,000 mancusi of silver paid annually to the Muslim emirs.^[49] For a Papal State with limited resources, it is a financial bleeding which will contribute to the exhaustion of the Papal treasury, mentioned among the probable reasons for the assassination of 882.

The gesture is not a theological capitulation: it is the realistic diplomacy of a pastor who cannot let the poor and pilgrims continue to be massacred. Saint Leo I had done the same before Attila in 452 - but in symbolic currency. John VIII pays in real money, and collective memory has long held this against him.

A crusade before its time?

Several letters from the Registrum attest that John VIII spiritually rewarded those who fought the Saracens. The wording is sober: it is a promise of indulgence of sins for those who die defending the Catholic faith against the enemies of Christ.^[50] Without constituting a crusade in the canonical sense of the 11th century - we will have to wait for Urban II and the Council of Clermont (1095) - these letters doctrinally prepare the theology of just defensive war which Anselm of Lucca, Gregory VII and the first school of pre-Gregorian canonists.

Charles the Bald, Christmas 875

On August 12, 875, Emperor Louis II of Italy, son of Lothair I and only effective emperor since the death of his father in 855, died without a direct male heir. The imperial succession is open. Three Carolingian candidates compete for the title: Charles the Bald (king of West Francia), Louis the German (king of East Francia), Carloman of Bavaria (son of Louis the German).^[51]

John VIII decides for Charles the Bald, who arrives in Italy in the fall and receives the submission of the Italians. Charles entered Rome on December 17, 875 and was welcomed by the Pope at Saint Peter's. On December 25, 875, Christmas Day, John VIII placed the imperial crown on Charles' head in the Vatican basilica.^[52][53] Four days later, on December 29, a second rite confirmed the imperial investiture.

The choice of Charles the Bald is not ideological: it is political. Charles is the only candidate who has a mobilizable army to help the pope against the Saracens. What followed would disappoint John VIII: Charles died on October 6, 877 at the Mont-Cenis pass, returning from Italy, without having been able to carry out the slightest military operation in favor of Rome.

The contested succession and death of Charles the Bald

The death of Charles opens a new crisis. His son Louis the Stammerer succeeded him in West Francia, but without real authority; Carloman of Bavaria claims Italy; the Italian dukes - Lambert of Spoleto and Adalbert of Tuscany in the first row - switched to the eastern Carolingian side hostile to John VIII.

Lambert of Spoleto, officially acting "in the interest of Carloman of Bavaria", continually harassed the papal territory from 876, then takes Rome in 878, forcing John VIII to flee.^[54][55] It is this coup de force which will precipitate the French trip of the pope and the Council of Troyes.

Louis the Stammerer, September 878

During his French exile, John VIII met Louis the Stammerer, son and successor of Charles the Bald. On September 7, 878, within the framework of the Council of Troyes, the Pope crowned Louis the Stammerer king of West Francia - and conferred on him, in certain sources, imperial dignity.^[56][57] But Louis the Stammerer, ill, died in April 879, and would never have the military force to protect Italy.

Charles the Fat, February 881

The last imperial coronation of John VIII was that of Charles the Fat, younger son of Louis the German, who became king of Italy after the extinction of the other Carolingian branches. The pope crowned him emperor in Rome on February 12, 881.^[58][59]

Charles the Fat united for the first time since 843 all the Carolingian kingdoms under a single sovereign (881-887). But his political weakness, his inability to resolve the Viking crisis in West Francia, and his increasingly erratic behavior caused him to be deposed in 887, ushering in the definitive dislocation of the Carolingian empire.

The results of an impossible imperial policy

In seven years (875-881), John VIII crowned three emperors without any of them being able to really protect Rome. The apparent record is grim: each coronation was followed by premature death or military inability to intervene in Italy.

But the doctrine that comes out of these seven years is lasting. The pope is no longer just the one who recognizes the already elected emperor; he becomes the one who designates the emperor among several candidates. This doctrine of the papal role in imperial devolution will be taken up by Gregory VII in the investiture quarrel, by Innocent III in the 13th century, and until the coronation of Charles V in Bologna in 1530. John VIII is, in imperial politics, the first practical theorist of the Roman Translatio Imperii.

Lambert of Spoleto and Adalbert of Tuscany take Rome

In the spring of 878, Lambert of Spoleto and Adalbert of Tuscany, Italian dukes hostile to the pope, take the city of Rome in the name of Carloman of Bavaria. John VIII is besieged in the Lateran, forced to swear an oath to them under duress, but the Pope manages to escape clandestinely by sea.^[60][61]

He sailed south, then went up the Ligurian coast to Arles, in Provence, where Duke Boson of Vienne (future king of Provence) and his wife Ermengard, daughter of Louis II of Italy, received him with honor in May 878. The pope now found himself in western Carolingian territory, free to call a council and request military aid from Louis the Stammerer.

The trip to Provence with Boson and Ermengard

The stay in Arles lasts a few months. The pope prepared the council there, dealt with current affairs by letter, and negotiated with Louis the Stammerer. Boson of Vienna proved to be a decisive ally: he escorted the pope in all his travels, provided the men, the horses, the money.

In August 878, the pope and his host returned to Champagne. It is in Troyes, the county capital of Bishop Hatton, that the council will be held.

The Council of Troyes of September 7, 878

On September 7, 878, the Council of Troyes opened in the presence of the Pope, Louis the Stammerer, and the bishops of West Francia and Burgundy.^[62][63] Several decisions structured the rest of the pontificate:

1. Excommunication of the Italian supporters of Carloman of Bavaria: Lambert of Spoleto, Adalbert of Tuscany, Formosus of Porto;
2. Official recognition of Louis the Stammerer as king of Francia and designated imperial;
3. Confirmation of the privileges of the great Frankish abbeys (Saint-Denis, Saint-Germain-d'Auxerre, Saint-Martin de Tours);
4. Affirmation of the primacy of the Apostolic See over the Frankish bishops, against any particular metropolitan claim.

The excommunication of Formosus, bishop of Porto, is the most resounding episode. Formosus was a man of the Nicolasian curia, legate in Bulgaria in 866-867, candidate for the pontificate in 872. His relationship with John VIII had deteriorated; his political sympathies for Carloman of Bavaria completed the rupture. At the Council of Troyes, Formosus was stripped of his seat and exiled to Francia; he was rehabilitated after the death of John VIII, became pope himself in 891-896, and was the subject, after his death, of the sinister Synod of the Corpse of 897.

Boson of Provence, adopted son of the pope

On his return to Italy in 879, John VIII made an unprecedented political gesture: he legally adopted Boson of Vienna as his son.^[64] This gesture has no formal precedent in papal practice; it testifies to the Pope's personal gratitude towards his Provencal host, and signals to the Carolingians that Boson is now under direct apostolic protection.

Papal adoption did not make Boson an emperor - but the following year, in October 879, Boson was elected king of Provence by the Burgundian and Provençal bishops, the first Burgundian kingdom independent of the Carolingian dislocation. The European geopolitics of the 10th century (Burgundy, Arles, Italy) has its roots in part in the French journey of John VIII.

Methodius imprisoned, released, contested by the Bavarians

Cyril and Methodius, brothers from Thessalonica sent to Great Moravia by Constantinople in 863, had been received in Rome by Adrian II in 868-869. The pope had approved the Slavonic liturgy and consecrated Methodius archbishop of Pannonia.^[65] At the death of Cyril (869), Methodius was left alone to carry out the mission.

In 870, the Bavarian bishops - first and foremost Anno of Freising and Ermenrich of Passau - gathered a synod in Regensburg under the presidency of king Louis the German, deposed Methodius and imprisoned him in a Swabian monastery (probably Reichenau or Ellwangen). The Moravian bishop remains captive for three years.^[66]

John VIII learned of the imprisonment in the summer of 873, shortly after his election. He intervenes with energy: he sends the legate Paul of Ancona to the Bavarian bishops, suspends the guilty a divinis, demands the release of Methodius and the re-establishment of his archiepiscopal see. Methodius is released and returns to Moravia.

The Roman audience of Methodius in 880

Bavarian attacks resume. At the beginning of 880, the Latin clergy of Moravia - around the priest Wiching, who would later be consecrated suffragan bishop of Nitra - again accused Methodius of heresy, and in particular of refusing the Filioque. Methodius personally went to Rome with Wiching to make his case heard before the pope.

The Roman audience was held at the beginning of June 880. John VIII examines at length the doctrinal dossier of Methodius: profession of faith, position on the Creed, liturgical use of the Slavonic language. The pope concludes that Methodius is doctrinally sound and that no accusation of heresy holds. He then wrote the bull Industriae tuae, addressed to the Moravian prince Svatopluk I.

The bull Industriae tuae (June 880)

Industriae tuae is the major magisterial act of the pontificate of John VIII. It states four things:

1. Methodius is restored in all his rights as archbishop of Pannonia-Moravia;
2. The Slavonic liturgy is approved as legitimate: “It is in no way contrary to the true faith or doctrine to chant the liturgy, to read the holy Gospel and the Holy Readings of the New Testament in the Slavonic language”;
3. In mixed assemblies (Slavs and Latins), the Gospel will first be proclaimed in Latin out of respect for Roman tradition, then translated into Slavonic for the understanding of the people;
4. Wiching is consecrated bishop of Nitra, but as suffragan subject to the metropolitan authority of Methodius.^[67][68]

The phrase that will remain in Christian memory is the pontifical doctrine of the three main languages:

“He who created the three main languages ​​- Hebrew, Greek and Latin - also created all the other languages ​​for his praise and glory. And we command that in the same Slavonic language the praises and works of Our Lord Jesus Christ be proclaimed. "

• Pope John VIII, Industriae tuae, June 880, to Svatopluk of Moravia^[69]

It is one of the oldest magisterial formulations of the principle of liturgical inculturation - nine centuries before Vatican II made the vernacular language the common case of the Latin liturgy.

Wiching of Nitra and the fall of the Moravian mission

The balance built by John VIII will not survive his death. Wiching, who was to be a docile suffragan of Methodius, in reality acted as agent of the Frankish episcopate. He falsified the papal bulls, denigrated Methodius to Prince Svatopluk, and after Methodius' death in 885, obtained the expulsion of the Slavonic disciples from Great Moravia.

The expelled disciples - first and foremost Clement, Naum, Angelar, Sava, Gorazd - emigrated to Bulgaria, where Tsar Boris-Michel welcomed them favorably. There they developed the Cyrillic alphabet (in homage to Cyril), translated the Byzantine liturgy into old liturgical Slavonic, and founded Slavic Orthodox Christianity which would structure Balkan civilization for a millennium.

The Latin Slavonic mission dies in Moravia; the Slavonic Byzantine mission triumphs in Bulgaria. But the Roman principle - the liturgy in the vernacular language is legitimate - was publicly affirmed by John VIII and will remain available in the doctrinal treasure of the Church.

The pope who defends the plurality of languages

John VIII's gesture has serious consequences. In the 9th century, several Western ecclesial currents - particularly among the Bavarian bishops - defended the doctrine of the three languages: only Hebrew, Greek and Latin would be legitimate languages ​​for the Christian liturgy, because they were engraved on the titulus of the Cross (Lk 23:38; Jn 19:20). This doctrine, attributed to “Isidore” or to Carolingian compilations, refused any other language.

John VIII decides in favor of the universality of praise. Its formulation - “He who created the three main languages ​​also created all the other languages ​​for his praise” - is a strong theological affirmation: the diversity of human languages ​​is not a post-Babelian curse to be smothered in the straitjacket of a single cultic language, but a creational wealth offered to divine praise. It is, in germ, the Pentecostal theology of languages that Vatican II took up a thousand years later in Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), a conciliar constitution on the holy liturgy which maintains Latin as the language of the Latin Church while expanding the use of the language of the people "in readings and monitions, in a certain number of prayers and songs".

“The use of the Latin language, except by special rights, will be preserved in the Latin rites. [...] However, whether in the Mass, or in the administration of the sacraments, or in other parts of the liturgy, the use of the language of the country can often be very useful for the people: we can therefore give it a larger place. "

• Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, no.36 §1-2, December 4, 1963^[70]

The continuity from John VIII to Vatican II is intelligible: neither the Carolingian pope nor the modern council erases Roman liturgical Latin, but both open the door to the language of the people whenever the understanding of the mystery by the faithful requires it. The doctrine of liturgical inculturation thus finds in Industriae tuae (880) its first great pontifical charter, and in Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963) its modern magisterial formulation - both in the same hermeneutics of continuity.

The return of Photios to the patriarchal seat

In Constantinople, Photios had been deposed in 867 by the new emperor Basil I the Macedonian and replaced by Ignatius, the restored legitimate patriarch. The Fourth ecumenical council of Constantinople (869-870), held under the presidency of the Roman legates, confirmed the deposition of Photios and condemned his doctrine.

But Ignatius died on October 23, 877. Basil I, aware of Photios' deep popularity among the Byzantine clergy, and anxious to put an end to ecclesial division, recalled Photios to the patriarchal seat. The return is overwhelmingly accepted by the Eastern bishops. The emperor then asked John VIII for official Roman recognition.

The council of union at the Lateran and the sending of the legates

John VIII weighs the decision. Recognizing Photios means revisiting the judgment of Hadrian II and the council of 869-870; to refuse is to leave the Byzantine East in schism and lose the Byzantine military alliance which contributed to the victory at Cape Circe in 877.

The pope chooses union. He welcomes the Byzantine delegation to Rome, examines the canonical conditions, and accepts the recognition of Photios under three conditions: 1) that Photios recognizes the error of his first enthronement under Bardas; 2) that he renounces jurisdiction over Bulgaria for the benefit of Rome; 3) that he accepts the primacy of the Apostolic See.^[71]

John VIII sends three legates to Constantinople: Pierre, cardinal of Saint-Chrysogonus; Paul, bishop of Ancona; Eugene, bishop of Ostia.^[72] The three are responsible for presiding, jointly with Photios, the council of union which is to open at Hagia Sophia.

The Council of Hagia Sophia

The council opened at Hagia Sophia in November 879 and held seven sessions until the beginning of March 880.^[73] Photios presided, surrounded by Roman legates and 383 bishops (almost the entire Byzantine episcopate). The acts of the council:

1. Reinstate Photios as legitimate patriarch;
2. Cancel the acts of the council of 869-870;
3. Reaffirm the Nicene-Constantinople Creed in its original formulation, without addition;
4. Condemn any addition to the Creed, which indirectly targets the Frankish-Iberian practice of adding the Filioque to the liturgical Creed;
5. Recognize Roman primacy through respectful formulation but without dogmatic solemnity.

What the council really decided

Historiography has long debated the exact scope of the council's decisions. The Orthodox Church considers it an ecumenical council (the Eighth ecumenical council in Orthodox numbering), because it would have formally condemned the Filioque. The Latin Catholic Church, from the 11th century onwards, did not count it among the ecumenical councils and on the contrary held the council of 869-870 (which remained a condemnation of Photios in Latin memory) as the Eighth ecumenical.

This chronological divergence is one of the historical roots of the great schism of 1054. At the time of John VIII, the rupture was not complete: the pope accepted the disciplinary decisions of the council without making it an ecumenical act of the universal Church.

The question of the Filioque

The Council of Hagia Sophia does not condemn the Filioque as doctrine - it condemns any addition to the Creed. Nuance is essential. In the eyes of John VIII, the Latin Church can hold as theological truth the procession of the Holy Spirit "of the Father and the Son" (Latin patristic formulation inherited from Augustine and clarified at the II Council of Toledo in 589), but it must not therefore modify the liturgical text of the Creed of Nicea-Constantinople without ecumenical agreement.

This nuanced distinction - theological truth preserved, liturgical modification avoided - would be held by Rome until the year 1014, when Benedict VIII, under pressure from Emperor Henry II, authorized the liturgical use of the Filioque in the Creed in Rome. The definitive break with Constantinople on this point did not come until 1054, two centuries after the death of John VIII.

Did Photios die in communion with Rome?

For centuries, Latin Catholic historiography held that after 880 Photios fell back into a "second schism" and died excommunicated. The Czech Jesuit Francis Dvornik demonstrated, in his book The Photian Schism: History and Legend (Cambridge University Press, 1948), that this “legend of the second schism” is a polemical construction of the 11th century, fabricated by the Latin theologians of the Eucharistic quarrel to justify the rupture of 1054.^[74]

Photios' contemporary historical sources - epistolary register of John VIII, Byzantine Annals, correspondence of John VIII's immediate successors - show that Photios died in ecclesial communion with Rome, probably in 893, after a final deposition by Emperor Leo VI (Photios was the emperor's former tutor, in an internal family cabal). The Orthodox Church has since venerated him as Saint Photios the Great.

Peter, foundation of unity

John VIII inherits and extends the Nicolasian doctrine of primacy. He recalls in several letters of the Registrum that the Apostolic See is founded on Peter, and not on the civil grandeur of the city of Rome. His formulation is more practical than theoretical: he acts as a pope who decides in the last instance, without needing to re-demonstrate each time the doctrinal foundations that Nicholas had laid down in Proposueramus quidem (865).

“Let no one be surprised that the Apostolic See is called upon to judge what bishops and princes cannot resolve among themselves: for it is to Peter that the Lord has entrusted the responsibility of shepherding his sheep, and to his successors that he has transmitted the power to bind and loose throughout the earth. "

• Roman doctrine defended by John VIII in the Registrum, synthetic formulation taken from the letters of the French crisis of 878^[75]

Emperor defender, not ecclesial legislator

The Gelasian doctrine of the two powers remains the framework. The emperor is the armed arm of the Church, the defender of Christians against pagans and heretics, but he is neither bishop nor ecclesial legislator.

John VIII strictly applies this distinction. When Lambert of Spoleto and Adalbert of Tuscany took Rome in the name of Carloman of Bavaria in 878, the pope refused to give in to political pressure, fled to France, and held the Council of Troyes to reestablish ecclesial authority. When Charles the Bald, then Louis the Stammerer, then Charles the Fat receive the imperial crown, the rite is clear: it is the pope who crowns, in Peter's basilica, according to the Roman liturgy.

The pope arbitrates between the Carolingians

The effective innovation of John VIII is active arbitration between imperial suitors. He is no longer content with ratifying the Germanic election - he chooses among several candidates the one who best serves Catholic unity and the defense of Italy. This doctrine will become constitutive of the medieval papacy.

“The sovereign pontiff does not have to blindly confirm what the people or the nobles have decided: he has the responsibility of establishing, to the extent that he is called to do so, the one who will best defend the Church against its enemies. "

• Doctrine practiced by John VIII between 875 and 881, synthetic formulation taken from the Registrum^[76]

Medieval and post-medieval reception

The imperial doctrine of John VIII was taken up by the canonists of the 11th century (Pierre Damian, Anselm of Lucca, Gregory VII), by Innocent III in Venerabilem fratrem (1202), and formalized by the Bolognese glossators of the 13th century. It remained the horizon of the doctrine of Translatio Imperii until the coronation of Charles V by Clement VII in Bologna (1530), the last papal imperial coronation in history.

The fight against the internal corruption of the Roman clergy

The Liber Pontificalis and the Registrum attest to John VIII's continuing struggle against the corruption of curial officials. In 878, the pope deposed and excommunicated a certain Gregoire, pontifical official, as well as several other clerics convicted of simony, conspiracy and political treason.^[77]

This purge is not only moral: it aims to restore the reliability of the papal administration at a time when the Pope must simultaneously lead the Saracen War, Carolingian diplomacy and Eastern policy. The tragic end of John VIII, assassinated by his own clerics in 882, suggests that internal corruption was not eradicated and that it ultimately got the better of the pope.

Marital discipline

Like Nicholas I before him, John VIII defended Catholic matrimonial discipline against Carolingian princes who sought divorce for political reasons. Several letters from the Registrum deal with concrete cases - without reaching the drama of the Lothaire II file under Nicholas, but confirming the same line: validly contracted Christian marriage is indissoluble.

Concern for the poor and captives

The Vita Iohannis VIII mentions the pope's charitable works: reconstruction of hospitals damaged by the Saracens, redemption of captives brought back from the Muslim galleys after Cape Circe, distributions of wheat to the stricken populations of Latium and Campania.^[78] Poverty is not a central theme of the spirituality of John VIII - it will be that of Francis Five centuries later -, but it is an obligatory dimension of medieval papal government: a pope who does not feed his poor is not a legitimate pope.

The story of the Annales Fuldenses

The Annales Fuldenses, written in Eastern Francia, give the most precise account of the death of John VIII. According to the Fuldensian chronicler, the pope was first poisoned by his own clerics - perhaps one of his close relatives -, but the poison acting too slowly, the conspirators hit the pope on the head with a hammer to complete the job.^[79]

The story shocked people for a long time. No pope before John VIII had been assassinated according to reliable contemporary sources. No chronicler of the 9th century had dared to give such detail (the hammer) on the end of a bishop of Rome.

Poisoning, then the hammer

“Pope John was poisoned by his own clerics. But as the poison did not act quickly enough for their liking, one of them hit him on the head with a hammer until he gave up the ghost. "

• Annales Fuldenses, sub anno 882, on the death of Pope John VIII^[80]

The factual sobriety of the story, in a chronicle usually attentive to geopolitical details without falling into the grotesque, argues for the plausibility of the episode - at least in its general outline: an internal plot in the pontifical palace, brought about by physical violence.

Supposed motives: finances, Byzantine disappointments, Saracen raids

The probable motives of the conspiracy, as reconstructed by modern historiography:

1. The exhaustion of the pontifical treasury - John VIII had paid 25,000 mancusi of silver each year to the Saracens and financed the fleet, the army and diplomatic trips from the Holy See's own resources;
2. Carolingian discontent - Charles the Fat, emperor since 881, had not been able (or wanted) to provide Rome with the promised military protection, and certain Roman clerics criticized the pope for his overly pro-Byzantine policy;
3. Military failures - despite the victory at Cape Circe and the fortifications, the Saracens continued their raids, and the Roman population began to blame the Pope for the inability to stop the destruction;
4. The purge of 878 - clerics deposed and excommunicated by John VIII for corruption had retained positions in the curia, and revenge could have been a direct motivation.^[81]

The historicity of the story: debates Lchurch, Engreen, Arnaldi

The historiographical debate of the 20th century has oscillated between two positions. The French philologist Arthur Lapôtre (1862-1949), in Europe and the Holy See in the Carolingian Era (Paris, Picard, 1895), defends the historicity of the Fuldensian story as plausible and technically credible. Later, the American historian Fred Engreen, in his article “Pope John VIII and the Arabs” (Speculum, 1945), qualifies the story and sees it rather as a symbolic construction of Frankish circles hostile to John VIII. The Italian historian Girolamo Arnaldi (1929-2016), in his work on the Papal State of the 9th century, accepts the fact of the assassination while expressing reservations about the detail of the hammer.^[82]

The current consensus: John VIII most likely died a violent death - poisoned, perhaps brutally finished off. The details of the Fuldensian story (the hammer precisely, the identity of the main culprit) remain contested.

The first pope probably assassinated

The historical verdict is clear: John VIII is the first pope in Christian history whose contemporary sources attest to a deliberate violent death by internal conspiracy. No pontificate will emerge unscathed from this precedent: the papacy enters, with the death of John VIII, into a long sequence of Roman instability which will culminate with the sinister Synod of the Corpse of 897 and the "pornocracy" of the 10th century.

The pope hailed by modern historians

The historical evaluation of John VIII has had two moments. In the 19th century, Latin memory mainly remembered the negative events: the assassination, the Saracen tribute, the contested recognition of Photios. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) inaugurates rehabilitation, in a formula that has become classic:

“All modern historians agree in recognizing John as one of the greatest popes of the 9th century. "

• Horace Kinder Mann, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8, art. "Pope John VIII", New York, Robert Appleton Company, 1913^[102]

This rehabilitation was consolidated in the 20th century. Erich Caspar, the editor of the Registrum, sees in John VIII one of the three great pontificates between Gregory the Great and Gregory VII. Girolamo Arnaldi underlines his role in the consolidation of the Heritage of Saint Peter's as an organized Papal State. Francis Dvornik rehabilitates his Byzantine policy. The Jesuit John W. O'Malley (A History of the Popes, 2010) presents him as one of the best popes between Gregory I and Gregory VII.^[103]

A legacy between Nicholas the Great and the decadence of the 10th century

John VIII transmitted to his successors a papacy which succeeded in simultaneously holding four dossiers opened by Nicholas the Great: Roman primacy, the defense of Italy, the Slavic mission, Eastern reconciliation. No pontificate before him had led in parallel, over ten years, so many major fronts.

But the tragic end of the pontificate opens the dark sequence of the 10th Roman century: ephemeral pontificates (Marinus I, Adrian III, Stephen V, Formosus, Boniface VI, Stephen VI), Synod of the Corpse of 897, “pornocracy” (Theodora and Marozia), simonies and internal divisions until the Gregorian reform of the 11th century. With the death of John VIII, the great line of universal popes of the High Middle Ages died out for almost two hundred years.

The Slavonic liturgy in Central Europe

The most lasting legacy of John VIII is cultural: the liturgy in the Slavonic language, approved by Industriae tuae in 880, structured Slavic Christianity for a millennium. Even when the Latin mission collapsed in Moravia after the death of Methodius (885), the disciples expelled to Bulgaria developed a Byzantine liturgy in Slavonic which became the worship language of Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Russia.

Saint John Paul II, in the encyclical Slavorum Apostoli (June 2, 1985), explicitly takes up the legacy of John VIII and makes Cyril and Methodius the co-patrons of Europe with Saint Benedict.^[104] The gesture of John VIII in 880 thus finds, eleven hundred years later, its magisterial confirmation at the height of the modern pontificate.

The consolidation of the Heritage of Saint Peter's

On the material level, John VIII transmitted to his successors a Heritage of Saint Peter's better organized than he had received it: Saint Peter's in the Leonine city, Saint Paul in Joannispolis, a fleet, a network of alliances with the Italian cities of the South, a centralized epistolary register. The medieval papacy as a territorial and moral power found with John VIII one of its stable inaugural forms.

• Pope Saint Nicholas I, known as Nicholas the Great (858-867) - the great predecessor whose doctrine John VIII extends.
• Pope Adrian II (867-872) - immediate predecessor, reception of Cyril and Methodius in Rome.
• Pope Marinus I (882-884) - immediate successor, first pope bishop transferred to Rome.
• Pope Formosa (891-896) - adversary excommunicated at Troyes, become pope, victim of the Synod of the Corpse.
• Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls - Joannispolis and the 9th century pontifical fortification.
• Council of Hagia Sophia (879-880) - Rome-Constantinople reconciliation on Photios.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius - Slavic mission and Slavonic liturgy approved by Industriae tuae.
• Saint John Paul II - encyclical Slavorum Apostoli (1985) which takes up the legacy of John VIII.