Pope John X (914-928)

The Pope Who Freed Central Italy from the Saracens

For thirty-three years — since the establishment of the Muslim base at the mouth of the Garigliano around 882 under the pontificate of John VIII — the Saracens ravaged Lazio, Campania, and Sabina, burning farms and monasteries, carrying off peasants and pilgrims into slavery. No pope, emperor, or Italian prince had succeeded in dismantling this nest of raids.^[16][17] John X, elected in March 914 amid territorial disaster, took personal charge of the matter.

In two years, he forged a coalition that his predecessors had sought but failed to find. He convinced King of Italy Berengar I, the senatorial dynasty of Theophylact of Tusculum, Duke Alberic I of Spoleto, Lombard princes Landulf I of Benevento and Atenulf II of Capua, Duke John I of Gaeta, Duke Gregory IV of Naples with his son John II, Prince Guaimar II of Salerno, and secured the support of the Byzantine fleet under strategos Nicholas Picingli.^[18][19] The combined army first confronted the Saracens at Campo Baccano north of Rome, then near Tivoli and Vicovaro, pushed the Muslim columns back toward their main fortress, and in June 915 began a three-month siege on the Garigliano’s bank.

Historical synthesis after Liutprand of Cremona (Antapodosis) and Flodoard of Reims's poem (De triumphis Christi) — and not after the Liber Pontificalis, whose notice (Duchesne, II, pp. 240–241) is brief and says nothing of the battle: before the pope, banner of Christ in hand, the knights of Italy and the sailors of Byzantium united their forces; the siege lasted three full months; when the Saracens, out of provisions, burned their own dwellings and attempted a desperate sortie toward the sea, they were cut down to the last man.^[20][21]

In August 915 — Kirsch's notice (1910) for its part advances August 916^[22] —, the Saracen base was destroyed. Italians and Byzantines triumphed together — a Latin-Greek military cooperation unparalleled since the fall of the Exarchate. The century was dark, but Rome had regained a pope who did not merely pray amid ruins: he commanded, negotiated, marched, and waged war when war was just. It was, like John VIII's fleet at Cape Circe (877), a pontifical victory against the Saracens.^[23]

The Pope Who Crowned Berengar I Emperor (December 3, 915)

On Sunday, December 3, 915, in St. Peter's Basilica, John X placed the imperial crown on Berengar I's head. It was the first imperial coronation since 901 — when Benedict IV had crowned Louis the Blind, blinded then set aside in 905. Fourteen years had passed without an imperial coronation in the West.^[24][25]

The act had threefold significance. Politically, it rewarded the only Italian prince who had agreed to march with the pope against the Saracens and who still commanded a mobilizable army in the north. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed the pontifical doctrine of Translatio Imperii formulated by John VIII: it is the bishop of Rome who designates the emperor among several candidates, not the other way around. Symbolically, it marked that the Christian Empire of the West was not dead with the Carolingian disintegration — it awaited only a prince capable of bearing it.

Berengar would not bear it long. Weakened by Hungarian invasions in Friuli and forced into compromises with his Italian rivals, he was assassinated in Verona on April 7, 924 by one of his own soldiers, possibly at the instigation of Rudolph II of Burgundy.^[26] But the 915 act inscribed a lasting point in Christian memory: the papacy holds the key to the Empire, even when empires fail.

The Pope of the Croatian and Bulgarian Mission

The second major front of the pontificate was missionary. In Croatia, Duke Tomislav had for twenty years been unifying the regions of Croatian Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Posavina; around 925 he assumed the royal title that John X was the first sovereign to officially recognize.^[27] The pope addressed to him a letter that remains, in Croatian memory, the diplomatic baptismal act of the kingdom: “dilecto filio Tamislao regi Chroatorum” — “to our dear son Tomislav, king of the Croats” (address preserved in Rački, pp. 189-190).

But the territory posed a burning canonical question: the Slavonic liturgy inherited from the disciples of Cyril and Methodius continued to be celebrated in Dalmatia, while the Latin archbishopric of Split claimed primacy over the Croatian see of Nin held by Bishop Gregory of Nin. John X sent two legates — John, bishop of Ancona, and Leo, bishop of Palestrina — to convene in 925 the Synod of Split that would settle the question. The canons limited the ordination of bishops “ignorant of Latin” and restricted the Slavonic Mass to parishes “for lack of available Latin bishops”, without abolishing it. A second council, assembled at Split in 928 under the pontificate of Leo VI — John X having been deposed in May/June 928 — and presided over by legate Madalbert, confirmed Split's primacy over Nin.^[28]

In Bulgaria, Tsar Simeon I the Great, weary of friction with Constantinople, proposed to Rome the transfer of the Bulgarian Church's obedience. John X accepted the principle of the envisaged obedience and answered with legates and letters urging Simeon to make peace with Byzantium — with no Roman coronation nor documented confirmation of the imperial title by Rome. When Simeon died in May 927, his son Peter I made peace with Byzantium (Treaty of 927): the envisaged Roman obedience never materialized, and no Roman coronation is attested.^[29][30]

This was the golden age of papal Balkan diplomacy: Rome laid the foundations of a Slavic Christendom that would last a thousand years.

Cluny: A Privilege Alleged by Tradition

On September 11, 909 (910 according to some datings), at Bourges, William I of Aquitaine had founded on his Burgundian lands the monastery of Cluny, under the leadership of its first abbot Bernon. The Benedictine rule was observed there with exceptional rigor, and the house was placed by the founding act under the direct dependence of the Apostolic See — thus exempt from any local episcopal or feudal jurisdiction.^[31] This papal exemption, which seemed a minor measure at the time, would transform the West.

Tradition attributes to John X the confirmation of the exemption of Cluny and the approval of its rule — a privilege whose text has not been preserved.^[32][33] The act is less documented than Berengar's coronation or the Garigliano victory, but its consequences were immense: under the great abbots Odo, Mayeul, Odilon, and Hugh, Cluny would become the engine of the Gregorian reform of the 11th century, form Gregory VII, free the Church from feudal claws, and restore the dignity of the priesthood.

John X could not have foreseen this. But his privilege for Cluny — if tradition is correct — constitutes, in retrospect, one of the most fruitful acts of his pontificate. Under a pope disliked by Protestant and anticlerical posterity, the Cluniac and Gregorian seed was planted in French soil.

The Pope Victim of the "Pornocracy"

The end is grim. The Theophylactian dynasty, which had brought John X to the pontificate in 914, turned against him when the pope tried, around 925-927, to restore the political autonomy of the Holy See by relying on Hugh of Provence (king of Italy since 926) rather than on the Roman masters. Marozia, daughter of Theophylact I and Theodora, married secondly to Guido (Guy) of Tuscany, could not bear that the pope escaped her control.^[34][35]

The coup d'état was brutal. In May 928 (perhaps June according to some chronologies), Marozia and Guido attacked the Lateran Palace. The pope’s brother, Peter, who had become duke of Spoleto after the collapse of the Spoleto house, was killed before the pontiff’s eyes. John X was arrested, deposed, and imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo on the Tiber.^[36]

Paraphrase of Liutprand of Cremona's account (Antapodosis, Book III, written circa 960): John is said to have been suffocated under a pillow a few months after his arrest — thus, by a woman's hand, is said to have perished the pope who had defeated the Saracens. A late and hostile version, taken up by the Annals of Benevento, but absent from independent contemporary sources.^[37]

Liutprand of Cremona’s account — a Lombard chronicler hostile to the Theophylactians — is the most precise but also the most polemical source. Flodoard of Reims, more restrained and chronologically closer to the events, simply writes that the pope “died of anguish” in his prison.^[38] The historical truth likely lies between the two: a deposed, isolated, ill-treated pope who died under circumstances that make murder plausible but cannot be absolutely confirmed.

With John X's death begins what modern historiography calls the “pornocracy” — a modern term for the dark age described by Baronio^[39] — ephemeral and weak pontiffs (Leo VI, Stephen VII), direct domination by the Tusculan house, until John XI — son of Marozia and Sergius III according to a persistent rumor — was installed on the See of Peter at about twenty years old, in 931.^[40]

Liutprand of Cremona and the Antapodosis

The dominant narrative source on John X is the Antapodosis (“Retribution”) by Liutprand of Cremona (c. 920–972), a Lombard bishop and ambassador of Otto I to Constantinople, written around 958-962 — that is, thirty to forty years after the events. Liutprand was not a direct witness to the Garigliano events or John X’s death; he transmits the Roman memory as it circulated in the mid-10th century, distorted by his own hatreds.^[41]

Liutprand hated the Romans. He hated the Tusculan house. He despised women meddling in politics. Regarding John X, his account combines two main accusations: 1) the pope was the lover of Theodora, who had secured for him the archbishopric of Ravenna and then the pontificate; 2) he was suffocated under a pillow by Marozia’s henchmen. The first accusation is systematically rejected by modern historiography; the second is probable but not confirmed by independent sources.^[42][43]

Paraphrase of Liutprand of Cremona's account (Antapodosis, Book II, ch. 47-48, and Book III, ch. 43, written circa 960): Theodora, presented as a shameless woman and Marozia's grandmother, is said, after an affair with John, to have moved her lover from the see of Ravenna to that of Rome — and this pope is then said to have been treacherously strangled in the Castel Sant'Angelo dungeon, out of hatred by another woman of the same lineage. An accusation with no contemporary confirmation, rejected by modern historiography.^[44]

This dark page is the sole source of the moral accusation against John X. No contemporary chronicler confirms it. All historiographical effort since Kirsch (1910) through Gregorovius and Romano has been to separate the attested facts (election, Garigliano, Berengar’s coronation, death in prison) from Liutprand’s polemic construction (love affair with Theodora, exclusively scandalous role of the Tusculan house).

The Liber Pontificalis and John X’s Notice

The Liber Pontificalis, the official collection of papal biographies compiled in Rome, gives a brief notice for John X. It confirms his origin from Tossignano, his passage through Bologna and Ravenna, and his election in 914; but it remains sober on political details and omits the episode of his violent death — a typical silence of the Liber on tragic ends of pontiffs.^[45]

The reference edition is that of Louis Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis: texte, introduction et commentaire, vol. II, Paris, E. de Boccard, 1892, pp. 240-241. The notice is supplemented by lists of donations to the Lateran and various Roman basilicas, which testify to the revival of pontifical generosity under John X — a sign that the financial situation of the Holy See, ruined under John VIII, had temporarily recovered.

Flodoard of Reims and the Frankish Annals

Flodoard of Reims (c. 894–966), canon then archdeacon of Reims Cathedral, is the other primary narrative source on John X’s pontificate. His Annals cover the period 919-966; his notice on the pope’s death, written only a few years after the events, presents a sober and less polemical version than Liutprand’s: John X “died, consumed by anguish” (“actus angore defungitur”) in his prison, with no explicit mention of suffocation.^[46]

Flodoard also composed a great poem in Latin entitled De triumphis Christi (“The Triumphs of Christ”), whose Italian part (apud Italiam) celebrates the Garigliano victory and John X's action in defense of the Christian people. It is one of the rare contemporary poetic testimonies on a medieval pope at war, and it confirms both the pope's personal involvement in the battle and the theological reception of the event as a holy combat.^[47]

Eugenius Vulgarius and the Defense of Theodora

The historiography of the Tusculan dynasty is not uniformly negative. Eugenius Vulgarius (c. 870 – c. 928), a Neapolitan priest and supporter of the pro-Formosus faction, exiled to Rome under Sergius III, openly praises Theodora as a lady of great piety and great dignity in several of his letters and poems that have been preserved.^[48] Vulgarius wrote while Theodora was still alive or had recently died—that is, before Liutprand constructed his posthumous polemic.

This contrast between Vulgarius (favorable, contemporary) and Liutprand (hostile, later) is the central argument in the modern rehabilitation of John X’s pontificate. A chronicler who slanders a pope dead for thirty years and opposes the entire house that produced that pope is not a neutral source.

Auxilius and the Internal Roman Conflicts

Auxilius, a Frankish priest ordained by Formosus († 896) who took refuge in Naples, is a valuable witness to the internal struggles of the Roman clergy in the early 10th century. An apologist for Formosus and the validity of his ordinations against the annulments imposed by Stephen VI and Sergius III, he wrote circa 908-911 — thus before the 914 election — and none of his surviving treatises concerns John X: the hypothesis that Auxilius recognized the 914 election, once considered, is withdrawn for lack of textual evidence.^[49]

The Monumenta Germaniae Historica and Modern Editions

The surviving letters of John X, rarer than those of John VIII (the Registrum of the previous pontificate being exceptional), are edited in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae VII (Karolini aevi V), as well as in editions of the 10th-century papal correspondence by Philipp Jaffé (Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, 2nd edition, Leipzig, 1885-1888).^[50] For Croatia, the acts of the Synod of Split are preserved and edited in Franjo Rački, Documenta historiae chroaticae periodum antiquam illustrantia, Zagreb, 1877, pp. 187-200—a critical reference source in Croatian historiography.^[51]

Modern Rehabilitation: Mann, Gregorovius, Romano, O'Malley

Modern historiography has overturned the judgment of the polemical tradition:

• Horace Kinder Mann (The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, vol. IV, London, 1910) restores the political facts of the pontificate; Johann Peter Kirsch's notice in the Catholic Encyclopedia (vol. 8, 1910) likewise explicitly rejects Liutprand's slanders as late, hostile and without contemporary confirmation.^[52]
• Ferdinand Gregorovius (Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, vol. III, Stuttgart, 1859-1872, book VI) regards John X as “one of the few great popes of the 10th century” and a forerunner of the Gregorian program: Church independence from aristocratic houses, political unification of Italy around a national emperor.^[53]
• Giacinto Romano (Storia di Roma medievale, early 20th century) and Girolamo Arnaldi (Il papato nei secoli VIII-X, Rome, 1990) confirm the diplomatic rigor of the pontificate.
• John W. O'Malley (A History of the Popes, Sheed & Ward, 2010, pp. 95-96), a reference synthesis in English, covers John X's pontificate within his sequence of 10th-century popes.^[54]

This academic consensus justifies the editorial treatment: John X is no longer a pope compromised by a Roman noblewoman, but an ecclesiastical statesman in a century that produced very few.

Romagnol Origin

John was born in Tossignano (today Borgo Tossignano, province of Bologna, in the Papal Romagna) around 860-865. His father was also named John—a subtle detail indicating the simplicity of his family background and excluding any belonging to the great Italian nobility. Since Adrian I (772-795), Romagna has been an ecclesiastical province closely linked to Rome, and its metropolitan archbishopric—Ravenna—is the second episcopal seat in Italy after the Apostolic See.^[55][56]

The exact date of his birth remains unknown. The Catholic Encyclopedia places it “in the third quarter of the 9th century”—thus between about 850 and 875—based on a diaconal career visible from the late 890s. At the time of his election in March 914, he was probably between fifty and fifty-five years old.

Deacon under Peter IV, Bishop of Bologna

The first documented episode of John's career is his diaconate in Bologna^[57]. Modern syntheses place it under Bishop Peter (known as Peter IV in the Bolognese lists) — an attribution without confirmation in the surviving contemporary sources.^[58] The medieval diaconate was the main entry path into the Italian episcopate: a deacon administered charity, organized the station liturgy, and represented the bishop in temporal affairs.

It was in Bologna that John met, according to Liutprand, Theodora—who had come to Bologna on business for the Roman senatorial house. This meeting became, under Liutprand’s pen, the starting point of the scandalous love legend; modern historiography rather sees it as the origin of a relationship of trust between a promising deacon and the politically dominant family of Rome.^[59]

Archbishop of Ravenna (c. 905-914)

Around 905, John was called to the archiepiscopal see of Ravenna, which was vacant. Modern syntheses hold him to have been consecrated by Pope Sergius III (904-911)^[60], a controversial pontiff who had annulled the Formosan ordinations and hardened Roman policy — though no surviving contemporary source names the consecrator. On 5 February 914, an official act still mentions him as archbishop of Ravenna—this is our terminus ad quem: the election to the pontificate therefore occurred after this date.^[61]

During eight to nine years in Ravenna, John defended the archiepiscopal jurisdiction against lay usurpations (Boson, Marquis of Tuscany, and other local lords), confirmed the metropolitan authority over the abbey of Nonantola—one of the great Benedictine monasteries of northern Italy—and maintained regular correspondence with the Roman curia. The period was marked by the continuing conflict between the archbishopric of Ravenna and the lay lordships of Romagna, but John succeeded in maintaining the dignity of the see without major public rupture.

The Canonical Irregularity of the Election to the Apostolic See

John’s election to the pontificate in March 914 raises a serious canonical question: ancient ecclesiastical law formally forbade the transfer of a bishop from one see to another, especially to Rome. The Lateran Council of 769, under Stephen III, had expressly prohibited the election of a bishop already in charge elsewhere to the See of Peter.^[62]

John X is, with Marinus I (882) before him, one of the first bishops transferred to the Apostolic See in medieval Latin history. The practice would become common from the 11th century onward (Gregory VII, Urban II, Paschal II...), but in 914 it remained canonically questionable. The fact that the election was accepted without schism by the Roman clergy suggests that political necessity (an experienced and weighty man to govern Rome in crisis) outweighed the canonical letter.

The Context: The Theophylact Family

At the time of the death of Pope Lando in January 914, Roman power was dominated by the Theophylact family of Tusculum. Theophylact I († 924/925) was vestararius and magister militum of the Holy See, meaning the chief administrative and military officer of Rome; he held the titles of consul and dux inherited from Byzantine officials and effectively governed the city. His wife Theodora († before 928) was described by the chronicle as a “senatrix”, indicating a lady of the Roman aristocracy invested with official civil functions. Their daughters Marozia and Theodora the Younger would also enter the government of the city.^[63]

The situation was unprecedented. The Roman aristocracy had never, since the Carolingian era, exercised such direct control over the Apostolic See. The immediately preceding pontiffs — Sergius III (904-911), Anastasius III (911-913), Lando (913-914) — had all been elected with the support of the Theophylact family.

A Swift Election

Lando died in late January or early February 914. On February 5, John was still Archbishop of Ravenna. By March 914 at the latest, he was elected, consecrated, and enthroned pope. The speed of the election indicates careful preparation: the Theophylact family had identified John — a man of experience, theologically sound, who had already served in Rome through the Bologna diaconate — as the ideal successor to Lando.^[64]

Liutprand’s accusation that John was “brought to Rome by Theodora” as her lover is not confirmed by any contemporary source and is rejected by all serious modern historiography.^[65] What is historically true, however, is that the election was the result of a political agreement between the Tusculan family and the Roman clergy to elevate a man capable of holding firm during the Saracen and political crisis.

Rehabilitation Against Liutprand

“Liutprand is a late and hostile witness. He writes fifty years after the events, at a Lombard court that hates the Romans. His charge against John X and Theodora rests on no contemporary source and contradicts the testimony of Eugenius Vulgarius, who praises Theodora as a lady of piety and dignity. Every substantial element of his account amounts to political slander.” — Historiographical synthesis after Johann P. Kirsch (1910) and Ferdinand Gregorovius^[66][67]

The election of March 914 was therefore neither a moral scandal nor a purchase of the papacy. It was a political agreement between aristocratic Rome and ecclesiastical Rome to face the Saracen emergency — an agreement that John X, through his victory at Garigliano a year later, would fully justify.

The Saracens of Garigliano: Thirty-Three Years of Raids

Around 882, under the pontificate of John VIII, a Saracen garrison was established at the mouth of the Garigliano, a river separating southern Latium from Campania. The location was strategic: equidistant from Rome (135 km north), Capua (40 km southeast), and Naples (90 km south), at the heart of a fertile plain allowing supply and at the crossroads of land routes to Sabina and the Liri valley.^[68][69]

For thirty-three years, the Saracens of Garigliano launched annual raids into Latium and Campania: pillaging the monasteries of Monte Cassino (886, 889), Subiaco, papal farms in Sabina and Tuscia, and attacking pilgrims on the major Salaria and Latina roads. The population of Latium took refuge in incastellamenti — fortified hilltop villages — and the economic life of Rome itself was degraded. No pope, emperor, or king of Italy had succeeded in dismantling this permanent war nest.

Political control of the base passed in 909 from the Aghlabids of Ifriqiya to the Fatimids, recently established in power in the Maghreb — a change that tightened logistics between the Garigliano base and the Emirate of Sicily, but did not alter the nature of the raids.^[70]

The Diplomat Pope: Forging the Coalition

John X’s political skill lay in breaking rivalries among the Christian princes of Italy to unite them against the common enemy. The task was titanic: Benevento and Capua had been disputing for fifty years; Naples had often negotiated directly with the Saracens to spare its suburbs; Salerno suspected Benevento of wanting to annex it; Gaeta claimed its independence from Naples; the Roman Theophylacts viewed Berengar I with suspicion; and Constantinople hesitated to risk its fleet defending Lombard cities that were not its vassals.

John X patiently convinced each party. In 913-914, even before his election, as Archbishop of Ravenna he had participated in negotiations with Berengar. In 914-915, as pope, he multiplied embassies: to Benevento, Capua, Naples, and Constantinople. The final bouquet of this diplomatic effort is the coalition summarized in the table below.

The Military Campaign

In spring 915, the Christian army concentrated north of Rome. The first engagements took place at Campo Baccano — site of the ancient Baccanas, on the Via Cassia 25 km north of Rome — where the Saracens, having left their base to raid Tuscia, were surprised and defeated. A second series of skirmishes occurred around Tivoli and Vicovaro, in the valley of the Anio: the Saracens, retreating southward, were harassed by papal troops and Spoleto militias.^[71]

When the Saracens were cornered at their main fortress on the Garigliano, the Christian army laid siege in June 915. The position was strong: palisades, ditches, access to the sea. But Berengar arrived with his Lombards, Theophylact personally led the Romans, Picingli’s Byzantines blocked the sea, and the Lombard dukes closed the land routes. For three months, the Saracen base was strangled.

The suicidal sortie and massacre

In August 915, after three months of siege, the Saracens realize that no reinforcements will come from Sicily. According to the account preserved by Liutprand and confirmed by Flodoard, they set fire to their own houses to prevent their capture, then attempt a desperate sortie toward the coast hoping to reach Sicily. The Muslim columns are massacred in the marshes and woods: “all were captured and executed,” writes the chronicle.^[72][73]

“When the Saracens, out of provisions, saw their certain end, they set fire to their dwellings themselves and ran toward the sea like madmen. None escaped: the harvest of Christ was complete.” — Summary based on Liutprand of Cremona and the Latin tradition^[74]

The Muslim base at Garigliano ceases to exist. For the first time since 882, southern Latium is free. For the first time since the sack of Saint Peter in 846, the Saint-Cassian / Benevento / Capua / Naples route is restored to Christendom. This is one of the greatest military victories of the medieval papacy.

The pope with banner in hand

Several sources — Liutprand, Flodoard in his poem De Christi triumphis, some 11th-century hagiographers — claim that John X personally commanded part of the operations, even that he fought himself, banner of Christ in hand, before his troops. This detail is probably embellished by the Latin tradition, but it reflects a certain fact: the pope was present, militarily engaged, morally responsible for the coalition.

This is one of the rarest images in pontifical history: a bishop of Rome leading a Christian army in a decisive battle against a Muslim enemy. The direct precedent is John VIII and his fleet at Cape Circe (877).^[75] The lasting successor will be Leo IX at the Battle of Civitate (1053) — where the pope was, however, captured by his Norman adversaries.

The imperial context: thirty-four years without an effective emperor

Since the coronation of Charles the Fat by John VIII on 12 February 881, the Western Empire had only known ephemeral episodes. Charles the Fat was deposed in 887, Guy of Spoleto crowned by Stephen V in 891 then died in 894, Lambert of Spoleto briefly emperor in 894-898, Arnulf of Carinthia crowned in 896 but unable to exercise the title, Louis the Blind crowned by Benedict IV in 901 then blinded by Berengar in 905. None of these emperors managed to govern Italy or protect Rome.^[76]

When Berengar I, marquis of Friuli then king of Italy since 888, agrees to march with John X against the Saracens, the pope promises him the imperial crown if victorious. The promise is fulfilled: three months after the Garigliano victory, Berengar solemnly enters Rome.

The coronation of 3 December 915

On Sunday, 3 December 915, in the basilica of Saint Peter’s in the Vatican, John X crowns Berengar I emperor of the Romans. The ceremony follows the ritual established since Charlemagne (800) and continued by John VIII: anointing by the pope, presentation of the globe and sceptre, acclamation by the Roman people, the emperor’s oath to defend the Roman Church, respect the privileges of the Holy See, and guarantee the Carolingian donations to the Patrimony of Peter.^[77][78]

Berengar I thus becomes the last emperor of direct Carolingian descent in Latin history. His maternal great-grandfather was Emperor Louis the Pious (814-840); he is the legitimate descendant, through the female line, of Charlemagne’s dynasty.

A lasting imperial doctrine

The 915 coronation does not save Italy from the Carolingian crisis, but it reaffirms a lasting doctrine: it is the pope who crowns the emperor. The principle of the Translatio Imperii established by John VIII between 875 and 881 — the pope’s active choice among several candidates — becomes the common doctrine of the Roman chancery, and will be taken up by Gregory VII in the Investiture Controversy, by Innocent III in the decree Venerabilem (1202), by Innocent IV at the Council of Lyon (1245), up to the coronation of Charles V in Bologna by Clement VII in 1530 — the last pontifical imperial coronation in history.

Berengar’s political failure

Berengar I will not last long. Faced with Hungarian invasions ravaging Friuli and Venetia since 899, forced into a humiliating compromise with the Magyars to whom he pays tribute to keep them at bay, militarily defeated by his Italian rivals, he is assassinated in Verona on 7 April 924 by one of his own soldiers, Flambert, possibly at the instigation of Rudolph II of Burgundy, his rival for the Italian throne.^[79]

With his death, Italy falls back into political chaos. The imperial title remains vacant for the next generation: it will be necessary to wait for the coronation of Otto I by John XII on 2 February 962 — forty-seven years after Berengar’s coronation — for an effective emperor to be restored in the West.

Tomislav, First rex Chroatorum

Since the late 9th century, the Duchy of Croatia — a political entity uniting Pannonian Croatia and Dalmatian Croatia — was ruled by the Trpimirović dynasty, nominally vassal sometimes to Constantinople, sometimes to the Frankish court. Around 910-925, Duke Tomislav unified the two Croatias under his sole authority, repelled the Bulgarians of Tsar Simeon I eastward, and was rewarded with the royal title.^[80]

It was John X who, the first, designated Tomislav as "rex" (king) in a preserved letter.

“John, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his dear son Tomislav, king of the Croats, and to Mihailo, most excellent duke of the Zachlumians.” — Pope John X, address of the letter to Tomislav of Croatia and Mihailo of Zachlumia, circa 925 (translated from the text edited by Rački)^[81]

This is the diplomatic birth certificate of the Kingdom of Croatia within the Latin Christendom. A thousand years later, in 1925, the millennium of this pontifical recognition was celebrated in Zagreb as one of the great founding events of Croatian national memory.^[82]

The Issue: Slavonic Liturgy in Dalmatia

The territory posed a burning canonical question. Coastal Dalmatia — Zadar, Split (Spalato), Trogir, Šibenik — had been of Latin tradition since late Antiquity and recognized the metropolitan primacy of the Archbishop of Split. The Croatian hinterland, Christianized later, used the Slavonic liturgy inherited from the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, expelled from Moravia after 885 — notably the diocese of Nin, whose bishop Gregory of Nin (Grgur Ninski) claimed jurisdiction over the entire Croatian kingdom.^[83]

John X ruled in favor of Latin unity, but without persecuting the Slavonic liturgy. In 925, he sent two legates — John, bishop of Ancona, and Leo, bishop of Palestrina, according to the acts of the synod in Rački's critical edition^[84] — to convene a synod at Split presided over by Archbishop John of Split, in the presence of the Dalmatian bishops, King Tomislav, and Prince Mihailo of Zachlumia.

The Canons of the 925 Synod

The canons of the Council of Split (925) decreed:

1. Primacy of the Archbishopric of Split over all episcopal sees in the Croatian kingdom, including Nin;
2. Preference for clergy trained in Latin: forbidding the ordination of bishops ignorant of Latin;
3. Limited tolerance for the Slavonic liturgy: Mass in the Slavic language remained permitted in parishes lacking Latin clergy, but it could not serve as a common standard;
4. Metropolitan authority maintained for the Archbishop of Split against the jurisdictional claims of Nin.^[85][86][87]

The canons did not abolish the Slavonic liturgy — John X here reprises the balanced doctrine of John VIII in Industriae tuae (880). But they clearly subordinated the Slavonic usage to the Latin authority of Split. It was a compromise solution preserving linguistic plurality without allowing the formation of a Croatian ecclesiastical separatism.

The Second Council of 928 and the Disappearance of the See of Nin

Bishop Gregory of Nin did not accept the verdict. He appealed to Rome against the decision of Split. But John X was deposed in May/June 928 before the appeal was decided: it was his successor Leo VI (May–December 928) who ruled. A second council at Split, held in 928 under the presidency of legate Madalbert, confirmed the canons of 925 and suppressed the episcopal see of Nin as an autonomous entity — Gregory of Nin was invited to become bishop of another city.^[88]

The decision was poorly received by later Croatian memory: Gregory of Nin remains a national hero defending the vernacular language, immortalized by the monumental statue by Ivan Meštrović erected in Split in 1929. But canonically, the pontifical verdict held: the archbishopric of Split remained until the 20th century the metropolitan see of Catholic Dalmatia.

Simeon the Great and the Dream of a Christian Bulgaria

To the east of the Croatian kingdom, the Bulgarian tsardom experienced its most brilliant period under the reign of Simeon I the Great (893–927). Son of Boris-Michael I (the tsar who converted Bulgaria to Byzantine Christianity in 864), Simeon studied theology and rhetoric in Constantinople, earning him the nickname “semi-Greek.” He dreamed of conquering Constantinople, uniting the Bulgarian and Byzantine crowns, and establishing a “Slavic Romania” over which he would reign as basileus.^[89]

Tired of ecclesiastical tensions with the Patriarchate of Constantinople—which refused to recognize his patriarchal autocephaly—Simeon turned to Rome. He sent an embassy to John X to discuss the possibility of transferring the Bulgarian Church’s obedience to the Apostolic See.

Proposed Obedience, Letters of Peace, No Roman Coronation

John X accepted the principle of the envisaged Roman obedience. He sent legates, who got no further than Constantinople, and letters urging Simeon to make peace with the Byzantine Empire: this is the exact extent attested by the surviving sources — offer of obedience and negotiation, with no Roman coronation nor documented confirmation of the imperial title by Rome.^[90][91][92]

After Simeon: the Byzantine Peace of 927, Without Roman Coronation

Simeon died on May 27, 927. His son Peter I succeeded him and concluded peace with Byzantium that autumn: received by Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos, he married his granddaughter Maria in autumn 927 (October 8 or November 8 according to modern syntheses) and obtained Byzantine recognition of his imperial title and of the Bulgarian patriarchal dignity.^[93] The Roman obedience envisaged under Simeon never materialized: the Bulgarian Church remained within Constantinople's orbit.

No surviving source attests a coronation of Peter I by legates of John X. The episode, sometimes linked to Bishop Madalbert, rests on a confusion: Madalbert — or Madalberta — was the legate of the Second Synod of Split (928), convened under Leo VI.^[94]

To John X's credit remains the diplomatic opening toward the Bulgarian sovereign — offer of obedience received, legates and letters of peace sent — a gesture without sequel but significant of the European scope of his chancery: between Rome, Constantinople, Pavia, Split and Preslav, the pope from Tossignano held in hand the threads of Christian politics in the first half of the 10th century.

September 11, 909: A Founding Act

On September 11, 909 (910 according to some datings), at Bourges, William I Duke of Aquitaine signed the founding charter of a new monastery on his Burgundian lands, at a place called Cluniacum. He entrusted its leadership to the Benedictine Berno, abbot of Baume-les-Messieurs, and placed the monastery under the direct dependence of the Holy See—without any intermediate episcopal or feudal jurisdiction.^[95]

The gesture seemed minor in 909. The monastic world then counted hundreds of abbeys subject to feudal lords who regarded them as hereditary properties. Cluny’s specificity—its pontifical exemption—freed it from this pattern and placed it in unique dependence on the pope of Rome.

Cluny: A Privilege of John X Alleged Only by Tradition

Historiographical tradition attributes to John X, probably in the early 920s, a privilege that would have confirmed Cluny's exemption and approved the rigor of its Benedictine rule.^[96][97] But the text has not come down to us, and the Cluniac bullary preserves no bull of John X: as the sources stand, the attribution remains an undocumented tradition. The first pontifical privilege for Cluny formally preserved is the bull of John XI (March 931), which places the abbey under Roman tutelage and authorizes Abbot Odo to reform other monasteries; Gregory V in 998 added exemption from the bishopric of Mâcon, later extended to all Cluniac abbeys by John XIX in 1024.^[98]

The theological stakes were significant. The pontifical confirmation was not merely an administrative formality: it inscribed Cluny in Peter’s direct dependence and conferred upon it a particular spiritual authority. Under its great abbots of the 10th–11th centuries, the monastery would found or reform hundreds of other monasteries, all of which would depend, by cascade, on the original Roman privilege.

A Seed for the Gregorian Reform

Under Odo (927–942), Mayeul (954–994), Odilon (994–1049), and Hugh the Great (1049–1109), Cluny became the principal spiritual and political center of Western Christendom. More than a thousand abbeys would depend directly or indirectly on the master of Cluny. The great Gregorian reform of the 11th century was born from Cluniac circles: Gregory VII himself, Hildebrand, had been a monk at Saint Mary of the Aventine in Rome—a Roman branch of Cluniac spirituality.

John X did not see these consequences. But by granting — according to tradition — a privilege to Berno around 920, he would have inscribed into pontifical law a matrix that would transform Europe two centuries later. A pope often judged compromised with Rome’s aristocratic nobility was thus, paradoxically, one of the legal founders of the spirituality that would sweep away that aristocracy a century and a half later.

The Sequence of Deaths (924-925)

The reversal begins in 924. On April 7, 924, Berengar I — a pillar of John X’s Italian policy — is assassinated in Verona.^[99] Without an emperor or a powerful king of Italy, John X loses his main counterbalance to the Tusculan house. That same year, the pope’s brother, Peter, is appointed Duke of Spoleto after the extinction of the Spoleto house — a move that, in hindsight, would be criticized as nepotism, but which responded to the need to secure loyalty over a strategically important fief.

In 924-925, Theophylact I himself dies. Alberic I of Spoleto — son-in-law of Theophylact and father of Alberic II — is assassinated at Orte shortly after, in 924 or 926 (the exact date is uncertain).^[100] For the first time since John X’s election, the Tusculan house finds itself without a prestigious male leader. Marozia, daughter of Theophylact and widow of Alberic I, takes control of the house and its Roman militias.

Hugh of Provence and the Papal Response

To counter Marozia’s seizure of power, John X calls upon a new external sovereign: Hugh of Provence (Hugh of Arles), great-grandson of Lothair I through his mother Bertha — herself daughter of Lothair II —, count of Provence, who became king of Italy in 926 after the post-Berengar collapse. The pope hopes that Hugh, with his Provençal base, can balance the weight of the Theophylactians and restore the political autonomy of the Holy See.^[101][102]

Marozia understands the maneuver. The alliance between John X and Hugh is an existential threat to the Tusculan house. She then marries in a second marriage Guido (Guy) of Tuscany, marquis of Tuscany — Hugh's half-brother through their common mother Bertha, but his political rival on the peninsula. The Marozia-Guido couple commands Tuscan troops that can be mobilized against Rome.

The Coup d'état (May/June 928)

In May or June 928 (sources differ on the exact month), Marozia and Guido of Tuscany march on Rome. They storm the Lateran Palace, where the pope and his court reside. Peter, John X’s brother and Duke of Spoleto, present at the Lateran to defend his brother, is killed before the pope’s eyes in a shootout within the papal apartments.^[103][104]

John X is captured. Marozia deposes him and has him transferred to the Castel Sant'Angelo — the former mausoleum of Hadrian, become in the early Middle Ages a fortress dominating Rome. The pope remains imprisoned there in cells described by medieval sources as harsh and unsanitary.

Suffocation (According to Liutprand) or Death from Anguish (According to Flodoard)

Sources differ on the exact circumstances of John X’s death.

Liutprand of Cremona, in Antapodosis, Book III, ch. 43, claims that the pope was suffocated under a pillow by Marozia's henchmen, shortly after his arrest — a version taken up by the Annals of Benevento (Mann, vol. IV), but which Flodoard and the Liber Pontificalis do not confirm.^[105][106]

Flodoard of Reims, in his Annals (notice filed sub anno 929 — annalistic year), writes more soberly that John X “died, consumed by anguish” (“actus angore defungitur”) in his prison.^[107] Flodoard is chronologically closer to the events (the Annals cover 919-966) and less polemical than Liutprand. His wording may indicate either a natural death under deplorable detention conditions or a euphemism for a murder he could not prove.

Historiographical Consensus

Modern historiography agrees on the following points: 1) John X was deposed and imprisoned by Marozia and Guido of Tuscany in spring 928 — a certain fact; 2) he died in prison under broadly violent conditions (mistreatment, isolation, anxiety, possibly suffocation) — a probable fact; 3) he died in May 928 — May or June according to chronologies, within a few weeks; Flodoard's notice, filed sub anno 929, belongs to the annalistic year, not to survival until 929.^{[108][109][110][111]}

The pillow detail reported by Liutprand is not inherently absurd — it was a discreet assassination method used in several medieval courts — but since it is unconfirmed by any other source and comes from the most biased pen regarding the pontificate, it must be regarded as possible but unproven.

Burial and Memory

The burial of John X is known only as a hypothesis: according to Rodolfo Lanciani (Pagan and Christian Rome, 1892, chap. V, p. 235), Marozia, to dispel suspicions of violent death, is said to have had him buried with honors near the middle door of the Lateran, at the foot of the nave — Lanciani himself referring to the description of the tombstone by John the Deacon of the Lateran.^[112][113] This burial, if it was there, did not survive the remodelling of the basilica in the 13th and 17th centuries.

Thus perished, in his Castel Sant'Angelo prison, the pope who had defeated the Saracens of Garigliano, crowned Berengar emperor and recognized Tomislav king of the Croats. The city he had served returned him to the earth of the Lateran, without glory or crown. — Synthetic paraphrase after Johann P. Kirsch and Ferdinand Gregorovius (not a verbatim quotation).^[114][115]

The Modern Rehabilitation of a Slandered Pope

The historical assessment of John X has undergone two phases. For a thousand years — from the 10th century to the early 20th century — Latin memory mainly retained Liutprand’s accusations: the lover of Theodora, the compromised pope, the scandalous end. The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century amplified these narratives as illustrations of the inherent corruption of the medieval papal system.

The reversal came from 19th- and 20th-century historians. Ferdinand Gregorovius, in his monumental Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1859-1872), carried out the first full rehabilitation based on a systematic critique of sources: Liutprand is late and hostile; Eugenius Vulgarius is contemporary and favorable to Theodora; Flodoard is measured and chronologically close.

Synthetic presentation after Gregorovius (vol. III, book VI): a pope who attempts to free the Apostolic See from the domination of the aristocratic houses by restoring an Italian imperial power.^[137]

Johann Peter Kirsch confirms this rehabilitation in the Catholic Encyclopedia (vol. 8, 1910) — he explicitly rejects Liutprand's slanders as late, hostile to the Theophylactians, and unconfirmed by any contemporary source.^[138] Horace Kinder Mann restores the political facts of the pontificate in The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (vol. IV, London, 1910); Giacinto Romano, Girolamo Arnaldi, John W. O'Malley extend this into the 20th and 21st centuries. Modern historiography regards John X as one of the most remarkable popes of the 10th century, anticipating — through his territorial ambition, European diplomacy, and support for Cluny — the great pontifical tradition that would culminate with Leo IX and Gregory VII in the 11th century.

The Croatian and Balkan Legacy

John X’s most enduring legacy is undoubtedly his Balkan work. The papal recognition of Tomislav as rex Chroatorum in 925 is the founding act of Croatian Christianity within the Latin sphere. A thousand years later, in 1925, the millennium of this recognition was celebrated in Zagreb as one of the great foundational events of Croatian national memory.^[139]

The Synod of Split (925, confirmed by a second synod in 928 under Leo VI) fixed for a millennium the linguistic status of the Croatian Church: Latin primacy, with regulated tolerance of the Slavonic liturgy. This compromise allowed Croatia to remain in Roman communion when Serbia and Bulgaria shifted into the Byzantine orbit after the Great Schism of 1054. The confessional separation between Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs, which shaped Balkan history until the 20th century, partly traces its roots to the decisions of the 925 Synod of Split.

In Bulgaria, the episode of Roman obedience was less lasting — under Peter I, the Bulgarian Church would revert to Byzantine obedience — but the diplomatic precedent set by John X (a pope who receives the offer of obedience from a Slavic sovereign and answers him with letters of peace) remained in the memory of Balkan chancelleries.

The Continued Imperial Doctrine

The coronation of Berengar extends the doctrine of the Translatio Imperii formulated by John VIII. No pope between 881 and 962 crowned an emperor except John X. When Otto I received the imperial crown from John XII on February 2, 962, he was the direct heir to Berengar’s 915 precedent — who himself was heir to Charles the Fat in 881. An unbroken chain links these three coronations.

The doctrine was taken up and strengthened by Gregory VII in the Dictatus Papae (1075), by Innocent III in Venerabilem (1202), and continued until the coronation of Charles V in 1530. It is the ideological framework of medieval Christendom, and John X is a discreet but essential link in it.

A Spiritual Matrix: Cluny

Perhaps the most paradoxical legacy is spiritual. A pope often judged compromised with the Roman nobility inscribed into pontifical law the legal foundation of a monastic movement that would reform the Church a century and a half later against that very nobility. Without the Roman protection — whose first confirmation tradition attributes to John X —, the Gregorian reform of the 11th century would not have had its Roman legal basis. This is one of those ironies of history that Providence seems fond of: the pope of the pornocracy planted the seed that would bring forth Saint Odo, Saint Odilon, Saint Hugh, and Saint Gregory VII.

The Pope Between Two Worlds

John X stands at the hinge of two worlds. Behind him, the universal Carolingian papacy of Nicholas I, Adrian II, and John VIII — a glory that fades after his assassination. Ahead of him, the Roman pornocracy of the Theophylacti (Leo VI, Stephen VII, John XI son of Marozia, the scandalous John XII crowning Otto) — a dark century that would only end with the Gregorian reform.

John X is the last resurgence of the great Carolingian papacy before its fall. His victory at Garigliano, his coronation of Berengar, his Balkan diplomacy, his support for Cluny: all these acts belong to the great tradition of the universal popes of the 9th century. His tragic end is, alas, the first card in a game that would dominate the Chair of Peter for an entire century.

• Pope John VIII (872-882) — the great predecessor whose imperial doctrine and military spirit John X continued.
• Pope Saint Nicholas I (858-867) — distant model of universal governance in the 9th century.
• Pope Lando (913-914) — immediate predecessor of John X.
• Pope Leo VI (928) — immediate successor, first pope of the Tusculan pornocracy.
• Pope Formosus (891-896) — pope whose annulled and restored ordinations still stirred Rome in John X’s time.
• Pope Sergius III (904-911) — pope who consecrated John as archbishop of Ravenna around 905.
• Pope John XI (931-935) — son of Marozia, installed on the See of Peter after John X’s downfall.
• Pope John XII (955-964) — heir of the Tusculan house and crowner of Otto I in 962.
• The Battle of Garigliano (915) — the great Christian victory against the Saracens.
• The Council of Split (925) — canonical foundation of the Latin Croatian Church.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius — Slavic liturgical heritage whose canonical status in Croatia was fixed by the Synod of Split.
• The Castel Sant'Angelo — Hadrian’s mausoleum transformed into a papal fortress, prison of John X in 928.
• Saint Odo of Cluny — second abbot who inherited the privilege that tradition attributes to John X.
• Pope Saint Gregory VII (1073-1085) — reformer of the Roman Church whose legal matrix is the Cluniac lineage that tradition traces back to John X.