Pope Sergius II (844-847)

A minor pope, but an excellent revealer of the 9th century

Sergius II was not a great doctrinal pope. He left behind neither a major council, nor an encyclical before its time, nor a lasting reform comparable to those of Adrian I or Leo III. His importance lies elsewhere: his pontificate shows what Rome becomes when the Carolingian order ceases to be protective and becomes burdensome, and when the Mediterranean grows dangerous enough for the basilicas of the apostles themselves to be sacked.

He is thus a hinge pope. Before him, the popes of the 8th and early 9th century sought Frankish protection against the Lombards and Byzantine impotence. After him, Leo IV would have to build walls, organise a naval defence, fortify the Vatican and answer a threat that was no longer merely Italian or Lombard, but maritime, mobile and Saracen.^[9]

The pope of the moment when Saint Peter's became vulnerable

The 846 raid did not destroy Rome within its walls, but it struck what Latin Christendom held most dear: the extra-mural sanctuaries of Peter and Paul. The basilicas lay outside the Aurelian Walls; they were rich in lamps, ornaments, sacred vessels, precious fabrics and gifts accumulated since Constantine and the Carolingian popes.^[10] Their sacking was not only a material loss. It was a liturgical wound: the places that made Rome's apostolic memory visible were exposed to pirates.

Mann stresses the raid's lasting impression: Rome, which he calls "the center of Christendom", came close to falling, and the sacking of the basilicas of the apostles struck the imagination of Western Europe (paraphrase of his conclusion, exact text in the note).^[11] The response would not really come under Sergius, whom the hostile recension of the Liber depicts as already diminished by illness; it would come under Leo IV, but it was prepared by this shock.

A difficult memory: the pope, his brother and the Liber Pontificalis

The Sergius II dossier is complicated by the two recensions of his life in the Liber Pontificalis. The ordinary version presents a well-trained cleric, pious, generous to the poor and active in restoring churches. The so-called Farnesianus version, preserved by a particular manuscript tradition, paints on the contrary a very harsh portrait: Sergius is said to have been diminished by gout, little inclined to government, and his brother Benedict, bishop of Albano, is said to have seized the administration, sold offices and tyrannised Rome.^[12][13]

These accusations must therefore be read with caution. They must not be suppressed: they are a historical source on the Roman crisis, simony and anti-Frankish resentment. But neither must they be repeated as a neutral photograph of the pope. Maddalena Betti has shown that these two versions of the Liber serve different political strategies: the hostile version makes the alleged misgovernment of Sergius and Benedict the justification for its account of the Saracen raid, read explicitly as divine punishment, against a background of anti-Frankish resentment after Louis II's expedition.^[14][15]

Table of witnesses

Two versions of one pontifical life

The decisive point is the plurality of traditions. The notice on Sergius II in the Liber Pontificalis is not a simple block. Duchesne published two states of the text; Betti revisited the analysis to show that the dossier is inseparable from Carolingian politics.^[19] The favourable recension presents Sergius as a man chosen by Providence, defender of Rome against Louis II. The hostile recension stresses Benedict, simony, social violence and the incapacity of the pontifical government.

This divergence explains the tone of this article: Sergius II must not be artificially whitewashed, but he must not be turned into a caricature either. The best historical judgement is twofold: his pontificate probably reveals a real rise of familial and aristocratic power in Rome; but the hostile sources amplify this observation to construct a narrative of chastisement, in which the Saracen raid becomes almost a providential punishment against corruption.^[20][21]

A noble family, linked to several popes

Sergius was born in Rome into a noble family. Mann notes that this same family gave three popes to the 9th century: Stephen IV, Sergius II and Adrian II.^[22] His father, also named Sergius, died while the child was young; his mother took charge of his education and died in her turn when he was about twelve.^[23]

The Liber Pontificalis, in its favourable tradition, stresses his early piety: Sergius is said to have avoided the overly dissipated games of his companions, sought divine wisdom, helped the poor and grown up in a rare moral discipline.^[24] These traits are hagiographical, but they are not useless. They show what Rome expected of a future pope: nobility, self-mastery, liturgical culture, charity and fidelity to the urban Church.

The schola cantorum

The young Sergius attracted the attention of Leo III, who sent him to the schola cantorum. There he learned liturgical chant and ordinary letters, then received orders: acolyte under Leo III, subdeacon under Stephen IV, priest of the title of Saints Martin and Sylvester under Paschal I, finally archpriest under Gregory IV.^[25][26]

This detail matters more than it seems. Carolingian Rome was a Rome of rites, processions, chant, liturgical books, from basilica to basilica. To be trained at the schola cantorum was not only to know how to sing: it was to be introduced into the administrative and ceremonial heart of the Roman Church. Sergius was thus a man of the Lateran, of Saint Peter's, of the liturgy and the urban titles, not a war leader.

A disputed succession

At the death of Gregory IV, at the beginning of 844, the leading clerics and laymen gathered to seek a successor. The majority settled on Sergius, then archpriest.^[27] But a deacon named John gathered a popular group, forced entry into the Lateran palace and tried to occupy the pontifical see. The episode lasted little time: the Roman nobles and their horsemen mobilised, John was shut up in a monastery, and Sergius was escorted with solemnity to the Lateran.^[28][29]

The most revealing detail is the clemency attributed to Sergius. According to Mann, the deacon John was said to have been threatened with a violent death; Sergius prevented it, refusing to "return evil for evil".^[30] Even if the account is stylised, it serves a clear thesis: Sergius's legitimacy came not only from the aristocratic party, but also from his moderation.

A consecration without awaiting the emperor

Sergius was consecrated at Saint Peter's in January 844, without awaiting the imperial envoys.^[31][32] Yet the Constitutio Romana of 824, issued during the pontificate of Eugene II, had strengthened the imperial presence in Roman affairs. Lothair I saw it as an infringement of his rights. He therefore sent his son Louis II with an army, accompanied by Drogo of Metz, to examine the validity of the election and recall Carolingian prerogatives.^[33][34]

A Frankish army at the gates of the city

Louis II's expedition was not a courtesy visit. Mann reports that the army, setting out from Pavia, ravaged areas of the pontifical territory near Bologna and continued its march toward Rome in an atmosphere of menace.^[35] Sergius, for his part, refused the army entry into the city. Louis was received at Saint Peter's, but on condition: if he came for the good of the Republic, the city and the Church, the gates would open; otherwise, they would remain closed.^[36]

"If he came with good will, for the benefit of the Republic, the city and the Church, the gates would be opened by order of the pope; otherwise they would not be opened." — Horace K. Mann, summarising the account of the Liber Pontificalis^[37]

This scene says everything about Sergius's position. He could not defeat the Franks militarily, but he could impose a language: Louis would not enter as a conqueror; he had to declare that he did not come with evil intent.

Crowning Louis, but refusing the oath to Louis

On Sunday 15 June 844, Sergius anointed Louis and crowned him king of the Lombards.^[38][39] The gesture publicly recognised the young Carolingian's place in Italy. But when Drogo and the northern bishops asked the Romans to swear fealty to Louis, Sergius refused. He accepted an oath to Emperor Lothair, in keeping with imperial logic, but not to the son.^[40]

This refusal was crucial. Sergius did not reject every relationship with the Empire; he refused a shift that would have placed Rome under the direct dependence of the king of Italy. It was a fine line, but a real one: the papacy could recognise the imperial order without surrendering itself to just any local holder of force.

Drogo of Metz, pontifical legate

After the crisis, Sergius nonetheless named Drogo of Metz pontifical legate for Francia and Germania.^[41][42] The choice seems paradoxical: Drogo came with Louis to put pressure on Rome; he left invested with a considerable ecclesiastical office. The pontifical letter, summarised by Mann, gave him power to convene general synods, examine episcopal elections and handle appeals before they reached Rome, while safeguarding the primacy of the Roman See.^[43]

The attempt quickly failed. The bishops of Charles the Bald, gathered at Verneuil in December 844, would not submit to a legate whose see belonged to Lothair's kingdom.^[44] Drogo eventually renounced it. The episode reveals the break-up of the old empire: what Rome and Lothair still dreamed of as a transalpine ecclesial unity already ran up against the Frankish kingdoms in formation.

The pope's brother and bishop of Albano

The darkest figure of the pontificate is Benedict, Sergius's brother and bishop of Albano. The hostile recension of the Liber Pontificalis accuses him of having usurped civil and ecclesiastical government, extorted money, sold bishoprics, seized monastic property and turned Roman building sites into a fiscal pretext.^[45][46]

These accusations belong to a real problem: in the 9th century, Roman aristocratic families carried more and more weight in pontifical elections, administrative offices and the control of resources. Sergius II was not yet the feudalised papacy of the 10th century, but he foreshadowed some of its mechanisms: family networks, accumulated offices, and a possible confusion between serving the Church and urban domination.

Simony or crisis rhetoric?

The simony denounced by the Farnesianus recension must be taken seriously, for it is precisely one of the great scandals that would haunt the Carolingian and then Gregorian reform. Betti notes that the hostile text makes simony a sign of the wreck of the Roman Church under Sergius, before presenting the Saracen raid as a chastisement or divine vengeance.^[47] But the very violence of this construction calls for caution.

The best reading is therefore as follows: Benedict probably exercised excessive power; Sergius's family entourage probably weighed heavily; but the blackest version of the account is also a polemical weapon. A serious Catholic article does not hide the weakness of churchmen; it simply refuses to turn a partisan text into an absolute verdict.

Adalbert of Tuscany's warning

On 10 August 846, Adalbert, margrave of Tuscany and Frankish protector of the pontifical territory of Corsica, warned Sergius that a fleet from Africa was heading for Rome. Mann gives the figures passed on by this tradition: seventy-three ships, eleven thousand men, five hundred horses.^[48] He advised sheltering the bodies of the apostles and the treasures of Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's, two basilicas then situated outside the walls.

The hostile recension accuses Sergius and Benedict of not having taken the warning seriously. Mann nuances this: the Italian coasts had already seen many alerts with no consequence, so that rumours of a raid could seem exaggerated.^[49] This nuance does not excuse the lack of preparation, but it explains why Rome did not react with the expected energy.

Ostia, Portus, then the basilicas of the apostles

On 23 August 846, the fleet reached the mouth of the Tiber. Ostia attempted a weak resistance, then was abandoned; Portus fell too. Rome's foreign scholae — English, Frisians, Franks — went out to fight, won small successes, then were surprised and cut to pieces.^[50]

The Saracens then moved up toward the extra-mural sanctuaries. Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's were sacked. The city of Rome, protected by its walls, was not taken. But the symbolic effect was disastrous: the apostolic tombs seemed within reach of a pirate fleet.

The bodies of Peter and Paul

The most sensitive question is that of the apostolic relics. The treasures were sacked; were the bodies profaned? Mann answers cautiously: there is no direct proof that the bodies of Peter or Paul were destroyed or carried off.^[51] He cites Lanciani to distinguish the two tombs: Peter's, placed in an underground crypt and protected by a solid structure, is said to have escaped the sacking; Paul's, more accessible, may have been damaged, but not destroyed in the strict sense.^[52]

This caution matters. The 846 raid was a major sacrilege, but the dossier must not be burdened with what the sources do not say. The certain fact is grave enough: the basilicas were sacked, and Christendom understood that the Vatican had to be fortified.

San Martino ai Monti

Before becoming pope, Sergius was priest of the title of Saints Martin and Sylvester, the present basilica of San Martino ai Monti. Once elected, he restored it. Mann reports that he placed there, in a confessio beneath the high altar, relics of Sylvester, of several popes and of other saints coming notably from the catacomb of Priscilla.^[53] The apse mosaics made at the time have disappeared, probably during the great 17th-century restoration.

This attention to relics illuminates a constant of pontifical Rome: restoring a church is not only consolidating a building; it is giving the faithful a place where the memory of the saints is made visible, accessible, liturgical.

Lateran, aqueduct and schola cantorum

Sergius also undertook works at the Lateran. He enlarged the sanctuary, decorated it with worked marble columns, arranged a confessio beneath the altar with gilt silver plates and turned the closed narthex into an open portico.^[54] He also restored the schola cantorum, the institution near the Lateran for training young clerics, and repaired the Aqua Jovia, a branch of the Marcian aqueduct that supplied a large part of the city.^[55]

These works do not suffice to make Sergius a great restorer comparable to Adrian I. But they correct the idea of a purely passive pontificate. Even in a short reign, crossed by Frankish pressure and the 846 raid, the papacy continued to maintain the city, its basilicas and its liturgical network.

Sergius died suddenly on 27 January 847 and was buried at Saint Peter's.^[56][57][58] The date of 27 January is that of the Holy See as of Mann, the Catholic Encyclopedia and the New Catholic Encyclopedia; the Liber Pontificalis (ed. Duchesne, vol. II, p. 86-105) gives burial at Saint Peter's with no contrary day. The isolated variant of 24 January, relayed by OrthodoxWiki, is therefore set aside. His death notably interrupted an attempt to settle the old conflict between the patriarchates of Aquileia and Grado, a dossier in which he probably wanted to combine ecclesiastical decision with imperial support to make the sentence enforceable.^[59]

His immediate legacy fell to Leo IV. His successor would have to repair the basilicas, raise Rome from the trauma, build the Leonine City and organise a more coherent defence against Muslim raids. In this sense, Sergius II is less the pope of the response than the pope of the shock. He received upon his pontificate the humiliation that his successor would turn into a programme.

• Pope Gregory IV — the immediate predecessor, in a period of growing Carolingian anarchy.
• Pope Saint Leo IV — the successor who fortified the Vatican after the 846 raid.
• The old Saint Peter's Basilica — to understand why Saint Peter's was vulnerable in 846.
• Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls — the other great sanctuary sacked by the Saracens.
• Pope Stephen IV — for the Carolingian precedent of the crowning of Louis the Pious.