Pope Sergius III (904-911)

The Pope who reopens the wound of Formosus

Seven years after the Cadaver Synod of January 897 - where Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of Formosus exhumed, judged it, cut off three fingers and thrown it into the Tiber^[14] - Sergius III in turn convened a Roman synod which reaffirmed the sentence of 897 and declared null all the ordinations conferred by Formosus.^[15][16] Where Theodore II (897), then John IX (898-900), had solemnly annulled the corpse trial and recognized the Formosan ordinations,^[17] Sergius III returned to the position of 897.

It was the most devastating act of his pontificate. All bishops, priests and deacons ordained by Formosus were canonically suspended. Many, ordained in turn by these Formosan bishops, were threatened in a cascade. The Western clergy, as far as England and Francia, were plunged into unprecedented sacramental confusion. Resistance was organized immediately, around two southern theologians who took up their pens: Auxilius of Naples and Eugene Vulgarius.^[18][19]

The Pope who rebuilt Saint John Lateran

The earthquake of 897 had almost completely destroyed the Lateran basilica: according to the formula transmitted by medieval sources, it had collapsed "ab altari usque ad portas cecidit" ("it collapsed from the altar to the doors").^[20] The lines of the original building had become indecipherable. For seven years, the pope's cathedral lay in ruins. It was Sergius III who launched the complete reconstruction, completed the work within the dimensions of the old basilica and solemnly consecrated it. According to a common hypothesis, without any identified act, it was on this occasion that the Constantinian basilica of the Savior would have become Saint Savior and Saint John the Baptist.^[21][22]

The Sergian nave lasted until the fire of 1308 - a little over four hundred years, from the earthquake of 897 to the fire of 1308.^[23] No hostile account can erase this material fact: the mother basilica of all the churches in the world was restored by him. For the Catholic Encyclopedia, this is the minimum criterion which prohibits reducing his pontificate to a simple parody of the papacy.^[24]

The Pope with whom the saeculum obscurum begins

Historians traditionally date the beginning of the saeculum obscurum ("dark century") from January 29, 904, the day of Sergius III's consecration. The name was coined in the 16th century by Cardinal Cesare Baronio in his Annales Ecclesiastici to designate the phase of the papacy dominated by the comital house of Tusculum.^[25] The more polemical term pornocracy ("government of prostitutes"), forged by German Protestant theology in the 19th century, designates the same sequence: Sergius III, Anastasius III, Lando, John X, Leo VI, Stephen VII, John XI, Leo VII, Stephen VIII, Marinus II, Agapetus II, and John XII.^[26]

The expression "pornocracy" is excessive: most of the popes of the period were competent administrators and good diplomats, as modern historiography recognizes.^[27] But the central mechanism is correct: Theophylact of Tusculum, vestararius (steward) of the Lateran Palace and head of the urban aristocracy, became the real master of Roman elections from 904. It is he who recalls Sergius III of exile; it was his family who would dominate Rome for sixty years.^[28]

Witness table

The modern historian has three groups of witnesses on Sergius III, which must be weighed carefully before writing a single sentence:

Auxilius and Eugene Vulgarius: the best placed doctrinal opponents

Auxilius of Naples was a Frankish priest, personally ordained by Formosus around 894, who took refuge in southern Lombardy after the Cadaver Synod. Between 908 and 911, he wrote four Latin treatises to defend the sacramental validity of Formosan ordinations: Libellus de ordinationibus a papa Formoso factis, Tractatus qui Infensor et Defensor dicitur, Libellus super causa et negatio Formosi papae, and In defensionem sacrae ordinationis papae Formosi libellus.^[29][30] His central argument - formulated half a millennium before the Council of Trent - holds that "orders conferred by sinful or excommunicated bishops are not in themselves invalid".^[31]

Eugene Vulgarius was a priest and professor of rhetoric and grammar at the episcopal school of Naples. Around 907, he wrote a pamphlet, De causa Formosiana, to defend Formosus and the legitimacy of his ordinations against the policy of Sergius III; he also composed carmina figurata in honor of the pope - a paradoxical work in which the doctrinal opponent honors the person of the pastor.^[32]

These two men are, by definition, the contemporaries most motivated to accumulate grievances against Sergius III. Neither of them mentions the slightest affair with Marozia, the slightest murder of Leo V or Christopher, or the slightest illegitimate child. This silence is the strongest historical argument for Mann's caution about the sexual accusations.^[33][34]

Liutprand of Cremona: hostile posterity, fifty years later

The Lombard bishop Liutprand of Cremona (c. 920-972) is, in his Antapodosis composed around 958-962, the only ancient author to portray Sergius III as an assassin and the father of an illegitimate pope. He wrote half a century after the events, in the entourage of the Ottonian emperor Otto I, at the precise moment when the Saxon Empire claimed the right to monitor Roman elections against the house of Tusculum.^[35][36]

Liutprand is also the most polemical chronicler of the 10th century, with an explicit agenda: to promote the idea of a renovated Western empire capable of imposing order on a depraved Rome.^[37] More seriously, he makes a major factual error about Sergius III. He attributes the Cadaver Synod itself to Sergius III, although that episode dates from 897 and was led by Stephen VI, seven years before Sergius's consecration.^[38] This confusion alone weakens his capacity to serve as a chronological witness to the Sergian pontificate.

The Liber Pontificalis and the difficulty of late versions

The Liber Pontificalis gives Sergius III a notice, but it is short, and the identification of John XI as Sergius's son appears clearly only in late recensions, after Liutprand and probably influenced by him.^[39] The best contemporary tradition, that of Flodoard of Reims (c. 894-966), instead gives John XI as the brother of Alberic II, that is, as the son of Marozia and her first husband Alberic I of Spoleto.^[40] Mann's verdict is therefore the only tenable one: "highly doubtful".^[41]

“These assertions are only made by embittered or poorly informed adversaries, and they are incompatible with what respectable contemporaries say about him. "

• Horace K. Mann, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13, New York, Robert Appleton, 1913, about accusations of murder and illegitimate paternity^[42]

Origins and formation

Sergius was born in Rome around 860 into a noble family. His father's name was Benedict.^[43] Like most future popes of his century, he entered the Roman clergy early: ordained subdeacon by Marinus I (882-884), raised to the diaconate by Stephen V (885-891), he made a career in the pontifical administration.^[44] This diaconal path was the royal road to Roman government: it was from this pool that both the cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian sees and future popes were recruited.

Bishop of Caere by Formosus (893)

In 893, Pope Formosus consecrated him bishop of Caere (present-day Cerveteri, about thirty kilometers northwest of Rome).^[45] The Catholic Encyclopedia transmits a tradition according to which Formosus, aware of Sergius's political value, sent him to Caere precisely to exclude him from a possible future papal candidacy, using ancient canonical rules which forbade a bishop to change sees.^[46] The same rule is precisely what the Cadaver Synod would later reproach Formosus for: having moved from Porto to Rome.

This appointment explains all the subsequent drama. Sergius was legally a Formosan bishop, but politically an adversary of Formosus as soon as tension rose between Roman factions. When Formosus died in 896, he was free, according to his own theory on the transfer of bishops, to leave Caere for Rome.

The question of the synod of the corpse

Did he participate in the Cadaver Synod of January 897? Contemporary sources do not explicitly name him among the main actors, but Britannica maintains that he supported Stephen VI and that his loyalty to the anti-Formosan position directly links him to this episode.^[47] The gesture which followed during his pontificate - the writing of a laudatory epitaph for Stephen VI on his tomb - retrospectively confirms this partisan affiliation.^[48] Whatever his exact role in 897, Sergius belonged to the faction which considered that Formosus had to be condemned and his acts annulled.

Death of Theodore II and candidacy of Sergius

Theodore II pontificated for only twenty days at the end of 897. He had time to rehabilitate Formosus, recover his body from the Tiber and solemnly rebury it in Saint Peter's, then he died suddenly.^[49] In the election that followed, in 898, two candidates faced each other: Sergius, supported by the anti-Formosans and by the emperor Lambert of Spoleto in a first phase, and John (future John IX), a Benedictine, supported by the Formosans and later by the Spoletan party.^[50]

John IX and excommunication

John IX won. Having become pope, he convened a synod in Rome in 898, followed by a large synod in Ravenna the same year, which confirmed the rehabilitation of Formosus, condemned the Cadaver Synod for a third time, and excommunicated Sergius together with the bishops who had consecrated him pope without waiting for the imperial decision.^[51][52] It was the hardest blow of his life: the bishop of Caere, a papal candidate, became an excommunicate.

Exile

He fled Rome. According to concordant sources, he first took refuge in Tuscany, with the margrave Adalbert II "the Rich", then in the Duchy of Spoleto, with Count Alberic I.^[53][54] This exile lasted approximately six years. The figure matters: for six years, the man who would become Sergius III was a deposed bishop, under canonical threat, hosted by military lords of central Italy. When he returned, it would be with their weapons.

Christopher's coup d'état against Leo V

During the six years of Sergius's exile, Rome experienced five pontificates: John IX (898-900), Benedict IV (900-903), Leo V (July-September 903), Christopher (September 903-January 904), then Sergius III himself.^[55] Leo V, a priest from the Roman countryside elected in July 903, was overthrown after two months by Christopher, a Roman priest who seized the Lateran by force and imprisoned Leo. This was a usurpation. The Catholic Church today considers Christopher an antipope, not a legitimate pope.^[56]

The armed intervention of Alberic and Theophylact

At the beginning of January 904, the Romans - in the wording of the Catholic Encyclopedia - "outraged at the violent usurpation of the papal see by Christopher" threw him into prison and recalled Sergius.^[57] The story is too smooth to be taken literally. What happened, in fact, was an armed operation led by Alberic I of Spoleto, accompanied in Rome by Theophylact of Tusculum, who imposed Sergius against any other solution.^[58][59]

"Theophylact of Tusculum, a strong military man, invited Sergius to return to Rome. With armed support, Sergius was consecrated pope on January 29, 904."

• English Wikipedia, synthesis of modern historiography on the return of Sergius III^[60]

The consecration of January 29, 904

Sergius was consecrated on Sunday, January 29, 904 at Saint Peter's. This date is retained by the Holy See as the official start of his pontificate, and his order number in the list of Peter's successors is 119.^[61] In Roman practice, the consecration erased the excommunication imposed by John IX in 898: a bishop consecrated pope by the Romans was, by the very nature of the office, freed from previous censures linked to his candidacy.

Leo V and Christopher in prison: strangled?

The fate of Leo V and Christopher is the first dark point of the pontificate. Both died in prison shortly after Sergius's consecration. According to the modern synthesis (English Wikipedia), Sergius is said to have ordered that the two men be strangled in prison^[62] - an account it attributes to Eugene Vulgarius, a contemporary and pro-Formosan witness. This nominative attribution is confirmed by Mann: the charge of having caused the death of his two immediate predecessors "rests solely on the authority" of Eugene Vulgarius, and the whole set of charges of vengeful cruelty and lust "must be declared not proven" (not proven).^[63] What is solid is that both men died in prison at the beginning of the pontificate, in obscure circumstances; and that Eugene, who vehemently denounces the pope's anti-Formosan policy, adds no accusation of personal immorality.

Modern historiography remains divided. Britannica maintains that Leo V and Christopher were "apparently strangled on his order".^[64] Other readings consider that the order may have come from Theophylact, whose political interest required removing any alternative: for lack of contemporary testimony on who gave the order, this attribution remains a hypothesis, not an established fact. Mann, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, does not decide but emphasizes that the story making Sergius a serial murderer of popes essentially comes from Liutprand, and therefore from a late and hostile source.^[65] The most honest position is to recognize:

1. That the two men probably died by violence in the prison where Christopher himself had been thrown.
2. That moral responsibility cannot be attributed to Sergius alone: ​​the political master of Rome is now Theophylact.
3. That this double death, whatever its author, remains unacceptable with regard to Christian charity, and that no Catholic encyclopedia should pass over it in silence.

Cancellation of Formosus ordinations

A few weeks after his consecration, Sergius III convened a synod in Rome which reaffirmed the decrees of the Cadaver Synod of 897 and declared invalid all ordinations conferred by Formosus.^[66][67] The sentence went further: clerics ordained by Formosus who wished to continue their ministry had to be re-ordained.^[68] According to some traditions, Sergius obtained the consent of the Roman clergy by threatening "exile, violence, or corruption".^[69] This last detail comes from Auxilius and must be handled with the same caution as any polemical accusation, but the central fact - the reaffirmation of 897 - is attested on all sides.

The epitaph of Stephen VI

To publicly signify his adherence to the line of 897, Sergius had a laudatory epitaph inscribed on the tomb of Stephen VI.^[70] The gesture was grave: it amounted to honoring as a legitimate pontiff the man who had subjected the corpse of Formosus to a mock trial. This gesture, more than any other, attached the infamous mark of the Cadaver Synod to the pontificate of Sergius III, even though he was not its direct author.

The resistance of Auxilius and Eugene Vulgarius

Resistance was organized immediately, mainly in southern Lombardy. Auxilius of Naples writes, in his Tractatus qui Infensor et Defensor dicitur, that the validity of a sacrament does not depend on the holiness of the minister, but on Christ who acts through him. Eugene Vulgarius defends the same thesis in his De causa Formosiana.^[71][72] The theological conclusion of the two men is clear:

“Orders conferred by sinning and excommunicated bishops are not in themselves invalid. "

• Summary of the common thesis of Auxilius of Naples and Eugene Vulgarius, around 907-911, taken up in Catholic sacramental doctrine^[73]

This resistance of bishops and theologians against the policies of a pope is not a rebellion: it is the normal exercise of Catholic conscience enlightened by sacramental doctrine. As later canonical tradition has shown, Auxilius and Eugene were theologically right.

What the Church says today: the validity/lawfulness distinction

The Council of Trent, in its decree on the sacraments (session VII, 1547), would definitively establish the doctrine: a sacrament is effective ex opere operato - by the force of the act itself - and not ex opere operantis, by the holiness of the minister.^[74] A sinful, even schismatic, bishop, if validly ordained, validly transmits sacred orders. The Formosan ordinations were therefore sacramentally valid. The nullity pronounced by Sergius III could only concern canonical liceity, not the sacramental effect.^[75][76]

This precision is decisive for Catholic coherence. The Church does not say that Sergius III was wrong about the canonical order of his time - the papacy then had the right to judge the acts of its predecessors. She says that the sacramental chain transmitted by Formosus was never broken. This is exactly the point that Auxilius and Eugene Vulgarius defended, and doctrinal posterity vindicated them.

The earthquake of 897: the basilica almost on the ground

The earthquake of 897, contemporary with the Synod of the Corpse, struck Rome with exceptional violence. Medieval chronicles transmit the formula, which has become famous in Roman archaeology: the Constantinian Basilica of the Lateran collapses "ab altari usque ad portas cecidit" - "it collapsed from the altar to the doors".^[77] On the exact year, Mann (Catalogues, Annales Alamannici) and modern syntheses retain 897; the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), for its part, dates the destruction to 896.^[78] The damage is such that the "lines of the ancient building" become difficult to reconstruct.^[79] Antipope Christopher, in the four months of his usurpation, also strips the ruined basilica of its treasures.^[80]

The construction site of Sergius III (904-911)

Sergius III took charge of reconstruction from the start of his pontificate. The construction site, carried out on the same dimensions as the Constantinian basilica, lasted seven years - most of his reign.^[81] The nave was raised, the narthex restored, the Lateran Palace itself was completely rebuilt and redecorated: "he [Sergius III] restored it with objects, images and crucifixes, and decorated its newly built walls with frescoes".^[82]

The dedication: Saint Savior and Saint John the Baptist

According to a common hypothesis taken up by modern syntheses, Sergius III is said to have added, at the consecration of the new basilica and on the occasion of the reconsecration of the new baptistery, a dedication to Saint John the Baptist to the Constantinian dedication to the Most Holy Savior.^[83] But no identified act makes it possible to establish this Sergian foundation: the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) attributes the Johannine dedication subsequent to the neighboring Benedictine monastery dedicated to Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, charged for a time with serving the basilica^[84], and Benedict XVI recalls that the titles of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist were only added after the 6th century, without dating or attributing the addition^[85]. The modern name Saint John Lateran and the double dedication - Sanctissimi Salvatoris et Sancti Iohannis Baptistae, still today the canonical title of the mother basilica of all the churches in the world - are thus well attested as the current state; their link to the construction site of Sergius III remains a hypothesis, not an established fact.

What remains today

The fire of 1308 destroyed the Sergian nave and forced it to be rebuilt in the 14th century. The current baroque basilica, rebuilt by Borromini in the 17th century, retains almost no visible element of the work of Sergius III. But the current double dedication to the Holy Savior and Saint John the Baptist remains - without any act making it possible to attribute it to Sergius III rather than to a later addition -, the Lateran Baptistery, direct heir to the Constantinian rotunda, is still in function, and the central position of the Pope's cathedral in Roman topography has remained as he refounded it after the disaster of 897.

Theophylact of Tusculum, real master of Rome

The central figure in the political background of the pontificate is Theophylact of Tusculum, Roman senator, count of Tusculum, vestararius of the Lateran Palace and magister militum (military commander of Rome).^[86] From 904, it was he - and not Sergius III - who held civil and military power in Rome. The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes him as having become the "virtual dictator" of the papal administration.^[87] Modern Catholic historiography is less polemical but recognizes the same reality: Sergius III governs the Church in a civil framework entirely controlled by Theophylact.

The house of Tusculum and its women

Theophylact married Theodora, attested as Roman senator (senatrix), woman of very high rank, perhaps the most powerful in Rome.^[88] From this marriage were born at least two daughters: Marozia (approximate dates: around 890-around 937) and Theodora the younger (mother of the future John XIII).^[89] Marozia was married around 909 (approximate date, transmitted by modern syntheses) to Alberic I of Spoleto, the same one who had brought Sergius back to Rome five years earlier.^[90] From this marriage was born, in 911 or 912 (approximate dates), Alberic II, future prince of Rome; another child, John, became pope in 931 under the name John XI.^[91] Each of these dates is fragile and approximate - including the very birth of Marozia, around 890: their mere chronological compatibility proves nothing about the paternity of John XI.

Pornocracy: a word from the 19th century

The term "pornocracy" was coined by German Protestant theologians of the 19th century.^[92] Cardinal Cesare Baronio, in his Annales Ecclesiastici published between 1588 and 1607, preferred the more measured formula saeculum obscurum.^[93] Modern historiography rejects both excesses: neither the innocence of the 10th-century popes, nor pornographic caricature.^[94] Most of the successors of Sergius III in the sequence (Anastasius III, Lando, John X) were in fact competent administrators and capable diplomats, who kept the ecclesiastical machine functioning despite political instability.^[95]

The supposed paternity of John XI

The most famous accusation - and the most damaging to the memory of Sergius III - is that of an affair with Marozia from whom the future pope John XI (pontiff from 931 to 935) was born. According to Liutprand of Cremona, writing his Antapodosis around 958-962:

Marozia, at fifteen (the age given by Liutprand, itself deduced from a birth around 890 which remains approximate), would have become the concubine of Sergius III, then aged about forty-five (an equally approximate age, deduced from a birth around 860); a son would have been born from this union, and this son, having become an adult, would have been brought to the pontificate under the name of John XI.^[96][97]

Mathematically, the story is possible: Sergius died in 911, and John XI was probably born between 906 and 911 (itself an approximate range, transmitted by modern syntheses). But this mere chronological compatibility - between dates that are all fragile - proves nothing: it makes the story possible, not established. Theologically, it is devastating: it would turn the See of Peter into a hereditary family transmission inside the Tusculan clan.

The silence of hostile contemporaries

But this accusation was not made by any contemporary. Not by Auxilius of Naples, who nevertheless denounced the annulled ordinations and challenged Sergius's very authority. Not by Eugene Vulgarius, who defended Formosus. Not by Flodoard of Reims, a distant but well-informed annalist. This triple absence is, for the historian, the decisive negative criterion: such an enormous scandal - a pope having a child by a fifteen-year-old young woman, and that child becoming pope - would have left a contemporary trace if the facts had been public.^[98][99]

Flodoard and the alternative version

Flodoard of Reims, in his Annals written in the middle of the 10th century, gives a different version: John XI is the brother of Alberic II, that is, the son of Marozia and her husband Alberic I of Spoleto, not of Sergius III.^[100] This more ordinary version fits the known chronology - with the same reservations about the fragility of the dates: Marozia married Alberic I around 909 (approximate date), two years before Sergius's death; a legitimate child of the couple would easily explain the future John XI, without this compatibility proving this filiation any more than the other.

The cautious verdict of the Catholic Encyclopedia

The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913, from the pen of Horace K. Mann, formulates the verdict that serious Catholic historiography has maintained since:

“The assertions according to which he killed his predecessors and had a son - the future John XI - from an illicit union with Marozia, must be considered highly doubtful. These assertions are only made by embittered or poorly informed adversaries, and they are inconsistent with what respectable contemporaries say about him. "

• Horace K. Mann, “Pope Sergius III”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13, New York, Robert Appleton, 1913^[101]

Mann adds the balanced formula that sums up the entire pontificate:

"[Sergius] was a pronounced party man, anxious for the supremacy of his party."

• Horace K. Mann, ibid.^[102]

A Catholic encyclopedia does not whitewash, but does not caricature

The honest Catholic tone on Sergius III is neither blind apologia nor diatribe. This is the careful distinction:

1. Acquired facts: military return in 904, cancellation of Formosian ordinations, epitaph of Stephen VI, restoration of the Lateran, death in 911. These facts are attested, and several are incriminated.
2. Probable facts: violent death of Leo V and Christopher in prison after January 904, under at least indirect responsibility of Sergius.
3. Possible but doubtful facts: connection with Marozia, paternity of John XI. No credible contemporary witnesses.
4. False facts: personal organization of the corpse synod (this is Stephen VI, seven years before him). Liutprand is wrong.

This gradation is the Catholic application of historical rigor. It acknowledges the real scandal - a pontificate installed by force and compromised with an aristocratic dictatorship - without adding to the record what the sources do not support.

The Filioque confirmed at the synod of Trosle (909)

The Filioque - the Latin word meaning "and from the Son" - is the formula by which the West confesses in the Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son. In June 909, a Frankish synod gathered at Trosle (diocese of Soissons), under the presidency of Hervé, Archbishop of Reims, condemned in its canon 14 the Byzantine position inherited from Photius, which refuses this formula.^[103] The canon declares that it acts "in accordance with the admonition of the ruler of the Roman See" (secundum admonitionem domni Romanae sedis praesulis): this was, according to Mann, an action initiated by Sergius III himself ("Sergius took steps to combat it") and carried out by the Frankish synod - the text of the canon invokes the admonition of the Roman See without mentioning any papal legate present at Trosle.^[104] This is one of the important magisterial acts of the pontificate: the papacy of Sergius III continues to hold, on the eternal procession of the Spirit, the Western theological position.

Diplomacy with Byzantium and the fourth marriage of Leo VI the Wise

The Byzantine emperor Leo VI the Wise (886-912), widowed three times without a surviving male heir, contracted around 905 a fourth marriage with Zoe Carbonopsina, with whom he had the future emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus.^[105] Byzantine canon law prohibited the fourth marriage. The patriarch Nicholas Mystikos refuses to recognize the union. Leo VI then consulted the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Rome.

The legates of Sergius III, dispatched to Constantinople, confirm the imperial decision: they accept the fourth marriage "on the grounds that the fourth marriages had not been condemned by the Church as a whole".^[106] The Roman sentence will be the decisive argument which allows Leo VI to depose Nicholas Mystikos and install Euthyme I as patriarch. This is an exceptional case of papal intervention within the Byzantine ecclesiastical government itself, in the last decade before the schism. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes the “caution” of Sergius III in handling this thorny issue.^[107]

Confirmation of new English seats

Sergius III confirms the establishment of new episcopal sees in England.^[108] This confirmation is part of the great diocesan reorganization of Wessex and Mercia ordered at the end of the 9th century after the Danish ravages. It shows that, even in the middle of the Roman saeculum obscurum, the universal jurisdiction of Peter's successor continues to function: it is from Rome that the confirmations come which make the new English bishoprics canonically legitimate.

Protection of John of Ravenna

Mann finally points out the protection granted by Sergius III to Archbishop John of Ravenna, in a context of increasing pressure from the King of Italy on the Ravenna Church.^[109] The detail confirms that the pontificate, behind its Tusculan aristocratic control, retained a real capacity for ecclesiastical government over the great Italian sees.

The seat of Peter is not the person of the pope

The case of Sergius III poses to all Catholic apologetics a formidable question: if a pope installed by force, allied to a family dictatorship, and possibly responsible for the death of two predecessors, is nevertheless legitimate pope in the official list of the Holy See, what does that say about the papacy? The Catholic response is old and constant: the seat of Peter is an institution of divine origin; the person who occupies it is a fallible man, sometimes sinful, sometimes unworthy. The distinction was not invented to defend Sergius III; it is posed by Saint Augustine in the Donatist quarrel, at the beginning of the 5th century, against the rigorists who wanted to annul the sacraments administered by compromised bishops during the persecution.^[110]

Augustine had won the doctrinal argument after a twenty-year struggle. His conclusion - that it is Christ himself who baptizes through the minister, were it Peter - has become universal Catholic doctrine.^[111] Applied to Sergius III, it means: the grace which passes through him does not depend on his personal holiness but on Christ who acts in the sacraments.

Validity of ordinations despite everything

This doctrine was not only defended by Auxilius and Eugene Vulgarius against Sergius III. It was explicitly defined by the Council of Trent, session VII, canons 11 and 12, in 1547, in the strongest terms:

“If anyone says that in ministers, when they perform or confer the sacraments, the intention at least to do what the Church does is not required: let him be anathema. "

• Council of Trent, session VII, Decree on the sacraments in general, canon 11, March 3, 1547^[112]

“If anyone says that a minister, being in a state of mortal sin, provided that he observes everything that pertains to the preparation and collation of the sacrament, neither performs nor confers a sacrament: let him be anathema. "

• Council of Trent, session VII, canon 12, March 3, 1547^[113]

These two canons prove in retrospect that Auxilius and Eugene Vulgarius were right against Sergius III on the sacramental question. The Formosan ordinations were valid, the derived ordinations were valid, and the nullity pronounced in 904 could only concern disciplinary lawfulness, not the effect of the sacrament.

Constant teaching: indefectibility of the Church, not impeccability of the Pope

The Catholic magisterium distinguishes three properties:

The confusion between these three levels is one of the oldest apologetic misunderstandings. The Catholic Church has consistently refused to teach the personal impeccability of its popes. It teaches, on the other hand, that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church (Mt 16:18), even when the men who are its pastors are unworthy. The case of Sergius III is the harshest illustration of this distinction.

And the Honorius case?

Only one case, in all of papal history, posed a real infallibilist difficulty: that of Honorius I (625-638), condemned post mortem by the Third Council of Constantinople (681) for having favored monothelitism in a private letter. The strict conditions laid down by Vatican I in defining papal infallibility in 1870 - magisterium ex cathedra, in matters of faith or morals, for the universal Church - exclude the private letter of Honorius.^[114] A fortiori, they do not apply to any act of Sergius III, who defined nothing in dogmatic matters. The synod of 904 concerned canonical acts, not the faith.

April 14, 911: burial in Saint Peter's

Sergius III died in Rome on April 14, 911.^[115] He was buried in the ancient basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican, like almost all medieval popes of Rome.^[116] The Catholic Encyclopedia reports a fact: "because he opposed the errors of the Greeks, they erased his name from the diptychs" - without further specifying the cause^[117]. Until now, the article linked this fact to the Filioque confirmed at Trosle at the invitation of Rome and to the sentence on the fourth marriage of Leo VI: this causality is Mann's hypothesis (vol. IV, p. 130-131), which presents it as the consequence of the Trosle action according to a 12th-century Greek document - not an established fact, all the more so as the erasure is situated a century after the pontificate, under Patriarch Sergius II of Constantinople (999-1019)^[118]. But burial in Saint Peter's, a sacred place above all, remains the mark of his legitimacy recognized by the universal Church.

Anastasius III, and the chain that goes on

His immediate successor was Anastasius III (911-913), Roman like him, and installed under the same control of Theophylact of Tusculum. Then came Lando (913-914), John X (914-928), Leo VI (928), Stephen VII (928-931), John XI (931-935, son of Marozia), Leo VII (936-939), Stephen VIII (939-942), Marinus II (942-946), Agapetus II (946-955), and finally John XII (955-964).^[119]

Fifty years before the Gregorian reform

The immediate legacy of Sergius III is dark. The mechanism he accepted - a pope installed by a Roman aristocratic family - would last sixty years.^[120] It would take the intervention of the Ottonian emperor Otto I in 962, then the great reform led by Leo IX (1049-1054) and Gregory VII (1073-1085), for the Roman Church to regain its independence from lay aristocracies. The Gregorian reform, which culminated in the following century, is precisely the historical response to the mechanism inaugurated at the consecration of Sergius III in 904.

But the immediate legacy does not exhaust the lasting legacy. The reconstructed Lateran basilica, the current double dedication to the Holy Savior and Saint John the Baptist - whose link to the Sergian construction site remains hypothetical -, the canon 14 of Trosle defending the Filioque, the discipline of Western marriage maintained before Constantinople, the confirmation of English sees: all this also belongs to the pontificate of Sergius III. It is this duality - a See of Peter that continues to function sacramentally and doctrinally when the man occupying it is politically compromised - that makes his case a school of Catholic ecclesiology.

• Pope Formosus - the pope exhumed in the synod of the corpse of 897, whose condemnation Sergius III reaffirms.
• Pope Leo V - the predecessor deposed by Christopher and probably strangled in 904.
• Pope John IX - the rival of 898 who had excommunicated Sergius.
• Pope Anastasius III - the successor, in Tusculan continuity.
• Pope John XI - the pope alleged to be Sergius's son according to Liutprand.
• Pope John XII - the outcome of the saeculum obscurum.