Free The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections by Michael Walsh

interconnected families in Rome which favored Charles’s brother, the German-oriented Carloman. They were a fairly dissolute group, though Formosus, around whom they rallied, had been an outstanding missionary and was not personally corrupt. The more militant group was led by George of the Aventine (the Aventine is one of Rome’s seven hills), who had risen in status by marrying a niece of Pope Benedict whom he deserted to live with the daughter of Gregory, a Lateran o ffi cial whom John dismissed. They rose unsuccessfully against John early in 876 and then fled the city – taking much of the papal treasury with them – to the pro-German Duke of Spoleto. John survived this particular storm, but his death on 15 December 872 may have been by assassination, an attack carried out by a disgruntled cleric in his service. The forces – and the people – which came to the fore in his pontificate were to dominate the papacy for years to come.
    Marinus I, who succeeded John VIII, seems to have been elected without significant controversy, though he made history by being the first bishop to be elected pope, strictly speaking in contraven- tion of church law (a bishop was said to be wedded to his diocese and could not, as it were, change wives, though the provision against diocese-swapping was being less and less observed). Because Marinus was a bishop he did not need to be consecrated, which was the moment in the process when the elected candidate became Bishop of Rome. Instead there was an “enthroning.” All this took place without consulting the emperor, though the pope went to see him about six months after his election, and he is recorded as having decreed that only the votes of the clergy and people of Rome had any significance in papal elections. Marinus’s
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    policies rather reversed those of his predecessor – Formosus and his supporters came back to Rome and George of the Aventine was put in charge of the city’s army. Marinus’s pontificate was relative- ly short however (December 882 to May 884), and he was followed by Hadrian III, who had inherited John VIII’s attitudes, including his opposition to Germany and hence to the Formosan party. There were riots at the time of Hadrian’s election and he estab- lished his authority in Rome by taking drastic action against his opponents among the nobility: he had one noblewoman whipped through the streets and George of the Aventine was blinded. Hadrian died outside Rome, at an abbey near Modena, in some- what mysterious circumstances; it is possible that he was murdered by a member of George of the Aventine’s family. The late pope’s body was despoiled of anything valuable by the monks of the abbey, while in Rome, as had become the custom, the mob plundered their way through the Lateran.
    Perhaps to counteract all the chaos Stephen V (VI) was elected by the clergy and nobility promptly and with acclaim – so promptly that the Emperor Charles the Fat was not consulted and objected, but Stephen managed to persuade him that no o ff ense had been intended. But at the Emperor Charles’s death in January 888 (he had abdicated a couple of months earlier) Stephen turned not to Charles’s nephew Arnulf, who had become ruler of Germany, but to Guy of Spoleto, who was crowned emperor in February 891, thereby introducing a new factor into the politics of papal elections.
    Then, at long last, in October 891, Bishop Formosus was elected to the papacy. There seems to have been a modicum of opposition from a deacon called Sergius, who was leader of the party which supported Guy of Spoleto – as Formosus himself had once done. But eventually, after Guy’s death, Pope Formosus bestowed the imperial crown on Arnulf.
    After Formosus, Boniface VI was pope for a fortnight before he died of gout. There followed the pontificate of Stephen VI (VII),
    48 The Conclave
    which lasted a year and a half and included one of the most macabre events in papal history. The