in this enterprise. And although John VIII still maintains the pretensions of the Holy See at a high level, although he goes so far as to claim the sole right of choosing the Emperor himself, and on two occasions, in 875 and in 881, succeeds in making his view prevail, crowning first Charles the Bald and then Charles the Fat, the horizon of the Papacy nevertheless narrows perceptibly. It becomes less and less feasible for the Popes to exercise over kings as a body a directing and moderating power. Anxiety for their own safety outweighs everything else. Formosus (891-896) is even reduced in 893 to imploring the help of Arnulf, King of Germany, in order to repel the aggressions of the House of Spoleto, as in former days Stephen II had called upon Pepin for succour against the attacks of Aistulf the Lombard.
Taking this course, the Papacy was speedily brought into subjection to those princes and kings over whom it had once claimed to reign. For some time the head of the House of Spoleto, the Emperor Lambert, was, with his mother Ageltrude, the real ruler of Rome. Later, the Papacy fell into the hands of the local aristocracy, and for more than half a century a family of native origin, that of a noble named Theophylact, a chief official of the papal palace, contrived to seize upon the direction of affairs and to make and unmake Popes at its pleasure. Then, when the influence of the direct line of Theophylact began to decline, the Kings of Germany came into the field to dispute with them and with another branch of their family, the Counts of Tusculum, the power of electing the Pope. From 963, the date when Otto I caused a council which he presided over to decree the deposition of Pope John XII, up to the middle of the eleventh century, the Kings of Germany and the Counts of Tusculum turn by turn set up Popes, and thrice at least the lords of Tusculum themselves assumed the tiara. Two sons of Count Gregory, Theophylact and Romanus (the latter being "Senator of the Romans" at the time of his elevation to the papal throne), and later their nephew Theophylact, a child of twelve, successively filled the Holy See, under the names of Benedict VIII (1012-1024), John XIX (1024-1032) and Benedict IX (1032-1044). When the latter grew tired of exercising power, he sold it for cash down to his godfather, a priest named John Gratian, who took the name of Gregory VI.
The prestige of the Papacy could not fail to suffer grievously from these strange innovations, the more so as Popes thus chosen, to be set aside as soon as they ceased to give satisfaction, had, for the most part, little to boast of in the matter of morals, and in any case, seldom inspired much confidence in point of religion. Stephen VI (896-897), too passive a tool in the hands of Lambert of Spoleto and his mother, did not hesitate, in order to recommend himself to them, to disinter the body of his predecessor Formosus, to arraign the corpse before a council, to have it condemned, and stripped of the pontifical ornaments in which it had been beforehand arrayed, to order it to be thrown into the
