This book is the third and final volume of an interpretation of the history of the city of Rome in the early Middle Ages, between the years 700 and 1000 CE, from the primary and somewhat novel perspective of its material culture. Architecture, painting, sculpture, manuscripts, and examples of objects that are often referred to as the ‘minor arts’ are all treated as historical documents, rather than works of ‘art’ in the modern sense; and as such they play an integral role in our understanding of the history of the city in this formative period, the span of centuries when for the first time the papacy takes on the political authority for the fledging ‘papal state’. This methodological approach is subsumed in the phrase ‘history in art’, also employed as the sub-title for the first two volumes in this series,Footnote ¹ where the intention was similarly to create a historical narrative in which the evidence of material culture was integrated with that gleaned from written texts. Each category supplements the other, a process undertaken in the belief that the resultant whole will be greater than the sum of the individual parts.

In stark contrast to its two predecessors, the tenth century poses a unique problem in this regard, for the simple reason that there is a comparative absence of surviving evidence – in both categories.Footnote ² For the eighth and ninth centuries we have a ready supply of written documents, including a substantial set of sequential biographies of the popes, known collectively as the Liber pontificalis, thought to have been compiled more or less in the immediate aftermath of the death of each pontiff, and many of these record their patronage of the arts and architecture in considerable detail.Footnote ³ But this process was seemingly discontinued after the vita of Pope Hadrian II (867–72), apart from a fragmentary account of the first year of the reign of Pope Stephen V (885–91), and there is nothing to suggest that other lives once existed and have subsequently been lost.Footnote ⁴

This break continues through the entirety of the tenth century. Although the years between 900 and 1000 witnessed more incumbents of the throne of Saint Peter than any other century, not a single contemporaneous biography is known to have been written for any of them, no doubt a reflection at least in part of their diminished authority within the city of Rome in this period. And thus we lack anything resembling a comprehensive official record of papal achievements. Only at the beginning of the twelfth century, after the Roman pontiffs had once again assumed substantial political importance and independence, did the formal documentation of their lives and activities resume, and at that time very brief entries, often with little more than the name of the pope, his place of origin, the number of ordinations performed, and the length of his time on the throne of Saint Peter, were inserted retroactively in order to fill the two-century gap.Footnote ⁵

Because we have no contemporaneous accounts written in Rome of events taking place in the city during the tenth century, historians have relied very heavily on texts written either elsewhere or at a later date. These are on occasion not only clearly ill-informed and prone to error, but also at times openly hostile to the city and its inhabitants, and the latter comment unfortunately applies to the two works of Liutprand of Cremona that have undoubtedly been the most influential for subsequent historiography: the Antapodosis (‘Retribution’) and the Historia Ottonis (‘History of Otto [I]’), both datable to the decade of the 960s. The literary production of the bishop of Cremona was aimed largely at justifying the intervention in papal affairs of his sequential political masters, initially Hugh of Provence, then Berengar II, king of Italy, who became the two primary targets for ‘retribution’, and subsequently the Saxon king and from 962 onwards ‘emperor’, Otto I.Footnote ⁶ Liutprand’s aim was to defend Otto’s unprecedented 963 synod that had deposed Pope John XII (955–63), and he also bears primary responsibility for sullying the reputation of Rome’s foremost aristocratic family in this era, that of Theophylact and Theodora and subsequent generations of their progeny including John XII, their great-grandson, with accusations of extreme moral turpitude in what turned out to be a largely successful campaign to discredit their legitimacy.Footnote ⁷

Another work with a determined axe to grind is the anonymous Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma. Written about the year 900, perhaps in northern Italy or at the pro-imperial abbey of Farfa, it assiduously maintains the precedence of the emperor over the papacy, and the former’s right both to convene ecclesiastical synods and to rule the city through the agency of his local representatives, the resident missi.Footnote ⁸ But it also contains a number of easily recognizable errors of fact, and what can only be described as some rather wild exaggerations that might today be dismissed as ‘fake news’, for example the claim that in returning Pope Leo III to the pontifical throne in 800 Charlemagne had beheaded some 300 Romans outside the Lateran palace in a single day.Footnote ⁹ Yet even untrustworthy historical sources can on occasion be mined for nuggets of useful information, in this instance for details such as the use of the bronze statue of the she-wolf, situated outside the papal residence at the Lateran, as a site for the administration of justice.Footnote ¹⁰

Rather more neutral in terms of its political slant is a fourth text of considerable importance for tenth-century Rome, the Chronicon, written in the last quarter of the century by Benedict, a monk in the monastery of Sant’Andrea at Monte Soratte, situated in the Tiber valley some 40 km to the north of the city.Footnote ¹¹ Known from a single manuscript preserved in the Vatican Library (Vatican City, BAV, Chigi F.IV.75, fols. 1r–58v), it too provides much useful information, in particular concerning the members of the ruling dynasty of Theophylact and Theodora, to whom it is considerably less inimical, albeit at a slightly greater chronological remove. A terminus post quem is provided by the mention of the 972 marriage at Rome of Otto II and the Byzantine princess Theophanu; and, presumably coincidentally, it also makes reference to the judicial role of the Lupa statue at the Lateran, confirming the position and function of this antique bronze in its medieval afterlife.Footnote ¹²

As will quickly become apparent, a great deal of what historians claim to know about tenth-century Rome is derived from readings of either Liutprand or Benedict of Monte Soratte, both of whom present issues of veracity and interpretation. There can be no doubt that our understanding of life in the city is severely hampered by this comparative absence of written documentation, and above all by the apparent discontinuation of the Liber pontificalis. This constitutes an enormous loss. In a survey of sources for the period between the ninth and twelfth centuries, Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri contends that this quantitative decline is not simply a question of survival, but that the tenth century witnessed an actual break in the centuries-old traditions favouring the production of written records.Footnote ¹³ But he may overstate the case.

The situation is rectified somewhat by the survival of other forms of writing, and in particular for documents recording the sale, lease, or donation of property. Wealth was based almost entirely on the possession of revenue-generating land, and thus such documents were vital to support the frequently contested ownership claims of both individuals and the principal churches and monasteries. Accordingly, their texts were carefully preserved, either as original documents or copies inserted in later registers, for example that of monastery of Subiaco, dating from the second half of the eleventh century.Footnote ¹⁴ Others of importance for the tenth century were compiled at Santi Andrea e Gregorio, the urban monastery founded by Gregory I (590–604) in his family home on the Celian hill,Footnote ¹⁵ and at Farfa in the Sabine hills to the northeast of the city.Footnote ¹⁶ These and similar records help fill the void, and have been heavily mined for information about the evolving social conditions in Rome, and in particular for the increased political and economic engagement of the urban aristocracy. They will play a prominent role in this study, in addition to the narratives of Liutprand and Benedict, albeit with the appropriate caution that must be accorded to all classes of documentation.

Finally, there also exists a wide variety of other miscellaneous texts, including letters and poems, among them the famous pilgrims’ song that begins ‘O noble Rome, mistress of the world and most excellent of all cities’.Footnote ¹⁷ Because it housed the tomb shrines of the two most prominent Christian saints, Peter and Paul, Rome was an important destination for European travellers, and especially for pilgrims. But it also attracted a broad range of secular magnates and senior clergymen, along with their entourages, who came to the city for the simple reason that it housed the pope and his court, the broadly acknowledged arbiters of religious authority and conveyors of political legitimacy in Latin Europe. The papacy may no longer have exercised any practical power or influence within the city itself, but the external prestige of the institution remained significantly unabated. Rome thus loomed large in the European imagination, and this was frequently reflected in chronicles and other documents written elsewhere. These provide occasional glimpses of the city and on occasion of its buildings and monuments, for example the description of the church of Saint Peter’s included in a tenth-century Psalter from Winchester (London, BL, MS Royal 2.B.V., fol. 189v).Footnote ¹⁸

This comparative absence of substantial documentation has had the unfortunate result of rather severely skewing subsequent attempts to come to grips with the city and its inhabitants in this period, and thus tenth-century Rome has had the misfortune to have suffered an inordinately bad press, beginning in its own day with Liutprand and continuing over the course of the subsequent millennium. The overall historiographical topos of a precipitous decline in civilization following the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 CE has deep roots in Western thought. Its origins can be found at least as early as the fourteenth century, in the works of humanist writers such as Petrarch, whose perambulations among the city’s ancient ruins in 1337 and 1341 led to the development of a concept of historical periodization in which the advent of Christianity bore negative consequences;Footnote ¹⁹ and in the eighteenth century this view would be further developed by scholars of the ‘Enlightenment’, most notably in the Anglosphere by Edward Gibbon in his influential Decline and Fall.Footnote ²⁰

Even within that larger context, however, the tenth century has been singled out for special attention, invariably being considered as the nadir of intellectual achievement and pinnacle of moral depravity. This view first surfaces in the eleventh- and twelfth-century attempts to purge the clergy of what were perceived to be such sins as simony and sexual transgression, in other words the movement known more generally as the ‘Gregorian Reform’, which sought to wrest the Church away from secular control; and in the sixteenth century this same understanding of the tenth century was adopted by writers on both sides of the debates concerning the ‘Reformation’ of the Christian church. Using Liutprand as their principal source, historians espousing the ‘Protestant’ cause focussed attention on what they perceived to be the debauchery of the popes of the day, whereas in the aftermath of the Council of Trent those associated with the movement for ‘Catholic Reform’ placed the blame for this unfortunate situation squarely on the usurpation of ecclesiastical authority by external forces, initially the secular aristocracy and, subsequently, the German emperors.Footnote ²¹ The foremost exponent of the latter viewpoint was Cesare Baronio (1538–1607), who also drew on Liutprand to describe the century as one of ‘iron’, ‘lead’, and ‘darkness’.Footnote ²² By the nineteenth century the language employed had become even more severe, with the situation in Rome being described as a ‘pornocracy’.Footnote ²³ This nomenclature has largely persisted, despite subsequent attempts to develop a more balanced viewpoint, and in 1991 Girolamo Arnaldi voiced the opinion that the only remaining ‘myth’ in the subject selected for the 38th Settimana di Studio at Spoleto occurred in the title itself: ‘Il secolo di ferro: mito e realtà del secolo X’ (‘The Iron Century: Myth and Reality of the Tenth Century’).Footnote ²⁴

Renewed interest in the theme of the ‘dark century’ has surfaced in a number of recent scholarly gatherings, including a study day at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in February 2021,Footnote ²⁵ and the five-day ‘Roma X secolo’ interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, the École française de Rome, and the Biblioteca Hertziana in June 2023, whose publication is anticipated in 2025. But while there can be no doubt regarding this increasing attention, with its focus on politics and historiography, progress in gaining significant additional understanding has been elusive.

If nothing else, one might expect that the comparative dearth of written texts would increase the importance of other categories of documentation, and especially those falling under the broad umbrella of what we might call ‘material culture’. But while such ‘documents’ are indeed of heightened significance, they too are comparatively few in number. As expressed succinctly by Hendrik Dey, ‘As more research is done, it becomes even harder to avoid the conclusion that the scarcity of both textual and material traces of ambitious building projects reflects a real decline in activity in comparison to what was occurring both before and after.’Footnote ²⁶ Furthermore, much if not most of the evidence gleaned from the sphere of ‘material culture’ lacks specific information concerning date and patronage, consequently rendering its use problematic.Footnote ²⁷ Once again this stands in sharp contrast to the situation in the eighth and ninth centuries, for which we have not only the papal biographies of the Liber pontificalis to act as a useful guide, but also the evidence of numerous datable buildings and their decorations. Of further value are the inscriptions that were placed in numerous churches between c. 700 and 900, often in the very durable media of mosaic or marble, commissioned by known patrons of obvious wealth and authority who desired that their pious actions would be recorded for posterity; but with one possible exception, work in the medium of mosaic is also entirely lacking in terms of surviving tenth-century production in Rome.Footnote ²⁸

Paralleling the view of historians that the tenth century marks the lowest moment in the fortunes of both the papacy and the medieval city, much the same opinion has generally been accorded by art historians to the material culture of this period.Footnote ²⁹ Guglielmo Matthiae, for example, deemed it ‘the darkest moment in the history of Roman painting’;Footnote ³⁰ and Ferdinando Mazzanti, the first to attempt a systematic survey of stone carving in Rome from the early Middle Ages, had earlier professed a similar view: ‘At first glance, one is amazed by such decadence . … It is no longer inexpert and childish art that arises timidly and willingly, but old and decrepit art that languishes and dies.’Footnote ³¹ Perhaps for this reason, very few art historians have devoted much time or attention to this century, apart from two splendid recent exceptions: the doctoral theses of Maria Laura Marchiori and Sabina Rosenbergová.Footnote ³²

Setting aside qualitative judgements of style, which have little place in any attempt to construct a ‘history in art’, we can agree that the tenth century does witness a ‘decline’ in more or less every major medium, but it is one that is above all quantitative. This is due partly, it would seem, to a perceptible diminution of overall production, but we must also take into account the accidental vagaries of survival. In rather stark contrast to the ninth century, for which we have a long series of imposing and well-documented buildings that testify to the substantial engagement of the papacy with church construction – for example the churches of Santa Prassede, Santa Maria in Domnica, and Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, all three commissioned by Pope Paschal I (817–24) – not a single structure survives from the tenth that is precisely datable. We simply lack the necessary data. The boastful claim of Pope Sergius III (904–11) that he rebuilt Rome’s cathedral, San Giovanni in Laterano, from the foundations upwards is unfortunately not supported by architectural analysis (see Chapter 4); and even the inscriptions in which it found voice have been lost over time, and are known today only at second hand. This same situation also pertains to much of the painting and sculpture generally assigned rather loosely to this century.

The physical evidence for a great deal of the material to be discussed in this book hangs necessarily by some rather slender threads; and thus most dates proposed for buildings, paintings, sculpture, and work in other media will invariably be imprecise, dependent on attribution or other circumstantial considerations rather than verifiable facts. Of course this is far from an ideal scenario, with the danger being that one ends up constructing a ‘house of cards’, but it is simply a question of engaging with what the evidence available to us does or does not permit; and despite some lingering question marks, it is hoped that some valid observations may nonetheless emerge. However, it will also necessitate a significant departure from the format of the two previous volumes in this series. A coherent continuous narrative is simply not possible in the absence of a series of fixed points of reference which can provide an underlying structural foundation grounded in a documentable chronology, and thus this volume will adopt a more thematic approach, following introductory chapters that introduce the various categories of material evidence and offer a summative historical overview. More detailed discussions of the arguments for and against the tenth-century dating of various examples of mural painting, the medium for which we have by far the most potential surviving evidence, will also be explored in an Appendix, in the hope that this serves not only to highlight the nature of the problem faced by those attempting to construct a comprehensive overview but, even more importantly, to lay a foundation for future research. Much still remains to be done on this subject, beginning with a better understanding of the chronological and other contexts for our material culture ‘documents’.

Perhaps the most significant phenomenon that will emerge from the discussion that follows is the shift in patronage from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and more specifically the person of the reigning pontiff, to other important groups that formed an essential part of the fabric of tenth-century Roman society. Two in particular stand out in this regard: the lay aristocracy and monks. The former had always been a force in the construction and decoration of churches from the earliest centuries of Christianity; but secular foundations and endowments had been all but eclipsed by the popes following the formation of the ‘Republic of Saint Peter’ (respublica sancti Petri) in the mid eighth century, not coincidentally also the moment when the previous imperial ownership of land is thought to have passed de facto to the Roman church. It is indicative that there are no known non-papal church constructions in Rome, or even major gifts, documented for the years between 755 and 870; but this is then followed by an abrupt change in the subsequent century and a half, from which, in complete contrast, we have very few works that can be linked directly with any specific pontiff (see Chapter 4).

On the other hand, the tenth century is remarkably replete with documentable examples of non-papal engagement with material culture, beginning with the donation by an otherwise unknown Teubaldus opifex (artisan) of two houses, an olive grove and vineyard, and numerous books (including copies of Gregory I’s Dialogues and Moralia in Job) and silver liturgical objects to the church of San Valentino, presumably that saint’s suburban shrine on the Via Flaminia although the inscription, preserved at Santa Maria in Cosmedin, specifies only the dedication of the church by Pope John IX (898–900) on 30 November in a fifth indiction.Footnote ³³ This is the earliest known gift of books and silver by a Roman layman, and signals the coming sea change in such practice. Unfortunately, none of these objects is known to survive.

While there is little doubt that the patronage of material culture was transformed dramatically in the late years of the ninth century, and that this process continued through the tenth, many questions remain without complete or satisfactory explanations. This study will support the now broadly accepted view that the change reflects a shift in the control of the resources needed to build and to decorate; and thus it is also perhaps worth asking whether the Liber pontificalis was discontinued for the simple reason that the popes were no longer playing as significant a role in Roman political life, and thus their biographies were no longer considered to be of continuing relevance for their presumed external audiences. Increasingly, the papacy played the proverbial second fiddle to other groups in the city, primarily the aristocratic élite. In addition, monastic communities resident in Rome also became more prominent, and thus they emerge as important patrons of the arts whose participation was on occasion recorded in painted inscriptions or else can be inferred from the subject matter of the murals they commissioned.

As noted above, formal written documents recording the disposition of privately owned property through sale, lease, donation, or bequest, prepared professionally either by secular notaries (tabelliones) or scribes attached to the papal chancellery (scriniarii),Footnote ³⁴ also begin to appear in the tenth century. There is little such original evidence now surviving from the previous period, apart from a few inscriptions in stone,Footnote ³⁵ probably due in large part to the extreme fragility of the material on which such documents were traditionally written: papyrus.Footnote ³⁶ Thus we are heavily reliant on copies made subsequently, when the rapid material disintegration of the originals was becoming all too apparent, and these texts were inserted into monastic cartularies, for example the eleventh-century Register of Subiaco (Regesto sublacense). The earliest extant tenth-century ‘original’, dated July 947 and written by Leo ‘tabellio urbis Romae’, perhaps unsurprisingly on parchment not papyrus, survives in the archive of the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata (Vatican City, BAV, Santa Maria in Via Lata, cass. 313, perg. 50);Footnote ³⁷ and by the eleventh century the initial trickle had become a flood. These Roman property documents demonstrate a remarkable continuity from Late Antiquity through to the turn of the millennium, both in terms of their standard legal formulas and the officials responsible for their production, and significant change in that regard would only occur in the eleventh century when the tabelliones seem to disappear, their role taken over completely by the scriniarii. At the same timed the papal chancery appears to have definitively abandoned the use of papyrus.Footnote ³⁸ As we shall quickly discover, property documents constitute an exceptionally important and useful source for our knowledge of tenth-century Rome. If nothing else, they reveal the important role played by women as protagonists in transactions related to real estate, much closer to the situation prevalent in southern Italian cities like Naples where Roman/Byzantine law codes also prevailed, but very different from that in the northern regions of the Italian peninsula.Footnote ³⁹

In addition to ‘Patronage’ (surveyed in Chapter 4), the other principal themes to be considered in this study are related to the function of material culture within the larger context of Roman society in the early Middle Ages. Our knowledge is greatest for the arts associated with actual religious practices, and in that regard three subjects stand out: ‘Monasticism’ (Chapter 5), ‘Death and Burial’ (Chapter 6), and ‘The Cult of the Saints’ (Chapter 7). Although the evidence may not be as firm as that available for the eighth and ninth centuries, nonetheless a substantial picture emerges of the state of the city of Rome in what is arguably its least documented moment. The tenth-century urbs may still remain somewhat obscure in comparison to its immediate predecessor, but perhaps much less so now than Baronio and others have hitherto led us to believe.