His successor, Stephen V., A.D. 816, was ignominiously
driven from the city; his successor, Paschal I., was accused of
blinding and murdering two ecclesiastics in the Lateran Palace; it was
necessary that imperial commissioners should investigate the matter, but
the pope died, after having exculpated himself by oath before thirty
bishops. John VIII., A.D. 872, unable to resist the Mohammedans, was
compelled to pay them tribute; the Bishop of Naples, maintaining a
secret alliance with them, received his share of the plunder they
collected. Him John excommunicated, nor would he give him absolution
unless he would betray the chief Mohammedans and assassinate others
himself. There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to murder the pope; some
of the treasures of the Church were seized; and the gate of St.
Pancrazia was opened with false keys, to admit the Saracens into the
city. Formosus, who had been engaged in these transactions, and
excommunicated as a conspirator for the murder of John, was subsequently
elected pope, A.D. 891; he was succeeded by Boniface VI., A.D. 896, who
had been deposed from the diaconate, and again from the priesthood, for
his immoral and lewd life. By Stephen VII., who followed, the dead body
of Formosus was taken from the grave, clothed in the papal habiliments,
propped up in a chair, tried before a council, and the preposterous and
indecent scene completed by cutting off three of the fingers of the
corpse and casting it into the Tiber; but Stephen himself was destined
to exemplify how low the papacy had fallen: he was thrown into prison
and strangled. In the course of five years, from A.D. 896 to A.D. 900,
five popes were consecrated. Leo V., who succeeded in A.D. 904, was in
less than two months thrown into prison by Christopher, one of his
chaplains, who usurped his place, and who, in his turn, was shortly
expelled from Rome by Sergius III., who, by the aid of a military force,
seized the pontificate, A.D. 905. This man, according to the testimony
of the times, lived in criminal intercourse with the celebrated
prostitute Theodora, who, with her daughters Marozia and Theodora, also
prostitutes, exercised an extraordinary control over him. The love of
Theodora was also shared by John X.: she gave him first the
archbishopric of Ravenna, and then translated him to Rome, A.D. 915, as
pope. John was not unsuited to the times; he organized a confederacy
which perhaps prevented Rome from being captured by t