Pope Sergius III, scion of Benedictus, of a noble Roman family, reigned in two intervals between 897 and April 14, 911, during a period of feudal violence and disorder in central Italy, where the Papacy was a pawn of warring aristocratic factions. His pontificate, so far as is known through the Liber pontificalis and a partisan and spiteful later chronicler, Liutprand of Cremona, was remarkable for the rise of the "pornocracy," or rule of the harlots, as papal chroniclers dubbed the reversal of the natural order as they saw it, with women in power: Theodora, whom Liutprand characterized as a "shameless whore..[who] exercised power on the Roman citizenry like a man" (emphasis added) and her daughter Marozia, the mother of Pope John XI and reputed to be the mistress of Sergius III, largely upon a remark by Liutprand (see Brook link below).

Sergius owed his rise to the power of his patron, the military commander Theophylact, Count of Tusculum who held the position of vestarius in control of the disbursements at the top of papal patronage. He and his party opposed Pope Formosus, who ordained Sergius bishop of Caere (Cerveteri )— in order to remove him from Rome, an unsympathetic source records. He was his faction's unsuccessful candidate for the papacy in 896; when John IX was elected instead, he excommunicated Sergius, who had to withdraw from his see at Ceveteri for safety. Elected Pope in 897, Sergius was forcibly exiled by Lambert, duke of Spoleto, and all the official records were destroyed; consequently most of the surviving documentation about Sergius comes from his opponents.

When the antipope Christopher seized the seat of St Peter by force, the Theophylact faction of Romans revolted and ejected him in 903/4. They then invited Sergius to come out of retirement. His return is marked as January 29 904.

Back in power, Sergius now in his turn annulled all the ordinations of Formosus, and demanded all bishops ordained by Formosus be re-ordained, an unwelcomed decision reversed again after his death. His nemeses, Pope Leo V and the antipope Christopher, both died in 904, alleged to have been strangled in prison, a claim, however, that the Catholic Encyclopedia called "extremely doubtful." He had the much-abused corpse of Formosus exhumed, tried in a counter-action to the famous "Cadaver Synod" of Pope Stephen VII, found guilty, and beheaded. He even went so far as to place a laudatory remark on Stephen VII's tombstone.

Sergius restored the Lateran Palace, which had been shattered by an earthquake in 896. He is the first pope to be pictured wearing the triple-crowned Papal tiara.

After him, his alleged illegitimate son and Marozia's nominee Pope Anastasius III sat on the pontifical throne.

External links

• Catholic Forum.com: Pope Sergius III
• Catholic Encycl;opedia: Pope Sergius III
• Societas Christianae Encyclopedia: The "Pornocracy"
• Lindsay Brook, "Popes and pornocrats: Rome in the Early Middle Ages" offers some more specific documentation