Sons of the Harlot Empress

[Carp]

Sons of the Harlot Empress
(Or, "A Bowl of Water Unspilled")

A Biographical History of Early Medieval Italy and the Royal House of Tusculum

The modern ruins of Roman Tusculum


​

“Italy was dismembered and powerless. In civilization and culture, however,
far surpassing the half barbarian Germans, had she in the middle of the tenth
century been able to put forward as her king a great native prince, such as
Alberic, the expedition of Otto would never have succeeded.”

- Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages

Between the breakup of Charlemagne's empire and the reform of the system of papal election in 1059, the nobility of Rome had great power in the selection of Christ's Vicar on Earth. No family exploited this more successfully than the Tusculani, the house of the Counts of Tusculum, who (with a few periods of interruption) were the dominant force in Rome from the early 10th century to the middle 11th century. For much of this time, the men upon Saint Peter's chair were either hand picked by the Tusculani counts or Tusculani counts themselves.

History has been harsh to the Tusculani. Their period of papal domination is often considered the nadir of the papacy, when the throne was sat upon by debauched, petty, and occasionally murderous noblemen who had little interest in spiritual affairs. The early Tusculan period, when several popes were the progeny of (or had affairs with) prominent Tusculan noblewomen, was infamously labeled the “Pornocracy” or "Rule of Harlots/Whores" by Protestant historians.

One Tusculan lord stands head and shoulders above the others: Alberic, sometimes called “Alberic II” to distinguish him from his father. He had a rather dubious pedigree for a prince: His father was an up-jumped page who murdered a duke and usurped his duchy, and his mother was the most notorious of Tusculan noblewomen who was the teenage mistress of a pope and had a bastard son with him who would also become pope. Alberic would go on to become the prince and absolute master of Rome, able to thwart the plans of Hugh, King of Italy and even Otto the Great. Neither could manage to lay a hand on the imperial crown as long as he lived.

***
​

The Tusculani have always been a great favorite of mine, but recently I read the above quote by Gregorovius and decided to see if I could expand the reach of the Tusculani beyond just Rome to Italy itself, and make Alberic and his descendents not merely princes and counts (and popes), but kings and emperors.

That might be burying the lede a bit, because a timeline with a Tusculani Italy is also necessarily a timeline in which the Holy Roman Empire as we know it never forms. Obviously, that itself will have broad implications that will have to be dealt with. In the main, however, this is a story about medieval Italy, and the style of writing will be more biographical, written in the manner of a narrative or somewhat “pop” history book. Butterflies will not be ignored, but the focus of our alternate universe author is principally on Italy and its royal house.

This timeline diverges from our own in 932, when King Hugh of Italy arrives in Rome to receive both a bride and the imperial crown. According to legend, at the wedding feast of Hugh and Marozia, Alberic’s twice-widowed and much-maligned mother, the young Alberic spilled a bowl of washing-water on Hugh, causing the king to slap his new stepson for his clumsiness. Alberic immediately fled the feast, rallied the Romans against the foreigner, drove Hugh from the city (he escaped through a window), and imprisoned his own mother. Marozia would die in her son’s dungeon, Hugh would never possess either Rome or the imperial crown, and Alberic would be Rome’s sovereign for the rest of his life.

In this timeline, however, there is no falling out – perhaps Marozia convinces her son to cooperate, or perhaps it’s as simple as Alberic being a little more careful with a bowl of water. Marozia shall be empress, Hugh shall be emperor, and Alberic shall be the founder of a dynasty.

***
​

Though I've lurked a lot and commented a bit, this is my first time posting a timeline of my own. While I do have some events and characters sketched out in advance, I'm largely making it up as I go along. I'm flexible, and I welcome any comments, criticisms, or insights into plausible and interesting ways in which the story could unfold.

Please note that the dates and family relationships of the early Tusculani (and 10th century Europeans in general) are highly uncertain and reliant on vague, contradictory, and often very partisan primary sources (looking at you Liutprand). For the most part I've settled on dates and lineages that seem most likely to me, but I sometimes interpret things in ways that are more useful to my story.

Some historical background, and the first act of Alberic's rise, will be posted in the next few days.

A note on footnotes:

1: Footnotes in regular type are “in-character” footnotes, written by the same alternate timeline author as the main text.
2: Footnotes in italics are “out-of-character” footnotes, commenting on key differences from our own timeline.

​

 

[Timaeus]

As a fan of the Tusculani, I will be watching this closely. I pity the seat of Saint Peter.

 

[St. Just]

Well-written early medieval Pornocracy TL? You have my immediate interest.

 

[RGB]

What El Yanqui said - rare period, very interested.

 

[Zioneer]

Very interesting, I don't know much about this time period, but I'm sure it'll be a wild ride.

 

[diestormlie]

And... Subbed.

Mashes F5

 

[Grouchio]

Do you need any information regarding the rest of Europe and the world at the time of 932 CE?

 

[Carp]

Background - Hugh, Marozia, and the two Alberics
​

Charles the Fat was the last man to rule over a united Carolingian empire. With his deposition in 887 and subsequent death, petty kings – the so-called reguli – appeared everywhere, hungry for the scraps of a fragmenting empire.

At the start of the 10th century, Italy’s king was Berengar of Friuli. Having gained the kingdom in the wake of the Carolingian disintegration, his reign was spent desperately trying to keep it, and even the acquisition of the imperial crown in 915 did not seem to make his throne any more secure. He finally lost his kingdom to Rudolph II, the King of Upper Burgundy, in 923, and died the year after. Rudolph himself was even less successful, and three years after the Italian nobles had invited him in to replace Berengar, they invited Hugh of Arles (also known as Hugh of Provence) to replace Rudolph.

​

A 12th century depiction of Emperor Berengar
​

King Hugh

Hugh was “merely” the Count of Arles, but he had become effectively the ruler of Provence (or Lower Burgundy) as the regent of Louis the Blind, who in an earlier conflict with Berengar had lost not only Italy and the imperial crown but his eyes as well. While Hugh’s family, the Bosonids, was a local Burgundinian house, he possessed Carolingian blood through his mother Bertha, an illegitimate daughter of Lothair II of Lotharingia. In short order, Hugh gained the Italian throne and Rudolph was forced back to Upper Burgundy. Hugh’s principal object thereafter was the imperial crown, which had been unclaimed since the death of Berengar.

That crown, however, rested with the Pope in Rome. In those days the power in that city was wielded by the senatrix and patricia Marozia, daughter of Theophylact of Tusculum, who by 932 was not only the pope’s master but also his mother.

Senatrix Marozia

In the time of the ancient Romans, Tusculum was a bucolic hilltop retreat, a place where the wealthy could withdraw from the sweltering heat of Rome and spend their summers in comfort only fifteen miles from the capital. Between the fall of Rome and the 10th century, Tusculum is hardly mentioned at all, but it re-emerges into history in 901 as the domain of a certain Theophylact, who was in that year a palatine iudex (Palatine Judge) of the Emperor Louis III. Though we have no knowledge of Theophylact's parents, the family was quite evidently a native house of Rome, and claimed since the early days of their rule to be descended from the Roman gens Julii, which boasted Roman consuls as far back as the 5th century BC.[1]

By the time Theophylact appears in 901, he is already the preeminent man in Rome. He is credited with the overthrow (and possibly the murder) of Antipope Christopher in 904. His ability to found a lasting dynasty, however, was stymied by his lack of sons; his wife, Theodora, bore him only one, a boy named Boniface who died in infancy. His legacy would instead reside with his two daughters, Marozia and Theodora.

The older of the two, Marozia, was renowned from a young age for her unsurpassed beauty; aspects of her intelligence and character would only be appreciated later. At the age of 15 or 16 she caught the eye (or, as some say, seduced) the new pope Sergius III, a man thoroughly without virtue but completely devoted to Tusculan supremacy. She became his mistress, and before his death in 911 she bore him a son named John.

Though no longer a virgin, her beauty and the power of her father were evidently sufficient to attract a suitor – Alberic, Duke of Spoleto. Formerly a page of Duke Guy III with no known pedigree, Alberic murdered his lord and usurped his duchy, a violent episode which was to set the tone for the remainder of his life. His marriage to Marozia cemented an alliance with Theophylact and pulled him into the power struggles of Rome. A man of some martial skill, he was acknowledged as “consul of the Romans” following his role in saving the city from the Saracen menace at the Battle of Garigliano in 915. After the death of Theophylact in 920, his wife was hailed as senatrix et patricia, and the couple ruled as tyrants in Rome. Alberic and Marozia possessed a mutually reinforcing ruthlessness seldom excelled in the annals of matrimony, and Alberic is said to have enforced his rule with the aid of the marauding Magyars who at that time were terrorizing all of Italy. In 925, having made more enemies than he could deal with, he was murdered by a mob.

Pope John X, who held Saint Peter’s throne at that time, had been a client of Theophylact and Alberic. He soon fell out with Marozia, however, and without a powerful father or husband to aid her, the senatrix was forced to flee the city in 924. She returned around three years later with a new husband – Guy, Margrave of Tuscany, who was eager to assist his beautiful new wife’s schemes. They were temporarily stymied by the opposition of Peter, Pope John’s brother, whom the pope had given Alberic’s lands in Spoleto, but in 928 the conflict in Rome was resolved in favor of Marozia and Guy. Their forces stormed the Lateran palace, hacked Peter to pieces in front of his brother, and threw John into a dungeon, where he was later strangled.

Both Rome and the Papacy were theirs. Guy, however, died unexpectedly only a year later, and again it was left to Marozia to maintain her rule alone. A series of her feeble and short-lived appointees kept the pontifical throne warm until her own bastard son with Pope Sergius turned 18 and was “elected” Pope John XI in 931. Still, however, her position was tenuous; her association with powerful men had been the chief instrument of her rise, and she was now quite unassociated.

Pope John XI, the illegitimate son of Marozia and Pope Sergius III
​

The Roman Wedding

Thus, with a King of Italy who needed control over Rome on the one hand, and a mistress of Rome who needed a powerful husband on the other, the solution practically recommended itself.

A minor obstacle existed to their union – it was technically illegal. Marozia and Hugh were not related in any way by blood, but Marozia’s previous husband, Guy of Tuscany, had been Hugh’s half-brother, as Bertha of Lotharingia had been mother to them both. By canon law, this made their marriage impossible on grounds of affinity.

This obstacle, however, turned out to be really more of an opportunity. Since Guy’s death, Tuscany had been held by his brother Lambert. Hugh already mistrusted Lambert, who ran his province with far too much independence. Hugh now alleged that by the time of the birth of Guy and Lambert, Bertha had been barren, and had faked her pregnancy and passed off newborn boys taken from another woman as her own. By way of slandering his own mother as a fraud, Hugh thus denounced Lambert as no true relative of his. Lambert was accused him of treason, removed from office, and blinded. This brutal act not only delivered Tuscany to Hugh, who passed it on to his brother Boso, but cleared the way for his marriage to Marozia.

Generally overlooked was Marozia’s own son – not the bastard who now ruled as Pope, but her eldest legitimate son by Alberic of Spoleto, also named Alberic. As the date of the wedding approached, the young man could have been forgiven for feeling a bit insecure. Lambert’s recent fate – stripped of office, disinherited, and blinded – must have weighed heavily on Alberic. If Hugh could treat his own half-brother in such a way, after all, what would become of his stepson? Alberic certainly knew of the ambitions of his mother, and had reason to wonder if they included him.

Hugh arrived in Rome in 932. He was married first in the Castel S. Angelo; during the feast after the wedding, Marozia is said to have sent Alberic to carry water to Hugh so that he might wash his hands. Alberic, despite any unease he may have had, nevertheless obeyed his formidable mother. Presumably at Marozia’s insistence, Hugh subsequently embraced Alberic and acknowledged him as his stepson. The next day came the moment Hugh had been waiting for - his long-awaited dowry, the imperial crown. Pope John XI performed the ceremony in Saint Peter’s Basilica, crowning his new stepfather as Imperator Romanorum.[2]


Footnotes
[1] The claim cannot possibly be substantiated, but neither can it be dismissed out of hand; Rome, even in its darkest days, was continually occupied, and noble families had tenaciously clung to power there under Germanic, Byzantine, and Frankish regimes.
[2] Only now have we reached our point of departure - everything before is actual history, or at least my interpretation of it based on conflicting sources. Some elements are disputed - for instance, whether John XI was in fact the son of Sergius or whether he was Alberic's son. It is highly unusual that the eldest daughter of a nobleman would openly conduct a pre-marital affair, let alone with a pope; on the other hand, it was exceptionally rare that a nobleman would push his firstborn son into a church career, which would have to have been the case if John, not the younger Alberic, was Alberic of Spoleto's eldest son. I have chosen the interpretation that holds John to be Marozia's bastard child with Sergius.

 

[St. Just]

Hmmm.... wonder how Marozia/Alberic II get around Hugh's legitimate son Lothar (IOTL, Lothar II of Italy)

 

[Deleted member 67076]

Man I love this time period. I'll be following this with interest.

 

[Carp]

Very interesting, I don't know much about this time period, but I'm sure it'll be a wild ride.

That's the nice thing about writing in it - nobody does.

Well, more accurately, there's a massive amount of uncertainty as to basic biographical information of important people - birth dates, relationships, even names. The known family tree of the House of Ivrea, for instance (who will become important later), is almost 100% men, which probably has less to do with impossibly unlikely sex determination than with contemporary chroniclers not really caring about daughters. It's both a blessing and a curse - you can bend things to accommodate your story, but there's also a lot less to go on.

Do you need any information regarding the rest of Europe and the world at the time of 932 CE?

I consider myself pretty well versed on Italian history at this time, though I may need to rely on more knowledgeable people when it comes to French and German politics of the mid-10th century. Ottonian Germany is a particular concern here, because of all the European states they are going to be changed most dramatically and immediately by the preservation of an independent Italian kingdom.

Hmmm.... wonder how Marozia/Alberic II get around Hugh's legitimate son Lothar (IOTL, Lothar II of Italy)

Lothair is actually slated to get a (reasonably) happy ending in this story, at least compared to his life IOTL. (Though that could all change - as I said, the ideas I have are not set in stone.)

 

[Grouchio]

http://www.amazon.com/The-Birth-West-Germany-Creation/dp/1610393686
http://www.amazon.com/Tenth-Century-Studies/dp/085033179X#
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo3647557.html

You could try playing ck2 at around the 932 mark if possible, perhaps that could help with planning and things. Ill see if theyre any books on the tenth century in the meantime...

Here's a few on Europe in general at the time...

 

[Carp]

I. The Empress in Pavia, the Judge in Rome

​

The Pre-Romanesque Basilica of San Michele Maggiore in Pavia,
the site of the royal coronations of Louis III "the Blind,"
Berengar of Friuli, and (possibly) Hugh of Arles

​

Empress Marozia

Having begun her life as the daughter of a local Roman lord, Marozia had risen far. The woman who had once merely been an object of salacious gossip had terrorized her city into obedience with unrelenting energy and stunning violence, and in 932 stood before them as a Roman Empress. It was the crowning moment of a remarkable career.

Rome, however, was not to remain hers. Her previous husbands had come to her, arriving from Spoleto and Tuscany to serve as her martial enforcers over her native city. Hugh would not fit into that pattern. Lombardy, not Rome, was the beating heart of his domain, and what the old imperial capital offered in religious and symbolic significance it utterly lacked in geographic, military, and economic importance.

Paradoxically, though crowned with the highest title a woman could aspire to and at the height of her personal glory, Marozia soon found that her actual power was greatly diminished. Three of her greatest assets in Rome had been her family name, her political savvy, and her legendary beauty. In Pavia, however, the provincial name of Tusculum meant nothing: “daughter of Theophylact” impressed precisely no-one, certainly not Frankish lords who traced their ancestry back to kings and emperors. As for her political instinct, it seems to have been of only limited use in the alien environment of the Pavian court. Even her beauty, though still remarked upon by contemporary chroniclers in 932, was in danger of waning; at the time of her wedding to Hugh she was already in her forties.

But the greatest of problems was that upon her arrival in Pavia much of her value to Hugh had already been lost. The imperial crown that she had offered was now his; she could not offer it again. Nor could she enjoy a privileged position as the mother of his children, for she never bore him any. (This cannot have been any fault of Hugh’s, for the emperor was a serial adulterer who sired bastards with young ladies both low and noble in every corner of his kingdom.) Liutprand[1] claims that, at least at first, the "Roman Venus" influenced her new husband with certain feminine wiles; but Liutprand could never resist a bawdy tale, even when it concerned the mother of his benefactor.[2]

Marozia brought four children with her to Lombardy. Her sons Alberic, Constantine, and Sergius were approximately 20, 15, and 12 in the year of her third marriage. Her fourth child and only daughter was the five year old Bertha.[3] Of all her children only Pope John XI, at that time 24 years of age, remained behind in Rome.

Alberic spent three years with his mother and stepfather at the imperial court, which was primarily based in Pavia but frequently traveled to other royal centers in Lombardy like Cremona, Turin, and Verona. Little is known of how his time was spent. He is certainly known to have been in Verona with Hugh in 934, the year Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria attempted (and failed) to invade the country, but we have no direct evidence that he was involved in that or any other military campaign.

One acquaintance of import that Alberic was to make at Hugh’s court was a young boy named Liutprand, who was twelve years old at the time of Alberic’s arrival. Liutprand, a native of Pavia, had entered Hugh’s service as a page in 931. Whether he was ever a page to Alberic is unknown, but Liutprand describes Marozia’s sons as treating him like an “adopted brother.” Liutprand, who was in his youth known chiefly for his fine singing voice, completed his education at court and became a deacon at the Cathedral of Pavia. He would be separated from Alberic for some years, but would in time become his biographer and chief propagandist, as well as our most detailed (if not our most impartial) contemporary source for the lives of Alberic and his close relations.

The Roman Rebellion

The departure of Marozia from Rome had suddenly robbed the city of the woman who, with one interruption after the death of her first husband, had kept a firm hand on the contumelious Romans since the death of Theophylact in 920. If Hugh or Marozia expected Pope John to take over the reigns of power, they badly overestimated his capabilities. He seems to have effectively been under the sway of his maternal uncle, also named John, who was the husband of Marozia’s younger sister Theodora.[4] This state of affairs continued until the unexpected death of John XI in 935; he had not even reached the age of thirty. Poison was rumored and some have assumed it was the work of his uncle, but it is difficult to see what the senior John would have gained from removing his easily controlled nephew from the throne.

Hugh, whose policy was always to fill vacant positions of power with his relatives, decided to compel the installation of his bastard son Boso as John’s successor. Hugh had been grooming Boso for the see of Piacenza, but the venerable bishop he had installed there to hold the post for a few years until Boso reached majority had stubbornly refused to drop dead. The now-vacant see of Rome seemed like an infinitely preferable alternative.

Boso’s age is unknown, but he was certainly in his early twenties or late teens. That was not necessarily an obstacle, as had been just demonstrated with John XI. John, however, had been a native Roman installed by the senatrix whom all Rome feared. Boso was deemed totally unsuitable by the Romans, whose contempt for outsiders was already legendary in their own time. On the arrival of Boso or shortly thereafter, a group of Roman nobles stirred up a rebellion, imprisoned Hugh’s son, and effected the election of a reluctant Benedictine monk named Leo.

Hugh furiously prepared to teach the city a lesson, but in the end did not go himself. Liutprand credits this decision to the influence of the empress, who, according to him, convinced him that her son Alberic, as a Roman, would be heeded by the people and successfully bring them to heel. It may also be that Hugh, who had only driven off a Bavarian invasion in the previous year, felt that his personal absence from Lombardy would be too much of a risk. From Marozia's perspective, it was an opportunity to demonstrate that she was still worth something to Hugh; it was critical that any emperor in Italy not merely wear the crown, but control Rome, and the empress would only benefit if her husband believed that only her family could provide that control.

So it was that Alberic, at the age of 23, was made a iudex palatinus[5] of the Emperor Hugh and tasked with restoring obedience to Rome. It was his first test, and one that pitted him in a struggle against his own uncle, who was one of the instigators of the rebellion. Alberic, however, was made of sterner stuff than Pope John. Spreading the rumor that he was intending to seize the Tusculani patrimony in the Alban Hills, he induced his uncle John to leave the city, and then made his entry uncontested. He benefited from the disorganization of the rebellion, which had no clear leader; his uncle John had not been able to coalesce the anti-Boso faction around himself, and other rebellious nobles could be bribed or otherwise induced to switch sides to Marozia's son.

Alberic rapidly succeeded in freeing Boso, and in days of street fighting wrested control of the city center. A church council was summoned in the name of the emperor (and safely outside the city) which pronounced Leo deposed and acknowledged Boso as pope.[6] When this provoked a riot, it was violently quashed by Alberic's men. As for Leo, who seems to have never wanted to put himself in the position of revolutionary leader, he soon submitted himself and was thrown in prison. Nevertheless, local resistance and unrest seems to have continued for some time; John continued to contest Alberic's dominance of Rome from his base at Tusculum for months, and it may have taken as long as a year for Alberic to put out the last embers of rebellion.

The Tusculani family tree, to 935 (click for enormous)
​

Next time: Alberic and the Saint

Footnotes
[1] This is the same person as OTL Liutprand of Cremona, a bishop, chronicler, and diplomat in the service of Otto the Great. Liutprand is a major primary source for this period of Italian history, though he's got a tremendous axe to grind against all sorts of people he doesn't like. ITTL, he ends up being Alberic’s partisan instead of Otto’s, and will be extensively referenced here.
[2] And how. OTL Liutprand is excessively cruel and/or vulgar when it comes to women he doesn’t like, calling Marozia a “shameless whore,” claiming that the wife of Berengar II cheated on him with a chaplain because of the size of “his weapon,” and devoting two chapters in the Antapodosis to a story about how the wife of the Margrave of Tuscany attempted to hide a jeweled belt in a “very intimate retreat.” She is stripped naked by the king’s soldiers, who discover the location of the belt by observing “a piece of string hanging close by the round and rosy hemispheres of her buttocks.” They burst into laughter and make obscene jokes at her expense. Keep in mind Liutprand is a bishop.
[3] Bertha was also her lone child from her short-lived second husband, Guy of Tuscany. Her three sons were all sired by her first husband, the elder Alberic.
[4] This John is sometimes mistakenly named “John Crescentius” because of his place as an ancestor of the Crescentii family, the “junior line” of the Tusculani noble house. The family, however, is named after John’s son Crescentius, and was not known as such until well after John’s death. John was evidently a member of a Roman noble family, but the identity of his parents or his family affiliation has never been confirmed. Later histories associate him with the gens Anicii of ancient Rome and occasionally refer to him as “Ioannes Anicius,” but the association was only claimed long after his death and is probably spurious.
[5] Palatine Judge. The same title was held by his grandfather Theophylact as the viceroy of Emperor Louis III ("Louis the Blind") in Rome.
[6] Yes, that does mean there is a "Pope Boso" in this timeline. The tradition of popes taking new names upon their accession did not start IOTL until the papacy of John XII, previously known as Octavian, the son of Alberic II.

 

[RGB]

This seems rather elegantly thought out. I like how Luitprand was repurposed very much, for one. For another, I really appreciate both the shift in their fortunes due to the politics of Hugh and also the limitations of Hugh's real power.

I don't have much in terms of suggestions or criticism beyond this; it's not really my period or place, but I am looking forward to more.

 

[The Professor]

Liking this.
Though I would suggest a different/further differentiation between OTL and TTL footnotes; perhaps "{iii}" vs "[3]"? That way they have less chance of confusion.

 

[Daztur]

OK the Luiprand bits won me over, enthusiastically subscribed.

 

[St. Just]

So is Hugh the Holy Roman Emperor, or just a pretender to the Western Roman Empire. Wonder how the true Romans in Constantinople will feel about that!

Nice use of Liutprand -- and funny to see a Pope Boso joining such honored ranks as Pope Hormisdas (Pope Ahura Mazda ) and Pope Lando.

Marozia is now thoroughly out of her element, but Alberic will get experience as the Palatine in Rome instead.

 

[edvardas]

if Otto is not so great, how will the Magyars fare?

 

[Deleted member 67076]

Liutprand is my hero.

 

[St. Just]

if Otto is not so great, how will the Magyars fare?

Could we see Otto, rather than striking south, striking East against the pagans, thusly integrating Bohemia and possible parts of Pannonia or Poland into the German imperium?