Saeculum obscurum wikimedia

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The Saeculum Obscurum lasted for sixty years between 904 and 964. This was the time known as the dark age of the Papacy when the popes were strongly influenced by the Theophylacti family and their allies.

Pope Sergius III’s ties with the family of Theophylact, the leading Roman Senator and Count of Tusculum, were made even closer by Sergius’ supposed affair with Theophylact’s daughter, Marozia. This relationship was promoted by Marozia’s mother, Theodora, and the result of this affair was a male child who became Pope John XI (931–935).

It was a time of great immorality in the papacy and was so named by the historian Cardinal Caesar Baronius in his Annales Ecclesiastici, written in the 16th Century. Among his primary sources was Bishop Liutprand of Cremona who wrote Antapodosis sive Res per Europam gestae (958-962).

Popes during the Saeculum Obscurum

The following were popes during the Saeculum Obscurum.

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia
2. ↑Dr Taylor Marshall
3. ↑Medieval Church History

From the Wikipedia:

"The Early Middle Ages or Middle Ages in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, characterizing it as marked by economic, intellectual, and cultural decline.

The concept of a "Dark Age" originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch, who regarded the post-Roman centuries as "dark" compared to the "light" of classical antiquity. The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's "darkness" (lack of records) with earlier and later periods of "light" (abundance of records). The phrase "Dark Age" itself derives from the Latin saeculum obscurum, originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 when he referred to a tumultuous period in the 10th and 11th centuries. The concept thus came to characterize the entire Middle Ages as a time of intellectual darkness in Europe between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. This became especially popular during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment.

As the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars began restricting the "Dark Ages" appellation to the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th century), and now scholars also reject its usage in this period. The majority of modern scholars avoid the term altogether due to its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate. Petrarch's pejorative meaning remains in use, typically in popular culture which often mischaracterises the Middle Ages as a time of violence and backwardness."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography))

Modern scholarly use, from the Wikipedia:

"The term was widely used by 19th-century historians. In 1860, in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt delineated the contrast between the medieval 'dark ages' and the more enlightened Renaissance, which had revived the cultural and intellectual achievements of antiquity.[36] The earliest entry for a capitalized "Dark Ages" in

Period of corrupt papal appointments in early/mid 10th century

"Pornocracy" redirects here. For other uses, see Pornocracy (disambiguation).

Saeculum obscurum (Ecclesiastical Latin:[ˈsɛː.ku.lu.mobsˈkuː.rum], "the dark age/century"), also known as the Pornocracy or the Rule of the Harlots, was a period in the history of the papacy during the first two thirds of the 10th century, following the chaos after the death of Pope Formosus in 896 which saw seven or eight papal elections in as many years. It began with the installation of Pope Sergius III in 904 and lasted for 60 years until the death of Pope John XII in 964. During this period, the popes were influenced strongly by a powerful and allegedly corrupt aristocratic family, the Theophylacti, and their relatives and allies. The era is seen as one of the lowest points of the history of the papal office.

Periodisation

The saeculum obscurum was first named and identified as a period of papal immorality by the Italian cardinal and historian Caesar Baronius in his Annales Ecclesiastici in the 16th century. Baronius's primary source for his history of this period was the contemporaneous writer Bishop Liutprand of Cremona. Baronius himself was writing during the Counter-Reformation, a period of heightened sensitivity to clerical corruption. His characterisation of the early 10th-century papacy was perpetuated by Protestant authors. The terms "pornocracy" (German: Pornokratie, from Greekpornokratiā, "rule of prostitutes"), hetaerocracy ("government of mistresses"), and the Rule of the Harlots (German: Hurenregiment) were coined by Protestant German theologians in the 19th century.

Historian Will Durant refers to the period from 867 to 1049 as the "nadir of the papacy".

10th-century popes

Main article: Papal selection before 1059

The Theophylacti family were descended from Theophylactus. They held positions of increase