turies, were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their
tyrants; and such was their indigence, after the loss and usurpation
of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could neither support
the state of a prince, nor exercise the charity of a priest. [128] The
influence of two sister prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded
on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the
most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and
their reign [129] may have suggested to the darker ages [130] the fable
[131] of a female pope. [132] The bastard son, the grandson, and the
great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated in the chair
of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen years that the second of
these became the head of the Latin church. [1321] His youth and manhood
were of a suitable complexion; and the nations of pilgrims could bear
testimony to the charges that were urged against him in a Roman synod,
and in the presence of Otho the Great. As John XII. had renounced the
dress and decencies of his profession, the soldier may not perhaps be
dishonored by the wine which he drank, the blood that he spilt, the
flames that he kindled, or the licentious pursuits of gaming and
hunting. His open simony might be the consequence of distress; and his
blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if it be true, could not
possibly be serious. But we read, with some surprise, that the worthy
grandson of Marozia lived in public adultery with the matrons of Rome;
that the Lateran palace was turned into a school for prostitution, and
that his rapes of virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims
from visiting the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they
should be violated by his successor. [133] The Protestants have dwelt
with malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to a
philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than
their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the apostolic see was
reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory VII. That
ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of two projects. I.
To fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and independence of
election, and forever to abolish the right or usurpation of the emperors
and the Roman people. II. To bestow and resume the Western empire as
a fief or benefice [134] of the church, and to extend his temporal
dominion over the kings and kingdoms o