The Feb­ru­ary 12 edi­tion of the Post includ­ed a piece by Max Fish­er, which stated:

“Pope Bene­dict IX, in 1045: At age 33 and about 10 years into his tumul­tuous term, the Rome-born pope resigned so that he could get mar­ried – and to col­lect some cash from his god­fa­ther, also Roman, who paid Bene­dict IX to step down so that he might replace him, accord­ing to British his­to­ri­an Regi­nald L. Poole’s defin­i­tive and much-cit­ed his­to­ry of the 11th century.”

Not quite. The twist­ed and still obscure events of the 11th cen­tu­ry are any­thing but clear, but this much is: Regi­nald Poole, writ­ing near­ly a cen­tu­ry ago, did not cred­it the idea that Bene­dict IX abdi­cat­ed the papa­cy in order to marry.

If you fol­low the link in the Post arti­cle to Poole’s 1917 work, it becomes clear that he regards the source of the mar­riage sto­ry to be high­ly unre­li­able. Of that source, a cer­tain Boni­zo, Poole writes:

“But I may premise that Boni­zo was not only one of the most inac­cu­rate of writ­ers and extreme­ly ill-informed about the his­to­ry which he relates, but was quite with­out scru­ple in fal­si­fy­ing facts which did not suit his opin­ions (p. 12).”

With that pref­ace, Poole then lays out Bonizo’s account, writ­ten in 1085, which holds that Pope Bene­dict want­ed to mar­ry his cousin but that her father refused, demand­ing that he first abdi­cate the papa­cy. Bene­dict agreed to do that and, in addi­tion, was paid a great sum of mon­ey by a Roman priest to hand over to him the papacy.

Poole then gives this assess­ment of Bonizo’s account:

“It will be seen that Boni­zo turns the course of events upside down, and places the elec­tion of Sil­vester III after that of Gre­go­ry VI. He implies that they were both Popes at the same time, and does not say what hap­pened to them when Bene­dict was restored. More­over, he gives no expla­na­tion of the con­duct of Ger­ard de Saxo, who after Bene­dict had ful­filled his con­di­tion refused to allow his daugh­ter’s mar­riage. Whether such a mar­riage was ever pro­posed, it is impos­si­ble to deter­mine. We have seen that it was believed in Bavaria not many years lat­er. But, in view of the spir­it of defama­tion which per­vad­ed that age, we can­not con­fi­dent­ly exclude the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the tale was a sim­ple slan­der (p. 13).”

Poole was clear­ly no fan of Boni­zo and does not cred­it his account of Benedict’s sup­posed abdi­ca­tion to mar­ry, call­ing it “impos­si­ble to deter­mine” and sug­gest­ing that it arose from “the spir­it of defama­tion that per­vad­ed that age.” More­over, Poole notes that Boni­zo didn’t even get the order of events right, sug­gest­ing that Gre­go­ry VI pre­ced­ed Sylvester III to the papal throne.

Accord­ing to John Julius Nor­wich, whose his­to­ry of the papa­cy relies in part on Poole’s work, Bene­dict was dri­ven from the papa­cy by a pop­u­lar upris­ing in Jan­u­ary 1045. He was replaced by Sylvester III. Two months lat­er, Bene­dict man­aged to take back the papa­cy and imme­di­ate­ly excom­mu­ni­cat­ed his usurp­er. In May, how­ev­er, Bene­dict took the unusu­al step, accord­ing to Nor­wich, of resign­ing his “papal rights” in favor of his god­fa­ther John Gra­t­ian, with­out, how­ev­er, “renounc­ing the papa­cy itself.” How Bene­dict jus­ti­fied this trans­ac­tion and what he, in fact, believed that he was sell­ing, is not alto­geth­er clear.

In any event, it was Gra­t­ian who became Gre­go­ry VI and who was lat­er accused of simo­ny. Both Poole and Nor­wich seem to agree that mon­ey changed hands, although Bene­dict nev­er did entire­ly relin­quish his claim as Pope, if Nor­wich is cor­rect. Nor does Nor­wich, any­more than Poole, cred­it Bonizo’s alle­ga­tion that Bene­dict abdi­cat­ed in order to marry.

All of this was final­ly set­tled by the Ger­man emper­or Hen­ry III, who deposed all three, accord­ing to Nor­wich. A sub­se­quent syn­od held at Sutri found Gre­go­ry VI guilty of simo­ny and ban­ished him from Italy.

So in a sin­gle sen­tence, the Post appears to have com­mit­ted the fol­low­ing errors:

1. Pre­sent­ing the alle­ga­tion that Bene­dict IX abdi­cat­ed the papa­cy in order to mar­ry as fact, rather than conjecture.
2. Cit­ing Regi­nald Poole, who cast asper­sions on Bonizo’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and on the verac­i­ty of his sto­ry, as con­firm­ing this allegation.

The Post is to be com­mend­ed for includ­ing a link to Poole’s work. The reporter, how­ev­er, should have read Poole’s essay more care­ful­ly before mis­rep­re­sent­ing him as assert­ing that Bene­dict abdi­cat­ed in order to marry.