Tusculum, Counts of

TUSCULUM, Counts of. - A great family of the 11th century, descended from Theophylact (v.).

In their eagerness to contest primacy with the Crescenzi (v.), whose fortune was bound up with the defense of Roman independence, the Tusculans adhered to the imperial party, and the head of the family, GREGORY, had received from Otto III the title and functions of praefectus navalis. Gregory had three sons: Alberic, Romanus, Theophylact. THEOPHYLACT had embraced the ecclesiastical career and was already a cardinal in 1012, when he succeeded in obtaining the papal throne with the support of Henry II and the imperial faction, prevailing over a certain Gregory, the candidate of the Crescenzi party, and took the name Benedict VIII (v.), perhaps in memory of Benedict VII (v.), who apparently came from the same family. His brother ROMANUS assumed, with the title and office of Senator, the temporal government of the city. Unlike what had happened in the time of Alberic, a strenuous defender, like the Crescenzi afterward, of Roman independence, the Tusculans were closely bound to the Emperor, whose high sovereignty they would acknowledge and whose coronation they solemnly celebrated in 1014, receiving in return the title of patrician for Romanus. The family of the counts of T. thus dominated the city spiritually and temporally and profited from it extensively to disperse the last remnants of the Crescenzi party. In 1024, on the death of Benedict VIII, his brother ROMANUS succeeded him under the name John XIX (v.), who, ever faithful to the imperial party, crowned Conrad II in 1027. On his death in 1032, it was as if the papal dignity had by now become a family property. ALBERIC, the last surviving of the three brothers, placed on the chair of St. Peter the youngest of his sons, Theophylact, who was barely twelve years old, under the name Benedict IX (v.), and secured for his firstborn GREGORY the civil government of Rome with the title of consul. The unworthiness of Benedict IX provoked in 1044 a revolt that drove him from the Leonine City, together with his brother Gregory, and replaced him with Sylvester III. The military support of the count of Galeria, belonging to another branch of the Tusculan family, allowed Benedict IX to regain the upper hand for a moment; but recognizing that he could maintain himself neither on the papal throne nor in the city, Benedict IX ceded the papacy for money, something that had never happened until then, to John Gratian, who was his godfather and who took the name Gregory VI (v.).

The scandalous situation that had thus arisen provoked the intervention of Henry III (v.), who in 1046, at the Council of Sutri, deposed the three popes and opened, with the appointment of Clement II, the series of German popes appointed by the Emperor, who were the initiators of that work of reform which the latest events had made even more necessary. In 1047, however, with the support of the margrave of Tuscany, Benedict IX re-entered Rome and maintained himself there for a year, but ended by withdrawing, and an early death brought on by his life of debauchery prevented him from attempting further adventures, while the new moral and political climate that was establishing itself in Rome limited the possibilities of the family's primacy. From then on the power of the counts of T. declined, although the line continued unbroken, and from arbiters that they had been of Rome and the Papacy they were reduced to the rank of petty feudal lords, within the bounds of the ancestral castle, until even that was destroyed in 1191 by the Roman army.

Gina Fasoli