A.D. 966 In a Campania he wrote with urgent entreaty to the Emperor. Otho made the cause of John his own; for the third time he descended the Alps; the terror of his approach appalled the popular faction. counter insurrection in favour of the Pope, Rotfred the prefect was killed, and the gates opened to the pontiff; he was received with hymns of joy and gratu- Nov. 12, 966. lation." At Christmas Otho entered Rome; and the Emperor and the Pope wreaked a terrible vengeance at that holy season on the rebellious city. The proud Roman titles seemed but worthy of derision to the German Emperor and his vassal Pope. The body of the prefect who had expelled John from the city was dug up out of his grave and torn to pieces. The Consuls escaped with banishment beyond the Alps; but the twelve Tribunes were hanged; the actual prefect set upon an ass, with a wine-bag on his head, led through the streets, scourged, and thrown into prison. All Europe, hardened as it was to acts of inhumanity, shuddered at these atrocities. The Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, reproached the ambassador of Otho at Constantinople with his barbarity. Liutprand, though an Italian, was devoted to the Emperor and his cause he haughtily answered, that his master had only punished, according to the imperial laws of Theodosius and Justinian, insurgents against the Empire and the Pope; he had scourged, executed, hanged, and banished these sacrilegious rebels P who n Continuat. Reginon, sub ann. 696. • He had first been hanged by the hair on the famous equestrian statue of M. Aurelius in the capitol.-Gregorovius, p. 387. A.D. 967. gavit."-Liutprand. The emperors of Constantinople had never abandoned their pretensions to Rome and Italy. Nicephorus 1esented the allegiance demanded by Otho of the princes of "Jugulavit, suspendit, exilio rele- Benevento and Spoleto, and his hosti had broken their oath of allegiance. If he had not done so, he had been impious, unjust, tyrannical.a The rebellion was crushed for a time; during the five remaining years of John's pontificate the presence of Otho overawed the refractory Romans. He ruled in At his death the undisturbed vacancy peace. Sept. 6, 972. of the See for three months implies the humble consultation of Otho's wishes (he had now returned to Germany) on the appointment of his successor. The choice fell on Benedict VI., as usual of Roman birth. The factions of Rome now utterly Jan. 19, 973. baffle conjecture as to their motives, as to the passions, not the principles, which actuated their leaders. Twice (the second time after an interval of ten years, during which he was absent from Rome), the same man, a Cardinal Deacon, seizes and murders two Popes; sets himself up as Supreme Pontiff, but though with power to commit these enormities, he cannot maintain on either occasion his ill-won tiara. Dec. 25, 967. The formidable Otho the Great" died the year of the accession of Benedict VI. Otho II., whose character was as yet unknown, had succeeded to the imperial throne; he had been already the colleague of his father in the Empire. He had been crowned at Rome by Pope John XIII. t lities against the few remaining possessions of the Greeks in Southern Italy. He demanded restoration of the Exarchate and of Rome, as the price to be paid for the hand of his daughter. The Romans will appear afterwards, more than once, in their desperation, turning for succour to the decrepit East. r clergy. The passage often quoted from Liutprand about the degeneracy of the Romans refers to the Byzantine Romans. "Post Carolum magnum regalem cathedram nunquam tantus patriæ rector atque defensor possedit."-So writes Thietmar of Otho I. He died May 7, 973. t John XIII. also crowned TheoIn the Legatio of Liutprand are phania the Byzantine wife of Otho II., some curious details on the Greek | April 14, a.d. 972. July, 974. A.D. 974. The year after the accession of Otho II., on a sudden, Bonifazio, surnamed Francone, described as the son of Ferruccio, a name doubtless well known to his contemporaries, seized the unsuspecting Pope Benedict and cast him into a dungeon, where shortly after he was strangled. Bonifazio assumed the papacy; but he had miscalculated the strength of his faction, in one month he was forced to fly the city. Yet he fled not with so much haste, but that he carried off all the treasures, even the sacred vessels from the church of St. Peter. He found his way to Constantinople, where he might seem to have been forgotten in his retreat. The peaceful succession of Benedict VII., the nephew or grandson of the famous Alberic, may lead to the conclusion that the faction of that family still survived, and was opposed to that of Bonifazio. The first act of Benedict, as might be expected, was the assembling a council for the excommunication of the murderer and anti-pope Boniface. This is the first and last important act in the barren annals of Pope Benedict VII. Under the protection of the Emperor Otho II., or by the strength of his Roman faction, he retained peaceful possession of the See for nine years," an unusual period of quiet. He was succeeded, no doubt through the influence of the Emperor, by John XIV., who was no Roman, but Bishop of Pavia. But in the year of John's accession, Otho II. was preparing a great armament to avenge a terrible defeat by the Saracens. He had hardly fled u Sismondi is probably right that Domus or Domnus, who is here inserted, was merely a title, Dominus Benedictus. This conjecture has the farther recommendation of giving the A.D. 983. full nine (or near ten) years to the papacy of Benedict, according to the epitaph quoted by Baronius. Compare Jaffe, who quotes a work of Giesebrecht as conclusive. Dec 7, X from the conquering Saracens, made his escape from a Greek ship by leaping into the sea and swimming ashore. He now threatened with all the forces A.D. 983. of the realm to bridge the Straits of Messina, and re-unite Sicily to the Empire of the West. In the midst of his preparations he died at Rome." The fugitive Bonifazio Francone had kept up his correspondence with Rome; he might presume on the unpopularity of a pontiff, if not of German birth, imposed by foreign influence, and now deprived of his all-powerful protector. With the same suddenness as before, he re-appeared in Rome, seized the Pope, imprisoned him in the Castle of St. Angelo, of which important fortress he had become master, and there put him to death by starvation or by poison." He exposed the body to the view of the people, who dared not murmur. He seated himself, as it seems, unresisted, in the papal chair. The Holy See was speedily delivered from this murderous usurper. He died suddenly. The people revenged themselves for their own base acquiescence in his usurpation by Aug. 20, 984. July, 985. cowardly insults on his dead body:a it was dragged through the streets, and at length buried, either by the compassion or the attachment, for Boniface must have had a powerful faction in Rome, of certain ecclesiastics. These bloody revolutions could not but destroy all reverence for their ecclesiastical Muratori, Annali, ann. 982. Giesebrecht, p. 567. On this battle, Amari II. 324. Richer, whose valuable chronicle the industry of Pertz has recovered, is very particular on the death of Otho II. He was suffering from indigestion, took 4 drachms of aloes, which brought on a bloody flux.-b. iii. c. 96. On his tomb, see Papencordt's note p. 182. Gregorovius, 420. Chronic. Volturn. apud Muratori, t. i. p. 11.-R. I. Hermann. Contract sub ann. 984. a Catal. Pap. apud Eccard. rulers in the people of Rome. The Empire was vacant; Otho III., though he called himself King of Germany and of Italy, had not yet assumed the imperial crown; and Otho was a youth who had but newly succeeded to his father. The Roman Republic, crushed by the overwhelming power of Otho the Great, now again assumes a distinct form and regular authority; and at the head of this republic is the Consul Crescentius, by the ecclesiastical writers condemned as a sacrilegious usurper, in modern days hailed as the champion and the martyr of Roman liberty. By a probable, if not a certain, genealogy, Crescentius descended from that famous, or infamous, line of Theodora, Marozia, and Alberic, who had so long ruled in Rome. He was the grandson of Theodora and the Pope John of Ravenna; by the mother's side he was nephew of Alberic. Crescentius was Master of the Castle of St. Angelo, so lately possessed by the usurper Boniface (who may have been supported by the Roman party, the house of Alberic), and the Castle of St. Angelo commanded Rome. b Hoefler, in his Deutsche Päpste, and Theodora. This Crescentius had a panegyric rather than a history of the German popes, has ingeniously traced this genealogy of the Crescentii from the various epitaphs preserved by Baronius: "Corpore hic recubat Crescentius inclytus ессе, Eximius civis Romanus, Dux quoque magnus. Ex magnis magna proles generatur et alta two sons: 1. John, named by Hermann. Contract. sub ann. 689, as having slain the Prefect Rotfred. 2. Crescentius (Numantanus), the Consul. The elder Crescentius became a monk; and by this, and ample and exemplary donations to the Church, atoned for his sins "Se Domino tradidit habitum monachorum This was the Crescentius "caballi Quod templum donis amplis ditavit et Hinc omnis, quicunque legis rogitare memento, Ut tandem scelerum veniam mereatur habere." |