CHAPTER III. THE HIGH NOON OF THE PAPACY
[985-1305 A.D.]
During the minority of Otto III the Tuscan party exercised undisputed sway in Rome, without any check from without. No sooner was Otto II dead than Boniface VII reappeared from exile, and having seized his rival John XIV, and put him to death by starvation, for two years occupied unresisted the papal chair. Nevertheless Boniface VII was not a friend of the Tuscan party. By the people his dead body was treated with insults. Boniface’s successor, John XV, not proving as pliant as Crescentius the consul desired, was driven from Rome and reduced to the necessity of again appealing to the imperial authority. He was permitted to return.[b]
At his death, Otto III obliged the clergy and the people to elect his nephew Bruno, a German, and only twenty years of age. But the chief control of the city was at present in the hands of the senator Crescentius (Cencius), a man whom the emperor could not fail to view with feelings of fear and jealousy. On visiting Rome, therefore, for the purpose of receiving consecration, he undertook measures for his expulsion; but was prevented from putting them in practice by the persuasions of his nephew, who had assumed the appellation of Gregory V. The clemency of the pontiff was ill rewarded. Crescentius, on the departure of the emperor, drove him from the city and bestowed the pontifical dignity on a Greek, who took the name of John XVI. Gregory in the meantime fled into Lombardy; and, having summoned the several bishops to meet him at Pavia, he there excommunicated both Crescentius and John, his sentence, it is said, being supported by nearly all Italy, Germany, and France. The emperor, on his part, lost no time in proceeding to the capital, where his appearance struck instant terror into the hearts of the guilty Romans. John was apprehended when on the point of leaving the city; and the officers of the emperor, dreading lest their master should show any forbearance towards the culprit, immediately tore out his tongue and his eyes. Crescentius suffered the gentler punishment of decapitation; and Gregory, thus freed from his enemies, retained the papal dignity till the year 999. He was succeeded by Gerbert, archbishop of Ravenna, whom Otto caused to be elected in gratitude for the services he had rendered him as his instructor.[c]
THE DREAM OF OTTO III
[999-1046 A.D.]