AND ANTI-POPE 105
elected at the Emperor's suggestion, but as the prisoner of the city prefect Peter, he had been made to feel the antagonism to the German rule which prevailed among nationalistically-minded Romans. A year after the election, Otto appeared, liberated the Pope and brought stern judgment to bear on the rebels. Some he exiled; others he blinded or hanged from the gallows. Peter, delivered over to the Pope, was hanged by the hair from the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. The Emperor made Crescentius, a Tuscan nobleman and the son of the younger Theodora, Duke of Rome, believing that he would be loyal to the Pope. But he showed John courtesy only when he found him subservient. In 967 he bade him crown his son Otto II co- Emperor, and won him over to the idea of gaining the Greek posses- sions in Italy for himself through marriage. Theophano, daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, received the Crown from the Pope's hands when in 972 she became the young Otto's wife. Soon afterward both Pope and Emperor died, and Crescentius manifested his true sen- timents. As leader of the nationalist faction, he ordered that the Imperial-minded Pope elected to succeed John be strangled in San Angelo; and before the sentence could be executed, he named as Pope under the name of Boniface VII a cardinal implicated in the plot. Boniface soon fled to the Bosphorus with a rich booty rifled from the Papal treasury.
Otto IFs successes in Italy were not decisive enough to forestall the future rule of Crescentius' faction, but he was able to protect the Pope who ruled during his time (973-983). This was Benedict VII, a Tuscan who had been elected through German influence, whose quiet wprk of reform was carried out in the spirit of Cluny. When Bene- dict died, Otto's wish was granted and the former Chancellor of the Empire became Pope John XIV. Yet before this Pontiff had been a year in office he lost his Imperial protector, who died at the age of twenty-eight, and fell a victim to the aristocratic faction. Boniface now returned from exile, and Benedict was thrown into a dungeon at San Angelo, where he starved to death. The year following Boni- face himself was slain, and his body dragged through the streets. Cencius, son of Crescentius, now remained the master of Rome for a decade while the Empress Theophano acted as Regent for her infant son, Otto III. Cencius' own creature John XV began to yearn for
io6
