Italy. The restive Romans, still mindful of the old prohibition of translations, rose against the Lombard Pope at Easter 984. Their leader was that Franco, now once more Boniface VII, who had been let loose with his treasure by the incensed Byzantines. He disgraced himself once more by causing the death of his imprisoned rival, and made himself so hated in his brief and tyrannous pontificate that on his death in 985 the mob outraged his corpse through the streets. He had really bought the Papacy from those who could sell it, the faction led by the house of the Crescentii. By them Alberic's rule of Rome was revived in the person of the "patrician" Crescentius II, son of Crescentius de Theodora. There was, however, a difference; while preserving his autonomous power, Crescentius II avoided a breach with the Empire.
He could take this anomalous position all the more easily because the Empire and the Regnum Italicum were in some sort vacant. The child Otto III of Germany was acknowledged as rightful heir, but not as sovereign, in Italy, where the interregnum was filled by admitting the claim of the two crowned Augustas, Theophano and Adelaide, to act for the future Emperor, this constitutional subtlety being made acceptable by the loyalty of Marquesses and Bishops to the German connexion. Otto II's aggressions against Venice and the Byzantines were promptly abandoned, and the peace of the Empire, tempered by the never wholly quiescent local broils, continued its beneficent work. Adelaide was soon thrust aside by Theophano who, Greek though she was, troubled with unruly German magnates and hampered by Slav revolt beyond the Elbe, yet contrived to rule. In 989 she came to Rome, partly to reaffirm the Empire, partly perhaps in rivalry with Adelaide. Crescentius II evidently came to terms, which preserved his patriciate, and she exercised without hindrance all the functions of sovereignty, even being styled Emperor by her puzzled chancery unused to a female reign. It was not, however, all by merit of the adroit and firm-willed lady, for, when a year after her return to Germany she died in June 991, and Adelaide took her place, the fabric of the Empire continued unshaken. The idea of the Ottoman monarchy had captivated men's imagination, the benefits it conferred on lands so recently wretched were indisputable, and the Italian magnates knew their own interests well enough to be persistently loyal.
At the head of the magnates stood Hugh of Tuscany, who for some years had ruled Spoleto as well, thus once more forming a mid-Italian buffer-fief, like that of his father Hubert, or of Paldolf Ironhead. It was Hugh who, when a revolution broke out at Capua on Aloara's death, set up a second son of Paldolf Ironhead's, Laidulf, as prince, and maintained the suzerainty of the Western Empire. At Rome, however, Crescentius II exercised unchallenged sway. Pope John XV had not even the support of the stricter clergy against his lay oppressor, for he himself had a bad name for avarice and nepotism. But intervention by the German monarch became certain. Otto III was now fifteen and of
