is party it
was that, at the end of the 8th century, treated Leo III. with such
impious cruelty in their first recorded attempt to overthrow the papal
government; that in the 10th century not only dethroned, but
imprisoned and murdered, by the hands of the consul Crescentius,
Benedict VI., and plunged the state into such disorders as to render
necessary the bloody but just intervention of Otho III. Emperor of
Germany, who delivered the Holy See from the oppression and
indignities which overwhelmed it. About the middle of the 12th
century, the example of the cities of Lombardy, roused to their
struggle for freedom to a great degree by the eloquence of Arnold of
Brescia, again awoke the republican faction at Rome; where other
elements of lawlessness unhappily existed in the papal schism which
then raged, and in which the anti-pope Anacletus drove from the Holy
See Innocent II., the lawful pope. On the death of Anacletus and the
return of Innocent, the sentence of the council, above mentioned,
against Arnold of Brescia, still more embittered the revolutionary
spirits of the city, worked up to wild enthusiasm by the temporary
presence of that arch-demagogue on the spot to defend his cause. At
last the pope's conduct to the citizens of Tivoli burst the storm of
rebellion over his head.

During the late schism, Tivoli had sided with Anacletus, and on his
death still refused to acknowledge Innocent. A Roman army was
accordingly marched out to reduce the place to obedience, but was
defeated by a sudden sally of the besieged. A fresh army which was
shortly raised behaved better, and Tivoli was reduced. Burning with
shame at the disgraceful failure of their first attempt, the Romans
clamoured for the total destruction of a hated rival and the
dispersion of its inhabitants. But the pope, satisfied with the
triumph of his authority, would lend no countenance to so guilty a
severity, and concluded with his chastised children a fatherly peace.
For thus checking the bad passions of his subjects, he incurred their
displeasure; whereupon, the republican leaders, perceiving their
opportunity seized it at once, and, by their virulent denunciations to
the mob of the pretended tyranny of priests, soon stirred up an
insurrection; and got the citizens to hold a congress in the Capitol,
at which the papal government was declared at an end, and the ancient
republic restored. Innocent strove to counteract this revolution, and
called a synod at