popes lived in the city at the same time: one in the Lateran,
a second in St. Peter's, and a third in Santa Maria Maggiore.

The eyes of the better citizens at length turned to the King of Germany.
The archdeacon Peter convoked a synod without consulting Gregory, and it
was here resolved urgently to invite Henry to come and take the imperial
crown and raise the Church from the ruin into which it had fallen.

Henry, coming from Augsburg, crossed the Brenner, and arrived at Verona
in September, 1046, accompanied by a great army and filled with the
ardent desire of becoming the reformer of the Church. No enemy opposed
him, the bishops and dukes, among them the powerful margrave Boniface of
Tuscany, did homage without delay. The Roman situation was provisionally
discussed at a great synod in Pavia. Gregory VI now hastened to meet the
King at Piacenza, where he hoped to gain the monarch to his side. Henry,
however, dismissed him with the explanation that his fate and that of
the antipopes would be canonically decided by a council.

Shortly before Christmas he assembled one thousand and forty-six bishops
and Roman clergy at Sutri. The three popes were summoned, and Gregory
and Sylvester III actually appeared. Sylvester was deposed from his
pontificate and condemned to penance in a monastery. Gregory VI,
however, gave the council cause to doubt its competence to judge him.
Gregory, who was an upright man, or one at least conscious of good
intentions, consented publicly to describe the circumstances of his
elevation, and was thereby forced to condemn himself as guilty of simony
and unworthy of the papal office. He quietly laid down the insignia of
the papacy, and his renunciation did him honor. Henry, with the bishops
and the margrave Boniface, immediately started for the city, which did
not shut its gates against him; for Benedict II had hid himself in
Tusculum, and his brothers did not venture on any resistance. Rome,
weary of the Tusculum horrors, joyfully accepted the German King as her
deliverer. Never afterward was a king of Germany received with such glad
acclamations by the Roman people; never again did any other effect such
great results or achieve the like changes. With the Roman expedition of
Henry III begins a new epoch in the history of the city, and more
especially of the Church. It seemed as if the waters of the deluge had
subsided, and as if men from the ark had landed on the rock of Peter to
give new races and