ence of the emperor;
and in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and to
punish, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a treaty
on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the candidate most
acceptable to his majesty: his successors anticipated or prevented their
choice: they bestowed the Roman benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne
or Bamberg, on their chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might
be the merit of a Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the
interposition of foreign power. These acts of prerogative were most
speciously excused by the vices of a popular election. The competitor
who had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or
avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were stained with
blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises of Tuscany and the
counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in a long and disgraceful
servitude. The Roman pontiffs, of the ninth and tenth centuries, were
insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their tyrants; and such was
their indigence, after the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical
patrimonies, that they could neither support the state of a prince,
nor exercise the charity of a priest. The influence of two sister
prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth and
beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of
their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and their reign may
have suggested to the darker ages the fable of a female pope. The
bastard son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare
genealogy, were seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age
of nineteen years that the second of these became the head of the Latin
church. His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion; and the
nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges that were urged
against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence of Otho the Great. As
John XII. had renounced the dress and decencies of his profession, the
_soldier_ may not perhaps be dishonored by the wine which he drank,
the blood that he spilt, the flames that he kindled, or the licentious
pursuits of gaming and hunting. His open simony might be the consequence
of distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if it
be true, could not possibly be serious. But we read, with some surprise,
that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in public adultery with the
mat