Empire of Rome fell to the Germans,
and how Otho I. of Saxony was consecrated Emperor._

Sec. 2.--_Of the Emperor Otho III., and the Marquis Hugh, which built
the Badia at Florence._

[Sidenote: 979 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Par. xvi. 127-132.]

After the death of Otho II., his son, Otho III., was elected Emperor,
and crowned by Pope Gregory V., in the year of Christ 979, and this
Otho reigned twenty-four years. After that he was crowned, he went
into Apulia on pilgrimage to Mount S. Angelo, and afterwards returned
by way of France into Germany, leaving Italy in good and peaceful
estate. But when he was returned to Germany, Crescentius, the consul
and lord of Rome, drave away the said Gregory from the papacy, and set
a Greek therein, which was bishop of Piacenza, and very wise; but when
the Emperor Otho heard this he was very wrath, and with his army
returned to Italy, and besieged in Rome the said Crescentius and his
Pope in the castle of S. Angelo, for therein had they taken refuge;
and he took the said castle by siege, and caused Crescentius to be
beheaded, and Pope John XVI. to have his eyes put out, and his hands
cut off; and he restored his Pope Gregory to his chair, which was his
kinsman by race; and leaving Rome and Italy in good estate, he
returned to his country of Germany, and there died in prosperity.
With the said Otho III. there came into Italy the Marquis Hugh; I take
it this must have been the marquis of Brandenburg, forasmuch as there
is no other marquisate in Germany. His sojourn in Tuscany liked him so
well, and especially our city of Florence, that he caused his wife to
come thither, and took up his abode in Florence, as vicar of Otho, the
Emperor. It came to pass, as it pleased God, that when he was riding
to the chase in the country of Bonsollazzo, he lost sight, in the
wood, of all his followers, and came out, as he supposed, at a
workshop where iron was wont to be wrought. Here he found men, black
and deformed, who, in place of iron, seemed to be tormenting men with
fire and with hammer, and he asked what this might be: and they
answered and said that these were damned souls, and that to similar
pains was condemned the soul of the Marquis Hugh by reason of his
worldly life, unless he should repent: who, with great fear, commended
himself to the Virgin Mary, and when the vision was ended, he remained
so pricked in the spirit, that after his return to Florence, he sold
all his patrimony in Germany,