Identifier: historyofallnati08wrig (find matches)
Title: A history of all nations from the earliest times; being a universal historical library
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Wright, John Henry, 1852-1908
Subjects: World history
Publisher: (Philadelphia, New York : Lea Brothers & company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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also, her temperate yet energetic rule maintained the impe-rial rights without any essential diminution, although a certain hos-tility seems to have existed between her and Adelheid, who residedin Pa via. But even Theophano could not restrain the savagery ofthe Roman nobility and clergy. In the year 984 Boniface VIL, whohad pre\iously fled to Constantinople, returned; John XIV. wasimprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo, and was put to death afterseveral months of cruel imprisonment. Boniface himself died aftera years time, an object of abhorrence even to his own partisans.Amid this confusion the young Crescentius, son of him who hadretired into a cloister to escape Otto II., succeeded in making himselfmaster of the city. The new pope, John XV. (985-996), was histool, and was stained with all the vices of the time. Thus affairsat Rome relapsed into a condition like that Avhich had prevailedbefore Otto I. interfered. The Roman church appeared to have fallen OTTO II. AND TIIEOPHAXO. 269
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Fn; 74 _ Ivory tablet, foniiiii- part «.f a diptych or of a book-cover, with an alle-jrorical representation of the marria^e of Otto II., emperor in the west, andTlieophano, niece of Zimisces. The fijxures are accompanied by exphmatoryinscriptions. IJelow tiie emperors feet is represented Ihi- giver of this tablet, with the words (translated) Lord, help thy servant John Ch Byzantine work of the tenth century. Paris, Cluny Mnsenm. (Proni Louandre.) 270 UNIVERSAL EMPIRE UNDER OTTO IL AND III. into decay; and wherever people wished to preserve to the religiouslife the possibility of thriving anew and exercising a salutary influ-ence upon the intellectual and moral civilization of the age, it seemedto be actually a duty for them to free themselves from the degeneratepapacy. In France, especially, many persons were of this opinion;because in that country the political and dynastical feuds which pre-vailed revealed the degradation of the church with unusual clearness.The show of power whic

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