Returning to the South, the Easter of 1051 beheld a council assembled at Rome for the purpose of restoring discipline. Apparently, the Italian prelates were disposed to exercise considerable caution in furthering the wishes of their chief, for they abstained from visiting their indignation on the guilty priests, and directed their penalties against the unfortunate females. In the city itself these were declared to be enslaved, and were bestowed on the cathedral church of the Lateran, while all bishops throughout Christendom were desired to apply the rule to their own dioceses, and to seize the offending women for the benefit of their churches.[466] The atrocity of this legislation against the wives of priests is all the more noteworthy when contrasted with the tenderness shown to worse crimes committed by men whose high position only rendered their guilt the more heinous. At this council, Gregory, Bishop of Vercelli, was convicted of what, by the rules of the church, was considered as incest—an amour with a widow betrothed to his uncle. For this aggravated offence he was merely excommunicated, and when, soon after, he presented himself in Rome, he was restored to communion on his simple promise to perform adequate penance.[467] The reformatory zeal of Leo and of the monastic followers of Damiani was thus evidently not seconded by the Italian church. A still more striking proof of this was afforded by the attempt to hold a council at Mantua early in 1053. The prelates who dreaded the result conspired to break it up. A riot was provoked between their retainers and the papal domestics; the latter, taken unawares and speedily overpowered, fled to the council-chamber for safety, and Leo, rushing to the door to protect them, was in imminent danger from the arrows and stones which hurtled thickly around him.[468] The reckless plot succeeded, and the council dispersed in undignified haste. Whether Leo was disgusted with his want of success and convinced of the impracticability of the undertaking, or whether his attention was thenceforth absorbed by his unlucky military operations against the rapidly augmenting Norman power in Southern Italy, it is not easy now to ascertain: suffice it to say that no further indications remain of any endeavor to carry out the reforms so eagerly commenced in the first ardor of his pontificate. The consistent Damiani opposed the warlike aspirations of the pontiff, but Leo persisted in leading his armies himself. A lost battle threw Leo into the power of the hated Normans, when, after nine months, he returned to Rome to die, in April, 1054, and to be reverenced as a saint after death by those who had withstood him during life in every possible manner.[469]