His death in July, 1057, was followed after but a few days’ interval by the election of Frederic, Duke of Lorraine—the empire having passed in 1056 from the able hands of Henry III. to the feeble regency of his empress, Agnes, as guardian of the unfortunate infant Henry IV.—thus releasing the Roman clergy from the degrading dictation of a Teutonic potentate. That Frederic should have abandoned the temptations and ambitions of his lofty station to embrace the austerities of monastic life in the abbey of Monte Casino, is a sufficient voucher that he would not draw back from the work thus far hopelessly undertaken by his predecessors. Notwithstanding the severity of the canons promulgated during the previous decade, and the incessant attempts to enforce them, Rome was still full of married priests, and the battle had to be recommenced, as though nothing had yet been done. Immediately on his installation, as Stephen IX., he addressed himself unshrinkingly to the task. For four months, during the most unhealthy season, he remained in Rome, calling synod after synod, and laboring with both clergy and people to put an end to such unholy unions,[472] and he summarily expelled from the church all who had been guilty of incontinence since the prohibitions issued in the time of Leo.[473] One case is related of a contumacious priest whose sudden death gave him the opportunity of striking terror into the hearts of the reckless, for the mutilated funeral rites which deprived the hardened sinner of the consolation of a Christian burial it was hoped would prove an effectual warning to his fellows.[474] Feeling the necessity of support in these thankless labors, he forced Damiani to leave the retirement of the cloistered shades of Avellana, and to bear, as Bishop of Ostia, his share of the burden in the contest which he had done so much to provoke—but it was all in vain.