61. One of the noble families of Rome had got the selection of the popes into its own hands, and was using the papal authority to secure its control over the city. In the same year (1024) in which Conrad II became emperor, a layman was actually exalted to the headship of the Church, and after him a mere boy of ten or twelve years, Benedict IX, who, in addition to his youth, proved to be thoroughly evil-minded. His powerful family maintained him, however, on the papal throne for a decade, until he proposed to marry. This so scandalized even the not over-sensitive Romans that they drove him out of the city. A rich neighboring bishop then secured his own election. Presently a third claimant appeared in the person of a pious and learned priest who bought out the claims of Benedict IX for a large sum of money and assumed the title of Gregory VI. [Sidenote: The interference of Henry III in papal affairs and its momentous consequences.] This state of affairs seemed to the emperor, Henry III, to call for his interference. He accordingly went to Italy and summoned a council at Sutri, north of Rome, in 1046, where two of the claimants were deposed. Gregory VI, more conscientious than his rivals, not only resigned his office but tore his pontifical robes in pieces and admitted his monstrous crime in buying the papal dignity, though his motives had been of the purest. The emperor then secured the election of a worthy German bishop as pope, whose first act was to crown Henry and Agnes his wife.[106] The appearance of Henry III in Italy at this juncture, and the settlement of the question of the three rival popes, are among the most important events of all mediæval history in their results. In lifting the papacy out of the realm of petty Italian politics, Henry unwittingly helped to raise up a rival to the imperial authority which was destined, before the end of the next century, to overshadow it and to become without question the greatest power in western Europe. [Sidenote: Difficulties to be overcome in establishing the supremacy of the popes in western Europe.]