This coronation of Otto the Great was a turning-point in the history of Germany, though at the time it caused little stir. To Otto himself it was merely the culminating success of his career, enabling him to undertake without interference the reform of the German Church that he had planned, and also to issue a charter that, while confirming the Popes in their temporal possessions, insisted that they should take an oath of allegiance to the Emperor before their consecration. By this measure the Papacy became in the eyes of Europe merely the chief see in the Emperor’s dominions; and under Otto’s immediate successors this supremacy was not seriously disputed by the Popes themselves. In some cases they were German nominees, ready to acknowledge the sceptre that secured their election; but, even where this was not the case, there was a general feeling that Rome had less to fear from the tyranny of Emperors beyond the Alps than from the encroachments of the petty lords of Italy. The Dukes of Spoletum, Counts of Tuscany, and Barons of the Roman Campagna had no respect at all for the head of Christendom except as a pawn in their political moves. One of the most unscrupulous and dissolute families in the vicinity of Rome, the Crescentii, who claimed the title of Patrician, once granted by Eastern Emperors to Italian viceroys, secured the Papacy for three successive members of their house. Under the last of these, Benedict IX, a boy of twelve at the time of his election, vice and tyranny walked through the streets of Rome rampant and unashamed. The young Pope, described by a contemporary as ‘a captain of thieves and brigands’, did not scruple to crown his sins by selling his holy office in a moment of danger to another of his family. As his excesses had already led the people of Rome to set up an Anti-Pope, and as he himself withdrew his abdication very shortly, the disgraceful state of affairs culminated in three Popes, each denouncing one another, and each arming his followers for battle in the streets. [Sidenote: Synod of Sutri] The interference of the Emperor Henry III (a member of the Salian House of Saxony) was welcomed on all sides, and at the Synod of Sutri the rival Popes were all deposed and a German bishop, chosen by the Emperor, elected in their place. Henry III has been described by a modern historian as ‘the strongest Prince that Europe had seen since Charlemagne’. Not only did he succeed in subduing the unruly Bohemians and Hungarians, but he also built Germany into the temporary semblance of a nation, mastering her baronage and purifying her Church. His influence over Italy was wholly for her good; but by the irony of fate his cousin Bruno, whom he nominated to the See of St. Peter under the name of Leo IX, was destined to lay the foundations of a Papacy independent of German control.