At last the Romans, maddened by misgovernment, chose a noble citizen of high character, by name Crescentius, to act as consul and for some few years the city enjoyed peace and tranquillity. Again the wheel turned, and when Crescentius nominated another pope, John XVI, the emperor seized the wretched pontiff and barbarously misused him by tearing out his eyes and tongue and cutting off his nose. Crescentius himself was besieged in St. Angelo but made so stout a resistance that the place could only be gained by treachery. He had little prospect of beating off Otho but was sturdily defiant when summoned to surrender. The castle with its many towers and innumerable battlements was deemed impregnable, but siege was laid in due form and the attack assisted by the huge military engines or wooden towers in use at the time. Eventually it was taken by assault, Crescentius was beheaded on the battlements, and his remains, after horrible mutilation, were thrown down and hung on a gallows below Monte Mario. He left a widow Stephania who vowed to avenge her husband even at the cost of becoming Otho’s mistress, whom she presently put to death by administering poison to him. This was the saddest period of ecclesiastical history; pope followed pope, all ineffectively striving to maintain order and St. Angelo was sometimes their sanctuary, sometimes their prison house. One or two of the popes who were most unworthy to wear the sacred insignia may be mentioned, such as Benedict IX, who was elected at the callow age of ten. Another pope writing of him fifty years later said, “I have horror to describe the life of Benedict, how shameful, corrupt and execrable it was.” After he had long tormented the Romans by his injustice and cruelty, they would no longer tolerate him, but rose and expelled him from the pontifical seat. He soon returned, and deposing his successor, sold the throne to an archpriest, who took the name of Gregory VI. Benedict thereupon retired into St. Angelo. There were then three popes in Rome, and the emperor appearing on the scene, nominated a fourth. A conflict at once arose with the emperor, Henry IV, and his nominee was attacked, but saved by Cencius, the son of the prefect, who now held St. Angelo and who kept him there safely for two years.