The Romans replied: "When the royal majesty is present, the assent to the election does not belong to us, and, when it is lacking, you are represented by your _patricius_. For in the affairs of the republic the patricius is not patricius of the pope, but of the emperor. We admit that we have been so thoughtless as to appoint idiots as popes. It now behooves your imperial power to give the Roman republic the benefit of law, the ornament of manners, and to lend the arm of protection to the Church." The senators of the year 1046, who so meekly surrendered the valuable right to the German King, heeded not the shades of Alberic and the three Crescentii; since these--their patricians--would have accused them of treason. The Romans of these days were, however, ready for any sacrifice so that they obtained freedom from the Tusculum tyranny. Nothing more clearly shows the utter depth of their exhaustion and the extent of their sufferings than the light surrender of a right which it had formerly cost Otto the Great such repeated efforts to extort from the city. Rome made the humiliating confession that she possessed no priest worthy of the papacy, that the clergy in the city were rude and utter simonists. All other circumstances, moreover, forbade the election of a Roman or even of an Italian to the papacy. The Romans besought Henry to give them a good pope; he presented the Bishop of Bamberg to the assenting clergy, and led the reluctant candidate to the apostolic chair. Clement II, consecrated on Christmas Day, 1046, immediately placed the imperial crown on Henry's head and on that of his wife Agnes. There were still many Romans who had been eye-witnesses of like transactions--that is to say, of papal election and imperial coronation following one the other in immediate succession--in the case of Otto III and Henry V; who, as they now saw the second German pope mount the chair of Peter, may have recalled the fact that the first had only lived a few sad years in Rome and had died in misery. The coronation of Henry III was performed under such significant conditions and in such perfect tranquillity that it offers the most fitting opportunity for describing in a few sentences the ceremonial of the imperial coronation. Since Charles the Great, these repeated ceremonies, with the more frequent coronations or Lateran processions of the popes, formed the most brilliant spectacle in Rome.