Leo VIII. and Benedict V. died in 965; the commissioners of Otho caused the election of John XIII. but the Romans revolted against this new pope, and banished him. Otho was obliged to return into Italy, and hasten to Rome to subdue the seditious and restore the pontiff. John could forgive none of his enemies: he signalized his return by atrocious vengeances, of which the emperor condescended to become the accomplice and the instrument. They have tarnished the glory of this prince, and justified the indifferent reception, at this period, of one of his ambassadors to the Greek emperor, Nicephoras Phocas.: “The impiety of thy master, said the empe− “ror of Constantinople to the ambassador of Otho, “does not allow us to receive thee honorably: thy “master has become the tyrant of his Roman sub− “ejects; he has exiled some, he has torn out the “eyes of others; he has exterminated one−half of his “people by the sword and by the scaffold.” The ambassador to whom this discourse was addressed, was the historian Liutprand, who himself relates it. Otho, however, was not cruel by nature; in this instance he only yielded to the importunities of the vindictive John. The successes of Otho the Great, his excursions to Rome from the year 962 to 966, laid the foundation of the power of the German emperors, his successors. He wished the imperial dignity to become forever inseparable from the united kingdoms of Germany and Italy; that Christendom in its full extent might form a republic which should recognize in the emperor its sole temporal head; that it should be the privilege of this supreme chief, to convoke councils, command the armies of Christendom, establish or depose popes, to preside over, and to create kings. But in order to elevate himself to such a pinnacle of greatness, he had need to manœuvre the German bishops; they, therefore, received from him enormous concessions. He distinguished the cities into two kinds, prefectorial, and royal, since imperial, and confided the government of the latter to the bishops, who laboured hard to render them episcopal. The bishops became Counts and Dukes with royal prerogatives, such as the administration of justice, privilege of coining money, collecting customs, and other public revenues. It was by the title of fiefs, and on condition of following him in his military expeditions, that Otho gratified them with such power and wealth: but these dangerous benefactions, in abridging the domains of the crown and the revenues of the State, served the ends of future anarchy and revolution. The clergy, as well the secular as regular, required in most of the countries of Europe a formidable power, which would have been further encreased, if already some symptoms of rivalry between these two bodies had not fettered their common aggrandizement. Converts multiplied from day to day, and enriched themselves almost beyond bounds. The Church’s period