of 1000 years was about to expire; and donations to the church, especially to monasteries, passed for the most certain assurance against eternal damnation. From the retirement of the cloisters arose important personages, before whom the thrones of the world were humbled. Dunstan, from Glastonbury Abbey, sprung forward to govern Great Britain, to insult queens, and subject kings to penance. Otho the Great was at this period the only prince of Christendom who fully ruled the ecclesiastical authority: and if there remained among any people, ideas or ‘habitudes’ of civil independence, it was among the Romans in the centre of Christianity itself. The reign of Otho the Great, is the era to which we would willingly refer the origin of the two factions, the papal and imperial, since called those of the Guelphs and Ghibelins. But in the tenth century, the partisans of the pope, were only citizens, emulous of obtaining the independence of their city or republic, and to withdraw their elective head from all domination. Some would have even preferred a civil magistracy simply, as that of Alberic; they united rather in opposition to the emperor, than in favor of the pontiffs chosen without, or in defiance of, his authority. Such were the elements of the factions, which revolted with John XII. which nominated Benedict V. and which repelled, as far as in their power, Leo VIII. and John XIII. The emperor had no partizans at Rome save his personal agents, and a few of the inhabitants; the rest were subjected only by his presence or his arms. Thus this pontifical faction which, in the sequel, appears to have supported the most monstrous excesses of pontifical ambition, was originally but a republican party, that more than once, it had been easy to engage in the destruction of the temporal power of the popes, by conferring on the Romans, and on some others of the cities of Italy, a suitable government. Otho died in 973; and from his death to the pontificate of Gerbert or Sylvester II. the most remarkable events are, the accession of Hugh Capet to the throne of France, the excommunication pronounced against his son Robert, and the attempts of Crescentius to force Rome from the yokes of Otho II. and Otho HI. the feeble successors of Otho the Great.