¹⁴⁰ Amolice Angerius de Viti Pontificum, p. 340. At the moment of Henry’s arrival, at Rome, the three popes were there, Benedict IX. at the palace of the Lateran, Sylvester III. at the Vatican, and Gregory VI. or John his coadjutor, at Saint-Mary-Major. Henry deposed the whole three without any difficulty, and caused a fourth to be elected, Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who took the name of Clement II. To this Clement succeeded Damasius II. Leo IX. and Victor II. all like himself, the creatures of Henry III. The ten years of this emperor’s reign, are one of the epochs during which the Romans and the popes have been most decidedly subject to the imperial power. Leo IX. the relative and subject of Henry, indemnified himself for that obedience which he could not refuse to this emperor, by acts of authority against other sovereigns. He held a council at Rheims in defiance of the King of France, Henry I. proclaimed in it the pontifical supremacy, and deposed and excommunicated prelates and seculars. In a council at Rome, he decreed that the females whom the priests should abuse in the bosom of this city, should remain slaves of the palace of the Lateran.¹⁴¹ This pontiff, whom they have placed in the catalogue of saints, should rather have obtained a place in the rank of warriors. He led an army against the Normans, who defeated him, and kept him prisoner at Beneventum. His ponticate is memorable from the completion of the schism of the Greek church; but the religious discussions which belong to the history of this schism, exceed the limits of our subject: the principal political result of this division was, to extinguish the already very feeble influence of the Emperors of the East over the affairs of Italy. ¹⁴¹ Fleury’s Eccles. Hist 1. 59, n. 75.