of shouting the pontiff’s complaint through the keyhole; and he and all his vast flock, which included, with the suffragan Sees, the whole of Lombardy, were totally indifferent to the excommunication stammered against them by the enraged and helpless Pope. Archbishop Ansperto was the chief restorer of the city as well as of the Church of Milan. He rebuilt and repaired the broken walls, the buildings ruined by the barbarians, and by his wise and resolute government gave a much-needed security to the life and property of the citizens. It was a greatly increased power which he transmitted to his successors, who wielded it with the same autocratic spirit. In the confusion of the Carlovingian break-up, when no one knew who was the rightful sovereign of the old Lombard kingdom, or who held the prerogative of electing him, the Archbishops of Milan assumed the part of king-makers, and laid the Crown, now on the head of an Italian prince, now on that of some heir of the Carlovingian tradition. The constant aim of the archbishops was to increase and consolidate their power, and the weakness of the royal authority gave them their chance. The story of the city in these two centuries is chiefly composed of the contests of the Primates with the successive wearers of the Lombard crown, who in their turn endeavoured to tyrannise over the See by seizing the right to elect its occupant, and filling it with their own rapacious and arrogant favourites. These royal appointments were violently opposed by the people, so that the city was distracted by constant schisms and civil warfare. From 948 to 953 the strife between Adelmano, the choice of the citizens, and Manasses, an ambitious and intriguing foreign priest, whom Berengarius had appointed to the See, filled Milan with tumult and bloodshed, during which the Ambrosian Church was despoiled of much of its treasure. The election in 953 of a third aspirant, Walperto, to whom the others gave way, closed at last the miserable war. With the coronation of Otho the Great (964) in St. Ambrogio, by this archbishop, who had crossed the Alps in person to summon the German prince to the deliverance of Italy from the cruel tyranny of Berengarius, a blessed period of peace and consequent prosperity began for Milan, favourable to the development of those popular forces in the city—hitherto depressed by constant terror and insecurity—which were to make her history in the coming centuries.