Otho the First imposed a treaty on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the candidate most acceptable to his majesty: [127] his successors anticipated or prevented their choice: they bestowed the Roman benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on their chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might be the merit of a Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the interposition of foreign power.
These acts of prerogative were most speciously excused by the vices of a popular election.

The competitor who had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were stained with blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in a long and disgraceful servitude.

The Roman pontiffs, of the ninth and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their indigence, after the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could neither support the state of a prince, nor exercise the charity of a priest.

[128] The influence of two sister prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and their reign [129] may have suggested to the darker ages [130] the fable [131] of a female pope.

[132] The bastard son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated in the chair of St.Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen years that the second of these became the head of the Latin church.