aballo, from his residence on the Quirinal,
near the colossal statues of Castor and Pollux, which have given to
the hill its modern name of Monte Cavallo. The Castel S. Angelo was
the stronghold of the family. Under the shelter of its massive
ramparts they were able to dictate the law to the Popes, and commit
bloodshed and sacrilege with impunity. In 928 Marozia and her second
husband Guido, marquis of Tuscany, with their partisans, fell on Pope
John X., who was staying in the Lateran Palace, murdered his brother
Pietro before his eyes, and dragged him through the streets of Rome to
the castle. The unfortunate Pope lingered awhile in a dark dungeon,
and was ultimately killed by suffocation. Marozia, perhaps to dispel
the suspicions of a violent death, allowed him to be buried with due
honors near the middle door of the Lateran, at the foot of the nave.
His gravestone was seen and described by Johannes Diaconus, but has
long since disappeared. In 974 Crescenzio, son of Theodora, committed
another sacrilegious murder, that of Benedict VI. Helped by a deacon
named Franco he confined him in the same dungeon of Castel S. Angelo,
while Franco placed himself on the chair of S. Peter, under the name
of Boniface VII. The legal Pope was soon after strangled. Such crimes
startled for a moment the apathy of the Romans, who besieged and
stormed the castle, deposed the usurper, and named in his place
Benedict VII., whose grave we are now visiting in S. Croce in
Gerusalemme. Yet Crescenzio and Franco did not pay dearly for their
crimes. Franco, after plundering the Vatican basilica of its
valuables, migrated to Constantinople, a rich and free man. Crescenzio
died peacefully in the monastery of S. Alessio on the Aventine in the
year 984. His tomb, the tomb of a murderer, whose hands had been
stained with the blood of a Pope, was allowed the honor of a laudatory
inscription. It can still be seen in the cloisters of the monastery:
"Here lies the body of Crescentius, the illustrious, the honorable
citizen of Rome, the great leader, the great descendant of a great
family," etc. "Christ the Saviour of our souls made him infirm and an
invalid, so that, abandoning any further hope of worldly success, he
entered this monastery, and spent his last years in prayer and
retirement."

All these events are alluded to in the epitaph of Benedict VII., in S.
Croce. This church has been so thoroughly deprived of its charm and
interest by another Benedi