The Sorceress of Rome
Produced by Al Haines.
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Was Stephania not overacting her part? (See page 311)]
Title page]
THE SORCERESS OF ROME
BY
_NATHAN GALLIZIER_
AUTHOR OF CASTEL DEL MONTE
PICTURES BY THE KINNEYS
DECORATIONS BY P. VERBURG
THE PAGE COMPANY BOSTON PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1907 BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED)
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
All rights reserved
First Impression, October, 1907 Second Impression, February, 1920
THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
Somewhere, in desolate wind-swept space, In Twilight-land, in no-man's land, Two hurrying shapes met face to face And bade each other stand.
"And who are you?" cried one agape Shuddering in the gloaming light. "I know not," said the second shape, "I only died last night."
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
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*INTRODUCTION*
The darkness of the tenth century is dissipated by no contemporaryhistorian. Monkish chronicles alone shed a faint light over thediscordant chaos of the Italian world. Rome was no longer the capitalof the earth. The seat of empire had shifted from the banks of theTiber to the shores of the Bosporus, and the seven hilled city ofConstantine had assumed the imperial purple of the ancient capital ofthe Caesars.
Centuries of struggles with the hosts of foreign invaders had in timelowered the state of civilization to such a degree, that in point ofliterature and art the Rome of the tenth century could not boast of asingle name worthy of being transmitted to posterity. Even the memoryof the men whose achievements in the days of its glory constituted thepride and boast of the Roman world, had become almost extinct. A greatlethargy benumbed the Italian mind, engendered by the reaction from theincessant feuds and broils among the petty tyrants and oppressors of thecountry.
Together with the rest of the disintegrated states of Italy, united byno common bond, Rome had become the prey of the most terrible disorders.Papacy had fallen into all manner of corruption. Its former halo andprestige had departed. The chair of St. Peter was sought for by briberyand controlling influence, often by violence and assassination, and thecity was oppressed by factions and awed into submission by foreignadventurers in command of bands collected from the outcasts of allnations.
From the day of Christmas in the year 800, when at the hands of Pope LeoIII, Charlemagne received the imperial crown of the West, the GermanKings dated their right as rulers of Rome and the Roman world, a right,feebly and ineffectually contested by the emperors of the East. It wasthe dream of every German King immediately upon his election to crossthe Alps to receive at the hand of the Pope the crown of a country whichresisted and resented and never formally recognized a superiority forcedupon it. Thus from time to time we find Rome alternately in revoltagainst German rule, punished, subdued and again imploring the aid ofthe detested foreigners against the misrule of her own princes, tosettle the disputes arising from pontifical elections, or as protectionagainst foreign invaders and the violence of contending factions.
Plunged in an abyss from which she saw no other means of extricatingherself, harassed by the Hungarians in Lombardy and the Saracens inCalabria, Italy had, in the year 961, called on Otto the Great, King ofGermany, for assistance. Little opposition was made to this powerfulmonarch. Berengar II, the reigning sovereign of Italy, submitted andagreed to hold his kingdom of him as a fief. Otto thereupon returned toGermany, but new disturbances arising, he crossed the Alps a secondtime, deposed Berengar and received at the hands of Pope John XII theimperial dignity nearly suspended for forty years.
Every ancient prejudice, every recollection whether of Augustus orCharlemagne, had led the Romans to annex the notion of sovereignty tothe name of Roman emperor, nor were Otto and his two immediatedescendants inclined to waive these supposed prerogatives, which theywere well able to enforce. But no sooner had they returned to Germanythan the old habit of revolt seized the Italians, and especially theRomans who were ill disposed to resume habits of obedience even to thesovereign whose aid they had implored and received. The flames ofrebellion swept again over the seven hilled city during the rule of OttoII, whose aid the Romans had invoked against the invading hordes ofIslam, and the same republican spirit broke out during the brief, butfantastic reign of his son, the third Otto, directing itself in thelatter instance chiefly against the person of the youthful pontiff,Bruno of Carinthia, the friend of the King, whose purity stands out inmarked contrast against the depravity of the monsters, who, to thenumber of ten, had during the past five decades defiled the throne ofthe Apostle. Gregory V is said to have been assassinated during Otto'sabsence from Rome.
The third rebellion of Johannes Crescentius, Senator of Rome, enactedafter the death of the pontiff and the election of Sylvester II, formsbut the prelude to the great drama whose final curtain was to fall uponthe doom of the third Otto, of whose love for Stephania, the beautifulwife of Crescentius, innumerable legends are told in the old monkishchronicles and whose tragic death caused a lament to go throughout theworld of the Millennium.
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