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Rh three abominable women (le donne cattive), old Theodora, Marozia, and young Theodora, who from about 900 till 932 ruled Rome, filling the city with their abominations, and setting up one wretched boy after another as Pope. Meanwhile the Normans were plundering the coast of Italy, the Saracens had conquered Sicily, were ravaging the South of the Peninsula, and had come thundering even to the very gates of Rome. Then at last in the 11th century came the reaction. As for civil affairs, the great Saxon Emperors saw to them. Otto I (936–973) crushed the Magyars (at the river Lech in 935) and then came to set things right in Italy. He broke down all the little tyrants who were devastating the country, and once more joined all Germany, from Strassburg to the Oder, and Italy down to Gaeta in the Western Roman Empire. The reform of the Church was the work of the Cluniac monks. The Benedictine Abbey of Cluny (Cluniacum), in the diocese of Macon in Burgundy, had for its Abbot since 910 Berno, once Count of Burgundy. After Berno came St. Odo († 941). Cluny first reformed itself, going back to the strict keeping of St. Benedict's rule; then an enormous number of other Benedictine houses were founded under its obedience, and from them came all the great bishops and Popes who in the 11th century wiped out the shame of the past by their stern discipline and their own saintly lives. Greatest of all, the soul of the reform and of the whole Cluniac movement was Hildebrand, counsellor and director of seven Popes before he became one of the greatest of all as St. Gregory VII (1073–1085). The Pope who was concerned with the schism of Cerularius was the third of the German reforming Popes, and one of the many disciples of Hildebrand—St. Leo IX (1048–1054). He was Bruno, Count of Nordgau in Elsass, and a cousin of the Emperor Henry III (1039–1056). Then he became Bishop of Toul. When Pope Damasus II (1047–1048) died, the Emperor tried to appoint Bruno Pope.

It is not certain whether Bruno had ever actually been a Cluniac monk, but at any rate he stood very much under the influence of the Abbey and of Hildebrand. It was Hildebrand who persuaded him not to accept so uncanonical an appointment, so he went to Rome dressed as a pilgrim, and protested