AGAPITO II, POPE. – A Roman, he succeeded Marino II on 10 May 946 and died in December 955. We have no information about his family or his life before the pontificate. He was worthy of the highest office, although he lived through the full severity of the Iron Age of the papacy. In Rome, his authority as prince was greatly limited Alberico II (v.). From 932 onward, the latter had been the arbiter of the city, in the capacity of “humble prince and senator of all the Romans.” He reserved to himself the temporal administration and also employed it in the interests of religion, while ordinarily leaving the exercise of spiritual power free to the Pontiff, in whose name official acts continued to be issued. When A. ascended to the pontificate, the reform of the ancient Roman monasteries and the foundation of new ones, begun fifteen years earlier on the advice of s. Oddone, abbot of Cluny (d. 942), was already under way. A. asked the abbot of Gorza for several monks to restore monastic discipline at S. Paolo fuori le mura. His influence, however, was more strongly felt outside Rome. At the Roman Council of 949, he confirmed the decisions of the Synods of Ingelheim (8 June 948) and Trier (948), which, under the presidency of the papal legate Marino, bishop of Bomarzo, had declared in favor of Artaud, who had been replaced in the archiepiscopal see of Reims by Ugo di Vermandois, imposed there by his father by force, although he was only five years old. In 950, following the sudden death of Lotario di Provenza, Berengario II crowned himself king of Italy (15 December 950), associating his son Adalberto with him; he wished the latter to marry Adelaide, Lotario’s widow; but she refused. Instead, she summoned to Italy Ottone I, king of the Germans, who
