CRESCENTE. – A Roman Cynic philosopher of the 2nd century. A babbler, immoral and greedy for money, more fond of popular applause than of truth, he was a bitter enemy of the Christians, whom he attacked even without fully knowing their doctrine, accusing them of atheism and impiety. In a public debate with St Justin he was easily convicted of ignorance and vanity, but Crescente took his revenge for this defeat by stirring up the Crescentii family to side with the imperial party. The house thus raised its power; in 965 it succeeded in seating one of its members, Giovanni, as pope—John XIII—and with the support of Giovanni III, Duke of Naples, widower of Teodora III, it suppressed the revolt of the new Count of Campagna, Roffredo of Veroli, and of the Prefect of the city, Pietro. Meanwhile it was able to expand its influence through the favour of its pope, who granted to his sister Stefania the city and county of Palestrina and to her son Benedetto the county of Sabina. When John XIII died in 972 and not long afterwards Otto I, CRESCENZIO de’ Theodora, placing himself at the head of the popular party, had Benedict VI, who had meanwhile been elected pope, strangled and in 974 replaced him with a creature of his own, Boniface VII. But when the latter fled (980) before the wrath of Otto II and was succeeded by Benedict VII, Crescenzio de’ Theodora was not swept away in the ruin he had caused; on the contrary, he came to an agreement with Benedict VII and perhaps even with Otto II, until he ended his days in 984 as a monk in S. Alessio on the Aventine.
The Crescentii reached the height of their power in Rome with Giovanni, called Nomentano perhaps from the place of his family’s chief holdings, son of Crescenzio de’ Theodora. Taking advantage of the regency of Theophano, mother of Otto III, Nomentano favoured the return of Boniface VII from Constantinople, becoming an accomplice in the deposition and murder of John XIV (984), and proclaimed himself patrician. After the death of Boniface VII, Nomentano obtained from Theophano and John XV the county of Terracina for his brother Crescenzio. When the empress died, however, Nomentano reverted to anti-German policy. At Otto III’s first arrival in Rome in 996 he was stripped of his dignity and reduced to the status of a private citizen. He resumed the struggle after Otto’s departure and had John Philagathos elected pope as John XVI (q.v.); but when Otto III returned to Rome he deposed the antipope ignominiously, besieged Nomentano in Castel S. Angelo, and on capturing him had him beheaded on the castle’s battlements (29 Apr. 998).
The fortunes of the Crescentii revived after the death of Otto III, when in 1006 Giovanni C., son of Nomentano, became patrician. More than his predecessors, he strove to aggrandize his house, especially in Sabina, at the expense of Farfa. Unlike his father, however, he knew how to maintain good relations, during the ten years of his patricianship, with the popes John XVIII and Sergius IV and with the Empire, then ruled by Henry II. Yet even if, under outward signs of respect, an autonomist tendency persisted—as shown by the obstacles placed in the way of the Roman coronation of the Emperor and by the dealings with King Arduin—Giovanni C. was able to die quietly between May and June 1012. With his death the primacy of the Crescentii in Rome came to an end; the surviving branches of the Stefaniani and Ottaviani continued for a time to contend against the growing power of Farfa and the Tusculani. But in 1022 the Stefaniani had to yield to an alliance of more powerful rivals, while the Ottaviani continued their struggle against the Tusculani and Stefaniani, which in 1044 was to bring them a pope of their own in Sylvester III. In the second half of the 11th century the house was in open decline: at the beginning of the 12th century, in the Roman strife stirred up with the Corsi in support of the antipope Maginulf against Paschal II, the Crescentii made their last modest appearance in the ever more turbulent civic scene, in which primacy had by then passed to the families of the Frangipane and the Pierleoni.