Crescenzi, Family

CRESCENZI, FAMILY. - A distinguished Roman house that was preeminent in the affairs of the city between the middle of the 10th century and the beginning of the 11th, subsequently taking part, through its branches of the Stefaniani and the Ottoniani, also in those of Sabina and the Marittima.

In a placitum of 902 held near St. Peter's, a Theophylact and a Crescentius appear together among the lay judges, the progenitors of the two families that subsequently succeeded one another in predominance over Rome and in the papacy itself. And Crescentius was among the magnates who formed the retinue of the senator omnium Romanorum, Theophylact. He reappears, although the gap in years cannot give absolute certainty of this, in another placitum, held by the princeps Alberic, forty years later. Then, for many years, there is no trace of the family in the documents. But from that Crescentius two branches must have descended: one represented by John, husband of Theophylact's daughter, Theodora II, and father in turn of another John, of Theodora III, of Crescentius de Theodora, of Marozia II, and of Stefania; the other by Crescentius a caballo marmoreo, father of Theodoranda, who was the wife of the count of the Campagna, Benedict, a follower of Alberic II.

According to Liutprand, Crescentius a caballo marmoreo, that is, of the Quirinal, where he must have had his houses near the statuary group, appears in an assembly convoked in 963 by Otto I to judge the fugitive Theophylactan pontiff, John XII. A rivalry that had arisen with the greater family had led the C. to side with the imperial party. The house raised its power; it succeeded, in 965, in installing one of its own as pope, JOHN, who was John XIII; with the support of the duke of Naples John III, widower of Theodora III, he repressed the revolt of the new count of the Campagna, Roffredo of Veroli, and of the prefect of the city, Peter, while he was able to aggrandize himself through the favor of his pontiff, who granted to his sister Stefania the city and county of Palestrina and to her son, Benedict, the comitatus of Sabina. When John XIII died in 972 and Otto I shortly thereafter, CRESCENTIUS de Theodora, having placed himself at the head of the popular party, had Benedict VI, elected pope in the meantime, strangled, replacing him in 974 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, Crescentius de Theodora was not swept away in the ruin he had caused; on the contrary, he came to a reconciliation with Benedict VII and perhaps also with Otto II, until he ended his days in 984 as a monk, in S. Alessio on the Aventine.

The C. reached their greatest power in Rome with JOHN, called Nomentano perhaps from the place of his chief possessions, son of Crescentius de Theodora. Taking advantage of the regency of Theophano, mother of Otto III, the Nomentano favored the return of Boniface VII from Constantinople, making himself an accomplice in the deposition and killing of John XIV (984), and proclaimed himself patrician. After the death of Boniface VII, the Nomentano obtained from Theophano and from John XV the comitatus of Terracina for his brother Crescentius. When the empress died, however, the Nomentano returned to an anti-German policy. At Otto III's first coming in 996 he was stripped of his dignity and reduced to the condition of a private citizen. He resumed the struggle, however, after Otto's departure and had John Philagathus created pontiff, who was John XVI (v.); but Otto III, having returned to Rome, had the antipope ignominiously deposed, besieged the Nomentano in Castel S. Angelo, and, having taken him, had him beheaded on the ramparts of the castle (29 Apr. 998).

The fortune of the C. revived after the death of Otto III, when in 1006 JOHN C., son of the Nomentano, became patrician. Even more than his predecessors, he turned to aggrandizing his own, especially in Sabina, at the expense of Farfa. But, unlike his father, he knew how to preserve himself in good harmony, during the ten years his patriciate lasted, with the pontiffs John XVIII and Sergius IV and with the Empire, then governed by Henry II. Nevertheless, if beneath the undoubted signs of deference the autonomist tendency was maintained, as the obstacles placed in the way of the Emperor's Roman coronation and the understandings reached with King Arduin show, John C. was able to die in silence, between May and June of 1012. With him the primacy of the C. in Rome came to an end; the surviving branches of the Stefaniani and the Ottaviani continued for a while longer to contend against the growing power of Farfa and of the Tusculani. But in 1022 the Stefaniani had to submit to an alliance with the more powerful rivals, while the Ottaviani continued, against the Tusculani and the Stefaniani, the struggle that was to bring them in 1044 to have, in Sylvester III, a pope of their own. In the second half of the 11th century the house was in open decline: at the beginning of the 12th century, in the Roman struggles stirred up with the Corsi in support of the antipope Maginulf against Paschal II, the C. made their last modest reappearance in the ever more turbulent life of the city, in which by now the primacy had passed to the families of the Frangipane and the Pierleoni.

Pier Fausto Palumbo