Excerpt from History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, Vol. 4: Part IIPaschalis owed his rapid success to Norman swords and to the irresistible power of gold, but his strength was dissipated in endless petty wars against petty tyrants. The popes of this age were forced, like all other bishops, to do battle for their temporal dominion against a thousand greedy enemies, and if Paschalis the gentle-natured monk reflected on the part played by the sacred overseer of the Church in the constant struggle for temporal property, he must have sighed for the apostolic times when the bishops possessed nothing on earth beyond the things of heaven.We shall enumerate neither the various fortresses nor the barons on whom the Pope waged war. In Peter Colonna, however, the most celebrated noble The family of mediazval Rome makes its first appearance on the stage Of history in the year 1 The name of the family owes its origin not to Trajan's famous column, which figures in the Colonna coat of arms, but to a castle in the Latin mountains which still towers above the Via Labicana.2 This little fortress.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.