caliginosa!]

Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a
wealthy bishopric had often been productive of tumult and
bloodshed. The people was less numerous, but the times were more
savage, the prize more important, and the chair of St. Peter was
fiercely disputed by the leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the
rank of sovereign. The reign of Adrian the First ^89 surpasses
the measure of past or succeeding ages; ^90 the walls of Rome,
the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards, and the
friendship of Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he
secretly edified the throne of his successors, and displayed in a
narrow space the virtues of a great prince. His memory was
revered; but in the next election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo
the Third, was preferred to the nephew and the favorite of
Adrian, whom he had promoted to the first dignities of the
church. Their acquiescence or repentance disguised, above four
years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a
procession, when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the
unarmed multitude, and assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred
person of the pope. But their enterprise on his life or liberty
was disappointed, perhaps by their own confusion and remorse.
Leo was left for dead on the ground: on his revival from the
swoon, the effect of his loss of blood, he recovered his speech
and sight; and this natural event was improved to the miraculous
restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had been
deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins. ^91 From
his prison he escaped to the Vatican: the duke of Spoleto
hastened to his rescue, Charlemagne sympathized in his injury,
and in his camp of Paderborn in Westphalia accepted, or