House of Crescentii

The Crescentii (in modern Italian Crescenzi) were a baronial family, attested in Rome from the beginning of the 10th century and which in fact ruled the city and the election of the popes until the beginning of the 11th century.

==History== thumb|left|Castel Sant'Angelo was known in the 10th and 11th centuries as the Roman stronghold of the Crescentii (domum Crescentii). Several individuals named Crescentius who appear in the very scanty documentation of the period have been grouped together by historians as the "Crescentii." Some do seem to bear family relationships, falling into two main branches, the Ottaviani and the Stefaniani, and their policies were consistent enough, especially as regards confronting the rival gang of aristocratic thugs, the Tusculani, who were descended from the influential curial official Theophylact, Count of Tusculum, ruler of Rome at the beginning of the 10th century. Their territorial strongholds were situated mainly in the Sabine Hills. thumb|right|The house of Crescentius the Elder The Crescentii had another formidable enemy, whose power did not always extend to Rome, in the German kings and emperors of the Ottonian Saxon dynasty, notably Otto the Great and Henry II. Emperor Otto's intervention in Italian affairs in 961 was not in Crescentii interests. In February 962, the pope and the emperor ratified the Diploma Ottonianum, in which the emperor became the guarantor of the independence of the papal states. It was the Crescentii who most threatened papal independence.