, so Shakespeare relates, was often at the in , and there was the wonderful meetings of poets—Beaumont, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare himself—… - Sidney Dark

In the early years of the eleventh century the . , the father of , deposed three popes, no man saying him nay. The removal of the right of election from the Roman nobility to the , however, brought to an end an system under which it was the Emperor who really decided who should sit on the papal throne, and was determined that lesser ecclesiastical appointments should also be taken out his hand. In the complicated feudal system, bishops and abbots often held their lands as the vassals of a suzerain lord, compounding for the military service demanded from lay vassals. It was the habit, too, of the pious to endow monasteries and churches on the condition that they held the patronage. And, in one way and another, the noble, the prince, and the emperor claimed the right of ecclesiastical investiture which in effect meant the right of nomination to the offices of the Church. This lay patronage naturally led to simony, and it was the fashion for rich abbeys and attractive bishoprics to be sold to the highest bidder, to the scandal of the faithful and the hindrance of the work of the Church.

was with at at the time of the in 1813. She went back to at the request of the , who assured her that the position of herself and her children was perfectly safe. The allied kings and statesmen waited on her. She was treated with the utmost deference, but it was she who grieved for in far more than , and before the began, Josephine, shriven and with her children kneeling by her side, died with the name of Bonaparte on her lips. Twenty thousand persons passed the catafalque where the Empress lay in state. Royal honours were hers at her funeral.

... in condemning it should be remembered that the statesmanship of intrigue of which she was a mistress has survived from her time to ours, and was not destroyed even by the . She was the pupil of Machiavelli, and she put the theories of the Italian political philosopher into more successful practice than any other sovereign or statesman in history.