Rather, in modern times, the various autonomous houses have formed themselves loosely into congregations ( for example, Cassinese, English, Solesmes, Subiaco, Camaldolese, Sylvestrines ) that in turn are represented in the Benedictine Confederation that came into existence through Pope Leo XIII's Apostolic Brief " Summum semper " on July 12, 1883.

Bishop Christian continued his mission in Sambia ( Samland ), where from 1233 to 1239 he was held captive by pagan Prussians, and freed in trade for five other hostages who then in turn were released for a ransom of 800 Marks, granted to him by Pope Gregory IX.

There was an opinion in the Church that viewed that perhaps the Council understood the Church of Alexandria correctly, but wanted to curtail the existing power of the Alexandrine Hierarch, especially after the events that happened several years before at Constantinople from Pope Theophilus of Alexandria towards Patriarch John Chrysostom and the unfortunate turnouts of the Second Council of Ephesus in AD 449, where Eutichus misled Pope Dioscorus and the Council in confessing the Orthodox Faith in writing and then renouncing it after the Council, which in turn, had upset Rome, especially that the Tome which was sent was not read during the Council sessions.

Duchesne and others have viewed the beginning of the Liber Pontificalis up until the biographies of Pope Felix III ( 483 – 492 ) as the work of a single author, who was a contemporary of Pope Anastasius II ( 496-498 ), relying on Catalogus Liberianus, which in turn draws from the papal catalogue of Hippolytus of Rome, and the Leonine Catalogue, which is no longer extant.

Guillermi's version is mostly copied from other works with small additions or excisions from the papal biographies of Pandulf, nephew of Hugo of Alatri, which in turn was copied almost verbatim from the original Liber Pontificalis ( with the notable exception of the biography of Pope Leo IX ), then from other sources until Pope Honorius II ( 1124 – 1130 ), and with contemporary information from Pope Paschal II ( 1099 – 1118 to Pope Urban II ( 1088 – 1099 ).

The Pope welcomed a Christian Lithuania as a bulwark against Mongol threats ; in turn, Mindaugas sought papal intervention in the ongoing Lithuanian conflicts with the Christian orders.

These humiliations, the weakening of the empire in the face of Muslim expansion, and the inability of the emperor to protect the papal estates against the Lombards, made Pope Stephen II turn from Emperor Constantine V. He appealed to the Franks to protect his lands.

In turn, this caused the true eighth Pope Boniface to take the number IX.

He succeeded Pope Adrian III, and was in turn succeeded by Pope Formosus.

The rebellion forces Charles to abandon the Ninth Crusade while still en route to the target city of Constantinople, and allows King Peter III of Aragon to take over rule of the island from Charles ( which in turn leads to Peter's excommunication by Pope Martin IV ).

* 1281 – Pope Martin IV authorizes the Ninth Crusade against the newly re-established Byzantine Empire in Constantinople ; French and Venetian expeditions set out toward Constantinople but are forced to turn back in the following year.

The rebellion forces Charles to abandon the Ninth Crusade while still en route to the target city of Constantinople, and allows King Peter III of Aragon to take over rule of the island from Charles ( which in turn leads to Peter's excommunication by Pope Martin IV ).

He was either murdered by Christopher, who was in turn executed by Pope Sergius III ( 904 – 911 ) in 904, or, more likely, was ordered to be strangled during the beginning of Sergius ’ pontificate, either on the orders of Sergius himself, or by the direction of the sacri palatii vestararius, Theophylact, Count of Tusculum.

* May 15 – King John of England submits to Pope Innocent III, who in turn lifts the interdict of 1208.

* Pope Martin IV authorizes a Crusade against the newly re-established Byzantine Empire in Constantinople ; French and Venetian expeditions set out toward Constantinople but are forced to turn back in the following year.

Pope Sixtus V ( 1585 – 1590 ) planned to turn the building into a wool factory to provide employment for Rome's prostitutes, though this proposal fell through with his premature death.

The astrolabe was almost certainly first brought north of the Pyrenees by Gerbert of Aurillac ( future Pope Sylvester II ), where it was integrated into the quadrivium at the school in Reims, France, sometime before the turn of the 11th century.

Charles had sent a message through Pope John XXII to Edward, suggesting that he was willing to reverse the forfeiture of the lands if Edward ceded the Agenais and paid homage for the rest of the lands: the Pope in turn had proposed Isabella as an ambassador.

After being excommunicated for his audacities by Pope Honorius III, Afonso II promised to make amends to the church, but he died in 1223 before making any serious attempts to do so.

Nevertheless, upon Andrew's request, the Archbishop withdrew the ecclesiastic punishments soon and the Pope promised that the dignitaries of the King of Hungary would never be excommunicated without his special authorization.

Before his death, he was absolved from the excommunication ; moreover, the Pope also promised that the King of Hungary and his relatives would not be excommunicated without the special permission of the Pope.

When at last successful, he was excommunicated by Pope Callixtus II for having expelled the monks of Saint-Gilles, who had aided his enemies.

The Pope had recognised Edward I of England's claim to overlordship of Scotland in 1305 and Bruce was excommunicated by the Pope for murdering John Comyn before the altar in Greyfriars Church in Dumfries in 1306.

In the summer of 1606, laws against recusancy were strengthened ; the Popish Recusants Act returned England to the Elizabethan system of fines and restrictions, introduced a sacramental test, and an Oath of Allegiance, requiring Catholics to abjure as a " heresy " the doctrine that " princes excommunicated by the Pope could be deposed or assassinated ".

In the Investiture Controversy which began between Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII over appointments to ecclesiastical offices, the emperor was compelled to submit to the Pope at Canossa in 1077, after having been excommunicated.

The struggle with the Pope sapped the Empire's strength, as Frederick II was excommunicated three times.

Fearing Frederick's concentration of power, the Pope finally excommunicated the Emperor.

In 1239, Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Fredrick again, and in 1245 he was condemned as a heretic by a church council.

Pope Gregory III " convoked a synod in 730 and formally condemned iconoclasm as heretical and excommunicated its promoters.

Pope Innocent III, who excommunicated John in 1209

But after continually delaying his departure for the Holy Land, including suffering an outbreak of disease in his fleet, he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX in 1227.

The Pope had excommunicated the King, causing a weakening of Henry's German support.

The only king of the Welf dynasty, he incurred the wrath of Pope Innocent III and was excommunicated in 1215.

In 787, Second Council of Nicaea, approved by Pope Adrian, had confirmed the practice and excommunicated the iconoclasts.

He was excommunicated for this by Pope Gregory XII.

Coscia fled from the city in the circumstance, being excommunicated under the new Pope Clement XII.

Pope Pius I opposed the Valentinians and Gnostics under Marcion, whom he excommunicated.

He also brought an offer of reconciliation in 1163 to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, whom Pope Alexander III had excommunicated in 1160.

Instigated by the king of Spain and the duke of Mayenne, he excommunicated Henry IV of France on 1 March 1591, reiterating the 1585 declaration of Pope Sixtus V that as a heretic ( Protestent ) Henry of Navarre was ineligible to succeed to the throne of Catholic France and deprived of his dominions.

This use of the title is said to have originated in the right conceded to the king of France, by the concordat between Pope Leo X and Francis I ( 1516 ), to appoint abbés commendataires to most of the abbeys in France.

In 853, at the age of four, Alfred is said to have been sent to Rome where, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he was confirmed by Pope Leo IV who " anointed him as king ".

In 1179 the bull Manifestis Probatum accepted the new king as vassal to the Pope exclusively.

Finally, Andrew made an agreement with his son with the mediation of Pope Honorius III and the junior king took over again the government of Slavonia, Dalmatia and Croatia.

Tomislav was the first ruler of Croatia who was styled a king in a letter from the Pope John X, dating kingdom of Croatia to year 925.

At the request of the king, he wrote a letter to Pope Boniface on the debated subject of " The Three Chapters ".

Evidence for an explicit Frankish overlordship of Kent comes from a letter written by Pope Gregory the Great to Theuderic, king of Orléans, and Theudebert, king of Metz.

Manfred is killed in the battle and Pope Clement IV invests Charles as king of Sicily and Naples.

In 1440 he was elected German king as Frederick IV and in 1452 crowned Holy Roman Emperor as Frederick III by Pope Nicholas V. In 1452, at the age of 37, he married the 18-year-old Infanta Eleanor, daughter of King Edward of Portugal, whose dowry helped him to alleviate his debts and cement his power.

In 936, Otto I the Great was crowned as king at Aachen ; his coronation as emperor by the Pope at Rome in 962 inaugurated what became later known as the Holy Roman Empire, which became to be identified with Germany.

Pope Innocent III, who feared the threat posed by a union of the Empire and Sicily, now supported Sicily's king Frederick II, who marched to Germany and defeated Otto.

Because he had sealed under duress, however, John received approval from the Pope to break his word as soon as hostilities had ceased, provoking the First Barons ' War and an invited French invasion by Prince Louis of France ( whom the majority of the English barons had invited to replace John on the throne and had him proclaimed king in London in May 1216 ).

The newly established Church of England amounted to little more than the existing Catholic Church, but with the king rather than the Pope as its head.

On many occasions, a Pope refused to crown a king with whom he was engaged in a dispute, but a lack of a papal coronation deprived a king of only the title Emperor and not of the power to govern ( cf Declaration of Rhens ).

In 1462, Pope Pius II declared the " Compacta " null and void, prohibited communion in both kinds, and acknowledged King George of Podebrady as king on condition that he would promise an unconditional harmony with the Roman Church.

An argument with Pope Innocent III led to John's excommunication in 1209, a dispute finally settled by the king in 1213.

Liutprand's successor Aistulf conquered Ravenna for the Lombards for the first time, but was subsequently defeated by the king of the Franks Pippin III, called by the Pope, and had to leave it.

He decided to reopen struggles against the Pope, who was supporting the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento against him, and entered Rome in 772, the first Lombard king to do so.

But when Pope Hadrian I called for help from the powerful king Charlemagne, Desiderius was defeated at Susa and besieged in Pavia, while his son Adelchis had also to open the gates of Verona to Frankish troops.

Joinville was a close friend, confidant, and counsellor to the king, and also participated as a witness in the papal inquest into Louis ' life that ended with his canonisation in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII.

Both Matilda's mother and husband died in 1076, leaving her in sole control of her great Italian patrimony as well as lands in Lorraine, while at the same time matters in the conflict between Pope Gregory VII and the German king Henry IV were at a crisis point.

In 1250 or 1251, Mindaugas agreed to receive baptism and relinquish control over some lands in western Lithuania, in return for an acknowledgment by Pope Innocent IV as king.