After spending the summer in Genoa, Milan and Brescia, they finally reached Perugia in November 1251, where the Papal Court resided continuously until April 1253.

In May they went on pilgrimage to Assisi, then visited Anagni, where the Court stayed from June until the second week in October, when they went off in pursuit of Manfred, Hohenstaufen regent of the Kingdom of Sicily.

The problem was that Rome was in the hands of Senator Brancaleone degli Andalo, Count of Casalecchio, since 1252, and the Ghibbelines and Alexander was repeatedly driven out by unruly mobs.

Unable to agree on one of themselves, the Cardinals chose Jacques Pantaléon, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, since 1255, was Papal Legate with the Crusade in the Holy Land.

He was one of the six cardinals who were chosen by the rest of the Sacred College on September 1, 1271, to select a compromise candidate for election as pope.

He was therefore instrumental in bringing to the papal throne the Archdeacon of Liège, Teobaldo Visconti, who was not a cardinal, and who was not even in Italy, but in the Holy Land on crusade.

King Charles I of Sicily acted as the Governor of the Conclave, in which position he is said to have been rigorous, but understandably partisan in favor of the French faction.

Cardinal Ottobono Fieschi of Genoa was elected on July 11 and chose the name Pope Adrian V.[22] He lived only thirty-nine days longer, dying at Viterbo, where he had gone to meet King Rudolf and avoid the summer heat of Rome.

He chose to be called John XXI, and on September 20 he was crowned at the Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Viterbo by Cardinal Giovanni Caetano Orsini.

[28] John XXI immediately struck back, on 30 September 1276, making it perfectly clear that the suspension had taken place and that it was valid.

[29] Ptolemy of Lucca states that the issue of this bull of revocation by John XXI was made at the suggestion of Cardinal Giovanni Caetano Orsini.

[31] It appeared that his reign was going to be a successful one, when one day in mid-May 1277, while the Pope was in a new room which he had just had built in the Episcopal Palace in Viterbo, suddenly the roof caved in.

He spent a great deal of time and energy attempting to gain control over Lombardy and Tuscany, which brought him into direct conflict with the Papacy.

In order to drive off the Hohenstaufen, the Papacy contrived a deal with the brother of Louis IX of France, Charles of Anjou, Count of Provence, who was invited to Italy to assume the crown of Sicily and be a counterweight against the Empire.

Pope Nicholas was willing to negotiate, but he refused to crown Rudolf as Emperor until Rudolph had acknowledged all the claims of the Church, including many that were quite dubious.

[35] According to the chronographer Bartholomew of Lucca (Ptolemy of Lucca), he discussed with Rudolph, in general terms at least, the splitting the Holy Roman Empire into four separate kingdoms – Lombardy, Burgundy, Tuscia and Germany – where Rudolph's kingdom would be made hereditary and he himself would be recognized as Holy Roman Emperor.

[37] In July 1278, Nicholas III issued an epoch-making constitution for the government of Rome, Fundamenta militantis [38] which forbade foreigners from taking civil office.

It depends for its justification not only on the biblical phrase, "Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam" (Matthew 16:18), but also on the forged Donations of Constantine.

Most importantly, he issued the papal bull Exiit qui seminat [39][40][41] on 14 August 1279, to settle the strife within the order between the parties of strict and relaxed observance.

[2] He repaired the Lateran Palace and the Vatican at enormous cost,[42] and erected a beautiful country house at Soriano nel Cimino near Viterbo,[43][2] where he died of a cardiovascular event (sources differ on whether it was a heart attack or a stroke).

This nepotism was lampooned both by Dante and in contemporary cartoons, depicting him in his fine robes with three "little bears" (orsetti, a pun on the family name) hanging on below.

Two died before the next Conclave, which was to take place on the death of Nicholas III in 1280, and the rest had to be terrorized into voting for a candidate of Charles I of Sicily.

Bartholomeus (Ptolemy) of Lucca says, subito factus apoplecticus, sine loquela moritur ('suddenly stricken with apoplexy, he died without speaking').

[48] Dante, in The Inferno (of the Divine Comedy), talks briefly to Nicholas III, who was condemned to spend eternity in the Third Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Hell, reserved for those who committed simony, the ecclesiastical crime of paying for offices or positions in the hierarchy of a church.

[49] In Dante's story, the Simoniacs are placed head-first in holes, flames burning on the soles of their feet (Canto XIX).

When the confusion is cleared up, Nicholas informs Dante that he foresees the damnation (for simony) not only of Boniface VIII, but also Clement V, an even more corrupt pope.