Word: thrones
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...early years of Christianity, under the unifying, cosmopolitan empire, many of the Popes were Greeks, Syrians and North Africans. The first French Pope, Sylvester II (999-1003), had difficulty coexisting with the powerful Roman families. One of the most brilliant and scholarly men ever to occupy the papal throne, Sylvester was so learned that he was suspected of being a sorcerer; in fact, he is thought to have been the model for Dr. Faustus...
...only Englishman to sit on the Throne of St. Peter was born Nicholas Breakspear in humble circumstances. As Adrian IV (1154-59), he adroitly played off the grasping Byzantines, the ambitious Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the obstreperous Romans. The sole Portuguese Pope had a brief pontificate: John XXI (1276-77) was killed when the ceiling of the papal palace in Viterbo collapsed...
...four Popes in 20 months. Boniface VI, who died after 15 days, was a rascal who had been dismissed from several ecclesiastical offices. His successor, Stephen VI (or VII), had the decomposing body of his predecessor-but-one, Formosus I, disinterred, clothed in papal robes, and set on the throne in St. Peter's; whereupon Stephen called a synod to "depose" him, had the dead man's blessing forefinger cut off, and the corpse flung into the Tiber...
...Shah, facing the gravest threat to his throne in a quarter of a century, moved swiftly to quell the opposition that has been building against his regime over the past nine months. His policy was twofold: 1) to punish corrupt officials and subversives and 2) to demonstrate convincingly that Tehran's springtime of political liberalization, begun only a month ago, would continue...
...presidential appointment confirms that Caldwell is Henry Ford's choice to be the ranking executive outside the family during the sensitive years of his transfer of power. The chairmanship of Ford Motor Co. is the last hereditary throne in American big business, and Henry II wants to make sure another Ford takes it over. Mindful of his own battle in the mid-1940s to wrest control of the company from Director Harry Bennett, who had gained sway over his aged grandfather Henry I, Henry II wants no willful executives who might contest a smooth succession...