the Conclave was in progress, and abducted two of the cardinals, Matteo Rosso Orsini and Giordano Orsini (the late pope's brother). Without their opposition, Simon de Brion was unanimously elected to the papacy on 22 February 1281, taking the name Martin IV, For the third time in fifteen years Viterbo had hosted a papal conclave. And for the third time there were disorders which had threatened the validity of the election and the lives of the participants. Viterbo was placed under the ban of excommunication and of the interdict for the imprisonment of the cardinals. It was not possible, therefore, for the Coronation to take place in Viterbo. But Rome was not at all inclined to accept a hated Frenchman as Pope. Martin IV sent two cardinals, Latino Orsini and Goffredo da Alatri, to Rome with a letter, proposing that he be crowned in Rome on Quadragesima Sunday. The Romans positively refused to allow the Coronation to take place in Rome. But they did hold a public meeting, and elected Giovanni Caetani Orsini in his purely personal capacity as their Senator, and authorized him to appoint anyone he chose as his substitute. So Martin IV was crowned instead at Orvieto on 23 March 1281. He never visited Rome during his Pontificate. Instead he immediately sent his Vicar, Peter of Lavagna, to Rome. But on 30 April 1281, Pope Martin handed the senatorial power over to King Charles for the rest of his reign. Papacy Dependent on Charles of Anjou in nearly everything, the new Pope quickly appointed him to the position of Senator of Rome. At the insistence of Charles, Martin IV excommunicated the Eastern Roman Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, who stood in the way of Charles's plans to restore the Latin Empire of the East that had been established in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. He thus broke the tenuous union which had been reached between the Greek and the Latin Churches at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274 and further compromise was rendered impossible. In 1282, Charles lost control of the island of Sicily in the violent massacre known as the Sicilian Vespers. The Sicilians had elected Peter III of Aragon as their king and sought papal confirmation, in vain, though they were willing to reconfirm Sicily as a vassal state of the papacy. Martin IV used all the spiritual and material resources at his command