taken from Rome to Cluny during Majolus' abbacy. Captivity In 972 Majolus visited the Imperial Court in Pavia and returned through the alps by way of the Saint Bernard Pass in Provence. A number of monks and others accompanying were captured by the Saracens from the stronghold of Fraxinet. Much venerated by his monks, a ransom was quickly raised. The monks responded, however, once their abbot was released, by stirring up a fury in Provence against the raiders. The peasantry and the nobles together implored their overlord William Count of Provence, to act. William, equally disturbed by the treatment of the abbot, raised a feudal host and took to the offensive. His army consisted not only of men from Provence, but also the lower Dauphiné and Nice. He defeated the Saracen raiders at the Battle of Tourtour, thus securing the mountain passes. Political life The Holy Roman Emperor Otto I had a good relationship with Majolus, as did his wife Adelheid of Burgundy. In 971, Majolus founded the Monastery of San Salvatore in Lombardy with Adelaide's support. Majolus visited the imperial court in Pavia at the Emperor's request, and many people sought out Majolus as an intermediary to help them with their petitions. He supposedly predicted the Emperor's death, when he had a dream seeing a lion in a cage that burst through its chains. Majolus interpreted that as a sign that the Emperor would die that year. Not long after this dream, the Emperor did die. In 974 Adelheid and her son Otto II, summoned Majolus to Italy to make him Pope, but Majolus refused. Otto II married Theophanu, a relative of the Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimiskes. She was frequently at odds with her mother-in-law, Adelaide, which caused an estrangement between mother and son. In Pavia, around 980, Otto II and his mother, the dowager empress, were reconciled after years of being apart, in part through the efforts of Majolus. This episode and other convinced contemporaries of the influence that Majolus and Cluny had over the Emperor. Majolus advised the Emperor against his Italian campaign in 983, telling him that he would die if he went on it, and the Emperor died in that year. Monastic Reform Up until that time, Benedictine houses were autonomous. The Cluniac reform movement had already begun with Berno of Cluny at the beginning of the 10th century, but the monasteries reformed by