Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor

“ In his anxiety to obtain possession of southern Italy, Otto I. had secured as a wife for his son and successor Theophano, daughter of the East Roman emperor, Romanus II., the ruler of much of southern Italy. Otto II., Otto and France. having all his father’s ambition with much of his strength and haughtiness, longed to get away from Germany and to claim these remoter districts. But he was detained for some time owing to the sudden invasion of Lower Lorraine by Lothair, king of France, in 978. ”

“ Beyond his Teutonic kingdom the kings of the barbarous north and east paid Otto an increasing obedience. The marauding heathens of an earlier generation were now becoming settled cultivators of the soil, Christian and civilised. Their dukes looked up to Otto as an exemplar of the policy which they themselves aspired to realise. The dukes of Poland and Bohemia performed homage to Otto as Emperor. Ambassadors from distant lands, France, Denmark, Hungary, Russia, and Bulgaria, flocked around his throne. He intervened with powerful effect in the West Frankish kingdom. ”

“ The emperor also gave renewed honour to the title of patrician, surrounded himself with officials bearing Greek and Roman designations, and raised the prestige of the prefect, who, having now almost the functions of an imperial vicar, bore the eagle and the sword as his insignia. Nevertheless Otto III. was thoroughly German, and during his reign all Germanic institutions made progress in Rome. This was particularly the case with feudalism, and Sylvester II. was the first pope to treat it with favour. Many families of real feudal barons now arose. ”

“ A race was formed strong enough to keep the empire itself in check, strong enough, except for its own internecine contests, to have formed a nation equal to its happier neighbours.
The recent scandals of the papacy induced Otto to deprive the Romans of their right to elect popes. But when he died in 973, his son Otto II. (married to Theophano of the imperial Byzantine house) and his grandson, Otto III., who descended into Italy in 996, found that the affairs of Rome and of the southern provinces were more than even their imperial powers could cope with. ”

“ To-day for nearly a thousand years it has progressed uninterrupted, except by disturbances from within; nor does it appear possible, with our present knowledge of science and of the remoter corners of the globe, that our civilization will ever again be even menaced by the other races.
Chronologists frequently adopt as a convenient starting-point for this modern development the year 962, in which Otto the Great, conqueror of the Huns, felt himself strong enough to march a German army to Rome and assume there the title of emperor, which had been long in abeyance. ”

“ It was left for the despised Greeks to repel the Arabs from the mainland; Sicily remained a Mohammedan possession till the coming of the Normans (1062) .
It is easier to sympathise with the policy of Otto II than with the man himself. The case is reversed when we turn to the career of his son. Otto III, an infant at his father's death, escaped from female tutelage in 996, and made his first Italian expedition as an autocrat of sixteen. He went to free the Papacy from the bondage of a Roman faction, the party of the infamous John XII, again rearing its head under a new leader. ”

“ His German subjects re-echoed these sentiments, and his uncle, Bishop Otto of Freising, taught that to the Emperor belonged the protection of the whole world. When bitter experience showed him that all his strength and all his faith were of little avail in setting up again a polity which the age had outlived, he had perforce to distinguish between his position as German King and Roman Emperor, and apply one method in breaking down the turbulent feudalism of his northern kingdom and another in checking the growing spirit of municipal independence in the lands beyond the Alps. ”

“ He soon claimed the inheritance of Matilda as well as the Sicilian monarchy. In August, 1210, he occupied Matilda's Tuscan lands, and in November invaded Apulia, and prepared to despatch a Pisan fleet against Sicily. Innocent was moved to a terrible wrath. On hearing of the capture of Capua, and the revolt of Salerno and Naples, he excommunicated the Emperor and freed his subjects from their oaths of fealty to him. But, despite the threats of the Church, Otto conquered most of Apulia and was equally successful in reviving the Imperial authority in Northern Italy. ”

“ Otto the Great having procured her betrothal to his son Otto II., she was married to him and crowned empress at Rome by Pope John XIII. on the 14th of April 972. In return for costly gifts brought by her to her husband, she was granted extensive estates in all parts of the empire. She appears to have been a woman of great beauty and considerable intelligence, and after the death of Otto the Great in 973 gradually superseded his widow Adelaide as the chief adviser of the new emperor, whom she accompanied on several military expeditions. ”

“ Pope Leo VIII was dead; the new pope, John XIII, the emperor’s creature, who had been expelled from Rome by an adverse party, had been reinstated by Pandolf, the valiant prince of Benevento, the last Lombard who preserved his ancestral bravery and fidelity amid the vices of Italy. Otto’s first act, on his arrival in Rome, was the infliction of a severe chastisement on the refractory Romans; thirteen of the most distinguished citizens were hanged. ”

“ Modern Germans have reproached him for neglecting the true development of his German realm in the pursuit of the shadow of an unattainable Empire. The criticism is hardly just to Otto, who was irresistibly led into his Italian policy by the necessities of his German position, and who could hardly be expected to look, beyond the immediate work before him, to far-off ideals of national unity and national monarchy that were utterly strange to him and to his age. Otto came into Italy to win over the Pope to his side. ”

“ When at length Otto left Rome to capture Berengar's son Adalbert, they at once attacked the defenceless Pope and recalled John XII., who wreaked sweet and cruel vengeance on the leaders of the imperial faction. An obsequious synod reversed all the decrees of deposition. When John XII. was killed in crime, the Romans, without consulting the Emperor as they had promised, at once elected Pope Benedict V. Once more Otto appeared before Rome with a huge army to assert his rights and to enforce his policy. The city surrendered, the new Pope begged for mercy, and was banished to Germany. ”

“ Henceforth father and son were joint rulers. Otto had done his best to make both German kingdom and Roman Empire hereditary.
Otto’s imperial position, 962–973. 34The last years of Otto’s reign were full of triumph. Secure in the obedience of the Church, he ruled both Germany and Italy with an ever-increasing authority. The Magdeburg archbishopric received new suffragans in the sees of Zeiz, Meissen, and Merseburg. A new era of peace and prosperity dawned. The German dukes were afraid to resist so mighty a power. ”

“ These achievements gave Otto great renown in Western Europe. The kings sent ambassadors to him, and presents came from the sovereigns at Constantinople and Cordova.
OTTO I. IN ITALY.—Otto now turned his eyes to Italy. After Arnulf, the Carlovingian emperor, left Italy (in 896) , that country had been left to sixty years of anarchy. The demoralization and disorder of Italy, the profligacy of the Romans and of the pontiffs,— every thing being then subject to the riotous aristocratic factions, —rendered unity impossible. ”

“ With him expired the dynasty of the Saxon Emperors, less pitifully, however, than either the Merovingian or Carolingian line.
When Otto the Great, towards the close of his reign, neglected Germany and occupied himself with establishing his dominion in Italy, he prepared the way for the rapid decline of the Imperial power at home, in the hands of his successors. The reigning Dukes, Counts, and even the petty feudal lords, no longer watched and held subordinate, soon became practically independent: except in Friesland, Saxony and the Alps, the people had no voice in political matters ”

“ During his residence at Benevento, Otto undertook the conquest of lower Italy. Bari, the strongly fortified Grecian metropolis, offering a valiant and successful resistance, he had recourse to his favourite policy, and despatched his confidant, Liutprand, the celebrated historian, to the court of Nicephorus, the Grecian emperor, in order to demand the hand of the beautiful princess Theophano, daughter to Romanus the late emperor, for his son Otto II, probably in the hope of receiving Italy as her dowry. ”

“ The latter's reign was to be a long and great one. He was consecrated at Aix-la-Chapelle in Charlemagne's basilica, thus at the outset showing what and whom he had in mind. Then and thereafter all manner of internal opposition had to be suppressed. His own competing brothers were, first of all, to be put down; and with them the Dukes of Bavaria, Franconia, and Lorraine, whom Otto conquered and replaced with men connected with him by ties of blood or marriage. Far to the West he made his power felt, settling affairs between Louis and Hugh the Great. ”

“ And that is what the faithful man truly did. In the following year the king really set out on his journey to Rome, and Adaldag went with him. Otto set up a stern tribunal in Rome, deposed the godless Pope John, and made good Leo Pope. Five years Otto spent in Italy, and wherever he came he wrought righteousness and judgment, punished the wicked and relieved the innocent and oppressed; being such a prince as Germany has had few. In the year 962 Otto was solemnly crowned kaiser by Leo at Rome, and thus acknowledged as the earthly head of the whole Christian world. ”

“ He had never seen anything so rich and grand in all of his life, for little Otto had never been in a town before.
"Oh! look," he cried, "at that wonderful lady; see, holy father! sure the Emperor's wife can be no finer than that lady."
The Abbot smiled. "Nay, Otto," said he, "that is but a burgher's wife or daughter; the ladies at the Emperor's court are far grander than such as she."
"So!" said Otto, and then fell silent with wonder. ”

“ Otto of Brunswick and Philip of Hohenstaufen, a brother of Henry VI. The civil war which ensued in Germany between these rival claimants gave Innocent III. his opportunity. Both claimants appealed to the Pope, but Otto was the more submissive. The Pope assumed the function of arbiter and issued a famous bull favouring Otto. [550:5] [551] Otto promised on oath protection of the possessions and rights of the Roman Church, and obedience and homage such as pious Emperors had formerly shown towards the Chair of Peter (1201) . ”

“ Before his death Henry obtained the promise of the nobles at a national assembly, or diet, at Erfurt to recognize his son Otto as his successor, and the promise was kept, Otto being chosen German king in July 936. Otto I. the Otto the Great. Great began his reign under the most favourable circumstances. He was twenty-four years of age, and at the coronation festival, which was held at Aix-la-Chapelle, the dukes performed for the first time the nominally menial offices known as the arch-offices of the German kingdom. ”

“ On a visit to Aachen, Otto caused the tomb of Charlemagne to be opened. That monarch was discovered seated on his throne. On Otto’s return to Rome, he announced his intention of making her the capital of the modern, as she had been that of the ancient world, but the Romans were incapable either of comprehending his grand projects or of perceiving the advantage that must have accrued to them had their city once more become an imperial residence. The senseless and brutal populace again rose in open insurrection. ”

“ Having secured his coronation at Rome in October 1209, Otto repudiated the many pledges he had made to Innocent and began to act in defiance of the papal wishes. To punish him the pope put forward his own ward, Henry VI.’s son Frederick, who was living in Sicily, as a rival king. While Otto was warring in Italy a number of influential princes met at Nuremberg, at the instigation of Innocent and of his ally Philip Augustus of France, and invited Frederick to come to Germany. ”

“ Otto, moreover, did not scruple to undergo a fresh election which secured for him universal recognition in Germany. By marrying Beatrice, Philip of Swabia’s daughter, he sought to unite the rival houses, while he conciliated Innocent by describing himself as king ‘by the grace of God and the Pope.’ Next year he crossed the Alps to Italy, and bound himself by oath, not only to allow the Papacy the privileges that he had already granted, but to grant complete freedom of ecclesiastical elections, and to support the Pope in his struggle against heresy. ”

“ They must be backed up by some other force, or the unity of the monarchy was doomed. The only available ally was the church, and with the same deep political purpose at heart Otto posed as the protector of the church and its reformer. His protection meant the exaltation of ecclesiastical lords to a plane equal to or above that of the lay lords; his reformation meant the placing of his brother, the learned Bruno, over the archiepiscopate of Cologne (953) , and his son William in the place of the perfidious Frederick, the archbishop of Mainz, who had connived at a plan for Otto’s assassination. ”

“ Falling into disgrace with Berengar on his return, he attached himself to the emperor Otto I., whom in 961 he accompanied into Italy, and by whom in 962 he was made bishop of Cremona. He was frequently employed in missions to the pope, and in 968 to Constantinople to demand for the younger Otto (afterwards Otto II.) the hand of Theophano, daughter of the emperor Nicephorus Phocas. ”