Chapter VIII: Otto the Great and His Successors (1)

[936-1024 A.D.]

THE CORONATION OF OTTO (936 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [936-938 A.D.]]

In the summer of 936 the leading men of the secular and clerical ranks assembled at Aachen to elect a king. Times had changed decidedly since the year 619, when Henry I received the crown. At his election only the Frankish duke Eberhard with his vassals and the archbishop Heriger of Mainz had appeared, besides the Saxon nobility. The whole kingdom took part in Otto’s election; all the German dukes, the archbishops, and probably a great many other high clerical and secular dignitaries proceeded to Aachen. The Saxon lords who had already decided in favour of Otto accompanied him thither; as he approached, those who had already gathered in the city went out to meet him and brought him back in a triumphal procession. The election took place in the celebrated palace of Charlemagne. Between the castle and the court chapel (the beautiful church of the Virgin) was an open colonnade through which the great emperor had often passed on his way to church. In this place the secular lords chose Otto for their king; he seated himself here and at once caused them to bring him their homage; they placed their hands in his and swore to support him against the enemy. Otto then, in company with the princes, proceeded to the church of the Virgin, the much admired chapel of Charlemagne, which was built in the form of an octagon, in part from antique marble columns. Since the ground space would accommodate only a limited number of persons, a great many had mounted to the circular gallery-like passages above, in order to view the festive proceedings from there. There had been a quarrel among the archbishops at first as to which of them should crown the new ruler; finally it was agreed that this honour should fall to Hildebert of Mainz on account of the peculiar dignity of his person. The archbishop conducted Otto into the middle of the chapel and then turned to the audience: “See,” he said, “I lead before you the new king, who has been selected by God, appointed by King Henry, and now chosen by all the princes, if this choice pleases you, so manifest it by raising the right hand.” Thereupon the congregation raised their right hands and showed their assent by a loud cry of acclamation. The archbishop then led the new king to the altar upon which were the insignia of kingly office--the sword with the girdle, the purple robe, the bracelets, the staff, the sceptre, and the crown. He then turned to Otto and presented him with the insignia of power, together with many pious admonitions. “Receive this sword,” said he, “in order with it to drive out all the enemies of Christ, the heathen, and all bad Christians, since God has given thee dominion over the Frankish realm in order to make of it a sure refuge for Christendom.” After Otto had received the other royal insignia, accompanied with similar pious expressions, the archbishop of Mainz anointed him, being assisted by the archbishop Wikfried of Cologne, put the crown on his head, and conducted him to the throne, which was placed between the marble columns of the church of the Virgin. When the service was concluded the new king proceeded with the secular and clerical lords to the banquet which had been prepared in the palace of Charles the Great. The four dukes of the kingdom, Giselbert of Lorraine, Eberhard of Franconia, Hermann of Swabia, and Arnulf of Bavaria, had charge of the coronation festivities; they also waited on the king personally at the banquet as vassals were accustomed to wait on their feudal lord on especially ceremonious occasions.[b]

It was no empty formality when the princes who had once recognised his father as their feudal lord now rendered him the same service which they received from their dependents. Kingship already meant something more than mere leadership of the Saxon dukes, and Otto was just the man to assume the right which only one king had ever possessed in German territory. If Henry seems almost more Saxon prince than king of the Germans, Otto on the other hand, although he called himself also king of the Franks, was from the very beginning of his reign king of the Germans in the most complete sense of the word.[c]

THE OVERTHROW OF THE STEM DUCHIES

[Sidenote: [938-953 A.D.]]

A revival of the Carlovingian conception of sovereignty can at once be discerned in the mind of the young king. The coronation itself offered an opportunity for this to appear. The duke of Bavaria had not come to do him homage; Otto deposed him and set up, beside the duchy of Bavaria, a count palatine to watch that the interests of the king should never suffer from the independence of the great vassal. It was the beginning of a policy radically different from that of Henry, who had left almost complete autonomy to the different nations and their dukes. From now on till the time of Bismarck the main story of German history is the struggle of the kings for a centralised government, and the frustration of their efforts by the local magnates who represented the tribes and nations of the earliest days.

The story of Otto’s wars against these great dukes is too long and too intricate to tell in detail here. Suffice it to say that every duke in the kingdom was in rebellion at one time and another. Even the Saxons turned against them, and aided the rebellion of his elder but bastard brother Thankmar and his younger brother Henry, who was the eldest born of the children of Henry I after he was king. At first Otto was beaten, but in a victory at Andernach (Birten) the dukes of Franconia and Lorraine were slain, and the young Henry was forced to submit (939).

Then the great plan of Otto was realised. The power of the king was to be secured by setting up members of his own family in place of the stem dukes, whom the people had hitherto looked up to as sprung from the old race of heroes, and the only hereditary lords of the Germans. Franconia he kept for himself; Bavaria was given to the penitent brother Henry; Swabia was held by his eldest son, Ludolf; his son-in-law Conrad was put over Lorraine. But they were no longer the old independent sovereigns. The scattered estates of the king that spread throughout the different duchies offered the chance for a system of counts palatine who, like the _missi dominici_ of Charlemagne, were to be the agents of royalty and centralisation, and to watch with jealous eye the actions of their neighbours, even if they were of the royal line. It was evident that another Charles was at the helm, but a second civil war had to be fought before the royal prerogatives were assured. Nothing shows more clearly the real tendencies of German history towards local liberty rather than imperial unity than the fact that the new dukes, the king’s own kin, were soon leading the forces of their respective nations against Otto. But the rebels quarrelled among themselves, and an invasion of the Hungarians forced them to join in a common national defence. Otto, however, had learned that he could never rely upon the dukes, whoever they were. Traditions of local independence and tribal, or as they viewed it “national” interests, overcame all ties of blood or duty. Counts palatine were not strong enough to act as a sufficient check. 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.

THE TENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE

These appointments were eminently just, no more attractive or saintly character appears in German history than that of Bruno, who as chancellor and as prelate carried out reforms that brought intellectual awakening with religious revival. Fostered by him, rare literature again began to be produced; the night of the dark age was passing, and Bruno, carrying his library with him in his travels, and studying Greek with the Scotchman Israel, is like an Erasmus of the tenth century. His work was that of a reformer and teacher.[a]

Above all, however, Bruno attempted to revive the scholarly activity of the clergy. Through him and through the men whom he trained, the court again became the centre of a scholarly movement; the royal chapel took on the character of a superior school. Of the seven liberal sciences which at that time comprised the whole sum of earthly wisdom, only the three lower ones, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, had, since the memory of man, been taught in the schools; that Bruno directed his studies to the four higher ones likewise, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, made him appear like a restorer of these sciences in the eyes of his contemporaries. While he himself still continued to study, he became at the same time the teacher of many others; he never let the superiority of his mind be felt unpleasantly, but rather by his winning friendliness and gentle earnestness, succeeded in charming everyone. While he himself “hastened forward on the path of virtue with gigantic strides,” as his biographer expresses it, he never wearied of looking back after those who were left behind, to help them on their way.

[Sidenote: [950-1000 A.D.]]

The scholarly efforts of the court gained in breadth and depth after Otto turned his attention to them, and they had already begun to bear fruit in the year 950. Soon afterwards the learned Rather was called to court. He was born in Lorraine, had left his home and made his fortune in Italy through King Hugo, but had been driven out of his bishopric at Verona. Bruno himself learned from Rather, who was held to be the first theologian of his time. Bishop Liutprand of Cremona came to court a little later, and also his not ordinary knowledge of old Latin literature does not seem to have been left unused by Bruno. It was no longer only the bones of the saints which were brought from over the Alps, but those other relics of antiquity which are so much more precious in our eyes; above all, the valuable manuscripts of classic authors. More than a hundred of these were brought into German countries by an Italian, Gunzo by name, at Otto’s command, some of the most valuable of which Italy has carried back again after a lapse of centuries. People now applied themselves with fresh zeal to the study of the old poets, orators, and historians--Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Cicero, and Sallust arose together from the dead and became the teachers of the Germans in the liberal sciences.

From the court the new studies spread throughout the kingdom, the cloister schools especially taking a gratifying part in the general advancement. St. Gall and Reichenau reached their most flourishing period; Fulda tried to maintain its old position; Hersfeld emulated it; a teacher from Italy was called to Würzburg. In Saxony, Corvei especially cultivated the sciences; also in the convents, especially at Gandersheim and Quedlinburg, the girls read Virgil and Terence together with the lives of the saints. While people had scarcely learned to know the ancients, with minds still dazzled by the brilliancy of their oratory, they found courage to compete with them; behind cloister walls men put their hand to works which, with all their roughness, are not without a certain lofty beauty, which show a sturdy attempt to reach perfection of form, and which through their contents possess for us an imperishable value.

It is a literature of a peculiar character which was developed out of these efforts. It rests upon a national foundation and is yet clothed in a garment of classic Roman language; it is monastic and ascetic, but at the same time naturalistic according to the conception of the ancients; it is ecclesiastic, but untrammelled by dogmatic disputes and canonistic scholasticism; finally it is courtly, but at the same time simple, true-hearted, and upright. The old-German heroic folk-lore is reproduced in hexameters which are imitated or borrowed from Virgil; the naïve fables must accommodate themselves to the strict beat of old verse measure; the wonderful stories of the origin of the Saxons are repeated in the language of Sallust and Tacitus; a nun treats the legends of the saints in the form of a Terentian comedy. Bruno has stamped the impress of his mind upon this whole literature. His taste for philological learning, his ascetic zeal, his high position at court which came to him from birth, influenced it perceptibly for over a century. But there was also another spirit at work which he neither could nor would control. In these books lives also the strong, sturdy, and true spirit of the German people.

The tenth century, more than others, has been called an age of barbarism, and its beginnings do indeed betray a decay of all that the Carlovingian period had accomplished in the way of art and literature. But already in the middle of the century we may detect new seeds of culture in the German countries, and it was really from them that a civilisation first developed which penetrated more deeply into the northern districts and became acclimated there. It was, to be sure, a civilisation which at first affected only the highest ranks of society--the court, the clergy, and the nobility which had been drawn into the vicinity of the court; but it was practically instrumental in gradually reforming all the conditions of German life. No one more than the historian of the German people perceives what a change took place at that time in the cultural conditions. After he has emerged from the darkness of tradition into the light of history already in the Carlovingian period, at the beginning of the tenth century he is again surrounded by a twilight in which it is impossible to distinguish fact from fable; tradition is confused, contradictory, incomplete, and disconnected. But with the middle of the century, contemporary, reliable sources are again opened up to him, which on the whole permit him to follow the course of events clearly; the ground becomes firm beneath his feet and only seldom is he compelled to tread the uncertain path of supposition.

The king’s chapel, however, was not only a school of learning, it was at the same time a plant-house for church and state, in that nearly all the priests went out from it who in the following period were raised to the seats of the German bishoprics by Otto and his successors. It is a new generation of princes of the church very unlike that which the later Carlovingian period had brought forth. These bishops, permeated as they are with the dignity of their ecclesiastical position, are yet truly submissive to the central power of the state; they willingly take part in the king’s battles and cheerfully go from one country to another in his interest and for his advantage. Hierarchic-theocratic ideas are far from their minds, no less so the thought of a slavish obedience to Rome, although they respect the rights of St. Peter; they are, however, permeated with the feeling of a free independent authority which God has given them over their bishoprics, and they rule their dioceses with a patriarchal, all-comprehending power. Their first duties they consider to be the organisation of ecclesiastical discipline, reformation of the cloisters and chapters, and the awakening of a scholastic life; but they feel it to be equally their calling to fortify their cities with walls, to gain or to secure for them privileges of markets and coinage, to elevate commerce, to cultivate waste regions, to clear away forests, to regulate the service of their dependents legally, to preserve right and justice within their immunities. They are throughout practical tasks which they set themselves and they believe that they are serving God and their fellow-men in performing them.

The Roman church has placed not a few of these bishops on the calendar of its saints, but the German people also owe these men the deepest gratitude. They have contributed not a little towards raising the oppressed part of the nation, towards reviving city life, and towards promoting agriculture, indeed one might say that even the more definite development of the national spirit is due largely to them. From one centre they went into all parts of the realm; wherever they went they spread the same culture, the same principles of administration, the same ecclesiastical-political views, and they themselves remained, although separated, in a close, often an intimate, relationship with each other. It might be said that among them for the first time, the firm outlines of a national policy were established, which remained untouched by the attitude of the person who happened to hold the chief power in the state. In this rank of bishops we meet a large number of the most worthy men, who showed themselves almost throughout filled with the same love for their German fatherland until the struggle concerning the investiture brought unholy discord into all ranks of life.[c]

THE STRENGTHENING OF THE MARKS

[Sidenote: [936-955 A.D.]]

But civil wars, the strengthening of royalty, and the activity of the church were but a part of the interests of Otto. From the day of his coronation the Slavs had been ravaging the frontiers on the northeast and the Hungarians had raided the rich valleys of the upper Danube. In campaign after campaign the king and his lieutenants kept the invaders at bay. To secure his kingdom, Otto granted larger powers to the counts of the border, the markgrafen, and thus prepared the way for the power of Brandenburg and of Austria (the East Mark). He encouraged German colonisation along the Elbe, and called to the assistance of his armies the influence of Christianising missionaries. The reformation of his clergy stood him in good stead, for not since the day of Charles the Great did the missionary effort of the monks and clergy reap such triumphs over heathenism and win so much in land and people for Christendom.

VICTORY OVER THE MAGYARS AND WENDS

But the Hungarians were still unsubdued, and in the year 955 they made a vast and final test of the strength of the new kingdom.[a] A powerful party in Bavaria, headed by the count Werner, brother to the fallen Arnulf, were induced by the hatred they bore to Henry to have recourse to the Hungarians, whom they invited into the country. Confident of success on account of their enormous numerical strength, the arrogant barbarians boasted that their horses should drain every river in Germany. Augsburg, whose supposed treasures attracted their cupidity, was besieged by them, but made a brave defence under the command of Burkhard of Swabia. Their king, Pulzko, was encamped at Günsburg. Otto instantly assembled the arrière-ban of the entire empire; the Bohemians united their forces with his; the Saxons, at that time engaged in opposing the Slavs, alone failed. The two armies came within sight of each other on the Lech, near Augsburg. Before the battle commenced, Otto addressed his troops, as his father had done on a similar occasion, and vowed, when referring to the victory won by Henry, to found a bishopric at Meresburg, if God granted him success.

It was the 10th of August, 955. The sun poured with intense heat upon the plain. The Hungarians rapidly crossed the Lech, fell upon the rear of the German army, dispersed the Bohemians, and were pressing hard upon the Swabians, when the fortune of the day was again turned by Conrad, who, anxious to retrieve his fault and to regain the confidence of his master, performed miracles of valour at the head of the Franconians. The emperor struggled sword in hand in the thickest of the fight. A vast number of the enemy were drowned in attempting to escape across the river. Conrad was mortally wounded in the neck by an arrow aimed at him by one of the fugitives, when in the act of raising his helmet in order to breathe more freely. A hundred thousand Hungarians are said to have fallen on this occasion.[145] Two of their princes, Lehel and Bulcs, were by the emperor’s command hanged on the gates of Augsburg. According to some writers, King Pulzko and four of the war-chiefs were hanged before the gates of Ratisbon. Werner was killed by the enraged Hungarians, but few of whom escaped to their country, almost the whole of the fugitives being slain or hunted down like wild beasts by the Bavarian peasants. The adherents of the adverse party were mercilessly punished by Henry of Bavaria, who caused them to be buried alive, or burned in beds of quicklime. Herold, bishop of Salzburg, was by his orders deprived of sight, and the patriarch Lupus of Aquileia met with a still more wretched fate. This was the last inroad attempted by the Hungarians, who for the future remained within their frontier, on their side equally undisturbed by the Germans. The booty was so enormous that a peasant is said to have had a silver plough made out of his share. The innumerable Hungarian horses taken on this occasion also gave rise to the establishment of the Keferloher horse fair.[d]

THE REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

[Sidenote: [936-962 A.D.]]

For a quarter of a century Otto (936-962) ruled with no higher title than king of the Franks. It was not till the winter of 962 that this successor of Charlemagne received the imperial crown, and proclaimed once more to the world the fact of that union of Roman and Teuton, upon which the structure of modern society was to rest. We have now to trace the story of what Bryce regards as the real foundation of the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages.

The one portion of the Carlovingian monarchy which suffered most in the dark age of dissolution was Italy. The heroic efforts on its behalf of Louis II, the last worthy descendant of Charles, were rendered fruitless by his early death without a son to succeed. Then Italy was a prize for uncles and cousins, like Charles the Bald and Charles the Fat. After their time there was a feudal anarchy in which the most noteworthy leaders were the dukes of Friuli in the north, of Spoleto in the centre, and of Capua and Benevento in the south, with marquises of Ivrea and Tuscany and proud Roman counts, like those of the family of Crescentius, to prevent consolidation or peace. At Rome itself the conditions were at the worst. Popes were elected by clergy and populace, but mob violence forced the elections amid riot and outrage.

[Sidenote: [950-962 A.D.]]

Above this world of ruin and disorder there still hung the shadow of an imperial crown. From the year 900 it had been alternately the prize of Lombard and Provençal (or Burgundian) princes.[146]

In the year 950 Lothair of Burgundy died suddenly, leaving his young, witty, and beautiful widow Adelheid (Adelaide) to face the craft and strength of Berengar II. Berengar determined to marry her to his son, and upon her refusal imprisoned her in a fortress on the Lake of Como. From this she escaped to the castle of Canossa.

Legend tells us that her deliverance was due to a priest who bored through her prison wall, and that in her flight she was so closely pursued as to be compelled to conceal herself in a field of standing corn. Her flight at Canossa gave the excuse for the interference of the German ally, Ludolf of Swabia, Otto’s eldest son. Ludolf at once descended the Alps; his uncle Henry of Bavaria was at his heels to share in the plunder, and laid claim to most of Venetia, although formerly Berengar’s ally. But the prize was for neither of them. In 951 Otto himself came down, and in Pavia, the old royal city of the Lombards, he signalised his double triumph by assuming the title “king of the Lombards” and by marrying the fair Adelaide. Henceforth the only obstacle to the assumption of the empire was the formality of coronation.

Nine years elapsed, however, before Otto took the final step. His son had withdrawn to Germany to lead a formidable rebellion against the father who had foiled his plans. Conrad the red, duke of Lotharingia, joined hands with him, and the civil wars broke out anew. It was then that the great Hungarian invasion came to restore allegiance to the one prince who could make headway against it. The rebels submitted and fought loyally for their king. The battle of Lechfeld left Otto unquestioned master in Germany. Fresh aggressions of Berengar, whom he had left as under-king in Italy, now led him to take the final step.[a]

Berengar aimed at the independent sovereignty of Italy, in which he was upheld by the majority of the people, whose national pride ill brooked the despotic rule of either the clergy or the Germans. The Lombard bishops, enraged at the restriction imposed upon them by Berengar, sought the protection of the pope, who applied for aid to the emperor. The family disputes that had so lately troubled Otto’s domestic peace, the struggle with the Hungarians and the Slavs, had at this juncture been brought to a favourable termination, and the reincorporation of Italy with the empire again became the object of his ambition. Accordingly, after causing his son, Otto II, to be crowned king of Germany at Aachen, and entrusting the government of the empire to his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, and to his illegitimate son Wilhelm, who had succeeded Frederick in the archbishopric of Mainz, he crossed the Alps (961 A.D.), expelled Berengar, and for the first time entered Rome, where the pope, John XII (a son of Alberic), was compelled to crown him emperor.[d]

THE IMPERIAL CORONATION (962 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [962 A.D.]]

Ancient custom demanded that the pope should send the Roman senate, i.e. the nobility of the city, and the citizens who bore arms to meet the king, who was to receive the imperial crown, while he was encamped upon the gardens of Nero under Monte Mario near the church of St. Peter, and to escort him back to the city. This delegation, accordingly, started out in pompous array with crosses and flags, dragon heads, and lofty standards, accompanied by the corporations of the foreigners in Rome, each hailing the joyful occasion by joyful songs in its own language. Aristocratic youths belonging to the first families of the city, welcomed the king at Monte Mario, kissed his feet, and then assisted him to mount a horse sent by the pope, upon which they conducted him, through crowds of people, to the steps leading to the outer court of St. Peter’s.

Before this sat the pope in full regalia, upon a golden throne surrounded on both sides by the clergy. After the king had left his horse and mounted the thirty-five marble steps, the pope arose, offered the king his lips for a kiss, and extended his right hand in brotherly greeting. They then passed through the brazen gates of the spacious outer court, which was called the paradise of St. Peter, and proceeded towards the main door--it was called the silver door--of the church. Before that was opened, however, the king swore to the pope that he had come with pure and upright intentions as regards the good of the city and church, and promised him the donations given by the earlier emperors. To the sound of the hymn, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” they then entered the festively decorated and brilliantly lighted church, which had no equal in all the world. The king hurried to the tomb of St. Peter as soon as he entered the church and fell on his knees to pray. The pope’s blessing and prayer concluded the ceremony in the church. This was followed by a festive banquet which the pope gave the future emperor, who then returned in the evening to his camp outside the city.

Thus was spent the day of the ceremonial reception; the coronation itself did not take place until the following Sunday. On that day the people gathered in the streets at an early hour; all the houses were decorated with carpets and awnings; the whole city thereby took on a festive appearance. Everybody then hastened to Leo’s city, to St. Peter’s, where the king in a purple robe and golden greaves awaited the pope. The pope appeared in the full regalia of his highest priestly office. After the king had then put on clerical garments, he was anointed as a priest at the altar and thus, as a member of the clerical order, received the imperial crown and sword from the hands of the pope.

The church re-echoed with the loud congratulations and the joyful cries of the crowd. As soon as these had subsided a lector read the document which the emperor had made out for the pope in regard to the possessions of St. Peter’s and the emperor with splendid gifts thanked Peter’s successor, who had adorned his head with the highest crown in the world.

With such festivities King Berengar had been received in Rome and crowned emperor. We possess no details concerning Otto’s reception and coronation; but the proceedings could not have been very different when he entered Rome on the 31st of January, and on February 2nd, 962, received the imperial crown from the pope in St. Peter’s; with him Adelheid was anointed and crowned.

Otto had attained the aim of long years of labour. The highest position in western Christendom, the leadership of all the states which had gone out from the empire of Charlemagne, had become his and through him they became the possessions of the German nation.[c]

In 964 Otto returned to Germany, and held Whitsuntide at Cologne, where he was attended by all the German princes, among whom appeared Lothair of France. Peace and security reigned throughout the empire.

WARS IN ITALY AGAINST BYZANTIUM

[Sidenote: [966-972 A.D.]]

Otto revisited Italy (966 A.D.), where Adalbert, the son of Berengar, had raised an insurrection in Lombardy; he was defeated on the Po by Burkhard of Swabia. 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. A fresh and closer treaty was concluded between the emperor and the pope, to whose dominions the territory of Ravenna, which had been severed from them, was restored, in return for which he solemnly placed the imperial diadem on the head of Otto II, an incident of rare occurrence during the lifetime and in the presence of the father.

All opposition to the irresistible power of the emperor had now ceased--the whole of upper and central Italy lay in silent submission at his feet. His first step was the imposition of a new form of government upon Lombardy. He replaced the great dukes, with the exception of his ally Pandolf, by numerous petty markgrafs, the majority of whom were Germans by birth. He also settled a considerable number of Germans in the different cities, and thus created a party favourable to the imperial cause that counterpoised the rebellious spirit of the Lombards and Romans. Pandolf of Benevento, surnamed Ironhead, and the petty duke, Gisulf of Salerno, whose imbecility rendered him ever inconstant to his allies, defended the frontiers of upper and central Italy against the Greeks, who still retained possession of lower Italy, and the Saracens, who had already settled in Sicily. Otto and his empress, Adelheid, visited Pandolf (968 A.D.) who entertained them with great magnificence.

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. His suit being contemptuously refused, Otto undertook a second campaign during the following year, and chose with great judgment his line of march along the Alps that separate lower Italy into two parts, and thus command Apulia to the east and Calabria to the west. Having thus opened a path, he returned the same way, leaving the conquest of the low country to Pandolf, who having the misfortune to be taken prisoner before Bovino, and to be sent to Constantinople, the Greeks, under the patrician Eugenius, crossed the frontier, laid waste the country in the neighbourhood of Capua and Benevento, and treated the inhabitants with great cruelty. Otto, who was at that juncture in upper Italy, sent the grafs Gunther and Siegfried to oppose them; a splendid victory was gained, and the victors, animated by a spirit of revenge, deprived the Greek prisoners of their right hands, noses, and ears. In 970, the Sicilian Saracens invaded the country, but were defeated at Chiaramonte by Graf Gunther. At this time, the emperor Joannes, who after the assassination of Nicephorus had ascended the throne of Greece, restored Pandolf Ironhead to liberty, concluded peace with Otto, and consented to the alliance of Otto II with the beautiful Theophano, who was escorted from Constantinople by the archbishop Gero of Cologne, Bruno’s successor, at the head of a numerous body of retainers.

[Sidenote: [972-973 A.D.]]

She was received in the palace of Pandolf at Benevento by the emperor and the youthful bridegroom. Her extraordinary beauty attracted universal admiration. The marriage ceremony was celebrated with great magnificence at Rome (972 A.D.). This princess created an important change in the manners of Germany by the introduction of Grecian customs, which gradually spreading downwards from the court, where her influence was first felt, affected the general habits of the people by the alterations introduced in the monastic academies. The German court adopted much of the pomp and etiquette of that of Greece. The number of retainers increased with increasing luxury, and the plain manners of the true-hearted German were exchanged for the finesse and adulation of the courtier. The emperor also adopted the Grecian title of “sacred majesty” (_sacra majestas_). Lower Italy remained in the hands of the Greeks.[d]

COMPARISON OF HENRY THE FOWLER AND OTTO WITH CHARLEMAGNE

The feeling of his unassailable position may have cheered the emperor on the journey to his own palatinate and church, at Memleben on the Unstrut, where the river, peaceful and calm on the surface but flowing strongly in its depths, winds its way out of the valley through the neighbouring mountains, which have still kept the name they bore in the days of antiquity. It is supposed to have been an ancient Germanic burial-place. He arrived there on the 6th of May, 973. It has rather been supposed that he came there with a foreboding of death. But death hovered over him. On the 7th he still kept the hours for prayer, not without interruption for rest and for “offering his hand to the poor,” as the chronicle says.

He seemed cheerful at table. Whilst he was listening to the singing of the Gospel at vespers, he was seized by the horror of death. Overcome by heat and weakness, he was placed on a seat, received the Communion, and died without any previous illness or death struggle. Thus the man who might have been considered as the ruler of all the western world, unexpectedly suffered the fate of mortals. The fullness of an inexhaustible vigour accompanied him to the end of his life, when it was suddenly conquered. He was only sixty-one years of age when he expired; his father had died at about the same age, in the same place, after a most active life.

Let us, even at the danger of repetition, add a few remarks concerning the position in the world of these two great men.

They had been preceded by Pepin and Charles the Great, likewise father and son, through whose succession and co-operation the West received its definite form. That which the father had planned, the son carried out with circumspect politics and the fortune of arms; under his long and peaceful administration the Western Empire was formed. The relations were not quite the same between Henry and Otto. Of Henry nothing is to be found from which one can conclude that his plans were the foundations of his son’s actions. But succeeding each other under altered circumstances, they obtained the greatest success. To them is due the fact that the Carlovingian kingdom was sustained. Father and son worked together to banish the most dangerous enemies by which Germany was at any time attacked. Through Otto, Italy again became closely united with the empire, and western France kept in peaceful relation to it. The western world, its power and civilisation, depended on the union of the three great lands.

[Sidenote: [973 A.D.]]

For the consolidation of the empire the union of Charles the Great with the papacy was most essential; the ecclesiastical and temporal interests co-operated. The church belonged to the Latin world; but it had a lasting effect on the Germanic tribes. It united their religious views with the idea of the apostolic mission of St. Peter, and with the traditions of antiquity. Thus Saxony, which Charles subjected with arms, was organised as an ecclesiastical province; Bavaria was subjected by direct influence of the pope to the great kingdom which then became the empire--that is to say, the constitution of the empire, embracing as it did Latin elements, did not take place without the influence of the pope. Nevertheless the personal authority of a great prince was necessary to keep all his provinces in unity.

Since then, as has been remarked, a considerable alteration took place. The opposition descended from antiquity between the priesthood and the higher authorities had again broken out; the priesthood had acquired a development and strength, with which the temporal power in the hands of the Carlovingians could no longer interfere. In Germany the hierarchical doctrines were also to the fore, and it might well have seemed possible that the essence of the German spirit had been absorbed by them. But how was it to escape this absorption? There can be no doubt that it was owing chiefly to the establishment of a princely house which was essentially Germanic and completely realised the idea of temporal power. The empire which Henry I conquered and Otto the Great raised to a magnificent structure, had a Germanic vein of preponderating strength and keenness; it gave back authority to temporal power--not alone the supreme authority but also the subordinate authority attending it, and was joined by those bishops who were free from the power of the pope at Rome, until now absolute. Had an unconditional subjection of the clergy taken place, this would have shattered the foundation of the empire. The religious idea was not fought by the Saxon princes, but ecclesiastical politics underwent a change. The object now was to insure the independence of the imperial and kingly authority and to save it from clerical interference in the government.

It strove for a juxtaposition of the two authorities with a preponderance of the temporal. This was the principle of the German Empire which was autonomically raised by Henry and Otto on the foundation of the Carlovingian. The relations of the European nations were reorganised by the unification of Germany. In England and France they had not been so fortunate as in Germany; the northern invasions had not been repelled, the nationalities had even become altered under their influence. They had other requirements, other centres. The rising of the temporal power in itself created new foundations for them.

If the empire aspired to universal authority, this attempt would have to be given up. A complete nullification of the papal authority would have been unbearable to the German Empire, and the neighbouring nations were far from being disposed to subject themselves to such a central superiority as would thus have arisen. Awakened national feeling laid the foundations of the German Empire, though religion was not without its effect. In the course of the following century the latter gained in intensity. From all these causes resulted the complex civilisation which we call Western Christianity; since thenceforward chaotic forces and tendencies progressed towards unification. The state thus founded became the basis for modern civilisation.[e]

THE UNFORESEEN EVILS OF OTTO’S REIGN

[Sidenote: [962 A.D.]]

By far the most important act of Otto’s eventful life was his assumption of the Lombard and the imperial crowns. His successors so steadily followed his example that the sovereign crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle claimed as his right to be afterwards crowned in Milan and in Rome. Thus grew up the Holy Roman Empire, that strange state which, directly descending through the empire of Charles the Great from the empire of the cæsars, contained so many elements foreign to ancient life. We are here concerned with it only in so far as it affected Germany. Germany itself never until the nineteenth century became an empire. It is true that at least the Holy Roman Empire was as a matter of fact confined to Germany; but in theory it was something quite different. Like France, Germany was a kingdom, but it differed from France in this, that its king was also king in Italy, and Roman emperor. As the latter title made him nominally the secular lord of the world, it might have been expected to excite the pride of his German subjects; and doubtless, after a time, they did learn to think highly of themselves as the imperial race. But the evidence tends to show that at first they had no wish for this honour, and would have much preferred had their ruler limited himself strictly to his own people. There are signs that during Otto’s reign they began to have a distinct consciousness of national life, their use of the word “deutsch,” to indicate the whole people, being one of these symptoms.

To the connection of their kingdom with the empire they owe the fact that for centuries they were the most divided of European nations. France was made up of a number of loosely connected lands, each with its own lord, when Germany, under Otto, was to a large extent moved by a single will, well organised, and strong. But the attention of the French kings was concentrated on their immediate interests, and in course of time they brought their unruly vassals to order. The German kings, as emperors, had duties which often took them away for long periods from Germany. This alone would have shaken their authority, for during their absence, the great vassals seized rights which it was afterwards difficult to recover. Thus the imperial crown was the most fatal gift that could have been offered to the German kings; apparently giving them all things, it deprived them nearly of everything. And in doing this, it inflicted on many generations incalculable and needless suffering.

By the policy of his later years, Otto did much to prepare the way for the process of disintegration which he rendered inevitable by restoring the empire. With the kingdom divided into five great duchies, the sovereign could always have maintained at least so much unity as King Henry secured; and as the experience of Otto himself showed, there would have been chances of much greater centralisation. Yet he threw away this advantage. Otto gave up the practice of retaining the duchies either in his own hands or in those of relatives. Even Saxony, his native duchy, and the chief source of his strength, was given to Markgraf Billung, whose family long afterwards kept it.

As a set-off to the power of the princes--for the reigning immediate vassals of the crown ranked as princes--Otto, especially after he became emperor and looked upon himself as the protector of the church, immensely increased the importance of the prelates. The emperor’s idea was that, as church lands and offices could not be hereditary, their holders would necessarily favour the crown. But he forgot that the church had a head beyond Germany, and that the passion for the rights of an order may be no less intense than that for the rights of a family. While the empire was at peace with the popes, the prelates of the church did strongly uphold it, and their influence was unquestionably, on the whole, much higher than that of rude secular nobles.

But with the empire and the papacy in conflict, they could not but abide, as a rule, by the authority which had the most sacred claims to their loyalty. From all these circumstances it curiously happened that the sovereign who did more than any other to raise the royal power, was also the sovereign who, more than any other, wrought its decay.[f]

OTTO II (973-983 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [973-977 A.D.]]

Otto II was short in stature, but strong and muscular, and of an extremely ruddy complexion; his temperament was fiery, but modified by the refined and learned education he had received, for which he was indebted to the care of his mother, Adelheid; his wife, Theophano, also sympathised in his love of learning. Still, the Italian blood that flowed in his veins estranged him too much from Germany, and excited in him so strong an inclination for the south, that it became as impossible for his mind to be completely absorbed by care for the empire as it was for his rough but honest German subjects to adopt the pomp and refinement of his court.

Swabia, on the death of the pious Hedwig, was inherited by Otto, the son of Ludolf, between whom and Henry the Wrangler, of Bavaria, the ancient feud that had arisen on account of the extent of their frontiers between their fathers was still carried on. The emperor decided the question in Otto’s favour and the quarrelsome Henry instantly attempted to rouse the ancient national hatred of the Bavarians, and to stir them up to open revolt. He also entered into alliance with Boleslaw of Bohemia, but was anticipated in his designs by Otto, who threw him into prison, bestowed Bavaria on Otto of Swabia, and Carinthia on a graf, Henry Minor, the son of Berthold, probably a Babenberger; this graf sided with Henry of Bavaria, revolted, and was deposed, 974 A.D. Carinthia was consequently also bestowed upon Otto. In the following year, Harold, king of Denmark, suddenly invaded Saxony, whence he was successfully repulsed. Shortly after this event, Henry escaped from prison, again raised the standard of rebellion, and was joined by the Bohemians, but again suffered defeat, and was retaken prisoner (977 A.D.).

OTTO IN FRANCE AND ITALY

[Sidenote: [978-983 A.D.]]

In 978 A.D. war again broke out in the West, where Charles, the brother of Lothair, king of France, attempted to gain possession of Lorraine, but was repulsed by Otto, who advanced as far as Paris, and burned the suburbs. The city, nevertheless, withstood his attack; and on his return homewards, being surprised by the treacherous count of Hennegau, he was compelled to come to terms with his opponents; Charles was permitted to hold lower Lorraine in fee of the empire, and upper Lorraine was granted to Frederick, count of Bar.

Otto, whose natural inclinations led him to Italy, was speedily called there by the affairs of that country. Crescentius (Cencius) had usurped the government in Rome, and attempted to revive the memory of ancient times by causing himself to be created consul. The pope, Benedict VII, was assassinated by his orders, and replaced by a creature of his own, Bonifacius VII, in opposition to whom the Tuscan imperialists raised Benedict VIII to the papal chair. Otto’s presence in Rome (980 A.D.) quickly restored order. Crescentius was pardoned. Otto was visited during his stay in Rome by Hugh Capet, Lothair’s secret competitor for the throne of France, whose claim was countenanced by the emperor, on account of the ingratitude displayed by the French monarch for the services formerly rendered to his ancestors by the imperial house of Saxony.

Lower Italy next engaged the attention of the emperor, who attempted to take forcible possession of his wife’s portion. The Greeks, until now unceasingly at war with the Arabs, instantly united with them against their common enemy. Naples and Taranto were taken by Otto, and the allies were defeated near Cotrona (981 A.D.); Abul Kasim, the terror of lower Italy, and numbers of the Arabs, were left on the field of battle. The following campaign proved disastrous to the emperor, who, whilst engaged in a conflict with the Greeks on the seashore near Basantello, not far from Taranto, was suddenly attacked in the rear by the Arabs, and so completely routed that he was compelled to fly for his life, and owed his escape entirely to the rapidity of his horse. When wandering along the shore in momentary expectation of being captured by the enemy, he caught sight of a Grecian vessel, towards which he swam on horseback, in the hope of not being recognised by those on board. He was taken up. A slave recognised him, but instead of betraying him passed him off as one of the emperor’s chamberlains. The Greeks made for Rossano with the intention of taking on board the treasures of the pretended chamberlain, who, the instant the vessel approached the shore, suddenly leaped into the sea and escaped.

Lower Italy remained in the hands of the Greeks, and was governed by an exarch. The Arabians also retained possession of Sicily.

QUELLING OF THE SLAVS

[Sidenote: [983-1004 A.D.]]

Mistevoi, the valiant prince of the Abodriti, favoured the Christian religion, followed the banner of Otto II, and served under him in Italy; on his return to his native country, he sued for the hand of Mechtildis, the sister of Bernhard of Saxony, and on being insulted by the jealous Dietrich, who called him a dog and unworthy of a Christian or of a German bride, replied: “If we Slavs be dogs, we will prove to you that we can bite.” The pagan Slavs, who were ever ripe for revolt, obeyed his call the more readily, on account of the death of Ditmar, who with many other of their tyrannical rulers had fallen in the Italian war. An oath of eternal enmity against the Germans and the priests was taken before their idol, Radegast, and suddenly rising in open rebellion, they assassinated all who fell into their hands (983 A.D.), razed all the churches to the ground, and completely destroyed the cities of Hamburg and Oldenburg, besides those of Brandenburg and Havelburg.

The lands of Dietrich became one scene of desolation. Sixty priests were flayed alive. The rebels were, nevertheless, completely beaten by Dietrich and Riddag in a pitched battle near Tangermünde. The emperor, however, more just than his father had been, deprived the cruel Dietrich of his government, and bestowed it on Hodo. Riddag and his cousin, the above-mentioned graf Dedo, remained in Meissen, whence Riddag was afterwards expelled by the Bohemians. It was regained by his cousin and successor, the brave Eckhart, whose exploits were equalled by those of Bernhard Billung, who had returned from Italy in order to oppose the Abodriti on the western frontier. The obstinacy with which the Slavs, notwithstanding the terrible defeats, still held out, is proved by the fact of Brandenburg having been first retaken in 994.

The peaceable conversion of the Bohemians and Poles chiefly contributed to the gradual but complete subjection of the Slavs on the frontiers. The independence of Bohemia and Poland was only possible so long as the powerful Slavonic pagan states existed to their rear. This support was now lost. Poland was already Christianised, and the bishop of Prague, Adalbert, was a celebrated Bohemian saint. It was also about this period that Christianity took firm footing in Denmark, although not without fierce struggles.

Great changes took place also at this period in France. Lothair died (986 A.D.), and in the following year his only son, Louis V. Charles of Lorraine, Lothair’s brother, aspired to the throne, but was excluded by the Capetian party. The disesteem in which he was held on account of his licentious habits, and the refusal of assistance from Germany, where the emperor, dissatisfied with the conduct of Lothair, no longer favoured the Carlovingians, rendered him defenceless; he fell into the hands of his rival, Hugh Capet, and died in prison (993 A.D.). His son Otto, the last of the Carlovingian race, died, neglected and despised (1004 A.D.).

OTTO III (983-1002 A.D.)