But in 968 the German monarch made a
surprise
attack on Apulia and,
only after failing to take Bari, did he send Liudprand of Cremona to
Constantinople to conclude the marriage-treaty.
only after failing to take Bari, did he send Liudprand of Cremona to
Constantinople to conclude the marriage-treaty.
Cambridge Medieval History - v3 - Germany and the Western Empire
Pope Agapetus, at Alberic's instigation, refused
his request to be crowned Emperor, for the Roman prince had no mind
to nullify his life's work by introducing a foreign Roman Emperor; and
the king's marriage to the rescued Adelaide roused against him a domestic
enemy. His son Liudolf, in thorough discontent at the influence of his
stepmother and her ally Henry of Bavaria, departed for Germany to
scheme revolt. Otto himself followed in February 952, having after all
acquired only some half of the kingdom of which he assumed the title.
He left his son-in-law Duke Conrad of Lorraine with troops to hold
Pavia and continue the war. The king had scarcely gone, however,
before Conrad and Berengar II came to terms, both perhaps being well
aware how little trust could be placed in the Lombard magnates.
Together they came to Otto at Magdeburg in April, but Otto's terms
were not so lenient as Conrad imagined. Berengar was received with
haughty discourtesy, and dismissed to attend a diet at Augsburg in
August, whither he was accompanied by the chief Lombard prelates.
There he and Adalbert became Otto's vassals for the Regnum Italicum
from which they were compelled to cede the marches of Verona, Friuli
and Istria to Duke Henry of Bavaria. Thus Otto, although withdrawing
from Italy, kept its eastern gateway in German hands.
Berengar II returned to Italy burning with wrath against the bishops
and nobles who had caused his disasters and the mutilation of his kingdom.
He and his queen Willa earned an evil name for greed and cruelty, since
they needed wealth to enrich the enfeebled kingship and were hungry for
revenge. Among their lay foes Adalbert-Atto underwent a long vain
siege in his castle of Canossa, but the chief sufferers were the churchmen.
The series of grants to them, which had continued so persistently under
former kings, almost ceases under Berengar. At Milan, Manasse's rival
CH. VII.
## p. 160 (#206) ############################################
160
The chronicler Liudprand
a
Adalman was induced to resign, and he himself was dispossessed in favour
of a new Archbishop, Walpert. Exiles began to make their way to Otto's
court, among them our chief informant about these Italian kings, the
chronicler Liudprand, who thereby became the bitter enemy of Berengar II
with his house and wreaked his revenge in his historical writings. If
there had survived another business-like Italian chronicle, like that of
Flodoard for France, Liudprand would have earned more gratitude from
posterity than he does for his vivid narrative, his pointed character-
sketches, and the brush-like abundance of " local colour" with which he
overlays his scanty facts. As it is, in his Antapodosis (Retribution) we
have a difficulty in obtaining a firm foothold for history amid the crumb-
ling and quaking mass of rancorous, if often contemporary, gossip which
Liudprand loves to heap up. Of noble birth, bred at King Hugh's court,
and once Berengar II's secretary, he was in the best position to give
accurate and full information, but he had a soul above documents. It
is hardly his fault that he depended on oral tradition for all events before
his own time, for there seems to have been no Italian chronicle for him
to use, but he evidently made no record at the time and when he wrote
rested wholly on a memory which rejected dates and political circum-
stances and was singularly retentive of amorous scandal however devoid
of probability. He does not even tell in his unfinished work the cause
and events of his persecution by Berengar to which he frequently alludes,
while sketching with fine precision the diary of his reception at Constan-
tinople whither he first went as Berengar's envoy. For what interested
him he could remember and tell to the life. To his credit be it said
he was no liar, though he may be found suppressing an unpleasant fact;
what he heard he told, and perhaps we may grant him that he gave a
ready, and sometimes a determined, belief to the gossip of anterooms and
the tradition of wrathful factions. It is unfortunate, for he was a practical
statesman, and knew and sometimes reveals the motives of his times.
Berengar had had a free hand in Italy, and had even recovered
Verona, because Otto was occupied in German revolts and frontier wars,
but in 955 occurred the decisive victory of the Lechfeld in which Otto
put an end once for all to Hungarian raids. He had succeeded
where all the Italian kings had failed, he had rescued central Europe,
and was therefrom with little doubt its destined ruler. His intervention
in Italy, Henry of Bavaria being now dead, was renewed by the agency
of his reconciled rebel son Liudolf. In 957 the duke made his invasion
with the usual rapid success. Berengar II fled, Adalbert was defeated
in battle, and all Lombardy had submitted when Liudolf died of fever at
Pombia near Lake Maggiore, the first German victor to lose his gains
owing to the alien climate of Italy.
The death of Liudolf was followed by the immediate recovery of his
lost ground by Berengar. He came back with a new series of bitter
feuds to pursue. Walpert of Milan and other prelates fled to Otto, and
## p. 161 (#207) ############################################
Otto's second invasion
161
Manasse became once more a pluralist by returning to Milan as Berengar's
partisan. Among the lay magnates Marquess Otbert went into exile; a
general disaffection existed among those who retained their possessions.
The king was still eager as Hugh had been before him to amass an im-
posing royal demesne and to create trusty great vassals. Hitherto central
Italy had been faithful to him ; now, however, Spoleto seems an enemy,
perhaps owing to the new turn of affairs at Rome. On his deathbed in
954 prince Alberic had bound the Romans by oath to elect his son and
heir by Alda, John-Octavian, Pope when Agapetus should die. In
December 955 the promise was kept and the boy became Pope as John XII.
Thus the Pope recovered control of Rome by uniting with the Papacy
the chiefship of the strong faction of Alberic. Any design of a perma-
.
nent principate must have been given up; it was perhaps too anomalous,
and it is significant that John renewed the long forgotten habit of dating
by the years of the Byzantine Emperors. But the Roman nobles remained
in power to the continued subjection of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy.
John XII himself was a dissolute boy whose pontificate was a glaring
scandal. No gleam of competence redeemed his debauchery, though he
was not without secular ambitions. About 959 he made war on the co-
regent princes of Capua-Benevento, Paldolf I (Pandulf) Ironhead and
Landolf III, with the aid of Marquess Theobald II of Spoleto. He
failed, and gave way, for prince Gisulf of Salerno assisted his neighbours;
and then Berengar attacked Spoleto on an unknown pretext. Theobald
was driven out, and Spoleto taken over by the king possibly to be con-
ferred on his own son Guido. Did Berengar demand the imperial crown?
In any case King Adalbert ravaged Roman territory, and John XII
was in such straits as to appeal for German intervention, thus strangely
shewing how the ancient policy of the Popes could recur in the unclerical
son of Alberic.
It was in the summer of 960 that the Pope's envoys, the Cardinal-
deacon John and the scriniarius Azo, reached Otto the Great in Saxony.
The Pope's prayer for help was seconded by the Lombard exiles and by
the messages of numerous magnates. Otto was now unembarrassed in
other directions, and could resume his old schemes with the knowledge
that he would have at last allies and support south of the Apennines.
He was not ready to move, however, till August 961, when he crossed the
Brenner Pass in force. Adalbert may have attempted to gather troops
to bar the defiles north of Verona, but the universal defection of counts
and bishops made resistance impossible, and the German king entered
Pavia, whence Berengar had fled after spitefully burning the royal palace.
Otto and the infant son Otto II whom he had left in Germany were at
once acknowledged as co-regent kings of Italy without further cere-
mony. All their deserted rivals could do was to hold out in strong castles
on the spurs of the Alps and in the Apennines where one magnate at
least, Marquess Hubert of Tuscany, remained true to them. Otto was
C. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. VII.
11
## p. 162 (#208) ############################################
162
Otto's imperial coronation
able to disregard his enemies while he proceeded through Ravenna, thus
avoiding the Tuscan route, to receive the promised imperial crown. On
31 January 962 he encamped on Monte Mario outside Rome, and according
to custom certain of his vassals took on his behalf an oath to respect the
Pope's rights. The custom was old, but the terms of the oath were new! ,
for John XII wished for an ally, not a suzerain, and the German king
promised not to hold placita or intervene in Rome without the Pope's
assent, to restore such alienated papal lands as he should become master
of, and to bind whomever he should appoint to rule the Regnum Italicum
to be the Pope's protector. The Romans disliked a foreigner, and Otto
bought his way by elusive promises and fallacious expectations. On
2 February he entered the Leonine city and was crowned with Adelaide
in St Peter's by the Pope. A Roman Emperor of the West, successor
of Charlemagne, once more existed. It was of evil omen that Otto's
sword-bearer stood on guard against his assassination while the sacring .
was enacted.
On their side Pope John and the Romans swore fealty to the Emperor
with an express promise not to aid or receive Berengar and Adalbert.
They found that Otto considered the situation changed by his new dignity.
It is true that the privilege he granted to the Papacy on 13 February was
even more generous than the old Carolingian donations in the matter of
territory—for it added a large strip of Spoletan land to Rome and its
duchy, the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, the Tuscan territory, the Sabina
and the southern patrimonies, not to mention the vaguer supposed do-
nation of 1774 which was now confirmed without any clear idea of its
meaning. But the pact of 824 was also expressly revived, by which the
election of the Pope was submitted to imperial confirmation, and the
Emperor's suzerainty in the papal lands was reserved and exercised in
Rome itself by his missus. The scheme of setting up a vassal king of
Italy, if ever really entertained, was abandoned. Although the terms
of Otto's oath were not precisely infringed, the change in the spirit of
the new treaty was manifest-Pope John had become a subject? .
There was still Berengar II to conquer, and the Emperor returned to
Pavia, driving Hubert of Tuscany into exile on the way. Berengar was
holding out in the impregnable castle of S. Leo in the Apennines, queen
Willa and her sons in strongholds near the lakes in the north. Willa
was now compelled to surrender on terms which allowed her to rejoin
her husband : their sons were pressed hard, and Adalbert made his escape
to the Saracens of Fraxinetum and Corsica. There he entered into re-
1 Unless the lost charter of Charles the Bald to John VIII really formed a
precedent. Cf. Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma (M. G. H. Script. 111. ,
p. 722).
? This account is based on the view that the Privilegium Ottonianum is substantially
the text of the privilege granted by Otto to John XII, the existing document being
a copy made for the next Pope, Leo VIII.
## p. 163 (#209) ############################################
Subjugation of Rome and the Papacy
163
lations with Pope John who was heartily weary of his new subordination.
Meantime Otto was secure in the north, his partisans were placed in power,
Liudprand was Bishop of Cremona, Adalbert-Atto Count of Modena and
Reggio, Otto's nephew Henry of Bavaria in firm possession of the march
of Verona. So the news of the Pope's dubious loyalty only urged the
Emperor to finish with Berengar by blockading him in S. Leo in May
963, while he still negotiated with John. The Pope on his side had
grounds of complaint, for the Exarchate had not been restored to the
Apostolic See on the ground that Berengar must first be conquered. On
the other hand Otto had documentary proof that John was trying to
rouse the Hungarians against him, and when he heard that Adalbert
had been welcomed by John at Civitavecchia he seems to have decided
to take the extreme measure of deposing his quondam ally. It was a
hazardous course, for in the general belief the Pope could be brought
to no man's judgment, and the Romans, even those not of Alberic's
faction, resented any diminution of their autonomy. But Otto knew that
John XII's scandalous life and government had made men inclined to
admit even a Pope's deposition, and were driving his Roman opponents
even to alliance with the foreign Emperor. Accordingly in October
Otto left a blockading force at S. Leo and marched on Rome, where his
partisans rose. John XII and Adalbert fled to Tivoli laden with much
church-treasure, and the Romans surrendered. They gave hostages and
swore never to elect a Pope save by the choice of Otto and his son. The
engagement was novel, going far beyond the Carolingian right to confirm
an election and receive the Pope's fealty, but Alberic had already exercised
the same power and Otto's imperial crown was unsafe without it. Canonical
form was as nearly as possible observed in John's deposition. A synod,
in which the Pope's central Italian suffragans predominated, was presided
over by the Emperor and attended by the Roman clergy and nobles ;
John was accused of gross misconduct and was summoned by Emperor
and synod to clear himself in person. A brief letter in reply merely
threatened with excommunication and suspension any bishops who should
elect a new Pope. The synod sent a second summons retorting the threat
and criticizing the illiteracy of John whose Latin smacked of the ver-
nacular, but John was not to be found by the messengers. It was clear
that the three canonical summonses could not be delivered to the culprit,
and Otto now came forward in his own person and denounced John for
his breach of fealty to himself. Thereupon on 4 December Emperor and
synod declared John deposed and elected the protoscriniarius, a layman,
Pope as Leo VIII.
Otto was in the full tide of success. Just after Christmas S. Leo at
last surrendered and Berengar II and his wife were sent captive to
Bamberg where they both died in 966. So Otto confidently dismissed
much of his army. But John XII was stronger than he seemed, for his
uncanonical deposition and a layman's uncanonical election had roused
а
CH. VII.
11-2
## p. 164 (#210) ############################################
164
The Romano-Germanic Empire
qualms among a section of the churchmen, and the Romans were fretting
under their subjugation. A sudden rising failed before the swords of
Otto's tried warriors; yet, when Otto went eastwards to take possession
of the Spoletan duchy, John XII had only to appear before Rome with
troops for the gates to be opened. Pope Leo just escaped with his life,
and John was reinstated. After mutilating his former envoys to Otto,
John and Azo, presumably on a charge of forgery, a synod of the nearest
bishops in February 964 annulled Otto's synod in which most of them
had participated and declared Leo an intruder. Otto, whose missus had
been ill-treated, naturally refused to change his policy. While his army
was collecting, however, John XII died on 14 May of paralysis, and the
Romans made a bid for independence by electing a learned and virtuous
Pope, Benedict V. It was a vain manoeuvre. Otto starved out the city,
mutilating all who tried to pass his blockading lines. On 23 June the
surrender was made, and Leo VIII reinstated. Benedict was deposed
and sent to a saintly exile at Hamburg. By now at any rate it was
agreed that Otto's grants to the Popes were only for show, for of all the
lands bestowed by his charter the duchy of Rome and the Sabina alone
were left to the Papacy.
In this way Otto the Great brought into existence the Romano-
Germanic Empire of the West, or, to give it its later and convenient
name, the Holy Roman Empire, compounded by a union of the German
kingdom with the Regnum Italicum and with the dignity of Roman
Emperor. It was intended and supposed to be a revival of the Empire
of Charlemagne which had broken up on the deposition of Charles the
Fat, although its title had remained until the fall of Berengar I to express
a protectorate of the Papacy. It was also a reassertion of that claim to
pre-eminence in Western Europe which had been made by Otto's pre-
decessor Arnulf as chief of the Carolingian house. Arnulf's Empire,
indeed, furnishes the transitional form between that of Otto and that of
Charlemagne, for Otto's title implied less than Charlemagne's had.
Otto was considered the lay chief of Western Christendom, its defender
from heathen and barbarians, the supreme maintainer of justice and
peace; but, whereas Charlemagne was ruler of church and state, Otto's
power over the church was protective in its character. The Pope was
unquestioned spiritual chief of Christendom; Otto was at the same time
his suzerain with regard to the papal lands, and his subject as a
member of the Church. The arrangement was only workable because
the Papacy was weak. In secular matters Otto's Empire lacked the
universality of Charlemagne’s. Not only were France and Christian
.
Spain outside its frontiers, but within it the nascent force of nationality
was beginning to make itself felt. The German monarch was a foreigner
in subject Italy, disguised as the fact might be by the absence of national
feeling among the Italian magnates. “He had with him peoples and
tribes whose tongues the people did not know. ” This meant constant
a
## p. 165 (#211) ############################################
The government of Italy
165
disaffection, constant suppression. The popular hatred burnt most
fiercely at Rome and found utterance in a Roman monk': “Woe to thee,
Rome, that thou art crushed and trodden down by so many peoples ;
who hast been seized by a Saxon king, and thy folk slaughtered and thy
strength reduced to naught ! ”
In the details of government, also, Otto had not the control which
Charlemagne exercised. Although the decline of the royal power must
not be overrated, especially in Germany, even there feudalism, seignorial
independence and state disorganisation, had made great strides. In
Italy, where he was too often an absentee, the royal demesne was
depleted and the lay vassals were out of hand. Otto met this difficulty
by a clever balancing of the two groups by whom he had been called in,
the great secular magnates and the bishops. Of these, the first were
the Marquesses, a title given in Italy to the ruler of several counties.
Towards them Otto was conciliatory; even Hubert in the end was
restored to Tuscany, and the Lombards, some four or five in number,
were the Emperor's faithful vassals. They were survivors in the struggle
for existence among the counts which had raged in the dissolution of
the Carolingian order. Under the pressure of civil war, of Hungarian
and Saracen ravage, old dynasts had vanished, new had come and had
either vanished too, or had remained weakened. In their place or by
their side ruled the bishops in the Lombard plain. Since 876 they had
been permanent royal missi in their dioceses, and thus had at least in
name supervision over the counts. Like other magnates the bishops
during the years of anarchy had increased their “immunity” inside their
domains, by increase of exemptions and jurisdictions and by grants of
the profitable royal rights of market and toll and the like, while those
domains also grew through the piety or competitive bribery of the kings
and nobles. Not least among the sources of the bishops' power was
their influence over their cities, inherited from Roman times. In anarchy
and disaster they stepped into the breach at the head of their fellow-
citizens, whatever civic feeling existed gathered round them, and fragment
by fragment they were acquiring in their cathedral cities the public
functions” whether of count or king. In its completed form this
piecemeal process resulted in the city and a radius of land round it
being excised from its county and removed from the count's jurisdiction.
Thus Bergamo, Parma, Cremona, Modena, Reggio and Trieste were at
Otto's accession under the rule of their bishops. Otto came as the ally
of the bishops and deliverer of the Church. He exercised whether by
pressure on the electors or by mere nomination the appointment to
vacant sees and great abbeys, and thus gained non-hereditary vassals
of his own choice who were the safest supporters of his monarchy. He
favoured of set policy these instruments of his power as counter-
weights to the feudal magnates. Fresh cities, Asti, Novara, and Penne
1 Benedict. S. Andreae Chron. c. 39.
CH. VII.
## p. 166 (#212) ############################################
166
Otto's attempt to annex South Italy
in the Abruzzi, were wholly given over to their bishops, and the im-
munities on episcopal lands steadily grew, so that they too were in
process of being excised from the counties in which they lay. The work
was slowly done by Otto and his successors both in Italy and Germany,
but there was no countering tendency. The functions granted were
either those of the hereditary counts or those which the kings had been
unable to perform. By transference of these to the churchmen Otto and
his heirs recovered control of much local government by seeming to give
it away, and secured faithful, powerful adherents selected for capacity.
Their monarchy came to rest, especially in Italy, on their control of the
Church ; all the more essential to them therefore became the subjection
or the firm alliance of the Papacy.
Scarcely had Otto left Italy when the death of his nominee, Pope
Leo VIII, early in 965 endangered his new Empire. The Romans with
a show of duty sent an embassy to beg for the exile Benedict as Pope,
and Adalbert appeared in Lombardy to raise a revolt. Duke Burchard
of Swabia, indeed, defeated Adalbert, and the Romans elected the
Bishop of Narni as Pope John XIII at the Emperor's command, but,
though John was of Alberic's kindred, the mere fact that he represented
German domination enabled rival nobles to raise the populace and drive
him into exile. He was not restored till in 966 the news of Otto's
descent into Italy with an army provoked a reaction. Punishment was
dealt out to the rebels, severer for the Roman enemies of the Pope than
for the Lombard rebels against Otto. John XIII's exile seems to have
occasioned fresh schemes of the Emperor. Paldolf I Ironhead of Capua-
Benevento, with whom the Pope had found an asylum, appeared in
Rome in January 967 and was there invested by Otto with the march of
Spoleto, at the same time becoming Otto's vassal for his native princi-
pality. Otto thus created a central Italian vassal of the first rank, and
enlarged his Empire. One motive, no doubt, was the wish to give peace
and security to the Spoletan march ; but the main purpose was clearly
to begin the annexation of South Italy to the Regnum Italicum. This
design, which was in pursuance of old Carolingian claims, was bound to
find resistance in the Eastern Empire. The Byzantines looked on Otto's
imperial title as a barbaric impertinence; they considered Capua-
Benevento as part of the Longobardic theme; and they were determined
to maintain their dominion in Italy.
The Eastern Roman Emperors were always handicapped in their
dealings in Italy; their province there was too important to be let go,
too
remote to be the object of their chief energies. The fall of King Hugh
had been followed by outbreaks in Apulia, and at the same time the Saracen
raids became a grave danger when the Fatimite Caliph Manşūr once again
recovered the revolted colony of Sicily in 947. Calabria was overrun
by his troops; even Naples was besieged; and, although in 956 the
patrician Marianus Argyrus restored Byzantine authority over subjects
## p. 167 (#213) ############################################
Compromise with Byzantium
167
and vassals, the peace which suspended, rather than closed, the Saracen
war was no more conclusive than the fighting. When a celebrated
general Nicephorus Phocas became Emperor in 963 his vigorous effort
to succour the last semi-autonomous Greeks of Sicily ended in disaster,
and an ignominious peace. Now he found himself on the defensive
against the aggression of the new Romano-Germanic Empire and the
Latin West. John XIII was trying to revive the decadent Latin Church
in south Italy by carving out new archbishoprics for Capua and Benevento
from his own Roman province; Otto the Great was acquiring Capua-
Benevento as a vassal state. At first it seemed as if an arrangement
were possible, for Otto asked for a Byzantine bride, Theophano, daughter
of Romanus II, for his son Otto II, whom at Christmas 967 he had
caused the Pope to crown co-regent Emperor; and his Venetian envoy
promised that Otto would respect the Byzantine dominions in Italy.
But in 968 the German monarch made a surprise attack on Apulia and,
only after failing to take Bari, did he send Liudprand of Cremona to
Constantinople to conclude the marriage-treaty. Otto must have thought
it easier to fix the frontier with the territory he claimed already in his
possession. The natural effect on the rude and soldierly Nicephorus was
to make him badger Liudprand and prepare an expedition. The war
was indecisive. The exiled King Adalbert, Nicephorus's Italian ally, could
do nothing and eventually fled to French Burgundy where in 975 he died,
while his brother Conrad submitted to Otto and received the march of
Ivrea. Otto on his side when he warred in person could take no Apulian
town and Paldolf Ironhead was captured by the Greeks, who yet were
soon defeated again. It was the murder of Nicephorus in December 969
which brought a solution. The new Byzantine Emperor, John Tzimisces,
had his hands full in the East; Otto saw the design of conquering Greek
Italy was hopeless. By the intervention of Paldolf, released for the
purpose, they came to terms, and in April 972 Theophano was married
at Rome to Otto II. Events make it clear that Otto kept the suzerainty
of Capua-Benevento and abandoned further schemes. Paldolf Ironhead's
wide central Italian dominion after all formed a convenient buffer-state
for both Empires, no matter to which he was a vassal.
Otto the Great did not long survive the settlement with Eastern
Rome, as he died in Thuringia on 7 May 973. His character belongs to
German history, but his work affected all Europe. He had created the
Holy Roman Empire and in so doing had revived the conception of
Charlemagne which moulded the thought and the development of Western
Europe. The union of Germany and north Italy was his doing and the
fate of both for centuries derives from the bias he gave their history.
So, too, in immediate results he closes one era and begins another,
for the times of anarchy and moral collapse following the wreck of
Charlemagne's Empire come to an end, and a period of revival in
government, in commerce and in civilisation is ushered in by the com-
CH. VII.
## p. 168 (#214) ############################################
168
Reduction of Fraxinetum
1
parative peace he gave. The problem of defence against the barbarian
invader, which had baffled the fleeting Italian kings and had contributed
to their ruin, was solved. Otto himself crushed the Hungarian hordes
for good and all: it was fitting that in his reign the Saracens of
Fraxinetum also, who so long preyed on the routes between Italy and
France, should be abolished. The impulse to this deliverance was
given by a crowning outrage. St Maiolus, Abbot of Cluny, revered
throughout the West, was captured in July 972 while crossing the Great
St Bernard Pass with a numerous caravan of fellow travellers. The Cluniac
monks at once raised the enormous ransom demanded by the Saracens,
but the indignation roused by the event and perhaps a hope of so great
a booty at length moved the great barons on either side of the Alps to
act in concert. The Saracens who had seized St Maiolus were cut off
and destroyed, and a federation of nobles led by the counts of Provence
and Ardoin of Turin closed in on Fraxinetum itself. The Saracen colony
was extirpated. Once more the Alpine passes were free to travellers,
save for exactions by the nobles and occasional brigandage? .
The Regnum Italicum could now rest under the shadow of the strong
monarchy, untroubled save by the violence of the nobles and the un-
appeased strife of Roman factions. Otto the Great had nominated in
973 Benedict VI to succeed to the Papacy, but a relative of John XIII
and of Alberic, Crescentius, son of a Theodora, thrust in a usurper, the
deacon Franco, as Boniface VII in 974. Yet a reaction, perhaps pro-
voked by the true Pope's murder, soon came, and the imperial missus,
Count Sico, was able to instal the Bishop of Sutri as Benedict VII,
although Franco contrived to escape to Constantinople with a quantity
of church-treasure. The revolution had not even required a German
army, much less an imperial campaign.
Not till December 980 did Otto II (the Red) find leisure or occasion
to proceed to Italy. He came to be reconciled with his mother Adelaide,
and perhaps to give her some voice in affairs. The young Emperor,
then aged twenty-five, was not eminently gifted with a ruler's wisdom;
but he was ambitious and energetic, and his ambitions now were directed
to that conquest of the south which his father had abandoned. There
was much that was tempting in the situation of Byzantine Italy, much
that seemed to call for intervention. In answer to the proceedings of
Otto the Great an attempt had been made by the Byzantines to unify
the administration by transmuting the strategos of Longobardia into the
catapan or viceroy of Italy with a superior authority over the strategos
of Calabria. This new system was soon put to hard proof. In 969 the
Fatimite caliphs conquered Egypt, and thus became hostile neighbours
to the East Romans in Syria. War broke out, and spread to the western
provinces of both powers. Once more Calabria was ravaged by the
· The county of Aosta appears to have become again a part of Jurane Burgundy,
as a result of this war.
## p. 169 (#215) ############################################
Otto II's failure in South Italy
169
Muslims under the Sicilian emir Abu'l-ķāsim in 976 and Apulia suffered
in the next year. The only relief given was due to the local payment of
blackmail, for the Byzantines, who had begun the war in spirited fashion
by the momentary capture of Messina, were paralysed by the campaigns
in Syria, by the civil wars which followed Tzimisces' death, and by the
disaffection of the Apulians.
Otto the Red succumbed to the temptation. The Saracen danger
under Abu'l-ķāsim grew ever more menacing and might affect his own
dominions. Civil war in the East and disaffection in Italy made the
Byzantines weak. He might at one and the same time repel the Muslims
and bring the Regnum Italicum to its natural limits. In September 981 he
had reached Lucera on the Apulian frontier when he was recalled to
secure his rear. Paldolf Ironhead had soon extended his central State.
When Prince Gisulf of Salerno was dethroned in 973 by a complot of
rebellious nobles and his jealous neighbours of Amalfi and Naples, it
was Paldolf who overthrew the usurper Landolf, his own kinsman, and
restored the old, childless prince as his client. In 977 he succeeded as
prince in Salerno. On Ironhead's death, however, in March 981 his
.
great dominion dissolved. One son, Landolf IV, inherited Capua-Bene-
vento, and another, Paldolf, ruled Salerno. Now revolutions broke out.
.
The Beneventans were restive under Capuan rule, and declared Ironhead's
nephew Paldolf II their prince while Landolf IV retained Capua: the
Salernitans drove out their Paldolf, and introduced the Byzantine ally,
Duke Manso III of Amalfi. Otto accepted the separation of Capua and
Benevento, but he besieged Salerno, and obtained its submission at the
price of recognising Manso. He seemed to have secured a new -vassal ;
he had lost the benefit of surprise and the halo of irresistible success.
When with large reinforcements from Germany he marched through
Apulia in 982, the towns did not join him, although Bari rebelled on its
own account', and Taranto surrendered after a long siege. There he
heard of the coming of the Saracen foe from whom he claimed to deliver
his intended conquest.
Abu'l-ķāsim had proclaimed a Holy War and crossed to Calabria.
Otto advanced to meet him. At Rossano he left the Empress Theophano
and, moving south, captured the Saracens' advance guard in an unnamed
town? He met the main body on the east coast, perhaps near Stilos.
Headlong courage and no generalship marked his conduct of the battle,
for he charged and broke the Saracen centre, without perceiving their
reserves amid the hills on his flank. Abu'l-ķāsim had been killed, but
meanwhile the exhausted Germans were attacked by the fresh troops on
their flank and overwhelmed. Some four thousand were slain including
1 It was recaptured by the Byzantines June 983; Lupus Protospath. is a year too
early in his dates here.
* Perhaps Cotrone, see Gay, L'Italie méridionale et l'Empire byzantin, p. 337.
3 Or else the Capo delle Colonne.
CH. VII.
## p. 170 (#216) ############################################
170
Growth and danger of Venice
the flower of the German nobles; many were made prisoners; the
Emperor himself only eluded capture by swimming to a Byzantine
vessel, from which in turn he had to escape by leaping overboard when
it brought him near Rossano.
With the remnants of his army Otto beat a retreat to Salerno and
Rome. As the news spread over the Empire his prestige waned, and a
mutinous spirit arose in Italy which was, however, kept in check by the
steady adherence of Marquesses and Bishops to the German monarchy.
Otto did his best to re-establish his position. In May 983 he held a
German Diet at Verona, and there obtained the election as King of
Germany of his infant son Otto, whom he thereupon sent north to be
crowned. At the same time he made an effort to bring the independent
sea-power of Venice to subjection. Venice had prospered exceedingly
during the century. Exempt from Hungarian ravage, she had contrived
to hold the piracy of the distant Saracens and of the Slavs of Dalmatia
in check. She had shaken, off Byzantine suzerainty and maintained a
privileged intercourse with the Regnum Italicum. She had already
become the chief intermediary between Constantinople and the West;
her wealth, derived partly from her questionable exports of iron, wood
and slaves to the Saracens, was growing rapidly. Even when she was
obliged to surrender the extra-territoriality of her citizens within the
Western Empire to Otto the Great, she obtained in return the perpetuity
of her treaty with him. But she had her special dangers. One was the
effort of the Doges to erect an hereditary monarchy, like that of Amalfi.
The other, caused largely by this effort, was the rise of two embittered
factions among the mercantile nobles who held the chief influence in the
State. These troubles affected her relations with Otto II, for the
aspiring Doge Pietro Candiano IV who had been murdered in 976 had
married Gualdrada of Tuscany, niece of the Empress Adelaide. The
efforts of Doge Tribuno Menio did indeed result in a hollow reconciliation
at Verona in June 983. Otto II restored Venice her privileges with the
airs of a suzerain, while Venice tacitly maintained her independence.
Hardly was the bargain struck, however, before Otto broke it. The civil
discord of Venice had ended in the bitter hatred of the rival families of
Caloprini and Morosini. Now Stephen Caloprini fled to Verona and
offered to be the Emperor's genuine vassal if restored to Venice as Doge.
Otto characteristically seized the chance of conquest. Venice was strictly
blockaded by land, and might have been forced to yield had not the
Emperor, enfeebled by a foreign climate, died of an over-dose of medicine
(four drachms of aloes) on 7 December 983.
Otto had been preparing for new aggression towards the south, where
Transemund, the new Marquess of Spoleto, and Aloara of Capua, Paldolf
Ironhead's widow, might be relied on. His impatient policy had just
been shewn in the promotion of a foreign Pope to succeed Benedict VII,
for John XIV had been Peter, Bishop of Pavia and Arch-chancellor of
## p. 171 (#217) ############################################
The minority of Otto III
171
Italy. The restive Romans, still mindful of the old prohibition of
translations, rose against the Lombard Pope at Easter 984. Their
leader was that Franco, now once more Boniface VII, who had been let
loose with his treasure by the incensed Byzantines. He disgraced him-
self once more by causing the death of his imprisoned rival, and made
himself so hated in his brief and tyrannous pontificate that on his death
in 985 the mob outraged his corpse through the streets. He had really
bought the Papacy from those who could sell it, the faction led by the
house of the Crescentii. By them Alberic's rule of Rome was revived in
the person of the “patrician” Crescentius II, son of Crescentius de
Theodora. There was, however, a difference; while preserving his
autonomous power, Crescentius II avoided a breach with the Empire.
He could take this anomalous position all the more easily because the
Empire and the Regnum Italicum were in some sort vacant. The child
Otto III of Germany was acknowledged as rightful heir, but not as
sovereign, in Italy, where the interregnum was filled by admitting the
claim of the two crowned Augustas, Theophano and Adelaide, to act for
the future Emperor, this constitutional subtlety being made acceptable
by the loyalty of Marquesses and Bishops to the German connexion.
Otto II's aggressions against Venice and the Byzantines were promptly
abandoned, and the peace of the Empire, tempered by the never wholly
quiescent local broils, continued its beneficent work. Adelaide was soon
thrust aside by Theophano who, Greek though she was, troubled with
unruly German magnates and hampered by Slav revolt beyond the Elbe,
yet contrived to rule. In 989 she came to Rome, partly to reaffirm the
Empire, partly perhaps in rivalry with Adelaide. Crescentius II evidently
came to terms, which preserved his patriciate, and she exercised without
hindrance all the functions of sovereignty, even being styled Emperor by
her puzzled chancery unused to a female reign. It was not, however, all
by merit of the adroit and firm-willed lady, for, when a year after her
return to Germany she died in June 991, and Adelaide took her place,
the fabric of the Empire continued unshaken. The idea of the Ottonian
monarchy had captivated men's imagination, the benefits it conferred on
lands so recently wretched were indisputable, and the Italian magnates
knew their own interests well enough to be persistently loyal.
At the head of the magnates stood Hugh of Tuscany, who for some
years had ruled Spoleto as well, thus once more forming a mid-Italian
buffer-fief, like that of his father Hubert, or of Paldolf Ironhead. It
was Hugh who, when a revolution broke out at Capua on Aloara's death,
set up a second son of Paldolf Ironhead's, Laidulf, as prince, and main-
tained the suzerainty of the Western Empire. At Rome, however,
Crescentius II exercised unchallenged sway. Pope John XV had not
even the support of the stricter clergy against his lay oppressor, for he
himself had a bad name for avarice and nepotism. But intervention by
the German monarch became certain. Otto III was now fifteen and of
CH. VII.
## p. 172 (#218) ############################################
172
Otto III reduces Rome
$
-
2
age; his advisers were anxious to put an end to the anomalous formal
vacancy of the Empire; and in response to Pope John's invitation the
king crossed the Brenner Pass with an army in February 996. No one
resisted him, although the inevitable riot between Germans and Italians
took place at Verona. At Pavia, where he received the fealty of the
magnates, he heard of John XV's death ; at the next stage, Ravenna, he
was met by a Roman embassy, which submissively requested him to name
a new Pope. His choice was as bold as possible; Otto II had only
promoted a Lombard; Otto III selected his own cousin Bruno of
Carinthia, a youth of twenty-four, who styled himself Gregory V. Thus
for the first time a German ascended the papal throne. It must have
been gall and wormwood to the Romans, but they made no resistance.
On 21 May Otto III was crowned Emperor by his nominee.
Neither Pope nor Emperor was disposed to allow the patriciate to
continue. Crescentius II was tried for his offences against John XV,
condemned to exile, and then pardoned at the Pope's request. The
victory had been so easy that Otto speedily left Italy. Gregory, how-
ever, was already in difficulties. He was a rash young man, who was
also open to bribes, and the Romans hated their German Pope. In
September he escaped from their hands, and Crescentius resumed power.
Gregory, safe in Pavia, might excommunicate the usurper and act as the
admitted head of the Church. Crescentius did not hesitate to set up an
Anti-Pope. His choice was cunning, if hopeless. Otto III, following
the steps of his predecessors, had sent to Constantinople to demand the
hand of a Greek princess. One envoy died on the mission; the other,
John Philagathus, Archbishop of Piacenza, had recently returned with a
Byzantine embassy to continue negotiations. This prelate was a Greek
of Calabria, who had been the trusted adviser of Theophano and had
obtained the independence of his see from Ravenna owing to her in-
Auence. Being the tutor and godfather of the Emperor, he might seem
a persona grata to him. Perhaps he shared Theophano's policy of
alliance with the Roman patrician. In any case he accepted Crescentius's
offer. But he was everywhere unpopular, a foreigner at Rome, an ingrate
further north, and Otto III was resolved. Late in 997 the Emperor
returned to Italy with imposing forces. By the usual route of Ravenna
he reached Rome with Pope Gregory in February 998. There was no
real resistance. John XVI fled to the Campagna to be captured, blinded
and mutilated by his pursuers and then made a public spectacle by the
revengeful Pope. Crescentius, who held out in the castle of Sant'Angelo,
the ancient tomb of Hadrian, soon was taken and executed. Otto and
Gregory hoped thus to crush the indomitable independence of the
Romans. They only added an injured hero to the traditions of medieval
Rome, for Crescentius was widely believed, possibly with truth, to have
surrendered upon assurances of safety.
Otto was still in Italy, alternately employed in affairs of Church and
## p. 173 (#219) ############################################
Schemes of Otto III
173
State, and in the pilgrimage and penance dear to his unbalanced character,
when Pope Gregory died in February 999. True to his imperial policy,
the Emperor selected another non-Roman, Gerbert of Aurillac, the first
French, as Gregory had been the first German Pope. Gerbert, now
Sylvester II, was the most learned man of his age, so learned that legend
made him a magician. Bred in the Aquitanian abbey of Aurillac, he
knew both Spain and Italy, but the best of his life had been spent at
the metropolitan city of Rheims. There he was renowned as a teacher
and had taken eager part in the events which led to the substitution of
Hugh Capet for the Carolingian dynasty of France. His reward had
been his elevation to the see of Rheims, but this being consequent on
the deposition of his predecessor had brought him into collision with the
Papacy, and in 997 he gave up the attempt to maintain himself. He
had, however, a sure refuge. For long he had stood in close relations to
the Saxon Emperors. Known to Otto the Great, he had been given the
famous abbey of Bobbio in 982 by Otto II, although the indiscreet zeal
he displayed led to his retreat to Rheims again on his patron's death.
None the less he had worked in France in the interests of Otto III in the
troublous times of the latter's infancy, and as his hold on Rheims grew
weaker he had attached himself in 995 to Otto's court. There he
speedily became the favoured tutor of the boy Emperor, partly sharing,
partly humouring and partly inspiring the visionary schemes of his pupil.
In 998 he became again an archbishop, this time of Ravenna, whence he
was called to fill the papal chair.
Sylvester II was far too practical a statesman to share in all the
dreams of Otto, yet even he seems to have thought of a renovated
Roman Empire, very different from the workaday creation of Otto the
Great, of an Empire as wide as Charlemagne's which should be truly
ecumenic, and no longer an appendage to the German monarchy. Otto's
schemes were far stranger, the offspring of his wayward and perfervid
nature. Half Greek, half Saxon in birth and training, bred by Theo-
phano and Philagathus and under northern prelates and nobles as well,
he not only blended the traditions of Charlemagne's lay theocracy with
those of the ancient Roman Empire seen through a long Byzantine
perspective, but he also oscillated between the ambitious energy of an
aspiring monarch and the ascetic renunciation of a fervent monk. The
contradiction, not unexampled at the time, was glaring in an unripe boy,
whose head was turned by his dignity and his power. He had his ascetic
mentors who fired his enthusiasms, St Adalbert of Prague, St Romuald
of Ravenna, St Nilus of Calabria. As the fit seized him he went on
pilgrimage or withdrew for austerities to hermitage or monastery. This
visionary ruler lacked neither ability nor a policy, however fantastic his
aims might be. He believed most fully in his theocracy. He was the
ruler of Church and State. The Popes were his lieutenants in ecclesiastical
matters. As time went on he emphasised his position by strange titles;
CA. VII.
## p. 174 (#220) ############################################
174
Social changes and troubles
he was
servant of Jesus Christ,” “servant of the Apostles,” in rivalry
with the servus servorum Dei of the Popes. Content with the practical
support they received from him in ruling both the Church and Rome,
Gregory V tolerated the beginnings of this and Sylvester II submitted
at a price to its full development. In a strange, scolding, argumentative
diploma Otto III denounced the Donation of Constantine and that of
Charles the Bald, the one as a forgery, the other as invalid, and pro-
ceeded to grant the Pope eight counties of the Pentapolis hitherto ruled
by Hugh of Tuscany. It was a considerable gift, somewhat modified by
the fact that Otto intended to make Rome itself his chief capital, and
treated the Pope as his vassal. He perhaps saw the revival of the
Lombard nobles; he was carried away by the ancient splendours of the
Empire, and, proud of his Greek extraction, he hoped to recall the past
by a gaudy imitation of its outer forms. Those forms he saw in
Byzantium, the continuously Roman. Titles and ceremonies were rudely
borrowed. His dignitaries became logothetes, protospathars and the
like: once and again their names were written in the Greek alphabet as
an evidence of culture. To gain centralisation and emphasise unity the
German and Italian chanceries were fused together, to the muddling of
their formal and perhaps of their practical business. Semi-barbarism
had a puerile side in the court the German Augustus held at Rome in
his palace on the Aventine, and well might the loyal German nobles look
askance at the freaks of the Emperor. “He would not see delightful
Germany, the land of his birth, so great a love possessed him of dwelling
in Italy. "
In January 1000 Otto paid his last visit to Germany, whither the
deaths of two great ladies, his aunt Abbess Matilda and the aged
Empress Adelaide, who had guided the German Government, called
him. In July he returned to Italy, for a storm which had long been
brewing had burst. It had its principal origin in the prosperity which
the Ottonian peace had brought to North Italy. The population had
increased, waste and forest were brought under cultivation, trade thrived
in the cities. True to Italian tradition the unrest appeared in two
separate groups of persons, among the country-side nobles, and among
the citizens, but, since the individuals who made up these two groups
were largely identical, it was as yet seldom that the effects of their dis-
contents were sharply separated. Under the great vassals of the country-
side, the bishops, abbots, marquesses and counts, were ranked the now
numerous greater and lesser vavassors, or capitaneil and secundi milites,
i The secundi milites were generally after-vassals without jurisdiction. The
capitanei included the smaller tenants-in-chief and the greater vavassors. They
were possessed of jurisdiction; the saine noble might easily hold both of the crown
and of another tenant-in-chief. Cf. Schupfer, F. , La società milanese all' epoca
del
risorgimento del comune (Archivio giuridico, m.
his request to be crowned Emperor, for the Roman prince had no mind
to nullify his life's work by introducing a foreign Roman Emperor; and
the king's marriage to the rescued Adelaide roused against him a domestic
enemy. His son Liudolf, in thorough discontent at the influence of his
stepmother and her ally Henry of Bavaria, departed for Germany to
scheme revolt. Otto himself followed in February 952, having after all
acquired only some half of the kingdom of which he assumed the title.
He left his son-in-law Duke Conrad of Lorraine with troops to hold
Pavia and continue the war. The king had scarcely gone, however,
before Conrad and Berengar II came to terms, both perhaps being well
aware how little trust could be placed in the Lombard magnates.
Together they came to Otto at Magdeburg in April, but Otto's terms
were not so lenient as Conrad imagined. Berengar was received with
haughty discourtesy, and dismissed to attend a diet at Augsburg in
August, whither he was accompanied by the chief Lombard prelates.
There he and Adalbert became Otto's vassals for the Regnum Italicum
from which they were compelled to cede the marches of Verona, Friuli
and Istria to Duke Henry of Bavaria. Thus Otto, although withdrawing
from Italy, kept its eastern gateway in German hands.
Berengar II returned to Italy burning with wrath against the bishops
and nobles who had caused his disasters and the mutilation of his kingdom.
He and his queen Willa earned an evil name for greed and cruelty, since
they needed wealth to enrich the enfeebled kingship and were hungry for
revenge. Among their lay foes Adalbert-Atto underwent a long vain
siege in his castle of Canossa, but the chief sufferers were the churchmen.
The series of grants to them, which had continued so persistently under
former kings, almost ceases under Berengar. At Milan, Manasse's rival
CH. VII.
## p. 160 (#206) ############################################
160
The chronicler Liudprand
a
Adalman was induced to resign, and he himself was dispossessed in favour
of a new Archbishop, Walpert. Exiles began to make their way to Otto's
court, among them our chief informant about these Italian kings, the
chronicler Liudprand, who thereby became the bitter enemy of Berengar II
with his house and wreaked his revenge in his historical writings. If
there had survived another business-like Italian chronicle, like that of
Flodoard for France, Liudprand would have earned more gratitude from
posterity than he does for his vivid narrative, his pointed character-
sketches, and the brush-like abundance of " local colour" with which he
overlays his scanty facts. As it is, in his Antapodosis (Retribution) we
have a difficulty in obtaining a firm foothold for history amid the crumb-
ling and quaking mass of rancorous, if often contemporary, gossip which
Liudprand loves to heap up. Of noble birth, bred at King Hugh's court,
and once Berengar II's secretary, he was in the best position to give
accurate and full information, but he had a soul above documents. It
is hardly his fault that he depended on oral tradition for all events before
his own time, for there seems to have been no Italian chronicle for him
to use, but he evidently made no record at the time and when he wrote
rested wholly on a memory which rejected dates and political circum-
stances and was singularly retentive of amorous scandal however devoid
of probability. He does not even tell in his unfinished work the cause
and events of his persecution by Berengar to which he frequently alludes,
while sketching with fine precision the diary of his reception at Constan-
tinople whither he first went as Berengar's envoy. For what interested
him he could remember and tell to the life. To his credit be it said
he was no liar, though he may be found suppressing an unpleasant fact;
what he heard he told, and perhaps we may grant him that he gave a
ready, and sometimes a determined, belief to the gossip of anterooms and
the tradition of wrathful factions. It is unfortunate, for he was a practical
statesman, and knew and sometimes reveals the motives of his times.
Berengar had had a free hand in Italy, and had even recovered
Verona, because Otto was occupied in German revolts and frontier wars,
but in 955 occurred the decisive victory of the Lechfeld in which Otto
put an end once for all to Hungarian raids. He had succeeded
where all the Italian kings had failed, he had rescued central Europe,
and was therefrom with little doubt its destined ruler. His intervention
in Italy, Henry of Bavaria being now dead, was renewed by the agency
of his reconciled rebel son Liudolf. In 957 the duke made his invasion
with the usual rapid success. Berengar II fled, Adalbert was defeated
in battle, and all Lombardy had submitted when Liudolf died of fever at
Pombia near Lake Maggiore, the first German victor to lose his gains
owing to the alien climate of Italy.
The death of Liudolf was followed by the immediate recovery of his
lost ground by Berengar. He came back with a new series of bitter
feuds to pursue. Walpert of Milan and other prelates fled to Otto, and
## p. 161 (#207) ############################################
Otto's second invasion
161
Manasse became once more a pluralist by returning to Milan as Berengar's
partisan. Among the lay magnates Marquess Otbert went into exile; a
general disaffection existed among those who retained their possessions.
The king was still eager as Hugh had been before him to amass an im-
posing royal demesne and to create trusty great vassals. Hitherto central
Italy had been faithful to him ; now, however, Spoleto seems an enemy,
perhaps owing to the new turn of affairs at Rome. On his deathbed in
954 prince Alberic had bound the Romans by oath to elect his son and
heir by Alda, John-Octavian, Pope when Agapetus should die. In
December 955 the promise was kept and the boy became Pope as John XII.
Thus the Pope recovered control of Rome by uniting with the Papacy
the chiefship of the strong faction of Alberic. Any design of a perma-
.
nent principate must have been given up; it was perhaps too anomalous,
and it is significant that John renewed the long forgotten habit of dating
by the years of the Byzantine Emperors. But the Roman nobles remained
in power to the continued subjection of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy.
John XII himself was a dissolute boy whose pontificate was a glaring
scandal. No gleam of competence redeemed his debauchery, though he
was not without secular ambitions. About 959 he made war on the co-
regent princes of Capua-Benevento, Paldolf I (Pandulf) Ironhead and
Landolf III, with the aid of Marquess Theobald II of Spoleto. He
failed, and gave way, for prince Gisulf of Salerno assisted his neighbours;
and then Berengar attacked Spoleto on an unknown pretext. Theobald
was driven out, and Spoleto taken over by the king possibly to be con-
ferred on his own son Guido. Did Berengar demand the imperial crown?
In any case King Adalbert ravaged Roman territory, and John XII
was in such straits as to appeal for German intervention, thus strangely
shewing how the ancient policy of the Popes could recur in the unclerical
son of Alberic.
It was in the summer of 960 that the Pope's envoys, the Cardinal-
deacon John and the scriniarius Azo, reached Otto the Great in Saxony.
The Pope's prayer for help was seconded by the Lombard exiles and by
the messages of numerous magnates. Otto was now unembarrassed in
other directions, and could resume his old schemes with the knowledge
that he would have at last allies and support south of the Apennines.
He was not ready to move, however, till August 961, when he crossed the
Brenner Pass in force. Adalbert may have attempted to gather troops
to bar the defiles north of Verona, but the universal defection of counts
and bishops made resistance impossible, and the German king entered
Pavia, whence Berengar had fled after spitefully burning the royal palace.
Otto and the infant son Otto II whom he had left in Germany were at
once acknowledged as co-regent kings of Italy without further cere-
mony. All their deserted rivals could do was to hold out in strong castles
on the spurs of the Alps and in the Apennines where one magnate at
least, Marquess Hubert of Tuscany, remained true to them. Otto was
C. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. VII.
11
## p. 162 (#208) ############################################
162
Otto's imperial coronation
able to disregard his enemies while he proceeded through Ravenna, thus
avoiding the Tuscan route, to receive the promised imperial crown. On
31 January 962 he encamped on Monte Mario outside Rome, and according
to custom certain of his vassals took on his behalf an oath to respect the
Pope's rights. The custom was old, but the terms of the oath were new! ,
for John XII wished for an ally, not a suzerain, and the German king
promised not to hold placita or intervene in Rome without the Pope's
assent, to restore such alienated papal lands as he should become master
of, and to bind whomever he should appoint to rule the Regnum Italicum
to be the Pope's protector. The Romans disliked a foreigner, and Otto
bought his way by elusive promises and fallacious expectations. On
2 February he entered the Leonine city and was crowned with Adelaide
in St Peter's by the Pope. A Roman Emperor of the West, successor
of Charlemagne, once more existed. It was of evil omen that Otto's
sword-bearer stood on guard against his assassination while the sacring .
was enacted.
On their side Pope John and the Romans swore fealty to the Emperor
with an express promise not to aid or receive Berengar and Adalbert.
They found that Otto considered the situation changed by his new dignity.
It is true that the privilege he granted to the Papacy on 13 February was
even more generous than the old Carolingian donations in the matter of
territory—for it added a large strip of Spoletan land to Rome and its
duchy, the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, the Tuscan territory, the Sabina
and the southern patrimonies, not to mention the vaguer supposed do-
nation of 1774 which was now confirmed without any clear idea of its
meaning. But the pact of 824 was also expressly revived, by which the
election of the Pope was submitted to imperial confirmation, and the
Emperor's suzerainty in the papal lands was reserved and exercised in
Rome itself by his missus. The scheme of setting up a vassal king of
Italy, if ever really entertained, was abandoned. Although the terms
of Otto's oath were not precisely infringed, the change in the spirit of
the new treaty was manifest-Pope John had become a subject? .
There was still Berengar II to conquer, and the Emperor returned to
Pavia, driving Hubert of Tuscany into exile on the way. Berengar was
holding out in the impregnable castle of S. Leo in the Apennines, queen
Willa and her sons in strongholds near the lakes in the north. Willa
was now compelled to surrender on terms which allowed her to rejoin
her husband : their sons were pressed hard, and Adalbert made his escape
to the Saracens of Fraxinetum and Corsica. There he entered into re-
1 Unless the lost charter of Charles the Bald to John VIII really formed a
precedent. Cf. Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma (M. G. H. Script. 111. ,
p. 722).
? This account is based on the view that the Privilegium Ottonianum is substantially
the text of the privilege granted by Otto to John XII, the existing document being
a copy made for the next Pope, Leo VIII.
## p. 163 (#209) ############################################
Subjugation of Rome and the Papacy
163
lations with Pope John who was heartily weary of his new subordination.
Meantime Otto was secure in the north, his partisans were placed in power,
Liudprand was Bishop of Cremona, Adalbert-Atto Count of Modena and
Reggio, Otto's nephew Henry of Bavaria in firm possession of the march
of Verona. So the news of the Pope's dubious loyalty only urged the
Emperor to finish with Berengar by blockading him in S. Leo in May
963, while he still negotiated with John. The Pope on his side had
grounds of complaint, for the Exarchate had not been restored to the
Apostolic See on the ground that Berengar must first be conquered. On
the other hand Otto had documentary proof that John was trying to
rouse the Hungarians against him, and when he heard that Adalbert
had been welcomed by John at Civitavecchia he seems to have decided
to take the extreme measure of deposing his quondam ally. It was a
hazardous course, for in the general belief the Pope could be brought
to no man's judgment, and the Romans, even those not of Alberic's
faction, resented any diminution of their autonomy. But Otto knew that
John XII's scandalous life and government had made men inclined to
admit even a Pope's deposition, and were driving his Roman opponents
even to alliance with the foreign Emperor. Accordingly in October
Otto left a blockading force at S. Leo and marched on Rome, where his
partisans rose. John XII and Adalbert fled to Tivoli laden with much
church-treasure, and the Romans surrendered. They gave hostages and
swore never to elect a Pope save by the choice of Otto and his son. The
engagement was novel, going far beyond the Carolingian right to confirm
an election and receive the Pope's fealty, but Alberic had already exercised
the same power and Otto's imperial crown was unsafe without it. Canonical
form was as nearly as possible observed in John's deposition. A synod,
in which the Pope's central Italian suffragans predominated, was presided
over by the Emperor and attended by the Roman clergy and nobles ;
John was accused of gross misconduct and was summoned by Emperor
and synod to clear himself in person. A brief letter in reply merely
threatened with excommunication and suspension any bishops who should
elect a new Pope. The synod sent a second summons retorting the threat
and criticizing the illiteracy of John whose Latin smacked of the ver-
nacular, but John was not to be found by the messengers. It was clear
that the three canonical summonses could not be delivered to the culprit,
and Otto now came forward in his own person and denounced John for
his breach of fealty to himself. Thereupon on 4 December Emperor and
synod declared John deposed and elected the protoscriniarius, a layman,
Pope as Leo VIII.
Otto was in the full tide of success. Just after Christmas S. Leo at
last surrendered and Berengar II and his wife were sent captive to
Bamberg where they both died in 966. So Otto confidently dismissed
much of his army. But John XII was stronger than he seemed, for his
uncanonical deposition and a layman's uncanonical election had roused
а
CH. VII.
11-2
## p. 164 (#210) ############################################
164
The Romano-Germanic Empire
qualms among a section of the churchmen, and the Romans were fretting
under their subjugation. A sudden rising failed before the swords of
Otto's tried warriors; yet, when Otto went eastwards to take possession
of the Spoletan duchy, John XII had only to appear before Rome with
troops for the gates to be opened. Pope Leo just escaped with his life,
and John was reinstated. After mutilating his former envoys to Otto,
John and Azo, presumably on a charge of forgery, a synod of the nearest
bishops in February 964 annulled Otto's synod in which most of them
had participated and declared Leo an intruder. Otto, whose missus had
been ill-treated, naturally refused to change his policy. While his army
was collecting, however, John XII died on 14 May of paralysis, and the
Romans made a bid for independence by electing a learned and virtuous
Pope, Benedict V. It was a vain manoeuvre. Otto starved out the city,
mutilating all who tried to pass his blockading lines. On 23 June the
surrender was made, and Leo VIII reinstated. Benedict was deposed
and sent to a saintly exile at Hamburg. By now at any rate it was
agreed that Otto's grants to the Popes were only for show, for of all the
lands bestowed by his charter the duchy of Rome and the Sabina alone
were left to the Papacy.
In this way Otto the Great brought into existence the Romano-
Germanic Empire of the West, or, to give it its later and convenient
name, the Holy Roman Empire, compounded by a union of the German
kingdom with the Regnum Italicum and with the dignity of Roman
Emperor. It was intended and supposed to be a revival of the Empire
of Charlemagne which had broken up on the deposition of Charles the
Fat, although its title had remained until the fall of Berengar I to express
a protectorate of the Papacy. It was also a reassertion of that claim to
pre-eminence in Western Europe which had been made by Otto's pre-
decessor Arnulf as chief of the Carolingian house. Arnulf's Empire,
indeed, furnishes the transitional form between that of Otto and that of
Charlemagne, for Otto's title implied less than Charlemagne's had.
Otto was considered the lay chief of Western Christendom, its defender
from heathen and barbarians, the supreme maintainer of justice and
peace; but, whereas Charlemagne was ruler of church and state, Otto's
power over the church was protective in its character. The Pope was
unquestioned spiritual chief of Christendom; Otto was at the same time
his suzerain with regard to the papal lands, and his subject as a
member of the Church. The arrangement was only workable because
the Papacy was weak. In secular matters Otto's Empire lacked the
universality of Charlemagne’s. Not only were France and Christian
.
Spain outside its frontiers, but within it the nascent force of nationality
was beginning to make itself felt. The German monarch was a foreigner
in subject Italy, disguised as the fact might be by the absence of national
feeling among the Italian magnates. “He had with him peoples and
tribes whose tongues the people did not know. ” This meant constant
a
## p. 165 (#211) ############################################
The government of Italy
165
disaffection, constant suppression. The popular hatred burnt most
fiercely at Rome and found utterance in a Roman monk': “Woe to thee,
Rome, that thou art crushed and trodden down by so many peoples ;
who hast been seized by a Saxon king, and thy folk slaughtered and thy
strength reduced to naught ! ”
In the details of government, also, Otto had not the control which
Charlemagne exercised. Although the decline of the royal power must
not be overrated, especially in Germany, even there feudalism, seignorial
independence and state disorganisation, had made great strides. In
Italy, where he was too often an absentee, the royal demesne was
depleted and the lay vassals were out of hand. Otto met this difficulty
by a clever balancing of the two groups by whom he had been called in,
the great secular magnates and the bishops. Of these, the first were
the Marquesses, a title given in Italy to the ruler of several counties.
Towards them Otto was conciliatory; even Hubert in the end was
restored to Tuscany, and the Lombards, some four or five in number,
were the Emperor's faithful vassals. They were survivors in the struggle
for existence among the counts which had raged in the dissolution of
the Carolingian order. Under the pressure of civil war, of Hungarian
and Saracen ravage, old dynasts had vanished, new had come and had
either vanished too, or had remained weakened. In their place or by
their side ruled the bishops in the Lombard plain. Since 876 they had
been permanent royal missi in their dioceses, and thus had at least in
name supervision over the counts. Like other magnates the bishops
during the years of anarchy had increased their “immunity” inside their
domains, by increase of exemptions and jurisdictions and by grants of
the profitable royal rights of market and toll and the like, while those
domains also grew through the piety or competitive bribery of the kings
and nobles. Not least among the sources of the bishops' power was
their influence over their cities, inherited from Roman times. In anarchy
and disaster they stepped into the breach at the head of their fellow-
citizens, whatever civic feeling existed gathered round them, and fragment
by fragment they were acquiring in their cathedral cities the public
functions” whether of count or king. In its completed form this
piecemeal process resulted in the city and a radius of land round it
being excised from its county and removed from the count's jurisdiction.
Thus Bergamo, Parma, Cremona, Modena, Reggio and Trieste were at
Otto's accession under the rule of their bishops. Otto came as the ally
of the bishops and deliverer of the Church. He exercised whether by
pressure on the electors or by mere nomination the appointment to
vacant sees and great abbeys, and thus gained non-hereditary vassals
of his own choice who were the safest supporters of his monarchy. He
favoured of set policy these instruments of his power as counter-
weights to the feudal magnates. Fresh cities, Asti, Novara, and Penne
1 Benedict. S. Andreae Chron. c. 39.
CH. VII.
## p. 166 (#212) ############################################
166
Otto's attempt to annex South Italy
in the Abruzzi, were wholly given over to their bishops, and the im-
munities on episcopal lands steadily grew, so that they too were in
process of being excised from the counties in which they lay. The work
was slowly done by Otto and his successors both in Italy and Germany,
but there was no countering tendency. The functions granted were
either those of the hereditary counts or those which the kings had been
unable to perform. By transference of these to the churchmen Otto and
his heirs recovered control of much local government by seeming to give
it away, and secured faithful, powerful adherents selected for capacity.
Their monarchy came to rest, especially in Italy, on their control of the
Church ; all the more essential to them therefore became the subjection
or the firm alliance of the Papacy.
Scarcely had Otto left Italy when the death of his nominee, Pope
Leo VIII, early in 965 endangered his new Empire. The Romans with
a show of duty sent an embassy to beg for the exile Benedict as Pope,
and Adalbert appeared in Lombardy to raise a revolt. Duke Burchard
of Swabia, indeed, defeated Adalbert, and the Romans elected the
Bishop of Narni as Pope John XIII at the Emperor's command, but,
though John was of Alberic's kindred, the mere fact that he represented
German domination enabled rival nobles to raise the populace and drive
him into exile. He was not restored till in 966 the news of Otto's
descent into Italy with an army provoked a reaction. Punishment was
dealt out to the rebels, severer for the Roman enemies of the Pope than
for the Lombard rebels against Otto. John XIII's exile seems to have
occasioned fresh schemes of the Emperor. Paldolf I Ironhead of Capua-
Benevento, with whom the Pope had found an asylum, appeared in
Rome in January 967 and was there invested by Otto with the march of
Spoleto, at the same time becoming Otto's vassal for his native princi-
pality. Otto thus created a central Italian vassal of the first rank, and
enlarged his Empire. One motive, no doubt, was the wish to give peace
and security to the Spoletan march ; but the main purpose was clearly
to begin the annexation of South Italy to the Regnum Italicum. This
design, which was in pursuance of old Carolingian claims, was bound to
find resistance in the Eastern Empire. The Byzantines looked on Otto's
imperial title as a barbaric impertinence; they considered Capua-
Benevento as part of the Longobardic theme; and they were determined
to maintain their dominion in Italy.
The Eastern Roman Emperors were always handicapped in their
dealings in Italy; their province there was too important to be let go,
too
remote to be the object of their chief energies. The fall of King Hugh
had been followed by outbreaks in Apulia, and at the same time the Saracen
raids became a grave danger when the Fatimite Caliph Manşūr once again
recovered the revolted colony of Sicily in 947. Calabria was overrun
by his troops; even Naples was besieged; and, although in 956 the
patrician Marianus Argyrus restored Byzantine authority over subjects
## p. 167 (#213) ############################################
Compromise with Byzantium
167
and vassals, the peace which suspended, rather than closed, the Saracen
war was no more conclusive than the fighting. When a celebrated
general Nicephorus Phocas became Emperor in 963 his vigorous effort
to succour the last semi-autonomous Greeks of Sicily ended in disaster,
and an ignominious peace. Now he found himself on the defensive
against the aggression of the new Romano-Germanic Empire and the
Latin West. John XIII was trying to revive the decadent Latin Church
in south Italy by carving out new archbishoprics for Capua and Benevento
from his own Roman province; Otto the Great was acquiring Capua-
Benevento as a vassal state. At first it seemed as if an arrangement
were possible, for Otto asked for a Byzantine bride, Theophano, daughter
of Romanus II, for his son Otto II, whom at Christmas 967 he had
caused the Pope to crown co-regent Emperor; and his Venetian envoy
promised that Otto would respect the Byzantine dominions in Italy.
But in 968 the German monarch made a surprise attack on Apulia and,
only after failing to take Bari, did he send Liudprand of Cremona to
Constantinople to conclude the marriage-treaty. Otto must have thought
it easier to fix the frontier with the territory he claimed already in his
possession. The natural effect on the rude and soldierly Nicephorus was
to make him badger Liudprand and prepare an expedition. The war
was indecisive. The exiled King Adalbert, Nicephorus's Italian ally, could
do nothing and eventually fled to French Burgundy where in 975 he died,
while his brother Conrad submitted to Otto and received the march of
Ivrea. Otto on his side when he warred in person could take no Apulian
town and Paldolf Ironhead was captured by the Greeks, who yet were
soon defeated again. It was the murder of Nicephorus in December 969
which brought a solution. The new Byzantine Emperor, John Tzimisces,
had his hands full in the East; Otto saw the design of conquering Greek
Italy was hopeless. By the intervention of Paldolf, released for the
purpose, they came to terms, and in April 972 Theophano was married
at Rome to Otto II. Events make it clear that Otto kept the suzerainty
of Capua-Benevento and abandoned further schemes. Paldolf Ironhead's
wide central Italian dominion after all formed a convenient buffer-state
for both Empires, no matter to which he was a vassal.
Otto the Great did not long survive the settlement with Eastern
Rome, as he died in Thuringia on 7 May 973. His character belongs to
German history, but his work affected all Europe. He had created the
Holy Roman Empire and in so doing had revived the conception of
Charlemagne which moulded the thought and the development of Western
Europe. The union of Germany and north Italy was his doing and the
fate of both for centuries derives from the bias he gave their history.
So, too, in immediate results he closes one era and begins another,
for the times of anarchy and moral collapse following the wreck of
Charlemagne's Empire come to an end, and a period of revival in
government, in commerce and in civilisation is ushered in by the com-
CH. VII.
## p. 168 (#214) ############################################
168
Reduction of Fraxinetum
1
parative peace he gave. The problem of defence against the barbarian
invader, which had baffled the fleeting Italian kings and had contributed
to their ruin, was solved. Otto himself crushed the Hungarian hordes
for good and all: it was fitting that in his reign the Saracens of
Fraxinetum also, who so long preyed on the routes between Italy and
France, should be abolished. The impulse to this deliverance was
given by a crowning outrage. St Maiolus, Abbot of Cluny, revered
throughout the West, was captured in July 972 while crossing the Great
St Bernard Pass with a numerous caravan of fellow travellers. The Cluniac
monks at once raised the enormous ransom demanded by the Saracens,
but the indignation roused by the event and perhaps a hope of so great
a booty at length moved the great barons on either side of the Alps to
act in concert. The Saracens who had seized St Maiolus were cut off
and destroyed, and a federation of nobles led by the counts of Provence
and Ardoin of Turin closed in on Fraxinetum itself. The Saracen colony
was extirpated. Once more the Alpine passes were free to travellers,
save for exactions by the nobles and occasional brigandage? .
The Regnum Italicum could now rest under the shadow of the strong
monarchy, untroubled save by the violence of the nobles and the un-
appeased strife of Roman factions. Otto the Great had nominated in
973 Benedict VI to succeed to the Papacy, but a relative of John XIII
and of Alberic, Crescentius, son of a Theodora, thrust in a usurper, the
deacon Franco, as Boniface VII in 974. Yet a reaction, perhaps pro-
voked by the true Pope's murder, soon came, and the imperial missus,
Count Sico, was able to instal the Bishop of Sutri as Benedict VII,
although Franco contrived to escape to Constantinople with a quantity
of church-treasure. The revolution had not even required a German
army, much less an imperial campaign.
Not till December 980 did Otto II (the Red) find leisure or occasion
to proceed to Italy. He came to be reconciled with his mother Adelaide,
and perhaps to give her some voice in affairs. The young Emperor,
then aged twenty-five, was not eminently gifted with a ruler's wisdom;
but he was ambitious and energetic, and his ambitions now were directed
to that conquest of the south which his father had abandoned. There
was much that was tempting in the situation of Byzantine Italy, much
that seemed to call for intervention. In answer to the proceedings of
Otto the Great an attempt had been made by the Byzantines to unify
the administration by transmuting the strategos of Longobardia into the
catapan or viceroy of Italy with a superior authority over the strategos
of Calabria. This new system was soon put to hard proof. In 969 the
Fatimite caliphs conquered Egypt, and thus became hostile neighbours
to the East Romans in Syria. War broke out, and spread to the western
provinces of both powers. Once more Calabria was ravaged by the
· The county of Aosta appears to have become again a part of Jurane Burgundy,
as a result of this war.
## p. 169 (#215) ############################################
Otto II's failure in South Italy
169
Muslims under the Sicilian emir Abu'l-ķāsim in 976 and Apulia suffered
in the next year. The only relief given was due to the local payment of
blackmail, for the Byzantines, who had begun the war in spirited fashion
by the momentary capture of Messina, were paralysed by the campaigns
in Syria, by the civil wars which followed Tzimisces' death, and by the
disaffection of the Apulians.
Otto the Red succumbed to the temptation. The Saracen danger
under Abu'l-ķāsim grew ever more menacing and might affect his own
dominions. Civil war in the East and disaffection in Italy made the
Byzantines weak. He might at one and the same time repel the Muslims
and bring the Regnum Italicum to its natural limits. In September 981 he
had reached Lucera on the Apulian frontier when he was recalled to
secure his rear. Paldolf Ironhead had soon extended his central State.
When Prince Gisulf of Salerno was dethroned in 973 by a complot of
rebellious nobles and his jealous neighbours of Amalfi and Naples, it
was Paldolf who overthrew the usurper Landolf, his own kinsman, and
restored the old, childless prince as his client. In 977 he succeeded as
prince in Salerno. On Ironhead's death, however, in March 981 his
.
great dominion dissolved. One son, Landolf IV, inherited Capua-Bene-
vento, and another, Paldolf, ruled Salerno. Now revolutions broke out.
.
The Beneventans were restive under Capuan rule, and declared Ironhead's
nephew Paldolf II their prince while Landolf IV retained Capua: the
Salernitans drove out their Paldolf, and introduced the Byzantine ally,
Duke Manso III of Amalfi. Otto accepted the separation of Capua and
Benevento, but he besieged Salerno, and obtained its submission at the
price of recognising Manso. He seemed to have secured a new -vassal ;
he had lost the benefit of surprise and the halo of irresistible success.
When with large reinforcements from Germany he marched through
Apulia in 982, the towns did not join him, although Bari rebelled on its
own account', and Taranto surrendered after a long siege. There he
heard of the coming of the Saracen foe from whom he claimed to deliver
his intended conquest.
Abu'l-ķāsim had proclaimed a Holy War and crossed to Calabria.
Otto advanced to meet him. At Rossano he left the Empress Theophano
and, moving south, captured the Saracens' advance guard in an unnamed
town? He met the main body on the east coast, perhaps near Stilos.
Headlong courage and no generalship marked his conduct of the battle,
for he charged and broke the Saracen centre, without perceiving their
reserves amid the hills on his flank. Abu'l-ķāsim had been killed, but
meanwhile the exhausted Germans were attacked by the fresh troops on
their flank and overwhelmed. Some four thousand were slain including
1 It was recaptured by the Byzantines June 983; Lupus Protospath. is a year too
early in his dates here.
* Perhaps Cotrone, see Gay, L'Italie méridionale et l'Empire byzantin, p. 337.
3 Or else the Capo delle Colonne.
CH. VII.
## p. 170 (#216) ############################################
170
Growth and danger of Venice
the flower of the German nobles; many were made prisoners; the
Emperor himself only eluded capture by swimming to a Byzantine
vessel, from which in turn he had to escape by leaping overboard when
it brought him near Rossano.
With the remnants of his army Otto beat a retreat to Salerno and
Rome. As the news spread over the Empire his prestige waned, and a
mutinous spirit arose in Italy which was, however, kept in check by the
steady adherence of Marquesses and Bishops to the German monarchy.
Otto did his best to re-establish his position. In May 983 he held a
German Diet at Verona, and there obtained the election as King of
Germany of his infant son Otto, whom he thereupon sent north to be
crowned. At the same time he made an effort to bring the independent
sea-power of Venice to subjection. Venice had prospered exceedingly
during the century. Exempt from Hungarian ravage, she had contrived
to hold the piracy of the distant Saracens and of the Slavs of Dalmatia
in check. She had shaken, off Byzantine suzerainty and maintained a
privileged intercourse with the Regnum Italicum. She had already
become the chief intermediary between Constantinople and the West;
her wealth, derived partly from her questionable exports of iron, wood
and slaves to the Saracens, was growing rapidly. Even when she was
obliged to surrender the extra-territoriality of her citizens within the
Western Empire to Otto the Great, she obtained in return the perpetuity
of her treaty with him. But she had her special dangers. One was the
effort of the Doges to erect an hereditary monarchy, like that of Amalfi.
The other, caused largely by this effort, was the rise of two embittered
factions among the mercantile nobles who held the chief influence in the
State. These troubles affected her relations with Otto II, for the
aspiring Doge Pietro Candiano IV who had been murdered in 976 had
married Gualdrada of Tuscany, niece of the Empress Adelaide. The
efforts of Doge Tribuno Menio did indeed result in a hollow reconciliation
at Verona in June 983. Otto II restored Venice her privileges with the
airs of a suzerain, while Venice tacitly maintained her independence.
Hardly was the bargain struck, however, before Otto broke it. The civil
discord of Venice had ended in the bitter hatred of the rival families of
Caloprini and Morosini. Now Stephen Caloprini fled to Verona and
offered to be the Emperor's genuine vassal if restored to Venice as Doge.
Otto characteristically seized the chance of conquest. Venice was strictly
blockaded by land, and might have been forced to yield had not the
Emperor, enfeebled by a foreign climate, died of an over-dose of medicine
(four drachms of aloes) on 7 December 983.
Otto had been preparing for new aggression towards the south, where
Transemund, the new Marquess of Spoleto, and Aloara of Capua, Paldolf
Ironhead's widow, might be relied on. His impatient policy had just
been shewn in the promotion of a foreign Pope to succeed Benedict VII,
for John XIV had been Peter, Bishop of Pavia and Arch-chancellor of
## p. 171 (#217) ############################################
The minority of Otto III
171
Italy. The restive Romans, still mindful of the old prohibition of
translations, rose against the Lombard Pope at Easter 984. Their
leader was that Franco, now once more Boniface VII, who had been let
loose with his treasure by the incensed Byzantines. He disgraced him-
self once more by causing the death of his imprisoned rival, and made
himself so hated in his brief and tyrannous pontificate that on his death
in 985 the mob outraged his corpse through the streets. He had really
bought the Papacy from those who could sell it, the faction led by the
house of the Crescentii. By them Alberic's rule of Rome was revived in
the person of the “patrician” Crescentius II, son of Crescentius de
Theodora. There was, however, a difference; while preserving his
autonomous power, Crescentius II avoided a breach with the Empire.
He could take this anomalous position all the more easily because the
Empire and the Regnum Italicum were in some sort vacant. The child
Otto III of Germany was acknowledged as rightful heir, but not as
sovereign, in Italy, where the interregnum was filled by admitting the
claim of the two crowned Augustas, Theophano and Adelaide, to act for
the future Emperor, this constitutional subtlety being made acceptable
by the loyalty of Marquesses and Bishops to the German connexion.
Otto II's aggressions against Venice and the Byzantines were promptly
abandoned, and the peace of the Empire, tempered by the never wholly
quiescent local broils, continued its beneficent work. Adelaide was soon
thrust aside by Theophano who, Greek though she was, troubled with
unruly German magnates and hampered by Slav revolt beyond the Elbe,
yet contrived to rule. In 989 she came to Rome, partly to reaffirm the
Empire, partly perhaps in rivalry with Adelaide. Crescentius II evidently
came to terms, which preserved his patriciate, and she exercised without
hindrance all the functions of sovereignty, even being styled Emperor by
her puzzled chancery unused to a female reign. It was not, however, all
by merit of the adroit and firm-willed lady, for, when a year after her
return to Germany she died in June 991, and Adelaide took her place,
the fabric of the Empire continued unshaken. The idea of the Ottonian
monarchy had captivated men's imagination, the benefits it conferred on
lands so recently wretched were indisputable, and the Italian magnates
knew their own interests well enough to be persistently loyal.
At the head of the magnates stood Hugh of Tuscany, who for some
years had ruled Spoleto as well, thus once more forming a mid-Italian
buffer-fief, like that of his father Hubert, or of Paldolf Ironhead. It
was Hugh who, when a revolution broke out at Capua on Aloara's death,
set up a second son of Paldolf Ironhead's, Laidulf, as prince, and main-
tained the suzerainty of the Western Empire. At Rome, however,
Crescentius II exercised unchallenged sway. Pope John XV had not
even the support of the stricter clergy against his lay oppressor, for he
himself had a bad name for avarice and nepotism. But intervention by
the German monarch became certain. Otto III was now fifteen and of
CH. VII.
## p. 172 (#218) ############################################
172
Otto III reduces Rome
$
-
2
age; his advisers were anxious to put an end to the anomalous formal
vacancy of the Empire; and in response to Pope John's invitation the
king crossed the Brenner Pass with an army in February 996. No one
resisted him, although the inevitable riot between Germans and Italians
took place at Verona. At Pavia, where he received the fealty of the
magnates, he heard of John XV's death ; at the next stage, Ravenna, he
was met by a Roman embassy, which submissively requested him to name
a new Pope. His choice was as bold as possible; Otto II had only
promoted a Lombard; Otto III selected his own cousin Bruno of
Carinthia, a youth of twenty-four, who styled himself Gregory V. Thus
for the first time a German ascended the papal throne. It must have
been gall and wormwood to the Romans, but they made no resistance.
On 21 May Otto III was crowned Emperor by his nominee.
Neither Pope nor Emperor was disposed to allow the patriciate to
continue. Crescentius II was tried for his offences against John XV,
condemned to exile, and then pardoned at the Pope's request. The
victory had been so easy that Otto speedily left Italy. Gregory, how-
ever, was already in difficulties. He was a rash young man, who was
also open to bribes, and the Romans hated their German Pope. In
September he escaped from their hands, and Crescentius resumed power.
Gregory, safe in Pavia, might excommunicate the usurper and act as the
admitted head of the Church. Crescentius did not hesitate to set up an
Anti-Pope. His choice was cunning, if hopeless. Otto III, following
the steps of his predecessors, had sent to Constantinople to demand the
hand of a Greek princess. One envoy died on the mission; the other,
John Philagathus, Archbishop of Piacenza, had recently returned with a
Byzantine embassy to continue negotiations. This prelate was a Greek
of Calabria, who had been the trusted adviser of Theophano and had
obtained the independence of his see from Ravenna owing to her in-
Auence. Being the tutor and godfather of the Emperor, he might seem
a persona grata to him. Perhaps he shared Theophano's policy of
alliance with the Roman patrician. In any case he accepted Crescentius's
offer. But he was everywhere unpopular, a foreigner at Rome, an ingrate
further north, and Otto III was resolved. Late in 997 the Emperor
returned to Italy with imposing forces. By the usual route of Ravenna
he reached Rome with Pope Gregory in February 998. There was no
real resistance. John XVI fled to the Campagna to be captured, blinded
and mutilated by his pursuers and then made a public spectacle by the
revengeful Pope. Crescentius, who held out in the castle of Sant'Angelo,
the ancient tomb of Hadrian, soon was taken and executed. Otto and
Gregory hoped thus to crush the indomitable independence of the
Romans. They only added an injured hero to the traditions of medieval
Rome, for Crescentius was widely believed, possibly with truth, to have
surrendered upon assurances of safety.
Otto was still in Italy, alternately employed in affairs of Church and
## p. 173 (#219) ############################################
Schemes of Otto III
173
State, and in the pilgrimage and penance dear to his unbalanced character,
when Pope Gregory died in February 999. True to his imperial policy,
the Emperor selected another non-Roman, Gerbert of Aurillac, the first
French, as Gregory had been the first German Pope. Gerbert, now
Sylvester II, was the most learned man of his age, so learned that legend
made him a magician. Bred in the Aquitanian abbey of Aurillac, he
knew both Spain and Italy, but the best of his life had been spent at
the metropolitan city of Rheims. There he was renowned as a teacher
and had taken eager part in the events which led to the substitution of
Hugh Capet for the Carolingian dynasty of France. His reward had
been his elevation to the see of Rheims, but this being consequent on
the deposition of his predecessor had brought him into collision with the
Papacy, and in 997 he gave up the attempt to maintain himself. He
had, however, a sure refuge. For long he had stood in close relations to
the Saxon Emperors. Known to Otto the Great, he had been given the
famous abbey of Bobbio in 982 by Otto II, although the indiscreet zeal
he displayed led to his retreat to Rheims again on his patron's death.
None the less he had worked in France in the interests of Otto III in the
troublous times of the latter's infancy, and as his hold on Rheims grew
weaker he had attached himself in 995 to Otto's court. There he
speedily became the favoured tutor of the boy Emperor, partly sharing,
partly humouring and partly inspiring the visionary schemes of his pupil.
In 998 he became again an archbishop, this time of Ravenna, whence he
was called to fill the papal chair.
Sylvester II was far too practical a statesman to share in all the
dreams of Otto, yet even he seems to have thought of a renovated
Roman Empire, very different from the workaday creation of Otto the
Great, of an Empire as wide as Charlemagne's which should be truly
ecumenic, and no longer an appendage to the German monarchy. Otto's
schemes were far stranger, the offspring of his wayward and perfervid
nature. Half Greek, half Saxon in birth and training, bred by Theo-
phano and Philagathus and under northern prelates and nobles as well,
he not only blended the traditions of Charlemagne's lay theocracy with
those of the ancient Roman Empire seen through a long Byzantine
perspective, but he also oscillated between the ambitious energy of an
aspiring monarch and the ascetic renunciation of a fervent monk. The
contradiction, not unexampled at the time, was glaring in an unripe boy,
whose head was turned by his dignity and his power. He had his ascetic
mentors who fired his enthusiasms, St Adalbert of Prague, St Romuald
of Ravenna, St Nilus of Calabria. As the fit seized him he went on
pilgrimage or withdrew for austerities to hermitage or monastery. This
visionary ruler lacked neither ability nor a policy, however fantastic his
aims might be. He believed most fully in his theocracy. He was the
ruler of Church and State. The Popes were his lieutenants in ecclesiastical
matters. As time went on he emphasised his position by strange titles;
CA. VII.
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174
Social changes and troubles
he was
servant of Jesus Christ,” “servant of the Apostles,” in rivalry
with the servus servorum Dei of the Popes. Content with the practical
support they received from him in ruling both the Church and Rome,
Gregory V tolerated the beginnings of this and Sylvester II submitted
at a price to its full development. In a strange, scolding, argumentative
diploma Otto III denounced the Donation of Constantine and that of
Charles the Bald, the one as a forgery, the other as invalid, and pro-
ceeded to grant the Pope eight counties of the Pentapolis hitherto ruled
by Hugh of Tuscany. It was a considerable gift, somewhat modified by
the fact that Otto intended to make Rome itself his chief capital, and
treated the Pope as his vassal. He perhaps saw the revival of the
Lombard nobles; he was carried away by the ancient splendours of the
Empire, and, proud of his Greek extraction, he hoped to recall the past
by a gaudy imitation of its outer forms. Those forms he saw in
Byzantium, the continuously Roman. Titles and ceremonies were rudely
borrowed. His dignitaries became logothetes, protospathars and the
like: once and again their names were written in the Greek alphabet as
an evidence of culture. To gain centralisation and emphasise unity the
German and Italian chanceries were fused together, to the muddling of
their formal and perhaps of their practical business. Semi-barbarism
had a puerile side in the court the German Augustus held at Rome in
his palace on the Aventine, and well might the loyal German nobles look
askance at the freaks of the Emperor. “He would not see delightful
Germany, the land of his birth, so great a love possessed him of dwelling
in Italy. "
In January 1000 Otto paid his last visit to Germany, whither the
deaths of two great ladies, his aunt Abbess Matilda and the aged
Empress Adelaide, who had guided the German Government, called
him. In July he returned to Italy, for a storm which had long been
brewing had burst. It had its principal origin in the prosperity which
the Ottonian peace had brought to North Italy. The population had
increased, waste and forest were brought under cultivation, trade thrived
in the cities. True to Italian tradition the unrest appeared in two
separate groups of persons, among the country-side nobles, and among
the citizens, but, since the individuals who made up these two groups
were largely identical, it was as yet seldom that the effects of their dis-
contents were sharply separated. Under the great vassals of the country-
side, the bishops, abbots, marquesses and counts, were ranked the now
numerous greater and lesser vavassors, or capitaneil and secundi milites,
i The secundi milites were generally after-vassals without jurisdiction. The
capitanei included the smaller tenants-in-chief and the greater vavassors. They
were possessed of jurisdiction; the saine noble might easily hold both of the crown
and of another tenant-in-chief. Cf. Schupfer, F. , La società milanese all' epoca
del
risorgimento del comune (Archivio giuridico, m.
