The catapan Calocyrus
Delphinas
in 983-4 had subdued the
Apulian rebels ; nor did Otto III shew any disposition to intervene.
Apulian rebels ; nor did Otto III shew any disposition to intervene.
Cambridge Medieval History - v3 - Germany and the Western Empire
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. ), pp. 259-60, 263–4, and Mayer, E. ,
Italienische Verfassungsgeschichte, 1. pp. 447, 450-1.
## p. 175 (#221) ############################################
Revolt of Ardoin of Ivrea
175
a
who were distinguished not so much by their position in the feudal chain
as by the extent of their lands and privileges, but who in general were
vassals of the magnates, not of the Emperor. The continued predominance
of city-life in Italy, and the terrors of the recent barbarian ravages, had
turned large numbers of the capitanei and secundi milites into inhabitants,
either partially or solely, of the cities, where they formed the most
powerful class of citizens. Under them were the traders who led the
non-noble city-population. All three classes, capitanei, secundi milites
and plebeians tended to be at odds with one another; there were also
signs of a resentment at the bishops' rule which had once been welcomed.
Berengar II, at enmity with the bishops, had shewn signs of courting the
townsmen when he granted privileges to the men of Genoa collectively;
the Milanese, in Otto III's minority, had waged war on their archbishop
Landulf II and the great family to which he belonged; the Cremonese
obtained from Otto III a diploma which infringed their bishop's fiscal
rights and was soon quashed on that account. The movement was
contrary to the imperial policy by which the bishops, sometimes of German
extraction, were the Emperor's best agents and counter-weights to the
restless nobles. Fresh towns, Lodi, Acqui, Piacenza, and Tortona, had
been placed completely under episcopal rule; the whole province of Ravenna
was made subject to its archbishop's authority by Otto III; lesser
privileges in town and country had been continually given piecemeal to
the prelates. Yet in the country-side the expedient was losing its value.
Prelates in difficulties, prelates of the local noble families, were steadily
granting church land by the leases known as libellariae to the nobles,
thereby impoverishing their churches and strengthening the noble class,
and the consequent feudal disorder was only increased by the growing
divergence in interest between the magnates, the capitanei, and the secundi
milites. The vast and increasing church estates were being consumed
by nominal leases and over-enfeoffment.
Disorder from this cause was already marked under Otto II ; Pope
Sylvester, as Abbot of Bobbio, had vainly striven to check the system
in his abbey; it now led to civil war. Ardoin, Marquess of Ivrea, was
probably a relative of Berengar II, but his sympathies lay with the lesser
nobles. He and they had profited by spendthrift episcopal grants, and
came to bitter feud with Bishop Peter of Vercelli, possibly because he
endeavoured to recall them'. In 997 they murdered the bishop and burnt
the cathedral. Peter's fellow-bishops were up in arms against Ardoin,
and Otto III took stringent action. In 998 he enacted that no church
libellaria should outlast the grantor's life. In 999, in concert with the
1 This is conjecture. Peter's long captivity among the Saracens after the battle
of Stilo (see supra, p. 169) must have facilitated usurpations, and Ingo, Peter's prede-
cessor, had certainly dilapidated his see, but Ardoin's immediate grievance may have
been owing to his claims on the curtis of Caresana, given by Empress Adelaide to
the Canons of Vercelli.
CH, VII.
## p. 176 (#222) ############################################
176
Revolt of the Romans
1
1
1
Pope, he confiscated Ardoin's lands and condemned him to a life of
penitent wandering. At the same time he appointed a stout-hearted
German, Leo, to the see of Vercelli, and granted him the counties of
Vercelli and Santhià. It was the first grant of entire counties to a
bishopric in Lombardy, although parallel to the powers conferred on
the see of Ravenna. But Ardoin resisted in his castles, and next year,
supported by his accomplices, seems even to have taken the title of king.
Otto returned, but was content to drive Ardoin back and to entrust his
uprooting to the local magnates. The embers of the revolt against the
Romano-
Germanic Empire were left to glow. Otto's wishes at this time
seem to have turned to the reassertion of the claims of the Holy Roman
Empire in the south. Since Abu'l-ķāsim's death in his victory over
Otto II, the Saracen raids, although they inflicted misery on Calabria and
South Apulia, had not been in sufficient force to endanger the Byzantine
rule.
The catapan Calocyrus Delphinas in 983-4 had subdued the
Apulian rebels ; nor did Otto III shew any disposition to intervene.
But the petty frontier states were a different matter. In 983 the
Salernitans had driven out Manso of Amalfi, and under their new prince
John II, a Lombard from Spoleto, remained henceforth neutral and
disregarded. Their neighbours, however, Capua, Benevento, Naples and
Gaeta, were more important for Otto. After a romantic pilgrimage to
the famous shrine of Monte Gargano, he sent in 999 the Capuan Ademar,
new-made Marquess of Spoleto, to Capua, where Laidulf was deposed
and Ademar made prince. At the same time Naples was seized, its
Duke John taken captive, and the Duke of Gaeta was bribed into
vassalage. These successes, which once more effectively enlarged the
Empire, did not last, for in 1000 the Capuans drove out Ademar,
substituting Landolf V of the old dynasty, and John of Naples recovered
his state and independence. A short campaign of Otto himself next
year against Benevento gained at most a formal submission from the
Lombard princes. The fact was that the Emperors could never devote
enough energy or men to the subjugation of the south, divergent as it
was in soil, in organisation, and in habits of life from the Frank-ruled,
feudalised and more fertile north.
At the time, indeed, Otto's throne was rocking under him. He
had offended the Romans by sparing revolted Tivoli, for which too
independent neighbour they nourished a passionate hatred ; nor were
their desires for their old autonomy and dislike of the Saxon stranger
diminished by his imperial masquerade. In February 1001 they broke
into revolt and blockaded Otto in his palace on the Aventine, at the
same time closing the gates against his troops who were encamped outside
the walls under his cousin, Duke Henry of Bavaria and Hugh of Tuscany.
After three days Otto prepared a desperate sortie, but at the same time
Hugh and Henry entered by treaty with the Romans. Once more they
swore fealty, and listened to the Emperor's reproaches, the best proof of
## p. 177 (#223) ############################################
Otto III's death
177
the strong illusion under which he laboured: “Are you my Romans? For
your sake I have left my country and my kindred. For love of you have
I abandoned my Saxons and all the Germans, my own blood. I have led
you to the most distant parts of the Empire, where your fathers, lords
of the world, never set foot, so as to spread your name and fame to the
ends of the earth? . " And the crowd half believed in the dream. They
dragged their leaders out and threw them before the Emperor. His
nobles were cooler, and under their persuasions he left the Eternal City,
where his escort still remained. It could not be concealed that he had
really been driven out by the rebels.
His case was nearly desperate. The German magnates were ready to
revolt against the dreamer. St Romuald counselled him to take the
cowl. Yet Otto, though a visionary, was resourceful and resolute. He
summoned fresh forces from Germany, where Henry of Bavaria kept the
princes loyal. He asked once more, and with success, for a Byzantine
bride. He vexed Rome whence his men were extracted, and prepared
for a siege. But his strength was exhausted. On 23 January 1002
he died at Paterno on the Tiber just as his reinforcements reached him.
All Italy was in confusion. The Germans were obliged to fight their
way northwards with the corpse. King Ardoin seized the Italian crown.
John Crescentius, son of Crescentius II, ruled Rome as patrician, and
Pope Sylvester, who had loyally followed his pupil, was content to return
thither despoiled of secular power and soon to die. Hugh of Tuscany
was already dead, to the joy of the ungrateful Otto. But the basis
of the Holy Roman Empire was still firm. Bishops and Marquesses as
a rule were faithful to the Saxon house. If Otto's dreams were over,
German supremacy, the fact, remained.
It was not only in the Lombard troubles under Otto III that signs
were apparent of the medieval evolution of Italy. His contemporary
and friend, Doge Pietro Orseolo II of Venice, was making a city-state
a first-rate power at sea. Within a few years Orseolo curbed and
appeased the feuds of the nobles, he effected a reconciliation with
Germany, he reinstated Venice in her favourable position in the Eastern
Empire, and contrived to keep on fair terms with the Muslim world.
In 2000 Venice made her first effort to dominate the upper Adriatic
and it was successful for the time. The Doge led a fleet to Dalmatia,
checking the Slav tribes and giving Venice a temporary protectorate
over the Roman towns of the coast. Byzantium was busied in war
nearer home and glad to rely on a powerful friend. She soon had
occasion for Venice's active help, for the Saracen raids grew once again
to dangerous dimensions. In 1002 the caid Şafī came from Sicily and
besieged Bari by land and sea. The catapan Gregory Trachaniotis was
1 Thangmar, Vita S. Bernwardi, c. 25. But these German accounts glose events.
Was the haling of the Roman leaders before Otto a mere piece of ceremonial, suitable
to a treaty with the Emperor?
C. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. VII.
12
## p. 178 (#224) ############################################
178
Revival and permanent division of Italy
rescued by Venice. Orseolo II arrived with his fleet, revictualled the
town, and fought a three days' battle with the Muslims. In the end,
,
worsted on both elements, they retreated by night. They still wasted
Calabria and the whole west coast of Italy, yet here too they received
a severe check in a naval battle near Reggio in 1006, in which the feet
of the Tuscan trading town of Pisa played the decisive part. Thus,
even before the Holy Roman Empire reached its apogee, the future
city-states of North Italy had made their first entry into international
politics.
In the security of the frontiers, in the rebirth of civic life, in the
resettlement of the country-side, in the renewal of intercourse and
commerce, the success of the Ottonian rule was manifest. Nor were
the omens inauspicious in the Church. During the wretched times of
anarchy a demoralisation, analogous to that of which the career of King
Hugh bears witness among the magnates, had invaded cathedral and
cloister. The Papacy could be the bone of contention for lawless nobles;
a great abbey, like Farfa, could be a nest of murder and luxury in the
mid tenth century. Now at any rate, in the north under Alberic and
the Ottos, in the Byzantine south, an improvement, slow and chequered
as it might be, had set in. But in one aim the Ottos had failed, the
extension of the Regnum Italicim over all Italy. Sardinia, which vegetated
apart ruled by her native “judges” under an all but forgotten Byzantine
suzerainty, might be disregarded; but the separation of the south of the
peninsula from the north left the Holy Roman Empire imperfect. It
was a case where geographical and climatic influences interacted on
historical events and made them, so to say, their accomplices in moulding
the future. South Italy as a whole was always a more barren land than
the north, more sunburnt, less well-watered, a land of pasture rather
than of agriculture or of intense cultivation, a land of great estates and
sparse inhabitants. Long separated from the main Lombard kingdom
by Roman territory, and protected by their mountain defiles, the
Lombards of Benevento had fallen apart from their northern kinsmen.
Charlemagne had not subdued them; Eastern Rome, by direct conquest
and through her client sea-ports, had exercised a potent influence upon
them; the Saracens held Sicily. Throughout the two centuries from 800
to 1000 the schism of the two halves of Italy, which Nature had half
prescribed, steadily widened. Even what they had most in common, the
tendency to autonomous city-states, took different embodiment and met
a different destiny. The Norman Conquest only concluded and intensified
a probable evolution.
a
## p. 179 (#225) ############################################
179
CHAPTER VIII.
GERMANY: HENRY I AND OTTO THE GREAT.
“The future of the realm," Conrad is said to have declared with his
dying words, “lies with the Saxons," and he bade his brother Everard
to bear the royal insignia to Henry, the Saxon Duke, as the one man
capable of restoring the glory of the German name. The union of
Frank and Saxon had given the throne to Conrad on the death of Louis
the Child; the same alliance was responsible for the ascendancy of the
Saxon dynasty in 919. Everard carried out the last injunctions of the
late king, waived his own claim, and caused Henry the Saxon to assume
the royal dignity. The election was a purely secular function ; for,
either from a genuine feeling of his unworthiness or from his dislike
of the higher clergy and their secular influence, a dislike which he un-
doubtedly possessed in the earlier years of his reign, he dispensed with
the solemn ceremonials of anointing and coronation offered him by
Archbishop Heriger of Mayence. It took place at Fritzlar on the borders
of Franconia and Saxony in May 919.
The position of Henry the Fowlerº was a difficult one. As king he
was scarcely more powerful than he was as duke. Saxon and Franconian
princes had been present at the election, but there is little reason to
believe that the princes of the southern duchies were present or that
they acquiesced in the result. Everard, Duke of Franconia, had been
chiefly instrumental in raising Henry to the throne, but he had previously
been an inveterate enemy to the Saxon house, and his loyalty was only
purchased at the price of almost complete independence in his own duke-
dom. The new king did not at first aspire very high. He had no
scheme of governing the whole realm, as the Carolings before him, from
one centre through his own officials. He had no choice but to allow the
tribes to manage their own affairs according to their own customs and
their own traditions. Even his modest ambition to be regarded as the
head of a confederate Germany was not yet accepted. Bavaria and
· Henry's Carolingian descent (he was the great-grandson of Louis the Pious)
did not influence the election. He was chosen purely on his own merits.
2 This name
“Auceps ” is first given him by the Annalista Saxo in the middle
of the twelfth century. Ann. Sax. M. G. SS. vi. 594.
CH, vul.
12-2
## p. 180 (#226) ############################################
180
Submission of Swabia and Bavaria
1
1
1
Swabia were outside his sphere of authority. Burchard, “no duke, but
tyrant, despoiler and ravager of the land” (his unscrupulous disposal
of church property had given him a bad reputation among monastic
writers) was ruling in Swabia. He had just rid himself of the aggressions
of Rodolph II, King of Upper (Jurane) Burgundy, who had attempted
to add Swabia to his dominions, by defeating him at Winterthur! . At
the news of Henry's approach, for it is uncertain whether the king
actually entered Swabia, he surrendered unconditionally. Henry allowed
him to retain his dukedom, only reserving to himself the right of ap-
pointing to bishoprics and the royal domain lying within the limits of
the duchy.
Bavaria offered a more difficult task. Arnulf “ the Bad,” though,
like Burchard, he had gained the ill-will of the clergy owing to his habit
of appropriating the revenue and property of the Church, was exceedingly
popular with the secular nobles. He had been urged, not against his
will, to put forward a claim to the throne of Germany, and was only
prevented by the antagonism of the clergy from making an immediate
attempt to win this end. According to one account Henry was obliged
to make two campaigns before he was able to bring Arnulf to terms.
However that may be, in 921 he approached Ratisbon (Regensburg),
perhaps, as Widukind records, he actually besieged the town; and, by
granting particularly favourable conditions, obtained Arnulf's submission.
The duke retained the coveted right of appointing to bishoprics within
his duchy, a privilege confined to Bavaria alone; in other ways also
Bavaria secured a larger measure of independence than was enjoyed by
any other German tribe. Almost sovereign powers were given to its
duke. Arnulf struck coins, directed his own foreign policy, and dated
documents according to the year of his reign.
Henry was not satisfied with the limits prescribed by the Treaty of
Verdun; he aimed at the inclusion of Lorraine in the German realm. It
was not an easy matter and was only accomplished by untiring patience
and by taking advantage of opportunities offered by the ceaseless dis-
turbances in the Western Kingdom. Gilbert (Giselbert), the reigning
duke, a versatile and unscrupulous man, sought and obtained the help
of the German king when his dominions were overrun by the West
Franks. He was reinstated and remained on friendly terms with Henry
until, in 920, hostilities broke out between the Eastern and Western
Kingdoms. Charles the Simple pushed his way into Germany as far
as Pfeddersheim near Worms, but retired on hearing that Henry was
arming against him. Gilbert, at this juncture, threw off his allegiance
1 Rodolph, however, partially gained his object. For either on the occasion of his
marriage with Burchard's daughter Bertha, or more probably after Burchard's death,
at the Council held at Worms in November 926, he added a strip of territory lying
to the east of the river Aar, but the extent of which is uncertain, to his dominions
in return for the gift to Henry the Fowler of the much coveted Holy Lance. See
R. L. Poole, The Supposed Origin of Burgundia Minor, EHR, xxx. 51, 1915.
## p. 181 (#227) ############################################
Conquest of Lorraine
181
war.
to Henry and assisted Charles in the campaign of the following year.
Fighting was however averted : on 7 November 921 the two kings met
in a boat anchored in the middle of the Rhine at Bonn. There a
treaty was concluded : Henry was formally recognised as king of the East
Franks, but Lorraine remained dependent on the Western Kingdom.
During the next years France was immersed in the throes of civil
First Robert, the younger son of Robert the Strong, and on his
death his son-in-law, Raoul (Rudolf), Duke of Burgundy, was set up as
rival king to the helpless Caroling, Charles the Simple, who spent most
of the remainder of his life in close captivity at Péronne. In the midst of
this anarchy Henry sought his opportunity to wrest Lorraine from the
Western Kingdom. Twice in the year 923 he crossed the Rhine. In the
spring he met Robert and entered into some compact of friendship with
him, probably at Jülich on the Roer; later in the year, at the call of
Duke Gilbert, who had again changed sides, he entered Lorraine with
an army, captured a large part of the country, and was only checked by
the appearance of Raoul (Robert had been killed at Soissons in the
previous June) with considerable forces. No battle took place, but an
armistice was arranged to last until October of the next year and the
eastern part of Lorraine was left in Henry's possession. The state of
affairs in Lorraine was less favourable to Henry when in 925 he once
more crossed the Rhine. Raoul had won a large measure of recognition
among the inhabitants and Gilbert, always to be found on what appeared
to be the winning side, had come to terms with him. Henry however
met with surprisingly little opposition on his way. He besieged Gilbert
at Zülpich, captured the town, and soon made himself master of a large
portion of the land. Gilbert had no choice but to accept the overlord-
ship of the Saxon king. He was reinstated and was attached more
closely to Henry's interests in 928 by receiving his daughter Gerberga
in marriage. Raoul bowed to the inevitable: henceforward Lorraine
was an integral part of the East Frankish dominion.
In the first six years of his reign Henry had achieved much. He
had succeeded in making his authority recognised in the southern duchies
and added Lorraine to his kingdom. Content with this recognition he
did not seek to interfere further in the affairs of the duchies. It was
his policy throughont to leave the administration in the hands of the
dukes. Bavaria, as far as we know, he never so much as revisited : Swabia
was less isolated, for after the death of Burchard, Herman, a cousin of
the Franconian Everard, married his widow and succeeded to the duke-
dom. The family connexion inevitably brought Swabia into closer
relations with the central power.
Henry's own activities were confined almost entirely to Saxony and
Thuringia. The weakness of his predecessors had encouraged the au-
dacity of the restless and barbarous neighbours to the north and east
of Germany. The Danes ravaged the coast of Frisia: the Wends,
CH. VIII.
## p. 182 (#228) ############################################
182
Hungarian Invasion of Saxony
inhabiting the land between the Elbe and the Oder, engaged the Saxon
nobles in a ceaseless and devastating border warfare: since the accession
of Louis the Child a new and still greater peril hung over Germany in
the violent inroads of the Magyars. These barbarians lived for war alone.
Though they were addicted to bunting and fishing, they chiefly relied for
their subsistence on the spoils of their victories. Their appearance, made
more grotesque and sinister by artificial means, their outlandish war-cries,
their dashing onslaught, and their ruthless cruelty combined to strike
terror upon those they encountered. Their unrivalled skill in archery
and horsemanship gave them a reputation of invincibility. For the early
years of Henry's reign the Hungarians had remained quiet, but in 924
they once more poured westward into Germany and Italy. The lack of
military organisation and system of defence in Saxony was laid bare.
With fire and sword they overran the whole of the province: the people
fled before them and hid themselves in the forests: Henry, helpless and
unable to offer any resistance, shut himself up in the fortress of Werla
at the foot of the Harz mountains. By an amazing stroke of luck, a
Hungarian chief, apparently a person of considerable importance, fell
into Henry's hands. Ransom was refused : the king would only sur-
render his prize on condition that the invaders would withdraw from
Saxony and refrain from molesting him for a period of nine years; for
his part, he was prepared to pay a yearly tribute. The terms were
accepted, the Hungarian noble was given up, and for nine years Saxony
was rid of the aggressions of her formidable neighbour'.
The nine years Henry turned to good account. He was enabled to
carry out his schemes of defence undisturbed. The Saxons were un-
accustomed to town life; they lived still, like the Germans of Tacitus,
apart in scattered villages and hamlets; a royal fortress or a monastery,
the seat of a spiritual or secular prince, alone served as places of meeting
for social purposes or the transactions of business. Fortified towns were
all but unknown. Henry saw the necessity not only of strengthening
the existing fortresses but of building and fortifying towns. Merseburg
and Hersfeld, Goslar and Gandersheim were secured within wall and moat.
Quedlinburg and Pöhlde are lasting memorials of his constructive activity
and
prove him not unworthy of the name of “builder of cities” (Städte-
erbauer) given him by later writers. The town was to be the centre of
all economic and judicial, military and social activity, the position of
defence, the place of refuge in time of invasion; to promote the prosperity
of the towns it was ordained that all councils and social gatherings should
be held there and that no substantial or valuable buildings should be
erected outside the walls. The country conquered from the Wends Henry
divided into military fiefs which he granted out to his ministeriales.
They were formed into groups of nine tenants, one of whom lived in the
1 The truce appears to have extended only to Saxony and Thuringia, for in 926
we find the Hungarians invading Swabia and Lotharingia.
.
## p. 183 (#229) ############################################
Defensive Measures
183
a
city to maintain the walls and dwellings in good repair and to take
charge of a third of the total produce of the tenement to provide against
an emergency. The remaining eight worked in the fields, but in the
event of an attack withdrew to the city to defend it against the invader.
The establishment of a colony of robbers and bandits on the outskirts of
Merseburg is an interesting experiment. It was the condition of their
tenure that they should only employ their craft of larceny and plunder
against their Slavonic neighbours. In many of these reforms, it is thought,
Henry had the example of England before his eyes. England had been
alike defenceless and open to the attacks of the Danish invaders until
Alfred and his son Edward the Elder adopted measures which not only
checked their forward movement but even drove them back and kept
them within prescribed limits. In 929 Henry asked his English con-
temporary Aethelstan for an English princess for his son Otto. The
negotiations, which ended in Otto's marriage with Edith, brought
Henry into close touch with England and English policy, and it is not
difficult to believe that through this connexion he found the pattern on
which to model his plans for the defence of his kingdom'. The army no
less than the system of defence required radical reform. The heerbann,
corresponding to the Anglo-Saxon fyrd, composed of the freemen—a
class which in course of years had considerably diminished in numbers-
was untrained and difficult to mobilise. Being an infantry force, it was
moreover wholly inadequate to cope with the Hungarian horsemen.
Hence it was essential for the Saxons to learn to fight on horseback.
The ministeriales established on the Wendish marches became the nucleus
of the new army.
But Henry seems to have exacted knight service
whenever possible throughout Saxony and even in the heerbann, which
continued often to be summoned in times of national danger, the cavalry
element gradually became predominant.
Henry tested the mettle of his reorganised army in the campaigns
against the Slavs. These restless people dwelling in the forest and swamp
lands between the Elbe and the Oder had been intermittently at war with
the Germans since the time of Charles the Great. But the warfare had
been conducted by the Saxon nobles for private ends and with a view to
Lappenberg, 1.
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. ), pp. 259-60, 263–4, and Mayer, E. ,
Italienische Verfassungsgeschichte, 1. pp. 447, 450-1.
## p. 175 (#221) ############################################
Revolt of Ardoin of Ivrea
175
a
who were distinguished not so much by their position in the feudal chain
as by the extent of their lands and privileges, but who in general were
vassals of the magnates, not of the Emperor. The continued predominance
of city-life in Italy, and the terrors of the recent barbarian ravages, had
turned large numbers of the capitanei and secundi milites into inhabitants,
either partially or solely, of the cities, where they formed the most
powerful class of citizens. Under them were the traders who led the
non-noble city-population. All three classes, capitanei, secundi milites
and plebeians tended to be at odds with one another; there were also
signs of a resentment at the bishops' rule which had once been welcomed.
Berengar II, at enmity with the bishops, had shewn signs of courting the
townsmen when he granted privileges to the men of Genoa collectively;
the Milanese, in Otto III's minority, had waged war on their archbishop
Landulf II and the great family to which he belonged; the Cremonese
obtained from Otto III a diploma which infringed their bishop's fiscal
rights and was soon quashed on that account. The movement was
contrary to the imperial policy by which the bishops, sometimes of German
extraction, were the Emperor's best agents and counter-weights to the
restless nobles. Fresh towns, Lodi, Acqui, Piacenza, and Tortona, had
been placed completely under episcopal rule; the whole province of Ravenna
was made subject to its archbishop's authority by Otto III; lesser
privileges in town and country had been continually given piecemeal to
the prelates. Yet in the country-side the expedient was losing its value.
Prelates in difficulties, prelates of the local noble families, were steadily
granting church land by the leases known as libellariae to the nobles,
thereby impoverishing their churches and strengthening the noble class,
and the consequent feudal disorder was only increased by the growing
divergence in interest between the magnates, the capitanei, and the secundi
milites. The vast and increasing church estates were being consumed
by nominal leases and over-enfeoffment.
Disorder from this cause was already marked under Otto II ; Pope
Sylvester, as Abbot of Bobbio, had vainly striven to check the system
in his abbey; it now led to civil war. Ardoin, Marquess of Ivrea, was
probably a relative of Berengar II, but his sympathies lay with the lesser
nobles. He and they had profited by spendthrift episcopal grants, and
came to bitter feud with Bishop Peter of Vercelli, possibly because he
endeavoured to recall them'. In 997 they murdered the bishop and burnt
the cathedral. Peter's fellow-bishops were up in arms against Ardoin,
and Otto III took stringent action. In 998 he enacted that no church
libellaria should outlast the grantor's life. In 999, in concert with the
1 This is conjecture. Peter's long captivity among the Saracens after the battle
of Stilo (see supra, p. 169) must have facilitated usurpations, and Ingo, Peter's prede-
cessor, had certainly dilapidated his see, but Ardoin's immediate grievance may have
been owing to his claims on the curtis of Caresana, given by Empress Adelaide to
the Canons of Vercelli.
CH, VII.
## p. 176 (#222) ############################################
176
Revolt of the Romans
1
1
1
Pope, he confiscated Ardoin's lands and condemned him to a life of
penitent wandering. At the same time he appointed a stout-hearted
German, Leo, to the see of Vercelli, and granted him the counties of
Vercelli and Santhià. It was the first grant of entire counties to a
bishopric in Lombardy, although parallel to the powers conferred on
the see of Ravenna. But Ardoin resisted in his castles, and next year,
supported by his accomplices, seems even to have taken the title of king.
Otto returned, but was content to drive Ardoin back and to entrust his
uprooting to the local magnates. The embers of the revolt against the
Romano-
Germanic Empire were left to glow. Otto's wishes at this time
seem to have turned to the reassertion of the claims of the Holy Roman
Empire in the south. Since Abu'l-ķāsim's death in his victory over
Otto II, the Saracen raids, although they inflicted misery on Calabria and
South Apulia, had not been in sufficient force to endanger the Byzantine
rule.
The catapan Calocyrus Delphinas in 983-4 had subdued the
Apulian rebels ; nor did Otto III shew any disposition to intervene.
But the petty frontier states were a different matter. In 983 the
Salernitans had driven out Manso of Amalfi, and under their new prince
John II, a Lombard from Spoleto, remained henceforth neutral and
disregarded. Their neighbours, however, Capua, Benevento, Naples and
Gaeta, were more important for Otto. After a romantic pilgrimage to
the famous shrine of Monte Gargano, he sent in 999 the Capuan Ademar,
new-made Marquess of Spoleto, to Capua, where Laidulf was deposed
and Ademar made prince. At the same time Naples was seized, its
Duke John taken captive, and the Duke of Gaeta was bribed into
vassalage. These successes, which once more effectively enlarged the
Empire, did not last, for in 1000 the Capuans drove out Ademar,
substituting Landolf V of the old dynasty, and John of Naples recovered
his state and independence. A short campaign of Otto himself next
year against Benevento gained at most a formal submission from the
Lombard princes. The fact was that the Emperors could never devote
enough energy or men to the subjugation of the south, divergent as it
was in soil, in organisation, and in habits of life from the Frank-ruled,
feudalised and more fertile north.
At the time, indeed, Otto's throne was rocking under him. He
had offended the Romans by sparing revolted Tivoli, for which too
independent neighbour they nourished a passionate hatred ; nor were
their desires for their old autonomy and dislike of the Saxon stranger
diminished by his imperial masquerade. In February 1001 they broke
into revolt and blockaded Otto in his palace on the Aventine, at the
same time closing the gates against his troops who were encamped outside
the walls under his cousin, Duke Henry of Bavaria and Hugh of Tuscany.
After three days Otto prepared a desperate sortie, but at the same time
Hugh and Henry entered by treaty with the Romans. Once more they
swore fealty, and listened to the Emperor's reproaches, the best proof of
## p. 177 (#223) ############################################
Otto III's death
177
the strong illusion under which he laboured: “Are you my Romans? For
your sake I have left my country and my kindred. For love of you have
I abandoned my Saxons and all the Germans, my own blood. I have led
you to the most distant parts of the Empire, where your fathers, lords
of the world, never set foot, so as to spread your name and fame to the
ends of the earth? . " And the crowd half believed in the dream. They
dragged their leaders out and threw them before the Emperor. His
nobles were cooler, and under their persuasions he left the Eternal City,
where his escort still remained. It could not be concealed that he had
really been driven out by the rebels.
His case was nearly desperate. The German magnates were ready to
revolt against the dreamer. St Romuald counselled him to take the
cowl. Yet Otto, though a visionary, was resourceful and resolute. He
summoned fresh forces from Germany, where Henry of Bavaria kept the
princes loyal. He asked once more, and with success, for a Byzantine
bride. He vexed Rome whence his men were extracted, and prepared
for a siege. But his strength was exhausted. On 23 January 1002
he died at Paterno on the Tiber just as his reinforcements reached him.
All Italy was in confusion. The Germans were obliged to fight their
way northwards with the corpse. King Ardoin seized the Italian crown.
John Crescentius, son of Crescentius II, ruled Rome as patrician, and
Pope Sylvester, who had loyally followed his pupil, was content to return
thither despoiled of secular power and soon to die. Hugh of Tuscany
was already dead, to the joy of the ungrateful Otto. But the basis
of the Holy Roman Empire was still firm. Bishops and Marquesses as
a rule were faithful to the Saxon house. If Otto's dreams were over,
German supremacy, the fact, remained.
It was not only in the Lombard troubles under Otto III that signs
were apparent of the medieval evolution of Italy. His contemporary
and friend, Doge Pietro Orseolo II of Venice, was making a city-state
a first-rate power at sea. Within a few years Orseolo curbed and
appeased the feuds of the nobles, he effected a reconciliation with
Germany, he reinstated Venice in her favourable position in the Eastern
Empire, and contrived to keep on fair terms with the Muslim world.
In 2000 Venice made her first effort to dominate the upper Adriatic
and it was successful for the time. The Doge led a fleet to Dalmatia,
checking the Slav tribes and giving Venice a temporary protectorate
over the Roman towns of the coast. Byzantium was busied in war
nearer home and glad to rely on a powerful friend. She soon had
occasion for Venice's active help, for the Saracen raids grew once again
to dangerous dimensions. In 1002 the caid Şafī came from Sicily and
besieged Bari by land and sea. The catapan Gregory Trachaniotis was
1 Thangmar, Vita S. Bernwardi, c. 25. But these German accounts glose events.
Was the haling of the Roman leaders before Otto a mere piece of ceremonial, suitable
to a treaty with the Emperor?
C. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. VII.
12
## p. 178 (#224) ############################################
178
Revival and permanent division of Italy
rescued by Venice. Orseolo II arrived with his fleet, revictualled the
town, and fought a three days' battle with the Muslims. In the end,
,
worsted on both elements, they retreated by night. They still wasted
Calabria and the whole west coast of Italy, yet here too they received
a severe check in a naval battle near Reggio in 1006, in which the feet
of the Tuscan trading town of Pisa played the decisive part. Thus,
even before the Holy Roman Empire reached its apogee, the future
city-states of North Italy had made their first entry into international
politics.
In the security of the frontiers, in the rebirth of civic life, in the
resettlement of the country-side, in the renewal of intercourse and
commerce, the success of the Ottonian rule was manifest. Nor were
the omens inauspicious in the Church. During the wretched times of
anarchy a demoralisation, analogous to that of which the career of King
Hugh bears witness among the magnates, had invaded cathedral and
cloister. The Papacy could be the bone of contention for lawless nobles;
a great abbey, like Farfa, could be a nest of murder and luxury in the
mid tenth century. Now at any rate, in the north under Alberic and
the Ottos, in the Byzantine south, an improvement, slow and chequered
as it might be, had set in. But in one aim the Ottos had failed, the
extension of the Regnum Italicim over all Italy. Sardinia, which vegetated
apart ruled by her native “judges” under an all but forgotten Byzantine
suzerainty, might be disregarded; but the separation of the south of the
peninsula from the north left the Holy Roman Empire imperfect. It
was a case where geographical and climatic influences interacted on
historical events and made them, so to say, their accomplices in moulding
the future. South Italy as a whole was always a more barren land than
the north, more sunburnt, less well-watered, a land of pasture rather
than of agriculture or of intense cultivation, a land of great estates and
sparse inhabitants. Long separated from the main Lombard kingdom
by Roman territory, and protected by their mountain defiles, the
Lombards of Benevento had fallen apart from their northern kinsmen.
Charlemagne had not subdued them; Eastern Rome, by direct conquest
and through her client sea-ports, had exercised a potent influence upon
them; the Saracens held Sicily. Throughout the two centuries from 800
to 1000 the schism of the two halves of Italy, which Nature had half
prescribed, steadily widened. Even what they had most in common, the
tendency to autonomous city-states, took different embodiment and met
a different destiny. The Norman Conquest only concluded and intensified
a probable evolution.
a
## p. 179 (#225) ############################################
179
CHAPTER VIII.
GERMANY: HENRY I AND OTTO THE GREAT.
“The future of the realm," Conrad is said to have declared with his
dying words, “lies with the Saxons," and he bade his brother Everard
to bear the royal insignia to Henry, the Saxon Duke, as the one man
capable of restoring the glory of the German name. The union of
Frank and Saxon had given the throne to Conrad on the death of Louis
the Child; the same alliance was responsible for the ascendancy of the
Saxon dynasty in 919. Everard carried out the last injunctions of the
late king, waived his own claim, and caused Henry the Saxon to assume
the royal dignity. The election was a purely secular function ; for,
either from a genuine feeling of his unworthiness or from his dislike
of the higher clergy and their secular influence, a dislike which he un-
doubtedly possessed in the earlier years of his reign, he dispensed with
the solemn ceremonials of anointing and coronation offered him by
Archbishop Heriger of Mayence. It took place at Fritzlar on the borders
of Franconia and Saxony in May 919.
The position of Henry the Fowlerº was a difficult one. As king he
was scarcely more powerful than he was as duke. Saxon and Franconian
princes had been present at the election, but there is little reason to
believe that the princes of the southern duchies were present or that
they acquiesced in the result. Everard, Duke of Franconia, had been
chiefly instrumental in raising Henry to the throne, but he had previously
been an inveterate enemy to the Saxon house, and his loyalty was only
purchased at the price of almost complete independence in his own duke-
dom. The new king did not at first aspire very high. He had no
scheme of governing the whole realm, as the Carolings before him, from
one centre through his own officials. He had no choice but to allow the
tribes to manage their own affairs according to their own customs and
their own traditions. Even his modest ambition to be regarded as the
head of a confederate Germany was not yet accepted. Bavaria and
· Henry's Carolingian descent (he was the great-grandson of Louis the Pious)
did not influence the election. He was chosen purely on his own merits.
2 This name
“Auceps ” is first given him by the Annalista Saxo in the middle
of the twelfth century. Ann. Sax. M. G. SS. vi. 594.
CH, vul.
12-2
## p. 180 (#226) ############################################
180
Submission of Swabia and Bavaria
1
1
1
Swabia were outside his sphere of authority. Burchard, “no duke, but
tyrant, despoiler and ravager of the land” (his unscrupulous disposal
of church property had given him a bad reputation among monastic
writers) was ruling in Swabia. He had just rid himself of the aggressions
of Rodolph II, King of Upper (Jurane) Burgundy, who had attempted
to add Swabia to his dominions, by defeating him at Winterthur! . At
the news of Henry's approach, for it is uncertain whether the king
actually entered Swabia, he surrendered unconditionally. Henry allowed
him to retain his dukedom, only reserving to himself the right of ap-
pointing to bishoprics and the royal domain lying within the limits of
the duchy.
Bavaria offered a more difficult task. Arnulf “ the Bad,” though,
like Burchard, he had gained the ill-will of the clergy owing to his habit
of appropriating the revenue and property of the Church, was exceedingly
popular with the secular nobles. He had been urged, not against his
will, to put forward a claim to the throne of Germany, and was only
prevented by the antagonism of the clergy from making an immediate
attempt to win this end. According to one account Henry was obliged
to make two campaigns before he was able to bring Arnulf to terms.
However that may be, in 921 he approached Ratisbon (Regensburg),
perhaps, as Widukind records, he actually besieged the town; and, by
granting particularly favourable conditions, obtained Arnulf's submission.
The duke retained the coveted right of appointing to bishoprics within
his duchy, a privilege confined to Bavaria alone; in other ways also
Bavaria secured a larger measure of independence than was enjoyed by
any other German tribe. Almost sovereign powers were given to its
duke. Arnulf struck coins, directed his own foreign policy, and dated
documents according to the year of his reign.
Henry was not satisfied with the limits prescribed by the Treaty of
Verdun; he aimed at the inclusion of Lorraine in the German realm. It
was not an easy matter and was only accomplished by untiring patience
and by taking advantage of opportunities offered by the ceaseless dis-
turbances in the Western Kingdom. Gilbert (Giselbert), the reigning
duke, a versatile and unscrupulous man, sought and obtained the help
of the German king when his dominions were overrun by the West
Franks. He was reinstated and remained on friendly terms with Henry
until, in 920, hostilities broke out between the Eastern and Western
Kingdoms. Charles the Simple pushed his way into Germany as far
as Pfeddersheim near Worms, but retired on hearing that Henry was
arming against him. Gilbert, at this juncture, threw off his allegiance
1 Rodolph, however, partially gained his object. For either on the occasion of his
marriage with Burchard's daughter Bertha, or more probably after Burchard's death,
at the Council held at Worms in November 926, he added a strip of territory lying
to the east of the river Aar, but the extent of which is uncertain, to his dominions
in return for the gift to Henry the Fowler of the much coveted Holy Lance. See
R. L. Poole, The Supposed Origin of Burgundia Minor, EHR, xxx. 51, 1915.
## p. 181 (#227) ############################################
Conquest of Lorraine
181
war.
to Henry and assisted Charles in the campaign of the following year.
Fighting was however averted : on 7 November 921 the two kings met
in a boat anchored in the middle of the Rhine at Bonn. There a
treaty was concluded : Henry was formally recognised as king of the East
Franks, but Lorraine remained dependent on the Western Kingdom.
During the next years France was immersed in the throes of civil
First Robert, the younger son of Robert the Strong, and on his
death his son-in-law, Raoul (Rudolf), Duke of Burgundy, was set up as
rival king to the helpless Caroling, Charles the Simple, who spent most
of the remainder of his life in close captivity at Péronne. In the midst of
this anarchy Henry sought his opportunity to wrest Lorraine from the
Western Kingdom. Twice in the year 923 he crossed the Rhine. In the
spring he met Robert and entered into some compact of friendship with
him, probably at Jülich on the Roer; later in the year, at the call of
Duke Gilbert, who had again changed sides, he entered Lorraine with
an army, captured a large part of the country, and was only checked by
the appearance of Raoul (Robert had been killed at Soissons in the
previous June) with considerable forces. No battle took place, but an
armistice was arranged to last until October of the next year and the
eastern part of Lorraine was left in Henry's possession. The state of
affairs in Lorraine was less favourable to Henry when in 925 he once
more crossed the Rhine. Raoul had won a large measure of recognition
among the inhabitants and Gilbert, always to be found on what appeared
to be the winning side, had come to terms with him. Henry however
met with surprisingly little opposition on his way. He besieged Gilbert
at Zülpich, captured the town, and soon made himself master of a large
portion of the land. Gilbert had no choice but to accept the overlord-
ship of the Saxon king. He was reinstated and was attached more
closely to Henry's interests in 928 by receiving his daughter Gerberga
in marriage. Raoul bowed to the inevitable: henceforward Lorraine
was an integral part of the East Frankish dominion.
In the first six years of his reign Henry had achieved much. He
had succeeded in making his authority recognised in the southern duchies
and added Lorraine to his kingdom. Content with this recognition he
did not seek to interfere further in the affairs of the duchies. It was
his policy throughont to leave the administration in the hands of the
dukes. Bavaria, as far as we know, he never so much as revisited : Swabia
was less isolated, for after the death of Burchard, Herman, a cousin of
the Franconian Everard, married his widow and succeeded to the duke-
dom. The family connexion inevitably brought Swabia into closer
relations with the central power.
Henry's own activities were confined almost entirely to Saxony and
Thuringia. The weakness of his predecessors had encouraged the au-
dacity of the restless and barbarous neighbours to the north and east
of Germany. The Danes ravaged the coast of Frisia: the Wends,
CH. VIII.
## p. 182 (#228) ############################################
182
Hungarian Invasion of Saxony
inhabiting the land between the Elbe and the Oder, engaged the Saxon
nobles in a ceaseless and devastating border warfare: since the accession
of Louis the Child a new and still greater peril hung over Germany in
the violent inroads of the Magyars. These barbarians lived for war alone.
Though they were addicted to bunting and fishing, they chiefly relied for
their subsistence on the spoils of their victories. Their appearance, made
more grotesque and sinister by artificial means, their outlandish war-cries,
their dashing onslaught, and their ruthless cruelty combined to strike
terror upon those they encountered. Their unrivalled skill in archery
and horsemanship gave them a reputation of invincibility. For the early
years of Henry's reign the Hungarians had remained quiet, but in 924
they once more poured westward into Germany and Italy. The lack of
military organisation and system of defence in Saxony was laid bare.
With fire and sword they overran the whole of the province: the people
fled before them and hid themselves in the forests: Henry, helpless and
unable to offer any resistance, shut himself up in the fortress of Werla
at the foot of the Harz mountains. By an amazing stroke of luck, a
Hungarian chief, apparently a person of considerable importance, fell
into Henry's hands. Ransom was refused : the king would only sur-
render his prize on condition that the invaders would withdraw from
Saxony and refrain from molesting him for a period of nine years; for
his part, he was prepared to pay a yearly tribute. The terms were
accepted, the Hungarian noble was given up, and for nine years Saxony
was rid of the aggressions of her formidable neighbour'.
The nine years Henry turned to good account. He was enabled to
carry out his schemes of defence undisturbed. The Saxons were un-
accustomed to town life; they lived still, like the Germans of Tacitus,
apart in scattered villages and hamlets; a royal fortress or a monastery,
the seat of a spiritual or secular prince, alone served as places of meeting
for social purposes or the transactions of business. Fortified towns were
all but unknown. Henry saw the necessity not only of strengthening
the existing fortresses but of building and fortifying towns. Merseburg
and Hersfeld, Goslar and Gandersheim were secured within wall and moat.
Quedlinburg and Pöhlde are lasting memorials of his constructive activity
and
prove him not unworthy of the name of “builder of cities” (Städte-
erbauer) given him by later writers. The town was to be the centre of
all economic and judicial, military and social activity, the position of
defence, the place of refuge in time of invasion; to promote the prosperity
of the towns it was ordained that all councils and social gatherings should
be held there and that no substantial or valuable buildings should be
erected outside the walls. The country conquered from the Wends Henry
divided into military fiefs which he granted out to his ministeriales.
They were formed into groups of nine tenants, one of whom lived in the
1 The truce appears to have extended only to Saxony and Thuringia, for in 926
we find the Hungarians invading Swabia and Lotharingia.
.
## p. 183 (#229) ############################################
Defensive Measures
183
a
city to maintain the walls and dwellings in good repair and to take
charge of a third of the total produce of the tenement to provide against
an emergency. The remaining eight worked in the fields, but in the
event of an attack withdrew to the city to defend it against the invader.
The establishment of a colony of robbers and bandits on the outskirts of
Merseburg is an interesting experiment. It was the condition of their
tenure that they should only employ their craft of larceny and plunder
against their Slavonic neighbours. In many of these reforms, it is thought,
Henry had the example of England before his eyes. England had been
alike defenceless and open to the attacks of the Danish invaders until
Alfred and his son Edward the Elder adopted measures which not only
checked their forward movement but even drove them back and kept
them within prescribed limits. In 929 Henry asked his English con-
temporary Aethelstan for an English princess for his son Otto. The
negotiations, which ended in Otto's marriage with Edith, brought
Henry into close touch with England and English policy, and it is not
difficult to believe that through this connexion he found the pattern on
which to model his plans for the defence of his kingdom'. The army no
less than the system of defence required radical reform. The heerbann,
corresponding to the Anglo-Saxon fyrd, composed of the freemen—a
class which in course of years had considerably diminished in numbers-
was untrained and difficult to mobilise. Being an infantry force, it was
moreover wholly inadequate to cope with the Hungarian horsemen.
Hence it was essential for the Saxons to learn to fight on horseback.
The ministeriales established on the Wendish marches became the nucleus
of the new army.
But Henry seems to have exacted knight service
whenever possible throughout Saxony and even in the heerbann, which
continued often to be summoned in times of national danger, the cavalry
element gradually became predominant.
Henry tested the mettle of his reorganised army in the campaigns
against the Slavs. These restless people dwelling in the forest and swamp
lands between the Elbe and the Oder had been intermittently at war with
the Germans since the time of Charles the Great. But the warfare had
been conducted by the Saxon nobles for private ends and with a view to
Lappenberg, 1.
