Part 472

"Otho the Great, son and successor of Henry I., added the kingdom of Italy to the conquests of his father, and procured also the Imperial dignity for himself, and his successors in Germany. Italy had become a distinct kingdom since the revolution, which happened (888) at the death of the Emperor Charles the Fat. Ten princes in succession occupied the throne during the space of seventy-three years. Several of these princes, such as Guy, Lambert, Arnulf, Louis of Burgundy, and Berenger I., were invested with the Imperial dignity. Berenger I., having been assassinated (924), this latter dignity ceased entirely, and the city of Rome was even dismembered from the kingdom of Italy. The sovereignty of that city was seized by the famous Marozia, widow of a nobleman named Alberic. She raised her son to the pontificate by the title of John XI.; and the better to establish her dominion, she espoused Hugo King of Italy (932), who became, in consequence of this marriage, master of Rome. But Alberic, another son of Marozia, soon stirred up the people against this aspiring princess and her husband Hugo. {1440} Having driven Hugo from the throne, and shut up his mother in prison, he assumed to himself the sovereign authority, under the title of Patrician of the Romans. At his death (954) he transmitted the sovereignty to his son Octavian, who, though only nineteen years of age, caused himself to be elected pope, by the title of John XII. This epoch was one most disastrous for Italy. The weakness of the government excited factions among the nobility, gave birth to anarchy, and fresh opportunity for the depredations of the Hungarians and Arabs, who, at this period, were the scourge of Italy, which they ravaged with impunity. Pavia, the capital of the kingdom, was taken, and burnt by the Hungarians. These troubles increased on the accession of Berenger II. (950), grandson of Berenger I. That prince associated his son Adelbert with him in the royal dignity; and the public voice accused them of having caused the death of King Lothaire, son and successor of Hugo. Lothaire left a young widow, named Adelaide, daughter of Rodolph II., King of Burgundy and Italy. To avoid the importunities of Berenger II., who wished to compel her to marry his son Adelbert, this princess called in the King of Germany to her aid. Otho complied with the solicitations of the distressed queen; and, on this occasion, undertook his first expedition into Italy (951). The city of Pavia, and several other places, having fallen into his hands, he made himself be proclaimed King of Italy, and married the young queen, his protégée. Berenger and his son, being driven for shelter to their strongholds, had recourse to negociation. They succeeded in obtaining for themselves a confirmation of the royal title of Italy, on condition of doing homage for it to the King of Germany. … It appears that it was not without the regret, and even contrary to the wish of Adelaide, that Otho agreed to enter into terms of accommodation with Berenger. … Afterwards; however, he lent a favourable ear to the complaints which Pope John XII. and some Italian noblemen had addressed to him against Berenger and his son; and took occasion, on their account, to conduct a new army into Italy (961). Berenger, too feeble to oppose him, retired a second time within his fortifications. Otho marched from Pavia to Milan, and there made himself be crowned King of Italy; from thence he passed to Rome, about the commencement of the following year. Pope John XII., who had himself invited him, and again implored his protection against Berenger, gave him, at first, a very brilliant reception; and revived the Imperial dignity in his favour, which had been dormant for thirty-eight years. It was on the 2d of February, 962, that the Pope consecrated and crowned him Emperor; but he had soon cause to repent of this proceeding. Otho, immediately after his coronation at Rome, undertook the siege of St. Leon, a fortress in Umbria, where Berenger and his queen had taken refuge. While engaged in the siege, he received frequent intimations from Rome, of the misconduct and immoralities of the Pope. The remonstrances which he thought it his duty to make on this subject, offended the young pontiff, who resolved, in consequence, to break off union with the Emperor. Hurried on by the impetuosity of his character, he entered into a negociation with Adelbert; and even persuaded him to come to Rome, in order to concert with him measures of defence. On the first news of this event, Otho put himself at the head of a large detachment, with which he marched directly to Rome. The Pope, however, did not think it advisable to wait his approach, but fled with the King, his new ally. Otho, on arriving at the capital, exacted a solemn oath from the clergy and the people, that henceforth they would elect no pope without his counsel, and that of the Emperor and his successors. Having then assembled a council, he caused Pope John XII. to be deposed; and Leo VIII. was elected in his place. This latter Pontiff was maintained in the papacy, in spite of all the efforts which his adversary made to regain it. Berenger II., after having sustained a long siege at St. Leon, fell at length (964) into the hands of the conqueror, who sent him into exile at Bamberg, and compelled his son, Adelbert, to take refuge in the court of Constantinople. All Italy, to the extent of the ancient kingdom of the Lombards, fell under the dominion of the Germans; only a few maritime towns in Lower Italy, with the greater part of Apulia and Calabria, still remained in the power of the Greeks. This kingdom, together with the Imperial dignity, Otho transmitted to his successors on the throne of Germany. From this time the Germans held it to be an inviolable principle, that as the Imperial dignity was strictly united with the royalty of Italy, kings elected by the German nation should, at the same time, in virtue of that election, become Kings of Italy and Emperors. The practice of this triple coronation, viz., of Germany, Italy, and Rome, continued for many centuries; and from Otho the Great, till Maximilian I. (1508), no king of Germany took the title of Emperor, until after he had been formally crowned by the Pope."

_C. W. Koch, The Revolutions of Europe, period 3._

"At the first glance it would seem as if the relation in which Otho now stood to the pope was the same as that occupied by Charlemagne; on a closer inspection, however; we find a wide difference. Charlemagne's connexion with the see of Rome was produced by mutual need; it was the result of long epochs of political combination embracing the development of various nations; their mutual understanding rested on an internal necessity, before which all opposing views and interests gave way. The sovereignty of Otho the Great, on the contrary, rested on a principle fundamentally opposed to the encroachment of spiritual influences. The alliance was momentary; the disruption of it inevitable. But when, soon after, the same pope who had invoked his aid, John XII., placed himself at the head of a rebellious faction, Otho was compelled to cause him to be formally deposed, and to crush the faction that supported him by repeated, exertions of force, before he could obtain perfect obedience; he was obliged to raise to the papal chair a pope on whose co-operation he could rely. The popes have often asserted that they transferred the empire to the Germans; and if they confined this assertion to the Carolingian race, they are not entirely wrong. The coronation of Charlemagne was the result of their free determination. But if they allude to the German emperors, properly so called, the contrary of their statement is just as true; not only Carlmann and Otho the Great, but their successors, constantly had to conquer the imperial throne, and to defend it, when conquered, sword in hand. {1441} It has been said that the Germans would have done more wisely if they had not meddled with the empire; or, at least, if they had first worked out their own internal political institutions, and then, with matured minds, taken part in the general affairs of Europe. But the things of this world are not wont to develop themselves so methodically. A nation is often compelled by circumstances to increase its territorial extent, before its internal growth is completed. For was it of slight importance to its inward progress that Germany thus remained in unbroken connexion with Italy?—the depository of all that remained of ancient civilisation, the source whence all the forms of Christianity had been derived. The mind of Germany has always unfolded itself by contact with the spirit of antiquity, and of the nations of Roman origin. … The German imperial government revived the civilising and Christianising tendencies which had distinguished the reigns of Charles Martell and Charlemagne. Otho the Great, in following the course marked out by his illustrious predecessors, gave it a fresh national importance by planting German colonies in Slavonian countries simultaneously with the diffusion of Christianity. He Germanised as well as converted the population he had subdued. He confirmed his father's conquests on the Saale and the Elbe, by the establishment of the bishoprics of Meissen and Osterland. After having conquered the tribes on the other side the Elbe in those long and perilous campaigns where he commanded in person, he established there, too, three bishoprics, which for a time gave an extraordinary impulse to the progress of conversion. … And even where the project of Germanising the population was out of the question, the supremacy of the German name was firmly and actively maintained. In Bohemia and Poland bishoprics were erected under German metropolitans; from Hamburg Christianity found its way into the north; missionaries from Passau traversed Hungary, nor is it improbable that the influence of these vast and sublime efforts extended even to Russia. The German empire was the centre of the conquering religion; as itself advanced, it extended the ecclesiastico-military State of which the Church was an integral part; it was the chief representative of the unity of western Christendom, and hence arose the necessity under which it lay of acquiring a decided ascendancy over the papacy. This secular and Germanic principle long retained the predominancy it had triumphantly acquired. … How magnificent was the position now occupied by the German nation, represented in the persons of the mightiest princes of Europe and united under their sceptre; at the head of an advancing civilisation, and of the whole of western Christendom; in the fullness of youthful aspiring strength! We must here however remark and confess, that Germany did not wholly understand her position, nor fulfil her mission. Above all, she did not succeed in giving complete reality to the idea of a western empire, such as appeared about to be established under Otho I. Independent and often hostile, though Christian powers arose through all the borders of Germany; in Hungary and in Poland, in the northern as well as in the southern possessions of the Normans; England and France were snatched again from German influence. Spain laughed at the German claims to a universal supremacy; her kings thought themselves emperors; even the enterprises nearest home—those across the Elbe—were for a time stationary or retrograde. If we seek for the causes of these unfavourable results, we need only turn our eyes on the internal condition of the empire, where we find an incessant and tempestuous struggle of all the forces of the nation. Unfortunately the establishment of a fixed rule of succession to the imperial crown was continually prevented by events."

_L. Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, introduction._

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 961-1039; and ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY.

GERMANY: A. D. 955. Great defeat and repulse of the Hungarians by Otho I.

See HUNGARIANS: A. D. 934-955.

GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122. End of the Saxon line. Election of the Franconians. Reformation of the Papacy. Contest of Henry IV. with the Head of the Church. The question of Investitures.

"Otho II. had a short and troubled reign, 973-983 A. D., having to repress the Slavi, the Danes, the Greeks of Lower Italy, and to defend Lorraine against the French. He died at Rome in his twenty-eighth year. 983 A. D. Otho III. (aged three years) succeeded under the regency of his mother, Theophania (a Greek princess), who had to contend with the rebellious nobles, the Slavi, the Poles, the Bohemians, and with France, which desired to conquer Lorraine. This able lady died 991 A. D. Otho III. made three expeditions into Italy, and in 998 A. D. put down the republic of Rome, which had been created by the patrician Crescentius. The resistance of Crescentius had been pardoned the preceding year, but on this occasion he was publicly beheaded on the battlements of Rome, in view of the army and of the people. In 999 A. D. Otho placed his tutor Gerbert in the papal chair as Sylvester II. The tutor and the emperor were in advance of their age. The former had gleaned from Saracen translations from the Greek, as well as from Latin literature, and was master of the science of the day. It is supposed that they had planned to remove the seat of empire to Rome—a project which, had he lived, he would not have been able to carry out, for the centre of political power had long moved northward: he died at the early age of twenty-two, 1002 A. D. Henry II. (the Holy), Duke of Bavaria, was elected emperor, and had to battle, like his predecessors, with rebellious nobles, with the Poles, and Bohemians, and the Slavi. He was thrice in Italy, and died 1024 A. D. 'Perhaps, with the single exception of St. Louis IX., there was no other prince of the middle ages so uniformly swayed by justice.' Conrad II. (the Salic) of Franconia was elected emperor in a diet in the plains between Mentz and Worms, near Oppenheim, which was attended by princes, nobles, and 50,000 people altogether. His reign was remarkable for the justice and mercy which he always kept in view. The kingdom of Aries and Burgundy was united to the empire, 1033 A. D. He checked the Poles, the Hungarians, and the Lombards, and gave Schleswiek to Denmark as a fief. In 1037 A. D. he granted to the lower vassals of the empire the hereditary succession to their offices and estates, and so extended the privileges of the great nobles, as to make them almost independent of the crown. Henry III. succeeded, 1039 A. D., and established the imperial power with a high hand."

_W. B. Boyce, Introduction to the Study of History, pages 230-231._

{1442}

"Henry III. was, as sovereign, able, upright, and resolute; and his early death—for his reign was cut short by disasters that preyed upon his health—is one of the calamities of history. The cause of the Roman Court he judged with vigor and good sense. His strong hand, more than any man's, dragged the Church out of the slough it had fallen into [see ROME: A. D. 962-1057]. … A few years before, in 1033, a child ten years old, son of one of the noble houses, had been put on the papal throne, under the name of Benedict IX.; and was restored to it by force of arms, five years later, when he had grown into a lewd, violent, and wilful boy of fifteen. At the age of twenty-one he was weary of the struggle, and sold out, for a large sum of money paid down, to a rich purchaser,—first plundering the papal treasury of all the funds he could lay his hands on. His successor, Gregory VI., naturally complained of his hard bargain, which was made harder by another claimant (Sylvester III.), elected by a different party; while no law that could possibly be quoted or invented would make valid the purchase and sale of the spiritual sovereignty of the world, which in theory the Papacy still was. Gregory appears to have been a respectable and even conscientious magistrate, by the standard of that evil time. But his open purchase of the dignity not only gave a shock to whatever right feeling there was left, but it made the extraordinary dilemma and scandal of three popes at once,—a knot which the German king, now Emperor, was called in to cut. … The worthless Benedict was dismissed, as having betrayed his charge. The impotent Sylvester was not recognized at all. The respectable Gregory was duly convinced of his deep guilt of Simony,—because he had 'thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money,'—and was suffered as a penitent to end his days in peace. A fourth, a German ecclesiastic, who was clean of all these intrigues, was set in the chair of Peter, where he reigned righteously for two years under the name of Clement II."

_J. H. Allen, Christian History in its Three Great Periods: Second period, pages 57-58._

"With the popes of Henry's appointment a new and most powerful force rose to the control of the papacy—a strong and earnest movement for reformation which had arisen outside the circle of papal influence during the darkest days of its degradation, indeed, and entirely independent of the empire. This had started from the monastery of Cluny, founded in 910, in eastern France, as a reformation of the monastic life, but it involved gradually ideas of a wider reformation throughout the whole church. Two great sins of the time, as it regarded them, were especially attacked, the marriage of priests and simony, or the purchase of ecclesiastical preferment for money, including also appointments to church offices by temporal rulers. … The earnest spirit of Henry III. was not out of sympathy with the demand for a real reformation, and with the third pope of his appointment, Leo IX., in 1048, the ideas of Cluny obtained the direction of affairs. … One apparently insignificant act of Leo's had important consequences. He brought back with him to Rome the monk Hildebrand. He had been brought up in a monastery in Rome in the strictest ideas of Cluny, had been a supporter of Gregory VI., one of the three rival popes deposed by Henry, who, notwithstanding his outright purchase of the papacy, represented the new reform demand, and had gone with him into exile on his deposition. It does not appear that he exercised any decisive influence during the reign of Leo IX., but so great was his ability and such the power of his personality that very soon he became the directing spirit in the papal policy, though his influence over the papacy before his own pontificate was not so great nor so constant as it has sometimes been said to have been. So long as Henry lived the balance of power was decidedly in favor of the emperor, but in 1056 happened that disastrous event, which occurred so many times at critical points of imperial history, from Arnulf to Henry VI., the premature death of the emperor. His son, Henry IV., was only six years old at his father's death, and a minority followed just in the crisis of time needed to enable the feudal princes of Germany to recover and strengthen their independence against the central government, and to give free hands to the papacy to carry out its plans for throwing off the imperial control. Never again did an emperor occupy, in respect either to Germany or the papacy, the vantage-ground on which Henry III. had stood. … The triumph of the reform movement and of its ecclesiastical theory is especially connected with the name of Hildebrand, or Gregory VII., as he called himself when pope, and was very largely, if not entirely, due to his indomitable spirit and iron will, which would yield to no persuasion or threats or actual force. He is one of the most interesting personalities of history. … The three chief points which the reform party attempted to gain were the independence of the church from all outside control in the election of the pope, the celibacy of the clergy, and the abolition of simony or the purchase of ecclesiastical preferment. The foundation for the first of these was laid under Nicholas II. by assigning the selection of the pope to the college of cardinals in Rome, though it was only after some considerable time that this reform was fully secured. The second point, the celibacy of the clergy, had long been demanded by the church, but the requirement had not been strictly enforced, and in many parts of Europe married clergy were the rule. … As interpreted by the reformers, the third of their demands, the suppression of simony, was as great a step in advance and as revolutionary as the first. Technically, simony was the sin of securing an ecclesiastical office by bribery, named from the incident recorded in the eighth chapter of the Acts concerning Simon Magus. But at this time the desire for the complete independence of the church had given to it a new and wider meaning which made it include all appointment to positions in the church by laymen, including kings and the emperor. … According to the conception of the public law the bishop was an officer of the state. He had, in the great majority of cases, political duties to perform as important as his ecclesiastical duties. The lands which formed the endowment of his office had always been considered as being, still more directly than any other feudal land, the property of the state. … {1443} It was a matter of vital importance whether officers exercising such important functions and controlling so large a part of its area—probably everywhere as much as one-third of the territory—should be selected by the state or by some foreign power beyond its reach and having its own peculiar interests to seek. But this question of lay investiture was as vitally important for the church as for the state. … It was as necessary to the centralization and independence of the church that it should choose these officers as that it should elect the head of all—the pope. This was not a question for Germany alone. Every northern state had to face the same difficulty. … The struggle was so much more bitter and obstinate with the emperor than with any other sovereign because of the close relation of the two powers one to another, and because the whole question of their relative rights was bound up with it. It was an act of rebellion on the part of the papacy against the sovereign, who had controlled it with almost absolute power for a century, and it was rising into an equal, or even superior, place beside the emperor of what was practically a new power, a rival for his imperial position. … It was absolutely impossible that a conflict with these new claims should be avoided as soon as Henry IV. arrived at an age to take the government into his own hands and attempted to exercise his imperial rights as he understood them."