THE SAXON KINGS OF THE GERMANS, AND REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE BY OTTO
I. (919–973)[1]
The Transference of the German Kingship from the Franks to the
Saxons—The Reign of Henry the Fowler—The Defence of the Frontiers
and the Beginnings of the Marks—Otto I.’s Rule as German King—The
Feudal Opposition and its Failure—The First and Second Civil
Wars—The Reorganisation of the Duchies—The Marks established—Battle
on the Lechfeld—Otto’s Ecclesiastical Policy—His Intervention in
Italy and its Causes—Italy in the Tenth Century—Degradation of the
Papacy—Theodora and Marozia—Alberic and John XII.—Otto’s Second
Intervention in Italy—His Coronation as Emperor—His later Italian
Policy—His Imperial Position and Death.
[Sidenote: Election of Henry the Fowler, 919.]
The death of Conrad I., in December 918 (see Period I. pp. 475–7), ended
the Franconian dynasty. In April 919 the Franconian and Saxon magnates
met at Fritzlar to elect a new king. On the proposal of Eberhard, Duke
of Franconia, and brother of the dead king Conrad, Henry, Duke of the
Saxons, called Henry the Fowler, was elevated to the vacant throne.
Henry had been already marked out for this dignity, both by the great
position of his house and nation, and by the wish of the last king. Yet
the voluntary abdication of the Franconian and the transference of the
monarchy to the Saxon forms one of the great turning-points in the
history of the German nation. The existence of a separate German state
had been already secured by the work of Louis the German and Arnulf of
Carinthia. Yet so long as the sceptre remained in the Carolingian hands,
the traditions of a mighty past overpowered the necessities of the
present. Down to the death of Conrad, the Franks were still the ruling
nation, and the German realm was East Frankish rather than German. The
accession of the Saxon gave the best chance for a more general
development on national lines. [Sidenote: The Saxon nation.] For of all
the five nations of Germany, the Saxons were the least affected by the
Carolingian tradition. Christianity was still less than a century old
with them, and formal heathenism still lingered on in the wilder moors
and marshes of the north. Roman civilisation was still but a sickly
exotic; and, free from its enervating influences, the Saxons still
retained the fierce barbaric prowess of the old Teutonic stock, while
the primitive Teutonic institutions, which were fast disappearing in the
south before the march of feudalism, still retained a strong hold amidst
the rude inhabitants of northern Germany. In the south the mass of the
peasantry were settling down as spiritless and peaceful farmers, leaving
the fighting to be done by a limited number of half-professional
soldiers. But among the Saxons every freeman was still a warrior, and
the constant incursions of heathen Danes and Wends gave constant
opportunities for the practice of martial habits. The old blood nobility
still took the leadership of the race. Not only were the Saxons the
strongest, the most energetic, and most martial of the Germans, but the
mighty deeds of their Ludolfing dukes showed that their princes were
worthy of them. It was only the strong arm of a mighty warrior that
could save Germany from the manifold evils that beset it from within and
without. The Ludolfings had already proved on many a hard-fought field
that they were the natural leaders of the German people. The dying
Conrad simply recognised accomplished facts, when he urged that the
Saxon duke should be his successor. The exhausted Franconians merely
accepted the inevitable, when they voluntarily passed over the hegemony
of Germany to their northern neighbours.
[Sidenote: Henry’s German policy.]
There were, however, insuperable limitations to the power of the first
Saxon king of the Germans. Henry the Fowler was little more influential
as king than as duke. There was no idea whatever of German unity or
nationality. The five nations were realities, but beyond them the only
ties that could bind German to German were the theoretical unities of
Rome—the unity of the Empire and the unity of the Church. From the
circumstances of his election and antecedents, Henry could draw no
assistance from the great ideals of the past, by which he was probably
but little influenced. He feared rather than courted the support of the
churchmen. When the Church offered to consecrate the choice of the
magnates by crowning and anointing the new king, Henry protested his
unworthiness to receive such sacred symbols.
Thus Germany became a federation of great duchies, the duke of the
strongest nation taking precedence over the others with the title of
king. Even this result was obtained only through Henry’s strenuous
exertions. His power rested almost entirely on the temporary union of
the Saxons and Franconians. The southern and western nations of Germany
were almost outside the sphere of his influence. Lotharingia fell away
altogether, still cleaving to the Carolings, and recognising the West
Frankish king, Charles the Simple, rather than the Saxon intruder. Henry
was conscious of the weakness of his position, and discreetly accepted
the withdrawal of Lotharingia from his obedience, receiving in return an
acknowledgment of his own royal position from Charles the Simple. Swabia
and Bavaria were almost as hard to deal with as Lotharingia. They had
taken no practical share in Henry’s election, and were by no means
disposed to acknowledge the nominee of the Saxons and Franconians. It
was not until 921 that Henry obtained the formal recognition of the
Bavarians, and this step was only procured by his renouncing in favour
of Duke Arnulf every regalian right, including the much-cherished power
of nominating the bishops. Henry was no more a real king of all the
Germans than Egbert or Alfred were real kings over all England. His
mission was to convert a nominal overlordship into an actual
sovereignty. But he saw that he could only obtain the formal recognition
necessary for this process by accepting accomplished facts, and giving
full autonomy to the nations. His ideal seems, in fact, to have been
that of the great West Saxon lords of Britain. He strove to do for
Germany what Edward the Elder and Athelstan were doing for England. It
is, from this point of view, of some political significance that Henry
married his eldest son Otto, afterwards the famous Emperor, to Edith,
daughter of Edward, and sister of Athelstan. Yet, like England, Germany
could hope for national unity only when foreign invasion had been
successfully warded off. The first condition of internal unity was the
cessation of the desolating barbarian invasions which, since the
break-up of the Carolingian Empire, had threatened to blot out all
remnants of civilisation. Saxony had already suffered terribly from the
Danes and Wends. To these was added in 924 a great invasion of the
Magyars or Hungarians, the Mongolian stock newly settled in the Danube
plains, and still heathen and incredibly fierce and barbarous. The
Magyars now found that the Bavarians had learnt how to resist them
successfully, so that they turned their arms northwards, hoping to find
an easier foe in the Saxons. [Sidenote: Invasion of barbarians checked.]
Henry, with his Franks and Saxons, had to bear the full brunt of the
invasion, and no help came either from Swabia or Bavaria. Henry had the
good luck to take prisoner one of the Hungarian leaders, and by
restoring his captive and promising a considerable tribute, he was able
to procure a nine years’ truce for Saxony. Two years later the Magyars
again swarmed up the Danube into Bavaria, but Henry made no effort to
assist the nation which had refused to aid him in his necessity.
Thus freed from the Magyars, Henry turned his arms against the Danes and
the Wends. In 934 he established a strong mark against the Danes, and
forced the mighty Danish king, Gorm the Old, to pay him tribute. He was
even more successful against the Slavs. In 928 Brennabor (the modern
Brandenburg), the chief stronghold of the Havellers, fell into his
hands, and with it the broad lands between the Havel and the Spree, the
nucleus of the later East Mark. [Sidenote: The defence of the frontiers
and the beginnings of the Marks.] But more important than Henry’s
victories were his plans for the defence of the frontiers. He planted
German colonists in the lands won from the barbarian. He built a series
of new towns, that were to serve as central strongholds, in the
marchland districts. The Saxon monk Widukind tells us how Henry ordered
that, of every nine of his soldier-farmers, one should live within the
walls of the new town, and there build houses in which his eight
comrades might take shelter in times of invasion, and in which a third
part of all their crops was to be preserved for their support, should
necessity compel them to take refuge within the walls. In return, the
dwellers in the country were to till the fields and harvest the crops of
their brother in the town. Moreover, Henry ordered that all markets,
meetings, and feasts should be held within the walled towns, so as to
make them, as far as possible, the centres of the local life. Some of
the most ancient towns of eastern Saxony, including Quedlinburg,
Meissen, and Merseburg, owe their origin to this policy. Henry also
improved the quality of the Saxon cavalry levies, teaching his rude
warriors to rely on combined evolutions rather than the prowess of the
individual horseman. So anxious was he to utilise all the available
forces against the enemy, that he settled a legion of able-bodied
robbers at Merseburg, giving them pardon and means of subsistence, on
the condition of their waging war against the Wends.
The effect of these wise measures was soon felt. Henry had laid the
foundation of the great ring of marks, whose organisation was completed
by his son. He had also inspired his subjects with a new courage to
resist the barbarian, and a new faith in their king. When the nine
years’ truce with the Hungarians was over, the Saxons resolved to fight
rather than continue to pay them a humiliating tribute. [Sidenote:
Henry’s triumph and death, 936.] A long series of victories crowned the
end of Henry’s martial career. He was no longer forced to strictly limit
himself to the defence of his own duchy of Saxony, and the southern
nations of Germany could honour and obey the defender of the German race
from the heathen foe, though they paid but scanty reverence to the duke
of the Saxons. Lotharingia reverted to her allegiance after the sceptre
of the western kingdom had passed, on the death of Charles the Simple,
from her beloved Carolings. Yet Henry never sought to depart from his
earlier policy, and still gave the fullest autonomy to Saxon, Bavarian,
and Lotharingian. He still lived simply after the old Saxon way,
wandering from palace to palace among his domain-lands on the slopes of
the Harz, and seldom troubling the rest of the country with his
presence. Yet visions of a coming glory flitted before the mind of the
old sovereign. He dreamed of a journey to Rome to wrest the imperial
crown from the nerveless hands of the pretenders, whose faction fights
were reducing Italy to anarchy. But his end was approaching, and the
more immediate task of providing for the succession occupied his
thoughts. His eldest son, Thankmar, was the offspring of a marriage
unsanctioned by the Church, and was, therefore, passed over as
illegitimate. By his pious wife Matilda, the pattern of German
housewives, he had several children. Of these Otto was the eldest, but
the next son, Henry, as the first born after his father had become a
king, was looked upon by many as possessing an equally strong title to
election. The king, however, urged on his nobles to choose Otto as his
successor. He died soon after, on 2nd July 936, and was buried in his
own town of Quedlinburg, where the pious care of his widow and son
erected over his remains a great church and abbey for nuns, which became
one of the most famous monastic foundations of northern Germany. ‘He
was,’ says the historian of his house, ‘the greatest of the kings of
Europe, and inferior to none of them in power of mind and body.’ But
Henry’s best claim to fame is that he laid the solid foundations on
which his son built the strongest of early mediæval states.
[Sidenote: Coronation of Otto I., 936.]
Otto I. was a little over twenty years of age when he ascended the
throne. While his father had shunned the consecration of the Church, his
first care was to procure a pompous coronation at Aachen. As strong a
statesman and as bold a warrior as his father, the new king was so fully
penetrated with the sense of his divine mission, and so filled with high
ideals of kingcraft, that it was impossible for him to endure the
limitations to his sway, in which Henry had quietly acquiesced. Duke
Eberhard of Franconia was the first to resent the pretensions of the
young king. He felt that he was the author of the sway of the Saxon
house, and resolved to exercise over his nation the same authority that
he had wielded without question in the days of King Henry. Meanwhile,
the death of Duke Arnulf of Bavaria gave Otto an opportunity of
manifesting his power to the south. [Sidenote: The attack on the
dukedoms, and the First Civil War, 938–941.] He roughly deposed Arnulf’s
eldest son, Eberhard, who had refused to perform him homage, and made
his younger brother Berthold duke, but only on condition that the right
of nominating to the Bavarian bishoprics, which had been wrung from the
weakness of Henry, should now be restored to the crown. Moreover,he set
up another brother, Arnulf, as Count Palatine, to act as a sort of
overseer over the new duke. But while Franconia and Bavaria were thus
deeply offended, Otto’s own Saxons were filled with discontent at his
policy. They resented Otto’s desire to reign as king over all Germany,
as likely to impair the dominant claims of the ruling Saxon race. They
complained that he had favoured the Franks more than the Saxons, and the
sluggish nobles of the interior parts of Saxony were disgusted that Otto
had overlooked their claims on his attention in favour of Hermann
Billung and Gero, to whom he had intrusted the care of his old duchy
along with the government of the Wendish marches. Thankmar, the bastard
elder brother, Henry, the younger brother who boasted that he was the
son of a reigning king, were both angry at being passed over, and put
themselves at the head of the Saxon malcontents. In 938, a revolt broke
out in the north. The faithfulness of Hermann Billung limited its
extent, and the death of Thankmar seemed likely to put an end to the
trouble. But Henry now allied himself with Duke Eberhard of Franconia;
and Duke Giselbert of Lotharingia, Otto’s brother-in-law, joined the
combination. A bloody civil war was now fought in Westphalia and the
Lower Rhineland. The army of Otto was taken at a disadvantage at
Birthen, near Xanten; but the pious king threw himself on his knees, and
begged God to protect his followers, and a victory little short of
miraculous followed his prayer. However, the rebels soon won back a
strong position, and the bishops, headed by Archbishop Frederick of
Mainz, intrigued with them in the belief that Otto’s term of power was
at an end. But the king won a second unexpected triumph at Andernach,
and the Dukes of Franconia and Lotharingia perished in the pursuit.
Henry fled to Louis, king of the West Franks, whose only concern,
however, was to win back Lotharingia from the eastern kingdom. At last
Henry returned and made his submission to his brother; but before long
he joined with the Archbishop of Mainz in a plot to murder the king.
This nefarious design was equally unsuccessful, and Henry, under the
influence of his pious mother, sought for the forgiveness of his injured
brother. At the Christmas feast of 941 a reconciliation was effected.
The troubles for the season were over.
[Sidenote: The reorganisation of the duchies.]
Otto now sought to establish his power over the nations by setting up
members of his own family in the vacant duchies. Franconia he kept
henceforth in his own hands, wearing the Frankish dress and
ostentatiously following the Frankish fashions. Over Lotharingia he
finally set a great Frankish noble, Conrad the Red, whom he married to
his own daughter, Liutgarde. The reconciled Henry was made Duke of
Bavaria, and married to Judith, the daughter of the old Duke Arnulf.
Swabia was intrusted to Otto’s eldest son, Ludolf, who in the same way
was secured a local position by a match with the daughter of the last
duke. But the new dukes had not the power of their predecessors. Otto
carefully retained the highest prerogatives in his own hands, and, by
the systematic appointment of Counts Palatine to watch over the
interests of the crown, revived under another name that central control
of the local administration which had, at an earlier period, been
secured by the Carolingian _missi dominici_.
[Sidenote: Its failure. The Second Civil War, 953.]
The new dukes soon fell into the ways of their predecessors. They
rapidly identified themselves with the local traditions of their
respective nations, and quickly forgot the ties of blood and duty that
bound them to King Otto. Henry of Bavaria and Ludolf of Swabia soon took
up diametrically different Italian policies, and their intervention on
different sides in the struggle between the phantom Emperors, that
claimed to rule south of the Alps, practically forced upon Otto a policy
of active interference in Italy. Ludolf was intensely disgusted that his
father backed up the Italian policy of Henry, and began to intrigue with
Frederick of Mainz, Otto’s old enemy. Conrad of Lotharingia joined the
combination. Even in Saxony, the enemies of Hermann Billung welcomed the
attack on Otto. At last in 953 a new civil war broke out which, like the
troubles of 938, was in essence an attempt of the ‘nations’ to resist
the growing preponderance of the central power. But the rebels were
divided among each other, and partisans of local separatism found it
doubly hard to bring about an effective combination. The restless and
turbulent Frederick of Mainz died during the struggle. Conrad and Ludolf
made their submission. A terrible Hungarian inroad forced even the most
reluctant to make common cause with Otto against the barbarians. But the
falling away of the dukes of the royal house had taught Otto that some
further means were necessary, if he desired to continue his policy of
restraining the ‘nations’ in the interest of monarchy and nation as a
whole. That fresh support Otto found in the Church, the only living
unity outside and beyond the local unities of the five nations.
[Sidenote: The organisation of the Marks.]
Even King Henry had found it necessary, before the end of his reign, to
rely upon ecclesiastical support, especially in his efforts to civilise
the marks. There the fortified churches and monasteries became, like the
new walled towns, centres of defence, besides being the only homes of
civilisation and culture in those wild regions. But King Henry had not
removed the danger of Wendish invasion, and the civil wars of Otto’s
early years gave a new opportunity for the heathen to ravage the German
frontiers. In the midst of Otto’s worst distress, Hermann Billung kept
the Wends at bay, and taught the Abotrites and Wagrians, of the lands
between the lower Elbe and the Baltic, to feel the might of the German
arms. His efforts were ably seconded by the doughty margrave, Gero, of
the southern Wendish mark. By their strenuous exertions the Slavs were
for the time driven away from German territory, and German rule was
extended as far as the Oder, so that a whole ring of organised
marchlands protected the northern and eastern frontiers. These marks
became vigorous military states, possessing more energy and martial
prowess than the purely Teutonic lands west of the Elbe, and destined on
that account to play a part of extreme prominence in the future history
of Germany. Owing their existence to the goodwill and protection of the
king, and having at their command a large force of experienced warriors,
the new margraves or counts of the marches, who ruled these regions,
gradually became almost as powerful as the old dukes, and, for the time
at least, their influence was thrown on the side of the king and
kingdom. Under their guidance, the Slav peasantry were gradually
Christianised, Germanised, and civilised, though it took many centuries
to complete the process. Even to this day the place-names in marks like
Brandenburg and Meissen show their Slavonic origin, and a
Wendish-speaking district still remains in the midst of the wholly
Germanised mark of Lausitz. To these regions Otto applied King Henry’s
former methods on a larger scale. Walled towns became centres of trade,
and refuges in times of invasion. Monasteries arose, such as
Quedlinburg, and that of St. Maurice, Otto’s favourite saint, at
Magdeburg. A whole series of new bishoprics—Brandenburg and Havelberg,
in the Wendish mark; Aarhus, Ripen, and Schleswig, in the Danish
mark—became the starting-points of the great missionary enterprise that
in time won over the whole frontier districts to Christianity. Hamburg
became the centre of the first missions to Scandinavia. Never since the
days of Charles the Great had the north seen so great an extension of
religion and culture. There was many a reaction towards heathenism and
barbarism before the twelfth century finally witnessed the completion of
this side of Otto’s work.
The Hungarians were still untamed, and, profiting by the civil war of
953, they now poured in overwhelming numbers into south Germany. But the
common danger was met by common action. On 10th August 955, Otto won a
decisive victory on the Lechfeld, near Augsburg, at the head of an army
drawn equally from all parts of Germany, and including among its leaders
Conrad the Red, the former Duke of Lorraine, who died in the fight.
[Sidenote: The battle on the Lechfeld, 955.] This crushing defeat damped
the waning energies of the Magyars, and the carrying out of the same
policy against them that had been so successful against their northern
neighbours resulted in the setting up of an east mark (the later
Austria), which carried German civilisation far down the Danube, and
effectually bridled the Magyars. In these regions Henry of Bavaria did
the work that Hermann Billung and Gero were doing in the north. The
final defeat of the barbarian marauders, and the wide extension of
German territory through the marks, are among Otto’s greatest titles to
fame. Moreover, Otto forced the rulers of more distant lands to
acknowledge his sovereignty. In 950 he invaded Bohemia, and forced its
duke, Boleslav, to do him homage. Nor did he neglect the affairs of the
more settled regions of the west. Already in 946 he had marched through
north France as far as the frontiers of Normandy, striking vigorous
blows in favour of the Carolingian Louis IV.—who had married his sister
Gerberga, Duke Giselbert’s widow—against his other son-in-law, Hugh the
Great, the head of the rival Robertian house [see page 69]. He also took
under his protection Conrad the Pacific, the young king of the Arelate.
[Illustration:
ECCLESIASTICAL DIVISIONS OF GERMANY
showing the growth of the provinces Magdeburg and Hamburg-Bremen.
]
In civilising the marks Otto had striven hard to use the Church to
secure the extension of the royal power. [Sidenote: Otto’s
ecclesiastical policy.] But the lay nobles were not slow to see that
Otto’s trust in bishops and abbots meant a lessening of their influence,
and resented any material extension of ecclesiastical power. The Saxon
chieftains—half-heathens themselves at heart—did their very best to
prevent the Christianisation of the Wends, knowing that it would
infallibly result in a close alliance between the crown and the new
Christians against their old oppressors. Even the churchmen of central
Germany watched Otto’s policy with a suspicious eye. Typical of this
class is Archbishop Frederick of Mainz, the centre of every conspiracy,
and the would-be assassin of his sovereign. If his policy had prevailed,
the Church would have become a disruptive force of still greater potency
than the dukedoms. But a new school of churchmen was growing up willing
to co-operate with Otto. His youngest brother, Bruno, presided over his
chancery, and made the royal palace as in Carolingian times the centre
of the intellectual life of Germany. Bruno ‘restored’ as we are told,
‘the long-ruined fabric of the seven liberal arts,’ and, like our
Alfred, was at the same time the scholar and the statesman. From his
efforts sprang that beginning of the general improvement of the German
clergy that made possible the imperial reformation of the Papacy.
Moreover, Bruno carried out a reform of discipline and of monastic life
that soon made Germany a field ripe to receive the doctrines that were
now beginning to radiate from Cluny to the remotest parts of the
Christian world. Side by side with the religious revival came the
intellectual revival that Bruno had fostered. Widukind of Corvey wrote
the annals of the Saxons; the abbess Hrotswitha of Gandersheim sang
Otto’s praises in Latin verse, and wrote Latin comedies, in which she
strove to adopt the methods of Terence to subjects chosen in order to
enhance the glories of religious virginity. The literary spirit touched
Otto himself so far that he learnt to read Latin, though he never
succeeded in talking it. Under Bruno’s care grew up a race of clerical
statesmen, far better fitted to act as Otto’s ministers than the lay
aristocracy with its insatiable greed, ruthless cruelty, and
insufferable arrogance. It now became Otto’s policy, since he had failed
to wrest the national duchies to subserve his policy, to fill up the
great sees with ministerial ecclesiastics of the new school. The highest
posts were reserved to his own family. His faithful brother, Bruno,
became Archbishop of Cologne, and was furthermore intrusted with the
administration of Lotharingia. Otto’s bastard son, William, succeeded
the perfidious Frederick as Archbishop of Mainz. Otto now stood forth as
the protector of the clergy against the lay nobles, who, out of pure
greed, were in many cases aiming at a piecemeal secularisation of
ecclesiastical property. The incapacity of a spiritual lord to take part
in trials affecting life and limbs had already led to each bishop and
abbot, who possessed feudal jurisdiction, being represented by a lay
‘Vogt’ (_advocatus_) in those matters with which he was himself
incompetent to deal. The lay nobles sought to make their ‘advocacy’ the
pretext of a gradual extension of their power until the bishop or abbot
became their mere dependant. But this course was not to the interest of
the crown. If the domains of the crown were to be administered by the
local magnates or to be alienated outright, if the jurisdiction of the
crown was to be cut into by grants of immunities to feudal chieftains,
it was much better that these should be put into spiritual rather than
into secular hands. Otto therefore posed as the protector and patron of
the Church. Vast grants of lands and immunities were made to the bishops
and abbots, and the appointment to these high posts, or at least the
investiture of the prelates with the symbols of their office, was
carefully kept for the king. The clergy, who in the days of Henry had
feared lest the king should lay hands on their estates, joyfully
welcomed Otto’s change of front. It was not clear to them as it was to
Otto, that the royal favour to the Church was conditional on the Church
acting as the chief servant of the State. Otto would brook no assertion
of ecclesiastical independence, such as had of old so often set bounds
to the empire of the Carolings. He desired to attach the Church to the
State by chains of steel; but he carefully gilded the chains, and the
German clergy, who were neither strong theologians nor sticklers for
ecclesiastical propriety, entered as a body into that dependence on the
throne which was to last for the best part of a century, and which was
in fact the indispensable condition of the power of the Saxon kings in
Germany. The unity of the Church became as in England the pattern of the
unity of the State, and in a land which had no sense of civil unity,
Saxon and Frank, Lorrainer and Bavarian were made to feel that they had
common ties as citizens of the Christian commonwealth.
[Sidenote: Resistance of William of Mainz.]
The first efforts of Otto towards the conciliation and subjection of the
clergy were surprisingly successful. He next formed a scheme of
withdrawing eastern Saxony and the Wendish march from obedience to the
Archbishop of Mainz, and setting up a new Archbishop of Magdeburg as
metropolitan of these regions. It was a well-designed device to give
further unity to those warlike and loyal regions upon which Otto’s power
was ultimately based. But his own son, Archbishop William, violently
opposed a scheme which deprived the see of Mainz of the obedience of
many of its suffragans. William’s representations to Rome induced the
Pope to take no steps to carry out Otto’s plan. The king was deeply
incensed, but the check taught him a lesson. He learnt that after all,
the German Church was not self-contained or self-sufficing. Over the
German Church ruled the Roman Pope. He could only ensure the obedience
of the German Church by securing the submission or the co-operation of
the head of the Christian world. So long as the Pope was outside his
power, Otto’s dream of dominating Germany through churchmen seemed
likely to end in a rude awakening. To complete this aspect of his policy
required vigorous intervention in Italy.
The condition of Italy had long been one of deplorable anarchy. After
the death of the Emperor Berengar in 924 had put an end to the best
chance of setting up a national Italian kingdom, things went from bad to
worse. The Saracens, having plundered its coasts, settled down in its
southern regions side by side with the scanty remnants of the Byzantine
power. Thus all southern Italy was withdrawn altogether from the sphere
of western influence. But in the centre and north things were far worse.
The inroads of the barbarians were but recently over, and had left their
mark behind in poverty, famine, pestilence and disorder. Great
monasteries like Subiaco and Farfa were in ruins. The Hungarians had
penetrated to the heart of central Italy. The Saracens from their
stronghold of Freinet, amidst the ‘mountains of the Moors’ of the
western Riviera, had devastated Provence, and had held possession of the
passes of the Alps. [Sidenote: State of Italy, 924–950.] If the growth
of feudalism, with its permanent military system and its strong castles,
had already repelled the barbarians, the price paid for deliverance was
the cutting up of sovereignty among a multitude of petty territorial
lords. The rising tide of feudal anarchy had almost overwhelmed the city
civilisation which had been, since Roman times, the special feature of
Italian life. A swarm of greedy feudal counts and marquises struggled
against each other for power, and a series of phantom Emperors reduced
to an absurdity the once all-powerful name of Cæsar. There was still a
nominal Italian or Lombard king, who claimed the suzerainty over all
northern and central Italy. But in their zeal for local freedom, the
Italians had encouraged quarrels for the supreme power. ‘The Italians,’
said Liutprand of Cremona, ‘always wish to have two masters, in order to
keep the one in check by the other.’ After the death of the Emperor
Berengar, in 924 [see Period I. pp. 463–7], Rudolf of Burgundy reigned
for nearly three years. On his fall in 926, Hugh of Provence was chosen
his successor, and held the name at least of king till his death in 946.
There then arose two claimants to the Italian crown—Lothair, son of Hugh
of Provence, and Berengar, Marquis of Ivrea, the grandson of the Emperor
Berengar. Neither was strong enough to defeat the other, and both looked
for help from the warlike Germans. It is however significant that they
sought support, not from the distant Saxon king, but from the
neighbouring dukes of Swabia and Bavaria, whose dominions extended to
the crest of the Alps. Lothair begged the help of Ludolf of Swabia,
while Berengar called in Henry of Bavaria. The latter gave the most
efficient assistance, and Lothair in despair was negotiating for help
from Constantinople when he was cut off by death (950), leaving his
young and beautiful widow, Adelaide of Burgundy, to make what resistance
she might to Berengar of Ivrea. But there was no chance of a woman
holding her own in these stormy times, and Adelaide was soon a prisoner
in the hands of the victorious marquis. She naturally looked over the
Alps to her German friends and kinsfolk, and both Ludolf and Henry,
already on the verge of war on account of their former differences as to
Italian policies, were equally willing to come to her assistance. Henry
now raised pretensions to the great city of Aquileia and the
north-eastern corner of the Italian peninsula. He now aspired, as the
protector of Adelaide, his former foe, to unite the Bavarian duchy with
the Italian kingdom. Ludolf, more active than his uncle, appeared in the
valley of the Po intent on a similar mission. Otto, ever on the watch to
prevent the extension of the ducal powers, saw with dismay the prospect
of his brother’s or son’s aggrandisement. He resolved by prompt personal
intervention to secure the prize for himself.
[Sidenote: Otto, King of Italy, 951.]
In 951, Otto successfully carried out his first expedition to Italy. He
met with no serious resistance, and on 23rd September entered in triumph
into Pavia, the old capital of the Lombard kings. Adelaide was released
from her captivity, and appeared in Pavia. Otto, who was now a widower,
forthwith married her, assumed the crown of Italy, and fruitlessly
negotiated with the Pope to bring about his coronation as Emperor. But
Otto soon crossed the Alps, leaving Conrad of Lorraine to carry on war
against Berengar. Next year, however, a peace was patched up. Berengar
was recognised as vassal king of Italy, with Otto as his overlord, and
the lands between the Adige and Istria—the mark of Verona and
Aquileia—were confirmed to Duke Henry, who thus drew substantial
advantage from his brother’s intervention. The revolt of Ludolf and
Conrad in 953 was largely due to their disgust at Otto’s vigorous and
successful defeat of their schemes.
[Sidenote: Position of the Papacy, 914–960.]
Nine years elapsed before Otto again appeared in Italy. Though he needed
the help of the Papacy more than ever, its condition was not one that
could inspire much hope. It was the period of the worst degradation into
which the Roman See ever fell. For more than a generation the Popes had
almost ceased to exercise any spiritual influence. The elections to the
Papacy had been controlled by a ring of greedy and corrupt Roman nobles,
conspicuous among whom was the fair but dissolute Theodora and her
daughters Marozia, wife of the Marquis Alberic I. of Camerino, and the
less important Theodora the younger. Imperialist partisans like
Liutprand of Cremona have drawn the character of these ladies in the
darkest and most lurid colours; but, allowing for monastic exaggeration,
it is hard to see how the main outlines of the picture can be untrue.
With all their vices, they did not lack energy. Pope John X. (914–928),
an old lover and partisan of Theodora, was not destitute of statecraft,
and did much to incite the Italians to drive away the Saracens of the
south; but, quarrelling with Marozia, he had to succumb to her second
husband, Guido, Marquis of Tuscany. After John’s death in prison in 928,
Marozia became mistress of Rome, and made and unmade Popes at her
pleasure. She married as her third husband, Hugh of Provence, the
nominal king of the Italians, and procured the election of her second
son, a youth of twenty, to the Papacy, under the name of John XI. About
932 her elder son, Alberic II., a strong, unscrupulous but efficient
tyrant, whose character found many parallels in later Italian history,
drove his father-in-law out of Rome, and reduced the city to some sort
of order under his own rule. His policy seems to have been to turn the
patrimony of St. Peter into an aristocratic republic, controlled by his
house, and leaving to the Pope no functions that were not purely
spiritual. He took the title of ‘Prince and Senator of all the Romans.’
He kept his brother, Pope John XI. (931–936), and the subsequent Popes,
in strict leading strings, and retained his power until his death in
954. His dreams of hereditary power seemed established when his young
son Octavian succeeded him as a ruler of Rome, and in 955 also ascended
the papal throne as John XII. [Sidenote: John XII., 955–964.] But the
new Pope, who thus united the ecclesiastical with the temporal lordship
of Rome, looked upon things purely with the eye of a skilful but
unscrupulous statesman. His great ambition was to make his house supreme
throughout middle Italy, and he soon found that King Berengar whose
claims grew greater now that Otto was back beyond the Alps, was the
chief obstacle in the way of carrying out his designs. He therefore
appealed to Otto for aid against Berengar. In 957 Ludolf of Swabia was
sent by his father to wage war against Berengar, but, after capturing
Pavia, Ludolf was carried off by fever, and Berengar then resumed his
successes. In 960 John sent an urgent appeal to Otto to come to his
assistance.
Otto had, as we have seen, long felt the need of the support of the
Papacy in carrying out his schemes over the German Church. The
wished-for opportunity of effecting a close alliance with the head of
the Church was now offered by the Pope himself, and the monastic
reformers, disciples of Bruno, or of the new congregation of Cluny,
urged him to restore peace and order to the distracted Italian Church.
[Sidenote: Otto crowned Emperor, 962.] In 961 Otto procured the election
and coronation of Otto, his young son by Adelaide, as king of the
Germans. In August he marched over the Brenner at the head of a stately
host. On 31st January 962 he entered Rome. On 2nd February he was
crowned Emperor by John XII.
[Sidenote: Consequences of the revival of the Roman Empire.]
The coronation of Otto had hardly among contemporaries the extreme
importance which has been ascribed to it by later writers. Since the
fall of the Carolingians there had been so many nominal emperors that
the title in itself could not much affect Otto’s position. Neither was
the assumption of the imperial title the starting-point so much as the
result of Otto’s intervention in Italy. But the name of Roman Emperor,
when assumed by a strong prince, gave unity and legitimacy to Otto’s
power both over Germany and Italy. And in Germany no less than in Italy
there was no unity outside that which adhered to the Roman tradition.
Yet the imperial title made very little difference in the character and
policy of Otto. He never sought, like Charles the Great, to build up an
imperial administrative system or an imperial jurisprudence. Even in
Germany there was still no law but the local laws of the five nations.
And there was no effort whatever made to extend into Italy the rude
system on which Otto based his power in Germany. Still the combination
of the legitimacy of the imperial position with the strength of the
Teutonic kingship did gradually bring about a very great change, both in
Germany and Italy, though it was rather under Otto’s successors than
under Otto himself that the full consequences of this were felt. Yet
Otto was the founder of the mediæval ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German
Nation,’ and the originator of that close connection of Germany with
Italy on which both the strength and the weakness of that Empire
reposed. Modern Germans have reproached him for neglecting the true
development of his German realm in the pursuit of the shadow of an
unattainable Empire. The criticism is hardly just to Otto, who was
irresistibly led into his Italian policy by the necessities of his
German position, and who could hardly be expected to look, beyond the
immediate work before him, to far-off ideals of national unity and
national monarchy that were utterly strange to him and to his age. Otto
came into Italy to win over the Pope to his side. He looked upon his
Roman coronation as mainly important, because it enabled him to complete
his subjection of the German Church with the help of his new ally Pope
John.
The first result of the alliance of Pope and Emperor was the completion
of the reorganisation of the German Church for which Otto had been
striving so long. The Pope held a synod at St. Peter’s, in which Otto’s
new archbishopric of Magdeburg was at last sanctioned. [Sidenote: Otto’s
motives.] But Otto, who looked upon the Pope as the chief ecclesiastic
of his Empire, was as anxious to limit Roman pretensions as he had been
to curb the power of the see of Mainz. He issued a charter which, while
confirming the ancient claims of the Papacy to the whole region in
middle Italy that had been termed so long the patrimony of St. Peter,
reserved strictly the imperial supremacy over it. He provided that no
Pope should be consecrated until he had taken an oath of fealty to the
Emperor. The Pope was thus reduced, like the German bishops, to a
condition of subjection to the state.
[Sidenote: Otto’s later Italian policy 962–973.]
Otto now left Rome to carry on his campaign against Berengar, who had
fled for refuge to his Alpine castles. John XII. now took the alarm, and
quickly allied himself with his old foe against his new friend. Otto
marched back to Rome, and in 963 held a synod, mostly of Italian
bishops, in which John was deposed for murder, sacrilege, perjury, and
other gross offences, and a new Pope set up, who took the name of Leo
VIII., and who was frankly a dependant of the Emperor. John escaped to
his strongholds, ‘hiding himself like a wild beast in the woods and
hills,’ and refusing to recognise the sentence passed upon him. The need
of fighting Berengar again forced Otto to withdraw from Rome. During his
absence the fickle citizens repudiated his authority, and called back
John. But hardly was the youthful Pope restored to authority than he
suddenly died in May 964. His partisans chose at once as his successor
Benedict V.
Otto now hurried back to Rome, and attended a synod, held by Leo VIII.,
which condemned Benedict and reaffirmed the claims of Leo. There was no
use in opposing the mighty Emperor, and Benedict made an abject
submission. Sinking on his knees before Otto, he cried, ‘If I have in
anywise sinned, have mercy upon me.’ He was banished beyond the Alps,
and died soon afterwards. His fall made patent the dependence of the
Papacy on Otto. A last revolt of the Romans was now sternly suppressed.
When Otto, flushed with triumph, marched northwards against Berengar,
Leo’s successor, John XIII., humbly followed in his train. The young
king Otto now crossed the Alps, and accompanied his father on a fresh
visit to Rome, where, on Christmas day 967, John XIII. crowned him as
Emperor. Henceforth father and son were joint rulers. Otto had done his
best to make both German kingdom and Roman Empire hereditary.
[Sidenote: Otto’s imperial position, 962–973.]
The last years of Otto’s reign were full of triumph. Secure in the
obedience of the Church, he ruled both Germany and Italy with an
ever-increasing authority. The Magdeburg archbishopric received new
suffragans in the sees of Zeiz, Meissen, and Merseburg. A new era of
peace and prosperity dawned. The German dukes were afraid to resist so
mighty a power. The division of Lotharingia into the two duchies of
Upper and Lower Lorraine which now took place was the first step in the
gradual process that soon began to undermine the unity of the
traditional ‘nations’ of the German people. Beyond his Teutonic kingdom
the kings of the barbarous north and east paid Otto an increasing
obedience. The marauding heathens of an earlier generation were now
becoming settled cultivators of the soil, Christian and civilised. Their
dukes looked up to Otto as an exemplar of the policy which they
themselves aspired to realise. The dukes of Poland and Bohemia performed
homage to Otto as Emperor. Ambassadors from distant lands, France,
Denmark, Hungary, Russia, and Bulgaria, flocked around his throne. He
intervened with powerful effect in the West Frankish kingdom. He aspired
to the domination of southern Italy, and, having won over to his side
the powerful Pandulf, prince of Capua and Benevento, he enlarged that
prince’s dominions and erected them into a mark to withstand the
assaults of the Arabs and Greeks of southern Italy. But while waging war
against the Mohammedans, Otto was anxious to be on good terms with the
Romans of the East. The accession of John Zimisces to the Eastern Empire
[see pages 161–162] gave Otto his opportunity. The new lord of
Constantinople offered the hand of Theophano, daughter of his
predecessor Romanus II., as the bride of the young Otto II., with Greek
Italy as her marriage portion. [Sidenote: Marriage of the young Otto and
Theophano, 972.] The Emperor welcomed the opportunity to win peacefully
what he had sought in vain to acquire by war. Early in 972 Theophano was
crowned by John XIII. at Rome, and immediately afterwards married to the
young Emperor. The gorgeous festivities that attended this union of East
and West brought clearly before the world the reality of Otto’s power.
Otto was now growing old, and had outlived most of his fellow-workers.
His brother Henry had died soon after the battle on the Lechfeld. His
bastard son William had already sunk into a premature grave. Now came
the news of the death of the faithful Hermann Billung. [Sidenote: Death
of Otto I., 973.] In the spring of 973 Otto went on progress for the
last time through his ancestral domains on the slopes of the Harz. Death
came upon him suddenly as he was celebrating the Whitsuntide feast in
his palace at Memleben. He was buried beside his first wife, the English
Edith, in his favourite sanctuary of St. Maurice of Magdeburg, raised by
his care to metropolitan dignity. His long and busy life had not only
restored some sort of peace and prosperity to two distracted nations,
but his policy had begun a new development of western history that was
to last nearly three centuries, and was to determine its general
direction up to the Reformation. He had built up a mighty state in an
age of anarchy. He had made Germany strong and peaceful, and the leading
power of Europe. He had subjected the Church and pacified Italy. Under
him the Roman Empire had again acquired in some real sense the lordship
of the civilised world.
THE CRESCENTII.
Theodora
|
+---------+----------------------------------------------+
| |
Marozia _m._ (1) Alberic I., Marquis of Camerino Theodora
(2) Guido, Marquis of Tuscany (the younger) (?)
(3) Hugh, King of Italy |
(1) | (1) |
+-----------+------------+ |
| | |
Alberic II. Pope John XI. Crescentius I. (Duke)
(_d._ 954) (931–936) (981)
| |
Pope John XII. (Octavian) Crescentius II. (Patrician)
(955–964) (998)
|
Crescentius III. (Patrician)
(1013)