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*INTRODUCTION*
The darkness of the tenth century is dissipated by no contemporary
historian. Monkish chronicles alone shed a faint light over the
discordant chaos of the Italian world. Rome was no longer the capital
of the earth. The seat of empire had shifted from the banks of the
Tiber to the shores of the Bosporus, and the seven hilled city of
Constantine had assumed the imperial purple of the ancient capital of
the Caesars.
Centuries of struggles with the hosts of foreign invaders had in time
lowered the state of civilization to such a degree, that in point of
literature and art the Rome of the tenth century could not boast of a
single name worthy of being transmitted to posterity. Even the memory
of the men whose achievements in the days of its glory constituted the
pride and boast of the Roman world, had become almost extinct. A great
lethargy benumbed the Italian mind, engendered by the reaction from the
incessant feuds and broils among the petty tyrants and oppressors of the
country.
Together with the rest of the disintegrated states of Italy, united by
no common bond, Rome had become the prey of the most terrible disorders.
Papacy had fallen into all manner of corruption. Its former halo and
prestige had departed. The chair of St. Peter was sought for by bribery
and controlling influence, often by violence and assassination, and the
city was oppressed by factions and awed into submission by foreign
adventurers in command of bands collected from the outcasts of all
nations.
From the day of Christmas in the year 800, when at the hands of Pope Leo
III, Charlemagne received the imperial crown of the West, the German
Kings dated their right as rulers of Rome and the Roman world, a right,
feebly and ineffectually contested by the emperors of the East. It was
the dream of every German King immediately upon his election to cross
the Alps to receive at the hand of the Pope the crown of a country which
resisted and resented and never formally recognized a superiority forced
upon it. Thus from time to time we find Rome alternately in revolt
against German rule, punished, subdued and again imploring the aid of
the detested foreigners against the misrule of her own princes, to
settle the disputes arising from pontifical elections, or as protection
against foreign invaders and the violence of contending factions.
Plunged in an abyss from which she saw no other means of extricating
herself, harassed by the Hungarians in Lombardy and the Saracens in
Calabria, Italy had, in the year 961, called on Otto the Great, King of
Germany, for assistance. Little opposition was made to this powerful
monarch. Berengar II, the reigning sovereign of Italy, submitted and
agreed to hold his kingdom of him as a fief. Otto thereupon returned to
Germany, but new disturbances arising, he crossed the Alps a second
time, deposed Berengar and received at the hands of Pope John XII the
imperial dignity nearly suspended for forty years.
Every ancient prejudice, every recollection whether of Augustus or
Charlemagne, had led the Romans to annex the notion of sovereignty to
the name of Roman emperor, nor were Otto and his two immediate
descendants inclined to waive these supposed prerogatives, which they
were well able to enforce. But no sooner had they returned to Germany
than the old habit of revolt seized the Italians, and especially the
Romans who were ill disposed to resume habits of obedience even to the
sovereign whose aid they had implored and received. The flames of
rebellion swept again over the seven hilled city during the rule of Otto
II, whose aid the Romans had invoked against the invading hordes of
Islam, and the same republican spirit broke out during the brief, but
fantastic reign of his son, the third Otto, directing itself in the
latter instance chiefly against the person of the youthful pontiff,
Bruno of Carinthia, the friend of the King, whose purity stands out in
marked contrast against the depravity of the monsters, who, to the
number of ten, had during the past five decades defiled the throne of
the Apostle. Gregory V is said to have been assassinated during Otto's
absence from Rome.
The third rebellion of Johannes Crescentius, Senator of Rome, enacted
after the death of the pontiff and the election of Sylvester II, forms
but the prelude to the great drama whose final curtain was to fall upon
the doom of the third Otto, of whose love for Stephania, the beautiful
wife of Crescentius, innumerable legends are told in the old monkish
chronicles and whose tragic death caused a lament to go throughout the
world of the Millennium.
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*CONTENTS*
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*BOOK THE FIRST*