OTTO I, emperor and king of Germany. — The Saxon dynasty had been so firmly established in Germany by the efforts of Henry I that his son OTTO was able to succeed him at the age of 24 without encountering opposition. Tall, robust, and little educated (he did not know Latin and did not learn to read until he was 35), he was above all a warrior; and surrounded by scribes, among whom the idealized memory of Charlemagne was still alive, he strove to revive the tradition of the great Emperor. Crowned at Aachen on 7 August 936 before bishops and dukes eager to serve him, he soon proved, once consecrated, that he united in his person all those other traits which contemporaries considered essential in an emperor: victorious leader, sovereign over many peoples, protector of the Pope.
Like Charlemagne, OTTO appeared before his subjects as the defender of the Christian people. Saxony, once a hotbed of barbarism and paganism, had become the champion of Christian order. Against the Slavs, OTTO revived the tradition of military and missionary expansion, occupying Brandenburg and Lusatia, encouraging the apostolate of Boso of Merseburg, founding the bishoprics of Oldenburg and the archbishoprics of Magdeburg and Hamburg, metropolitan sees of new Christian communities (955-68). His hardest blows were struck against the Hungarians, who, after 937, had spread terror as far as Capua on one side and as far as Reims and Aquitaine on the other. Supported, in fact, by all the forces of Germany, he confronted them in Bavaria on the banks of the Lech (10 August 955) and annihilated them. Having thus broken their power, the Hungarians settled down and founded a state which, thirty years later, under St Stephen, would enter the Christian world.
Meanwhile OTTO set about rebuilding the cohesion of Germany, which had been fragmented into so many national duchies. Victorious over two major rebellions (938-39 and 953), he recovered the lands usurped from the royal domain, forced the princes to swear loyalty, and replaced them, when necessary, with members of his own family: thus he installed his son Landulf in Swabia, his brother Henry in Bavaria, his son-in-law Conrad in Lorraine, keeping Franconia for himself. And to remove from each of them the temptation to rebel, he kept his vassals under surveillance through the counts palatine. With regard to the German Church, OTTO’s policy consisted in making himself master of the bishoprics and in arming the prelates to secure their support. He constantly interfered in elections, carried out investitures himself, treated bishops as lords, expanded their feudal prerogatives, and sometimes even entrusted them with comital powers; as at Magdeburg, Cologne, and Speyer. Although he often chose faithful men and relatives, the bishops appointed by him generally proved themselves to be animated by true religious zeal: for example, his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, and Ulrich of Augsburg.
OTTO also worked to bring the other Carolingian lands under his sceptre. In France he exploited the dissensions between Louis IV d’Outremer and Hugh the Great, son of King Robert—both his brothers-in-law—acting now as mediator, now as protector of the Carolingian in distress; while the Council of Ingelheim (948) gave him the opportunity to concern himself with the ecclesiastical affairs of the Kingdom of France. But his action in the West was limited to this. In the regions of the Rhône, OTTO intervened to keep the Kingdom of Burgundy in the hands of the young King Conrad, threatened by the claims of Hugh of Arles, already holder of the Iron Crown of Italy. The anarchic situation of the peninsula particularly favoured the ambitions of the German king. In the north, the ancient Lombard kingdom was prey to several dynasties and rivals: the dynasties of Arles and Burgundy, both ousted by Berengar, margrave of Ivrea, to whom
More than in the political sphere, he worked for the good of his diocese. The city of Bamberg owes to him the completion of the imperial cathedral and the church
OTTO, during a first intervention in 951, had been obliged to recognize the Lombard crown. In the south, the Byzantine possessions were harassed by the Saracens. In the centre, the Papal States were in the grip of the disturbances provoked by the double succession of the ‘principal senator of the Romans’ Alberic (954) and of Pope Agapito (955), both devolving to Alberic’s son Octavian, barely sixteen years old and pope under the name of John XII, inexperienced and of ill repute. Called to his aid by the Pope, OTTO descended into Italy (961), placed the Iron Crown upon his brow at Pavia, and came to encamp on Monte Mario (31 January 962); two days later he received the imperial crown in St Peter’s.
The elevation of OTTO I to the imperial dignity sharpened his desire to restore the tradition of Charlemagne. With the title, like him, of ‘imperator augustus’, he intended to legislate for all the Frankish people and to reassert imperial rights over the Eternal City, despite all the efforts of John XII to uphold the principle of the pre-eminence of papal power. While the conciliar decrees of 963, ratifying OTTO’s ecclesiastical policy in Germany, recalled the Pope’s right to regulate, in the last analysis, the religious organization, the Privilegium Othonis (13 February 962) confirmed the territorial donations of Pepin and Charlemagne and renewed the Constitution of 824: control of the administration of the Papal States by means of the missi dominici, oath of fealty from the Pope to the Emperor. The misunderstanding between Pope and Emperor grew worse when John XII sought the support of Berengar of Ivrea and his son Adalbert. OTTO, stronger, returned to Rome, presided over a council in St Peter’s which deposed John (November 963) and set up the antipope Leo VIII (4 December 963). A revolt by the Romans reinstated John XII; but he died shortly afterwards (May 964) and OTTO was fortunate enough to capture and deport the short-lived successor Benedict V (June 964) and finally, after the death of Leo VIII (965), to impose on the Romans a pope of his own choice, John XIII. To consolidate his power over Italy and the Papacy more firmly, OTTO spent six consecutive years in the peninsula, presided over a great assembly in Rome itself in 967, and exacted from the Pope the imperial coronation of his son OTTO II at Christmas of the same year. At the same time OTTO I asserted his claims to dominate southern Italy; he forced the dukes of Benevento and Capua to pay him homage and the basileus John Tzimisces to recognize his imperial title and to give in marriage to OTTO II a ‘porphyrogenita’ princess, Theophano.
The prestige of OTTO I rivals that of Charlemagne in its extent. At the ‘judgements’ which he too held in Italy, Saxony, Franconia, or Lorraine, there appeared envoys of the kings of France and Burgundy, of Denmark, Hungary, and Bulgaria, and even of the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt. The future of the new dynasty seemed gloriously assured; OTTO and his descendants appeared marked by God to revive and continue the work of Charlemagne. The idea of the Empire was strengthened by the association of an heir already crowned during his father’s lifetime. But the inequality of power between Emperor and Pope was so great in the former’s favour that it foreshadowed the renewal and aggravation of the conflicts in which OTTO himself had been embroiled. The importance which he attached to Italian problems already heralded the orientation which his successors would give to their imperial policy.
