OTTO II, Emperor and King of Germany. - Crowned emperor in Rome in 967, while his father was still alive, he succeeded him at the age of 18. More educated than his father, but sensual, vain and despotic, he shared all his ambitious dreams; but he had neither the energy nor the political sense needed to realize them.

He let himself be dragged along by events, and suffered repeated setbacks. Swabia, and above all Bavaria, backed by Bohemia, turned against him; the King of Denmark attacked him. He also received rebuffs from France in 978, and King Lothair nearly captured him at Aachen. O. II responded vainly by invading France almost as far as Paris; but, defeated at Soissons, he had to come to terms with the king of France. All of it time wasted in bringing back to obedience the Romans, stirred up by the Crescenzi, who had strangled the imperial pope Benedict VI. His coming to Rome and his understanding with Benedict VII (980-81) made O. II believe he could realize his father's ambitions, all the more so since he had married the Byzantine Theophano. Using the struggle against the Saracens as a pretext, he tried in vain to win over to himself the Greeks of southern Italy. The infidels inflicted on him, on 13 July 982, at Stilo in Calabria, a grave defeat, whose resonance gave impetus to a double offensive, Slavic and Danish, on the Elbe. But O., dragged along by his blind ambition, abandoned himself to the reckless dream of the conquest of Sicily. Death came to interrupt his designs on 7 Dec. 983.

Bibliography5 works

BIBL.: G. Artenberg, Über die Herkunft der Theophano, Gemahlin Kaisers O. II., in Byzant. Zeitschr., 4 (1895), pp. 467-480; K. Uhlirz, Jahrb. des deutsch. Reiches unter O. II. und O. III., Leipzig 1902; L. Hartmann, Gesch. Italiens im Mittelalt., IV, Gotha 1915; P. E. Schramm, Kaiser, Basilica und Papst in der Zeit der Ottonen, in Hist. Zeitschr., 129 (1924), pp. 424-75; G. Cartellieri, op. cit. in bibl. di OTTONE I.

Guglielmo Mollat

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Otto II, Emperor and King of Germany

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