OTTO III, EMPEROR and King of Germany. — When Otto III succeeded his father, Otto II, he inherited a realm that was still young and fragile, and one that he would soon compromise through his reckless ambition. The son of a Greek mother and a notably learned Saxon father, Otto III hesitated for a long time between his father’s Mediterranean and Eastern dreams and his mother’s anti-Slavic politics. Nurtured on classical learning and shaped by the beneficial influence of holy men such as Gerbert, St Adalbert, and St Nilus, Otto was a mystic who dreamed of a universal empire where the Kingdom of Christ might advance. Rome exercised an irresistible attraction over him. Seduced by it, he sought to dominate it; yet the German spirit reasserted its rights, and the brutality of Otto I reappeared in his methods, marked by alternating phases of asceticism and gentleness. Few characters are as complex as that of Otto III. He imposed upon the Romans a German pope, Gregory V, from whom he received the imperial crown on 21 May 996. He crushed with the utmost severity a revolt fomented by the Crescentii, and yet his confused policy in southern Italy nearly brought him as many setbacks as his father, who had aimed higher and possessed a broader vision.
The Emperor found in Gerbert of Aurillac, whom he raised to the papacy under the name of Sylvester II without consulting the Romans, a collaborator suited to his measure. In concert, Pope and Emperor, the two pillars of the world, worked toward the establishment of a Christian Empire. Hungary, baptized and directly united to Rome, became the “Apostolic Crown.” The autonomy of the Polish and Czech Churches bore witness to the increasingly Roman and ever less German character of Otto III’s ideal, who gave himself the title: “Roman, Saxon, Italian, servant of the Apostles, by the grace of God, august emperor of the world.” He sought to adhere to all traditions; on 19 May 1000, Pentecost, he solemnly exhumed the body of Charlemagne in Aachen, and it is said that he took upon himself the golden cross of the great Emperor, while the legend spread of a mysterious message from Charles to his imitator. Otto III also wished to marry a Greek princess, thus concentrating in himself the rights of both the Eastern and Western Empires. Above all, he dreamed of the greatness of Rome, where he habitually resided from 999 onward; he revived the ancient and Byzantine ceremonial at court. As the servant of the Apostles, he regarded himself as the lieutenant of St Peter.
Yet even before the end of his reign, the first signs of an inevitable rivalry between the two heads of the Christian world began to appear. Rome itself, ungrateful and hostile especially to German influence, rose up and forced the Emperor to withdraw to Monte Gargano, from which he did not emerge except to die (24 January 1002). The insults with which the Lombards greeted his corpse were the funeral knell of the dream of universal dominion, for which Otto left no heir.
OTTO OF PASSAU (Passau). — Francesco, moralist writer. Very few reliable details are known about his life. He was a lector in the convent of Basel. On 2 February 1386 he completed the only work known to be his: *Die 24 Alten oder der goldene Thron der minnenden Seele*.
Otto III. Emperor and King of Germany — Ivory font offered by Otto (depicted at top right) to Aachen Cathedral.