CHAP. IV fidy he feared, was crowned and consecrated emperor in St. A. D. 888-1002 Peter's Church, by John XII, on February 2. "While I am praying at the grave of St. Peter to-day," he said to a young officer that morning, "hold your drawn sword near my head. I know my predecessors have often feared the tricks of the Romans, and a wise man avoids mischief in due time. You can pray at Monte Mario when we return!" As events soon proved, the suspicion of the German king was not without foundation; for, although he had been invited by John XII, and also by the Romans, to come to Rome, his presence there had excited an undercurrent of apprehension in striking contrast with the joy with which he had been at first received. He had entered the city under solemn bonds to exalt the Roman Church and its pontiff to the extent of his ability. This obligation included the promise to exercise no authority at Rome without the advice of the Holy Father, especially in what related to the rights of the Pope and of the Romans. It was soon discovered, however, that, in seeking a protector, Rome had found a master. The revelation at once gave to the situation a threatening aspect. Soon after the coronation, on February 13, 962, a document whose authenticity has been long disputed, but is now well established, fixed in authoritative form the relations between the Papacy and the Empire. This document, known as the, "Privilegium of Otto I," is composed of two portions.2 The 1 The promise of Otto I reads: "Tibi d. Iohanni papae ego rex Otto promittere et iurare facio: — ut, si Romam venero, s. romanam ecclesiam et te, rectorem ipsius, exaltabo secundum meum posse. Et nunquam vitam aut membra neque ipsum honorem, quem nunc habes et per me habiturus eris, mea voluntate, perdes. Et in Roma nullum placitum neque ordinationem faciam de omnibus, quae ad te vel ad tuos Romanos pertinent, sine tuo consilio," etc. — Jaffé, Regesta, II, 588. 2 The "Privilegium of Otto I" was first printed by Baronius in 1588 from an original MS. written in gold letters on purple vellum found in the archives of St. Angelo, now in the Vatican Archives, Codex Vaticanus 1984, 3833. Muratori, and Goldast, Constitutiones A. D. 888-1002 first is a confirmation of the gifts and concessions of the Car- CHAP. IV lovingian emperors to the Papacy, with generous additions. The second provides for the imperial supervision of the papal elections and the papal administration. Having secured to the Papacy its temporal possessions, the document proceeds to define the Pope's vassalage to the Emperor,- or more precisely to Otto and his son, who are expressly named, and their successors, to whom is conceded the right to oversee the papal elections, imperial approval being necessary to the act of consecration. Thus was founded the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation," although this name was not employed until a later time. It was, in fact, little more than a revival of two ancient documents, the Privilege of 817 granted by Lewis the Pious, which served as the basis for the first part; and the Constitution of 824, which suggested the second;but, in effect, it was a complete subordination of the Papacy to the imperial control. The opportunity had been presented to make the Pope the representative of Christendom, rather than the creature of the Roman aristocracy. However religious his motives may have been, and his conduct has been defended on the ground of religious duty, — Otto preferred to make the Papacy the appanage of his own royal house. The Pope, as well as the Roman clergy and nobility, was required to take an oath of fidelity to Otto and his son, with a promise to observe the regulations of the "Privilegium" and not to aid the Emperor's enemies. The first fruit of Otto's triumph was the Pope's consent to establish the long desired archbishopric at Magdeburg. Thus, at last, the German king was able to accomplish his wishes in his own kingdom by the victory won at Rome. The compact was, in reality, an enforced personal bargain between a bishop of Rome and a German king; but it had Imperiales, II, p. 44, reject its authenticity; but Th. Sickel, Das The significance of this compact A. D. 888-1002 CHAP. IV created an institution whose pretensions and conflicts were to be the centre of human interest for centuries to come. Regarded in the light of its immediate results, the compact was illusory from every point of view. It was almost immediately violated by both parties and gave rise to a struggle which imposed upon Rome a German supremacy. Thenceforth, the kings of Germany claimed the exclusive right to the imperial crown, and soon it became the custom for the "King of the Romans" to be elected by the German nobles. The Papacy, with its prerogative of conferring the crown of the world, had become a vassal of the German kingdom; but Germany had bartered away its unity as a nation in pursuit of a phantom beyond the Alps. Otto's confiscation of the Papacy When Otto left Rome in triumph, he felt that he had not only received the greatest of earthly dignities, but that in his control of the Pope he had placed his hand upon a power that would vastly strengthen his mastery of Germany. He had hardly turned his face northward to chase Berengar from his strongholds among the Alps, when John XII, repenting of his bargain, opened negotiations to transfer the power to Adalbert and to induce the Hungarians to invade Germany. Otto hastened back to Rome, called a synod which tried and deposed John, who had fled to the mountains, and set up a new pope, Leo VIII, in his place. To secure his control of the Papacy, Otto now forced the Romans to swear that they would in the future never elect or consecrate a pope without the consent and choice of himself and his son. But as soon as he resumed his campaign against Berengar, John returned to Rome from his hiding-place, created a revolt, and expelled the new pope, Leo. John having soon afterward died, the Romans broke their vow and elected Benedict V. Determined to triumph, Otto again returned to Rome, restored Leo, and bore off the humbled Berengar and the penitent Benedict as prisoners to Germany. Once more he returned to quell a last revolt, which followed upon the death of Leo, in 965. This time, he made the Romans feel his power, decapitating or blinding the leaders, and subject ! A. D. 888-1002 ing to the deepest humiliation the faithless prefect of the CHAP. IV city. The new pope, John XIII, humbly followed in the train of the Emperor's triumphal marches in Italy, and on Christmas day, 967, crowned his son Otto emperor. Thus, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation at one stroke finally subjected the Papacy to the imperial power, and confirmed the succession of his own house. Great While the accession of Otto I to the imperial throne The Empire invested his great personality with a new importance, his of Otto the empire was, in fact, German rather than Roman. Bitterly hated at Rome, where his cruelties were not soon forgotten, his power in Italy rested entirely upon his force of arms, and his last years were spent in efforts to reduce the peninsula to subjection. Having mastered the North of Italy, he succeeded in imposing a nominal vassalage upon the dukes of Capua. and Benevento in the South; but his ambition coveted the possession of the Greek cities also, and for this purpose he resorted to an experiment in diplomacy which gives a special interest to his reign. Otto had already begun a campaign against the Greek Liutprand's cities by a short siege of Bari, when, upon the advice of mission to Byzantium Liutprand, Bishop of Cremona,-who had once been sent in the interest of Berengar on a mission to Byzantium, where he had been well received, it was determined to abandon for the present the use of force, and to propose a marriage between the young Emperor Otto and Theophano, daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, Romanus II. On account of his skill in the Greek language, his knowledge of the Eastern court, and his ability as a diplomatist, Liutprand was chosen as ambassador of Otto I; and, starting upon his journey in April, 968, reached Constantinople in the following June. The report which the Bishop of Cremona afterward made Liutprand's of his mission is, perhaps, the most entertaining document report of his which has come down to us from the Middle Ages.1 The 1 An account of Liutprand's mission to Byzantium is given by Schlumberger, Un empereur byzantin, pp. 592, 633. See also on the "Antapodosis" and "Legatio" of Liutprand, Pertz in prefaces to the mission A. D. 888-1002 CHAP. IV failure of his negotiations is ingeniously covered by a description of the Eastern capital and its sovereign, with a narration of his experiences so graphic and so charged with satire that we must rejoice in the luckless result of a mission which has given us so lively a piece of literature. Shut up in a large but uncovered palace,1 the ambassador was practically kept a prisoner from his arrival early in June till his departure in November, often, he assures us, without even water. Otto the Great was denied the title of "Basileus" and always referred to as "Rex"; not permitted to ride, Liutprand had to walk to the palace; the Germans were constantly referred to as barbarians; while at table he was placed below the Bulgarian envoy, -a man "shorn in Hungarian fashion, girt with a brazen chain, and, as it seemed, a catechumen," - being fed with "fat goat, stuffed with garlic, onions, and leeks, and steeped in fish sauce." After waiting seven days, he was led before Nicephorus II, the Emperor,-"a monstrosity of a man, a pygmy, fatheaded and like a mole as to the smallness of his eyes; disgusting with his short, broad, thick, and half hoary beard; disgraced by a neck an inch long; very bristly through the text in vol. V of Mon. Germ. Hist. An English translation of Liutprand's report of his mission is found in Henderson, Select Documents, Appendix. 1 This was, no doubt, the Xenodochium Romanorum, constructed at Constantinople in imitation of the " Grecostasis at Rome, as a habitation for foreign envoys, an institution afterward imitated by the Ottoman Turks in their "Eldsci-Khan." The tradition that foreign envoys were to be thus separately housed was probably derived from the custom at Rome. It is still the usage at Constantinople for the foreign embassies and legations to have their residence at Pera; not merely, as might be imagined, for sanitary reasons, but from the immemorial custom of assigning to them a distinct and separate quarter. The isolation which, with the Romans, was originally the result of mere hospitality in providing a building for the use of envoys, came at last to be associated with the idea of precaution against communication with the people. Thus the Venetians prohibited by law all conversation with the diplomatic representatives of foreign governments. |