THE IMPERIAL CORONATION (962 A.D.)
[962 A.D.]
Ancient custom demanded that the pope should send the Roman senate, i.e. the nobility of the city, and the citizens who bore arms to meet the king, who was to receive the imperial crown, while he was encamped upon the gardens of Nero under Monte Mario near the church of St. Peter, and to escort him back to the city. This delegation, accordingly, started out in pompous array with crosses and flags, dragon heads, and lofty standards, accompanied by the corporations of the foreigners in Rome, each hailing the joyful occasion by joyful songs in its own language. Aristocratic youths belonging to the first families of the city, welcomed the king at Monte Mario, kissed his feet, and then assisted him to mount a horse sent by the pope, upon which they conducted him, through crowds of people, to the steps leading to the outer court of St. Peter’s.
Before this sat the pope in full regalia, upon a golden throne surrounded on both sides by the clergy. After the king had left his horse and mounted the thirty-five marble steps, the pope arose, offered the king his lips for a kiss, and extended his right hand in brotherly greeting. They then passed through the brazen gates of the spacious outer court, which was called the paradise of St. Peter, and proceeded towards the main door—it was called the silver door—of the church. Before that was opened, however, the king swore to the pope that he had come with pure and upright intentions as regards the good of the city and church, and promised him the donations given by the earlier emperors. To the sound of the hymn, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” they then entered the festively decorated and brilliantly lighted church, which had no equal in all the world. The king hurried to the tomb of St. Peter as soon as he entered the church and fell on his knees to pray. The pope’s blessing and prayer concluded the ceremony in the church. This was followed by a festive banquet which the pope gave the future emperor, who then returned in the evening to his camp outside the city.
Thus was spent the day of the ceremonial reception; the coronation itself did not take place until the following Sunday. On that day the people gathered in the streets at an early hour; all the houses were decorated with carpets and awnings; the whole city thereby took on a festive appearance. Everybody then hastened to Leo’s city, to St. Peter’s, where the king in a purple robe and golden greaves awaited the pope. The pope appeared in the full regalia of his highest priestly office. After the king had then put on clerical garments, he was anointed as a priest at the altar and thus, as a member of the clerical order, received the imperial crown and sword from the hands of the pope.
The church re-echoed with the loud congratulations and the joyful cries of the crowd. As soon as these had subsided a lector read the document which the emperor had made out for the pope in regard to the possessions of St. Peter’s and the emperor with splendid gifts thanked Peter’s successor, who had adorned his head with the highest crown in the world.
With such festivities King Berengar had been received in Rome and crowned emperor. We possess no details concerning Otto’s reception and coronation; but the proceedings could not have been very different when he entered Rome on the 31st of January, and on February 2nd, 962, received the imperial crown from the pope in St. Peter’s; with him Adelheid was anointed and crowned.
Otto had attained the aim of long years of labour. The highest position in western Christendom, the leadership of all the states which had gone out from the empire of Charlemagne, had become his and through him they became the possessions of the German nation.c
In 964 Otto returned to Germany, and held Whitsuntide at Cologne, where he was attended by all the German princes, among whom appeared Lothair of France. Peace and security reigned throughout the empire.
WARS IN ITALY AGAINST BYZANTIUM
[966-972 A.D.]
Otto revisited Italy (966 A.D.), where Adalbert, the son of Berengar, had raised an insurrection in Lombardy; he was defeated on the Po by Burkhard of Swabia. Pope Leo VIII was dead; the new pope, John XIII, the emperor’s creature, who had been expelled from Rome by an adverse party, had been reinstated by Pandolf, the valiant prince of Benevento, the last Lombard who preserved his ancestral bravery and fidelity amid the vices of Italy. Otto’s first act, on his arrival in Rome, was the infliction of a severe chastisement on the refractory Romans; thirteen of the most distinguished citizens were hanged. A fresh and closer treaty was concluded between the emperor and the pope, to whose dominions the territory of Ravenna, which had been severed from them, was restored, in return for which he solemnly placed the imperial diadem on the head of Otto II, an incident of rare occurrence during the lifetime and in the presence of the father.
All opposition to the irresistible power of the emperor had now ceased—the whole of upper and central Italy lay in silent submission at his feet. His first step was the imposition of a new form of government upon Lombardy. He replaced the great dukes, with the exception of his ally Pandolf, by numerous petty markgrafs, the majority of whom were Germans by birth. He also settled a considerable number of Germans in the different cities, and thus created a party favourable to the imperial cause that counterpoised the rebellious spirit of the Lombards and Romans. Pandolf of Benevento, surnamed Ironhead, and the petty duke, Gisulf of Salerno, whose imbecility rendered him ever inconstant to his allies, defended the frontiers of upper and central Italy against the Greeks, who still retained possession of lower Italy, and the Saracens, who had already settled in Sicily. Otto and his empress, Adelheid, visited Pandolf (968 A.D.) who entertained them with great magnificence.
During his residence at Benevento, Otto undertook the conquest of lower Italy. Bari, the strongly fortified Grecian metropolis, offering a valiant and successful resistance, he had recourse to his favourite policy, and despatched his confidant, Liutprand, the celebrated historian, to the court of Nicephorus, the Grecian emperor, in order to demand the hand of the beautiful princess Theophano, daughter to Romanus the late emperor, for his son Otto II, probably in the hope of receiving Italy as her dowry. His suit being contemptuously refused, Otto undertook a second campaign during the following year, and chose with great judgment his line of march along the Alps that separate lower Italy into two parts, and thus command Apulia to the east and Calabria to the west. Having thus opened a path, he returned the same way, leaving the conquest of the low country to Pandolf, who having the misfortune to be taken prisoner before Bovino, and to be sent to Constantinople, the Greeks, under the patrician Eugenius, crossed the frontier, laid waste the country in the neighbourhood of Capua and Benevento, and treated the inhabitants with great cruelty. Otto, who was at that juncture in upper Italy, sent the grafs Gunther and Siegfried to oppose them; a splendid victory was gained, and the victors, animated by a spirit of revenge, deprived the Greek prisoners of their right hands, noses, and ears. In 970, the Sicilian Saracens invaded the country, but were defeated at Chiaramonte by Graf Gunther. At this time, the emperor Joannes, who after the assassination of Nicephorus had ascended the throne of Greece, restored Pandolf Ironhead to liberty, concluded peace with Otto, and consented to the alliance of Otto II with the beautiful Theophano, who was escorted from Constantinople by the archbishop Gero of Cologne, Bruno’s successor, at the head of a numerous body of retainers.
[972-973 A.D.]
She was received in the palace of Pandolf at Benevento by the emperor and the youthful bridegroom. Her extraordinary beauty attracted universal admiration. The marriage ceremony was celebrated with great magnificence at Rome (972 A.D.). This princess created an important change in the manners of Germany by the introduction of Grecian customs, which gradually spreading downwards from the court, where her influence was first felt, affected the general habits of the people by the alterations introduced in the monastic academies. The German court adopted much of the pomp and etiquette of that of Greece. The number of retainers increased with increasing luxury, and the plain manners of the true-hearted German were exchanged for the finesse and adulation of the courtier. The emperor also adopted the Grecian title of “sacred majesty” (sacra majestas). Lower Italy remained in the hands of the Greeks.d