Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

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Otto had, as we have seen, long felt the need of the support of the Papacy in carrying out his schemes over the German Church. The wished-for opportunity of effecting a close alliance with the head of the Church was now offered by the Pope himself, and the monastic reformers, disciples of Bruno, or of the new congregation of Cluny, urged him to restore peace and order to the distracted Italian Church. ¹⁹ In 961 Otto procured the election and coronation of Otto, his young son by Adelaide, as king of the Germans. In August he marched over the Brenner at the head of a stately host. On 31st January 962 he entered Rome. On 2nd February he was crowned Emperor by John XII. Consequences of the revival of the Roman Empire.

The coronation of Otto had hardly among contemporaries the extreme importance which has been ascribed to it by later writers. Since the fall of the Carolingians there had been so many nominal emperors that the title in itself could not much affect Otto’s position. Neither was the assumption of the imperial title the starting-point so much as the result of Otto’s intervention in Italy. But the name of Roman Emperor, when assumed by a strong prince, gave unity and legitimacy to Otto’s power both over Germany and Italy. And in Germany no less than in Italy there was no unity outside that which adhered to the Roman tradition. Yet the imperial title made very little difference in the character and policy of Otto. He never sought, like Charles the Great, to build up an imperial administrative system or an imperial jurisprudence. Even in Germany there was still no law but the local laws of the five nations. And there was no effort whatever made to extend into Italy the rude system on which Otto based his power in Germany. Still the combination of the legitimacy of the imperial position with the strength of the Teutonic kingship did gradually bring about a very great change, both in Germany and Italy, though it was rather under Otto’s successors than under Otto himself that the full consequences of this were felt. Yet Otto was the founder of the mediæval ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation,’ and the originator of that close connection of Germany with Italy on which both the strength and the weakness of that Empire reposed. Modern Germans have reproached him for neglecting the true development of his German realm in the pursuit of the shadow of an unattainable Empire. The criticism is hardly just to Otto, who was irresistibly led into his Italian policy by the necessities of his German position, and who could hardly be expected to look, beyond the immediate work before him, to far-off ideals of national unity and national monarchy that were utterly strange to him and to his age. Otto came into Italy to win over the Pope to his side. He looked upon his Roman coronation as mainly important, because it enabled him to complete his subjection of the German Church with the help of his new ally Pope John.