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

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The first result of the alliance of Pope and Emperor was the completion of the reorganisation of the German Church for which Otto had been striving so long. The Pope held a synod at St. Peter’s, in which Otto’s new archbishopric of Magdeburg was at last sanctioned. ²⁰ But Otto, who looked upon the Pope as the chief ecclesiastic of his Empire, was as anxious to limit Roman pretensions as he had been to curb the power of the see of Mainz. He issued a charter which, while confirming the ancient claims of the Papacy to the whole region in middle Italy that had been termed so long the patrimony of St. Peter, reserved strictly the imperial supremacy over it. He provided that no Pope should be consecrated until he had taken an oath of fealty to the Emperor. The Pope was thus reduced, like the German bishops, to a condition of subjection to the state. Otto’s later Italian policy 962–973.

Otto now left Rome to carry on his campaign against Berengar, who had fled for refuge to his Alpine castles. John XII. now took the alarm, and quickly allied himself with his old foe against his new friend. Otto marched back to Rome, and in 963 held a synod, mostly of Italian bishops, in which John was deposed for murder, sacrilege, perjury, and other gross offences, and a new Pope set up, who took the name of Leo VIII., and who was frankly a dependant of the Emperor. John escaped to his strongholds, ‘hiding himself like a wild beast in the woods and hills,’ and refusing to recognise the sentence passed upon him. The need of fighting Berengar again forced Otto to withdraw from Rome. During his absence the fickle citizens repudiated his authority, and called back John. But hardly was the youthful Pope restored to authority than he suddenly died in May 964. His partisans chose at once as his successor Benedict V.