Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн
28 страница из 100
Otto was now growing old, and had outlived most of his fellow-workers. His brother Henry had died soon after the battle on the Lechfeld. His bastard son William had already sunk into a premature grave. Now came the news of the death of the faithful Hermann Billung. 22 In the spring of 973 Otto went on progress for the last time through his ancestral domains on the slopes of the Harz. Death came upon him suddenly as he was celebrating the Whitsuntide feast in his palace at Memleben. He was buried beside his first wife, the English Edith, in his favourite sanctuary of St. Maurice of Magdeburg, raised by his care to metropolitan dignity. His long and busy life had not only restored some sort of peace and prosperity to two distracted nations, but his policy had begun a new development of western history that was to last nearly three centuries, and was to determine its general direction up to the Reformation. He had built up a mighty state in an age of anarchy. He had made Germany strong and peaceful, and the leading power of Europe. He had subjected the Church and pacified Italy. Under him the Roman Empire had again acquired in some real sense the lordship of the civilised world.