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

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Theophano died in 991. No new regent was appointed, but a council of regency set up, prominent among its members being the Empress Adelaide, Willegis of Mainz, Eckhard of Meissen, and Henry, Duke of Bavaria, son and successor of Henry the Quarrelsome. The composition of this body was a further proof of the extension of ecclesiastical influence. But an even more significant indication of this was the fact that the young king was brought up almost entirely under the direction of highly-placed churchmen. Willegis of Mainz, and Bernward, Bishop of Hildesheim, the future saint, were the two prelates most directly responsible for his education. The result was that, though the young king spent his early years amidst his fierce and half-barbarous Saxon subjects, he became still less of a German than Otto II., and was possessed by ideals that stand in the strongest contrast with those of his predecessors. Bernward caused him to be schooled in the best culture of his time, and gave him an abiding love of letters and learned men. He also strongly inspired the quick-witted and sympathetic youth with the ascetic views and the sacerdotal sympathies of the Cluniacs. Thus Otto became enthusiastically religious, and ever remained a devout pilgrim to holy places and seeker out of inspired anchorites and saints. Moreover, Otto inherited from Theophano all the high Byzantine notions of the sacredness of the Empire, and, seeking to combine the two aspects of his education, his mind was soon filled with glowing visions of a kingdom of God on earth, in which Pope and Emperor ruled in harmony over a world that enjoyed perfect peace and idyllic happiness. Otto’s ideals were generous, noble, and unselfish; but in the iron age in which he lived they were hopelessly unpractical. The young king lived to become the ‘wonder of the world’ and the ‘renewer of the Empire.’ But his early death came none too soon to hide the vanity of his ambitions. At best, he was the first of that long line of brilliant and attractive failures which it was the special mission of the mediæval Empire to produce. Otto’s coronation at Rome, 996.