Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн
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In 996 Otto attained his legal majority, and crossed the Alps to seek his coronation at Rome as Emperor. The king and his army marched as though bound on a pilgrimage, or like the crusading hosts of a century later. As they entered the Lombard plain, the news came that the Papacy was vacant, and a deputation of Romans, tired of the tyranny of Crescentius, begged Otto to nominate a new Pope. The young king at once appointed his cousin, Bruno, grandson of Conrad the Red and Liutgarde, daughter of Otto I., a youth of four-and-twenty, and a zealous champion of the Cluniacs, who took the name of Gregory V. 27 On 25th May 996, Otto was crowned by Gregory at Rome.
Pope and Emperor strove at once to embody their theories in acts. The proceedings of the anti-papal synod of Reims were annulled; its nominee to the see of Reims, Gerbert of Aurillac, was forced to yield up his post to the worldly Arnulf that the synod strove in vain to depose. The whole French episcopate bowed in submission before the new Pope, and Gerbert soon repudiated his earlier teachings. The French king, Robert, was visited with the severest censures of the Church for contracting a marriage within the prohibited degrees. The holy Adalbert, the apostle of Bohemia, but driven from his see of Prague by a pagan reaction, was sternly ordered to return to his bishopric, or, if that were impossible, to engage in a new mission to the heathen. Adalbert chose the latter alternative, and his early death at the hands of the heathen Prussians made him the protomartyr of the new order that Otto and Gregory were striving to introduce. But while the two enthusiasts were busy in the regeneration of the universe, they were unable to maintain themselves in the very centre of their power. A new Roman rebellion brought back Crescentius. 28 Only through the help of the iron soldiery of the Saxon borders, headed by the valiant Eckhard of Meissen, could Otto win back the Eternal City to his obedience. In 998 Rome surrendered, and Crescentius atoned for his rebellion on the scaffold. Gerbert of Aurillac.