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Otto III and the two empires at the millennium
I’m going to start by taking a look at the Byzantine empire, discussing the political developments of the reign of Basil II, then move west to examine the short reign of Otto III, analyzing the roots behind his program of renovatio imperii Romanorum and why it was ultimately unsuccessful.
-Basil II ascended to the thrown in 976 following the death of John Tzimisces. However an eastern military commander, Bardas Sclerus, also claimed the thrown. Having secured the east, Sclerus marched on Constantinople. With no where else to turn, Basil II, relying on the advice of Basil the eunuch, appealed to another general, Bardas Phocas, who in 979 defeated Sclerus. It must be mentioned that the emperorship at this time was by no means a strong one. There had been a string of rather incapable emperors and much of the power lay in the hands of the eastern military commanders and the imperial advisors. Once it became evident following the elimination of the Sclerus threat that Basil II was a more ambitious emperor than his forefathers, the eunuch Basil, the emperor’s chief advisor, began plotting with the generals to have him deposed. Discovering this, the emperor had Basil arrested and exiled in 985, a date which for all practical purposes marks the beginning of his independent reign. - The Macedonians had rebelled at the beginning of Basil’s reign, eventually coming under the leadership of Samuel. An attempt to retake Macedonia in 976 had failed, an event that fueled the ambitious generals’ desire to rise against the unsuccessful emperor. In 987 Bardas Phocas and Sclerus conspired to overthrow the empire and divide the empire east and west, however Phocas soon had Sclerus arrested and stood before the gates of Constantinople alone in 988. In an act of desperation, one which would have great long term effects on Basil’s rule and the future of the empire, Basil appealed to Vladimir of Russia and was able to beat Phocas. Not only did this secure Basil’s rule, but by relying on the first time for foreign troops he was able to break free of the military dependency on powerful generals within the empire and thus he became the clear head of the military. Vladimir was baptized an Orthodox Christian and given Basil’s sister as his bride, the first time a princess born in the purple was given to such a foreigner.
In 991 and again in 1001 Basil launched offensives against the Macedonian empire under Samuel. Basil put much of his energy into the conquest of this former territory, perhaps at the expense of possible gains in the east. The traditional final victory over Samuel was the battle of Kleidion in 1014 – (1018).
The significance of Basil II’s conquests in Macedonia and Bulgaria is that they shifted the focus of the empire away from the frontier and military families in the East back to the West. We see a continuation in this trend when Basil brought all the Byzantine possessions in Italy under a single catepanate and planned, upon his death in 1025, a large-scale campaign against the Arabs in Italy and Sicily. –look towards west
The West-
Otto II had developed a quite ambitious (in fact overly ambitious) policy in Italy. Proclaiming himself Romanorum imperator augustus in 982, he decided to press his rights in Italy by attacking both the Byzantines and the Muslims of Sicily. Beaten badly by the Muslims, Otto II barely escaped alive (byz help) only to die the next year of Malaria in 983. The 3-year old Otto III was crowned in Aachen the same month, but only took power in 994 after the regencies of his mother Theophano and grandmother Adelheid. The regents had done a good job preserving the imperial possessions, and Otto received the empire more or less how his father had left it.
According to Benjamin Arnold what Otto III did was to turn the political focus of the empire away from a military emphasis towards an ideological one. The essence of this ideological focus can be summed up by Otto’s use of the Carolingian slogan “renovatio imperii Romanorum.” Otto seems to have had a sense of what it meant to be emperor of the Romans or Holy Roman Emperor which neither of the previous Ottos or even Charlemagne possessed. Bishop Leo of Vercelli wrote in 998 that “The times are reformed by the pope under the aegis of Caesar.” What Otto III did was to look to Byzantium, to Charlemagne and to the medieval conception of Classical Rome through works such as Augustine’s as models of what it was to be emperor. only 3 when his father died, Otto had little direct contact with his father and therefore must naturally have turned to other sources.
So now let’s have a look at Otto’s reign. Assuming power in 994 at the age of 15, Otto marched to Rome to be crowned and dispatched an embassy to Constantinople requesting a Byzantine princess. In 996, when Otto departed for Rome to aid Pope John XV from Crescentius, the patricius and senator of Rome, John died before Otto’s arrival. With Otto’s army approaching, the Romans did the sensible thing and offered Otto the right to appoint the next Pope. Ignoring the tradition of appointing only Romans, Otto appointed his cousin and chaplain, Bruno. Taking the name Gregory V in remembrance of the reformer Gregory the Great, Bruno and Otto made it clear that it was their intention to reform. By appointing a relative as the first German pope, Otto to and extent removed the papacy from the factionalism of the Roman nobility and began a trend of close relations with the emperor. Although this was a shift towards the classical ideal and Byzantine example, which Otto would undoubtedly have learned about through his mother and other Greeks at court, it did not sit well with the ever more powerful Roman nobles or the Byzantines. They soon drove Gregory out and installed the Greek John Philogatos as the anti-pope John XVI. A couple western writers of the 11th C point to Byzantine support for this event and Basil II’s envoy wrote home in 997 that he had elevated a Greek to the papacy. Otto, however, returned in 998, killing Crescentius and mutilating and imprisoning Philogatos. With Gregory V back in St. Peters, Otto set about turning Rome into his imperial capital. He constructed a palace in the old imperial quarter of the city. In 999 Gregory died, allowing Otto to appoint Gerbert, Archbishop of Ravenna as Sylvester II. Once again in the name of the pope we see Otto looking back to a previous age and the supposed cooperation and harmony between Constantine and Pope Sylvester I. Two years later, in 1001, Otto declared in a charter that the Donation of Constantine, the document which stated that Rome was reserved for the popes, was a forgery. In this act we see Otto bringing both the head of Christ’s Church and Christ’s empire back into Rome, a vital part of his renovation of the Christian Roman Empire.
Another of Otto’s accomplishments in reviving the Empire was the conversion of Hungary. Duke Stephen of Hungary converted to western Christianity in 996, taking Otto has his Godfather and receiving his crown from Otto in a coronation by a papal legate, thus driving back Byzantine influence in the region. Otto’s revival is likewise evident in his polish policy, in which he detached the polish church from the German one, raising the duke of Poland to the status of “Brother and fellow-worker of the Empire.” It was regular practice for Otto to dispense offices and titles to his nobles in the pattern of a Byzantine emperor. Otto therefore is seen detaching Poland from the German regnum, linking it instead to empire of the Romans.
Not everyone, however, was pleased by Otto’s renovatio and his decision to strengthen the empire at the expense of the German kingdom. Otto’s Saxon subjects soon complained about his frequent absences and his decision to raise Rome as the imperial capital, the spot which Aachen had held since Charlemagne. Otto appeared removed from his Saxon subjects. He dined like a Byzantine or Roman emperor, above and apart from his company, unlike his grandfather who would drink with his men after a battle. Instead of associating himself with monastic communities like other western rulers, Otto was more likely to forge strong personal relationships with monastic figures as a Byzantine emperor would. His toughest opposition, however, came in Rome. The Romans had long been hostile to imperial rule, and the growing strength of the nobility did not help matters. Thietmar von Merseberg, Otto’s contemporary, has Otto as saying: “When I pray at the holy threshold of the Apostles hold your sword always over my head. I know only too well how often our predecessors had reason to worry about the trustworthiness of the Romans.” Dissatisfaction with what they saw as intrusive imperial presence mounted, and in 1001 the Romans rebelled, expelling Otto from the city. Although the Romans of this period recognized some form of imperial overlordship, they also insisted on a degree of autonomy, and Otto had overstepped his bounds. This was a heavy blow to Otto’s imperial policy, and his reaction could not have been far from what Bernward of Hildesheim recorded: “Are you not my Romans? For you indeed I left my fatherland and also forsook my kin. For love of you I rejected my Saxons and all the Germans, my blood. I led you into remote parts of my empire in which your fathers, when they ruled the world, never set foot, that I might spread your name and glory to the ends of the earth. I adopted you as my sons. I preferred you to all. For your sake, because I put you before all, I brought on myself the envy and hatred of all.” This quote does a wonderful job at summing up Otto’s policy of renovation. It also tells why it failed. By establishing his rule away from his center of power in Germany in the more or less hostile city of Rome, Otto ignored the fact that his emperorship was still largely dependent upon Saxon military might.
Perhaps, had he not died in 1002, Otto would have continued to press his position in Rome. On the other hand, he may have adopted a more practical approach centered upon reality with age and experience. His successor, Henry II, adopted such a policy entitled renovatio regni Francorum. Note the emphasis is no longer on the empire, but upon the kingdom of the Franks.
As for relations between the east and the west at this time, although it must be said that the Byzantines were undoubtedly unhappy about Otto’s new claims as successor of the Christian Roman Empire, a title they had always claimed, Basil II seemed to distracted by his wars in Macedonia and Bulgaria and elsewhere to do anything about it. Although the status and power of the western empire required that the Byzantines recognize it, which they did by dispatching a daughter of Constantine VIII, Basil’s brother, as the first Byzantine princess born in the purple sent to marry a Frankish emperor. Such a concession, after all, was made to the Russians, and the Byzantines could always seek to undermine the new nature of German emperorship by methods such as supporting a Greek Pope. Closer relationships between empires at this time also lead ultimately to greater conflict. It was the marriage between Otto II and Theophano which brought many of the ideas of emperorship to Germany which the Byzantines found so threatening. In the end, however, Otto III pushed the ideals of renovatio too far without accounting for the realities of empire and kingdom. Thank you.