The Historians' History of the World 07

The one portion of the Carlovingian monarchy which suffered most in the dark age of dissolution was Italy. The heroic efforts on its behalf of Louis II, the last worthy descendant of Charles, were rendered fruitless by his early death without a son to succeed. Then Italy was a prize for uncles and cousins, like Charles the Bald and Charles the Fat. After their time there was a feudal anarchy in which the most noteworthy leaders were the dukes of Friuli in the north, of Spoleto in the centre, and of Capua and Benevento in the south, with marquises of Ivrea and Tuscany and proud Roman counts, like those of the family of Crescentius, to prevent consolidation or peace. At Rome itself the conditions were at the worst. Popes were elected by clergy and populace, but mob violence forced the elections amid riot and outrage.

[950-962 A.D.]

Above this world of ruin and disorder there still hung the shadow of an imperial crown. From the year 900 it had been alternately the prize of Lombard and Provençal (or Burgundian) princes.[146]

In the year 950 Lothair of Burgundy died suddenly, leaving his young, witty, and beautiful widow Adelheid (Adelaide) to face the craft and strength of Berengar II. Berengar determined to marry her to his son, and upon her refusal imprisoned her in a fortress on the Lake of Como. From this she escaped to the castle of Canossa.

Legend tells us that her deliverance was due to a priest who bored through her prison wall, and that in her flight she was so closely pursued as to be compelled to conceal herself in a field of standing corn. Her flight at Canossa gave the excuse for the interference of the German ally, Ludolf of Swabia, Otto’s eldest son. Ludolf at once descended the Alps; his uncle Henry of Bavaria was at his heels to share in the plunder, and laid claim to most of Venetia, although formerly Berengar’s ally. But the prize was for neither of them. In 951 Otto himself came down, and in Pavia, the old royal city of the Lombards, he signalised his double triumph by assuming the title “king of the Lombards” and by marrying the fair Adelaide. Henceforth the only obstacle to the assumption of the empire was the formality of coronation.

Nine years elapsed, however, before Otto took the final step. His son had withdrawn to Germany to lead a formidable rebellion against the father who had foiled his plans. Conrad the red, duke of Lotharingia, joined hands with him, and the civil wars broke out anew. It was then that the great Hungarian invasion came to restore allegiance to the one prince who could make headway against it. The rebels submitted and fought loyally for their king. The battle of Lechfeld left Otto unquestioned master in Germany. Fresh aggressions of Berengar, whom he had left as under-king in Italy, now led him to take the final step.a

Berengar aimed at the independent sovereignty of Italy, in which he was upheld by the majority of the people, whose national pride ill brooked the despotic rule of either the clergy or the Germans. The Lombard bishops, enraged at the restriction imposed upon them by Berengar, sought the protection of the pope, who applied for aid to the emperor. The family disputes that had so lately troubled Otto’s domestic peace, the struggle with the Hungarians and the Slavs, had at this juncture been brought to a favourable termination, and the reincorporation of Italy with the empire again became the object of his ambition. Accordingly, after causing his son, Otto II, to be crowned king of Germany at Aachen, and entrusting the government of the empire to his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, and to his illegitimate son Wilhelm, who had succeeded Frederick in the archbishopric of Mainz, he crossed the Alps (961 A.D.), expelled Berengar, and for the first time entered Rome, where the pope, John XII (a son of Alberic), was compelled to crown him emperor.d

THE IMPERIAL CORONATION (962 A.D.)

[962 A.D.]

Ancient custom demanded that the pope should send the Roman senate, i.e. the nobility of the city, and the citizens who bore arms to meet the king, who was to receive the imperial crown, while he was encamped upon the gardens of Nero under Monte Mario near the church of St. Peter, and to escort him back to the city. This delegation, accordingly, started out in pompous array with crosses and flags, dragon heads, and lofty standards, accompanied by the corporations of the foreigners in Rome, each hailing the joyful occasion by joyful songs in its own language. Aristocratic youths belonging to the first families of the city, welcomed the king at Monte Mario, kissed his feet, and then assisted him to mount a horse sent by the pope, upon which they conducted him, through crowds of people, to the steps leading to the outer court of St. Peter’s.