THE SAXON OR OTTONIAN ERA
This era lasted from 919 to 1024. It is named so, because its rulers were Dukes of Saxony and because three of them were called Otto.
SOURCES
Only the principal sources can be mentioned:
SECONDARY WORKS
GERMANY’S DUCHIES
When the Carolingian period ended in Germany in 911, there were four German duchies: Saxony, Bavaria (the two most important), Franconia and Swabia. There was as yet no German identity or nationality; one was first and foremost a Bavarian or a Swabian. Particularism always remained an important factor in German history. Mighty dukes, like those of Saxony and Bavaria, exercised a power barely distinguishable from that of a king.
When Germany seceded from the Carolingian realm in 911, the Duchy of Lotharingia formed part of West Francia (France). It became German in 925; its ruler was made a duke in 928. The sentiment of apartheid was strong in this duchy, due to its position between France and Germany. Otto I the Great divided it into two duchies, Lower Lotharingia and Upper Lotharingia. Upper Lotharingia comprised what is now Alsace-Lorraine, Lower Lotharingia Luxemburg, Belgium, and the southern part of the Netherlands. Flanders west of the Scheldt, however, remained French.
KING CONRAD I
King Conrad I (911-919), Duke of Franconia, was an interim ruler. He was the last link with the Carolingian race, because his mother was a Carolingian. The main significance of his reign is that from now on Germany definitely went its own way. He left no son.
THE SAXON RULERS
The dukes of Franconia and Saxony decided between them that the Duke of Saxony, Henry I the Fowler, should be the next king. The Saxon or Ottonian Kings of Germany were the following: Henry I the Fowler (919-936), Otto I the Great (936-973), Otto II (973-983), Otto III (983-1002), Henry II (1002-1024). From Henry I to Otto III the succession went from father to son, but Otto III left no son. The claim of the Duke of Bavaria, Henry III, was that he was the greatgrandson of Henry. As German king he was Henry II. He left no son; with him the Saxon dynasty died out.
THE SUCCESSION
Contrary to the practice in France and England, there was in Germany no hereditary right to the throne. The German kings did not follow the custom of the Merovingians and the Carolingians of dividing the realm among their sons; the kingdom remained one. Until the end of the Holy Roman Empire German kings were elected. However, during the Saxon dynasty the later college of electors did not yet exist. The dukes determined who should be king. In practice normally the son of the deceased king was chosen.
NO CAPITAL
Another important difference with the Kingdoms of France and England was that Germany had no capital. Kings travelled around from Pfalz to Pfalz, taking their family, their court and their chancellery with them. Pfalz comes from palatium, palace, a royal Burg. The favourite Pfalz of the Saxon and Salian kings was that of Quedlinburg, in the south-eastern part of the Duchy of Saxony. The first German capital was Berlin in 1870. From 1949 to 1989 the divided Germany had two capitals, Bonn and East Berlin. In 1989 Berlin became the capital of the reunited Germany (although Bonn was a serious option).
ROYAL POWER
A medieval German king always remained duke of his own duchy, which was his power base. How powerful he was depended mainly on the resources of his own duchy and on his personality. On the whole the other dukes did not feel very much inclined to allow the king to meddle into their own affairs. Almost all kings had their problems with them, which not rarely led to armed clashes and even to civil war. The kings often had to buy their support with favours and privileges. There was no national German army; a king count only count on the militia of his own duchy; the other dukes were or were not ready to put their contingents at the king’s disposal. The new king began his reign with the so-called Königsumritt, during which he visited as many parts of the kingdom as possible, to receive the allegiance of the princes and the citizens.
HENRY I THE FOWLER, 919-936
Legend has it that Henry, Duke of Saxony, heard that he was chosen King of Germany, while he was catching birds (hence his nickname the Fowler) in Quedlinburg, where they still point the spot where he then was, namely, the little square Im Finkenherd. The fact that a member of the Saxon nation that had fought Charlemagne so long was now his successor in Germany, was some sort of triumph over the Carolingian past. In 921 the Carolingian King Charles III the Simple recognized Henry as the legitimate King of Germany.
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| This is the little square Im Finkenfeld in Quedlinburg (Lower Saxonia). According to tradition it was here that Henry I , while he was catching birds, heard that he was chosen as King of Germany. |
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THE HENRY CULT
Henry I the Fowler lies buried, with his wife Mathilda, in the crypt of the Stiftskirche on the Schlossberg in Quedlinburg (Niedersachsen); their tombs are still there; that of Mathilda is intact, but the lid of Henry’s tomb is heavily damaged. The German Nazis considered Henry as the founder of the German Reich, and in consequence, also of their own Third Reich. In 936 Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS, came to the crypt with his SS-staff in order to celebrate the thousandth anniversary of Henry’s death. He returned each year for a solemn celebration. From 1938 to 1945 the Stiftskirche was a Germanische SS-Halle. Hitler never came; he was not interested in SS-mystics and had no sympathy for Himmler, who to him was only a useful tool.
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This is the entrance to the Burg on the Schloßberg in Quedlinburg. On this hill stood the favourite Pfalz of the Saxon and Salian emperors. The original chapel in which Henry I was buried no longer exists. His tomb is now in the crypt of the Stiftskirche, which dates from 1129. |
OTTO I THE GREAT 936-973
Otto I was the son of Henry I the Fowler; he too was Duke of Saxony.
THE CORONATION CEREMONY
The solemn ceremony took place on August 7, 936, in Charlemagne’s basilica in Aachen. All the German dukes and all the potentes of the realm assembled in the portico. When Otto had taken place on a throne, they all reached him the hand and promised to be true to him. Meanwhile archbishop Hildebert of Mainz with the other clergy, stood awaiting the new king in the basilica itself. When Otto entered the church, the archbishop went to meet him, took him by the right hand with his own left hand, and led him to the middle of the church. Here he addressed the people who had streamed in and shouted: "Look! I show you your King Otto, elected by God, designated by King Henry, and now chosen by all the princes. When you agree with this choice, then raise your hand to heaven." All did this and acclaimed the new king. It created a great noise, says Widukind, the chronicler to whom we owe this description.
Then the king, who wore Frankish dress, was led by Hildebert to the altar, where the royal insignia were laid out. The archbishop gave him the sword, the royal mantle, the sceptre and the staff. When he handed him the sword, he said: "Receive this sword with which you will drive away the enemies of Christ, the barbarians and the bad Christians, because to you through God’s will all power in the Empire of the Franks belongs to you, so that all the Christians may live in peace." The two officiating archbishops, Wichfried of Cologne and Hildebert, then anointed Otto with the sacred oil and crowned him with the golden crown.
The king then took place on Charlemagne’s throne, thus stressing that he was the successor of the first western emperor, who in his turn was considered to be the successor of the Roman Emperors. A solemn mass was celebrated. Finally the king left the church and went to the palace. There he seated himself at a decorated table, together with the archbishops and the princes. The German dukes, led by Duke Giselbert of Lower Lotharingia, waited upon him. After the banquet Otto gave them all a magnificent present.
This protocol would serve as a model for later coronations: election in Frankfurt, coronation in Aachen, and imperial coronation in Rome.
REBELLIONS
To remain in power, Otto had to fight down quite a number of rebellions, by his brother Henry, his son Liudolf, and some of the dukes. Otto learned to deeply distrust the members of his family and his vassals. Instead, he turned for support to the clergy. This was always on Otto’s side, because they wanted Germany to be unified under a strong leadership. Otto gave bishops and abbots tasks of a secular, even military nature. Later this led to great difficulties.
ITALY
Since long Lombardy, Northern Italy, was in a state of anarchy. Several local rulers aspired to the title ‘King of Italy’. The most ambitious of these was Berengar II, margrave of Friaul, who was crowned as King of Italy indeed in 950. The hope of the anti-Berengar party was Adelheid, who should have married Lothar, son of King Hugo of Italy (926-947); Lothar did not succeed Hugo, since he died young. Berengar felt Adelheid to be a threat to his position and had her interned. She escaped, however, and fled to the castle of Canossa, from where her cry for help reached the ears of Otto I. He came, deposed Berengar II, and married Adelheid (he was twice as old as she was). In 951 he was crowned as King of Italy in Pavia. From then on German and Italy were bound together for centuries. German kings needed Lombardy as their stepping-stone to Rome, to be crowned as emperor there.
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THE DEFEAT OF THE HUNGARIANS
The still pagan Hungarians were a horrible nuisance for Europe; they raided far and wide, as far as Denmark, Italy and Spain, but most of all in Germany. In 955 they came again to Bavaria, where they were confronted by a large German army, contingents having come from all the German duchies. It was the first all-German army ever, an evident sign that the concept of ‘Germany’ was gaining in importance. There were eight regional armies in all, accompanied by some eight to ten thousand cavalry.
The German prepared themselves for the ordeal by a religious fast, by making peace with one another, and by receiving holy communion. In the morning of the ninth of August battle was joined the Lechfeld near Augsburg. The predatory Hungarians immediately made the strategic mistake of sending a large part of their troops to attack the German baggage train. The Franconians surrounded them and sent them to flight. They were sorely missed in the centre, where the main body of the Hungarians came under very heavy attack. King Otto led the final storm in person. At the head of his cavalry he rode behind the standard of St.Michael, with the Holy Lance in his hand. The Hungarians were no match for this mass of armour. Many fleeing men drowned in the river Lech. Later in the day the enemy camp was conquered. Not many Hungarians escaped, for Otto had given orders to take no prisoners. On the German side the losses were not small either; the most conspicuous victim was the valiant Duke Conrad of Franconia, who was hit in the throat by an arrow, when he, because of the unbearable heat, turned up the visor of his helmet.
NOTE: the Holy Lance was supposed to be the spear with which Jesus’ side was pierced on the cross.
ENLARGING GERMAN TERRITORY
The Slav populated regions between the rivers Elbe and Oder became ever more under German control. Here margraviates were established: the Billinger Mark, which later became the Mark Brandenburg, the Ostmark, later Austria, the Mark Merseburg, and others. German colonists streamed in in such numbers that a mixed German-Slav population originated, with the Germans soon in the majority. The Slavs did not welcome the colonists and staged rebellions against them. Only two months after his victory on the Lechfeld, Otto defeated the Slavs in the Battle of the Rechnitz in Mecklenburg (September 955).
The memory of their erstwhile independence was never wholly lost among the Slavs of eastern Germany. In present-day Brandenburg there are still remnants of the old Slav nation of the Wends, who speak a non-German language. Profiting from the German Zusammenbruch in 1945, they asked the brandnew United Nations to recognize their independence. Nothing came of it.
In 950 the King of Bohemia had to recognize German suzerainty; Bohemia remained within the German sphere of power until 1918.
THE IMPERIAL CORONATION
Pope John XII was the very first pontiff to change his name (which was Octavian); all the Popes before him had kept their own names. His position was threatened from both sides. Berengar II pressed on from the north. Inside the city a strong reform party was active, for Pope John was a very unworthy man, the puppet of the Roman aristocratic factions. He appealed for help to Otto I.. He came with his wife Adelheid; they were crowned as emperor and empress on February 2, 962 in St.Peter’s in Rome.
From then on there was a German Empire, later to be called the Holy Roman Empire deutscher Nation; it existed until 1806. `Holy’ means that it was Christian, `Roman’ because the fiction was kept up that the Imperium Romanum had been restored and that the German emperors were the successors of the Roman emperors. Yet the German Empire could not stand the comparison with the Roman Empire, not even with the Western Roman Empire. Its territory did not comprise England, France, Spain and the still Byzantine South Italy. However, the German king was also King of Italy (Lombardy), while Burgundy and Bohemia were vassal states of the empire. The region between the Rhine and the Elbe, which had never been Roman, and the region between the Elbe and the Oder, which had never been Frankish, were now German.
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THE PAPAL-IMPERIAL RELATION
Shortly after his coronation, on February 13, 962, emperor and Pope concluded the Pactum Ottonianum, of which the most important stipulation was that a new Pope, before he was consecrated, had to take an oath of loyalty to the emperor, not only to Otto, but also to his successors. This arrangement was meant to give the Church worthy pontiffs, but it made it also dependent on a political power.
OTTO THE GREAT AND BYZANTIUM
As and emperor Otto wished to be recognized as the equal of the Byzantine Emperor, at that time Nicephoras Phocas (963-969). He therefore wanted to have a Byzantine bride for his son Otto (II). Byzantine emperors never married their own, porphyrogennêtai, purple-born (purple being the imperial colour) daughters to non-Byzantine (= barbarian) rulers; if such a daughter was married to a non-Byzantine ruler, a claim to the Byzantine throne might originate. In 968 Otto sent his confident Liudprand of Cremona to Constantinople to ask for the hand of a Byzantine princess for Otto II.
The western party arrived at the gates of the Byzantine capital on June 4, 968. Liudprand complained that they were made to wait in torrential rain. Then they were escorted to a house in the town, where they were treated like prisoners, wrote Liudprand; armed guards stood outside to prevent their going out. The house had no water, and to make matters worse, the Greek wine was found to be undrinkable (a western complaint until this day). On June 7 they were presented to his Byzantine Majesty in his marble palace. Liudprand writes of this man that he was small as a pygmy, with exiguous eyes like those of a worm or a mole, bald, with a short beard and an enormous paunch. Liudprand’s aim was naturally to demonstrate that such a monstruosity was not fit to be an emperor.
On the evening of this day Liudprand was invited to dine with the emperor; he was alone, not one of his companions was allowed to come with him. He abhorred the food, which swam in a horrible fish oil. Nicephoras, who probably was slightly drunk (Liudprand too had perhaps a few drops too many), intimated that he did not have a high opinion of the military power of the German Empire. "You are not Romans, you are Lombards," he said contemptuously. Angrily, Liudprand retorted that the Germans did not want to be Romans at all; the Romans were a sorry lot. "In that one word `Roman’ we concentrate all existing vices, such as meanness, cowardice, greed, ostentation, mendacity." And he went on railing against the Romans (we should not forget that the Byzantines thought of themselves as `Romans’.) With a gesture the emperor made his guest stop and declared the dinner party over. Liudprand and his party went home without a Byzantine princess.
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Later Otto got what he wanted. In 972 he sent Gero, the archbishop of Cologne, to Constantinople to ask for the hand of Anna, the daughter of the Emperor John I Tzimisces. John refused to give a purple-born princess to a German prince, but Gero could return with a cousin, princes Theophano. She married Otto (II) on April 14, 972 in Rome.
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OTTO’S END AND OTTO II
Otto I the Great died in Merseburg on May 7, 973, and was succeeded by his son Otto II (973-983). His wife Theophano became empress.
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THE FRENCH INVASION
Lotharingia remained a bone of contention between France and Germany. The French King Lothar (954-986), a Carolingian, hoped to regain Lower Lotharingia for France. In June 978 a French army crossed the German border and headed straight for Aachen. Otto II and Theophano, who were in the Pfalz then, had to take to their heels, leaving all their luggage behind. When Lothar entered the palace, he found nobody there to his disappontment. The infuriated soldiers overturned the tables on which the dishes still stood ready, while the train personnel made away with the kitchen utensils. The clothes chests of the royal family were emptied of their contents. Having thoroughly plundered the palace, the French returned home.
The French did not return home without performing a highly symbolic act: they changed the position of the eagle with its widespread wings, that Charlemagne had put on the ridge of the roof. There are two versions of this.
Richer: the soldiers turned it to the south-east, that is, to Germany, "for the Germans had turned it to the west [i.e. towards France], thereby subtly indicating that they might triumph over France with their cavalry." In this version (Richer was a Frenchman) the act should avert evil, namely, the German threat against France.
Thietmar: the soldiers turned the eagle towards France. He says that it was the custom of those who were in possession of the palace – the French at that moment - `would turn it towards their kingdom’. This version seems to mean that the emperor of the West should be a Frenchman. In both versions the meaning is the same: the emperorship did not belong to the Germans by right (don’t forget that Lothar was a Carolingian).
A NARROW ESCAPE
It was a persistent aim of German imperial policy to unite all Italy under German control. The German king was also King of (North) Italy (Lombardy); Middle Italy were the Papal States, and South Italy was still Byzantine. Many emperors attempted in vain to conquer South Italy, Otto II being one of them. When he began an offensive in 982, there was a strong Arabian presence in the extreme south, under the command of an Arabian condottiere, Abu al-Qasim, the emir of Sicily. The Arabian troops, finding the Germans too strong for them, began to withdraw.
The emperor, going after them as quickly as he could, found his enemy entrenched at Capo Colonne near Crotone, and attacked him on July 15. German horsemen broke through the Saracen centre and found al-Qasim whom they killed. Victory seemed certain; the Germans began to pursue the fleeing Arabs. However, important Saracen reserves had been positioned in the nearby hills. These now sallied forth and fell on the careless and unsuspecting Germans many of whom were killed, among them several great nobles. Otto himself fled with some retainers to the beach, with the Saracens on his heels. A Jew who was standing there offered him his horse on which he rode into the sea towards a ship that was just sailing along, but the sailors refused to take him aboard. Otto returned to the beach just at the moment that the first Saracen horsemen appeared. He jumped into the water and swam towards another passing ship; being a good swimmer, he succeeded in boarding it. What he did not know was that it was a Byzantine merchant-man, heading for Constantinople; its captain was overjoyed with the big fish he had caught. The emperor, however, kept his head cool. He persuaded the captain to sail to Rossano, where the Empress Theophano and a great treasute could be taken aboard. Arrived before Rossano, Otto had a sailor sent to his wife, who soon enough appeared on the beach with a few mules loaded with gold. The bishop of Metz and two armed soldiers boarded the ship. Once they were on board, Otto jumped into the sea and swam to the beach; a sailor who tried to hold him was killed by one of the soldiers. The emperor safely reached his headquarters, where somewhat later the bishop and the soldiers joined him; the men had kept the crew at bay with their swords. This, however, was the end of the attempt to conquer South Italy.
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OTTO II’S END
Otto II suddenly died in Rome on December 7, 983, only twenty-eight years old. He is the only German emperor to have died and been buried in Rome.
OTTO III
Otto II was succeeded by his minor son Otto III (983-1002). As long as he was a minor, the influence of his grandmother Adelheid and his mother Theophano was great. He received an excellent education; his contemporaries, not used to so much erudition in their rulers, referred to him as the mirabilia mundi, the wonder of the world. When he was fifteen, he was declared to have come of age.
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OTTO III’S KAISERIDEE
Otto III was every inch an emperor; his official behaviour was in the Byzantine style rather than in the Frankish or German mode. Thietmar says, he always loved Rome (the imperial city) best. Like the Roman emperors, he dined alone. In his view an uninterrupted line connected the Roman emperors through Charlemagne and his successors with his grandfather and father and finally with himself. An old chronicle relates that Otto was in Aachen in the spring of the year 1000 and that on that occasion he visited Charlemagne’s tomb (the story is probably partly legendary). It was found after some searching. A hole was made in the floor through which the emperor descended in the tomb, accompanied by two bishops and a count. The spectacle they saw in the light of the torches impressed them deeply. The dead Charlemagne did not lie down but sat upright on a seat, as if he was still living. The deceased emperor, already dead for almost two hundred years, had a golden crown on his head and a sceptre in his hands, which were enveloped in gloves. His finger nails had grown through these gloves and protruded out of them – a detail that serves to show that not all Charlemagne’s vitality had disappeared at his death. Kneeling down, the four men paid homage to Charlemagne. Otto then clothed the body in white garments and cut the nails. Over the nose, which had suffered from corruption, he placed a golden cap. Finally, he broke a tooth out of Charles’s mouth, departed and had the tomb sealed once again. It is possible that on this occasion the corpse was laid in the sarcophagus in which it was laid in 1165. (By appropriating part of the dead emperor’s body, Otto hoped to become like his great predecessor; it was a form of identification.)
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OTTO IIII AND ROME
Otto III was so much in love with Rome that he doubtless wanted to make it into his imperial residence. However, the Romans were not in love with him and his Germans. He went three times to Rome, in 996, 997/998, and 1000/1001. In May 996 he was crowned in Rome as emperor. During his second expedition he had to conquer the city on the anti-German rebels. During his third stay the armed opposition was so strong that he and his troops had to evacuate the city.
OTTO III’S END
Otto III died in Italy on January 24, 1002; he was childless.
HENRY II
Otto’s nearest relative, Henry III, Duke of Bavaria, succeeded him as King Henry II (1002-1024). In 1004 he went to Italy for the first time; he was then crowned as King of Italy in Pavia. Since he could not leave the situation in Rome as it was, he arrived in Rome in February 1014 and was crowned as emperor in St.Peter’s on the 14th. The occasion was celebrated with bloody fighting between Germans and Romans in the streets of Rome. His third expedition took place in 1020-1021. An attempt to conquer South Italy on the Byzantines remained unsuccessful.
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THE END OF THE SAXON DYNASTY
Henry II died on July 13, 1024; he lies buried in the Bamberger Dom. His marriage with Kunigund remained childless. Both Henry and Kunigund were sanctified by the Church, as the only German rulers, With Henry II the Saxon dynasty came to an end.