German border, destroyed the bishoprics of Havelberg
and Brandenburg, and burned Hamburg, reversing most
of Otto I’s successes in Slavic territory. Perhaps the
seriousness of the political situation can be seen in the
feet that Otto II summoned an imperial diet at Verona
on May 27, 983, where he had his three-year-old son
Otto III elected to the German kingship, then sent the
child on to Aachen to be crowned. Otto II remained in
Italy, trying to subject Venice to imperial control. He
died of malaria in Rome on December 7, 983, at the age
of twenty-eight, and is the only emperor to be buried in
St. Peter’s Basilica.
Otto II appears to have been dominated and over-
shadowed throughout his life by people of stronger
character, fi rst his father, then his wife Theophanu, and
also by his counselors, especially the loyal and talented
Archbishop Willigis of Mainz. Physically Otto was not
as impressive as his father; the exhumation of his body
in 1609 revealed that he was a small man, and eleventh-
century sources describe him as a redhead. Certainly
his reputation has suffered by comparison to his great
father and exotic son. In general, his reign is best seen
as one of consolidation and growing sophistication.
Unlike his predecessors, Otto II was well educated. His
love of luxury and ostentation was notorious, although
this perhaps should be taken more as a sign of the
enormous wealth the Ottonians were able to command
than of character weakness. His reign saw advances in
the imperial chancery and greater cooperation between
the German and Italian parts of the empire. It also saw
a closer identifi cation with the ancient Roman Empire
and the city of Rome, setting aside the Byzantine
emperor’s claim to be the only true successor of the
caesars. Otto’s chancery in 982 adopted for the fi rst
time the title Roman empire (imperator Romanorum
augustus) as the designation of a German emperor, a
title that became standard to Otto’s successors. Despite
his reverses in Italy and on the Slavic frontier, Otto left
a fi rmly established realm, increasingly self-assured and
international, to his son.
See also Otto I, Otto III
Further Reading
Beumann, Helmut. Die Ottonen. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1987.
Reuter, Timothy. Germany in the Early Middle Ages, 800–1056.
London: Longman, 1991.
Phyllis G. Jestice
OTTO III (980–1002)
King of the Germans, 983–1002, emperor 996–1002,
Otto III was the most fl amboyant and controversial of the
German emperors. He was born in 980, the only son of
Emperor Otto II and the Byzantine princess Theophanu.
Otto II continued his own father’s policy of assuring
Ottonian rule by having the young Otto elected king at
Verona, May 27, 983. He then dispatched the three-year-
old Otto to Aachen for coronation on Christmas 983.
This was several weeks after Otto II’s death in Italy but
before the news had reached the north.
A series of informal regents governed the empire for
most of Otto’s short life. By German custom, the young
king’s proper guardian was his closest adult male rela-
tive, Duke Henry II the Quarrelsome of Bavaria. Henry,
though, soon tried to supplant his charge, claiming the
kingship in his own name. Archbishop Willigis of Mainz,
though, threw his support behind Otto III, summoning
the young king’s mother, Theophanu, and grandmother
Adelheid from Italy to help him preserve Otto’s rights.
After a period of intense political maneuvering, Henry
surrendered Otto to the two empresses on June 29, 984.
Theophanu assumed the regency for her son. After her
death in 991, Adelheid directed affairs until Otto III
formally came of age in September 994.
Otto’s role during his childhood was strictly sym-
bolic. In 986 he was sent on a campaign against the
Slavs—not to fi ght but so Mieszko of Poland could join
the host and do homage. For the most part, though, Otto
was not very visible in German affairs until he came
of age. He was very well educated. His main tutor was
Bernward, the future bishop of Hildesheim, but he also
received instruction in Greek from his mother’s friend
John Philagathos, a southern Italian. After coming of
age, Otto continued his education with the most learned
man of the age, Gerbert of Aurillac.
Rome during Otto’s minority had fallen into the
hands of the local noble Crescentius II. Pope John XV
asked for Otto’s help in 995, leading to Otto’s fi rst Italian
expedition. John died before his arrival, so Otto forced
the Roman Church to accept his own cousin Bruno of
Carinthia as pope, who took the name Gregory V. Greg-
ory then crowned Otto as emperor on May 21, 996. The
imposition of a German pope shows Otto’s early deter-
mination to control Rome. This marked a new departure,
since Gregory was the fi rst non-Roman pope since the
Byzantine emperors had appointed Greeks to the offi ce
in the seventh century. Gregory was soon driven from
the city, forcing Otto to return and reinstate him in 998.
This time Otto secured Rome by having Crescentius
executed, and had Crescentius’s antipope (none other
than Otto’s former tutor, John Philagathos) blinded and
imprisoned. Afterward, Otto stayed in Rome, having
decided to make the city the capital of his empire. He
had a palace built for himself on the Aventine. This
has been taken as evidence of Otto Ill’s grandiose plan
to create a new Roman empire. Certainly Otto greatly
developed the idea of a western empire, but it was not
inextricably linked to Rome. At fi rst he wanted to set
up Aachen as a “new Rome,” placing the focus of theOTTO II