Ottoman Turks and Empire 541Otto III (980–1002)king of Germany, Holy Roman
Emperor
Otto III was crowned king in December 983 at the age of
three, on the death of his father, Otto II (r. 973–983).
Henry the Quarrelsome, once a duke of BAVARIA (r.
955–976, 985–995), acted as regent but was soon replaced
by Otto’s Byzantine mother, THEOPHANO, until her death in
- After another regency by his grandmother, ADELAIDE,
Otto himself directed the empire from 994.
The main concern of Otto’s government was ITALY.
He went there in May 996 to receive imperial consecra-
tion from his cousin, the first German pope, Gregory V
(r. 996–999), whom Otto had just appointed. At ROME
he met Adalbert (ca. 956–997), the exiled bishop of
PRAGUE, and the famous intellectual Gerbert of Auril-
lac, the future Pope SYLVESTERII. He returned to Ger-
many but in 998 had to go back to Rome, where the
noble Crescenti family had taken power and placed an
antipope (John XVI [r. 997–998]) on the papal throne.
Otto defeated the Crescenti and executed the antipope,
who also happened to have been his old teacher, while
putting the unpopular foreigner, Gregory, back on the
papal throne.
THE IMPERIAL COURTOtto III then stayed at Rome on the Palatine Hill, and
there he formed an imperial court on the model of
Byzantium. Under the influence of Gerbert, whom he
appointed pope as Sylvester II, he tried to establish a new,
universal conception of empire, a federation of kingdoms
and local ecclesiastical institutions under the joint
authority of the emperor and his client, the pope. Otto
went on pilgrimage to Gniezno in February 1000, to the
tomb of Adalbert, who had been martyred in 997; he
made Duke BOLESLAVof POLANDthe king and gave him
control of the church in his country. He then participated
in crowning STEPHENI of Hungary and honored bishop
of Gran by giving him control over the Magyar church.
These were not acceptable to the powerful German
bishops, who had ambitions for a widespread German
domination of Eastern Europe.
Otto returned to Rome but was forced to leave the
city by an uprising in January 1001. While waiting for
reinforcements to return to Rome, he died January 24,
1002, at the age of 21 and was buried near his imperial
role model CHARLEMAGNE at AACHEN. His successors
were not able to continue his ambitious imperial plans.
See alsoHOLYROMANEMPIRE;OTTONIAN ART.
Further reading:Thietmar of Mersburg, Ottonian
Germany: The Chronicle of Thietmar of Mersburg,trans.
David A. Warner (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2001); Robert Folz, the Concept of Empire in
Western Europe from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century,
trans. Sheila Ann Ogilvie (New York: Harper & Row,
1969).
Ottoman Turks and Empire The Ottomans were a
dynasty of Oghuz Turks founded by a chief named
OSMANI, the son of Ertoghrul. He founded an emirate in
ANATOLIA. As other Turkoman chiefs did in the late 13th
and early 14th centuries, he profited from the weakening
of SELJUK, MONGOL, and BYZANTINEpower. His emirate
was the base of the future Ottoman domination of the
Balkans and eventually of nearly all of ISLAM.
These beginnings were modest. From Bithynia, they
expanded by attacks and raids at the expense of the last
Byzantine strongholds in Anatolia, including the impor-
tant capture of Bursa in 1326 and the occupation of the
southern side of the Dardanelles in 1345. The Ottoman
sultanate, as did the other small Turkish states of Anato-
lia, maintained a seminomadic pastoral life that only
gradually promoted Islamization of formerly Byzantine
territories.
In 1354, after an opportune earthquake, the
Ottomans captured Gallipoli on the European coast of
the Dardanelles. Now in Europe, they began the conquest
of the Balkans. They were successful because of sound
military organization, the formation of the elite JANISSARY
Corps and the zeal of their warriors. These were the
foundations of the great conquests of MURADI between
1362 and 1389 and of BAYAZID I “the Thunderbolt”
between 1389 and 1402. Over some 40 years, they con-
quered most of the southeastern Balkans, including
Thrace, MACEDONIA,BULGARIA, and southern SERBIA.
They encircled CONSTANTINOPLE, crushed the Serbs at
KOSOVOPolje in 1389, and destroyed Western crusaders
at the Battle of NICOPOLISin 1396.
In the meantime in Anatolia, the Ottomans occupied
most of the rival Turkish emirates of western and central
Anatolia. Even the death of Bayazid I, defeated in battle
by TAMERLANEat Ankara in 1402, slowed this march of
conquest by only 20 years. From 1421, Ottoman expan-
sion recommenced under MURADII between 1421 and
1451 and MEHMEDII between 1451 and 1481. Murad
continued the conquest of GREECEand ALBANIA, crossed
the Danube, attacked HUNGARY, crushed Serbia, and
routed another great coalition of Western crusaders at the
Battle of Varna in 1444. Sultan Mehmed II captured Con-
stantinople on May 29, 1453, and continued on to attack
the colonies of VENICEalong the Adriatic, ALBANIA, and
the VLACHS. He created an imperial state, combining both
the Seljuk and Byzantine legacies. By the 16th century,
the Ottomans controlled EGYPT, SYRIA, and IRAQ.
SeeART AND ARCHITECTURE, ISLAMIC; ILLUMINATION.
Further reading:Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Hori-
zons: A History of the Ottoman Empire(New York: H. Holt,
1999); Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481
(Istanbul: Isis Press, 1990); I. Metin Kunt, “The Rise of
the Ottomans,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History,
Vol. 6, c. 1300–c. 1415,ed. Michael Jones (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), 839–63; Stanford J.