Otto III, 980-1002, Holy Roman emperor (996-1002) and German king (983-1002), son of Holy Roman Emperor Otto II and the Byzantine princess Theophano. On Otto's accession Henry the Wrangler, the deposed duke of Bavaria, attempted to become his guardian and then to obtain the crown, but the plot was frustrated and Henry was forced to abandon it, although he was restored in Bavaria. Instead, Theophano was regent until her death in 991, and Otto's grandmother Adelaide succeeded her until 994. Otto established his cousin Bruno in the vacant papacy as Gregory V (996) and restored him (998) after his expulsion by a Roman revolt. After Gregory's death (999), Otto installed his tutor Gerbert of Aurillac as pope (see Sylvester II). His pilgrimage (1000) to the grave of his friend St. Adalbert gave him the opportunity to strengthen the influence of his "ecclesiastical empire" against Germany's eastern neighbors. The scion of both the Western and Eastern imperial houses and remarkably well educated, Otto III was at the same time noted for his asceticism and religiosity. In 998 he settled in Rome, hoping to make this the seat of his empire, which would include German, Italian, and Slavic lands. He tried unsuccessfully to establish a permanent imperial administration. In 1001 discontented Romans rioted and forced Otto to flee the city. He was planning to attack Rome when he died. Otto was succeeded by Henry II, son of Henry the Wrangler.

Otto III (980 – January 23, 1002) was the fourth ruler of the Saxon or Ottonian dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire. He was elected king of Germany in 983 on the death of his father Otto II.

Early years

Otto was born in Kessel, near Goch, in what is now Netherlands.

He was acclaimed King of Germany in Verona in June 983, at the age of three, and crowned in Aachen on December 25 the same year. His father had died four days before the ceremony, but the news did not reach Germany until after the coronation.

In early 984 Henry the Quarrelsome, who had been deposed as Duke of Bavaria by Otto II, seized Otto and claimed the regency as a member of the reigning house. To further his object he made an alliance with Lothair of France. Willigis, Archbishop of Mainz, the leader of Otto's party, induced Henry to release the imprisoned king, for which his Duchy of Bavaria was restored. Otto was thus returned to his mother, the Byzantine Greek princess Theophanu, who served as regent thenceforth. She abandoned her husband's imperialistic policy and devoted herself entirely to furthering an alliance between Church and Empire. She was unable, however, to prevent France from speedily freeing herself from German influence. The regent endeavoured to watch over the national questions of the Empire in the East. One of the greatest achievements of this empress was her success in maintaining feudal supremacy over Bohemia.

After Theophanu's death in 991, Otto's grandmother, Adelaide of Italy, then served as regent together with Willigis until Otto III reached his majority in 994.

Otto's mental gifts were considerable, and were carefully cultivated by Bernward, afterwards bishop of Hildesheim, and by Gerbert of Aurillac, archbishop of Reims, so that he was called "the wonder of the world."

Imperial views

Otto attempted to revive the glory and power of ancient Rome with himself at the head of a theocratic state. In 996, he came to the aid of Pope John XV at the pope's request to put down the rebellion of the Roman nobleman Crescentius II. He was declared King of the Lombards at Pavia, but failed to reach Rome before the Pope died. Once in Rome, he engineered the election of his cousin Bruno of Carinthia as Pope Gregory V, the first German pope. The new pontiff crowned Otto emperor on May 21, 996, in Rome. Here his main advisors were two of the main characters of this age, his tutor Gerbert of Aurillac and the bishop Adalbert of Prague. Together with these two visionary men, influenced by the Roman ruins and perhaps by his Byzantine mother, Otto devised a dream of restoration of a universal Empire formed by the union of the Papacy, Byzantium and Rome. He also introduced some court customs in Greek.

However, as soon as Otto had left Rome one year later, the city magnate Crescentius II deposed Gregory and installed John XVI as pope. Leaving his aunt, Matilda of Quedlinburg, as regent in Germany, Otto returned to Italy and retook the city in February 998, storming Castel Sant'Angelo. Crescentius was executed in the Castel Sant'Angelo, the antipope mutilated and blinded, and Gregory reinstated.

Otto made Rome the administrative center of his empire and revived elaborate Roman customs and Byzantine court ceremonies. He took the titles "the servant of Jesus Christ," "the servant of the apostles", "consul of the Roman senate and people" and "emperor of the world". When Gregory V mysteriously died in 999, Otto arranged for Gerbert to be elected pope as Sylvester II. The use of this papal name was not casual: it recalled the first pope of this name, who had allegedly created the "Christian empire" together with Constantine the Great. Otto therefore was to be seen as the ideal successor to Constantine in the task of reunifying the Roman Empire.

Between 998 and 1000 Otto, being a fervent Christian, made several pilgrimages. He travelled to the Gargano Peninsula in Southern Italy and to Gaeta, where he met Saint Nilus the Younger, then a highly venerated religious figure. Later he left Italy, taking the pro-Byzantine Duke of Naples, John IV, captive with him, for the tomb of Adalbert of Prague (who in the meantime had been martyred by the pagan Prussians) at Gniezno, and during the meeting with Bolesław I the Brave in the Congress of Gniezno he founded the archbishopric of Poland. In Eastern Europe Otto and his entourage strengthened relationships with the Polish Duchy and with Stephen of Hungary, who had requested and been granted a crown by Sylvester. Otto was advised by St Romuald, the fervent reforming hermit idealized by Peter Damian in the "Vita beati Romualdi". Romuald urged Otto to become a monk.

Another model to which Otto strongly aspired was Charlemagne. In the year 1000 he visited Charlemagne's tomb in Aachen, removing relics from it. He had also carried back parts of the body of Adalbert, which he placed in a splendid new church he had built in the Isola Tiberina in Rome, now San Bartolomeo all'Isola. Otto also added the skin of Saint Bartholomew to the relics housed there.

A minor rebellion by the town of Tibur (Tivoli) in 1001 ended up as his undoing. He retook the town, but spared the inhabitants, which angered the people of Rome, as Tibur was a rival they wanted destroyed. This led to a rebellion by the Roman people, headed by Gregory, Count of Tusculum; Otto was besieged in his palace and then driven from the city. He withdrew to Ravenna to do penance in the monastery of Sant'Apollinare in Classe. After having summoned his army, Otto headed southwards to reconquer Rome, but died in the castle of Paterno, near Civita Castellana, on January 24, 1002. A Byzantine princess had just disembarked in Puglia, on her way to marry him.

Causes of death

Otto's death has been attributed to various causes; medieval sources speak of malaria, which he had caught in the unhealthy marshes that surrounded Ravenna. The Romans suggested instead that Stefania, the widow of Crescentius, had made him fall in love with her and then poisoned him. Otto's body was carried back to Germany by his loyal soldiers, and buried in Aachen Cathedral together with that of Charlemagne. His tomb, however, has been lost.

Henry succeeded him as king of Germany (and later as emperor) as Henry II.

Sources

• Thietmar's Chronicle. Between 1012 and 1018 Thietmar of Merseburg wrote a Chronicon, or Chronicle, in eight books, which deals with the period between 908 and 1018. For the earlier part he used Widukind's Res gestae Saxonicae, the Annales Quedlinburgenses and other sources; the latter part is the result of personal knowledge. The chronicle is nevertheless an excellent authority for the history of Saxony during the reigns of the emperors Otto III and Henry II. No kind of information is excluded, but the fullest details refer to the bishopric of Merseburg, and to the wars against the Wends and the Poles.

See also

• Kings of Germany family tree. He was related to every other king of Germany.

References

• Althoff, Gerd Otto III, Penn State Press, 2002 ISBN 0-271-02232-9

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