Otto I of the Holy Roman Empire

Otto I (23 November 912 – 7 May 973 Memleben), also known as Otto the Great (German: Otto I., der Große), was King of East Francia from 936 to 973 and Holy Roman Emperor from 962 to 973. He was the son of Henry I the Fowler, Duke of Saxony. From 929, his father associated him to the throne with the purpose of facilitating the succession.

Ascension to the throne

After the death of Henry I (July 2, 936), he was elected king by the German dukes on August 7, 936. He had himself crowned in Aachen in Charlemagne's palace in 936 with the Carolingian title from Rex et sacerdos ('King and Priest'). In fact, he had the vocation to restore the Carolingian empire and is the first representative of the Holy Roman Empire.

With the effective help of the high ecclesiastical hierarchy —in the hands of his friends and family— and of the dukes of Franconia, Swabia, Lorraine, and Bavaria, Otto defeated the German lords in several battles and replaced them with their relatives.

Otto I's foreign policy

His foreign policy was initially addressed to the Italian peninsula, where he upheld the rights of Adelaide of Italy against King Berengar II of Ivrea. After entering Pavia victoriously in 951, again following the Carolingian tradition, he had himself proclaimed King of the Franks and the Lombards, to then marry Adelaide. Given this, Berengar gave in and agreed to pay vassalage to him, so a gap was made for him in the distribution of power and he received the title of King of Italy.

The empire at the end of the reign of Oton (front of points and stripes).

To go so quickly to the aid of Adelaide, Otto took advantage of the army of his eldest son Liudolfo, who had just invaded Lombardy taking advantage of the instability in the area. By appropriating this army and later marrying Adelaide, Otto frustrated all his son's ambitions in Italy. Liudolf was greatly annoyed by this, and soon after, in 953, he rebelled against his father with the support of his brother-in-law Conrad the Red. But Otto crushed the rebellion of his son a year later with the help of Henry I, Duke of Bavaria.

In the east, Otto I won a major victory on the banks of the Lech River on August 10, 955. That day the Battle of Lechfeld took place, in which he defeated a huge host of Magyars, whom he the previously defeated German lords had appealed to overthrow him. To this end he recruited an army of knights from all parts of his kingdom who inflicted enormous losses on the Magyars as they rioted across the Lech River.

With this victory he put an end to the Magyar threat, giving him a great reputation and earning him the title of 'the Great'. In the same year he turned his arms against the Elbe Slavs, at which he won at the Battle of Recknitz, an action that promoted the Germanic expansion to the east.

Alliance with the Church and crowned emperor of the Romans

In 961, he linked his son Otto II to power, according to the procedure initiated by his father Enrique, to guarantee a succession with little conflict. Shortly after he responded to the request for help from Pope John XII and went to Italy to defend the rights of the pontiff against the interference of Berengar.

Then he marched to Rome, where he was crowned emperor on February 2, 962, an action that revived the Western Roman Empire (the first was with Charlemagne), at that time the largest territorial state in Europe. He adopted the name & # 34;Sacrum & # 34; (Holy Roman Empire) to underline his close relationship with the Church.

But the alliance with the pope was short-lived, as the latter soon changed his political views. Otto then marched on Rome and deposed him, but the Romans did not relent or accept the new pope, Leo VIII, imposed by Otto. On the death of John XII, they elected Benedict V. After a new campaign in 966, Otto I finally managed to establish himself and his son was named emperor.

The pontificate and the empire

Following the restoration of the Empire, Otto I affirmed the right of the emperors to intervene in the election of the pontiffs, but this power disappeared since Pope Nicholas II established in 1059 that the pontifical election would be exclusive to the Conclave or college of cardinals The antagonism between popes and emperors subsisted fueled by the imperial claim, resisted by the pontificate, to subjugate Italy.

Relations between the emperors and the popes, absolute heads of the Western Church, abounded in conflicts that weakened imperial and papal power.

The Saxon dynasty only lasted two generations after Otto I. In 1024, the Franconian ducal family succeeded to the throne. For a century, the imperial choice fell on this family, to which belonged Henry IV, the emperor humiliated at Canossa, and Henry V, who celebrated the concordat of Worms with the Church.

Ottonian Renaissance

Under the patronage of Otto I and his immediate successors, the so-called "Ottonian Renaissance" took place, a limited renaissance of the arts and architecture. The Ottonian Revival manifests itself in some revived cathedral schools, such as that of Bruno I, Archbishop of Cologne, and in the production of illuminated manuscripts, the leading art form of the day, of a handful of scriptoria of elite, such as Quedlinburg, founded by Otto in 936.

Imperial abbeys and the imperial court became centers of religious and spiritual life, guided by the example of women of the royal family. Otto was scandalized by the state of the liturgy in Rome, so he commissioned the first Libro Pontifical, a liturgical book that contained both prayers and instructions on the rite. The compilation of the Romano-Germanic Pontifical, as it is currently called, was supervised by Archbishop William of Mainz.