The nature and extent of the impact of Theophano on Ottonian court
culture is controversial and ambivalent.34 The many Byzantine objets d’art
datable to the late tenth or early eleventh century still extant in German
cathedral treasuries and museums probably arrived by a variety of routes,
not merely from Theophano’s sumptuous dowry. The emperor, however,
remained the principal distributor. Some of the works had important symbolic
functions beyond conspicuous display.Otto II is shown on an ivory –
most probably Italian-carved and now in theMus´ee de Cluny – wearing an
imperial loros (a richly embroidered pendant sash) and other ornamented
vestments. Theophano also wears Byzantine imperial vestments and the
couple are being crowned with stemmata by Christ (fig. 40). Such depictions
were in use in contemporary Byzantium; in Germany they counterbalanced
the fact that Theophano had needed to be crowned by the pope
before her wedding to Otto. The Byzantine origins of this visual statement
– diffused among the Saxons’ Nordic neighbours through crude lead
medallions35 – may have been lost on most of Otto’s subjects. But one
should not underestimate the comprehension of the political elite; in 984
Gerbert of Aurillac could assume that Archbishop Egbert of Trier would be
familiar with the Greeks’ custom of associating ‘a new man’ on the throne
as ‘co-emperor’.36 It was probably in such matters that Byzantium had most
to offer the Ottonians. Its arsenal of symbols could help each ruler pass on
the imperial crown – itself partly of Byzantine inspiration – to his chosen
son. For a family with pretensions to being the beata stirps (‘blessed family’),
readily recognisable emblems of long-established authority were of
inestimable value.
Otto II, for his part, seems to have been more positively interested than
his father in the imperial Roman past and its Italian foundation stones; the
use by his Italian chancery of the title of imperatorRomanorumaugustus from
March 982 signalled a much keener commitment to Italian affairs.He tried
to subjugate Venice, attacked Byzantine Taranto and aspired to the extra
moral authority and power which expulsion of the Saracens from southern
Italy would bring. In the 980s and 990s their depredations surpassed
those of Fraxinetum’sMuslims, whom local lords had managed to extirpate
c. 972.AvictoriousOtto could have complemented hisRoman title through
reclamation of Apulia and Calabria, while eclipsing the basileus as pallida
Saracenorum mors (‘white death of the Saracens’).37 However, Otto’s army
was outmanoeuvred by the Saracens near Reggio di Calabria and he himself
escaped only by swimming out to a Byzantine warship anchored offshore
that was following events. He died fifteen months later, on 7 December
983, and was laid in an antique sarcophagus beneath a porphyry lid in
St Peter’s, Rome; here too, Byzantine imperial symbolism was echoed.
Considering Otto II’s misadventures, his son might be expected to have
emerged from his long minority with the limited goal of tightening control
over his Teutonic subjects and rebellious Slavs. In fact Otto III showed
unprecedentedly fervent attachment to both the city and the imperial mystique
of Rome from quite soon after his coronation as emperor in 996 until
his death in 1002. He also came to envisage his hegemony as extending
spiritually and ecclesiastically as far east as Poland and Hungary. Yet these
tendencies did not manifest themselves all at once, and they were neither
wholly consistent nor the product ofOtto’s whims alone. It was most probably
his advisers who were responsible for the decision to seek a marriage-tie
with Byzantium, only four or five years after Theophano’s death in 991. Her
presence was evidently remembered as benign; it had presumably inspired
the king of France, Hugh Capet (987–96) to seek a Byzantine princess for
his son and heir, Robert II (996–1031), already in 988. Gerbert of Aurillac,
who had a hand in this d´emarche, was esteemed byOtto both as counsellor
and polymath and brought into his circle of courtly correspondents; Otto
expressed the desire that Gerbert would bring out his ‘Greek exactitude’
while banishing ‘Saxon rusticity’.38 But this serious-minded, highly strung
adolescent was also strongly drawn to holy men whose vision was focused
on God’s kingdom or on spreading the Gospel on earth. First among these
was Adalbert of Prague, who became Otto’s spiritual father in 996. He
seems to have aroused in Otto a longing for spiritual regeneration that
intensified after Adalbert’s martyrdom by the Prussians in the following
year. Otto’s yearning for personal salvation fused with a general sense of
mission to save others, itself a facet of his desire to resurrect the empire.
Thus he joined with the ruler of the Poles, Boleslaw I Chobry (992–1025)
in venerating Adalbert, personally laying the relics on the altar of Gniezno’s
cathedral in 1000. Otto came under the influence of other fathers, such
as the group of hermits around Romuald whom he met in Rome in 1000;
and Nilus of Rossano, the Calabrian Greek holy man who had moved to
a monastery near Gaeta and was urged by Otto to come and take charge
of any monastery he might wish in Rome. Nilus was later visited by Otto,
who is said to have wept and placed his crown in the old man’s hands upon
departing.39
Otto seems to have been able to converse freely with Nilus, and he had a
reading knowledge of Greek. Thus one of the most formidable barriers to
intercourse between Greek and western courts was, temporarily, lowered.
But Theophano’s ‘splendid retinue’40 fromConstantinople had included no
one who emerged as a dominant figure in theOttonian court or as a special
adviser to the youngOtto. The oneGreek to rise high in Theophano’s favour
came not from Constantinople but from southern Italy. John Philagathos
instructed Otto, his godson, in Greek for several years. In 989 or 990 he
was put in charge of the administration at Pavia, overriding entrenched
customs and interests there. Subsequently John was sent to Constantinople
to negotiate a marriage alliance for his young master. He returned in late
996 without a porphyrogenita, but with aGreek envoy, Leo of Synada. Soon,
against all Ottonian expectations, he had been acclaimed pope in lieu of
Otto III’s appointeeGregoryV(996–9); but before long John’s chief patron,
Crescentius, had been beheaded and he himself was blinded, deposed and
paraded around Rome by supporters of Otto III, seated back to front
on a donkey, in the spring of 998. Leo of Synada claimed a hand in John’s
elevation, but this cannot have formed part of his original brief, and the key
axis was that between John Philagathos and the Crescentii.41 Nonetheless,
Byzantine support for John was probably suspected by contemporaries, as it
certainly was by later writers, and the episode can scarcely have encouraged
Otto to employ other Italo-Greeks.
In 1000, after his visit to Adalbert’s shrine, Otto had Charlemagne’s
remains at Aachen exhumed and the body laid on Byzantine silks, evidently
acting here as heir. He contemplated making Aachen his most favoured
residence, but then chose another city, like Aachen on the periphery of
his lands but still more deeply imbued with historical legitimacy. Otto
determined in effect to abandon the essentially absentee lordship of Rome
practised by his father and grandfather. He would make Rome a ‘royal city’
as a conscious riposte to the papacy’s self-proclaimed ‘apostolic’ status and
to self-willed local nobles.42 The phrase was most probably also a conscious
evocation of the Byzantines’ term for their own ‘reigning city’.Otto’s choice
of site for his residence there is highly significant: the PalatineHill, where the
caesars’ palaces had stood from the reign of the emperorOctavian Augustus
onwards. The outpourings of Otto’s clerical staff reflect his residence there:
some sixty-five diplomata were issued in or near Rome between May 996
and February 1001, two of them expressly stating that they were issued in
palatio monasterio, probably an allusion to the adjoining monastery of San
Cesario on the Palatine.43 Otto’s installation of his court there for quite
lengthy stretches from 998 onwards blatantly flouted the idea that the area
within the city walls had been made over to the papacy by the Donation of
Constantine.44 There was no recent precedent for a large-scale secular court
in Rome, but a fair proportion of the citizens were acquainted with the
luxury products and authority symbols of the Byzantine emperor. Otto’s
predecessors had used Byzantine-style media, such as the flamboyantly
de luxe copy ofOtto II’s dowry charter for Theophano. IfOtto III borrowed
more extensively, this was because he was trying to root his court in a city
where such things clearly appealed to some of the leading families and where
at the same time elaborate ceremonial trappings and liturgies daily glorified
St Peter and his heir. The Byzantine extravaganza of palace ceremonies and
street parades could bring to life the idea that the emperors conferred preeminence
on the City by residing there and ensured divine favour for it
through prayer. The new establishment on the Palatine was intended to be
the node of a fresh network of bonds with laymen and clerics.
A farrago of terms for officials emerges from Otto’s diplomata. Two
are of unmistakably Byzantine stripe, logothete and protospatharius. Otto
began in 998 to call his chancellor for Italy,Heribert, cancellarius et logotheta
(or archilogotheta). The title protospatharius is consistently borne by only
one individual but he too is associated with the palace, as comes palatii
in Italy. Most of the other terms come from the contemporary civilian
administration of Rome or, as in the case of imperialis palatii magister, were
Otto’s own coinings. They feature principally in his documents issued in or
after 998, and exemplifyOtto’s efforts to represent himself as the legitimate,
palace-based master of the city.45 From 1000 Otto also experimented with
his own title, varying it in accordance with his location north or south of
the Alps. Very little is known about the ceremonial envisaged for his palace.
The descriptions in the Libellus de cerimoniis aulae imperatoris are mainly
due to Peter the Deacon’s mid-twelfth-century fascination with classical
Rome, but three protocols most probably date from Otto’s time. One of
these prescribes how a protospatharius should present to the emperor a
prospective patricius; the emperor will then invest him with a cloak and
place a golden ‘crown’ (circulus) on his head.46 A conspicuous feature of
court life was that Otto would sometimes sit at a separate table, elevated
above his fellow diners. To dine apart, or with a few guests at a separate,
raised, table was also the practice of the basileus at certain banquets, and
this was probably the chosen model of Otto’s dining ritual.
Otto also tried to earn the appreciation of Rome’s citizens through his
promotion of the cult of the Virgin as protectress of Rome. He even commissioned
a hymn in her honour which included the lines: ‘Holy mother
of God, look after the Roman people and look kindly on Otto!’ The Virgin,
rather than Sts Peter and Paul, is associated with the City, and Otto is
acclaimed by name, a combination also to be found in contemporary Constantinople.
The hymn was chanted through Rome’s streets by the ‘Greek
School’ on the Vigil of the Assumption in 1000.47 The impact of such rites
was all the greater at a time when there were still a significant number of
Greek-speakers in Rome; there were fresh arrivals of monks from the south
at that time, refugees from Muslim raiding. Rome was both central to
Otto’s designs and the haunt of influential persons conversant with Byzantine
ways, including Byzantine forms of punishment and degradation for
rebels, such as those inflicted on Philagathos.
North of the Alps Otto’s experiment with a new political culture could
expect fewer sympathisers. The fairly plentiful finds in northern Germany
of objets d’art and silks showing distinctively Byzantine traits or workmanship
do nevertheless show that some members of the north German elite
had an appetite for eastern luxuries, and there is evidence that they adapted
motifs like the symmetrical double portrait and proskyn¯esis to their own
family needs. Authority symbols such as the loros were assimilated by the
reigning family. Stemmata of Byzantine design retained a place among the
insignia of EmperorHenry II (1002–24), while other items, such as the orb,
seem to have belonged to an easily comprehensible vocabulary of directly
God-given power common to eastern and western courts. In 1000Otto III’s
newly mounted political culture travelled on show to the Slav north-east,
to Gniezno. Otto is said to have removed a crown from his own head and
placed it on Boleslaw’s, rendering him ‘brother and partner of the empire’.
Otto also declared him ‘friend and ally of the Roman people’.48 A comparable
crown-transfer is attested only once in Byzantine chronicles, but the
emperor was accustomed to crowning junior emperors and caesars personally.
Otto seems to have been consciously drawing on Byzantine rites and
terminology to convey his own notion of his relationship with Boleslaw
as a kind of primus inter pares. He presented him with a gilded lance; for
Otto and his forebears a ‘Holy Lance’ – perhaps inspired by Byzantium
and its cult of Constantine the Great – had long been a symbol of imperial
authority. Nonetheless, Otto’s new political order required frequent
displays of military virtus and ample bounty, as well as ceremonial, and
time would have been needed to instil it.49 Thietmar of Merseburg voices
the incomprehension and dissatisfaction of some northerners in describing
Otto’s aim as being to revive ‘the ancient customs of the Romans, now
largely destroyed’.50
The reaction of the Byzantine government to Otto’s experiment was as
mixed as that of the Saxon nobility.Otto’s initial attempts to tighten his hold
on Rome are unlikely to have been welcome, but Leo of Synada’s embassy
implies at least a willingness to sound out the young ruler; negotiationswere
still in progress, and Leo still in thewest, in September 998.His observations
of the turmoil in Rome could have persuaded the government that Otto
was too weak to warrant a porphyrogenita. Yet only a few years later, in
response to another request or proposal from Otto, Byzantium acceded
and a daughter of Constantine VIII (1025–8) landed at Bari, probably in
February or March 1002, too late to find Otto alive; he had died near
Rome on 23/24 January. Why was the eastern empire now so much more
forthcoming, subjecting a porphyrogenita to a winter sea voyage? Otto’s
pretensions and claims had grown more sweeping in the meantime, and
Gerbert of Aurillac’s assumption of the name Sylvester upon becoming
pope in 999 signalled that Otto himself was to rank as a new Constantine:
the pope in the era of Constantine the Great’s adoption of Christianity had
been called Sylvester. The signal was aimed mainly at Otto’s heterogeneous
subjects and the newly Christianised peoples of eastern Europe. But a poem
composed soon afterGregory V’s return to Rome in 998 claims that ‘golden
Greece’ and the Muslims fear Otto and ‘serve [him] with necks bowed’.51
The poem, probably chanted at a festival in Rome, challenged Byzantine
claims to be sole continuators of the imperium Romanum and thus the
crucible of legitimate earthly authority. Yet these various manifestations of
Otto’s God-given majesty did not win round all the leading families or the
mob in Rome, and his experiment with an urbs regia (reigning city) could
therefore have been dismissed by the Byzantines as tawdry and ill-starred;
Otto had to abandon his residence on the Palatine in 1001. Such things
probably did not go unnoticed by easterners passing through Rome. Otto’s
one foray into southern Italy, in 999, took him only to Benevento and
Capua, and was not notably effective, nor is there evidence that he claimed
all southern Italy (see below, p. 581).
Otto III did, however, show a pronounced interest in Venice, and visited
Doge Peter II Orseolo (991–1009) in April 1001. Already the godfather of
a son of Peter named after him, Otto now became godfather to the doge’s
daughter. His visit may have been viewed with unease from Byzantium;
the empire’s position in the Adriatic was hard pressed after the loss of
Dyrrachium to Samuel of Bulgaria (987/8–1014). Samuel lacked a fleet to
reduce Byzantium’s subject cities on theDalmatian coast and his incursions
probably ranged no further north than Ragusa. But they may well have
occasioned Doge Peter’s show of force down the coast in 999, when he
received oaths of fidelitas from the notables of Zara, Split and most of the
other Dalmatian towns.
Whether this operation was undertaken with prior Byzantine approval is
uncertain, but Venice’s fleet had proved its efficacy in an area where Byzantine
possessionswere beleaguered. This alone could account forByzantium’s
close attention to Venice and to any other power exercising leverage over
it. Another, related reason may lie behind Byzantium’s readiness to oblige
Otto III between 1000 and 1002. Basil II was about to lead his army up
the Danube against Samuel. As Samuel was probably linked to Stephen I
of Hungary (1000–38) through a marriage alliance, Basil was liable to be
attacked by Stephen, and he most probably joined forces with a Hungarian
chieftain in the region of Vidin, Ahtum-Ajtony (see above, p. 527). Otto
may have appeared a useful potential restraint on Stephen, for Stephen’s
wife was sister of Duke Henry of Bavaria, the future emperor Henry II;
and through ‘the grace and urging’ of Otto, Stephen founded cathedral
churches and duly received a crown and, most probably, a gilded lance
in late 1000:52 such links gave Otto a certain moral leadership. If word
of Otto’s d´emarches towards Hungary reached Byzantium in 1001, while
preparations for the daring venture up the Danube were afoot, this could
have tipped the balance in favour ofOtto’s repeated requests for a marriagetie.
This explanation, though hypothetical, fits the pattern of east–west
relations throughout the tenth century. The Balkans, especially Bulgaria,
loomed large among the concerns of the Byzantine government; matters
further afield were mostly of secondary importance. A well-disposed
Otto might do little more than discourage Stephen I of Hungary from
attacking Basil’s far-reaching Danubian expedition, but Otto will have
seemed likely to be a force in east-central Europe for many years to come,
and for his good offices a porphyrogenita probably seemed a price worth
paying.
Otto III’s unexpected death and his successor’s preoccupation with matters
north of the Alps loosened Byzantino-German relations for almost two
decades. Basil II for his part was embroiled in the Bulgarian war. It was the
Venetians who came to the relief of Bari when it was in danger of falling
to the Saracens in 1003, and the Sicilians and North Africans continued
to pillage the south Italian coastline through the opening decades of the
eleventh century. Imperial authority suffered another blow when an Apulian
notable, Melo, instigated a revolt c. 1009. This was far from being
the first local insurrection (see below p. 570), but it was serious, involving
Ascoli as well as Bari. The imperial authorities took several years to suppress
it andMelo then fled to the courts of Lombard princes. Subsequently,
in 1017, he mounted another challenge to imperial power, relying heavily
on a band of Normans, at first exiguous but later reinforced. This is the
first occasion when the Normans’ armed presence in the south is incontrovertible,
although a few Normans had probably found employment at
Lombard courts from the opening years of the century onwards. Melo
now ventured to fight pitched battles and several important towns such as
Trani renounced imperial authority. However, in October 1018 Melo and
his Normans were defeated at Cannae by Basil Boioannes, the katepan¯o of
Italia.
Boioannes was assisted by the fact that Bulgaria was being pacified and
manpower and money were now available for operations in Italy. The
forces which he led onto the battlefield were like ‘bees issuing forth from
a full hive’.53 But he showed great organisational talent, building numerous
strongholds in northern Apulia. Several towns were founded in what
amounted to a system on the Byzantine side of the River Fortore, including
Civitate and Fiorentino. Others were founded in Calabria. Boioannes
expressly claimed to be restoring at Troia a town long abandoned; the name
and site of Civitate likewise evoked classical antiquity. Troia – ‘Troy’ – lay
only 215 kilometres from Rome.
Boioannes’ prime objective was to consolidateApulia’s northern defences
and overawe the borderland princelings. But the effect was to provoke the
German emperor and aggravate the hostility which Pope Benedict VIII
(1012–24) had already shown in granting a fortress on the Garigliano to
Melo’s brother-in-law, Datto. In 1017 Benedict had probably played a part
in encouraging Norman fortune-seekers to join up with Melo and the
rulers of Capua-Benevento andNaples. Benedict also looked to theGerman
emperor as a patron of church reform and counterweight to the Crescentii,
and it was toHenry II’s court thatMelo fled after Cannae. In 1020 Benedict
himself acceptedHenry’s invitation and crossed the Alps to Bamberg, where
he exchanged the kiss of peace with Henry and celebrated the liturgy using
the filioque clause in the creed, a heretical interpolation in Byzantine eyes.
Henry made his claim to overlordship in the south explicit by conferring
on Melo the title of dux Apuliae. However, on 23 April 1020 Melo died.
The following spring Boioannes suddenly attacked Melo’s brother-in-law
on the Garigliano. The fortress was handed over to Pandulf IV of Capua,
now a Byzantine vassal; Datto himself was paraded through Bari’s streets
on a donkey, then thrown in the sea. Henry II marshalled a large army
and reached Ravenna at the end of December 1021. A detachment was
sent to deal with Pandulf and his cousin Atenulf, abbot ofMonte Cassino.
Henry led the main force towards the base which had assisted Boioannes to
operate so effectively on theGarigliano, an area where Picingli had required
allies a hundred years earlier (see above, p. 538). Henry besieged Troia for
about three months, until his army succumbed to dysentery, the basileus’
abiding ally against intruders from the north. Henry eventually managed
to extract token submission from Troia, but soon after his withdrawal the
inhabitants opened the gates to Boioannes. So long as Henry stayed in
the south, he could overawe the Lombard princes. Pandulf IV, besieged
in Capua, sued for terms and was stripped of his principality; the prince
of Salerno, Guaimar III (999–1027), surrendered; and a new abbot was
installed atMonte Cassino in lieu of Atenulf. But Boioannes’ barrier fortress
stood undemolished; Henry’s southern foray had made no more impact on
Byzantine Apulia than Otto I’s or Otto II’s expeditions had done.
In 1025 the eastern empire appeared on course towards reconquering
Sicily and dominating commercial traffic in the central Mediterranean
when Basil II died and his expeditionary force dispersed. But Byzantine
Italy was becoming more prosperous and populous than it had been for
centuries.Many of its inhabitants seem to have preferred the distant, undemanding
basileus as the safeguard of their interests, while Byzantine emperors
contemplated yet another Sicilian expedition. Byzantium’s build-up of
power in southern Italy antagonised the papacy and the western emperor,
but their retaliatory capability was very limited. It was small groups of
alien predators whose energies, greed and organisational skills wore down
the Byzantine authorities in the mid-eleventh century. The spoils of the
burgeoning towns and, eventually, power over them would go to these
self-reliant freebooters, hailing from the shores of a northern sea.
World History
