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XLIX. Otto III
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357 When they arrived back on land and the pope discovered what had happened , he complained to the Senate that the king had been betrayed—the oaths of loyalty had been badly kept. Young people joined older ones in demanding that those who had sold out the king should be killed, as the law required. There were twenty of them who had sold out the king, although they strongly denied it until they were killed. They fought ordeals of combat, which ended badly for them. Fourteen were rich and prominent nobles, the rest commoners; they were all beheaded. Not long after the king fled from the Greeks, he fell ill. For a fact, he held the Empire exactly nine years. He was buried in Rome. Many Germans were slain [in the conflict at the end of his reign]. XLIX Otto III Otto III (r. as German king 983–1002 and Roman emperor 996–1002) was the son of Otto II and the Byzantine Princess Theophano. He was elected German king at age three. Having accompanied his troops in expeditions against the Wends and the Bohemians in his early teens, he undertook an expedition to Italy in the course of which he appointed a cousin to the vacant papacy as Gregory V, who crowned him Roman emperor at age fifteen (not twelve). Otto took his Roman connection quite seriously. He built a palace on the Aventine and ornamented it with art works resembling those of ancient Greeks and Romans. He also revived some ancient-Roman titles for himself. The Romans were on the whole less than enthusiastic about him and eventually besieged him in his palace. After a temporary truce, Otto escaped and rallied some 358 Chapter Forty-nine troops, but he died in the course of a military campaign against the Romans. when King Otto departed this life, he left a son, the third Otto, who was not yet of age, since he was twelve years old. The princes assembled at Mainz for a council, where bishops and dukes agreed that since his father was so true and trustworthy, they would choose the son even though he was still a child. This led to a great conflict breaking out in the Empire. On the Rhine there were two rich and powerful counts, one a mighty prince named Theodoric, the other one named William. They did not want to pledge themselves as vassals and were scornful of the boy as a ruler. They raised a fierce revolt, saying that no child ever won control of the Empire in the manner of an apprentice and that, if the election had really been free, a king would have been chosen who could run the Empire on the basis of his own knowledge and experience. It was asking too much to expect someone still in childhood to know what to do or to be relied upon. Young Otto would have preferred to overcome their opposition with conciliation. He offered them fiefs and treasure, but that did not help anything . At Würzburg there was a bishop named Hugo, who was often at the king’s court, and the honor of the Empire was very dear to him. Since the rebel dukes destroyed so much with their fires, hunger spread throughout the land. What the rebel dukes did caused people to suffer greatly, and it was the cause of many deaths. Bishop Hugo had mercy on the suffering people. Very often he would ride out secretly, searching quietly for those rebel dukes until he caught them at Kassel and led them back to the king’s court. Everyone, poor and rich, praised the bishop the same way for what he had done. After the lords temporal and spiritual had given their verdict, Theodoric and William were executed in Worms. Now let us hear what the books tell us: great unrest was then stirred up by the Wends. Fear of God made nothing sacred to them. In Prague—to this day the books contain documents proving this—there was a bishop named Albrecht. The Wends committed a great [52.205.218.160] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:42 GMT) 359 crime against him according to the laws of God while he was lying in his bed. It was the worst of crimes for King Otto—they martyred him to death. In the choir of martyrs he occupies a place in the Kingdom of Heaven. God then avenged his stalwart. King Otto led an expedition into...