Imperator Mundi, Basileus Kosmou
by John W. Braue, III
Otto III (980-1002) was the son of the Holy Roman Emperor1 Otto II and his empress, Theophano, certainly of Byzantine origin and possibly a member of the “Macedonian” dynasty2.
Otto II died in 983; Theophano (until her death in 991) and her mother-in-law Adelaide of Burgundy acted as his regents until 994, when he assumed personal control. He was determined to revive the glories of the Roman Empire; he made Rome his capital, revived Roman customs and Byzantine court ceremonies, and took the title (among others) ofimperator mundi, “emperor of the world”3. Alas, it all ended in tears5; Otto died suddenly at Tibur, where he was taking refuge from a revolt against him in Rome, at the age of 21; his cousin, Henry Duke of Bavaria, failed to arrive in time to rescue him, but was elected emperor as Henry II (r. 1002-1024).
Tamerlane has suggested an AH in which Otto III does not die young and unmarried, but rather weds Zoë, daughter of Constantine VIII, nominally co-emperor with his brother Basil II Bulgaroktonos6. The idea would seem incredible…were it not for the fact that Basil had traded his sister, Anna, to Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev for 6,000 Rus7 troops in 988. Despite official (and no doubt heart-felt) Byzantine bigotry toward the barbaroi, Basil II at least was capable of swallowing hard and not letting it override his sense of necessity.
So, after Otto III is rescued from Tibur by Henry of Bavaria (and, undoubtedly, sacks the rebellious city of Rome), Basil, in order to get more foreign troops (the figure of 6,000 Rus may be exaggerated, plus, no doubt, quite a few had been killed in the past decade or so), shops Zoë to Otto (who is half-Greek). The wedding takes place in 1003; the next year, she bears Otto a son, named “Romanus”8 after her grandfather.
Otto, of course, is not letting the grass grow under his feet. After asserting his mastery (for the moment) over the Romans (those who are still alive, anyway), he assembles the nobility and prelates of the empire at Rense (Reichstag am Rensen, in 1004). Here, an end to feudal warfare is proclaimed (the Landfrieden). He also creates the Imperial Council (Consulium Imperialis; Reichsrat), both to assist him in the administration of his realm and to judge violations of the Landfrieden. It should be noted, of course, that there is a difference between proclaiming an end to private warfare, and actually having it happen; the latter never occurs.
Zoë dies in 1008, in a riding accident. This does not lead to a marked cooling of relations between Otto and Basil, but only because they weren’t all that warm to begin with, despite the marital relationship between the Saxons and the Macedonians. However, the existence of Romanus9 provides a link, if a tenuous one, between the two emperors and dynasties; nor are the interests of Otto and Basil always opposed.
Sometimes they are, though. The city of Venice had been part of the Byzantine exarchate of Italy, and retained its nominal allegiance to Constantinople even after the murder of the last exarch in 751. That allegiance had been nominal, though, and by the beginning of the 11th century, Constantinople was negotiating with Venice for naval support against the Muslims of Sicily. To the imperator mundi, however, Venice is no more than a contumacious city…against him. In 1017, Otto besieges Venice; although he is successful in occupying some of the Veneto, his siege is ultimately in vain; Rome again rises against Otto, in concert with the Lombard princes of southern Italy (and the unofficial support of Constantinople, which does not want to see an upstart German – even one with his connections with the Macedonians – become too powerful); when Robert II of France dies in 1020, and his cousin Frederic of Bar (r. 1020-1054) is elected king10, Otto is forced to give up his opposition to Venice, lest it continue to provide a nucleus of discontent that Frederic might take advantage of.
The Italian situation is not Otto’s only setback. He viewed the proper relationship between the Empire and the Church as the Caesaropapist one defined by Constantine I and Justinian I, with the emperor (i.e., him) appointing or confirming bishops, particularly the Bishop of Rome, his preferred capital. The Popes, OTOH, were in opposition to this model; the doctrine of papal supremacy, developed from Hildebrand (Gregory VII) to Boniface VIII, had not yet taken root, though, and the official (and to a very great extent real) ideology was that of the “two swords”. This as yet decentralized opposition was aided by reformers such as Lothair of Eisleben and Ulfric of Wildhaus.
Basil II dies, unmarried and childless, in 1026, and his incompetent brother, Constantine VIII, in 103011. The heir to the Macedonian dynasty is Constantine’s grandson – and Otto’s son – Romanus. After more than a century and a half of Macedonian succession, the attachment of the Byzantines to the dynasty is sufficient that the Byzantine dunatoi are willing to accept the unknown and untried grandson of Constantine, raised as a barbarian, as basileus. Unfortunately, Romanus III proves to be no more competent than his grandfather; fortunately – for the Saxon dynasty, although not for Romanus personally – he dies two years later, at the age of twenty-eight. His six-year-old son, Constantine IX, is consecratedbasileus; the dunatoi are happy to have a child as a figurehead that they can manipulate for at least a decade.
Otto might have made a serious attempt to assert an effective guardianship over his grandson, and with it an effective rule over Byzantium…an attempt that probably would have ended disastrously, likely with Constantine being deposed and some strategos or senator planting his butt on the throne of the Caesars. Again, fortunately in dynastic terms, although in no other, he is distracted just at this time by the first in a series of wars against Frederic I of France. Otto had been attempting to consolidate his power in northern Italy and assert his nominal suzerainty over the kingdom of Burgundy (the last king, Rudolf III, has (as in OTL) no direct heir). Frederic, naturally, does not care to see this extension of Otto’s supremacy, the more so as historically and ideologically, the obvious next step is the re-creation of Charlemagne’s empire by the assertion of Imperial sovereignty over France.
The Empire still militarily overweighs France enough that the war does not go at all well for Frederic. French invasions of Burgundy and northern Italy are easily turned back (1030 and 1032-1033), and Otto makes Friedrich “the Crafty” duke of Lombardy in 1031 (a decision that he would come to regret). The death of Rudolf III in 1032 (as in OTL) allows a nominal annexation of Burgundy, although the next year the Burgundian noble Reinhard proclaims himself king (a proclamation that is of course immediately accepted by Frederic). Otto is distracted by revolts in Germany of the Edelfrei (petty nobility, roughly equivalent to late-medieval English gentry) in 1031, and a particularly nasty jacquerie in 1033-1034 (this last has the dubious effect of bringing Lothair of Eisleben back to the Imperial side, although virtually no one else follows him there). These distractions, however, do not prove sufficient to prevent him from inflicting complete defeat on Frederic at Lodi in 1034, a defeat which results in Frederic’s capture by the Imperial forces. At Speier the next year, Frederic grants all of Otto’s demands (including the abandonment of Reinhard); incredibly, Otto trusts this statement enough to let him go free! (although he has enough sense to take Frederic’s sons hostage).
Almost immediately, the Byzantines open war upon the Holy Roman Empire (despite Otto’s still-minor grandson being nominal senior basileus12). And the next year, Frederic resumes his war under the pretext that his declarations at Speier were made under duress and, therefore, void. There is no formal alliance between Frederic and Stephen; Frederic is formally joined, however, by Pope #Julius II, Venice…and Friedrich the Crafty of Lombardy! Otto’s army sacks Rome and imprisons the pope; another French invasion of Italy comes to naught due to the military efforts of the Duke of Liguria and the effects of plague (probably measles or smallpox, although eleventh-century accounts do not allow a firm diagnosis). However, the technically separate but parallel war between the Western and Eastern empires means that Otto is facing a much more serious enemy than last time. The Second French War ends in 1038, with a slight retreat on Otto’s part; Frederic pays 2,000,000 shillings indemnity and Otto’s supremacy in Italy is again acknowledged (although he is compelled to grant amnesty to Friedrich), but Reinhard is recognized as king of Burgundy (with a reservation – which is never given effect – of succession to Otto) and Frederic’s sons are freed. This treaty does not include Byzantium; the war between the two Empires goes on until Otto’s death.
Otto himself finally dies in 1040 at sixty, a goodly age for the time and place. The nobles of the Western empire are not particularly desirous of a union, even a nominal and personal one, with the East; they therefore elect Romanus’ second son, Stephen, as imperator mundi. The two empires will never be (re-)united, although they will both be ruled by separate branches of the Saxons for a couple of centuries (and there will be enough pro-Saxon sentiment that the Western branch can make a serious, if ultimately unsuccessful, bid for the Byzantine throne after the death of the last Eastern Saxon).
[1] The term is anachronistic, but I’ll use it to clearly distinguish the medieval Western emperor from the Eastern one.
[2] Many sources call her the daughter of Romanus II (r. 959-963); others, however, consider it unlikely that a porphyrogenita would be married to a barbarian, and think her a niece of John I Tzimisces (r. 969-976) instead.
[3] Suitably pompous. Of course, when I’m elected emperor, I’ll style myself umbra Dei in mundo, “the shadow of God on earth”4; that’s even more pretentious.
[4] A steal from the Safavid shahs of Persia.
[5] I’m sure somebody cried.
[6] ”Killer of Bulgarians”. Basil and his predecessors had been at war with the First Bulgarian Empire for centuries. In 1014, he defeated and captured a Bulgarian army at Kleidon; he blinded 15,000 of his prisoners, leaving 100 with one eye each, to lead the others home. When the Bulgarian tsar Samuel Cometopoulos saw the blind army come stumbling back to him, he allegedly had a fatal stroke.
[7] The chronicles don’t make it clear if they were Slavs, Swedes, or men of mixed ancestry, although later legend claimed that they were formed into the “Varangian Guard”, the personal bodyguard of the basileis, famously of Viking (and English!) mercenaries. In fact, the Varangian Guard doesn’t seem to have been organized before the 1030s, although there were definitely regiments in Byzantine service as early as 1016 identified as “Varangian”.
[8] The Byzantines referred to themselves as “Romans”…which, however, is Rhomaioi in Greek. Otto may not have known that, however, and probably would have liked the symbolism: “My son, the Roman!”
[9] And his sister, Matilda (1006-1059). Despite being married twice, however, she remains childless; of course, this will not be known at this time.
[10] In OTL, Robert lives until 1031, and is succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Henry I.
[11] OTL dates 1025 and 1028, respectively.
[12] In the tradition of Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimisces, the general Stephen Lichodas made himself co-emperor with Constantine IX in 1032. Although Constantine was never formally removed, his reign was purely nominally until after the death of Stephen I in 1042.
Otto II died in 983; Theophano (until her death in 991) and her mother-in-law Adelaide of Burgundy acted as his regents until 994, when he assumed personal control. He was determined to revive the glories of the Roman Empire; he made Rome his capital, revived Roman customs and Byzantine court ceremonies, and took the title (among others) ofimperator mundi, “emperor of the world”3. Alas, it all ended in tears5; Otto died suddenly at Tibur, where he was taking refuge from a revolt against him in Rome, at the age of 21; his cousin, Henry Duke of Bavaria, failed to arrive in time to rescue him, but was elected emperor as Henry II (r. 1002-1024).