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162 able to disregard his enemies while he proceeded through Ravenna, thus avoiding the Tuscan route, to receive the promised imperial crown. On 31 January 962 he encamped on Monte Mario outside Rome, and according to custom certain of his vassals took on his behalf an oath to respect the Pope's rights. The custom was old, but the terms of the oath were new , for John XII wished for an ally, not a suzerain, and the German king promised not to hold placita or intervene in Rome without the Pope's assent, to restore such alienated papal lands as he should become master of, and to bind whomever he should appoint to rule the Regnum Italicum to be the Pope's protector. The Romans disliked a foreigner, and Otto bought his way by elusive promises and fallacious expectations. On 2 February he entered the Leonine city and was crowned with Adelaide in St Peter's by the Pope. A Roman Emperor of the West, successor of Charlemagne, once more existed. It was of evil omen that Otto's sword-bearer stood on guard against his assassination while the sacring was enacted.

On their side Pope John and the Romans swore fealty to the Emperor with an express promise not aid or receive Berengar and Adalbert. They found that Otto considered the situation changed by his new dignity. It is true that the privilege he granted to the Papacy on 13 February was even more generous than the old Carolingian donations in the matter of territory – for it added a large strip of Spoletan land to Rome and its duchy, the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, the Tuscan territory, the Sabina and the southern patrimonies, not to mention the vaguer supposed donation of 774 which was now confirmed without any clear idea of its meaning. But the pact of 824 was also expressly revived, by which the election of the Pope was submitted to imperial confirmation, and the Emperor's suzerainty in the papal lands was reserved and exercised in Rome itself by his missus. The scheme of setting up a vassal king of Italy, if ever really entertained, was abandoned. Although the terms of Otto's oath were not precisely infringed, the change in the spirit of the new treaty was manifest—Pope John had become a subject.

There was still Berengar II to conquer, and the Emperor returned to Pavia, driving Hubert of Tuscany into exile on the way. Berengar was holding out in the impregnable castle of S. Leo in the Apennines, queen Willa and her sons in strongholds near the lakes in the north. Willa was now compelled to surrender on terms which allowed her to rejoin her husband: their sons were pressed hard, and Adalbert made his escape to the Saracens of Fraxinetum and Corsica. There he entered into re-