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164 qualms among a section of the churchmen, and the Romans were fretting under their subjugation. A sudden rising failed before the swords of Otto's tried warriors; yet, when Otto went eastwards to take possession of the Spoletan duchy, John XII had only to appear before Rome with troops for the gates to be opened. Pope Leo just escaped with his life, and John was reinstated. After mutilating his former envoys to Otto, John and Azo, presumably on a charge of forgery, a synod of the nearest bishops in February 964 annulled Otto's synod in which most of them had participated and declared Leo an intruder. Otto, whose missus had been ill-treated, naturally refused to change his policy. While his army was collecting, however, John XII died on 14 May of paralysis, and the Romans made a bid for independence by electing a learned and virtuous Pope, Benedict V. It was a vain manoeuvre. Otto starved out the city, mutilating all who tried to pass his blockading lines. On 23 June the surrender was made, and Leo VIII reinstated. Benedict was deposed and sent to a saintly exile at Hamburg. By now at any rate it was agreed that Otto's grants to the Popes were only for show, for of all the lands bestowed by his charter the duchy of Rome and the Sabina alone were left to the Papacy.

In this way Otto the Great brought into existence the Romano-Germanic Empire of the West, or, to give it its later and convenient name, the Holy Roman Empire, compounded by a union of the German kingdom with the Regnum Italicum and with the dignity of Roman Emperor. It was intended and supposed to be a revival of the Empire of Charlemagne which had broken up on the deposition of Charles the Fat, although its title had remained until the fall of Berengar I to express a protectorate of the Papacy. It was also a reassertion of that claim to pre-eminence in Western Europe which had been made by Otto's predecessor Arnulf as chief of the Carolingian house. Arnulf's Empire, indeed, furnishes the transitional form between that of Otto and that of Charlemagne, for Otto's title implied less than Charlemagne's had. Otto was considered the lay chief of Western Christendom, its defender from heathen and barbarians, the supreme maintainer of justice and peace; but, whereas Charlemagne was ruler of church and state, Otto's power over the church was protective in its character. The Pope was unquestioned spiritual chief of Christendom; Otto was at the same time his suzerain with regard to the papal lands, and his subject as a member of the Church. The arrangement was only workable because the Papacy was weak. In secular matters Otto's Empire lacked the universality of Charlemagne's. Not only were France and Christian Spain outside its frontiers, but within it the nascent force of nationality was beginning to make itself felt. The German monarch was a foreigner in subject Italy, disguised as the fact might be by the absence of national feeling among the Italian magnates. "He had with him peoples and tribes whose tongues the people did not know." This meant constant