Page:Cambridge Medieval History Volume 3.pdf/208

Rh disaffection, constant suppression. The popular hatred burnt most fiercely at Rome and found utterance in a Roman monk : "Woe to thee, Rome, that thou art crushed and trodden down by so many peoples; who hast been seized by a Saxon king, and thy folk slaughtered and thy strength reduced to naught!"

In the details of government, also, Otto had not the control which Charlemagne exercised. Although the decline of the royal power must not be overrated, especially in Germany, even there feudalism, seignorial independence and state disorganisation, had made great strides. In Italy, where he was too often an absentee, the royal demesne was depleted and the lay vassals were out of hand. Otto met this difficulty by a clever balancing of the two groups by whom he had been called in, the great secular magnates and the bishops. Of these, the first were the Marquesses, a title given in Italy to the ruler of several counties. Towards them Otto was conciliatory; even Hubert in the end was restored to Tuscany, and the Lombards, some four or five in number, were the Emperor's faithful vassals. They were survivors in the struggle for existence among the counts which had raged in the dissolution of the Carolingian order. Under the pressure of civil war, of Hungarian and Saracen ravage, old dynasts had vanished, new had come and had either vanished too, or had remained weakened. In their place or by their side ruled the bishops in the Lombard plain. Since 876 they had been permanent royal missi in their dioceses, and thus had at least in name supervision over the counts. Like other magnates the bishops during the years of anarchy had increased their "immunity" inside their domains, by increase of exemptions and jurisdictions and by grants of the profitable royal rights of market and toll and the like, while those domains also grew through the piety or competitive bribery of the kings and nobles. Not least among the sources of the bishops' power, was their influence over their cities, inherited from Roman times. In anarchy and disaster they stepped into the breach at the head of their fellow-citizens, whatever civic feeling existed gathered round them, and fragment by fragment they were acquiring in their cathedral cities the "public functions" whether of count or king. In its completed form this piecemeal process resulted in the city and a radius of land round it being excised from its county and removed from the count's jurisdiction. Thus Bergamo, Parma, Cremona, Modena, Reggio and Trieste were at Otto's accession under the rule of their bishops. Otto came as the ally of the bishops and deliverer of the Church. He exercised whether by pressure on the electors or by mere nomination the appointment to vacant sees and great abbeys, and thus gained non-hereditary vassals of his own choice who were the safest supporters of his monarchy. He favoured of set policy these instruments of his power as counterweights to the feudal magnates. Fresh cities, Asti, Novara, and Penne