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174 he was "servant of Jesus Christ," "servant of the Apostles," in rivalry with the servus servorum Dei of the Popes. Content with the practical support they received from him in ruling both the Church and Rome, Gregory V tolerated the beginnings of this and Sylvester II submitted at a price to its full development. In a strange, scolding, argumentative diploma Otto III denounced the Donation of Constantine and that of Charles the Bald, the one as a forgery, the other as invalid, and proceeded to grant the Pope eight counties of the Pentapolis hitherto ruled by Hugh of Tuscany. It was a considerable gift, somewhat modified by the fact that Otto intended to make Rome itself his chief capital, and treated the Pope as his vassal. He perhaps saw the revival of the Lombard nobles; he was carried away by the ancient splendours of the Empire, and, proud of his Greek extraction, he hoped to recall the past by a gaudy imitation of its outer forms. Those forms he saw in Byzantium, the continuously Roman. Titles and ceremonies were rudely borrowed. His dignitaries became logothetes, protospathars and the like: once and again their names were written in the Greek alphabet as an evidence of culture. To gain centralisation and emphasise unity the German and Italian chanceries were fused together, to the muddling of their formal and perhaps of their practical business. Semi-barbarism had a puerile side in the court the German Augustus held at Rome in his palace on the Aventine, and well might the loyal German nobles look askance at the freaks of the Emperor. "He would not see delightful Germany, the land of his birth, so great a love possessed him of dwelling in Italy."

In January 1000 Otto paid his last visit to Germany, whither the deaths of two great ladies, his aunt Abbess Matilda and the aged Empress Adelaide, who had guided the German Government, called him. In July he returned to Italy, for a storm which had long been brewing had burst. It had its principal origin in the prosperity which the Ottonian peace had brought to North Italy. The population had increased, waste and forest were brought under cultivation, trade thrived in the cities. True to Italian tradition the unrest appeared in two separate groups of persons, among the country-side nobles, and among the citizens, but, since the individuals who made up these two groups were largely identical, it was as yet seldom that the effects of their discontents were sharply separated. Under the great vassals of the country-side, the bishops, abbots, marquesses and counts, were ranked the now numerous greater and lesser vavassors, or capitanei and secundi milites,