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176 Pope, he confiscated Ardoin's lands and condemned him to a life of penitent wandering. At the same time he appointed a stout-hearted German, Leo, to the see of Vercelli, and granted him the counties of Vercelli and Santhià. It was the first grant of entire counties to a bishopric in Lombardy, although parallel to the powers conferred on the see of Ravenna. But Ardoin resisted in his castles, and next year, supported by his accomplices, seems even to have taken the title of king. Otto returned, but was content to drive Ardoin back and to entrust his uprooting to the local magnates. The embers of the revolt against the Romano-Germanic Empire were left to glow. Otto's wishes at this time seem to have turned to the reassertion of the claims of the Holy Roman Empire in the south. Since Abu'l-Ḳāsim's death in his victory over Otto II, the Saracen raids, although they inflicted misery on Calabria and South Apulia, had not been in sufficient force to endanger the Byzantine rule. The catapan Calocyrus Delphinas in 983-4 had subdued the Apulian rebels; nor did Otto III shew any disposition to intervene. But the petty frontier states were a different matter. In 983 the Salernitans had driven out Manso of Amalfi, and under their new prince John II, a Lombard from Spoleto, remained henceforth neutral and disregarded. Their neighbours, however, Capua, Benevento, Naples and Gaeta, were more important for Otto. After a romantic pilgrimage to the famous shrine of Monte Gargano, he sent in 999 the Capuan Ademar, new-made Marquess of Spoleto, to Capua, where Laidulf was deposed and Ademar made prince. At the same time Naples was seized, its Duke John taken captive, and the Duke of Gaeta was bribed into vassalage. These successes, which once more effectively enlarged the Empire, did not last, for in 1000 the Capuans drove out Ademar, substituting Landolf V of the old dynasty, and John of Naples recovered his state and independence. A short campaign of Otto himself next year against Benevento gained at most a formal submission from the Lombard princes. The fact was that the Emperors could never devote enough energy or men to the subjugation of the south, divergent as it was in soil, in organisation, and in habits of life from the Frank-ruled, feudalised and more fertile north.

At the time, indeed, Otto's throne was rocking under him. He had offended the Romans by sparing revolted Tivoli, for which too independent neighbour they nourished a passionate hatred; nor were their desires for their old autonomy and dislike of the Saxon stranger diminished by his imperial masquerade. In February 1001 they broke into revolt and blockaded Otto in his palace on the Aventine, at the same time closing the gates against his troops who were encamped outside the walls under his cousin, Duke Henry of Bavaria and Hugh of Tuscany. After three days Otto prepared a desperate sortie, but at the same time Hugh and Henry entered by treaty with the Romans. Once more they swore fealty, and listened to the Emperor's reproaches, the best proof of