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Rh The death of Archbishop Bruno in the same year deprived the Emperor of another of his most loyal and most valuable governors. In his ducal office he had no successor: the division of the duchy into the provinces of Upper and Lower Lorraine, carried out by Bruno in 959, rendered a duke or archduke over the whole superfluous.

The years 966 to 972 were spent in Italy. Two events which bear upon German history may be recorded; first, the young king Otto II was crowned Emperor at the hands of the Pope John XIII on Christmas Day 967; and secondly, after a long series of negotiations, a Byzantine princess, a niece of John Tzimisces named Theophano, was given in marriage to the young Emperor.

At Christmas 972 Otto the Great was again in Germany. He was honoured by embassies to his court from distant lands, even from the Saracens in Africa. His work, however, was completed, he had outlived his friends and associates. While he was absent in Italy, his son William and his mother Matilda had died (March 968): soon after his return he lost his trusted and loyal servant Herman. He himself did not survive much longer. He died at Memleben, the little town in the Harz Mountains which had also witnessed the death of his father, on 7 May 973, in his sixty-first year. His body was taken to Magdeburg and buried in the cathedral he had built.

The Saxon historian, Widukind, sums up the achievements of his life in the voice of popular opinion: "The people, saying many things in his praise, recalled to mind that he had ruled his subjects with paternal piety, he had liberated them from their enemies, had conquered with his arms the proud Avars, Saracens, Danes, and Slavs; he had brought Italy under his yoke; he had destroyed the temples of his heathen neighbours and set up churches and priests in their place." All this he had accomplished. If he had failed in his attempt to centralise the government of Germany, his failure was due to the inevitable progress towards feudalism and the too deeply rooted tribal traditions. If in this direction his empire fell short of its model, the empire of Charles the Great, in another direction it was conspicuously in advance of it. His work, in the extension of German influence and civilisation and in the progress of Christianity towards the north and east of his dominions, was of permanent value, and stood as the firm basis of future expansion and future development.