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Rh birth, had taught him Latin and Greek, taught him to despise "Saxon rusticity" and to prefer "our Greek subtility ." They had also made him familiar with the elaborate ceremonial of the Byzantine court. His intimacy with Gerbert, when he was still at an impressionable age, had moulded him into the ideals of the Roman Empire.

He was now in 996 Holy Roman Emperor, and the title had for him a greater meaning than for his predecessors. The legend on one of his seals, "renovatio imperii Romanorum," shews clearly that he realised that he was making a change in the imperial position. The change is most apparent in the ordering of the institution where the business of the Empire was transacted, the imperial chancery. Otto the Great had not revived the system which had prevailed under the Carolingians of treating Italy as a part of the Empire under the same administrative machinery. He had established a separate chancery for Italy. Germany and Italy were to be two distinct governments under one ruler. When a vacancy occurred in 994 in the chancellorship of Italy, Otto had appointed his chaplain Heribert. On the death of the German chancellor, Hildibald of Worms, in 998, Heribert was placed at the head of the German chancery also. Otto had departed from the system established by his grandfather and, working on a definite plan, he returned to the Carolingian tradition of a combined chancery for the whole Empire. The two titular heads, the arch-chancellors of Germany and Italy, remained, but their offices were sinecures; the business of the Empire was done by a single chancellor in a single chancery. Equally significant is Otto's choice of counsellors. He completely emancipated himself from the control of those men who had conducted the administration during his minority. Willigis of Mayence, Hildibald of Worms, were replaced by an entirely new body of men. With the exception of the chancellor Heribert, who was appointed Archbishop of Cologne in 999, the men who exercised the most influence at court were foreigners. Gerbert of Aurillac, Marquess Hugh of Tuscany, Peter, Bishop of Como, the arch-chancellor of Italy, form the Emperor's intimate circle of advisers.

The reverential, though perhaps over-inquisitive, visit of the Emperor to the tomb of Charles the Great at Aix-la-Chapelle in the year 1000 is symbolic of his attitude and policy. The famous story of the opening of the tomb is recorded by the chronicler of the monastery of Novalesa in Lombardy, who, though writing more than half a century later, gives his information on the authority of Otto, Count of Lomello, who is said to have been present on the occasion. "We entered in," he said, "unto Charles. He was not lying down, as is the manner with the bodies of other dead men, but sat on a certain chair as though he lived. He was crowned with a golden crown, and held a sceptre in his hands, the same being covered with gloves, through which the nails had grown and