Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/300

 CHAPTER XVII POPES, EMPERORS, AND PRINCES IN THE MIDDLE AGES I. ORIGIN OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 345. Otto the Great (936-973). The East Prankish, or German part, of Charlemagne's empire had, after his death, fallen apart into big and little fiefs, and the various dukes and counts were constantly making war on each other and on their weak kings. The first German ruler, after Charlemagne, who gained much dis- tinction was Otto the Great, who came to the throne in 936. He repelled the Hungarians, who had been a constant menace, and forced them back into eastern Europe, where they settled and finally built up the modern Hungarian state. Otto was having plenty of trouble to keep his vassals under his control, but never- theless he determined to try to add northern Italy to his realms and succeeded in being acknowledged king of Italy. Later the Pope, needing protection from his enemies, called Otto to Rome, and, in return for his assistance, crowned him emperor, as Charle- magne's successor, in the year 962. The coronation of Otto was a very important event for Ger- many ; for from this time onward the German rulers, who had quite enough to do to keep their own vassals in order, were con- stantly distracted by efforts to keep their hold on their Italian possessions, which lay on the other side of the great mountain range of the Alps. 346. The Holy Roman Empire. Otto's successors dropped their old title of king of the East Franks as soon as they had been duly crowned by the Pope at Rome, and assumed the magnificent and all-embracing designation, "Emperor Ever August of the Romans." Their "Holy Roman Empire," as it came to be called later, was to endure, in name at least, for more than eight centuries, 216