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CHAP. XI In 961 he again entered Italy, to be greeted with universal acclaim as by men longing for a deliverer. He was crowned king in Pavia; the levies of the once more hostile Berengar dispersed before him. In February 962 he was anointed emperor at Rome by John XII., son of that second Alberic who had refused to open the gates, but whose debauched son had called for aid upon the mighty German. Once more the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans was refounded to endure a while with power, and continue a titular existence for eight centuries.

The power of the first Otto was so overwhelming that the papacy could not escape the temporary subjection which its vile state deserved. And the Empire was its honest patron, for the good of both. So on through the reigns of Otto II., who died in 983, aged twenty-eight, and his son Otto III., who died in 1002, at the age of twenty-two, a dreamer and would-be universal potentate. Then came the practical-minded rule of the second Henry (1002–1024), who still aided and humbly ruled the Church. Conrad II., of Franconia, followed, faithful to the imperial tradition. He was succeeded in 1039 by his son Henry III., beneficent and prosperous, if not far-seeing, who again cared for both Church and State, and imperially constrained the papacy, itself impotent in the grip of the Roman barons and the Counts of Tusculum. Henry did not hesitate to clear away at once three rival popes (1046) and name a German, Clement II. It was this worthy man, but still more another German, his successor, Leo IX. (1049–1054), who lifted the papacy from its Italian mire, and launched it full on its course toward an absolute spiritual supremacy that was to carry the temporal control of kings and princes. But the man already at the helm was a certain deacon Hildebrand, who was destined to guide the papal policy through the reigns of successive popes until he himself was hailed as Gregory VII. (1073–1085).