Otto II OF GERMANY
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The Rest of the Story: The Ancestors of Sarah May Paddock Otstott
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Otto OF GERMANY's sister: Luitgarde (931?-953)

Otto II OF GERMANY (955?-983)

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      Otto II and Theophano: Byzantine ivory plaque (Musée de Cluny)     The Tomb of Emperor Otto II in the Vatican Grottoes     The Tomb of Emperor Otto II in the Vatican Grottoes    
 
Name: Otto II OF GERMANY 1
Sex: Male
Nickname: "The Red"
Father: Otto I (912-973)
Mother: Edith (Eadgyth) OF ENGLAND ( -947)

Individual Events and Attributes

Birth 0955 (app) Saxony, Germany
Title (1) frm 26 May 0961 to 7 Dec 0983 (age 5-28) King of Germany
Occupation frm 25 Dec 0967 to 7 Dec 0983 (age 11-28) Holy Roman Emperor
Title (2) frm 0980 to 7 Dec 0983 (age 24-28) King of Italy
Group/Caste Membership Ottonian Dynasty
National or Tribal Origin Germany
Religion Roman Catholic
Death 7 Dec 0983 (age 27-28) Rome, Italy
Burial the atrium of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, Italy

Additional Information

Title (1) (formerly King of the Franks)
Occupation He was crowned in Rome by Pope John XIII
Title (2) (formerly King of the Lombards)
Death after a campaign against the Saracens, on his way back from southern Italy
Burial When the church was rebuilt his remains were removed to the crypt, where his tomb can still be seen

Marriage

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      Theophanu     Spouse: Theophana     Matilda of Saxony    
 
Spouse Theophana (956-991)
Children Matilda OF SAXONY (978-1025)
Marriage 14 Apr 0972 (age 16-17) Saint Peter's Basilica

Additional Information

Marriage They were married by Pope John XIII.

Individual Note 1

Otto II (955 – December 7, 983), called the Red, was the third ruler of the Saxon or Ottonian dynasty, the son of Otto the Great and Adelaide of Italy.

 

Born in the year 955, Otto received his education under the care of his uncle, Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, and his illegitimate half-brother, William, archbishop of Mainz. Needing to put his affairs in order prior to his descent into Italy, his father had Otto elected German king at Worms in 961, and crowned at Aachen Cathedral on May 26, 961.[1] Later, he was crowned joint Emperor at Rome by Pope John XIII on December 25, 967.[2] Although the nominal co-ruler, he exercised no real authority until the death of his father.

 

He married Theophanu, niece of the Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimisces, in Rome on April 14, 972.[3] After participating in his father's campaigns in Italy, he returned to Germany and became sole Emperor on the death of his father in May 973 at the age of seventeen,[3] without meeting any opposition. Otto spent his reign continuing his father's policy of strengthening imperial rule in Germany and extending it deeper into Italy.

 

After suppressing a rising in Lorraine, difficulties arose in southern Germany, probably owing to Otto's refusal to grant the duchy of Swabia to Henry II of Bavaria.[3] In 974 Henry's mother, Judith, entered into a conspiracy against the Emperor, which included Henry, Bishop Abraham of Freising, the dukes of Bohemia and Poland, and several members of the clergy and the nobility who were discontented by the previous Emperor's policies. The plan was discovered and easily suppressed, however. In the same year, Otto's forces successfully opposed an attempt by Harald I of Denmark to throw off German overlordship;[4] however, his expedition against the Bohemians in 975 was a partial failure owing to the outbreak of further trouble in Bavaria.[5] The following year he restored order for the second time in Lorraine and forced Henry II to flee from Regensburg to Bohemia, Bavaria being assigned to his relative Otto of Bavaria.[3] In 977 the king made another expedition into Bohemia, where King Boleslaus II promised to return to his earlier allegiance.[4] Also Mieszko I of Poland submitted. (See also War of the Three Henries).[6]

 

Meanwhile in the west of the kingdom, Otto attempted to quell the ambitions of the great landed magnates by restoring land and privileges to them. In 973 he restored the lands of Reginar IV, Count of Mons and Lambert I of Leuven which his father had confiscated.[3] Then in 977, he appointed Charles, the brother of King Lothair of France, as Duke of Lower Lotharingia, which infuriated the French king, who claimed the duchy as his own.[3] After Otto had crushed an attempt by Henry to regain Bavaria, King Lothair of France invaded Lorraine with an army of 20,000 and occupied the capital Aachen for five days.[7]

 

Otto retired first to Cologne and then to Saxony. Otto’s mother, who was of French origin, sided with Lothair and moved to the court of her brother Conrad at Bourgogne.[4] In September 978, having mustered 30,000 men, Otto retaliated by invading France.[8] He met with little resistance, but sickness among his troops compelled him to raise the siege of Paris, and on the return journey the rearguard of his army was destroyed and the baggage seized by the French.[7] An expedition against the Poles was followed by peace with France: Lothair renounced his claim on Lorraine (980), and in exchange Otto recognized the rights of Lothair's son Louis.[7]

 

Otto now felt himself free to travel to Italy. Influenced by his wife who was hostile to the return of the Macedonian Dynasty in the shape of Emperor Basil II after the assassination of John I Tzimisces, she persuaded Otto to bring the whole of Italy under the authority of the Western Emperor.[9] The government of Germany was left to arch-chancellor Willigis and to duke Bernard I of Saxony. He was accompanied by his wife, his son, Otto of Bavaria, the bishops of Worms, Metz and Merseburg and numerous other counts and barons. Crossing the Alps in what is today Switzerland, he reconciled with his mother at Pavia where he received the Iron Crown of Lombardy[10] before celebrating the Christmas of 980 in Ravenna.[11]

 

The situation at Rome was chaotic. Pope Benedict VI, elected by his father, had been imprisoned by the Romans in Castel Sant'Angelo, where he had died in 974.[12] His successor Boniface VII had fled to Constantinople[13] and Benedict VII, former bishop of Sutri, was now pope.[12] Preceded by Benedict, Otto ceremoniously entered Rome on Easter day of 981.[11]

 

Otto proceeded to hold his court in the ancient Imperial capital, attended by princes and nobles from all parts of western Europe. He was next required to stop the inroads of the Saracens on the Italian mainland and, most of all, the aggressive policy of the Sicilian emir Abu al-Qasim, whose fleet was harassing Apulia and whose troops had invaded Calabria. As early as 980 he had demanded a Pisan fleet to help him in carrying on his war in the south of Italy,[14] and in September 981 Otto marched into southern Italy. He was first entangled in the quarrels between the local Lombard princes who had divided the area after Pandulf Ironhead's death.[10] Otto unsuccessfully besieged Manso I of Amalfi in Salerno, but in the end obtained the recognition of his authority from all the Lombard principalities. In January 982 the German troops marched towards Byzantine Apulia to annex this region as well to the Western Empire.[15] His descent caused the Byzantine Empire to seek the assistance of the Saracens to hold onto their possessions in southern Italy.[8]

 

Otto besieged and captured Taranto in March 982,[13] and when he moved from Taranto he initially defeated a Saracen army in early July.[16] However, he soon met with a severe defeat near Stilo in July 982[9] (in which, among the others, al-Qasim was killed).[17] Without revealing his identity, the Emperor escaped on a Greek vessel to Rossano.[18] He returned to Rome on November 12, 982.

 

Under pressure from the Saxon magnates, who were concerned over the invasion of northern Germany by the Danes,[16] Otto was forced to hold a diet at Verona in May 983.[16] Largely attended by German and Italian princes, he had Otto III confirmed as king and prepared a new campaign against the Saracens.[9] He also obtained a settlement with the Republic of Venice, whose help was much needed after the defeat of Stilo. Proceeding to Rome, Otto secured the election of Peter of Pavia as Pope John XIV.[19]

 

Just as the news reached him of a general rising of the Slav tribes on the eastern frontier of Germany, he died in his palace in Rome on December 7, 983.[9] He was survived by the future Emperor Otto III and three daughters. He was buried in the atrium of St. Peter's Basilica, and when the church was rebuilt his remains were removed to the crypt, where his tomb can still be seen.

 

Otto was a man of small stature, by nature brave and impulsive, and by training an accomplished knight. He was generous to the church and aided the spread of Christianity in many ways. According to one of the chroniclers of the time, he was given the epithet of the "Red" when in 981 he invited the most troublesome of the Roman families to a banquet, and proceeded to butcher them at dinner.[12] More sympathetic chroniclers said that it was due to his reddish complexion.[8]

 

On April 14, 972, Otto II married Theophanu. They had the following children:

 

Sophie I, Abbess of Gandersheim and Essen, born 975, died 1039.

Adelheid I, Abbess of Quedlinburg and Gandersheim, born November or December 977, died 1040.

Matilda, born 979, died 1025; who married Ezzo, count palatine of Lotharingia

Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor, born June or July 980

A daughter, a twin to Otto, who died before October 8, 980

 

NOTES:

1 Reuter, pg. 251

2 Duckett, pg. 90

3 a b c d e f Reuter, pg. 254

4 a b c Comyn, pg. 117

5 Duckett, pg. 100

6 Duckett, pg. 101

7 a b c Comyn, pg. 118

8 a b c Canduci, pg. 226

9 a b c d Reuter, pg. 255

10 a b Sismondi, pg. 29

11 a b Duckett, pg. 102

12 a b c Comyn, pg. 119

13 a b Duckett, pg. 103

14 Sismondi, pg. 91

15 Comyn, pg. 120

16 a b c Duckett, pg. 104

17 Sismondi, pg. 30

18 Canduci, pg. 226; Sismondi, pg. 30

19 Duckett, pg. 105

 

SOURCES:

Reuter, Timothy, The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. III: c. 900-c. 1024, Cambridge University Press, 2000

Canduci, Alexander (2010), Triumph & Tragedy: The Rise and Fall of Rome's Immortal Emperors, Pier 9, ISBN 978-1741965988

Duckett, Eleanor (1968). Death and Life in the Tenth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Comyn, Robert. History of the Western Empire, from its Restoration by Charlemagne to the Accession of Charles V, Vol. I. 1851

Sismondi, J. C. L. History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages. 1906

Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Otto II". Encyclopædia Britannica (eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press.2

Individual Note 2

The Tomb of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II located in the back of the south aisle in the Vatican Basillica. After a campaign against the Saracens, on his way back from southern Italy, he died in Rome, in a palace in the vicinity of St Peter's, on December 7, 983, at the age of 28.

 

With great honors, he was originally buried in the atrium of the old basilica, to the right from the entrance.

 

The original ornate tomb made from precious marbles, was replaced with a new big sarcophagus. Inscribed on it, were two Latin distichs dictated by the Emperor's friend, Abbot Gerbert, the future Pope Sylvester II. The gigantic porphyry lid came, according to tradition, from the tomb of Emperor Hadrian in his grandiose mausoleum (present-day Castel S. Angelo). On its sides were screens decorated with porphyry and serpentino panels. In 1610, during the demolition of the portico, the sepulcher was opened and the remains were placed in a recently excavated strigilled sarcophagus, where they rest to this day. A marble disc was added at the center with the inscription: OTTO / SECVNDVS / IMPERATOR / AVGVSTVS - Otto II, Emperor August.

 

For a few decades, the porphyry lid remained in the grottoes until the artist Carlo Fontana found a new prestigious use for it: as the new baptismal font of St Peter's, inaugurated in 1694.

 

Above the sarcophagus is a vast mosaic representing Christ Enthroned between Sts Peter and Paul that was located above the emperor's original tomb in the atrium of the basilica. The original 10th century style of the mosaic was altered during restorations. The two Apostles are dressed in white Roman togas with a border, following the ancient fashion. Present in the iconography are several symbolic indications of Peter's primacy in his basilica: the majestic Christ raises His right hand in a gesture of a teacher, while with His left arm He is embracing Peter. In his right hand, attached to a ring, Peter is holding not 2 but 3 keys indicating the power given by Christ to him and his successors, over the peregrine, purifying and celestial church.

 

On the sides of the mosaic are two fragments of inscriptions. To the left is a long medieval list of relics of saints, salvaged in 1610 during the demolition of a small oratory in the atrium of the basilica, close to the tomb of Otto II. Immured to the right is a fragment of an inscription from 1103 reproducing a document concerning the donation made by Matilda of Canossa to Pope Gregory VII, whose name is legible in one of the surviving fragments: GREGORIO PP OMNIA BONA MEA - to Pope Gregory all my possessions.

 

http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org/Grottoes/Otto%20II/Tomb%20of%20Otto%20II.htm

Sources

1Weis, Frederick Lewis & Sheppard, Walter Lee, Jr, "Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America before 1700: Lineages from Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Malcolm of Scotland, Robert the Strong, and other Historical Individuals". p 142, 147-20.
2"Wikipedia". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_II,_Holy_Roman_Emperor.