The Emperor Otto II. (955-983)

955	Birth of Otto II., son of the Emperor Otto I. (Otto the Great) and Adelheid, daughter of King Rudolf II. of Burgundy
December 967	Coronation of Otto II. to be emperor together with his father
April 14th, 972	Marriage with Theophanu, niece of the Byzantine Emperor Johannes I.Tzimiskes. They have four children: (Adelheid, Sophia, Mathilde, Otto III.=1002)
973	After his father´s death Otto II. faced hard inner and outer difficulties in the beginning. With the influence of Gerberts of Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II.) and of the learned Abbot Adso of Montier-en-Der Otto´s thoughts developed for an self-contained policy towards Italy.
974	The replacement of the duchy Swabia with his nephew Otto, Luidolf´s son, leads to the elevation of his cousin Henry II. (the quarrelsome), Duke of Bavaria, who has an alliance with the Dukes of Poland and Bohemia and who loses his duchy after imprisonment and escape. The Emperor Otto II. tried to weaken Bavaria wherever he could. He appointed the Babenbergs, who already had an influence in the Northern district, to margraves in the eastmark (Ostmark); in 976, however, he dismissed Carinthia and Friaul from the Bavarian alliance and made an own duchy out of it.
978	After new fights against Henry the Quarrelsome Otto II. lends Carinthia to the Salian Otto.
980	Otto II. meets the King of France in Margut-sur-Chiers after precedent arguments: their dispute comes to an end as the French king renuonces Lorraine
980-983	War against Italy: Otto II. settles the Roman relations and starts the conquest of Southern Italy, which he claims as part of his empire according to his self-conception as Romanorum imperator (Emperor of the Romans).
July 13th, 982	The emperor´s army is crushingly defeated by the Sarazens at Cape Colonne to the south of Cotrone (Calabria).
May 983	At an empire assembly in Verona his three years old son (Otto III.) is elected to be king in order to guarantee the continuation of the Ottonian dynasty. At the same time he settles once more the occupation of the South German duchies. (The Konradian Konrad receives Swabia, Henry of Carinthia receives Bavaria.)
December 7th, 983	Otto II. dies in Rome as a result of a Malaria disease. As the only emperor of the Middle Ages Otto II. was buried in Rome (Peters Church).

Valuation of Otto´s reign: Otto went beyond his father´s course.
From the beginning his aim was to conquer South Italy. By doing so he hasted to get the control of whole Italy, which meant the removal of the byzantin and the sarazen reign.
Otto was already said to be wilful and uneven by his contemporaries. The setbacks that took place in the South and East during the end of his reign have spoiled his image without any doubt.
However, it must be said that he succeeded in claiming the power of the empire that his father had established.
translated by: Marion Wagner

Hrsg. u. Berater: Bautier, Robert-Henri, Lexikon des Mittelalters, München 1989, Artenis Verlag, Band 4, S.1567-68
Brock Haus, Die Enzyklopädie, F.A. Brockhaus GmbH, Leipzig, Mannheim 1997, S.415-416
Dr. Karl Julius Ploetz, Der große Ploetz, Freiburg, Würzburg 1986, Verlag Ploetz, S.402-403, 436-437
Alvermann, Dirk: Königsherrschaft und Reichsintegration, Berlin 1998, Duncker und Humblot Verlag
Hubensteiner, Benno: Bayerische Geschichte, Ludwig Verlag, München 1997, S. 76 f., 101

working: Kristin von Hobe
translation: Marion Wagner
(23.5.2005)