Germany there was growing up at the end of the tenth century the
practice of imperial control over the things of the Church. The policy
of the Ottos and the reformation of the papacy were certain ultimately
to lead to the contest concerning investitures. High clerical office
had come too often to be bought and sold, and the churches were
becoming mere appanages of the great principalities. It was wise of
Otto I. to try to win from the dukes the power they had obtained: but
it was not for the good of the Church that the power should be even in
the imperial hands.

[Sidenote: Otto III. and the popes.]

Otto I. died in 973. He had begun the reformation of the papacy. His
son and grandson succeeded him, Otto II. in 973, Otto III. in 983. In
996 died Pope John XV., a Roman whom the Frankish chronicler, Abbo of
Fleury, declares to have been lustful of filthy lucre and venal in all
his acts. To Otto the clergy, senate, and people of Rome submitted the
election of his successor. He chose his own cousin Bruno, "a man of
holiness, of wisdom, and of virtue,"--news, to quote the same saintly
writer, more precious than gold and precious stones. His throne was
insecure: the Roman noble Crescentius drove him from it, but he won his
way back and overcame one who had been set up as an anti-pope. He died
in 999.

{200}

At the close of the tenth century a pope and an emperor of great ideas
stand forth from the blackness of an age when, according to the
evidence of councils and of monastic chronicles alike, vice was
rampant--"the more powerful oppress the weaker, and men are like fishes
in the sea, which everywhere in turn devour one another"--and the
bishops and clergy alike neglected their duties. Otto III. (983-1002),
the offspring of the German who sat on the imperial throne and the
daughter of the Caesars of the East, made himself a real ruler of the
Empire in Church as well as in State, and after the disputed succession
of his cousin Bruno (Gregory V., 996-99) placed on the papal throne the
first of the great line of later medieval popes. Gregory V. was the
first pope of transalpine birth imposed by the Germans; Gerbert was the
first of the French popes. It needed the imperial army to keep Gregory
on the throne, and to crush the last of the Roman princelets who had
made the papacy infamous; Gerbert (Silvester II., 999-1003) was only
able to remain in the eternal city so long as Otto was there to protect
him. [Sid