grandson added the Byzantine culture to the Roman-Carlovingian
substratum. The women of the tenth century played a remarkably active
part in politics and literature. Mathilda and Editha, the pious wives of
the first two Saxon emperors, powerfully affected the civilization of
their time. The reigns of Otto II. and Otto III. bear most decided
traces of the influence of two royal women, Adelheid and Theophano, who
exercised a strong influence upon the political and intellectual life of
the century.

The period of the Ottos marks the climax of an early renaissance as
distinguished from the great classical movement so called five centuries
later. In art, this renaissance is expressed by churches and palaces
built after late Roman and Byzantine models, partly even with the
materials of those times; in literature, the renaissance blossoms in
classical studies, Latin historiography and poetry. Indeed, Tietmar of
Merseburg, the famous chronicler of the Saxon emperors, could well say:
"Proud like Lebanon's cedars the Empire towered, a terror to all nations
far and wide;" and again: "Highly blessed was the world when Otto
wielded the sceptre."

As regards the moral life of the times, Tietmar's _Chronicon_ presents
Henry, the founder of the dynasty, as not faultless. The legend also
weaves around Henry the wreath of romance when it reports that Princess
Use of the Herz Mountains kissed the cares from his royal brow in her
wondrous castle, a favor which, according to the charming Use song, she
bestows some nine hundred years later on Heine, the darling of the
Muses. When still very young, Henry concluded a marriage with
Hatheburch, a distinguished widow at Merseburg, but rejected her after
she had borne him a son, Thammo (_Thankmar_). He had fallen in love with
Mathilda, a rich and beautiful maiden of the race of Duke Widukind, who
had immortalized the Saxon name in the thirty years' struggle with
Charlemagne. She became Henry's wife and bore him three sons, Otto,
Henry, and Bruno. She seems to have steadied her great husband, though
their married life did not remain always cloudless. An episode related
by Tietmar, "to deter and warn the pious," may be repeated here because
of the flavor of its time: Henry had once on the day before Good Friday
of Easter week intoxicated himself, and, driven by the devil, abused his
pious wife in the following night. Satan, rejoicing over the deed, could
not refrain from telling the story to a res