From this complicated series of events some interesting conclusions may
be deduced. The Empire, which has so often been abused as a source of
countless woes to Germany, was revived in the interests of a purely
German policy. Unlike his son and his grandson, Otto I never submitted
to the spell of Italy. Since the time of Charles the Great it had been
taken for granted that the Empire could only be conferred by the Pope
and only held by a King of Italy. Otto did not greatly value his Italian
dominions, though circumstances forced him to reside in Italy for a
large part of his later years. For a time he had thoughts of recovering
Apulia and Calabria from the Greeks, Sicily from the Arabs. But he
abandoned his claims against the Eastern Empire as the price of a
marriage-alliance, and he left Sicily untouched. The Crown of Italy was
valuable to him chiefly as a qualification for his imperial office. To
the ecclesiastical duties of that office he was not indifferent. His
bishops, though largely employed as secular administrators, were
chosenwith some regard to their spiritual duties; he was a friend to the
Cluniac movement for monastic reform. But clearly he did not visit Rome
in pursuit of any plans for cleansing that Augean stable the Papacy. The
vices of John XII were notorious; but, as a Pope who could legally
confer the Empire, he was good enough for Otto's purpose. Only when John
repented of his bargain and turned traitor was he evicted in favour of a
more reputable successor (963). And John's successor was a layman until
the time of his election. Otto's chief concern was to secure a
trustworthy partisan; this remained the Saxon policy till the days of
his grandson.

Otto was not indifferent to the splendour or the more ambitious claims
of his office. He paraded before the world the benevolent protectorate
which he exercised over the young rulers of Burgundy and France; he