insisted upon the homage of the Polish and Bohemian dukes. He held
magnificent Diets to celebrate his new position, and made great efforts
to win recognition from the Byzantine court. But in substance his
ambitions were those of a German national king. He had a keen sense of
realities, a keen appreciation of concrete results; from first to last
his thoughts centred round the problems of his native land. The
extension of the eastern frontier, the alliance with the Church, the
management of the duchies--these were his main achievements as they had
been his main ambitions. But he had built better than he knew; and the
Empire acquired before his death a nobler significance than he perhaps
had ever contemplated.

The work of Otto I was skilfully done, since it survived the follies of
his son and grandson. For twenty years after his death (973) the titular
rulers of the Empire were boys and women-regents. At Rome, in Germany,
on the western and eastern frontiers all the beaten factions and
humiliated rivals plucked up courage to make another bid for victory.
The old Empress Adelaide, and her daughter-in-law the Empress Theophano,
divided or disputed the control of the administration until 991; from
that date till 998 the elder woman, freed from interference by the death
of Theophano, exercised a great though a declining influence. Neither
Empress was competent to handle the singular difficulties of the
situation. Adelaide, though true to the German ambitions of her husband,
was guided by personal prejudice in the selection of her ministers.
Theophano, a woman of remarkable abilities and attainments, despised the
monotonous intricacies of German politics, encouraged both her husband
and her son to regard Italy as the worthiest field for the activities of
an Emperor, and in Italy looked rather to Rome and the South than to
Lombardy. It was the church party, both in Germany and in Lombardy,
which in these years kept the subjects of the Empire true to their