allegiance. The German dukes were less disinterested. But the precedents
which Otto I had established proved invaluable when his son was required
to deal with a rebellion, or had the opportunity of appointing to a
vacant dukedom.

The blame for the chimerical ambitions of Otto II and Otto III is
usually thrown upon Theophano, that brilliant missionary of Byzantine
culture and Byzantine political ideas. But the influence which perverted
the judgement of these Emperors, until they became a byeword in Europe,
was something more impalpable than the will-force of a domineering
woman. They were born into the misty morning twilight of the medieval
renaissance, of an age when intellectual curiosity was awakening, when
philosophy, the sciences and Latin literature were studied with a lively
but uncritical enthusiasm, when the rhetorician and the sophist were the
uncrowned kings of intelligent society. The philosophy was little more
than school-logic, derived at second or third hand from Aristotle, the
science a grotesque amalgam of empiricism and tradition. The Latin
classics, apart from their use as a source of tropes and commonplaces,
only served to inspire a superstitious and uncomprehending reverence for
ancient Rome. Of this new learning Otto II and his son were naive
disciples. They could not sufficiently admire the encyclopaedic Gerbert,
the most fashionable and incomparably the ablest teacher of their day.
Otto II and his court listened patiently for hours while Gerbert
disputed with a Saxon rival concerning the subdivisions of the genus
philosophy. Otto III invited Gerbert to come to court and cure him of
"Saxon rusticity"; he deluged the complaisant tutor with Latin verses,
consulted him in affairs of state, and finally promoted him to the
Papacy. Gerbert was in fact a subtle and ambitious politician, who
filled the chair of Peter with no small degree of credit. But his more
serious talents would never have found their opportunity save for his