martyred friend, St. Adalbert, in Gnesen. Meanwhile the serious business
of the Empire was neglected; the Slavonic states shook off the German
connection; the eastern frontier was unguarded. Even the Romans, whom he
cherished as his peculiar people, despised his vagaries and rose in
insurrection. This was the awakening. Alive at last to the difference
between his dreams and his true position, he quitted the Eternal City to
wander aimlessly in Italy, and died broken-hearted at the age of
twenty-one.

It would obviously be unjust to judge the Holy Roman Empire of the first
Otto by the tragicomic aberrations of his immediate successors. Their
careers illustrate, in an extreme form, the temptations to which an
Emperor was exposed; but neither of them understood the essence of the
institution. Far from idealising the Empire overmuch they did not make
it ideal enough. The true conception of Empire eluded their grasp and
was unaffected by their failure. The policy of Otto the Great is
justified by the fact that he, like Charles the Great, gave to a
national monarchy the character of a religious office and the sense of a
sacred mission. To appreciate his achievement we need only compare the
German monarchy, as it stood in the year 1000, after a generation of
misgovernment had marred the architect's design, with that of the Capets
in France or of the House of Egbert in England. The difference is not
only in size or outward splendour. The Holy Roman Empire stood for a
nobler theory of royal and national Duty.




IV