Otto II. was eighteen years of age when the death of his father made him sole ruler. His education and surroundings gave his policy a very different direction from that of Otto I. The elder prince was purely German, and even in winning the imperial crown sought to subserve a Teutonic object. His son, born and reared in the purple, Burgundian or Italian on his mother’s side, and married to a Byzantine Emperor’s daughter, took wider views. To Otto II. Italy was as important as Germany, and his ambition was to weld the two realms together in a solid imperial unity, while constantly keeping his eyes even beyond these two kingdoms. To him the Emperor’s lordship of the world was a reality, and he strove with all the force of an ardent, impetuous, and impulsive nature to give effect to his ideal. But while Otto II.’s short reign witnessed the Empire assuming a more universal character, it also saw the first signs of that essential incompatibility between the position of German king and Roman Emperor which, in after ages, was to bear such bitter fruit.
Despite the quietness of Otto I.’s last years, the difficulties against which the old Emperor had struggled still remained. The separatist spirit of the national dukedoms still lived on in Bavaria, and had only been temporarily glossed over by the good understanding between Otto I. and Duke Henry. Judith, the widow of Duke Henry, now ruled Bavaria in the name of her son Henry II., surnamed the Quarrelsome, while she controlled Swabia through her influence on her daughter Hedwig, and Hedwig’s aged husband, the Swabian Duke Burkhard. Otto II. saw the danger of a close union between the two southern duchies, and, on Burkhard’s death, invested his nephew Otto, Duke Ludolf’s son, with Swabia. Judith and her partisans were instantly aroused. A new civil war was threatened, in which the Bavarians did not scruple to call in the help of the Bohemians and Poles. But the young Emperor’s vigorous measures proved fatal to the attempted rebellion, and Otto took the opportunity of his triumph to lessen the influence of the Bavarian dukes by intrusting, to separate margraves, the east mark, on the Danube (the later Austria), and the north mark between the Danube and the Bohemian Forest. [Sidenote: Break-up of the Bavarian Duchy, 976–8.] The great highland marchland of Carinthia and Carniola, with which still went the Italian March of Verona, or Friuli, was constituted a seventh duchy. The rest of the Bavarian duchy was consigned to the care of the faithful Otto of Swabia. Judith was shut up in a convent. Henry the Quarrelsome fled to Bohemia, whence he made subsequent unsuccessful attempts to recover his position. Thus the Emperor triumphed, but he had simply to do over again the work of his father. It was a thankless business, and showed how insecure were the very foundations of the German kingdom. But for the rest of his short reign Germany gave Otto but little trouble. The extension of Christianity among Wends, Poles, and Bohemians gave Magdeburg and Mainz new suffragans in the Bishops of Gnesen and Prague, though renewed attacks on the marches soon taught Otto that the Christianised Slavs were scarcely less formidable enemies than their heathen fathers had been.