ABSTRACT
Otto II, known as ‘the Red’, was already co-regent with his father, having received the imperial crown from Pope John XIII on Christmas Day 967. Therefore he was easily able to take over the government upon his father’s death in 973. His reign was a short one, only ten years long, and not notably successful. Perhaps the most important deed of Otto II was his marriage to a Byzantine princess. This union implied acceptance of the Saxon dynasty as emperors of the West, and one might think that Constantinople would now relinquish its tenuous hold on Italy. It was an auspicious time for such a hope, since the new emperor in Constantinople, John Tzimisces, was preoccupied with consolidating Byzantine claims on the eastern frontier. 1 Tzimisces was threatened both by the Caliph of Baghdad and the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt.
