Charlemagne had been able to deal easily with such difficulties, for the Pope had been his ally, almost it might be said his vassal, and so they could have but one mind on Church matters. By the time of Otto the Great, however, German kings had long ceased to be emperors, and the imperial title, bandied about from one Italian prince to another, had become tarnished in the world’s eyes. Was it worth while, then, for a German king to regain this title in order to gain control over the See of St. Peter? Students of history, able to test mediaeval policy by its ultimate results, will answer ‘No’, seeing that German kings would have done well to resist the will-of-the-wisp lure of the crowns of Lombardy and Rome; but to Otto the question of interference in Italy bore a very different aspect. Too great to be dazzled by the title of Emperor, too busy to invade Italy merely for the sake of forcing the Pope to become his ally, Otto found himself faced by the necessity of choosing whether he would make himself lord of the lands on the other side of the Alps or see one of his most powerful subjects, the Duke of Bavaria, do so instead. The occasion of this choice was the murder of Count Lothair of Provence, one of the claimants to the throne of Italy. Lothair’s widow, Adelaide, a Burgundian princess, appealed to Germany to avenge her wrongs--a piece of knight-errantry with such prospects of profit that several of the German princes and notably the Duke of Bavaria, whose lands lay just to the north of the Alps, were only too willing to undertake it. In 951 Otto the Great, anticipating their ambitions, crossed the Alps with an army, rescued Adelaide from her husband’s murderer, married her himself, and was crowned King of Italy at Pavia. Recalled to Germany by foreign invasions, he appeared again in Italy ten years later, and in February 962 was crowned Emperor by the Pope at Rome. His successors, dropping the title ‘King of Germany’, claimed henceforth to be ‘Kings of the Romans’ on their election and, after their coronation by the Pope, ‘Holy Roman Emperors’--temporal overlords of Christendom, as the Popes claimed to be spiritual viceroys.