Otto III. was occupied a great deal with dreams about a world Empire. He inherited from his mother the ambition to rule the East and from his father the right to rule the West. His teachers inspired him with a desire to become the Christian Emperor of the world with the Pope as his chief assistant, and coloured his whole career by giving him a monastic view of life. He made frequent visits to sacred shrines where he remained weeks at a time. In Rome he built his palace purposely beside a monastery. The idea of a holy crusade to Jerusalem was in his mind. He felt called upon to reform the Papacy, which he enriched by large grants and strengthened by privileges, and he selected most of his chief officials from the churchmen. He called himself the "servant of Jesus Christ" and the "servant of the Apostle." After having taken Rome and appointed two Popes, Otto attempted to put his imperial fancies into practice. Rome was made his permanent residence and capital from which to rule the world as "Emperor of the Romans." On the Aventine a great palace was built--a thing not even thought of by Charles the Great. The ceremonies of the Byzantine court were introduced--a long retinue of servants, an imperial guard, and a very formal etiquette. The young ruler refused to eat with his nobles and loved to sit proudly on a gaudy throne arrayed in costly purple while his servants meekly satisfied every whim. He likewise aped the Roman Emperors in magnifying the office of patrician and city prefect, by calling himself "Consul" and by thinking of reviving the senate. Dreaming of conquests beyond the seas, he appointed a naval prefect. Germany and Italy were united under one chancellor and each ruled with troops from the other. Germany,[405:1] Lombardy, Greece, Naples, and the rest of the world were to be reduced to subject provinces of the restored Empire. To receive the sacred sanction of his most renowned predecessor, Charles the Great, for these mighty ideas, Otto III. opened his tomb in the cathedral at Aachen in the year 1000 and from the body of the powerful Teuton carried away holy relics.[405:2] Early in 1000 the turbulent Romans broke out in a fresh rebellion and the world Empire was destroyed about as easily as a child's house of blocks. Besieged for three days in his palace, Otto at last addressed the discontented mob in these words: Are you my Romans? For you I left my country and my friends. For love of you I have sacrificed my Saxons and all the Germans, my blood. I have adopted you as my sons; I have preferred you to all. For you I have had stirred up against me the envy and hatred of all. And now you have rejected your father; you have destroyed my friends by a cruel death; you have excluded me whom you should not exclude, because I will never suffer those to be exiled from my affections whom I embrace with paternal love.[406:1]