except for Charlemagne’s reign, political power had been decentralized into smaller and smaller political units. With the reigns of Otto I and his successors, creatively named Otto II and Otto III, the Holy Roman Empire was reconstituted in Germany, beginning the process of centralizing political authority in Europe. The papacy, which had degenerated to the point where it was little more than a political football kicked back and forth between Roman noble families — a period frequently called the “papal pornocracy” (“rule by immorality”) — was cleaned up by the Ottonians and eventually emerged
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