linguistic:voice_change, linguistic:paraphrasing, information:filtering, structural:expansion
Relations with the Catholic Church

Beginning in the late 940s, Otto rearranged interior policies by utilizing the offices of the Catholic Church as tools of royal administration, thereby setting the course for the Ottonian Imperial Church System. With regard to his "divine right" to rule he viewed himself as the protector of the Church. A key element of administrative reorganisation was the installment of celibate clerics in secular offices, chiefly bishops and abbots, at the expense of the hereditary secular nobility. Otto sought to establish a non-hereditary counter-balance to the fiercely independent and powerful royal princes. He granted land and bestowed the title of Prince of the Empire (Reichsfürst) to appointed bishops and abbots. Hereditary claims were thus avoided as after death the offices fell back upon the crown. Historian Norman Cantor concludes: "Under these conditions clerical election became a mere formality in the Ottonian empire, and the king filled up the ranks of the episcopate with his own relatives and with his loyal chancery clerks, who were also appointed to head the great German monasteries."

The most prominent member of this blended royal-ecclesiastical service was his own brother Bruno the Great, Otto's Chancellor since 940, who was appointed Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lorraine in 953. Other important religious officials within Otto's government included Archbishop William of Mainz (Otto's illegitimate son), Archbishop Adaldag of Bremen, and Hadamar, the Abbot of Fulda. Otto endowed the bishoprics and abbeys of his kingdom with numerous gifts, including land and royal prerogatives, such as the power to levy taxes and to maintain an army. Over these Church lands, secular authorities had neither the power of taxation nor legal jurisdiction. This raised the Church above the various dukes and committed its clerics to serve as the king's personal vassals. In order to support the Church, Otto made tithing mandatory for all inhabitants of Germany.

Otto granted the various bishops and abbots of the kingdom the rank of count as well as the legal rights of counts within their territory. Because Otto personally appointed all bishops and abbots, these reforms strengthened his central authority, and the upper ranks of the German Church functioned in some respect as an arm of the royal bureaucracy. Otto routinely appointed his personal court chaplains to bishoprics throughout the kingdom. While attached to the royal court, the chaplains would perform the work of the government through services to the royal chancery. After years within the royal court, Otto would reward their service with promotion to a diocese.