Stefano Manganaro's volume examines the relationship - dynamic rather than static - between two terms. Their joining gives shape to the title: on the one hand Rome; on the other the Ottonians. In the discussion, the angle of observation is, in fact, inverted compared to how the title is phrased: not so much Rome and the Ottonians, but rather the Ottonians and Rome (or, even better, the Ottonians in Rome). What is meant by the first term, the Ottonians, is easier to make intelligible: the sequence of three emperors with the same name - Otto - who ruled the East Frankish kingdom together with the Italic kingdom while bearing the imperial title from 962 to 1002. However, as regards periodisation, the author chooses a diachronic approach that identifies 951 - with the submission of Berengar II, the marriage to Queen Adelaide (widow of Lothair II of Italy), and the (for the moment unsuccessful) negotiations with Pope Agapetus II aimed at obtaining the imperial crown - as a more fitting and distinctive turning point. Reconstructing the profiles of these three emperors is tantamount to studying the Empire itself: "a politico-religious reality with a sacral basis, continuously solicited by the dynamics among the actors who composed it." (282) The sovereign with his court is seen as a "mobile centre which, physically traversing the two Ottonian realms, set in motion in them centripetal processes absolutely indispensable to the stability of these institutions, while at the same time defining geographies that were discontinuous in space and variable in time" (298). In short, a cone of light is aimed at the person of the emperor and reconstructs his itinerary step by step, dwelling on the most solemn ceremonies that mark his course: on which feast days of the liturgical calendar they occur and, consequently, what their mise en scene is. From this the author draws the elements that underlie his reconstructions. The analysis, in fact, is first directed at decoding political strategies and symbolic languages, as the words of the subtitle make explicit.

It is worth clarifying, instead, what the volume means by Rome. At the centre of attention are not the forms by which Roman political society was structured, nor their transformation in relation to imperial action within a framework of mutual influence. Rome is seen above all as "an immaterial patrimony of a historical-legal nature with a strongly legitimizing function." (3) It is a set of resources that can act as a "multiplier of projects and ambitions" of the emperors, guaranteeing them a "decisive leap in quality" in the act - and even mission - of government (303). This complex entity would also be incarnated in a person who would be, at once, its principal depositary and active bearer: the pope. "From this perspective Rome should not be understood only as a single, fixed place, but as a mobile place that followed the pope, identifying with his person." (96) It is therefore not surprising that the author chooses to dwell on the phases in which the emperor managed to come into contact with this patrimony, when Rome remained passive or reacted positively in the face of his adventus: specifically, those phases in which the proximity between the persons of the emperor and the pope - both in physical-spatial and political-relational terms - was at its closest. And this occurs with Otto II and Peter/John XIV (formerly bishop of Pavia and archchancellor of the kingdom of Italy) between 983 and 984; with Otto III and Bruno/Gregory V (a relative of the emperor and already a member of his chapel) first, and Gerbert/Sylvester II (formerly archbishop of Ravenna and an intellectual reference at his court) later, between 996 and 1002. Ultimately, Rome is not observed for itself, but in function of the political strategies of the Ottonians and as the stage for the symbolic languages that the emperors themselves, living or dead, perform.

The internal structure of the work is clear. It consists of three chapters, each focused on one emperor and on a privileged source that serves as the key testimony of that Otto's presence in the city, namely, his coming into contact with Rome. At the end of each chapter there is a short summary that recaps the essential steps of the argument. In the case of Otto I (11-108), at the heart of the analysis is the account that Liutprand of Cremona gives in his Historia Ottonis of the synod of November-December 963. Convened after Otto I's arrival in the city, it led to the deposition of Pope John XII. This represents the most striking example of the emperor's ability to intervene in, and exert authority over, Rome. In Manganaro's interpretation it is taken as an example of a tool subsequently employed by the emperor to achieve synergy with the popes - a fruitful relationship with Rome, that is: synods convened in Rome and beyond, held in the pope's presence and often presided jointly. This relationship would in any case have been functional to the implementation of a political strategy that was aimed far from Rome, towards Magdeburg and even further east. As emperor close to the See of Saint Peter, Otto I could better embody his mission as defender of Christendom and as evangelizer in dealings with the Danes, Slavs and Hungarians, redrawing at will the ecclesiastical geography of his north-Alpine realm and better disciplining the centrifugal forces within that political space. Yet the same episode would also testify to the substantial incommunicability between linguistic and political cultures, thought of as an ethnically connoted binary code. If for Otto I and the East Franks the crucial accusation against John XII was political treason - the breaking of a sworn oath of fidelity toward the emperor - for the Romans, the decisive grounds for deposition necessarily rested on canon law: simony, and thus apostasy.

The other two chapters, which rework articles published by the author in journals in 2021 and 2022 respectively, fix the gaze on a material structure that redrew the topography of power in the Eternal City. In fact, these were buildings that failed to make a lasting impact on Rome's monumental and identity landscape: their memory soon blurred, ultimately dissolving. Otto II in Rome is seen retrospectively through the mirror of his burial, which stood eccentric and isolated in the porticoed atrium (Paradisus) of the Vatican basilica, more precisely in the southeastern corner (109-194). Of the funerary monument today only the massive red porphyry covering remains, reused in the seventeenth century as the baptismal font of the new basilica. The author questions the political meaning of the burial, reasoning from its position - both absolute and relative - within the Vatican complex. He tries to decipher its communicative code and advances proposals for dating. The theme of incomprehension between political cultures returns here: by virtue of its placement, the tomb presented Otto II as a new Constantine. This would occur because of the adoption of a symbolic-ritual code that Manganaro considers characteristic of the Ottonian dynasty and therefore alien and incomprehensible to the Romans: burial at an ecclesiastical institution founded and/or richly endowed by the deceased. As to dating, the author cautiously favours the brief pontificate of John XIV, between December 983 and April 984 - that is, immediately after the sovereign's death, when the pope was a foreigner and very close to the emperor. The monument is interpreted as the seal of a broader political strategy largely continuous with that of his predecessor and father: Otto II's collaboration with the Roman pontiff would have allowed the sovereign to acquire a universal projection, with the aim of defending and expanding the bounds of Christendom under threat. In this case he turned his attention southward, towards Calabria and Apulia, positioning himself in competition with the Byzantine emperor in the struggle against Muslim powers. Rome would then become for Otto II a "gateway to the Mediterranean." (191)

The final chapter investigates Otto III's physical presence in Rome by searching for his palace, the first built by a medieval emperor within the Aurelian Walls: a shadowy structure, glimpsed only fleetingly in the sources (195-286). It would have been erected ex novo between April 998 and April 999, leaning on a monastery. From itinerancy, attention thus shifts to the fixed nodes that underpin public institutions, ensuring their cohesion and subsistence. Manganaro offers an excursus on the landholdings possessed by emperors in the city from the ninth century onward - resources that appear quite meagre according to the charters. He attributes to Lothair I the construction of a first imperial palace near the Vatican basilica, contemporaneous with the building of the Leonine Walls, and proposes its location not far from where Otto II's tomb later stood. Finally, the urban palace of Otto III is discussed. The author presents and debates three possible alternative locations, leaving the question open: the first two (Santi Bonifacio e Alessio on the Aventine; Saint Maria in Pallara on the Palatine) have already been proposed in the historiography. The third is original: a portion or appurtenance of the papal palatium on the Lateran. In short, and unlike his grandfather and father, in Otto III's design Rome is not a base from which to act elsewhere: the investment is made in Rome for Rome. This initiative, in many respects rich in novelty, would fit within the framework of the renovatio imperii Romanorum, highlighted among others by Knut Görich. It is in this concluding section that the interpretive key used in several earlier passages is least perceptible. Among the protagonists of this story - the Ottonians and Rome - a nearly insurmountable barrier of incommunicability persisted. It is erected because they are the expression of two cultures imagined as too distant and different, incapable by their nature of establishing an effective dialogue. In its essential mechanisms, a universe so conceived appears rather distant from that delineated by Wolfgang Huschner - although his work makes an appearance in the course of the discussion - who sought and valued the Transalpine Kommunikation of the Ottonian experience.

Paolo Tomei