ern Japanese, set themselves to appropriate,
assimilate, and remodel for their own use, the rudiments of the
civilisation with which they found themselves brought into contact. So
speedy and so thorough was the transformation, that scarce a century
passed ere the once powerful Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne bowed
down before the strenuous Saxons, to whom the supreme power was
transferred. Their Chief was elected king of the Germans, and some
fifty years later their king, Otho the Great, after being crowned at
Aix-la-Chapelle, the former centre of Frankish rule, received the
Imperial Crown from the Pope in Rome. This displacement of the
political centre was naturally followed by a complete displacement of
artistic centres. Both these sides of life were fostered by Otho with
a keen personal interest--the building up of his empire and the
encouragement of art going hand in hand. Moreover, owing to his close
ties with Italy and the East, and the element of classic tradition
inevitably induced by such ties, art received an added stimulus and
grace. Oriental monks were to be found in the monasteries. Learned men
and artists were summoned from Italy and Constantinople. The number
and influence of these were increased when Otho's son, afterwards Otho
the Second, married Theophano, a Greek princess, who, bringing many
compatriots in her train, sought to reflect in her German home
something of the learning and splendour of the Byzantine Court. The
ivory, shown in illustration, commemorating this marriage, is an
example of the work of some Byzantine craftsman in her employ, whilst
the jewelled and gold-wrought cover of the Gospels of St. Emmeran (now
at Munich) shows to how high a level the goldsmith's art of the time
had been raised by the influences alluded to.

[Illustration: _Musee de Cluny, Paris._

MARRIAGE OF OTHO II. AND THEOPHANO.

Byzantine, 10th century.

_To face page 7._]

Perhaps the one place which retains in the most varied and
concentrated form the traces of this wave of artistic development then
passing over Germany, is Hildesheim. This is of interest here because
the bishops of Hildesheim were specially appointed to perform the
office of consecration of nuns at Gandersheim. It seems hardly
possible that Roswitha could have seen its gifted bishop Bernward,
himself a painter, and a worker in mosaic and metals, though owing to
the uncertainty of the date of her death--one chronicler making it as
late as 100