The year 947 was occupied by a series of fruitless assemblies called together to decide a dispute over the archbishopric of Rheims. The two parties in France had each its candidate for the see, and the party uppermost unscrupulously imposed the man of its choice upon the diocese. These transactions, vain as they were, are not without their importance, for they led up to the solemn synod held at Ingelheim on 7 June 948. The legate of Pope Agapetus II, Bishop Marinus of Bomarzo, presided over it. It was an assembly of the highest significance: it was the first occasion since the accession of the Saxon dynasty, since the synod of Hohen Altheim in 916, that a papal legate had appeared in Germany. It was attended by more than thirty bishops, and the two kings Louis and Otto were present in person. The business was not restricted to the Rheims dispute. The discussion on the political question at issue resulted in a canon being passed against attacks on the royal power and a declaration that Hugh should make his submission under pain of excommunication. The dispute over the see of Rheims was decided in favour of Artaud, the candidate of the royal party; his rival Hugh, son of Herbert of Vermandois, was excommunicated. Hugh the Great held the decrees of the synod at defiance; he was excommunicated at the Synod of Trèves (September 948); he continued in his obduracy and carried on hostilities against Louis and his allies Otto and Conrad of Lorraine till 950, when, at a meeting held on the banks of the Marne, he made his submission, restored Laon, and, by his homage, recognised Louis as his lord.
The affairs of France were no sooner settled on a satisfactory basis than a turn of events in Italy provided the occasion for Otto's first expedition across the Alps. The occasion was the death of King Lothar, leaving his widow Adelaide with a title to the Italian throne in her own right, defenceless and soon to be a prisoner in the hands of Berengar, Marquess of Ivrea, who was himself crowned King of Italy at Pavia on 15 December 950. The old connexion between Germany and Italy founded on the Empire of Charles the Great, though it had ceased to be a reality since the death of the Emperor Arnulf in 899, is recalled to memory by many minor incidents in the dark years of the first half of the tenth century. The dukes of Swabia and Bavaria were frequently drawn into the Italian struggles; Berengar of Ivrea, fleeing from the murderous designs of his rival Hugh of Arles, had crossed the Alps, taken refuge in Swabia, and even commended himself to Otto (941), an act which perhaps gave Otto the right to expect an acknowledgment of overlordship from Berengar when the latter ascended the Italian throne in 950. With the opposite faction Otto was also brought into close connexion through Conrad of Burgundy, who had spent his youth at the German court and whose sister Adelaide had married Hugh's son Lothar.
The arrangements for the Italian expedition were settled at the
