the German Franks. During this migration the Roman Empire grew weak
[39]. Both the Western, that is, Latin, Franks and the German Franks were descendants of the Trojans, who, upon escaping the burning city of lilium, split into two groups: while the future Romans followed Aeneas on his way to Latium, the future Franks went to Scythia and called themselves the Sicambri
[40]. Interestingly, Otto describes the rise of the
Roman Empire as well as the history of the Franks[41]. In fact, the history of the impérium itself takes pride on the place in his History of the Two Cities, whose title refers to the Church and the Empire, which are called the civitas Dei and the civitas terrena, respectively[42]. Christ’s birth during the times of Augustus (27 BC-14 AD) was described by Otto as the will of God, who wanted to make Rome the seat of the Church[43].
To Otto, the key moment of world history was the reign of Constantine the Great (306–337), who Christianized the Roman Empire and united the civitas Dei and civitas terrena into the civitas permixta. However, Constantine moved the impérium to Constantinople and gave it to the Greeks. Whether Constantine gave the western part of the empire to Pope Sylvester I or not, Otto does not decide, but leaves it to the reader[44]. The fall of Rome is a dramatic episode in Otto’s chronicle, followed a row of tyrannies in Italy until Justinian’s reconquest of it for the Romans[45]. From then on the chronicle traces the history of the Franks until Charlemagne renovated the Roman Empire under the Franks, finally transferring it away from Constantinople[46]. It is at this precise point that the two Trojan lines, the Roman and the Frankish, finally converge. After the Carolingians lost control of the empire, Henry I (919–936) was elected king of Eastern Francia. For Otto of Freising this was the key moment in the history of his country, the Roman Empire, as it was disputed whether Henry I continued the regnum Francorum or started a regnum Teutonicorum. Otto solves the problem by stating that the regnum Teutonicorum, which held the impérium Romanům in his own day, was a part of the regnum Francorum. Finally, the impérium Romanům was conquered by Otto the Great from the Langobards in 962[47]