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Relationships between kings and monasteries or convents were governed by three privileges: free election, immunity, and royal protection. While the first two privileges have been extensively investigated, royal protection has attracted little attention among medievalists, with the exception of German scholarship. The latter has usually emphasised a specific consequence of the use of this privilege, namely the transfer of ownership rights over the monastery or the convent from the founders' family to the king. However, this was just one possible effect of royal protection, not necessarily the most common or most important. The distinguishing features of this privilege have been largely ignored, namely its nature as a right in personam, and not in rem, as well as its jurisdictional content, since royal protection allowed protected persons to be judged by the royal court. This article aims to explore the full political potential of royal protection, and to reconstruct the institutional dynamics that the use of this privilege could trigger in the Ottonian period. Two case studies are analysed comparatively: Central Italy and Eastern Saxony. Though different and distant from each other, these two political spaces can be fruitfully compared, as the Ottonians and the religious communities of these areas deliberately decided to make intensive use of royal protection to shape their mutual relationships. This comparative study reveals significant differences in the political application of the privilege in the two regions, in part reflecting a dissimilar understanding of the idea of royal protection itself. This privilege established a bilateral and asymmetrical relationship of variable intensity, which could change in time and space depending on the variable degree of political autonomy enjoyed by the protected abbot (abbess) and his (her) community as well as the different attitude of the king, acting as a lenient judge or as lord of those under his protection.

Abstract
This article reconstructs the perception of the future in Ottonian culture by investigating a variety of sources produced within the chronological and geographical framework of the Roman–Germanic Empire (Germany, Italy, and Lotharingia) at the time of Saxon kings and emperors (919–1024). Traditional scholarly interest in end times at the turn of the first millennium is here intertwined with a more recent transdisciplinary perspective that focuses on the notion of contingency. Ottonian sources provide evidence of how a real concern about historical contingencies, which affect this-worldly future events, could coexist with an eschatological awareness that induced patterns of thought and behavior in view of eternal salvation, in connection with the belief that the last age of the world had already begun long ago. This belief, not to be confused with speculations about the imminence of the end, should be properly understood and contextualized, and a clear distinction among eschatology, apocalypticism, and millenarianism is therefore required. Although each Ottonian author had a particular approach toward the future, influenced by various circumstances and different authorial intentions (doctrinal reflection, pastoral responsibilities, devotion, political reasons, rhetorical purposes, and propaganda), the analysis of these sources reveals an appropriation of Augustinian themes and teachings that seems to have been widespread, deep, and genuine. What emerges is a complex picture of how prominent Ottonian authors conceived and coped with the future, passing from the cosmic to existential dimension, from spiritual commitment to ordinary business, and from the uncertainty of terrestrial future to the transcendent certainty of the Last Things.

ENGLISH: Over the last few decades, German and Italian scholarships in the field of medieval constitutional history widened their traditional differences in research approach, as the studies on royal rulership (Königsherrschaft) in the tenth and early eleventh centuries seem to reveal. These studies define the subject of this article, which aims at raising awareness of the need to once again increase German-Italian cooperation. In this respect, the present essay briefly deals with selected issues and problems that are differently tackled by German and Italian scholarly traditions, and subsequently outlines four promising research paths for investigating royal rulership and kingship in the tenth and early eleventh centuries by means of an in-depth exchange between the two historiographies. These four new proposals concern macro-themes such as space, time, power-sharing practices, and the circulation of political models by making use of hostages. . / ITALIANO: Negli ultimi decenni la medievistica tedesca e quella italiana di ambito politico-istituzionale sembrano aver approfondito le loro tradizionali differenze metodologiche, come si osserva soprattutto negli studi sul potere regio (Königsherrschaft) nei secoli X-XI. Questi studi definiscono l'oggetto del presente articolo. Con l'auspicio di contribuire al rilancio di un proficuo dialogo italo-tedesco, il saggio offre dapprima una breve – e certo non esaustiva – riflessione storiografica, a partire da una selezione di temi e di problemi che sono generalmente affrontati in modo diverso dai medievisti tedeschi e italiani; successivamente sono presentate quattro nuove piste di ricerca, potenzialmente sviluppabili sulla scorta di un più intenso scambio tra le due storiografie, che ovviamente coinvolge la comunità medievistica internazionale nel suo complesso. Queste nuove proposte toccano i macro-temi dello spazio, del tempo, delle pratiche di condivisione del potere (sharing-power practices) e della circolazione di modelli politici tramite gli ostaggi.

Over the last few decades, German and Italian scholarships in the field of medieval constitutional history widened their traditional differences in research approach, as the studies on royal rulership (Königsherrschaft) in the tenth and early eleventh centuries seem to reveal. These studies define the subject of this article, which aims at raising awareness of the need to once again increase German-Italian cooperation. In this respect, the present essay briefly deals with selected issues and problems that are differently tackled by German and Italian scholarly traditions, and subsequently outlines four promising research paths for investigating royal rulership and kingship in the tenth and early eleventh centuries by means of an in-depth exchange between the two historiographies. These four new proposals concern macro-themes such as space, time, power-sharing practices, and the circulation of political models by making use of hostages. ; Negli ultimi decenni la medievistica tedesca e quella italiana di ambito politico-istituzionale sembrano aver approfondito le loro tradizionali differenze metodologiche, come si osserva soprattutto negli studi sul potere regio (Königsherrschaft) nei secoli X-XI. Questi studi definiscono l'oggetto del presente articolo. Con l'auspicio di contribuire al rilancio di un proficuo dialogo italo-tedesco, il saggio offre dapprima una breve – e certo non esaustiva – riflessione storiografica, a partire da una selezione di temi e di problemi che sono generalmente affrontati in modo diverso dai medievisti tedeschi e italiani; successivamente sono presentate quattro nuove piste di ricerca, potenzialmente sviluppabili sulla scorta di un più intenso scambio tra le due storiografie, che ovviamente coinvolge la comunità medievistica internazionale nel suo complesso. Queste nuove proposte toccano i macro-temi dello spazio, del tempo, delle pratiche di condivisione del potere (sharing-power practices) e della circolazione di modelli politici tramite gli ostaggi.