Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

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Conrad was so successful with this policy in Germany and Burgundy that he desired to extend it to Italy. But the spirit of independence was already deeply rooted south of the Alps, and the very prelates who had called Conrad to help them against their lay rivals, now looked with suspicion on a policy that deprived churchman and lay noble alike of their cherished immunities. 34 Aribert of Milan had long aspired to a position of almost complete independence. His dream was to make the see of St. Ambrose a sort of North Italian patriarchate, and at the same time he wished to combine with ecclesiastical ascendency an organised temporal power. His twofold ambition was exactly that of the Papacy at a later period, and for the moment Milan seemed stronger than Rome. The citizens of Milan, more obedient to their bishops than the turbulent Romans, were zealous partisans of Aribert; but the smaller nobles, who saw in the fulfilment of his plans the destruction of their own independence, rose as one man against him. Civil war broke out in Lombardy between the friends and foes of Aribert. So dangerous was the outlook that in 1036 Conrad again crossed the Alps in the hope of restoring peace in North Italy.

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