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

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Aribert was summoned to a Diet at Pavia; but he loftily declared that he would surrender no single right of the church of St. Ambrose, and was soon in open war against the Emperor. Conrad saw his only chance of overcoming the archbishop in winning over the smaller nobility to his side. In 1037 he issued the famous edict which made fiefs hereditary in Italy, thus doing for the south by a single stroke what gradual custom and policy had slowly procured for the north. He also promised to exact from his vassals no greater burdens than those already usually paid to him. But these measures, though increasing the party of Conrad in Italy, were not enough at once to overcome Aribert, who, secure in the hearty support of the Milanese citizens, defied not only the threats of Conrad but also the condemnation of Rome, which the Count of Tusculum, who then occupied the papal throne, willingly put at the service of the Emperor. In 1038 Conrad was forced by urgent business to recross the Alps, leaving Aribert unsubdued. Next year he died suddenly at Utrecht. ‘No man,’ says a Saxon annalist, ‘regretted his death.’ Yet if Conrad was unpopular, he was singularly successful. Though he had failed to get the better of Aribert, he had obtained his object in everything else that he undertook. He left the royal authority established on such a solid basis that his son, King Henry, already crowned King of Germany and Burgundy, and already Duke of Bavaria and Swabia, now stepped into the complete possession of his father’s power, as if he were already the heir of an hereditary state. Henry III. was the first German king to succeed without opposition or rebellion. Henry III., 1039–1056.