According to topschoolsoflaw, the resentment of 1004 exploded; citizen interests reacted offended by the wasteful administration of the Saxon kings. At the time of the Ottoni, Ravenna had almost become the capital of the kingdom, while Pavia no longer had the advantages but only the burden of a capital. Even those soldiers, whom Arduino had already gathered under him against the bishops and against their German king, had to blow the fire. Of course, the new revolt was another blow inflicted on an organism already corroded inside by so many adverse interests. The administration must have become more confused and uncertain. Many lines broke apart. Certain administrative bodies ceased to function. There must have been great destruction of legal titles. The kingdom, as a juridical and political organism having its own personality, it became more evanescent, it was more than ever incorporated into the empire, it tied itself more to German dynasties, that is, it became more estranged from Italy. Pavia ceased to be, in fact, the capital. Many institutions of the kingdom fell, the Count Pavese or Count Palatine disappeared for a long time: and he took his place. missi dominici, invested from time to time, in an extraordinary way, with what were the ordinary functions of the Count Palatine. He re-emerges, at the head of the Lombard cities and of the whole kingdom, Milan. Archbishop and city benefited greatly from that crisis. The one collected not a few royal possessions, including the court of Monza; the other was promoted in its city systems. And no doubt that, among the impulses for the revolt in Pavia, there was also this. We are in a time in which what was the aspiration of the feudal minor classes to hold the offices and the benefits conferred on them with complete safety and autonomy, becomes a bit of an aspiration for citizenship – of which those classes are also an increasingly important part – a to live independently, to make one’s own law, to keep the king’s officials away, indeed, except for due reverence, the same people as the king. In Constance, where Corrado received the delegates of the Lombard cities and the bishops headed by Ariberto, who went to pay homage to him and offer him the royal crown (Robert of France and William of Aquitaine had refused), the Pavesi also met: but the king did not want to receive them and put them to the announcement. The following year, he went down to Italy. He took the crown in Milan and besieged the capital of the kingdom. The Pavesi ended up giving in: they rebuilt the palace: but outside the walls, iuxta civitatem , as many cities will later do.
Corrado stayed in Italy for two years. He took the imperial crown in Rome, took care of the things of the kingdom; he took care of the affairs of the South. Here an always ruffled skein, both for the intervention on the scene, by the Normans, and for the momentum that seemed to animate the two youngest Lombard principalities, Capua and Salerno. At that moment, the turbulent Pandolfo IV of Capua was hinting at taking a prevailing position in the south. The emperor kept him in check. Better disposed instead he showed himself towards the Normans, received them in vassalage, considered them almost his militia in the South. No more peaceful than the south, the kingdom, still fresh from the struggles between Henry and Arduino, that is, between secular lords and ecclesiastical lords, between great feudatories and minor vassals, between partisans of the Italian king and partisans of the German king, recruited from every social class or group. The movement of the lesser vassals was still smoldering. Not all great gentlemen are friends. The bishops no longer sufficient support of the empire, neither do they. The emperor waited to consolidate the foundations of this shaky building. From the marque of Verona, already reunited with the kingdom of Italy, he detached the bishopric of Trento, uniting it with Germany, to secure the road towards the Po valley. Later, with the conquest of Burgundy, it will also tighten the kingdom from the north-east he will make sure by taking them away from the Frankish feudatories, other important gateways to Italy. He then tried to win back the great lords of the north and of Tuscia. He conferred on Bonifacio, of the Attoni family, very loyal to the Germans, the important brand of Tuscany taken from the Marquis Ranieri. That brand was almost a kingdom unto itself, within the kingdom of Italy. And the house of the Attoni, who already mastered the lower Po valley, from the Adige to the Apennines up to the mountains of Modena and Reggio, now rose to the height of its power: two great brands in his hands; innumerable allodial possessions from all over, especially in the Mantua area, in the lower Po, in the Bolognese area, on the Apennines; all the access roads to central Italy and Rome controlled by Bonifacio, the “great marquis”. To draw him closer to himself, the emperor also resorted to other means. Widower of Richilda, Bonifacio married Beatrice of Lorraine in 1036, nephew of the empress and very attached to the great princely and feudal world beyond the Alps. There is no doubt that the emperor aimed to free himself from his near dependence on the Italian bishops. Politics no different he had adopted in Germany. For the same purpose, he placed in several bishoprics and abbeys German prelates. It is not difficult for him to think, with this, also of a church reform. But, albeit with reformist intentions, he accentuated the prince’s interference in ecclesiastical life, his arbitrariness in disposing of the properties of the churches for the purposes of the state, which will aggravate rather than heal the evils of the Church, will make the freedom of the Church feel more necessary than ever. , will put the refor nators against the empire, will give a new and revolutionary character to the movement of the reform, already politically orthodox.
