THE GERMAN EMPERORS Berengar gained nothing by his act of obedience to Otto. Otto entered Lombardy in 961, deposed Berengar, assumed the crown in Sant' Ambrogio at Milan, and in 962 was proclaimed emperor by John XII. at Rome. Henceforward Italy changed masters ac cording as one or other of the German families secured supremacy beyond the Alps. By this revolution the Italian kingdom virtually ceased to exist, and was merged in the German kingdom; and, since for the German princes Germany was of necessity their first care, Italy from this time forward began to be abandoned to the slowly-working influences which tended to divide her into separate states. Among the centrifugal forces which determined the future of the Italian race must be reckoned, first and foremost, the new spirit of municipal independence which Otto encouraged by plac ing the enclosures of the chief burghs beyond the jurisdiction of the counts. Within those precincts the bishops and the citizens were independent of all feudal masters but the emperor. He fur ther broke the power of the great vassals by redivisions of their fiefs. In this way, feudalism received a powerful check in Italy. The Italian nation was not indeed as yet apparent. But the condi tions under which it could arise and reconstruct out of the ruins of its past glories a new civilization of its own now at last existed. The nobles fortified themselves in strong places outside the cities, and gave their best attention to fostering the rural population. Within the cities and upon the open lands the Italians, in this and the next century, doubled, trebled and quadrupled their num bers. A race was formed strong enough to keep the empire itself in check, strong enough, except for its own internecine contests, to have formed a nation equal to its happier neighbours.
Otto III.'s untimely death in 1002 introduced new discords. Rome fell once more into the hands of her nobles. The Lom bards chose Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, for king, and Pavia sup ported his claims against those of Henry of Bavaria, who had been elected in Germany. Milan sided with Henry; and this is perhaps the first eminent instance of cities being reckoned powerful allies in the Italian disputes of sovereigns. Ardoin retired to a mon astery, where he died in 1015. Henry nearly destroyed Pavia, was crowned in Rome and died in 1024. After this event, Heribert, the archbishop of Milan, invited Conrad, the Franconian king of Germany, into Italy, and crowned him with the iron crown of the kingdom.
The intervention of this man, Heribert, compels us to turn a closer glance upon the cities of north Italy. In Milan we hear for the first time the word Comune, the citizens first form themselves into a Parlament°, the archbishop organizes the hitherto voiceless, defenceless population into a community capable of expressing its needs, and an army ready to maintain its rights. To Heribert is attributed the invention of the Ccrroccio, which played so singular and important a part in the warfare of Italian cities. A huge car drawn by oxen, bearing the standard of the burgh, and carrying an altar with the host, this carroccio, like the ark of the Israelites, formed a rallying point in battle, and reminded the armed artisans that they had a city and a church to fight for. It must not, how ever, be supposed that at this epoch the liberties of the cities were fully developed. The mass of the people remained unrepre sented in the government. It still needed nearly a century of struggle to render the burghers independent of lordship, with a fully organized commune, self-governed in its several assemblies. The maritime cities were more advanced than the others. Not to mention Venice, which had not yet entered the Italian community, and remained a Greek free city, Genoa and Pisa were rapidly rising into ill-defined autonomy. Their command of fleets gave them incontestable advantages, as when, for instance, Otto II. employed the Pisans in 98o against the Greeks in Southern Italy, and the Pisans and Genoese together attacked the Saracens of Sardinia in 1017.
the reign of Conrad II., the party of the counts of Tusculum revived in Rome ; and Crescentius, claim ing the title of consul in the imperial city, sought once more to control the election of the popes. When Henry III., the son of Conrad, entered Italy in 1046, he found three popes in Rome. These he abolished, and, taking the appointment into his own hands, gave German bishops to the see. These German popes were short-lived and inefficient; and unless it could be purged of crying scandals—of the subjection of the papacy to the great Roman nobles, of its subordination to the German emperor and of its internal demoralization—the condition of the church seemed desperate. The Tuscan monk, Hildebrand, throughout three pa pacies, during which he controlled the counsels of the Vatican, and before he himself assumed the tiara, laid down a programme of reform including these three points : ( 1) the celibacy of the clergy ; the abolition of ecclesiastical appointments made by the secular authority ; (3) the vesting of the papal election in the hands of the Roman clergy and people, presided over by the curia of cardinals. But before turning to the tremendous revolution which Hildebrand inaugurated, it will be necessary to describe events in southern Italy, upon which in no small measure his success depended.
By the consolidation of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily into a power ful kingdom, and by recognizing the overlordship of the papal see, the house of Hauteville influenced the destinies of Italy with more effect than any of the princes who had previously dealt with any portion of the peninsula. The southern regno, in the hands of the popes, proved an insurmountable obstacle to the unification of Italy, led to French interference in Italian affairs, introduced the Spaniard and maintained in those rich southern provinces the reality of feudal sovereignty long of ter this alien element had been eliminated from the rest of Italy (see NORMANS ; SICILY : His tory).
Gregory's immediate successors, Victor III., Urban II., and Paschal II., carried on his struggle with Henry IV. and his anti popes, encouraging the emperor's son to rebel against him, and stirring up Europe for the first crusade. When Henry IV. died, his own son's prisoner, in 1106, Henry V. crossed the Alps, entered Rome, forced Paschal II. to crown him and compelled the pope to grant his claims on the investitures. Scarcely had he returned to Germany when the Lateran disavowed all that the pope had done, on the score that it had been extorted by force. France sided with the Church. Germany rejected the bill of investiture, but a new seizure of Rome proved of no avail. The emperor at last aban doned the contest which had distracted Europe. By the concordat of Worms, 1122, he surrendered the right of investiture by ring and staff, and granted the right of election to the clergy. The popes were henceforth to be chosen by the cardinals, the bishops by the chapters subject to the pope's approval. On the other hand, the pope ceded to the emperor the right of investiture by the sceptre. But the popes were really victors. They remained inde pendent of the emperor, but the emperor had still to seek the crown at their hands (see PAPACY; INVESTITURE).