The king reached Pavia before Christmas, while Ardoin withdrew to his fortresses, thus yielding up to Henry nearly the whole of Lombardy without a blow. Then he sent to Pavia offering to resign the crown if he were put in possession of some county, apparently his own march of Ivrea. But Henry rejected the proposal and Ardoin was left in helpless isolation. At Pavia, meanwhile, a throng of bishops and abbots, including the two great champions of monastic reform, Odilo of Cluny and Hugh of Farfa, surrounded Henry, while many lay nobles, even the Otbertines, and others friendly to Ardoin, also came to make submission.
In January 1014 Henry passed on to Ravenna. At Ravenna there reappeared, after ten years of obscurity, Bishop Leo of Vercelli. But beside him stood Abbot Hugh of Farfa, the man who had so firmly upheld in Italy the ideals of monasticism, resolved as ever both to combat vigorously the nobles, especially the Crescentian family who had annexed the possessions of his house, and to make his community a pattern of monastic discipline. Like many others, he had acquired his abbacy by unworthy means: partly in expiation of this offence, partly to get Henry's help against his enemies, he had resigned his office, though still deeply concerned for the prosperity of Farfa. His strenuous character, the moral dignity which placed him at the head of the abbots of Italy, and the identity of his aims for monasticism with those of the king, made Hugh an ally too important to be left aside. In Italy the monasteries supported Henry, and there he shewed them favour, especially Farfa with its command of the road to the south, without any of the reserve he had shewn in Germany.
At Ravenna a synod was convoked, the first business of which was to settle the disputed right to the archbishopric of Ravenna. Adalbert, its actual holder for the last ten years, was generally recognised in the Romagna; but Henry in 1013 had treated the see as vacant, and had nominated there to his own natural half-brother, Arnold. The intruder, however, failed to establish himself in possession, and now came back to be declared, with the authority of the Pope and the advice of the synod, the rightful archbishop. Thereupon followed the issue in Henry's name of decrees for the suppression of certain ecclesiastical abuses then prevalent in Italy: the simoniacal conferment of Holy Orders, the ordination of priests and deacons below the canonical age, the taking of money for the consecration of churches, and the acceptance by way of gift or pledge of any articles dedicated to sacred use. Of no less serious import for the Church and for the nation at large was the further decree that all bishops and abbots should make returns of the property alienated from their churches and abbeys, of the time and manner of the alienation, and of the names of the present holders. Such a record was a preliminary to any measure of restitution; but this could not fail to arouse the anger of the territorial lords, against whom chiefly it would be directed.
