After Ravenna came Rome. On Sunday, 14 February 1014, he made his entry into the city amid applause. Twelve senators escorted the king and queen to the door of St Peter's, where the Pope and his clergy awaited them.
The two chiefs of Western Christendom, whose fortunes were to be closely linked together for the rest of their joint lives, now met for the first time. Benedict VIII was a man of vigorous, though not exalted, character; belonging to the turbulent Roman nobility, raised to the papal throne while yet a layman and after a faction contest, he was not likely to shew any real religious zeal. Though his life was free from scandal, Benedict shone, not as a churchman but as a man of action, whose principal aim was to recover for the Papacy its external dignity and its material power. Already he had repelled the Crescentians from Rome, and taken many of their castles in the Sabina. He had even wrested the duchy of Spoleto out of the hands of John, the elder nephew of the late Patricius. But these enemies, nevertheless, were still formidable, and it was not a mere formality when the Pope demanded of the king, before they entered the basilica, whether he would be a faithful patron and defender of the Roman Church, and be true in all points to himself and his successors. The pledge was heartily given, and then, within the church, Henry offered at the high altar the crown he had worn hitherto as king, and received unction and coronation as Roman Emperor at the hands of Benedict. Queen Kunigunda at the same time was crowned Empress. Soon afterwards the Pope confirmed Henry's acts and canons passed at Ravenna, Adalbert was deposed, and Arnold recognised as Archbishop of Ravenna.
Henry was on the point of starting for the south to force the Crescentii to disgorge the remnant still held of Farfa's lands, most of which Benedict had already regained for the monastery, when a sudden tumult broke out in Rome. After two days' riot the Germans were victorious but, nevertheless, Henry did not venture to remain longer in Rome. Only a week had passed since his coronation and already he had to make sure of his retreat. After another fruitless effort, therefore, to bring the case between the Crescentian brothers and the Abbot of Farfa to legal decision, the Emperor, with the concurrence of the Pope and the judges, as his last act invested Hugh with the possessions claimed from the Crescentii. Having charged Benedict to give actual effect to this decision, the Emperor left Rome.
Nearly two months Henry spent in securing his hold upon Tuscany, the fidelity of which province, as commanding the route between Lombardy and Rome, was of prime importance for him. Since the death in 1012 of the Marquess Boniface, an ineffective ruler and a dissolute man, the March had remained vacant; and Henry now gave it to Rainier, a Tuscan, who had lately, through the influence of the Pope, replaced the Crescentian John as Duke of Spoleto. Since the Marquess of Tuscany
