November 1021 Henry left Augsburg for Italy: early in December he reached Verona, where Italian princes joined his Lorrainers, Swabians and Bavarians: among them were the Bavarian Poppo, Patriarch of Aquileia, and the distinguished Aribert, since 1018 Archbishop of Milan. Leo of Vercelli of course was there, and if some lay magnates kept away others made a welcome appearance. Christmas Henry spent at Ravenna and in January moved southwards. Before he reached Benevento Benedict joined him. The army marched in three divisions and the one which Pilgrim of Cologne commanded met with brilliant successes, taking Capua. Henry himself was delayed for three months by the fortress of Troia, built with almost communal privileges by the Catapan in 1018 to guard the Byzantine province and strong enough to surrender on merely nominal terms. But sickness had assailed the Germans and after visiting Rome Henry came in July to Pavia. So far he had made Rome safer and had subjugated the Lombard states. Then in a synod at Pavia (1 August 1022) with Benedict's help he turned to church reform. Clerical marriage, as common in Lombardy as in Germany, was denounced. And the ever growing poverty of the Church was also noted: lands had been alienated and married clerics were trying to endow their families. As at Goslar it was decided that the wives and children of unfree priests were also serfs, and could thus not hold land. These ecclesiastical decrees, meant to be of general force although passed in a scanty synod, the Emperor embodied in an imperial decree. Leo of Vercelli probably drafted alike the papal speech and the imperial decree and he was the first bishop to enforce the canons.
Then in the autumn of 1022 Henry returned to his kingdom. The following Easter he sent Gerard of Cambray and Richard of St Vannes to beg Robert of France to become his partner in church reform. The two kings met (11 August) at Ivois just within Germany. It was agreed to call an assembly at Pavia of both German and Italian bishops: the assembly would thus represent the old Carolingian realm.
But now Germany was not ecclesiastically at peace either within itself or with the Pope, Aribo of Mayence, on the death of his suffragan Bernward of Hildesheim, had revived the old claim to authority over Gandersheim. But Henry had taken sides with the new Bishop, Godehard of Altaich, although his settlement left irritation behind. Aribo had also a more important quarrel with Pope Benedict arising out of a marriage.
Count Otto of Hammerstein, a great noble of Franconia, had married Irmingard, although they were related within the prohibited degrees. Episcopal censure was disregarded: excommunication by a synod at Nimeguen (March 1018), enforced by the Emperor and the Archbishop of Mayence, only brought Otto to temporary submission. Two years later, after rejoining Irmingard, he attacked in revenge the territory of Mayence. At length his disregard of synod and of Emperor alike forced Henry to
