tion or exchange without the tenant's consent is prohibited; the Emperor's right to the fodrum "as it was taken by our ancestors" is affirmed. Finally, a penalty of a hundred pounds of gold, to be paid half to the imperial treasury, half to the injured party, is enjoined for disobedience. By these concessions the Emperor bound to his interests the strongest and most numerous military class in North Italy, and at the same time struck a blow at the dangerously powerful position of the Lombard episcopate.
The heat of the summer prevented any serious campaigning for some months. The siege of Milan was raised, the army dispersed. The Emperor, however, did not relinquish his efforts to overthrow the Archbishop of Milan; in spite of the remonstrances of his son and many others, he took the unprecedented step of deposing Aribert without reference to an ecclesiastical synod. The Papacy was weak and submissive; John XIX had allowed himself to be inscribed in a document among the fideles of the Emperor[1]. He was now dead (1033), and his nephew, a bad man certainly, but not so bad as he is painted in the scurrilous party literature of the succeeding generation, young perhaps, but not the mere boy of twelve he is usually accounted[2], was raised to the pontificate under the name of Benedict IX. He, no doubt, cared little for the duties incumbent on his office; at all events, when he visited the Emperor at Cremona, he made no protest against the uncanonical action of Conrad. Aribert retaliated by organising a conspiracy with Conrad's enemy and late rival for the throne of Burgundy, Odo of Blois. But it soon collapsed; after two incursions into Lorraine, Odo was defeated and killed at Bar on 15 November 1037 by Duke Gozelo. The three Lombard bishops of Vercelli, Cremona, and Piacenza, who were implicated, were banished to Germany.
Towards the end of the year Conrad again took the field, this time with the object of ordering the affairs of the southern principalities. On his march southward the burghers of Parma revolted and were punished by the destruction of their city (Christmas). At Spello the Emperor had another interview with the Pope, who now imposed the sentence of excommunication on the Archbishop of Milan (Easter 1038). It was probably also on this occasion that a constant source of confusion and trouble in the Roman courts was removed; this was the indiscriminate use of Lombard and Roman law, which gave rise to endless disputes between Lombard and Roman judges. The Emperor's edict now established that in Rome and Roman territory all cases should be determined according to Roman law.
- ↑ "Qualiter nos communi fidelium nostrorum decreto, pape scilicet Johannis et Popponis patriarche venerabilis, Aribonis Moguntini archiepiscopi," etc. Cf. Bresslau I. 148, n. 4.
- ↑ See the suggestion of R. L. Poole ("Benedict IX and Gregory VI," Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VIII. p. 217) that Rodulf Glaber misread a statement that Benedict had been Pope per ann. xii. for puer ann. xii.
