Adalbert of Bremen had all virtues and all gifts, save that he was of doubtful humility, humble only to the servants of God, to the poor and to pilgrims, but by no means so to princes nor to bishops; accusing one bishop of luxury, another of avarice. Even as a young man he had been haughty and overbearing in countenance and speech. His father, Count Frederick, was of a stock of ancient nobility in Saxony and Franconia. His mother Agnes, of the rising house of Weimar, had been brought up at Quedlinburg, and valued learning. Adalbert quickly rivalled, or more than rivalled, Archbishop Herman of Cologne in the councils and confidence of the king. He made many an expedition "with Caesar" into Hungary, Italy, Slavonia, and Flanders. He might at Sutri have had from Henry the gift of the Papacy, but that he saw greater possibilities in his northern see. His close connexion with the king caused him to be regarded with suspicion, indeed as a royal spy, by the great semi-loyal Duke of the North, the Saxon Bernard II. It was Adalbert who moved the bishop's seat from Bremen to Hamburg, "fertile mother of nations," to recompense her long sorrows, exposed to the assaults of Pagan Slavs.
But Henry was not only looking northwards. To this same congress he summoned to judgment one of the three great Italian prelates, Widger of Ravenna. He had, before his nomination by Henry to the see, been a canon of Cologne, and although unconsecrated, "had for two years inefficiently and cruelly wielded the episcopal staff." Wazo, the stalwart Bishop of Liège, famous as an early canonist, was one of the episcopal judges chosen, but without pronouncing on Widger's guilt, he significantly denied the right of Germans to try an Italian bishop, and protested against the royal usurpation of papal jurisdiction. This trial is the first sign either of clash between royal and ecclesiastical claims, or of Henry's preoccupation with Italy, where, while these things were doing, church corruption and reform were waging a louder and louder conflict. To Italy Henry was now to pass. Before doing so he once more visited Saxony and the North. At Quedlinburg he invested his little eight-year-old daughter Beatrice in place of the dead Abbess Adelaide, and at Merseburg he held court in June, receiving the visits and gifts of the princes of the North and East, Břatislav of Bohemia, Casimir of Poland and Zemuzil of the Pomeranians.
By the festival of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, 8 September 1046, he was at Augsburg, whither he had summoned bishops, lords, and knights to follow him to Italy. The news of the sudden downfall of Peter of Hungary grieved, but did not deter, him. Crossing the Brenner Pass, he reviewed his army before the city of Verona.
When Henry came to Italy (1046), he came to a realm where among the cities of Romagna and the hills of Tuscany a new age was coming into life. He had not visited Italy since he had accompanied his father in 1038, and now the state of things was greatly changed, while his own
