PETER IN CHAINS
(Henry's favourite foundation) and afterward consecrated a new church erected in honour of St. Stephen and received Communion together with the King. The two rulers also visited Fulda; and the fact that they travelled together was an expression of their agreement concerning the questions they discussed. The Pope, who for years had docilely carried out the Imperial will, was assured of German help in Southern Italy. The other matter of great moment was the reform in the spirit of Cluny, and this Henry had very much at heart. He was a fervent Christian, more so perhaps than the worldly, nationalistic Tus- can Pope; and as Emperor of Christendom he felt deeply attracted to the Benedictines. Simony and clerical marriage had made alarming headway, to the injury of the Church and of the State. Both evils were deeply related. If the ancient rule of priestly celibacy (this rule is spoken of as early as 300; and the practice of celibacy goes back much farther) were discarded then it would also be impossible to prevent the deeding of ecclesiastical property to the children of priests or to root out haggling over Church offices. The Empire, which since the reforms made under Otto the Great had counted on the personal obedience of prelates and their freedom from family ties, was now threatened with the emergence of a priestly caste. If the bishops, in so far as they were estate owners and princes, could bequeath their possessions and their dignity to legitimate sons according to the feudal law, it could, of course, not remain hidden from tender consciences that the conferring of spiritual dignities by the Emperor was at bottom also simonistic.
The struggle for this ultimate liberation of the Church and the intellect was still hidden in the future, when during 1022, soon after their meeting in Germany, Henry and the Pope both attended a Synod in Pavia in order to reach an agreement concerning reform. All priests were ordered under threat of dismissal to rid themselves of wives and concubines. Their children were declared serfs of the Church, which was never to raise them to the dignity of freemen. But during the year 1024 both Henry and Benedict died, and Rome was the victim of all the horrors of family strife over the Papacy.
Conrad II, the first Salian Emperor, was a strong man who brought good fortune to the Empire, but he was not a devoted son of the Church. He ordered the erection of the Cathedral of Speyer, but he
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