Also around Rome, new disorders: and at the head, always the secular aristocracy. Tivoli rose up; the city of Rome rose up with Gregory of the counts of Tusculum. Emperor and pope had to flee in February 1001. Insurrections also in Tuscany, Ugo Marquis, the faithful supporter and friend of Otto III, died. Everything crumbled around the young gentleman after the brief dream. In 1002, the emperor also died. How wonderful if the political opposition then took on a certain national color, such as “Romans”, “Italians” against foreigners and Germans? Thus Arduino was able to resurrect, elected in Pavia from a diet of greats and crowned king of Italy, although his authority never asserted itself outside the north-western regions of Italy. But here is Henry II from Germany, of the same family from Saxony, inclined to the same policy in relations with the bishops, both in Italy and in Germany. He was recognized by the lords of north-eastern Italy; many bishops welcomed him well. He was thus able to take the royal crown from the archbishop of Milan in Pavia (1004). The night a battle broke out between citizens and Germans. And the king had to flee. Then, finally, the city motion was stifled. Arduino tries the test again, a few years later: and again Enrico goes down to Italy, strengthens his partisans, especially the bishops, helps them in claiming their assets, puts them in a position to be able to support themselves, after his departure, in the face of a return of Arduino, and to make vain, even if Arduino disappeared definitively, the intention of his followers to oppose Henry with a new king. Since then, no more kings of Italian origin, until the century. XIX. Crown of Italy and imperial crown, by now already united in the same person: almost like an annex of this one, they are fixed both on the head of the kings of Germany, the strongest at this moment among the various kings. of the restored empire.
According to ALLCOUNTRYLIST.COM, an important fact, for centuries, this almost definitive union of the Italic kingdom and the Germanic kingdom due to the common king and the close political relationship created by the empire. Germany was drawn to operate outside her borders, and to find her center almost outside of herself, to wear out many of her forces for ends not inherently of her own. In the absence of the emperors and kings, in their need to negotiate and settle with the German princes for having contributed to the Italian expeditions, these principles were strengthened, the local, dynastic and lineage particularisms were consolidated, the unitary effort of the king was made vain, Germany was organized in a large number of small and medium territorial states. Hence the regret of modern German historians and politicians, as if Germany bartered, with the ephemeral glory of the empire, the strength of the kingdom. Such historians and politicians, however, must not forget how much German spiritual life and culture have been solicited by these closest ties with the West and with Italy; do not forget how much the possession of the empire and the kingdom of Italy could give prestige and internal strength to many of those kings of Germany; how much they concurred, placing common goals before the eyes of all, to give unity to that kingdom undermined by the multiplicity and contrast of so many lineages and dynasties; how much they fed the nascent German national sentiment, by virtue of the multiple relationships and collisions with a world as different and hostile as the Italian one. But Italy was much more resentful of this union of kingdoms. Legally, no dependence of the kingdom of Italy from the kingdom of Germany. The two kingdoms each retained their own laws and institutions, within the empire that both, equally, comprised them. But since he was German king of Italy and emperor, that union was practically resolved, in vassalage of the kingdom of Italy to the kingdom of Germany. However, the peninsula also opened up to influences from beyond the Alps. German bishops came to settle in Italian churches; noble Saxon or Swabian or Bavarian knights, descended in the wake of kings and emperors, took up residence in Italy, largely endowed with benefits and offices, and brought new blood to the old Italian aristocracy. The marches of Verona and Aquileia, i.e. Trentino and Friuli and Istria, were aggregated to political bodies beyond the mountains, as a greater guarantee of access roads to Italy. Indeed, these north-eastern regions, where the action of the Saxons made themselves felt for a long time, where Henry II immediately found recognition and Aquileia became a center of irradiation of German influences; these regions underwent a certain process of Germanization, more or less superficial or profound. Peasants and small German nobility crept down the alpine valleys and dominated the castles of Friuli. Even more: foreign king meant more and more nominal royal power, due to his remoteness and discontinuity. Yes, of course, some kings of Italy between the tenth and twelfth centuries, strong in German forces, seem to restore vigor to the kingdom. But in the meantime he must more than ever, if he wants to count, rely on bishops and then on secular feudatories and then, a little, on cities, all aspiring to live autonomously: that is, digging the ground under his feet and almost denying himself. But in the meantime, as the national sentiment comes alive, the intolerance towards a sovereign who is a foreigner and surrounds himself with foreigners will grow in the Italians; and this impatience will result in the discrediting of the royal authority. Therefore, weaker kingdom, due to insanable weakness, even when conditions favorable to its reconstitution return elsewhere; detachment from the center and autonomy and life in itself of particular forces; some pale dawning of national conscience, which is colored by political contrasts. On the one hand, further dissolution of Italian political life; on the other hand, a more lively sense of one’s own ethnic individuality, a certain ideal unity that hints at being constituted or reconstituted. Complex facts: but to be traced back a little to the foreign dynasty and linked to foreigners.
