According to Timedictionary, the Kingdom of Italy joins the Kingdom of Germany in its fortunes. Trentino, Friuli and Istria are organized into German fiefdoms to better ensure communication between the two kingdoms. Consolidated his authority in Germany and in Italy direction, Ottone also turns to the Italy southern. But, after some initial successes, he only manages to conclude a marriage between the Byzantine princess Theophane and her son and heir Otto II.
982: Otto II is defeated in Stilo by the Saracens and the imperial policy towards Italy fails. southern.
983: on the death of Otto II, his son Otto III succeeds him, and the classical education received by his mother Theophane and the tutor Gerberto di Aurillac (future Pope Sivestro II) pushes him to renovatio Imperii, which, in order to restore the ancient glories of Christian and imperial Rome, induces him to transfer the capital of his substantially Germanic empire directly to Rome, with the only practical result of a more systematic subjection of the ecclesiastical body to the imperial will and a more open aiding and abetting of the bishops to damage of secular feudality.
1004: Arduino d’Ivrea, after the death of Otto III (1002) at the helm of secular feudalism in revolt against the power of the bishops-counts, is defeated by the Emperor Henry II: thus the last attempt to reconstitute a independent kingdom.
11th century
Starting from the year 1000, Italian history becomes more complex, with the participation of new and more numerous actors: cities and all those social forces that meet and clash in the city. Significant is the withdrawal of the Saracens from the Mediterranean under the energetic offensive of the maritime cities, Amalfi, Naples, Gaeta, Pisa, Genoa, Venice; but it is above all in the North that this impetuous citizen movement is imposed; with the decline of Pavia, Milan acquires ever greater autonomy inside and prestige outside. ● 1037: the Constitutio de feudis, issued by the Emperor Conrad II, ensures the inheritance of their benefits and imperial protection to the small feudal lords. It is a blow to the great ecclesiastical hierarchy, from which the emperor is breaking away; the city populations take advantage of this to expand and consolidate their autonomy.
1059: concordat of Melfi. The pope grants all the Italy southern in vassalage to the Normans, whose power constitutes a danger to the papacy itself, having in exchange military assistance in the fight against the emperor. With the papal recognition and investiture, which constitute the legitimacy of the previous usurpations and conquests, the Normans resumed their work of political unification of the whole South with renewed vigor, also giving it a religious color, especially in the conquest of Muslim Sicily and in the elimination of the last Byzantine bastions. The Roman curia must accept the rapid advance of these allies-enemies, who thus complete the conquest of the South.
1098: Urban II grants Count Roger rights which make him a sort of apostolic legate with regard to the Sicilian Church and which will be extended by Pasquale II and Eugenio III.
In Italy, where the influence of the ecclesiastical order is deeper and more effective, where the ideals of the Reformation are more lively and dynamic and the ferments and impulses for social renewal are more vigorous, the reform movement radiated by Cluny reaches a particular intensity. In the struggle of the investitures, with the religious motive (the rebellion of the faithful against the unworthy and simoniacal bishops) the socio-political rebellion of the lower classes against their own lord is confused. Encouraged by the consensus that reached it from all over, strengthened by the imposing influx of new and impetuous religious energies, the Church, from Leo IX to Stephen IX, to Niccolò II, always under the pressure of the tireless action of the monk Hildebrand (later pope Gregory VII), with a continuous crescendo of disciplinary provisions, decrees,
Late 11th century: in the Italy In the north, the clash between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV involves not only secular and ecclesiastical feudality, but also the people of the cities and countryside, which in the alternating vicissitudes of victories and defeats of the protagonists is increasingly felt. Pope and emperor compete in the granting of privileges and diplomas to the cities to have them at their side in the struggle. The split that occurred within the Italian (and also German) episcopate took the form of a schism between Gregory VII and Urban II, on the one hand, and Clement III (Guibert of Ravenna, elected Roman pontiff by Henry IV), on the other.
