Page:Cambridge Medieval History Volume 3.pdf/297

254 views both in ecclesiastical and secular politics were diametrically opposed to his own. Yet this very fact of his antagonism to the reforming movement induced Aribo, Archbishop of Mayence, and the bulk of the episcopate, jealous and suspicious of the progress of Cluniac ideas in Germany, to throw the whole weight of their influence in support of his candidature. The election took place on the Rhine between Mayence and Worms on 4 September 1024. Before it took place the elder Conrad had a meeting with his cousin and apparently induced him to withdraw from the contest.

Conrad the Elder, left in undisputed possession of the field (for the party of his late rival, the Lorrainers, rather than give him their votes, had retired from the assembly), was elected unanimously, and received from the hands of the widowed Empress Kunigunda, the royal insignia, committed by her husband to her care. The election was a popular one. Princes and people, spiritual and secular, thronged to Mayence to attend the coronation festival. "If Charles the Great himself had been alive and present," writes Conrad's enthusiastic biographer, "the rejoicing could not have been exceeded." The ceremony of coronation was performed on 8 September by Aribo in the cathedral of Mayence and was followed by the customary state banquet and by the taking of the oath of fealty by the bishops, nobles, and even, we are told, by other freemen of distinction. One incident marred the general serenity of the proceedings; Conrad's marriage in 1017 with Gisela, the widow successively of Bruno of Brunswick and of Ernest II of Swabia, being within the prohibited degrees, was not sanctioned by the Church. Aribo denied her the crown; and it was only after an interval of some days that Archbishop Pilgrim of Cologne, desirous of making his peace with the king he had opposed, offered to perform the ceremony in his cathedral at Cologne.

The princes of Lorraine, among them Gozelo and Dietrich, the Dukes, of the lower and upper provinces, Reginar V, the powerful Count of Hainault, and the greater number of the bishops, had, as we have seen, resisted Conrad's election, and after the event had denied him recognition. The bishops adopted this attitude on account of Conrad's lack of sympathy with the movement of reform in the Church; when, however, their