Page:Cambridge Medieval History Volume 3.pdf/318

Rh power in Italy had been made a reality, and an important first step had been taken here towards incorporating the hitherto elusive South, and towards absorbing the new-comers, the Normans. On the north-eastern frontiers of the Empire both March and Mission were suffering from long neglect. Poland had been divided and weakened, and turned from aggression to an equally dangerous anarchy: Bohemia had recently slipped into hostility: Hungary was tranquil, but scarcely friendly. In the North the Danish alliance tended to stability. In the duchies of Germany itself, Lorraine was indeed growing over-powerful, but Bavaria, Swabia and (a few months later) Carinthia were held by the Crown; Saxony was quiescent, though scarcely loyal; in Germany as a whole the people and the mass of fighting landowners looked to the Crown for protection and security. The Church, as under Henry II, was a State-department, and the main support of the throne.

Over this realm, Henry, in the summer of 1039, assumed full sway, as German, Italian, and Burgundian king, Duke of Swabia and of Bavaria, and "Imperator in Spe." The Salian policy of concentrating the tribal duchies in the hands of the sovereign was at its height.

In his father's funeral train, bearing the coffin in city after city, from church-porch to altar, and finally at Spires, from the altar to the tomb, Henry the Pious inaugurated his reign. A young man in his twenty-second or twenty-third year, head and shoulders taller than his subjects, the temper of his mind is seen in his sending away cold and empty the jugglers and jesters who swarmed to Ingelheim for the wedding festivities of his second bride, Agnes of Poitou, and in his words to Abbot Hugh of Cluny, that only in solitude and far from the business of the world could men really commune with God.

The re-establishment of the German kingship, after the disintegration caused by the attacks of Northmen and Magyars, had been a gradual and difficult process. For the moulding of a real unity, not even yet attained, there was need of the king's repeated presence and direct action in all parts of the realm. What Norman and Plantagenet rulers were to do later in England by means of their royal commissioners, judges and justices, the German king had to do in person.

Following in this the policy of his predecessors, Henry opened his reign with a systematic progress throughout his realm, a visitation accompanied by unceasing administrative activity. He had already, before leaving the Netherlands, received the homage of Gozelo, Duke of both Lorraines; of Gerard, the royalist-minded and most energetic bishop of Cambray; and of a deputation of Burgundian magnates who had been waiting on Conrad in Utrecht when death overcame him. He had passed with the funeral procession through Cologne, Mayence, Worms, and Spires. Immediately after the conclusion of the obsequies he returned to Lower Lorraine, to Aix-la-Chapelle and Maestricht, where he remained some eight or nine days, dealing justice to the many who demanded it. Thence he went to