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Rh policy was different from his father's. Conrad had been at strife with Aribert, the great Archbishop of Milan, but Henry before he left Germany made at Ingelheim (1039), as the Milanese historian tells us, "a pact of peace with the Archbishop, and was henceforth faithfully held in honour by him." But in 1045, when peace between the populace and nobles of Milan was hardly restored, Aribert died. Henry rejected the candidate put forward by the nobles and chose Guido supported by the democracy. Politics were intertwined with Church affairs, and Henry's dealings with the Papacy were the beginning of that church reform, which gave Rome a line of reforming German Popes and led to the Pontificate of Gregory VII. The story of that progress will come before us later, and this side of the history is therefore here left out. But it was the evil state of Rome, where the Tusculan Benedict IX, the Crescentian Sylvester III, and the reforming but simoniacal Gregory VI, had all lately contested the papal throne and the situation was entangled, that chiefly called Henry into Italy. By the end of October he was at Pavia, where he held a synod and dispensed justice to the laymen. At Sutri (20 December 1046) he held a second synod, in which the papal situation was dealt with and the papal throne itself left vacant. Two days later he entered Rome, where a third synod was held. No Roman priest was fit, we are told, to be made a Pope, and after Adalbert of Bremen refused Henry chose on Christmas Eve the Saxon Suidger of Bamberg, who after "was elected by clergy and people," and became Clement II.

On Christmas Day the new Pope was consecrated, and at once gave the Imperial crown to Henry; Agnes was also crowned Empress at the same time. Then too the Roman people made him "Patrician": the symbol of the Patriciate, a plain gold circlet, he often wore, and the office, of undoubted but disputed importance, gave the Emperor peculiar power in Rome and the right to control every papal election, if not to nominate the Pope himself. The new Patrician was henceforth officially responsible for order in the city; so it was fitting that, a week after his coronation, he was at Frascati, the headquarters of the Counts of Tusculum, and that, before leaving for the South, he seized the fortresses of the Crescentii in the Campagna. At Christmas-tide Clement II held his first synod at Rome, and it was significant of the new era in church affairs that simoniacs were excommunicated, and those knowingly ordained by simoniacs, although without themselves paying a price, sentenced to a penance of forty days; a leniency favoured by Peter Damiani as against those who would have had them deprived. After this the Empress went northwards to Ravenna, while the Emperor along with the Pope set out for the South.