CORRADO II, EMPEROR, called the SALIAN. — When the Saxon dynasty died out with Enrico II in 1024, the choice fell upon the Frankish-Rhenish count C., who, born around 990 and a great-grandson, through his mother, of Ottone il Grande, thus became the founder of the Salian dynasty. Disorders broke out in Lorraine and in Italy; while the succession to the kingdom of Burgundy brought C. into conflict with other German and French princes, the collapse of the great Polish kingdom upon the death of Boleslao opened broad possibilities for action in the eastern lands; C. established agreements with the Bohemians and the Russians of Kiev. Having settled the affairs of Germany, he accepted the invitation of Ariberto, archbishop of Milan, and descended into Italy in the spring of 1026. Pavia remained hostile because of the disputes that had arisen under Enrico II, and the coronation was held in Milan, and the following year in Rome, at the hands of Giovanni XIX on 26 March 1027. After an ineffective expedition into the Mezzogiorno, where Norman infiltration was beginning, C. returned to Germany and in 1035 was able to secure Burgundy for the Empire, against the ambitions of Oddone di Champagne. In 1037 he returned to Italy: this time the archbishop Ariberto was hostile and the Pavians favorable.
Unlike Enrico II, no scruple prevented him, in ecclesiastical affairs,
from attending to political interests without concern for ecclesiastical prescriptions, and he favored the simoniacal schemes of the most unscrupulous figures, tolerating the tiara’s coming into the possession of a scion of the Tusculans, Benedetto IX (v.), in order to use it for his own ends. He nevertheless knew how to draw new forces into the service of the Crown, relying, against the high nobility, on the lesser nobility and, above all, on the ministeriales, whom he employed in military enterprises and offices. The most noteworthy act of the new expedition into Italy was the Constitutio di feudis of 1037, which guaranteed the hereditary nature of fiefs. Having failed in his siege of Milan and having renewed, with virtually no success, an attempt to assert his authority in Campania, he crossed the Alps again and went to die at Utrecht on 4 June 1039.