Rome
Rome is the capital city and a special comune of Italy. Rome serves as the capital of the Lazio region. With 2,872,800 residents in 1,285 km2, it is the country's most populated comune, it is the fourth most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4,355,725 residents, thus making it the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber; the Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been defined as capital of two states. Rome's history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe; the city's early population originated from a mix of Latins and Sabines.
The city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, is regarded by some as the first metropolis. It was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, the expression was taken up by Ovid and Livy. Rome is called the "Caput Mundi". After the fall of the Western Empire, which marked the beginning of the Middle Ages, Rome fell under the political control of the Papacy, in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. Beginning with the Renaissance all the popes since Nicholas V pursued over four hundred years a coherent architectural and urban programme aimed at making the city the artistic and cultural centre of the world. In this way, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, creating masterpieces throughout the city.
In 1871, Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, which, in 1946, became the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city. In 2016, Rome ranked as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, the most popular tourist attraction in Italy, its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The famous Vatican Museums are among the world's most visited museums while the Colosseum was the most popular tourist attraction in world with 7.4 million visitors in 2018. Host city for the 1960 Summer Olympics, Rome is the seat of several specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development; the city hosts the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean as well as the headquarters of many international business companies such as Eni, Enel, TIM, Leonardo S.p. A. and national and international banks such as Unicredit and BNL.
Its business district, called EUR, is the base of many companies involved in the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, financial services. Rome is an important fashion and design centre thanks to renowned international brands centered in the city. Rome's Cinecittà Studios have been the set of many Academy Award–winning movies. According to the founding myth of the city by the Ancient Romans themselves, the long-held tradition of the origin of the name Roma is believed to have come from the city's founder and first king, Romulus. However, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was derived from Rome itself; as early as the 4th century, there have been alternative theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. Several hypotheses have been advanced focusing on its linguistic roots which however remain uncertain: from Rumon or Rumen, archaic name of the Tiber, which in turn has the same root as the Greek verb ῥέω and the Latin verb ruo, which both mean "flow". There is archaeological evidence of human occupation of the Rome area from 14,000 years ago, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites.
Evidence of stone tools and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence. Several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the bronze age and the beginning of the Iron age, each hill between the sea and the Capitol was topped by a village. However, none of them had yet an urban quality. Nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city developed through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine; this aggregation was facilitated by the increase of agricultural productivity above the subsistence level, which allowed the establishment of secondary and tertiary activities. These in turn boosted the development of trade with the Greek colonies of southern Italy; these developments, which according to archaeological ev
Excommunication
Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular receiving of the sacraments. The term is historically used to refer to excommunications from the Catholic Church, but it is used more to refer to similar types of institutional religious exclusionary practices and shunning among other religious groups. For instance, many Protestant denominations, such as the Lutheran Churches, have similar practices of excusing congregants from church communities, while Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as the Churches of Christ, use the term "disfellowship" to refer to their form of excommunication; the Amish have been known to excommunicate members that were either seen or known for breaking rules, or questioning the church. The word excommunication means putting a specific group out of communion. In some denominations, excommunication includes spiritual condemnation of the group.
Excommunication may involve banishment and shaming, depending on the group, the offense that caused excommunication, or the rules or norms of the religious community. The grave act is revoked in response to sincere penance, which may be manifested through public recantation, sometimes through the Sacrament of Confession, piety or through mortification of the flesh. Within the Catholic Church, there are differences between the discipline of the majority Latin Church regarding excommunication and that of the Eastern Catholic Churches. In Latin Catholic canon law, excommunication is a applied censure and thus a "medicinal penalty" intended to invite the person to change behaviour or attitude and return to full communion, it is not an "expiatory penalty" designed to make satisfaction for the wrong done, much less a "vindictive penalty" designed to punish: "excommunication, the gravest penalty of all and the most frequent, is always medicinal", is "not at all vindictive". Excommunication can be either latae ferendae sententiae.
According to Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki, "excommunication does not expel the person from the Catholic Church, but forbids the excommunicated person from engaging in certain activities..." These activities are listed in Canon 1331 §1, prohibit the individual from any ministerial participation in celebrating the sacrifice of the Eucharist or any other ceremonies of worship. Under current Catholic canon law, excommunicates remain bound by ecclesiastical obligations such as attending Mass though they are barred from receiving the Eucharist and from taking an active part in the liturgy. "Excommunicates lose rights, such as the right to the sacraments, but they are still bound to the obligations of the law. They are urged to retain a relationship with the Church, as the goal is to encourage them to repent and return to active participation in its life; these are the only effects for those. For instance, a priest may not refuse Communion publicly to those who are under an automatic excommunication, as long as it has not been declared to have been incurred by them if the priest knows that they have incurred it.
On the other hand, if the priest knows that excommunication has been imposed on someone or that an automatic excommunication has been declared, he is forbidden to administer Holy Communion to that person.. In the Catholic Church, excommunication is resolved by a declaration of repentance, profession of the Creed and an Act of Faith, or renewal of obedience by the excommunicated person and the lifting of the censure by a priest or bishop empowered to do this. "The absolution can be in the internal forum only, or in the external forum, depending on whether scandal would be given if a person were absolved and yet publicly considered unrepentant." Since excommunication excludes from reception of the sacraments, absolution from excommunication is required before absolution can be given from the sin that led to the censure. In many cases, the whole process takes place on a single occasion in the privacy of the confessional. For some more serious wrongdoings, absolution from excommunication is reserved to a bishop, another ordinary, or the Pope.
These can delegate a priest to act on their behalf. Interdict is a censure similar to excommunication, it too excludes from ministerial functions in public worship and from reception of the sacraments, but not from the exercise of governance. In the Eastern Catholic Churches, excommunications is imposed only by decree, never incurred automatically by latae sententiae excommunication. A distinction is made between major excommunication; those on whom minor excommunication has been imposed are excluded from receiving the Eucharist and can be excluded from participating in the Divine Liturgy. They can be excluded from entering a church when divine worship is being celebrated there; the decree of excommunication must indicate the precise effect of the excommunication and, if required, its duration. Those under major excommunication
Ostrogoths
The Ostrogoths were the eastern branch of the older Goths. The Ostrogoths traced their origins to the Greutungi – a branch of the Goths who had migrated southward from the Baltic Sea and established a kingdom north of the Black Sea, during the 3rd and 4th centuries, they built an empire stretching from the Black Sea to the Baltic. The Ostrogoths were literate in the 3rd century, their trade with the Romans was developed, their Danubian kingdom reached its zenith under King Ermanaric, said to have committed suicide at an old age when the Huns attacked his people and subjugated them in about 370. After their annexation by the Huns, little is heard of the Ostrogoths for about 80 years, after which they reappear in Pannonia on the middle Danube River as federates of the Romans. After the collapse of the Hun empire after the Battle of Nedao, Ostrogoths migrated westwards towards Illyria and the borders of Italy, while some remained in the Crimea. During the late 5th and 6th centuries, under Theodoric the Great most of the Ostrogoths moved first to Moesia and conquered the Kingdom of Italy of the Germanic warrior Odoacer.
In 493, Theodoric the Great established a kingdom in Italy. A period of instability ensued, tempting the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian to declare war on the Ostrogoths in 535 in an effort to restore the former western provinces of the Roman Empire; the Byzantines were successful, but under the leadership of Totila, the Goths reconquered most of the lost territory until Totila's death at the Battle of Taginae. The war lasted for 21 years and caused enormous damage and depopulation of Italy; the remaining Ostrogoths were absorbed into the Lombards who established a kingdom in Italy in 568. A division of the Goths is first attested in 291; the Tervingi are first attested around that date. The Greuthungi are first named by Ammianus Marcellinus, writing no earlier than 392 and later than 395, basing his account on the words of a Tervingian chieftain, attested as early as 376; the Ostrogoths are first named in a document dated September 392 from Milan. Claudian mentions. According to Herwig Wolfram, the primary sources either use the terminology of Tervingi/Greuthungi or Vesi/Ostrogothi and never mix the pairs.
All four names were used together, but the pairing was always preserved, as in Gruthungi, Tervingi, Vesi. That the Tervingi were the Vesi/Visigothi and the Greuthungi the Ostrogothi is supported by Jordanes, he identified the Visigothic kings from Alaric I to Alaric II as the heirs of the fourth-century Tervingian king Athanaric and the Ostrogothic kings from Theodoric the Great to Theodahad as the heirs of the Greuthungian king Ermanaric. This interpretation, though common among scholars today, is not universal. According to the Jordanes' Getica, around 400 the Ostrogoths were ruled by Ostrogotha and derived their name from this "father of the Ostrogoths", but modern historians assume the converse, that Ostrogotha was named after the people. Both Herwig Wolfram and Thomas Burns conclude that the terms Tervingi and Greuthungi were geographical identifiers used by each tribe to describe the other; this terminology therefore dropped out of use after the Goths were displaced by the Hunnic invasions.
In support of this, Wolfram cites Zosimus as referring to a group of "Scythians" north of the Danube who were called "Greuthungi" by the barbarians north of the Ister. Wolfram asserts, he further believes that the terms "Vesi" and "Ostrogothi" were used by the peoples to boastfully describe themselves. On this understanding, the Greuthungi and Ostrogothi were less the same people; the nomenclature of Greuthungi and Tervingi fell out of use shortly after 400. In general, the terminology of a divided Gothic people disappeared after they entered the Roman Empire; the term "Visigoth", was an invention of the sixth century. Cassiodorus, a Roman in the service of Theodoric the Great, invented the term Visigothi to match Ostrogothi, which terms he thought of as "western Goths" and "eastern Goths" respectively; the western-eastern division was a simplification and a literary device of sixth-century historians where political realities were more complex. Furthermore, Cassiodorus used the term "Goths" to refer only to the Ostrogoths, whom he served, reserved the geographical term "Visigoths" for the Gallo-Hispanic Goths.
This usage, was adopted by the Visigoths themselves in their communications with the Byzantine Empire and was in use in the seventh century. Other names for the Goths abounded. A "Germanic" Byzantine or Italian author referred to one of the two peoples as the Valagothi, meaning "Roman Goths". In 484 the Ostrogoths had been called the Valameriaci because they followed Theodoric, a descendant of Valamir; this terminology survived in the Byzantine East as late as the reign of Athalaric, called του Ουαλεμεριακου by John Malalas. The Gothic name makes its first appearance sometime between 16 and 18 AD with earlier indications related to the Guti of Scandia or attributable to the Gutones. Procopius wrote of the Gauts in Thule and Cassiodorus mentioned the Gauthigoths amid his list of Scandinavian peoples. Two distinct groups of Gothic peoples are first attested to in 291, the western Tervingi-Vesi and the eastern Greutungi-Ostrogothi. "Greuthungi" may mean "steppe dwellers" or "people of t
Crescentius the Younger
Crescentius the Younger, son of Crescentius the Elder, was a leader of the aristocracy of medieval Rome. During the minority of Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, he declared himself Consul of Rome and made himself de facto ruler of Rome. After being deposed, he led a rebellion, seized control of Rome, appointed an antipope, but the rebellion failed and Crescentius was executed; the aspirations of the Roman aristocracy did not vanish with the death of the older Crescentius. The latter left a son called Crescentius, who after the death of Boniface VII took the reins of power in his hands. Circumstances seemed to be favourable; the Emperor Otto III was still a child, the empress mother, although an energetic princess, was absent from Rome. Crescentius the Younger took the title of Patricius Romanorum, by which he meant to express that he was ruler in Rome, though not altogether independent of the imperial authority, it is quite that the election of Pope John XV, who succeeded Boniface VII, was accomplished with the participation of Crescentius, although the particulars of that election are unknown.
In some of the official documents of the time, issued by the pope, the name of Crescentius and his title of Patricius appear together with the name of John XV. When the Empress Theophanu came to Rome in 989, she conducted herself as empress and sovereign, while leaving Crescentius his subordinate position. Meanwhile, the young Emperor Otto III assumed the reins of government, in 996 made his first journey to Italy, induced by various considerations by the appeals of Pope John XV. However, death overtook the pope at the beginning of 996, before Otto reached Rome; the Romans and their leader, did not care at this time to nominate a successor to the deceased pope. They sent a delegation to the emperor with the request that he provide a suitable candidate for the Holy See. Otto III was at Ravenna. After a consultation with his counsellors he chose his own cousin, Bruno, a young ecclesiastic, only twenty-three years of age, who seemed to have the necessary qualifications. Early in May he was consecrated at Rome as Gregory V.
A few weeks afterwards Otto III. On 25 May the pope and the Emperor held in St. Peter's a synod, at the same time a high court of justice; the rebellious Romans, including Crescentius, who had embittered the last years of the pontificate of Pope John XV, were summoned to give an account of their doings. The result was. Pope Gregory V, who wished to inaugurate his pontificate with acts of mercy, pleaded for the guilty, the Emperor withdrew his sentence of exile. Crescentius was permitted to live in retirement at Rome; the clemency shown to Crescentius by the pope was repaid with deeds of violence. Only a few months after the departure of the emperor for Germany a revolt broke out in Rome under the leadership of Crescentius; the foreign pope and the many foreign officers installed throughout the Papal States were offensive in the sight of the Romans. In September, 996, the pope was forced to flee with only a few attendants. At Pavia he held a synod in February, 996, in which he pronounced sentence of excommunication against Crescentius, the usurper and invader of the Church of Rome.
Crescentius, far from being moved by these proceedings against him, completed his work of rebellion by appointing an antipope, Johannes Philagathos, Bishop of Piacenza, who had just returned from an embassy to Constantinople on behalf of Emperor Otto III. In April 997, he assumed the title of Pope John XVI. In February 998, Otto III returned to Rome with Pope Gregory V and took possession of the city without much difficulty; the antipope sought safety in flight, while Crescentius shut himself up in Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome. John XVI was soon captured by the emissaries of the Emperor. At the intercession of Saint Nilus the Younger, one of his countrymen, his life was spared: he was sent to the monastery of Fulda, in Germany, where he died about 1001. Towards the end of April Castel Sant'Angelo was taken. Afterwards his remains were interred in the church of S. Pancrazio on the Janiculum. Otto took the wife of Crescentius to be his concubine. Execution of Crescentius. A poem by Letitia Elizabeth Landon in the Literary Gazette, 1823.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed.. "Crescentius". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton
Robert II of France
Robert II, called the Pious or the Wise, was King of the Franks from 996 to 1031, the second from the House of Capet. He was born in Orléans to Hugh Adelaide of Aquitaine. Robert distinguished himself with an extraordinarily long reign for the time, his 35-year-long reign was marked by his attempts to expand the royal domain by any means by his long struggle to gain the Duchy of Burgundy. His policies earned him many enemies, including three of his sons, he was known for his difficult marriages: he married three times, annulling two of these and attempting to annul the third, prevented only by the Pope's refusal to accept a third annulment. After his own coronation, Robert's father Hugh began to push for the coronation of his son. "The essential means by which the early Capetians were seen to have kept the throne in their family was through the association of the eldest surviving son in the royalty during the father's lifetime," Andrew W. Lewis has observed, in tracing the phenomenon in this line of kings who lacked dynastic legitimacy.
Hugh's claimed reason was that he was planning an expedition against the Moorish armies harassing Borrel II of Barcelona, an invasion which never occurred, that the stability of the country necessitated a co-king, should he die while on expedition. Ralph Glaber, attributes Hugh's request to his old age and inability to control the nobility. Modern scholarship has imputed to Hugh the motive of establishing a dynasty against the claims of electoral power on the part of the aristocracy, but this is not the typical view of contemporaries and some modern scholars have been less sceptical of Hugh's "plan" to campaign in Spain. Robert was crowned on 25 December 987. A measure of Hugh's success is that when Hugh died in 996, Robert continued to reign without any succession dispute, but during his long reign actual royal power dissipated into the hands of the great territorial magnates. Robert had begun to take on active royal duties with his father in the early 990s. In 991, he helped his father prevent the French bishops from trekking to Mousson in the Kingdom of Germany for a synod called by Pope John XV, with whom Hugh was in disagreement.
As early as 989, having been rebuffed in his search for a Byzantine princess, Hugh Capet arranged for Robert to marry Rozala, the widowed daughter of Berengar II of Italy, many years his senior, who took the name of Susanna upon becoming queen. She was the widow of Arnulf II of Flanders, with. Robert divorced her within a year of his father's death in 996, he tried instead to marry Bertha, daughter of Conrad of Burgundy, around the time of his father's death. She was a widow of Odo I of Blois, but was Robert's cousin. For reasons of consanguinity, Pope Gregory V refused to sanction the marriage, Robert was excommunicated. After long negotiations with Gregory's successor, Sylvester II, the marriage was annulled. In 1001, Robert entered into his final and longest-lasting marriage—to Constance of Arles, the daughter of William I of Provence, her southern customs and entourage were regarded with suspicion at court. After his companion Hugh of Beauvais urged the king to repudiate her as well, knights of her kinsman Fulk III, Count of Anjou had Beauvais murdered.
The king and Bertha went to Rome to ask Pope Sergius IV for an annulment so they could remarry. After this was refused, he fathered several children by her, her ambition alienated the chroniclers of her day, who blamed her for several of the king's decisions. Constance and Robert remained married until his death in 1031. Robert was a devout Catholic, hence his sobriquet "the Pious." He was musically inclined, being a composer and poet, made his palace a place of religious seclusion where he conducted the matins and vespers in his royal robes. Robert's reputation for piety resulted from his lack of toleration for heretics, whom he harshly punished, he is said to have advocated forced conversions of local Jewry. He supported riots against the Jews of Orléans who were accused of conspiring to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Robert reinstated the Roman imperial custom of burning heretics at the stake. In 1030–1031, Robert confirmed the foundation of Noyers Abbey; the kingdom Robert inherited was not large and, in an effort to increase his power, he vigorously pursued his claim to any feudal lands that became vacant resulting in war with a counter-claimant.
In 1003, his invasion of the Duchy of Burgundy was thwarted, it would not be until 1016 that he was able to get the support of the Church to be recognized as Duke of Burgundy. The pious Robert made few friends and many enemies, including three of his own sons: Hugh and Robert, they turned against their father in a civil war over property. Hugh died in revolt in 1025. In a conflict with Henry and the younger Robert, King Robert's army was defeated, he retreated to Beaugency outside Paris, his capital, he died in the middle of the war with his sons on 20 July 1031 at Melun. He was interred with Constance in Saint Denis Basilica and succeeded by his son Henry, in both France and Burgundy. Robert had no children from his short-lived marriage to Susanna, his illegal marriage to Bertha gave him one stillborn son in 999, but only Constance gave him surviving children: Hedwig, Countess of Auxerre, married Renauld I, Count of Nevers on 25 January 1016 and had issue. Hugh Magnus, co-king Henry I, successor Adela, Countess of Flanders, married Richard III of Normandy and Count Baldwin V of F
Bishops of Rome under Constantine I
Constantine I's relationship with the four Bishops of Rome during his reign is an important component of the history of the Papacy, more the history of the Catholic Church. The legend surrounding Constantine I's victory in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge relates his vision of the Chi Rho and the text in hoc signo vinces in the sky and his reproducing this symbol on the shields of his troops; the following year Constantine and Licinius proclaimed the toleration of Christianity with the Edict of Milan, in 325 Constantine convened and presided over the First Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council. None of this, has much to do with the popes, who did not attend the Council. Moreover, between 324 and 330, he built Constantinople as a new capital for the empire, and—with no apologies to the Roman community of Christians—relocated key Roman families and translated many Christian relics to the new churches; the Donation of Constantine, an 8th-century forgery used to enhance the prestige and authority of popes, places the pope more centrally in the narrative of Constantinian Christianity.
The legend of the Donation claims that Constantine offered his crown to Sylvester I, that Sylvester baptized Constantine. In reality, Constantine was baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia, unlike the pope, was an Arian bishop. Sylvester was succeeded by Julius I during the life of Constantine. Although the "Donation" never occurred, Constantine did hand over the Lateran Palace to the bishop of Rome, begin the construction of Old Saint Peter's Basilica; the gift of the Lateran occurred during the reign of Miltiades, Sylvester I's predecessor, who began using it as his residence. Old St. Peter's was begun between 326 and 330 and would have taken three decades to complete, long after the death of Constantine. Constantine's legalization of Christianity, combined with the donation of these properties, gave the bishop of Rome an unprecedented level of temporal power, for the first time creating an incentive for secular leaders to interfere with papal succession. In spite of the Diocletian Persecution, Christians constituted one-tenth of the population of the Roman Empire at the time of Constantine's rise to power.
Christianity was legalized by Galerius, the first emperor to issue an edict of toleration for all religious creeds including Christianity in April 311. Eamon Duffy characterizes the church in Rome before Constantine as "not one congregation, but a loose constellation of churches based in private houses or, as time went on and the community grew, meeting in rented halls in markets and public baths, it was without any single dominant ruling officer, its elders or leaders sharing responsibility, but distributing tasks, like that of foreign correspondent. By the eve of the conversion of Constantine, there were more than two dozen of these religious community-centers or tituli"; the Roman church was a small community, its bishop exercised little influence outside its members in the time of Constantine. Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to embrace Christianity, although he continued in his pre-Christian beliefs, he and co-Emperor Licinius bestowed imperial favor on Christianity through the Edict of Milan promulgated in 313.
After the Edict of Milan, the church adopted the same governmental structure as the Empire: geographical provinces ruled by bishops. These bishops of important cities therefore rose in power over the bishops of lesser cities. Whatever his personal beliefs, Constantine's political interest in Christianity was as a unifying force and his policy of "the imposition of unity on the churches at all costs" soon set him on a "collision course with the popes." Miltiades was pope at the time of Constantine's victory, Constantine gifted to Miltiades the Lateran Palace, where he relocated, holding a synod in 313. Constantine designated Miltiades as one of four bishops to adjudicate the case of the Donatists, but he had no authority to decide the case or publish the result without the approval of the emperor himself. Customarily, the African bishops may have gone to the bishop of Rome as a respected, neutral figure, but it was well known that Miltiades would not agree with the Donatist position that ordination by a "traitor" bishop would invalidate the sacrament.
Turning to Constantine was a strange move because he had not yet been baptized, word of his budding conversion may not yet have reached Alexandria. Constantine therefore referred the matter to Miltiades, requiring him to collaborate with three bishops from Gaul. Eamon Duffy calls this the "first direct intervention by an emperor in the affairs of the church." When Miltiades invited fifteen additional Italian bishops to participate in the synod and ruled against the Donatists, they appealed to Constantine again, who called for a new synod in Arles, this time headed by the bishops of Arles and Syracuse. Miltiades died, his successor, Sylvester I, did not travel to Arles; the Arles synod gave Silvester I somewhat of a nod by asking him to circulate their decisions to the other bishops, although he had no part in the process. During Silvester I's reign, construction began on the Lateran Basilica, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, St. Peter's. Silvester did not attend the first ecumenical council, the First Council of Nicaea, but sent two priests as his representatives.
Silvester would have viewed Arianism as a heresy.
Salian dynasty
The Salian dynasty was a dynasty in the High Middle Ages. The dynasty provided four German Kings. After the death of the last Saxon of the Ottonian Dynasty in 1024, the elective titles of King of the Germans and three years Holy Roman Emperor both passed to the first monarch of the Salian dynasty in the person of Conrad II, the only son of Count Henry of Speyer and Adelheid of Alsace, he was elected German King in 1024 and crowned Holy Roman Emperor on 26 March 1027. The four Salian kings of the dynasty—Conrad II, Henry III, Henry IV, Henry V—ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1027 to 1125, established their monarchy as a major European power, they achieved the development of a permanent administrative system based on a class of public officials answerable to the crown. Werner of Worms and his son Duke Conrad the Red of Lorraine, who died in 955, founded the ancestral dynasty. Conrad the Red married Liutgarde, a daughter of Emperor Otto I, their son Otto I, Duke of Carinthia ruled Carinthia from 978 to 1004.
Duke Otto had three sons: Bruno, who became Pope Gregory V. Henry was the father of the first Salian Emperor Conrad II. Pope Leo IX had family ties to the dynasty, since his grandfather Hugo III was the brother of Adelheid, the grandmother of Henry III. After the death of the last Saxon Emperor Henry II the first Salian regent Conrad II was elected by the majority of the Prince-electors and was crowned German king in Mainz on 8 September 1024. Early in 1026 Conrad went to Milan, where archbishop of Milan, crowned him king of Italy; when Rudolph III, King of Burgundy died 1032, Conrad II claimed this kingship on the basis of an inheritance Henry II had extorted from the former in 1006. Despite some opposition, the Burgundian and Provençal nobles paid homage to Conrad in Zürich in 1034; this Kingdom of Burgundy would become known as the Kingdom of Arles under Conrad's successors. In 1028 Conrad II had his son Henry III elected and anointed king of Germany. Henry's tenure led to an overstatement of unknown sacral kingship.
So during this reign Speyer Cathedral was expanded to be the largest church in Western Christendom. Henry's conception of a legitimate power of royal disposition in the duchies was successful against the dukes, thus secured royal control. However, in Lorraine, this led from which Henry emerged as the winner, but in southern Germany a powerful opposition group was formed in the years 1052–1055. 1046 Henry ended the papal schism, freed the Papacy from dependence on the Roman nobility, laid the basis for its universal applicability. His early death in 1056 was long regarded as a disaster for the Empire; the early Salians owed much of their success to their alliance with the Church, a policy begun by Otto I, which gave them the material support they needed to subdue rebellious dukes. In time, the Church came to regret this close relationship; the alliance broke down in 1075 during what came to be known as the Investiture Controversy, a struggle in which the reformist Pope, Gregory VII, demanded that Emperor Henry IV renounce his rights over the Church in Germany.
The pope attacked the concept of monarchy by divine right and gained the support of significant elements of the German nobility interested in limiting imperial absolutism. More important, the pope forbade ecclesiastical officials under pain of excommunication to support Henry as they had so done in the past. In the end, Henry IV journeyed to Canossa in northern Italy in 1077 to do penance and to receive absolution from the pope. However, he resumed the practice of lay investiture and arranged the election of an antipope in 1080; the monarch's struggle with the papacy resulted in a war that ravaged through the Holy Roman Empire from 1077 until the Concordat of Worms in 1122. The reign of the last ruler of the Salian dynasty Henry V coincided with the final phase of the great Investiture Controversy, which had pitted pope against emperor. By the settlement of the Concordat of Worms, Henry V surrendered to the demands of the second generation of Gregorian reformers; this agreement stipulated that the pope would appoint high church officials but gave the German king the right to veto the papal choices.
Imperial control of Italy was lost for a time, the imperial crown became dependent on the political support of competing aristocratic factions. Feudalism became more widespread as freemen sought protection by swearing allegiance to a lord; these powerful local rulers, having thereby acquired extensive territories and large military retinues, took over administration within their territories and organized it around an increasing number of castles. The most powerful of these local rulers came to be called princes rather than dukes. According to the laws of the feudal system of the Holy Roman Empire, the king had no claims on the vassals of the other princes, only on those living within his family's territory. Lacking the support of the independent vassals and weakened by the increasing hostility of the Church, the monarchy lost its pre-eminence, thus the Investiture Contest strengthened local power in the Holy Roman Empire – in contrast to the trend in France and England, where centralized royal power grew.
The Investiture Contest had an additional effect. The lon
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gregory V". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
