Long Description:Conrad II is buried in the crypt of the Speyer Cathedral.
During his reign, he proved that the German monarchy had become
a viable institution. Survival of the monarchy was no longer
dependent on contracts between sovereign and territorial
nobles.
Henry, count of Speyer, the father of Conrad II was a grandson
of Luitgard, a daughter of Emperor Otto I who had married the
Salian Duke Conrad the Red of Lorraine. Conrad grew up poor by the
standards of the nobility and was raised by the bishop of Worms. He
was reputed to be prudent and firm out of consciousness of
deprivation. In 1016, he married Gisela of Swabia, a widowed
duchess. Both parties claimed descent from Charlemagne and were
thus distantly related. Strict canonists took exception to the
marriage, and Emperor Henry II used this to force Conrad into
temporary exile. They became reconciled, and upon Henry's death in
1024, Conrad appeared as a candidate before the electoral assembly
of princes at Kamba in the Rhineland. He was elected by the
majority and was crowned king in Mainz on September 8, 1024.
The Italian bishops paid homage at Conrad's court at Konstanz in
June 1025, but lay princes sought to elect William III (V), Duke of
Aquitaine, as king instead. However early in 1026 Conrad went to
Milan, where Ariberto, archbishop of Milan, crowned him king of
Italy. After overcoming some opposition of the towns Conrad reached
Rome, where Pope John XIX crowned him emperor on Easter, 1027.
He formally confirmed the popular legal traditions of Saxony and
issued new constitutions for Lombardy. In 1028 at Aachen he had his
son Henry elected and anointed king of Germany. Henry married
Cunigunde or Gunhilda, daughter of King Canute the Great of
England, Denmark and Norway. This was an arrangement that Conrad
had made many years ago, when he gave Canute the Great parts of
northern Germany to administer. Henry, the later Emperor Henry III,
became chief counselor of his father.
When Rudolph III, King of Burgundy died on February 2, 1032, he
bequeathed his kingdom, which combined two earlier kingdoms of
Burgundy, to Conrad. Despite some opposition, the Burgundian and
Provencal nobles paid homage to Conrad in Zürich in 1034. This
kingdom of Burgundy, which under Conrad's successors would become
known as the Kingdom of Arles, corresponded to most of the
southeastern quarter of modern France and included western
Switzerland, the Franche-Comté and Dauphiné. It did not include the
smaller Duchy of Burgundy to the north, ruled by a cadet branch of
the Capetian King of France. (Piecemeal over the next centuries
most of the former Kingdom of Arles was incorporated into France -
but King of Arles remained one of the Holy Roman Emperor's
subsidiary titles until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806.)
In 1039 Conrad fell ill and died in Utrecht.
Note : The Salian dynasty succeeded the Saxon dynasty. The
Salian Franks were a subgroup of the Franks who had been living
North and East of the limes in the Dutch coastal area. From the 5th
century they migrated throughout Belgium and to northern France,
then formed a kingdom in northern France and on coasts north of it.
This kingdom was the nucleus of the future Kingdom of France.
They are distinguished from the Ripuarian Franks. The name
Ripuarian is believed to mean 'river-dwelling'. The name Salian may
refer to salt and, by extension, the sea, i.e. 'sea-dwelling'.
Alternatively, it may be derived from the Roman name for a river in
The Netherlands: Isala, a branch of the Rhine currently named
IJssel in Dutch. In the third century A.D., the Romans may have
named the Germanic tribe living in this area after this river. Even
nowadays, this area is called Salland.
