Aribert, Archbishop of Milan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tomb of Aribert in the cathedral at Milan.

Aribert or Heribert (Italian Ariberto da Intimiano) (died 16 January 1045, Monza) was the archbishop of Milan from 1018, a quarrelsome warrior-bishop in an age in which such was not uncommon.

Aribert went to Konstanz in June 1025, with other bishops of northern Italy, to pay homage to Conrad II of Germany, the beleaguered founder of the Salian dynasty. There, in exchange for privileges, he agreed to crown Conrad with the Iron Crown of Lombardy. This he did, at Milan, on 26 March 1026. He journeyed to Rome a year later for the imperial coronation of Charles by Pope John XIX on 26 March 1027. He subsequently joined an imperial military expedition into Burgundy.

In the political arena of Italy, power was disputed between the great territorial magnates and their vassal captains and the lesser nobility— the valvassores— and the burghers of the Italian communes.

Aribert created enemies among the lower nobility, against whom he perpetrated the worst violences, and with the metropolitan of Ravenna, whose episcopal rights, along with those of the smaller sees, he ignored. A revolt soon engulfed northern Italy and, at Aribert's request, the Emperor travelled south of the Alps to quell it. The Emperor took the position of champion of the valvassores and demanded that Aribert should make a defence against the charges brought against him, but Aribert refused, on the grounds that he was the emperor's peer. His consequent arrest provoked the rebellion of the anti-Imperial faction of the Milanese, seen by 19th-century historians as fiercely patriotic. Aribert had soon escaped and was leading the revolt. The Emperor found himself unable to take Milan and proceeded to Rome, where his diplomatic skills succeeded in isolated Aribert from his erstwhile allies; Pope Benedict IX, excommunicated the fighting archbishop in March 1038. That year, he held up the carroccio as the symbol of Milan and soon it was the symbol of all the Tuscan cities as far as Rome. Aribert ended his episcopacy in relative peace, having agreed to cease hostilities with Emperor Henry III, Conrad's son, at Ingelheim in 1040.