present and future were received into the emperor’s protection, and the
state of the city and its contadowere confirmed in their entirety. The
inhabitants of Treviso were likewise told that the emperor wished to
promote their state and honour: they could keep their present consuls
and ‘the ancient state of the consulate’ (antiquum statum consulatus) as
long as they exercised justice according to the statutes of the law.
Outside Italy, Frederick vowed to reform the church and city of Lyons
to its ancient state of dignity, or so he said in a letter designed to recruit
the French to the support of Pope Victor.^73
In dealings with the imperial capitals of Rome and Aachen emperors
often talked of the state of the whole commonwealth rather than of the
cities themselves. In 1151 Conrad wrote to the prefect, consuls,
captains, and people of Rome, from whom he had received since his
return from crusade so many letters showing how they strove to pro-
mote his dignity and to reform the state of the Roman empire: Wibald,
abbot of Corvey and Henry the notary were on their way to pacify and
stabilize the affairs of the city and of Italy, and the Romans were to
accept their instructions about what was to be done in hoc temporis
statu.^74 The canonization of Charlemagne in 1165 was an occasion for
Frederick to emphasize his efforts throughout the empire to preserve
‘the rights of the church, the unharmed state of the commonwealth, and
the integrity of the law’, and to confirm Charles the Great’s grant of
liberty and justice to Aachen, ‘which is the head and seat [caput et sedes]
of the German kingdom’.^75 In the treaties which he concluded with Pisa
and Genoa, whose naval power he needed for a projected campaign
against the Norman kingdom of Sicily, Frederick likewise emphasized
the aid these cities had given to ‘the honour and glory of the empire and
the state of the commonwealth’. Pisa protested its imperialis status,
in the sense of its privileged position in the imperial commonwealth.^76
Conrad’s grant of extensive rights in Provence to a layman, Raymond
of Baux, included the enfeoffment of the lands which Raymond’s father-
in-law, Count Gerbert, had held quando in optimo statu fuit—when he
was in his best state.^77 The personal state of the greatest importance
was, of course, the emperor’s own, his physical condition first of all. On
his way through Greece on crusade, Conrad kept his minister in
90 The Spread of the Organized Peace
(^73) Friderici I Diplomata, 1158–1167, 76 (Imola), 218 (Lyons), 326 (Hungary), 341
(Mantua), 344 (Treviso); Friderici I, 1181–1190, 54–9 (Lombard league of towns), 93
Cambrai), 106, 148, 203, 268 etc.
(^74) Conradi III [etc.] Diplomata, 455; for the pretensions of the city of Rome at this period,
see R. L. Benson, ‘Political Renovatio: Two Models from Roman Antiquity’, in Renaissance
and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Benson, G. Constable, with C. D. Lanham (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, and Harvard UP, 1982), pp. 348–50.
(^75) Friderici I Diplomata, 1158–67, 433. 28.
(^76) Ibid.199. 19 , 220–5.
(^77) Conradi III [etc.] Diplomata, 240. 12.