THE BEGINNING OF THE SALIAN CENTURY

Just as his predecessor Otto III in 1002, Henry II died without issue in 1024. Although this may look like a repetition of events, there were marked differences: Otto III had not been married, and being still very young, marriage with the prospect of an heir must have seemed probable. He died, however, of malaria in Italy at the age of twenty-one. Henry II, on the other hand, had been married for almost thirty years when he died at the age of about fifty. The probability that his death would leave the realm without an obvious successor must have presented itself to the magnates for quite some time. Yet the detailed account of the election procedure written by the royal chaplain Wipo some twenty years after the event gives the impression that it was only after Henry’s death on 13 July 1024 that the magnates, who had been summoned to Kamba on the Rhine for the election of a new king by Archbishop Aribo of Mainz, began to give the question any thought: according to Wipo, first several candidates were named, then their number gradually reduced to two men both by the name of Conrad – one called ‘the Younger’, the other ‘the Elder’ the sons of two brothers; finally ‘Conrad the Elder’ was elected king. Like the other lay nobles of his time he was an ‘idiota’, illiterate. This was anything but a compliment from the Italian monk who called him that. But as it did not prevent the German electors from regarding him as the most suitable candidate, it shows that literacy was held in rather less esteem in the German lands than south of the Alps.