Brenner Pass at today’s Austria-Italy border. Photo credit: Sönke Kraft aka Arnulf zu Linden
This time in our series 1000 Years Ago Today, the exact date is unknown. But sometime in November 1021, King Henry II of Germany, Holy Roman Emperor and also known as Saint Henry the Exuberant, the last ruler of the Ottonian line, conducts his fourth Italian military campaign.
He crosses the Brenner Pass, a mountain pass through the Alps with a 60,000-strong army, and reaches Verona in the Kingdom of Lombardia in northern Italy. There he receives Lombard levies.
Lombard levies? Levies were an army consisting of people - either citizens or subjects - that could be quickly mustered and outfitted to serve the nobles or local dignitaries whenever a need arose. So levies supplemented professional soldiers. Over time there was a gradual move away from citizen and subject recruits to professional armies and greater use of mercenaries. But in 1021, you still needed to employ people in this way.
Physical anthropologists have by the way found striking similarities between skeletons found in Lombardy and those of the contemporary population of the Swedish island of Gotland. This would suggest a Scandinavian origin for the Lombards.
Anyway, November turning into December, Henry proceeds from Verona to Mantua (also in Lombardy), and then into Ravenna (in Emilia-Romagna) where he spends the Christmas of 1021.
Today, there is a four-lane motorway through the Brenner Pass - one of the most important transit routes between Northern and Southern Europe.