formation of a rival power.

[Sidenote: Alexander II (1061-73) and Milan.]

The value of this new alliance to the Papacy was put to the test
almost immediately. On the death of Pope Nicholas (1061) the papal and
imperial parties proceeded to measure their strength against each
other. The reformers, acting under the leadership of Hildebrand, chose
as his successor a noble Milanese, Anselm of Baggio, Bishop of Lucca,
who now became Alexander II. He was elected in accordance with the
provisions of the recent Lateran decree, and no imperial ratification
was asked. On the purely ecclesiastical side this choice was a strong
manifesto against clerical marriage. The city of Milan as the capital
of the Lombard kingdom of Italy had for many centuries held itself in
rivalry with Rome. Moreover, it was the stronghold of an aristocratic
and a married clergy, which based its practice on a supposed privilege
granted by its Apostle St. Ambrose. But this produced a reforming
democracy which, perhaps from the quarter whence it gained its chief
support, was contemptuously named by its opponents the Patarins or
Rag-pickers. The first leader of this democratic party had been Anselm
of Baggio. Nicholas II sent thither the fanatical Peter Damiani as
papal legate, and a fierce struggle ended in the abject submission of
the Archbishop of Milan, who attended a synod at Rome and promised
obedience to the Pope.

[Sidenote: German opposition.]

The weak point in the decree of Nicholas II had been that the German
clergy were not represented at the Council which issued it, and it was
construed in Germany as a manifest attempt of the reforming party to