ABSTRACT
In the late eleventh century the Empire, once the greatest state, reaching into north and central Italy, France and the Low Countries, began to decentralize or, rather, fall apart. The Hohenstaufens tried to tighten controls. At Wurzburg in 1196, Barbarossa proposed replacing the elective monarchy by dynastic succession. The ministerial system of quasi-servile knights was extended along major arteries of communication, and the monarch allied with townsmen against local princes and with the ministers against the nobility. The ensuing combat of the Welfs and Hohenstaufen, moreover, ensured the monarchy's failure. The monarchy used any tool that came to hand. The Norman connection enabled England to recruit administrators from as far away as Sicily. Although French settlement slowed, Savoyards helped build the offices of the royal court during the reign of Henry III from 1216 to 1272. More than France or Germany, England was open to the influence of Italy's schools of Roman law.
