Italian campaign was an attempt to realise what the Corpus Juris Civilis maintained, that the emperor was dominus mundi and thus the “lawful overlord and supreme monarch in Europe: every king and prince was inferior to him”. The dispute between Henry and Robert highlighted the discrepancy between de facto and de jure independence of other monarchs from the emperors. According to Woolf, the opening line to the Edict of Thessalonica, “Cunctos populos, quos clementiae nostrae regit temperamentum”, had “invited discussion on the universal lordship of the emperor”. Bartolus, in his commentaries on the Corpus Juris Civilis, inferred that the words “Cunctos populous quos” implied that there were nations outside the Imperium. Yet, this seemed
