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The setting for the carmina was the Holy Roman Empire of the 10^th and 11^th centuries, especially the area which today is made up of Germany, France and Italy. Many of the carmina concern the political situation and there are several references to the royal (subsequently imperial) family of Conrad II known as The Salic, that is, The Frank.
Conrad II of Franconia ascended the throne (acting as Rex Romanorum) on 8 September 1024.
The ecclesiastics offered the newly-elected Conrad the Kingdom of Italy and they sent him a missive inviting him to visit the peninsula. The head of this legation was Aribert, the archbishop of Milan, because he held the bishopric of a large city which numbered nearly three hundred thousand inhabitants (and had under it the dioceses of Pavia, Lodi, Cremona, Brescia, Mantova, Vercelli, Novara, Tortona, Casale, Asti, Mondovì, Acqui, Turin, Vigevano, Ivrea, Alba, Savona, Genoa, Ventimiglia and Albenga), because he was the head of the national diet and, as successor to Saint Ambrose, by tradition he had the right to confer the royal crown, and lastly because of his culture, his tenacity and his fighting character, which he had demonstrated more than once and which he would show with more strength in the following twenty years.
Conrad accepted the Milanese archbishop's invitation and promised to go to Italy, but the expedition could not take place immediately due to the need to intervene in internal rebellions. However, once these were suppressed, having gathered a strong army in Augsburg, towards the end of winter 1026, Conrad journeyed to Italy through the Brenner Pass, passed though Verona and arrived in Milan without any difficulty on 23 March. Here he received the crown of King of Italy from the hand of Archbishop Aribert.
After having travelled around Italy for some time in order to put down various uprisings and restore order in certain cities, Conrad at last arrived in Rome in 1027. Here, on 26 March he received from the hand of Pope John XIX the crown of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
On 6 September 1032 Rudolph III of Burgundy, King of Arles, died. Some years previously Rudolph had surrendered his kingdom of Burgundy to Conrad and regained custody of it but with the promise to transfer it, after his death, to the emperor or his son Henry.
Thus a Burgundian nobleman consequently brought Conrad the regalia. Not all Burgundians, however, were willing to accept the sovereignty of the German emperor. He was accepted by the Teutonic inhabitants of Upper Burgundy, whose main cities were Berne and Zurich, but opposed by those of Latin descent who inhabited Lower Burgundy and in the cities of Lyon, Vienne, Arles, Marseille, Geneva and Besançon. The latter chose a nephew of Rudolph's, Count Odo of Champagne as the recently deceased king's successor, thus giving rise to the fortune of a dynasty that was up until that moment unknown: the House of Savoy.
In 1039, whilst fighting the Saracens and Greeks in Italy, Conrad II's army was struck by a plague epidemic. When the soldiers were recalled to Germany, they brought the disease with them, which infected the Emperor too, who died leaving the throne to his son Henry III.

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