After the death of the last Ottonian emperor in 1024, the Kingdom of Germany and later the entire Holy Roman Empire passed to Conrad II, a Salian.

The Salian dynasty developed a permanent administrative system based on a class of public officials answerable to the crown.

Wipo added that Conrad's mother, Adelaide of Metz, was "supposedly descended from the ancient royal house of Troy".

[3] Peter H. Wilson states the Salians received their name due to their origins amongst the Franks living along the Rhine in western Franconia, a region "distinguished through its use of Salic law".

[4] A less likely etymology links the appellation to the old German word sal ("lordship"), proposing that the name can be traced to the Salian monarchs' well-documented inclination towards hierarchical structures.

Bishop Otto of Freising, a maternal descendant of the Salian monarchs, also used the term in his Chronicle or History of the Two Cities in the middle of the 12th century.

[6] In a narrow sense, only the four German monarchs who ruled from 1024 to 1125 could be called Salians, but the same appellation has already been expanded to their ancestors by modern historians.

[7] Count Werner, who held estates in the Nahegau, Speyergau and Wormsgau early in the 10th century, is the Salian monarchs' first certainly identified ancestor.

His family links with the Conradines facilitated his acquisition of large portions of their domains after King Otto I of Germany crushed their revolt in 939.

The Conradines lost their preeminent position in Franconia and Conrad the Red emerged as Otto I's principal supporter in the region.

He also seized Wormsgau, Speyergau, Niddagau, Elsenzgau, Kraichgau and Pfinzgau, thus uniting almost all lands between the rivers Rhine and Neckar by the time Otto I died in 973.

The parentage of his wife, Judith, is uncertain: she may have been related either to Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria, to Count Henry of Arlon, or to Burchard, Margrave in the Eastern Marches.

The Emperor persuaded Otto to cede his right to administer justice in Worms, and also parts of his revenues in the town, to the local bishop.

Otto was persuaded to renounce Carinthia and Verona, but he was lavishly compensated with a large forest in Wasgau, the royal palace at Kaiserslautern and the proprietary rights over Weissenburg Abbey.

[13][14] After Henry of Worms' premature death, his seniority rights shifted to his younger brother, Conrad, enabling him to inherit the major part of the patrimonial lands from his father.

The Roman aristocrat Crescentius the Younger expelled him from Rome, but the Emperor crushed the revolt and restored the papal throne to Gregory V. The Pope died at the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven in 999.

He inherited his father's patrimonial lands, but Emperor Henry II made Adalbero of Eppelstein the new duke of Carinthia.

Gisela's first husband Brun I, Count of Brunswick had been a candidate to the imperial throne along with her father and the winning Henry II.

In his response to the rebels, Conrad emphasized that "Even if the king died, the kingdom remaind, just as the ship whose steersman falls remains".

In 1046 Henry ended the papal schism, freed the Papacy from dependence on the Roman nobility, and laid the basis for its universal applicability.

The early Salians owed much of their success to their alliance with the Church, a policy begun by Otto I, which gave them the material support they needed to subdue rebellious dukes.

[1] The pope also attacked the concept of monarchy by divine right and gained the support of significant elements of the German nobility interested in limiting imperial absolutism.

[1] The reign of the last ruler of the Salian dynasty Henry V coincided with the final phase of the great Investiture Controversy, which had pitted pope against emperor.

[citation needed] This agreement stipulated that the pope would appoint high church officials but gave the German king the right to veto the papal choices.

[1] According to the laws of the feudal system of the Holy Roman Empire, the king had no claims on the vassals of other princes, only on those living within his family's territory.