The king's attention at the time was called to Italy where two popes, Innocent II. and Anacletus II., were clamouring for his support. At first Lothair, fully occupied with the affairs of Germany, remained heedless and neutral; but in March 1131 he was visited at Liége by Innocent, to whom he promised his assistance. Crossing the Alps with a small army in September 1132, he reached Rome in March 1133, accompanied by Innocent. As St Peter's was held by Anacletus, Lothair's coronation as emperor took place on the 4th of June 1133 in the church of the Lateran. He then received as papal fiefs the vast estates of Matilda, marchioness of Tuscany, thus securing for his daughter and her Welf husband lands which might otherwise have passed to the Hohenstaufen. His efforts to continue the investiture controversy were not very serious. He returned to Germany, where he restored order in Bavaria, and made an expedition against some rebels in the regions of the lower Rhine. Resuming the struggle against the Hohenstaufen, Lothair soon obtained the submission of the brothers, who retained their lands, and a general peace was sworn at Bamberg. The emperor's authority was now generally recognized, and the annalists speak highly of the peace and order of his later years. In 1135, Eric II., king of Denmark, acknowledged himself a vassal of Lothair; Boleslaus III., prince of the Poles, promised tribute and received Pomerania and Rügen as German fiefs; while the eastern emperor, John Comnenus, implored Lothair's aid against Roger II. of Sicily. The emperor seconded the efforts of his vassals, Albert the Bear, margrave of the Saxon north mark, and Conrad I., margrave of Meissen and Lusatia, to extend the authority of the Germans in the districts east of the Elbe, and assisted Norbert, archbishop of Magdeburg, and Albert I., archbishop of Bremen, to spread Christianity. In August 1136, attended by a large army, Lothair set out upon his second Italian journey. The Lombard cities were either terrified into submission or taken by storm; Roger II. was driven from Apulia; and the imperial power enforced over the whole of southern Italy. A mutiny among the German soldiers and a breach with Innocent concerning the overlordship of Apulia compelled the emperor to retrace his steps. An arrangement was made with regard to Apulia, after which Lothair, returning to Germany, died at Breitenwang, a village in the Tirol, on the 3rd or 4th of December 1137. His body was carried to Saxony and buried in the monastery which he had founded at Königslutter. Lothair was a strong and capable ruler, who has been described as the "imitator and heir of the first Otto." Contemporaries praise his justice and his virtue, and his reign was regarded, especially by Saxons and churchmen, as a golden age for Germany.