Thus the Papacy assumed a feudal suzerainty over southern Italy which outlasted the Middle Ages. Within seven years of the Synod of Melfi, the establishment of the Norman duke William the Bastard in England, as the ally of the Pope, still further bound the most restless, active, and enterprising race in Europe to the apostolic see. [Sidenote: The Patarini in Lombardy.] The Pope now intervened decisively in the long struggle between the traditional and the strict parties in Lombardy, where the ancient independence of the archbishops of Milan had long been assailed by the Patarini or rag-pickers, as the reformers were contemptuously called. Lovers of old ways in the north, with the Archbishop Guido of Milan at their head, had long upheld clerical marriage as the ancient custom of the Church of St. Ambrose. Peter Damiani was now sent as papal legate to Milan to uphold the ‘rag-bags’ in their struggle. At a synod held in Milan, the zealous monk made short work of the married clerks and of the immemorial rights of the archbishop. Guido proffered an abject submission and received a contemptuous restitution of his archbishopric. The continuance of the friendship of Godfrey and Matilda secured middle Italy, as the alliance with Normans and Patarini had secured the south and the north. [Sidenote: Milan submits to Rome.] The strongest princes of Gaul and Burgundy were on the zealots’ side. The imperialist prelates of Germany, headed by Anno of Cologne, made a faint effort to stem the tide, but the decrees fulminated by German synods against Nicholas and his work were unknown or disregarded in Italy. [Sidenote: Alexander II. 1061–1073.]