A History of Verona Page: 26 of 493

EARLY HISTORY I
existed except in the ten years between the transference of the
Mark to Germany and the death of Milo in 962. The highest
judicial and administrative power passed very early into the
hands of the lowest of the three officials, the Count. Doubtless
when the Duke appeared in person in the Mark, the Count
resumed his subordinate position, but since the Duke was
almost invariably head of another and larger duchy his visits
must have become less and less frequent, as time went on.
Other causes contributed to weaken the Duke's authority in the
Mark. He held no large landed estate there. Then, while
elsewhere in North Italy the appointment of the Count lay
with the Marquis or Duke, at Verona the Emperor kept it in
his own hands. At Verona, too, another check was wanting
to the Count's authority, in that the bishop, unlike the other
Lombard prelates, never acquired any temporal power over the
city. Small wonder, then, that by the end of the tenth century
the Count of Verona had become again what he was in the
earlier half, viz. the most important official in the Mark. The
office was generally held by Veronese, from 930 to 950 A.D. by
Milo, and then by his nephew Egelric. On the latter's death it
passed to other families, to return later to his descendants, becoming
practically hereditary in the family. In time, however,
with the weakening of the Imperial authority in Italy, the title
of Count of Verona ceased to carry with it any special powers,
and a later generation took instead the title of Counts of
S. Bonifacio, from the little town on the Alpone near which
their estates lay. Under this name the family soon became one
of the strongest elements of discord during the development
of Verona into a self-governing city.
One urgent reason for the transference of the Veronese Mark
from the kingdom of Italy to that of Germany was that it
enabled the Emperors to keep a firmer hold on Verona, and
through her on the Brenner Pass, at that time almost the only
road between Germany and Italy which was practicable for an
army. The Brenner Pass ascends the valley of the Sill from
Innsbruck to the Brenner Lake, on the watershed between the
Danube and the Po. From here it descends the Eisack to its
confluence with the Adige at Botzen, and then follows the