Chapter IV: , VII (82)

In 911, on the death of Louis, surnamed the Child, the German
or East-Frank branch of the dynasty of Charlemagne had become
extinct. "There remained indeed Charles the Simple,
acknowledged as king in some parts of France, but rejected in
others, and possessing no personal claims to respect. The
Germans therefore wisely determined to chose a sovereign from
among themselves. They were at this time divided into five
nations, each under its own duke, and distinguished by
difference of laws, as well as of origin; the Franks, whose
territory, comprising Franconia and the modern Palatinate, was
considered as the cradle of the empire, and who seem to have
arrogated some superiority over the rest, the Suabians, the
Bavarians, the Saxons ... and the Lorrainers, who occupied the
left bank of the Rhine as far as its termination. The choice
of these nations in their general assembly fell upon Conrad,
duke of Franconia, according to some writers, or at least a
man of high rank, and descended through females from
Charlemagne. Conrad dying without male issue, the crown of
Germany was bestowed [A. D. 919] upon Henry the Fowler, duke
of Saxony, ancestor of the three Othos, who followed him in
direct succession. To Henry, and to the first Otho [A. D.
936-973], Germany was more indebted than to any sovereign
since Charlemagne."

_H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 5._

"In 924, the Hungarians, who were as much dreaded as the angel
of destruction, re-appeared. They came from the grassy plains
of Hungary, mounted on small and ugly, but strong horses, and
swept along the Danube like a hailstorm. Wherever they came
they set fire to farms, hamlets, and towns, and killed all
living creatures or carried them off. And often they bound
their prisoners to the tails of their horses, and dragged them
along till they died from the dreadful torture. Their very
figures inspired disgust and terror, for their faces were
brown, and disfigured by scars to absolute hideousness; their
heads were shaven, and brutal ferocity and rapacity shone out
of their deep-set eyes. And though the Germans fought bravely,
these enemies always overmatched them, because they appeared
now here, now there, on their fleet horses, and fell upon
isolated districts before they were expected or could be
stopped. ... When on a sudden the terrible cry, 'The
Hungarians are coming, the Hungarians are coming,' resounded
through the land, all fled who could, as if the wild legions
of hell were marching through Saxony and Thuringia. King
Henry, however, would not fly, but encountered them in combat,
like a true knight. Yet he lost the battle, either because he
was ill, or because his soldiers were too few, and
unaccustomed to the enemy's mode of fighting, which enabled
them to conquer while they were fleeing. Henry was obliged to
shut himself up in the royal palace of Werla, near Goslar,
which he bravely defended. The Hungarians stormed it again and
again, but they could not scale the walls; while Henry's men
by a daring sally took a Hungarian chieftain prisoner, which
so terrified the besiegers that they concluded a truce for
nine years on condition that their chief should be released,
and that Henry should engage to pay a yearly tribute. Henry
submitted to the dishonourable sacrifice that he might husband
his strength for better times. ... How important it was to
have fortified places which could not be stormed by cavalry,
and therefore afforded a safe refuge to the neighbouring
peasantry, Henry recognised in 929, when the Hungarians
marched through Bavaria and Suabia to Lorraine, plundered the
time-honoured monastery of St. Gall, and burnt the suburbs of
Constance, but could not take the fortified town itself.
Henry, accordingly, published an order throughout the land,
that at suitable places large fortresses should be built, in
which every ninth man from the neighbouring district must take
garrison duty. Certainly living in towns was contrary to the
customs of the North Germans, and here and there there was
much resistance; but they soon recognised the wisdom of the
royal order, and worked night and day with such diligence that
there soon arose throughout the land towns with stately towers
and strong walls, behind whose battlements the armed burghers
defiantly awaited the Hungarians. Hamburg was then fortified,
Itzehoe built, the walls of Magdeburg, Halle, and Erfurt
extended, for these towns had stood since the time of
Charlemagne. Quedlinburg, Merseburg, Meissen, Wittenberg,
Goslar, Soest, Nordhausen, Duderstadt, Gronau, Pölde, were
rebuilt, and many others of which the old chroniclers say
nothing. Those who dwelt in the cities were called burghers,
and in order that they might not be idle they began to
practise many kinds of industry, and to barter their goods
with the peasants. The emperor encouraged the building of
towns, and granted emancipation to every slave who repaired to
a town, allowed the towns to hold fairs and markets, granted
to them the right of coining money and levying taxes, and gave
them many landed estates and forests. Under such encouragement
town life rapidly developed, and the emperor, in his disputes
with the lawless nobility, always received loyal support from
his disciplined burghers. After a few centuries the towns,
which had now generally become republics, under the name of
'free imperial towns,' became the seats of the perfection of
European trade, science, and culture. ... These incalculable
benefits are due to Henry's order to build towns."

_A. W. Grübe,
Heroes of History and Legend,
chapter 8._

At the expiration of the nine years truce, the Hungarians
resumed their attacks, and were defeated by Henry in two
bloody battles.

GERMANY: A. D. 936-973.
Restoration of the Roman Empire by
Otho I. called the Great.

"Otho the Great, son and successor of Henry I., added the
kingdom of Italy to the conquests of his father, and procured
also the Imperial dignity for himself, and his successors in
Germany. Italy had become a distinct kingdom since the
revolution, which happened (888) at the death of the Emperor
Charles the Fat. Ten princes in succession occupied the throne
during the space of seventy-three years. Several of these
princes, such as Guy, Lambert, Arnulf, Louis of Burgundy, and
Berenger I., were invested with the Imperial dignity. Berenger
I., having been assassinated (924), this latter dignity ceased
entirely, and the city of Rome was even dismembered from the
kingdom of Italy. The sovereignty of that city was seized by
the famous Marozia, widow of a nobleman named Alberic. She
raised her son to the pontificate by the title of John XI.;
and the better to establish her dominion, she espoused Hugo
King of Italy (932), who became, in consequence of this
marriage, master of Rome. But Alberic, another son of Marozia,
soon stirred up the people against this aspiring princess and
her husband Hugo.
{1440}
Having driven Hugo from the throne, and shut up his mother in
prison, he assumed to himself the sovereign authority, under
the title of Patrician of the Romans. At his death (954) he
transmitted the sovereignty to his son Octavian, who, though
only nineteen years of age, caused himself to be elected pope,
by the title of John XII. This epoch was one most disastrous
for Italy. The weakness of the government excited factions
among the nobility, gave birth to anarchy, and fresh
opportunity for the depredations of the Hungarians and Arabs,
who, at this period, were the scourge of Italy, which they
ravaged with impunity. Pavia, the capital of the kingdom, was
taken, and burnt by the Hungarians. These troubles increased
on the accession of Berenger II. (950), grandson of Berenger
I. That prince associated his son Adelbert with him in the
royal dignity; and the public voice accused them of having
caused the death of King Lothaire, son and successor of Hugo.
Lothaire left a young widow, named Adelaide, daughter of
Rodolph II., King of Burgundy and Italy. To avoid the
importunities of Berenger II., who wished to compel her to
marry his son Adelbert, this princess called in the King of
Germany to her aid. Otho complied with the solicitations of
the distressed queen; and, on this occasion, undertook his
first expedition into Italy (951). The city of Pavia, and
several other places, having fallen into his hands, he made
himself be proclaimed King of Italy, and married the young
queen, his protégée. Berenger and his son, being driven for
shelter to their strongholds, had recourse to negociation.
They succeeded in obtaining for themselves a confirmation of
the royal title of Italy, on condition of doing homage for it
to the King of Germany. ... It appears that it was not without
the regret, and even contrary to the wish of Adelaide, that
Otho agreed to enter into terms of accommodation with
Berenger. ... Afterwards; however, he lent a favourable ear to
the complaints which Pope John XII. and some Italian noblemen
had addressed to him against Berenger and his son; and took
occasion, on their account, to conduct a new army into Italy
(961). Berenger, too feeble to oppose him, retired a second
time within his fortifications. Otho marched from Pavia to
Milan, and there made himself be crowned King of Italy; from
thence he passed to Rome, about the commencement of the
following year. Pope John XII., who had himself invited him,
and again implored his protection against Berenger, gave him,
at first, a very brilliant reception; and revived the Imperial
dignity in his favour, which had been dormant for thirty-eight
years. It was on the 2d of February, 962, that the Pope
consecrated and crowned him Emperor; but he had soon cause to
repent of this proceeding. Otho, immediately after his
coronation at Rome, undertook the siege of St. Leon, a
fortress in Umbria, where Berenger and his queen had taken
refuge. While engaged in the siege, he received frequent
intimations from Rome, of the misconduct and immoralities of
the Pope. The remonstrances which he thought it his duty to
make on this subject, offended the young pontiff, who
resolved, in consequence, to break off union with the Emperor.
Hurried on by the impetuosity of his character, he entered
into a negociation with Adelbert; and even persuaded him to
come to Rome, in order to concert with him measures of
defence. On the first news of this event, Otho put himself at
the head of a large detachment, with which he marched directly
to Rome. The Pope, however, did not think it advisable to wait
his approach, but fled with the King, his new ally. Otho, on
arriving at the capital, exacted a solemn oath from the clergy
and the people, that henceforth they would elect no pope
without his counsel, and that of the Emperor and his
successors. Having then assembled a council, he caused Pope
John XII. to be deposed; and Leo VIII. was elected in his
place. This latter Pontiff was maintained in the papacy, in
spite of all the efforts which his adversary made to regain
it. Berenger II., after having sustained a long siege at St.
Leon, fell at length (964) into the hands of the conqueror,
who sent him into exile at Bamberg, and compelled his son,
Adelbert, to take refuge in the court of Constantinople. All
Italy, to the extent of the ancient kingdom of the Lombards,
fell under the dominion of the Germans; only a few maritime
towns in Lower Italy, with the greater part of Apulia and
Calabria, still remained in the power of the Greeks. This
kingdom, together with the Imperial dignity, Otho transmitted
to his successors on the throne of Germany. From this time the
Germans held it to be an inviolable principle, that as the
Imperial dignity was strictly united with the royalty of
Italy, kings elected by the German nation should, at the same
time, in virtue of that election, become Kings of Italy and
Emperors. The practice of this triple coronation, viz., of
Germany, Italy, and Rome, continued for many centuries; and
from Otho the Great, till Maximilian I. (1508), no king of
Germany took the title of Emperor, until after he had been
formally crowned by the Pope."

_C. W. Koch,
The Revolutions of Europe,
period 3._

"At the first glance it would seem as if the relation in which
Otho now stood to the pope was the same as that occupied by
Charlemagne; on a closer inspection, however; we find a wide
difference. Charlemagne's connexion with the see of Rome was
produced by mutual need; it was the result of long epochs of
political combination embracing the development of various
nations; their mutual understanding rested on an internal
necessity, before which all opposing views and interests gave
way. The sovereignty of Otho the Great, on the contrary,
rested on a principle fundamentally opposed to the
encroachment of spiritual influences. The alliance was
momentary; the disruption of it inevitable. But when, soon
after, the same pope who had invoked his aid, John XII.,
placed himself at the head of a rebellious faction, Otho was
compelled to cause him to be formally deposed, and to crush
the faction that supported him by repeated, exertions of
force, before he could obtain perfect obedience; he was
obliged to raise to the papal chair a pope on whose
co-operation he could rely. The popes have often asserted that
they transferred the empire to the Germans; and if they
confined this assertion to the Carolingian race, they are not
entirely wrong. The coronation of Charlemagne was the result
of their free determination. But if they allude to the German
emperors, properly so called, the contrary of their statement
is just as true; not only Carlmann and Otho the Great, but
their successors, constantly had to conquer the imperial
throne, and to defend it, when conquered, sword in hand.
{1441}
It has been said that the Germans would have done more wisely
if they had not meddled with the empire; or, at least, if they
had first worked out their own internal political
institutions, and then, with matured minds, taken part in the
general affairs of Europe. But the things of this world are
not wont to develop themselves so methodically. A nation is
often compelled by circumstances to increase its territorial
extent, before its internal growth is completed. For was it of
slight importance to its inward progress that Germany thus
remained in unbroken connexion with Italy?--the depository of
all that remained of ancient civilisation, the source whence
all the forms of Christianity had been derived. The mind of
Germany has always unfolded itself by contact with the spirit
of antiquity, and of the nations of Roman origin. ... The
German imperial government revived the civilising and
Christianising tendencies which had distinguished the reigns
of Charles Martell and Charlemagne. Otho the Great, in
following the course marked out by his illustrious
predecessors, gave it a fresh national importance by planting
German colonies in Slavonian countries simultaneously with the
diffusion of Christianity. He Germanised as well as converted
the population he had subdued. He confirmed his father's
conquests on the Saale and the Elbe, by the establishment of
the bishoprics of Meissen and Osterland. After having
conquered the tribes on the other side the Elbe in those long
and perilous campaigns where he commanded in person, he
established there, too, three bishoprics, which for a time
gave an extraordinary impulse to the progress of conversion.
... And even where the project of Germanising the population
was out of the question, the supremacy of the German name was
firmly and actively maintained. In Bohemia and Poland
bishoprics were erected under German metropolitans; from
Hamburg Christianity found its way into the north;
missionaries from Passau traversed Hungary, nor is it
improbable that the influence of these vast and sublime
efforts extended even to Russia. The German empire was the
centre of the conquering religion; as itself advanced, it
extended the ecclesiastico-military State of which the Church
was an integral part; it was the chief representative of the
unity of western Christendom, and hence arose the necessity
under which it lay of acquiring a decided ascendancy over the
papacy. This secular and Germanic principle long retained the
predominancy it had triumphantly acquired. ... How magnificent
was the position now occupied by the German nation,
represented in the persons of the mightiest princes of Europe
and united under their sceptre; at the head of an advancing
civilisation, and of the whole of western Christendom; in the
fullness of youthful aspiring strength! We must here however
remark and confess, that Germany did not wholly understand her
position, nor fulfil her mission. Above all, she did not
succeed in giving complete reality to the idea of a western
empire, such as appeared about to be established under Otho I.
Independent and often hostile, though Christian powers arose
through all the borders of Germany; in Hungary and in Poland,
in the northern as well as in the southern possessions of the
Normans; England and France were snatched again from German
influence. Spain laughed at the German claims to a universal
supremacy; her kings thought themselves emperors; even the
enterprises nearest home--those across the Elbe--were for a
time stationary or retrograde. If we seek for the causes of
these unfavourable results, we need only turn our eyes on the
internal condition of the empire, where we find an incessant
and tempestuous struggle of all the forces of the nation.
Unfortunately the establishment of a fixed rule of succession
to the imperial crown was continually prevented by events."

_L. Ranke,
History of the Reformation in Germany,
introduction._

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 961-1039;
and ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY.

GERMANY: A. D. 955.
Great defeat and repulse of the Hungarians by Otho I.

See HUNGARIANS: A. D. 934-955.

GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122.
End of the Saxon line.
Election of the Franconians.
Reformation of the Papacy.
Contest of Henry IV. with the Head of the Church.
The question of Investitures.

"Otho II. had a short and troubled reign, 973-983 A. D.,
having to repress the Slavi, the Danes, the Greeks of Lower
Italy, and to defend Lorraine against the French. He died at
Rome in his twenty-eighth year. 983 A. D. Otho III. (aged
three years) succeeded under the regency of his mother,
Theophania (a Greek princess), who had to contend with the
rebellious nobles, the Slavi, the Poles, the Bohemians, and
with France, which desired to conquer Lorraine. This able lady
died 991 A. D. Otho III. made three expeditions into Italy,
and in 998 A. D. put down the republic of Rome, which had been
created by the patrician Crescentius. The resistance of
Crescentius had been pardoned the preceding year, but on this
occasion he was publicly beheaded on the battlements of Rome,
in view of the army and of the people. In 999 A. D. Otho
placed his tutor Gerbert in the papal chair as Sylvester II.
The tutor and the emperor were in advance of their age. The
former had gleaned from Saracen translations from the Greek,
as well as from Latin literature, and was master of the
science of the day. It is supposed that they had planned to
remove the seat of empire to Rome--a project which, had he
lived, he would not have been able to carry out, for the
centre of political power had long moved northward: he died at
the early age of twenty-two, 1002 A. D. Henry II. (the Holy),
Duke of Bavaria, was elected emperor, and had to battle, like
his predecessors, with rebellious nobles, with the Poles, and
Bohemians, and the Slavi. He was thrice in Italy, and died
1024 A. D. 'Perhaps, with the single exception of St. Louis
IX., there was no other prince of the middle ages so uniformly
swayed by justice.' Conrad II. (the Salic) of Franconia was
elected emperor in a diet in the plains between Mentz and
Worms, near Oppenheim, which was attended by princes, nobles,
and 50,000 people altogether. His reign was remarkable for the
justice and mercy which he always kept in view. The kingdom of
Aries and Burgundy was united to the empire, 1033 A. D. He
checked the Poles, the Hungarians, and the Lombards, and gave
Schleswiek to Denmark as a fief. In 1037 A. D. he granted to
the lower vassals of the empire the hereditary succession to
their offices and estates, and so extended the privileges of
the great nobles, as to make them almost independent of the
crown. Henry III. succeeded, 1039 A. D., and established the
imperial power with a high hand."

_W. B. Boyce,
Introduction to the Study of History,
pages 230-231._

{1442}

"Henry III. was, as sovereign, able, upright, and resolute;
and his early death--for his reign was cut short by disasters
that preyed upon his health--is one of the calamities of
history. The cause of the Roman Court he judged with vigor and
good sense. His strong hand, more than any man's, dragged the
Church out of the slough it had fallen into [see ROME: A. D.
962-1057]. ... A few years before, in 1033, a child ten years
old, son of one of the noble houses, had been put on the papal
throne, under the name of Benedict IX.; and was restored to it
by force of arms, five years later, when he had grown into a
lewd, violent, and wilful boy of fifteen. At the age of
twenty-one he was weary of the struggle, and sold out, for a
large sum of money paid down, to a rich purchaser,--first
plundering the papal treasury of all the funds he could lay
his hands on. His successor, Gregory VI., naturally complained
of his hard bargain, which was made harder by another claimant
(Sylvester III.), elected by a different party; while no law
that could possibly be quoted or invented would make valid the
purchase and sale of the spiritual sovereignty of the world,
which in theory the Papacy still was. Gregory appears to have
been a respectable and even conscientious magistrate, by the
standard of that evil time. But his open purchase of the
dignity not only gave a shock to whatever right feeling there
was left, but it made the extraordinary dilemma and scandal of
three popes at once,--a knot which the German king, now
Emperor, was called in to cut. ... The worthless Benedict was
dismissed, as having betrayed his charge. The impotent
Sylvester was not recognized at all. The respectable Gregory
was duly convinced of his deep guilt of Simony,--because he
had 'thought that the gift of God could be purchased with
money,'--and was suffered as a penitent to end his days in
peace. A fourth, a German ecclesiastic, who was clean of all
these intrigues, was set in the chair of Peter, where he
reigned righteously for two years under the name of Clement
II."

_J. H. Allen,
Christian History in its Three Great Periods:
Second period,
pages 57-58._

"With the popes of Henry's appointment a new and most powerful
force rose to the control of the papacy--a strong and earnest
movement for reformation which had arisen outside the circle
of papal influence during the darkest days of its degradation,
indeed, and entirely independent of the empire. This had
started from the monastery of Cluny, founded in 910, in
eastern France, as a reformation of the monastic life, but it
involved gradually ideas of a wider reformation throughout the
whole church. Two great sins of the time, as it regarded them,
were especially attacked, the marriage of priests and simony,
or the purchase of ecclesiastical preferment for money,
including also appointments to church offices by temporal
rulers. ... The earnest spirit of Henry III. was not out of
sympathy with the demand for a real reformation, and with the
third pope of his appointment, Leo IX., in 1048, the ideas of
Cluny obtained the direction of affairs. ... One apparently
insignificant act of Leo's had important consequences. He
brought back with him to Rome the monk Hildebrand. He had been
brought up in a monastery in Rome in the strictest ideas of
Cluny, had been a supporter of Gregory VI., one of the three
rival popes deposed by Henry, who, notwithstanding his
outright purchase of the papacy, represented the new reform
demand, and had gone with him into exile on his deposition. It
does not appear that he exercised any decisive influence
during the reign of Leo IX., but so great was his ability and
such the power of his personality that very soon he became the
directing spirit in the papal policy, though his influence
over the papacy before his own pontificate was not so great
nor so constant as it has sometimes been said to have been. So
long as Henry lived the balance of power was decidedly in favor
of the emperor, but in 1056 happened that disastrous event,
which occurred so many times at critical points of imperial
history, from Arnulf to Henry VI., the premature death of the
emperor. His son, Henry IV., was only six years old at his
father's death, and a minority followed just in the crisis of
time needed to enable the feudal princes of Germany to recover
and strengthen their independence against the central
government, and to give free hands to the papacy to carry out
its plans for throwing off the imperial control. Never again
did an emperor occupy, in respect either to Germany or the
papacy, the vantage-ground on which Henry III. had stood. ...
The triumph of the reform movement and of its ecclesiastical
theory is especially connected with the name of Hildebrand, or
Gregory VII., as he called himself when pope, and was very
largely, if not entirely, due to his indomitable spirit and
iron will, which would yield to no persuasion or threats or
actual force. He is one of the most interesting personalities
of history. ... The three chief points which the reform party
attempted to gain were the independence of the church from all
outside control in the election of the pope, the celibacy of
the clergy, and the abolition of simony or the purchase of
ecclesiastical preferment. The foundation for the first of
these was laid under Nicholas II. by assigning the selection
of the pope to the college of cardinals in Rome, though it was
only after some considerable time that this reform was fully
secured. The second point, the celibacy of the clergy, had
long been demanded by the church, but the requirement had not
been strictly enforced, and in many parts of Europe married
clergy were the rule. ... As interpreted by the reformers, the
third of their demands, the suppression of simony, was as great a
step in advance and as revolutionary as the first.
Technically, simony was the sin of securing an ecclesiastical
office by bribery, named from the incident recorded in the
eighth chapter of the Acts concerning Simon Magus. But at this
time the desire for the complete independence of the church
had given to it a new and wider meaning which made it include
all appointment to positions in the church by laymen,
including kings and the emperor. ... According to the
conception of the public law the bishop was an officer of the
state. He had, in the great majority of cases, political
duties to perform as important as his ecclesiastical duties.
The lands which formed the endowment of his office had always
been considered as being, still more directly than any other
feudal land, the property of the state. ...
{1443}
It was a matter of vital importance whether officers
exercising such important functions and controlling so large a
part of its area--probably everywhere as much as one-third of
the territory--should be selected by the state or by some
foreign power beyond its reach and having its own peculiar
interests to seek. But this question of lay investiture was as
vitally important for the church as for the state. ... It was
as necessary to the centralization and independence of the
church that it should choose these officers as that it should
elect the head of all--the pope. This was not a question for
Germany alone. Every northern state had to face the same
difficulty. ... The struggle was so much more bitter and
obstinate with the emperor than with any other sovereign
because of the close relation of the two powers one to
another, and because the whole question of their relative
rights was bound up with it. It was an act of rebellion on the
part of the papacy against the sovereign, who had controlled
it with almost absolute power for a century, and it was rising
into an equal, or even superior, place beside the emperor of
what was practically a new power, a rival for his imperial
position. ... It was absolutely impossible that a conflict
with these new claims should be avoided as soon as Henry IV.
arrived at an age to take the government into his own hands
and attempted to exercise his imperial rights as he understood
them."

_G. B. Adams,
Civilization During the Middle Ages,
chapter 10._

"At Gregory's accession, he [Henry] was a young man of
twenty-three. His violence had already driven a whole district
into rebellion. ... The Pope sided with the insurgents. He
summoned the young king to his judgment-seat at Rome;
threatened at his refusal to 'cut him off as a rotten limb';
and passed on him the awful sentence of excommunication. The
double terror of rebellion at home and the Church's curse at
length broke down the passionate pride of Henry. Humbled and
helpless, he crossed the Alps in midwinter, groping among the
bleak precipices and ice-fields,--the peasants passing him in
a rude sledge of hide down those dreadful slopes,--and went
to beg absolution of Gregory at the mountain castle of
Canossa. History has few scenes more dramatic than that which
shows the proud, irascible, crest-fallen young sovereign
confronted with the fiery, little, indomitable old man. To
quote Gregory's own words:--'Here he came with few attendants,
and for three days before the gate--his royal apparel laid
aside, barefoot, clad in wool, and weeping abundantly--he
never ceased to implore the aid and comfort of apostolic
mercy, till all there present were moved with pity and
compassion; insomuch that, interceding for him with many
prayers and tears they all wondered at my strange severity,
and some even cried out that it was not so much the severe
dignity of an apostle as the cruel wrath of a tyrant. Overcome
at length by the urgency of his appeal and the entreaties of
all present, I relaxed the bond of anathema, and received him
to the favor of communion and the bosom of our holy Mother the
Church.' It was a truce which one party did not mean nor the
other hope to keep. It was policy, not real terror or
conviction, that had led Henry to humble himself before the
Pope. It was policy, not contrition or compassion, that had
led Gregory (against his better judgment, it is said) to
accept his Sovereign's penance. In the war of policy, the man
of the world prevailed. Freed of the Church's curse, he
quickly won back the strength he had lost. He overthrew in
battle the rival whom Gregory upheld. He swept his rebellious
lands with sword and flame. He carried his victorious army to
Rome, and was there crowned Emperor by a rival Pope [1084].
Gregory himself was only saved by his ferocious allies, Norman
and Saracen, at cost of the devastation of half the
capital,--that broad belt of ruin which still covers the half
mile between the Coliseum and the Lateran gate. Then, hardly
rescued from the popular wrath, he went away to die, defeated
and heart-broken, at Salerno, with the almost despairing words
on his lips: 'I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and
therefore I die in exile!' But 'a spirit hath not flesh or
bones,' as a body hath, and so it will not stay mangled and
bruised. The victory lay, after all, with the combatant who
could appeal to fanaticism as well as force."

_J. H. Allen,
Christian History in its Three Great Periods:
second period,
pages 69-72._

"Meanwhile, the Saxons had recognized Hermann of Luxemburg as
their King, but in 1087 he resigned the crown: and another
claimant, Eckbert, Margrave of Meissen, was murdered. The
Saxons were now thoroughly' weary of strife, and as years and
bitter experience had softened the character of Henry, they
were the more willing to return to their allegiance. Peace was
therefore, for a time, restored in Germany. The Papacy did not
forgive Henry. He was excommunicated several times, and in
1091 his son Conrad was excited to rebel against him. In 1104
a more serious rebellion was headed by the Emperor's second
son Henry, who had been crowned King, on promising not to
seize the government during his father's lifetime, in 1099.
The Emperor was treated very cruelly, and had to sign his own
abdication at Ingelheim in 1105. A last effort was made on his
behalf by the Duke of Lotharingia; but worn out by his sorrows
and struggles, Henry died in August, 1106. His body lay in a
stone coffin in an unconsecrated chapel at Speyer for five
years. Not till 1111, when the sentence of excommunication was
removed, was it properly buried. Henry V. was not so obedient
to the Church as the Papal party had hoped. He stoutly
maintained the very point which had brought so much trouble on
his father. The right of investiture, he declared, had always
belonged to his predecessors, and he was not to give up what
they had handed on to him. In 1110 he went to Rome,
accompanied by a large army. Next year Pope Paschal II. was
forced to crown him Emperor: but as soon as the Germans had
crossed the Alps again Paschal renewed all his old demands.
The struggle soon spread to Germany. The Emperor was
excommunicated; and the discontented princes, as eager as ever
to break the royal power, sided with the Pope against him. Peace
was not restored till 1122, when Calixtus II. was Pope. In
that year, in a Diet held at Worms, both parties agreed to a
compromise, called the Concordat of Worms."

_J. Sime,
History of Germany,
chapter 8._

{1444}

"The long-desired reconciliation was effected in the form of
the following concordat. The emperor renounced the right of
investiture with the ring and crosier, and conceded that all
bishoprics of the empire should be filled by canonical
election and free consecration; the election of the German
bishops (not of the Italian and Burgundian) should be held in
presence of the emperor; the bishops elect should receive
investiture, but only of their fiefs and regalia, by the
sceptre in Germany before, in Italy and in Burgundy after,
their consecration; for these grants they should promise
fidelity to the emperor; contested elections should be decided
by the emperor in favour of him who should be considered by
the provincial synod to possess the better right. Finally he
should restore to the Roman Church all the possessions and
regalia of St. Peter. This convention secured to the Church
many things, and above all, the freedom of ecclesiastical
elections. Hitherto, the different Churches had been compelled
to give their consent to elections that had been made by the
king; but now the king was pledged to consent to the elections
made by the Churches; and although these elections took place
in his presence, he could not refuse his consent and
investiture without violating the treaty, in which he had
promised that for the future elections should be according to
the canons. This, and the great difference, that the king,
when he gave the ring and crosier, invested the bishop elect
with his chief dignity, namely, his bishopric, but now granted
him by investiture with the sceptre, only the accessories,
namely the regalia, was felt by Lothaire, the successor of
Henry, when he required of pope Innocent II. the restoration
of the right of investiture. Upon one important point, the
homage which was to be sworn to the king, the concordat was
silent. By not speaking of it, Calixtus seemed to tolerate it,
and the Roman see therefore permitted it, although it had been
prohibited by Urban and Paschal. It is certain that Calixtus
was as fully convinced as his predecessors, that the condition
of vassals, to which bishops and abbots were reduced by their
oath of homage, could hardly be reconciled with the nature and
dignity of the episcopacy, or with the freedom of the Church,
but he perhaps foresaw, that by insisting too strongly upon
its discontinuance, he might awaken again the unholy war, and
without any hopes of benefit, inflict many evils upon the
Church. Sometime later Adrian endeavoured to free the Italian
bishops from the homage, instead of which, the emperor was to
be content with an oath of fidelity: but Frederick I. would
not renounce the homage unless they resigned the regalia. The
greatest concession made by the papal see in this concordat,
was, that by its silence it appeared to have admitted the
former pretensions of the emperors to take a part in the
election of the Roman pontiff. ... In the following year the
concordat was ratified in the great council of three hundred
bishops, the ninth general council of the Church, which was
convened by Calixtus in Rome."

_J. J. I. Döllinger,
History of the Church,
volume 3, pages 345-347._

See, also, PAPACY: A. D. 1056-1122;
CANOSSA; ROME: A. D. 1081-1084;
and SAXONY: A. D. 1073-1075.

ALSO IN:
_A. F. Villemain,
Life of Gregory VII.,
book 2._

_Comte C. F. Montalembert,
The Monks of the West,
book 19._

_H. H. Milman,
History of Latin Christianity,
books 6-8._

_W. R. W. Stephens,
Hildebrand and His Times._

_E. F. Henderson,
Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,
book 4._

GERMANY: A. D. 1101.
Disastrous Crusade under Duke Welf of Bavaria.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1101-1102.

GERMANY: A. D. 1125.
Election of Lothaire II., King, afterwards Emperor.

GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152.
The rise of the College of Electors.

The election of Lothaire II., in 1125, when a great assembly
of nobles and church dignitaries was convened at Mentz, and
when certain of the chiefs made a selection of candidates to
be voted for, has been regarded by some historians--Hallam,
Comyn and Dunham, for example--as indicating the origin of the
German electoral college. They have held that a right of
"pretaxation," or preliminary choice, was gradually acquired
by certain princes, which grew into the finally settled
electoral right. But this view is now looked upon as more than
questionable, and is not supported by the best authorities.
"The phrase electoral princes (electores principes) first
occurs in the Privilegium majus Austriacum, which dates from
1156, but it does not appear what princes were intended, and
the accounts extant of the elections of the rival kings,
Philip and Otho (IV.) in 1198, show beyond question that the
right of election was not then limited to a few princes. The
election of Frederick II. (1213) is only described by the
authorities in general terms. They inform us that many princes
took part in the proceedings. The following brief passage
concerning the royal elections occurs in the Auctor Vetus de
Beneficiis: 'When the king elected by the Germans goes to Rome
to be 'consecrated (the) six princes who first cast their
votes for him shall by rights accompany him that the justice
of his election may be evident to the Pope.' The
Sachsenspiegel Lehurecht substantially copies this sentence,
but designates as the six princes: 'the Bishop of Mentz and of
Treves and of Cologne, and the Palsgrave of the Rhine, the
Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg.' The
Sachsenspiegel of Landrecht is still more explicit: 'In voting
for Emperor, the first shall be the Bishop of Mentz; the
second, the (Bishop) of Treves; the third, the (Bishop) of
Cologne. The first of the laymen to vote is the Palsgrave of
the Rhine, the steward of the Empire; the second, the Duke of
Saxony, the marshal; the third, the Margrave of Brandenburg,
the chamberlain. The butler of the Empire (is) the King of
Bohemia. He has no vote because he is not German.' The obvious
inference is that these three temporal princes voted before
the rest because they were respectively the steward, marshal,
and chamberlain. In the chronicle of Albert of Stade, the
inference is given as fact in these words: 'The Palsgrave
votes because he is steward, the Duke of Saxony because (he
is) marshal, and the Margrave of Brandenburg, because (he is)
chamberlain.' The mere fact that the right of casting the
first six votes attached to six particular princes implies
that their votes greatly outweighed those of their
fellow-princes, and this is well known to have been the case
in all the elections held in the thirteenth century subsequent
to that of Frederick II. Only two others were associated with
them in the double election of Richard of Cornwall and
Alphonso of Castile (1256), namely, the King of Bohemia and
the Duke of Bavaria. The whole number of participants was
therefore eight, yet Urban IV., in a letter written March 31,
1263, to Richard of Cornwall, mentions the King of Bohemia
alone as associated with them, and incidentally states that
the 'princes having a voice' in the royal elections were
'seven in number.' It seems as if this must have been the
statement of an idea rather than of a fact, although a college
of seven electors was a recognized institution ten years
later, as the circumstances attending the election of Rudolph
of Hapsburg, demonstrate."

_S. E. Turner,
A Sketch of the Germanic Constitution,
chapter 4._

{1445}

The Mark of Brandenburg was raised to the rank of an
Electorate in 1356--not in 1152 as erroneously stated by
Carlyle. The Margraf then became Kurfürst--"one of the Seven
who have a right ... to choose, to 'kieren' the Romish Kaiser;
and who are therefore called Kur Princes, Kurfürste, or
Electors. ... Fürst (prince) I suppose is equivalent
originally to our noun of number, 'First.' The old verb
'kieren' (participle 'erkoren' still in use, not to mention
'Val-kyr' and other instances) is essentially the same word as
our 'choose,' being written 'kiesen' as well as 'kieren.' Nay,
say the etymologists, it is also written 'Küssen ('to
kiss,'--to choose with such emphasis!), and is not likely to
fall obsolete in that form.--The other Six Electoral
Dignitaries, who grew to Eight by degrees, and may be worth
noting once by the readers of this book, are:

1. Three Ecclesiastical, Mainz, Cöln, Trier (Mentz, Cologne,
Treves), Archbishops all. ...

2. Three Secular, Sachsen, Pfalz, Böhmen (Saxony, Palatinate,
Bohemia); of which the last, Böhmen, since it fell from being
a kingdom in itself, to being a Province of Austria, is not
very vocal in the Diets.

These Six, with Brandenburg, are the Seven Kurfürsts in old
time; Septemvirs of the Country, so to speak. But now Pfalz,
in the Thirty-Years War (under our Prince Rupert's Father,
whom the Germans call the 'Winter-King'), got abrogated, put
to the ban, so far as an indignant Kaiser could; and the vote
and Kur of Pfalz was given to his Cousin of Baiern
(Bavaria),--so far as an indignant Kaiser could.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1621-1623.

However, at the Peace of Westphalia (1648) it was found
incompetent to any Kaiser to abrogate Pfalz or the like of
Pfalz, a Kurfürst of the Empire. So, after jargon
inconceivable, it was settled, that Pfalz must be reinstated,
though with territories much clipped, and at the bottom of the
list, not the top as formerly; and that Baiern, who could not
stand to be balked after twenty-years possession, must be made
Eighth Elector.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

The Ninth, we saw (Year 1692), was Gentleman Ernst of Hanover.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1705.

There never was any Tenth."

_T. Carlyle,
Frederick the Great,
book 2, chapter 4._

"All the rules and requisites of the election were settled by
Charles the Fourth in the Golden Bull [A. D. 1356--see below:
A. D. 1347-1493], thenceforward a fundamental law of the
Empire."

_J. Bryce,
The Holy Roman Empire,
chapter 14._

GERMANY: A. D. 1138-1268.
The house of Suabia, or the Hohenstaufen.
Its struggles in Germany and Italy, and its end.
The Factions of the
Guelfs and Ghibellines.
Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick the Second.

On the death of Henry V., in 1125, the male line of the house
of Franconia became extinct. Frederick, duke of Suabia, and
his brother Conrad, duke of the Franks, were grandchildren of
Henry IV. on their mother's side, and, inheriting the
patrimonial estates, were plainly the heirs of the crown, if
the crown was to be recognized as hereditary and dynastic. But
jealousy of their house and a desire to reassert the elective
dependence of the imperial office prevailed against their
claims and their ambition. At an election which was denounced
as irregular, the choice fell upon Lothaire of Saxony. The old
imperial family was not only set aside, but its bitterest
enemies were raised over it. The consequences were a feud and
a struggle which grew and widened into the long-lasting,
far-reaching, historical conflict of Guelfs and Ghibellines.

See GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES;
also, SAXONY: DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD DUCHY.

The Saxon emperor Lothaire found his strongest support in the
great Wölf, Welf, or Guelf nobleman, Henry the Proud, duke of
Bavaria, to whom he (Lothaire) now gave his daughter in
marriage, together with the dukedom of Saxony, and whom he
intended to make his successor on the imperial throne. But the
scheme failed. On Lothaire's death, in 1138, the partisans of
the Suabian family carried the election of Conrad (the
Crusader--see CRUSADES: A. D. 1147-1149), and the dynasty most
commonly called Hohenstaufen rose to power. It took the name
of Hohenstaufen from its original family seat on the lofty
hill of Staufen, in Suabia, overlooking the valley of the
Rems. Its party, in the wars and factions of the time,
received the name of the Waiblingen, from the birth-place of
the Suabian duke Frederick--the little town of Waiblingen in
Franconia. Under the tongue of the Italians, when these party
names and war-cries were carried across the Alps, Waiblingen
became Ghibelline and Welf became Guelf. During the first half
century of the reign of the Hohenstaufen, the history of
Germany is the history, for the most part, of the strife in
which the Guelf dukes, Henry the Proud and Henry the Lion, are
the central figures, and which ended in the breaking up of the
old powerful duchy of Saxony. But Italy was the great
historical field of the energies and the ambitions of the
Hohenstaufen emperors. There, Frederick Barbarossa (Frederick
Red beard, as the Italians called him), the second of the
line, and Frederick II., his adventurous grandson, fought
their long, losing battle with the popes and with the
city-republics of Lombardy and Tuscany.

_U. Balzani,
The Popes and the Hohenstaufen._

Frederick Barbarossa, elected Emperor in 1152, passed into
Italy in 1154. "He came there on the invitation of the Pope,
of the Prince of Capua, and of the towns which had been
subjected to the ambition of Milan. He marched at the head of
his German feudatories, a splendid and imposing array. His
first object was to crush the power of Milan, and to exalt
that of Pavia, the head of a rival league. Nothing could stand
against him. At Viterbo he was compelled to hold the stirrup
of the Pope, and in return for this submission he received the
crown from the Pontiff's hands in the Basilica of St. Peter.
He returned northwards by the valley of the Tiber, dismissed
his army at Ancona, and with difficulty escaped safely into
Bavaria. His passage left little that was solid and durable
behind it. He had effected nothing against the King of Naples.
His friendship with the Pope was illusory and short-lived. The
dissensions of the North, which had been hushed for a moment
by his presence, broke out again as soon as his back was
turned. He had, however, received the crown of Charles the
Great from the hands of the successor of St. Peter. But
Frederick was not a man to brook easily the miscarriage of his
designs. In 1158 he collected another army at Ulm. Brescia was
quickly subdued; Lodi, which had been destroyed by the
Milanese, was rebuilt, and Milan itself was reduced to terms.
{1446}
This peace lasted but for a short time; Milan revolted, and
was placed under the ban of the Empire. The fate of Cremona
taught the Milanese what they had to expect from the clemency
of the Emperor. After a desultory warfare, regular siege was
laid to the town. On March 1, 1162, Milan, reduced by famine,
surrendered at discretion, and a fortnight later all the
inhabitants were ordered to leave the town. The circuit of the
walls was partitioned out among the most pitiless enemies of
its former greatness, and the inhabitants of Lodi, of Cremona,
of Pavia, of Novara, and of Como were encouraged to wreak
their vengeance on their defeated rival. For six days the
imperial army laboured to overturn the walls and public
buildings, and when the Emperor left for Pavia, on Palm Sunday
1162, not a fiftieth part of the city was standing. This terrible
vengeance produced a violent reaction. The homeless fugitives
were received by their ancient enemies, and local jealousies
were merged in common hatred of the common foe. Frederick had
already been excommunicated by Pope Alexander III. as the
supporter of his rival Victor. Verona undertook to be the
public vindicator of discontent. Five years after the
destruction of Milan the Lombard league numbered fifteen towns
amongst its members. Venice, Verona, Vicenza, Treviso,
Ferrara, Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, Milan, Lodi, Piacenza,
Parma, Modena, and Bologna. The confederation solemnly engaged
to expel the Emperor from Italy. The towns on the frontier of
Piedmont asked and obtained admission to the league, and to
mark the dawn of freedom a new town was founded on the low
marshy ground which is drained by the Bormida and the Tanaro,
and which afterwards witnessed the victory of Marengo. It was
named by its founders Alessandria, in honour of the Pope, who
had vindicated their independence of the Empire. ... The
Lombard league had unfortunately a very imperfect
constitution. It had no common treasure, no uniform rules for
the apportionment of contributions; it existed solely for the
purposes of defence against the external foe. The time was not
yet come when self-sacrifice and self-abnegation could lay the
foundations of a united Italy. Frederick spent six years in
preparing vengeance. In 1174 he laid siege to the new
Alexandria, but did not succeed in taking it. A severe
struggle took place two years later. In 1176 a new army
arrived from Germany, and on May 29 Frederick Barbarossa was
entirely defeated at Legnano. In 1876 the seventh hundred
anniversary of the battle was celebrated on the spot where it
was gained, and it is still regarded as the birthday of
Italian freedom."

_O. Browning,
Guelphs and Ghibellines,
chapter 1._

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1154-1162 to 1174-1183.

"The end was that the Emperor had to make peace with both the
Pope and the cities, and in 1183 the rights of the cities were
acknowledged in a treaty or law of the Empire, passed at
Constanz or Constance in Swabia. In the last years of his
reign, Frederick went on the third Crusade, and died on the
way.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1188-1192.