Chapter IX: The Franconian, or Salian, Dynasty (2)

Disaffection was rife among the nobles throughout the empire, for Henry, like his father, had endeavoured to secure the dukedoms for his own family, or to confer them on men of no consequence who should be dependent upon himself. The Saxons, whose ancient pride could ill brook the rule of a Franconian, bore him the bitterest ill-will of all, and, of the Saxons, the ducal house of Billing most keenly resented the wrongs which, like many other great Saxon families, it believed it had suffered at the hands of the emperor and his friends. The expenses of the court, which the emperor usually held at Goslar to keep the Saxons in check, also weighed heavily upon the province. The nobility were in a ferment throughout the empire; the emperor held them down with iron hand, but his position was in truth even such as one of his faithful councillors and friends saw in a dream: “The emperor stood before his throne, sword in hand, and cried with a terrible countenance that he would yet smite down all his enemies.” But he was snatched from the empire in the flower of his age, when its need of a strong ruler was sorest. The pope was on a visit to him, and his nobles were gathered about him in his palace at Bodfeld in the Harz, where he had gone for a few days to enjoy the pleasures of the chase. There he was met by the news of a defeat inflicted on Saxon levies by the Wend tribes at Prizlava, in the angle between the upper Havel and the Elbe. The evil tidings were soon followed by the death of the great monarch, and his empire was left to a child six years old, helpless in the face of the evil days to come.

HENRY IV (1056-1106 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1056-1066 A.D.]]

The first two emperors of the house of Franconia had drawn in the reins of government so tightly that the German princes seemed to have fallen once more upon the times of Charles and Otto the Great. But the old intractability which prevented complete union was still active in the German races, and this instinct was now reinforced by the private interest of the great nobles who found the authority of the empire irksome when too vigorously wielded, and whose sovereign privileges had been greatly reduced under Conrad II and Henry III. The moment was therefore propitious to all who hated a strong and united empire, for a child king now succeeded the strongest and sternest ruler the empire had ever known. The empress Agnes was to undertake the regency for the youthful monarch, Henry IV, as Theophano had done for Otto III. She did so with Bishop Henry of Augsburg for her adviser. But envy, selfishness, and perfidy were already at work undermining the power of the crown. Under the first Franconian monarchs times and manners had been rude and hard, but now all restraint was flung aside and every consideration of right and fealty seemed to have departed from the empire.

Troubles presently began to ferment; here and there in Saxony a rumour ran of attempts on the young king’s life. Agnes was soon forced to make large concessions in order to gain friends, who proved untrustworthy after all. A Saxon noble, Otto, of the family of Nordheim, a race akin to the Billings, whose hereditary seat lay close to the modern town of Göttingen, received from the empress the duchy of Bavaria, which Henry III had acquired for his own house. Rudolf von Rheinfelden, a Burgundian noble, worked his way into the empress’ good graces, and received the duchy of Swabia together with the hand of the daughter of the empress. The duchy of Carinthia was given to Berthold, a Zähringian. If only the empress could have purchased fidelity by these concessions! But not one of these men was trustworthy; and the moving spirit of all the plots which aimed at wresting the sovereign power from the empress and bestowing it on the nobles of the empire, was Archbishop Hanno of Cologne, a man of low origin, but ambitious, harsh, crafty, and cunning, although outwardly wearing the semblance of the sanctity of the cloister. It was natural that the power of the empire should decline abroad--in Italy, in Hungary, and over the Wends; and the fact was laid to the charge of the empress, together with the accusation that she was bringing up her son too effeminately. In brief a criminal project was maturing in Hanno’s heart as in the hearts of the princes, his allies. The empress was then at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine with her twelve-year-old son, when Hanno appeared at her court, and after a festive banquet invited the young king to take an excursion on the Rhine in his beautiful boat. The boy embarked unsuspectingly with Hanno, together with some of the conspirators: the bishop’s serfs plied their oars and the boat was quickly under way. The lamentations of the young king’s mother pursued him from her balcony; the people followed on the banks, cursing the robbers; and the boy himself, alarmed and fearing the worst, jumped into the river, from which he was rescued with difficulty. But the plot had succeeded and Hanno, who now had the young king in his own hands, succeeded, by the help of the nobles, in assuming the reins of power at the head of the bishops.

Matters were not thereby mended in the empire. The empress soon retired from the world and ended her days in Italy, occupied in works of piety. Under Hanno’s administration any man who pleased laid hands on the royal demesnes; and a few years later the young king was an eye-witness of mortal combat in the cathedral at Goslar, where brawling ecclesiastics fought for temporal honours in the very sanctuary.

Such an education sowed the seeds of mistrust, bitterness, and hatred in the heart of the young ruler, and as soon as he was able he threw himself into the arms of a different guide, Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. The latter, no less ambitious than Hanno, and even prouder, sought to exalt his famous metropolitan see, whence missions still went forth across the North Sea and the Baltic, to the position of the patriarchate of the north. Formerly the friend of Henry III, he now sought to win the friendship of the youthful Henry IV. When Henry attained the age of sixteen he declared him of age, according to German law, by girding him with the sword, but for some years he continued to direct his unripe youth. In his endeavours Adalbert frequently incurred the displeasure of the Saxon nobles. Their intentions, as a matter of fact, were evil, and it was against them that he fostered the young king’s suspicions. Meanwhile the latter began to grow up to independent manhood. Of the authority, property, and prerogatives of his predecessors, he found but little left; all his efforts were directed to their recovery, and in pursuit of this end he manifested the iron will of his forefathers. Their hot blood flowed also in his veins, inciting him to occasional arbitrary acts, and above all to excesses which were magnified by the slanderous tongues of his enemies. He first sought to subdue Saxony. The means he employed for the purpose were such as the Normans had adopted in lower Italy; he erected strongholds in commanding situations in the land. From these centres, however, many acts of violence were perpetrated in the surrounding country, and he thus aroused the wrath, not only of individual nobles, but of the whole Saxon race.

But Henry did more than this to compass the fall of the enemies who had ruled for so long. About this time a man arose to accuse Otto of Nordenheim, duke of Bavaria, of having conspired against the king’s life, and offered to prove the charge by ordeal. Henry deposed the duke, laid him under the ban of the empire, together with Magnus of Saxony, of the house of Billing, and presently threw the latter into the dungeon of the Harzburg. He seemed bent upon completely abolishing the duchy of Saxony; but Bavaria he gave to a member of the ancient Swabian dynasty, Welf by name. Meanwhile Adalbert had died, after having seen all his plans go to wreck; for the Wends east of the Elbe, among whom he had hoped to establish his suffragan bishoprics by the help of Godschalk, one of their own chiefs, had rebelled, and extirpated Christianity for the time and for long afterwards, within their borders.

[Sidenote: [1066-1075 A.D.]]

Henry IV had begun his reign with vigour. This circumstance only hastened the formation of conspiracies against him among the nobles throughout the empire. In Saxony, the whole nation was in a ferment--clergy, nobles, and commons. All complained of intolerable oppression, exercised from Henry’s strongholds. At the head of the league now formed stood Otto of Nordheim. In South Germany, Rudolf of Swabia was in accord with him; Welf and Hanno were equally aware of the plot. The pope, too, influenced by Hildebrand, now cardinal subdeacon, also began to take an interest in German affairs; he zealously opposed his ecclesiastical authority to the evil desires of King Henry, who wished for a divorce from Bertha, his noble wife; and he also sought to intervene as mediator at the request of the Saxons.

Meanwhile the whole empire was on the verge of rebellion. In the year 1073 the Saxons rose as one man, and marched in a body sixty thousand strong to Harzburg near Goslar, a castle on a lofty height, commanding a wide view of the surrounding country, which the king had made into a stately royal residence. Henry, after useless negotiations, barely escaped by flight. When he tried to gather the princes of the empire around him, none appeared; nay, the idea of deserting him altogether and electing another emperor was openly mooted. At this crisis the towns alone proved true to Henry from the outset; and whilst these negotiations were pending, he lay sick to death in the loyal city of Worms. But he had scarcely recovered before he met and defeated the foreign foe in Hungary; and then with restless activity he turned to affairs at home. He still had some friends; the archbishop of Mainz, the dukes of Lorraine and Bohemia, and Welf of Bavaria came over on his side; and finally even Rudolf, who shortly before had laid the most treasonable plots against him, thought it advisable to make a fresh display of devotion. Concord between the South German princes and Saxons was at an end, and Henry skilfully made use of their dissensions.

In the wantonness of victory the Saxons had destroyed the Harzburg; they had even burned a church and desecrated graves; the archbishop of Mainz excommunicated them for the sacrilege; and in the summer of 1075 Henry IV marched against them, with such a splendid array as few emperors before him had led, in spite of their proffers of atonement and submission. Henry could have brought the matter to a peaceful issue, much to his own advantage and that of his people. But his soul thirsted for vengeance; he surprised the Saxons and their Thuringian allies at Hohenburg in the meadows on the Unstrut, not far from Langensalza. His army ranged in the same order as that of Otto the Great at the battle of the Lech, gained a sanguinary victory (1075). But German had fought against German, and on the evening of the battle loud lamentations broke forth in the royal army for the fallen, many of whom had been slain by the hands of their own kin. Nevertheless Henry was now master of Saxony and lord of all Germany; he seemed to have established his throne firmly once more. So he would have done, in all likelihood, had he not imprudently involved himself in a much more serious quarrel.

QUARREL BETWEEN HENRY IV AND GREGORY VII

[Sidenote: [1075 A.D.]]

We know how, amidst the indescribable barbarism, misery, and violence of the eleventh century, a reformation of morals, though in a gloomy monastic form, had proceeded from the convent of Cluny; and how the emperor Henry III himself had endeavoured to promote it. Through Hildebrand this reformation was transferred to Rome, to the court of the popes, who for nearly two centuries had been oblivious of the vocation ascribed to them by the faith of the age. As long as Henry III was alive, the Romans on whom the election still depended had, by Hildebrand’s advice, allowed the emperor to designate the popes. During the minority of Henry IV, the election was for the first time committed to the college of cardinals; and in 1075 Hildebrand was elected pope under the title of Gregory VII.

This great and gifted man immediately proceeded to carry his own ideas into practice. He would have the church thenceforth free from all temporal authority, that of the emperor included. He therefore issued an edict, which had already been suggested in earlier counsels but never carried out, prescribing the celibacy of the clergy. Unhampered by wife, child, and earthly cares, the clergy were in future to feel themselves merely members of a powerful ecclesiastical community, receiving orders from Rome, from the successor of St. Peter, the vicegerent of God and Christ upon earth. This edict, deeply as it touched the life of the nation, might seem to affect the emperor but slightly; yet a second struck at the roots of his power. Henceforth neither the emperor nor any temporal sovereign was to appoint bishops; in the phraseology of the time the investiture--_i.e._, the conferring of the ring and crosier, the symbols of episcopal office--was no longer to be in the hands of laymen. The cathedral chapter, that is to say the college of clergy attached to each cathedral, was to make the election, the pope to confirm it; no gift nor purchase was to be made on elevation to the sacred office, otherwise the candidate was guilty of simony, as the offence was styled, by a reference to Acts, viii, 18.

This edict was a heavy blow to the German monarchs, for since the reign of Henry II they had sought and found support among the bishops against the increasing power of the nobles. The estates of the church formed a considerable portion of the imperial territory; the monarch disposed of them and of their revenues if he appointed bishops, as he had always done up to this time. Many of Henry IV’s appointments had been made, not with his father’s strict regard for clerical fitness, but for his own profit and to meet the needs of the moment. Some of these bishops had paid money to Henry’s counsellors for their appointment, and for this, in 1075, Gregory VII put them as well as the counsellors under the ban, demanding of the king to depose them, and threatening him with the punishment of the church if he refused. Long had Henry watched unwillingly the encroachments of the pope; after the victory over the Saxons had restored his power in the empire, he attempted, following the example of his father, to depose Gregory--without reflecting how much weaker his power was than his father’s, and how much nobler and greater was the mind of Gregory VII than were those of the previous popes. At Worms in 1076 he held a synod of German bishops, who neither by their worthy living nor their education could be called mirrors of the church. By them on a trumped-up accusation he had Gregory VII deposed. Gregory replied with the ban in 1076. This was the first time a pope had attempted this measure against a German king. And Henry was soon to realise what a ban, which at that time loosed all bonds of feudal obedience, signified. It was the signal for the princes, who jealously saw the royal power restored, to desert him. In the autumn of the same year they held a diet at Tribur on the old election field, and sent word to the king that if in a year and a day he was not free from the ban, they could no longer consider him their lord.

Henry saw himself deserted by all; he heard that Gregory VII was already on the way to Germany to adjudge his cause. He resolved on a reconciliation with the pope as the best way out of his troubles. He started in the severe winter, when the rivers were almost frozen in their beds, and crossed the snow-covered Alps, not as his predecessors with a formidable army, but as a penitent, accompanied by his noble-minded wife, a few faithful servants, and those placed under the ban with him. In Lombardy, in which a strong opposition prevailed against Gregory’s innovations, he had been offered means of resistance, but he rejected them, and hastened to Canossa, the fortress of the powerful Countess Matilda of Tuscany, a daughter of that Beatrice who had once caused Henry III such anxiety. She was as devoted to Gregory VII as to an ecclesiastical father, and now offered him her castle. Henry did not come as an assailant, but as a supplicant.[i]

So picturesque and important was this pilgrimage that it has fallen into proverb, and “going to Canossa” is a metaphor of humiliation. The contrast between Henry IV’s beggar-like penance and the manner in which his forefathers went into Italy and the manner in which the popes received them, is vivid enough to merit a liberal quotation from the old historian Lambert von Hersfeld,[g] a contemporary of the event he describes.[a]

“GOING TO CANOSSA”: A CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT

[Sidenote: [1075-1077 A.D.]]

Henry IV arrived as he had been ordered, and the castle being surrounded by three walls, he was received in the circuit of the second wall, which went round the castle, the whole of his followers remaining outside, and there, having put down the ensigns of his dignity as a king, and without any ornaments, having no longer any magnificent wearing apparel, he stood with bare feet, fasting from morning until evening, awaiting the sentence of the Roman pope. Thus he spent his second, yea, his third day! Only on the fourth day was he led before him, and after much talking to and fro, delivered from the ban under the following conditions:

(Based on the effigy on his tomb)]

(1) That he should be present at any day or place the pope should decide upon and, all the princes having been assembled for a general meeting, find his way there to reply to the charges which were to be brought against him; the pope meanwhile, if so it pleased him, sitting on the judgment-seat, to decide the matter. After this sentence he was to keep the empire, were he able to dispel the accusations, or he was to lose it without anger, if, after having been convicted, he should be judged according to the laws of the church unworthy of royal honours. But whether he kept the realm or lost it, he never on any account or at any time should take revenge on any human being for this humiliation.

(2) Till the day, however, when his affair should be settled by lawful instigation, he must not use any apparel of kingly splendour, nor token of kingly dignity, undertake nothing bearing upon the organisation of the state, ordinarily his right, nor decide anything which ought to be valid.

(3) Except calling in the taxes indispensable for the keep of himself and his own people, he was to use no kingly or public moneys. As to all those who had sworn allegiance to him, they were to be free and relieved of the thraldom of the oath and of the duty to keep true to him before God and man.

(4) He must keep forever aloof from Ruotbert, bishop of Bamberg, Andalrich von Cosheim, and the others by whose counsels he had destroyed himself as well as his empire, and never again admit them into his intimate companionship.

(5) Should he, after contestation of the accusations, remain at the head of the empire, newly strengthened and powerful, he must always be submissive to the pope and obey his command, and be on his side to improve everything against the laws of the church, which in his realm had taken root in consequence of bad habits, yea, do all in his power to reach that goal.

(6) Finally, should he in the future act against one of these points, the deliverance from the ban which had been so ardently longed for would be considered as null and void, yea, he would be regarded as convicted and having confessed, and no further hearing would be granted to him to declare his innocence. As to the princes of the empire being permitted to join their votes and so elect another king, they might do so without being further examined, and were relieved from all duties of allegiance.

The king accepted these conditions with joy and with the most solemn assurances promised to fulfil them. However, there was little confidence felt in his word, therefore the abbot of Cloniaca, who declined to take the oath on account of his priestly vows, pledged his troth before the eyes of the all-seeing God; the bishop of Zeits, the bishop of Vercelli, the markgraf Azzo and the other princes took oath, putting their hands on the bones of the saints, which were presented to them, that the king would not be led away from his purpose, neither through any trouble, nor through the change of events.

Thus having been made free from excommunication the pope said a high mass calling the king with the rest of the assistants. After having offered the sacrifice of the sacrament, he said to the crowd which was numerous around the altar, whilst holding in his hand the body of Christ--the sacred bread: “Not long ago I have received writings from you and your followers, wherein you accused me of ascending the apostolic chair by the heresy of simony, and that before receiving my episcopate and after its reception I have soiled my life with some other crimes; which according to the statutes of the canon forbid me to approach the holy sacraments. By the word of many witnesses, worthy ones beyond a doubt, I might refute the accusations; I speak of witnesses who know my whole life to the very fullest from my early youth. I also speak of those who have advanced my nomination to the holy see. You must not believe though that I depend upon human rather than upon divine testimony; to free each and all from this error, and that in the very shortest time, the sacrament, of which I am about to partake, shall be to me to-day a touchstone of my innocence. May the all-powerful God by his decree speak me either free from even the suspicion of the crime I am accused of, or make me die a sudden death if I am guilty.”

These words and others he spoke, such solemn usage being customary, and called upon the Lord to support him, he being the most just of judges and the protector of innocence; then he partook of the sacrament. Having partaken of it with the greatest calm, and the multitude having raised a shout to the honour of God, which was at the same time a homage to innocence, he turned, after silence was restored, towards the king, saying:

“Do now, my son, if it pleases you, what you have seen me do. The princes of Germany trouble us every day with their complaints; they put upon your shoulders a great load of terrible crimes, on account of which they deem that you should be kept away, and this up to your very end, not only from all direction of public affairs, but also from frequenting the church, and that you should be held aloof from all intercourse in civil life. They also ask most pressingly that a day may be appointed and audience given for a full canonical investigation of the accusations they are going to bring forward against you. You yourself know best that human judgment is generally deceptive, and that in public lawsuits often the false instead of the true is accepted, things being wrongly expounded; one likes to listen to the speeches of eloquent men, speeches rich by natural gifts, by the richness and charm of expressions, one likes to listen to untruths garbed with the beauty of words--and you know, too, that truth unassisted by eloquence is not considered. In order to better your condition, have you not in your misfortunes most ardently asked the protection of the chair of the apostle? In that case do now what I advise you to do. If you know that you are innocent, and are cognisant that your good name is treacherously attacked, deliver the church of God from scandal and yourself from the doubtful issue of the long strife in the shortest way possible, and partake of the part of the body of the Lord that yet remains. You will thus prove your innocence by the testimony of God and will shut every mouth that speaks wrongly against you. Men in the future and those knowing the real state of things, will be the most ardent defenders of your innocence; the princes will reconcile themselves with you, the empire will be given back, and all storms of war which have troubled the realm for so long a time, will be quieted forever.”

Thereupon the king, dazed by the unexpected turn of the whole affair, began to waver, to cast about for expedients, to take counsel with his familiars away from the crowd, and full of fear to consider what he must do and how to escape the necessity of so awful a trial. Having gained courage, he began to give the pope as a pretext the absence of the princes, of those princes at least who had shown him unswerving fidelity during his misfortunes; and without whose counsels he could not act; in the absence of his accusers, moreover, as he said, any proof of innocence which he might furnish as to his justification, before the few who were present, would be useless and without avail before the incredulous. Consequently he urgently asked the pope to keep the matter unchanged for the general assembly and a public hearing, that he might openly refute his accusers; and thus test the accusations as well as the accusers, who should previously have been examined according to the laws of the church. Under these conditions alone recognised by the princes of the empire to be fair and just would he be able to exculpate himself.

The pope willingly granted him this request; after accomplishment of the holy offices he invited the king for breakfast, then dismissed him in the kindest manner possible, after having carefully told him all he had to mind, and sent him with his blessing back to his own people, who had remained outside of the castle. He had sent the bishop Eppa of Zeits outside, to release those from the ban who had held communication with the king whilst he had been excommunicated, and this out of kindness, so that he might not soil the just acquired communication with the church.[g]

The wearer of the imperial crown could no more claim to be the highest power on earth, created by and answerable to God alone. Gregory had extorted the recognition of the absolute superiority of the spiritual dominion; proclaiming that to the pope, as God’s vicar, all mankind are subject and all rulers responsible.[j]

HENRY’S STRUGGLE TO REGAIN POWER (1077-1090 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1077-1085 A.D.]]

Thus the king was freed from the ban, but whilst he was still in Italy, the German princes elected another king, Rudolf of Swabia, his brother-in-law, whom the towns immediately rejected. The pope wished to decide which of the two deserved to be king. At this Henry’s courage awoke and he took up arms. He was again put under the ban, but he continued to fight with exhaustless energy in Germany. The whole land was devastated and much blood was shed. Fortune wavered for a long time from one side to the other and most of the nobles wavered with it. But Henry found a true support in the young Frederick of Hohenstaufen, a Swabian noble, who first brought fame to his house and to whom Henry later gave his daughter in marriage, investing him at the same time with the duchy of Swabia. Bohemia, whose duke he soon invested with the title of king, was faithful to him in the fight. In 1080 Rudolf fell in a battle which bid fair to end victoriously for him at Merseburg, slain it is said by the hand of the young Godfrey de Bouillon, the son of the duke of Lorraine who was later to gain still greater honours.

(From an effigy)]

Henry had by this time so far regained his power that he could raise up an anti-pope, and undertake a Roman campaign against Gregory VII. He pressed the latter hard in Rome, but with iron resolution Gregory refused to enter into treaty with the banned. Just when his need was greatest, the Normans who hastened up under their king Robert Guiscard (the son of Tancred de Hauteville) saved him from imprisonment. He died a fugitive amongst them at Salerno (1085) without removing the ban from Henry, and with the consciousness of being a martyr. His indomitable spirit, his high ideas of the papacy, descended to his successor. Henry IV had remained outwardly the victor; he received the imperial crown from the hand of his pope, and was held in respect in Germany for a decade. But various misfortunes shattered his family, and mutual mistrust destroyed the relations between him and the princes; still the cup of misfortune destined for him had not yet been emptied.

[Sidenote: [1085-1099 A.D.]]

The religious enthusiasm which had originated in Cluny and been carried by Hildebrand and his followers into the church, soon found an extremely visible aim; western Christianity rose up to free the Holy Sepulchre from the infidels. Many thousands took up the cross in response to the preaching of the hermit Peter of Amiens and the exhortations of Pope Urban II. The agitation seized Germany and also lower Lorraine, passing by, singularly enough, without leaving any trace, the mass of the people and the emperor Henry IV; it was almost with astonishment that the unrestrained swarms of the hermit were seen passing through Germany, and next giving vent to their wild religious zeal by murdering the Jews. Then came the regular crusaders’ army under Godfrey de Bouillon, a German imperial prince, who in 1099 really conquered the Holy Sepulchre, and whose brother won the royal crown of Jerusalem.[i]

Though the death of Gregory VII delivered the emperor from his most dangerous enemy, he found himself compelled to struggle with a rival in the empire, who had been raised by the adherents of the deceased Rudolf. Whilst Henry was busied in besieging Rome, Hermann of Luxemburg received the crown of Germany, and was supported by the Saxon princes, by Welf, duke of Bavaria, and by some of the states of Swabia. The utmost distraction prevailed throughout Germany; and the bishops distinguished themselves by the zeal with which they animated the contending parties. Whilst some, under the influence of the papal legate, upheld the excommunication of Henry, others declared Pope Gregory’s proceedings utterly illegal and void, and recognised the anti-pope Clement III as the true head of the church.

Against the Saxons the arms of the emperor were in the first place turned; but amongst these rebels great discord prevailed; and the anti-cæsar Hermann incurred the censures of the church for contracting a marriage within the prohibited degrees. Many of the Saxons voluntarily returned to their allegiance; and Henry succeeded in mastering the remainder, though not without a severe struggle and a sanguinary defeat at Pleichfeld. Hermann of Luxemburg, now fallen into general contempt, obtained permission from Henry to retire to his patrimony in Lorraine; and perished soon afterwards in a mock attack on one of his own castles (1088).

In the midst of this confusion the emperor had still sufficient authority to dispose of two crowns. Out of gratitude to his faithful ally, Wratislaw, duke of Bohemia, he conferred on him the royal title, and caused him to be crowned king at Prague by the archbishop of Trèves. And at Aachen, Conrad, eldest son of Henry, was anointed king of Germany by the archbishop of Cologne in the year 1087.

Besides the rebellious Saxons the emperor was compelled to take arms against his cousin-german, Eckbert, markgraf of Thuringia, who now aspired to the imperial dignity. Another competitor was also in the field, Ludolf, duke of Carinthia. But these rival claims were without difficulty silenced. Eckbert was surprised and slain in a mill near Brunswick, by the vassals of Adelaide, abbess of Quedlinburg, the emperor’s sister; and Ludolf died about the same period without striking a blow.

HENRY AND CONRAD

[Sidenote: [1087-1101 A.D.]]

Peace being thus restored in Germany, Henry made haste to revisit Italy, where he hoped to reap advantage from the death of his arch-foe, Pope Gregory VII. After the short pontificate of Victor III, Urban II was raised to the papacy; and, as he seemed resolved to tread in the steps of Gregory, he received the cordial support of the countess Matilda. That princess had entered into a second marriage with Welf, son of Welf VI, duke of Bavaria, a union which ranged one of the most formidable of the German nobles against the fortunes of Henry. After laying waste the estates of Matilda in Lorraine the emperor arrived in Lombardy, besieged and took Mantua, and received considerable encouragement by the rupture of Welf with the countess, and the desertion of the father and son from the papal cause.

But these propitious events were more than countervailed by the rebellion of his own son, Conrad, whose unnatural ambition tempted him to this fatal step. Seduced by the blandishments of Matilda and the pope, he was crowned king of Italy at Milan, with the promise of the imperial dignity on condition of his yielding the great question of investitures. Fortunately the contagion was confined to Italy; and, on his return to Germany, Henry IV found no marks of disaffection. The assembled states maintained their fidelity, declared Conrad to have forfeited the crown, and elected in his stead Henry, second son of the emperor, who swore to respect his father’s authority, and abstain from interfering in the government. The services of the imperial partisans were liberally rewarded, and to Welf VI were restored the duchy of Bavaria and other states which he had forfeited by his former rebellion. The guilty Conrad soon found his visions of dominion entirely dissipated. Discouraged by the fidelity of the Germans to the emperor the supporters of the young prince fell rapidly away, and he died deserted and despised at Florence, not without suspicion of poison (1101).

Henry IV now again announced his intention of visiting Italy, in the hope of effecting a reconciliation between the empire and the popedom. But his schemes were at once frustrated by a new rebellion. Neither regarding the oath he had solemnly sworn, nor admonished by the example of his brother’s fall, Henry, second son of the emperor, impatient of the long reign of his father, appeared in arms against him. The rebellious prince found a warm supporter in Pope Paschal II, who succeeded Urban II in 1099, and in a council held in Rome solemnly renewed the censures which his predecessor Gregory had thundered against Henry. No pretension of the see of Rome was more odious than the right it assumed to absolve men from oaths deliberately taken; and the new pope taught the prince to believe that the excommunication of his father completely freed him from all obligation. In the bitterness of his heart the afflicted Henry attempted to recall his son to a sense of duty by the most gentle and touching exhortations; but these mild efforts were entirely lost upon the prince, who resolutely declared his determination to avoid all intercourse with a man excommunicated.[k]

END OF HENRY IV

[Sidenote: [1101-1106 A.D.]]

Perhaps he feared that through the growing weakness of his father more of the royal power might be lost; perhaps his ambition could not wait for the time when the crown would fall to him, or he feared that another would be elected in his stead; at any rate in 1105 he rebelled. Most of the German princes were on his side. The exasperated father likewise prepared for combat, and a civil war more cruel than any former ones shattered the empire.

On the river Regen father and son stood face to face, the former still strong through the support of Leopold of Austria and the duke of Bohemia. Skirmishing went on for three days without anything decisive having occurred, and then young Henry won over Leopold of Austria by the promise to give him his sister Agnes, the widow of the great Staufen, in marriage. With him all deserted the aged emperor, and he stood alone as Louis the Pious had once stood on the Lügenfeld. But the kindly feeling which his predecessors, and especially he himself, had shown to the towns now bore plentiful fruit. Through the rights and liberties conferred upon them and increased by the emperors since Conrad II they had now become flourishing communities, and their numerous and well fortified residences bordered the great commercial waterway of the Rhine. They all declared themselves on the side of the aged emperor; luck seemed to desert his wicked son. Under the mask of hypocrisy he came to Coblenz, humbled himself before his father, and begged for forgiveness: the princes assembled in Mainz were to settle the last quarrel. The father forgave his son, and took him in his arms with tears; then unsuspectingly he rode with him to the appointed place of meeting. But the son with evil cunning decoyed him to the fortress of Böckelheim in Nahethale: the grating fell behind the emperor as he entered, and he found himself his son’s prisoner. The latter with his princes demanded his voluntary abdication and the surrendering of the crown jewels. Broken down by misfortune the old man had to accede to these requests. But new abuses and even danger of death threatened him; then he fled from the custody of his son, and the faithful towns again armed for his safety. The war began anew, and its issue was hard to foretell; then the news came from Lüttich that the emperor was dead (1106). Even in death the ban weighed upon him, for his coffin remained unburied for over five years in unconsecrated places; but the people loudly lamented the dearly loved ruler, who after the short errors of youth had been so long and heavily afflicted by misfortune. Certainly his last years did much, if the old chroniclers may be believed, to remove the stains of his early follies and crimes. He is represented as having, after his victory over Gregory VII, protected the poor against their oppressors, put down robbery, administered justice, and maintained the public peace.

HENRY V AND THE WAR OF INVESTITURES

[Sidenote: [1106-1111 A.D.]]

Henry V was now acknowledged throughout the empire. He owed his crown to the papal party and the princes, but no sooner was he in possession of the power for which he had striven than he showed that he had resolution enough to hold his own against all comers. Abroad he succeeded in restoring the dominion of the empire over Flanders and securing his western frontier; his campaigns on the eastern border, against Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia, were less fortunate. In the interior and in his relations to the princes he could effect little change in the conditions which had grown up under Henry IV. The fiefs, large and small, had long since become hereditary, the crown property had dwindled sadly; hardly any district was under the direct rule of the king. In case of war the latter summoned his great vassals, and they in their turn summoned their feudal retainers and “ministerials”--_i.e._, vassals; and these constituted the army of the empire. Thus feudalism had penetrated to the lowest ranks of the people, but the king was still regarded as the ruling head of the state; and a powerful monarch at the head of this body of many members could accomplish more than the other sovereigns of Europe, whose power in their own dominions was no less restricted by that of their great vassals.

Devoid of heart and conscience though he might be, Henry V was by no means deficient in the prudence and capacity for government which had characterised his forefathers. He possessed resolution and boldness; but he was hasty and precipitate, and often frustrated his own great purposes by acts of arbitrary violence. The papal party soon realised that they had mistaken his character; for he contested the papal right of investiture even more resolutely than his father had done, and as early as 1110 he undertook a brilliant expedition to Rome in connection with the matter. When he reached Lombardy and held a diet of the empire on the plains of Roncaglia near Piacenza, the Italian cities (with the exception of Milan and Pavia), which had risen more rapidly than those of Germany and to a height of prosperity even greater, acknowledged his supremacy and the countess Matilda did him homage as her feudal lord. In the year 1111 he arrived at Rome.

[Sidenote: [1111-1122 A.D.]]

The quarrel with Pope Paschal II had broken out afresh over the question of his coronation and the investiture, but at length the disputants came to an agreement to the effect that the emperor should renounce the right of investiture and that the pope should prevail upon the lords spiritual to resign all temporal dominion in the empire. The pope then led the king to St. Peter’s, according to ancient usage, amidst hymns of praise and great rejoicings. Henry, however, had already surrounded the cathedral by Germans. When the bishops refused the renunciation required of them, and the emperor consequently demanded full rights of investiture, the pope was in doubt as to whether he should proceed with the coronation under these circumstances. One of Henry’s retinue cried impatiently: “What need of so many words? It is the will of my lord the king to be crowned as Charlemagne was!”

From that moment the pope and his cardinals were prisoners. Henry carried the former off with him, in spite of a furious tumult at Rome, through which he and his knights cut their way with the sword. But the spirit of Gregory VII lived on in the church; when the pope, his spirit broken by confinement, granted the king the right of investing bishops and abbots, and actually crowned Henry after his release from prison, the cardinals and the French clergy excommunicated the emperor and continued the conflict with their ghostly weapons. Meanwhile Henry V had returned to Germany, where fortune still smiled upon him; for at Warnstedt, to the north of the Harz, his general Hoyer von Mansfeld defeated the Saxon and Thuringian nobles, with Ludwig der Springer, “the jumper,” and Wiprecht von Groitzsch among them, who had risen in revolt against the imperial house with their old stubborn defiance (1113).

The emperor, who had just concluded a brilliant marriage with Matilda of England, was now at the height of his power; but he nevertheless did not succeed in permanently establishing the royal authority in North Germany, where the Saxons in particular were constantly striving to secure a more independent position. When Henry was on an expedition against the Frisians, the city of Cologne rebelled, and the princes of the lower Rhine entered into alliance with it. Henry’s good fortune deserted him before its walls; and his enemies lifted their heads on all sides. By his action in imprisoning Count Ludwig of Thuringia he had incurred the violent resentment of the Saxon and Thuringian nobles. They arose afresh in rebellion, and this time they defeated the emperor at Welfesholze near Mansfeld in the Harz (1115). The whole of North Germany and almost the whole of the German church fell away from him; in South Germany, on the contrary, his nephew, Friedrich von Staufen, duke of Swabia, remained loyal to the imperial cause, as did Bavaria under Welf.

Henry himself had gone to Italy again (1116-1118), another cause of quarrel having been added to the War of Investiture, which still dragged on. Countess Matilda was dead, and had bequeathed all her lands and goods to the holy see. A great part of the land, however, was held as a fief of the empire, and should therefore have reverted to the king on her death without issue; and Henry further laid claim to her _allodium_, or property, on the ground of near kinship. While he was in Italy Paschal II died.

In the person of his next successor but one, the papal throne was occupied, for the first time since the reign of Hildebrand, by a pope who had not been a monk. This was Guido of Vienne, a Burgundian of high rank and a kinsman of Henry’s, who took the name of Calixtus II. The elevation of this prudent and far-sighted man offered the emperor the prospect of reconciliation, although the new pope had hitherto been the leader of his opponents among the cardinals; and negotiations were set on foot. Calixtus went to France, which country, striving upwards with fresh vigour ever since the Crusades, became the zealous champion of the papacy. For a long time the negotiations led to no result; a personal interview between the pope and the emperor was projected, but the distrust of years and the memory of the capture of Paschal II prevented it from taking place. Calixtus retained the upper hand in Italy, Henry in Germany. But in spite of many successes on either side, both were inclined to moderate their demands. The German princes assumed the office of mediators, and after fifty years of strife the investiture quarrel was settled by the Concordat of Worms in 1122.

[Sidenote: [1122-1125 A.D.]]

The king resigned the investiture with ring and crosier, but obtained the privilege that the election of bishops should take place in his presence or in that of his representative, and that--in Germany at least--they should receive the territory appertaining to their sees in fief from the imperial crown before they were consecrated. Thus the emperor had secured much; but the papacy, on the other hand, had acquired a considerable influence in imperial affairs, and the loyalty of the bishops, which had been the strongest pillar of the throne, began to waver. Henry died at Nimeguen (1125) without issue; and the people, who had never loved him, saw in his childlessness the retribution for the war with his father, and his transgression of his duty as a son.

From the hands of Henry II the Franconian dynasty received a re-consolidated empire, although the great fiefs within it had already become hereditary. The first princes of the line, Conrad II and Henry III, who in greatness were second to none of the emperors of Germany, had so strengthened the royal power that both were able to cherish the dream of an empire such as Otto the Great’s had been. Their power passed to a child, and the nobles broke away from the curb all the sooner that it had been drawn over-tight. At the same time the church entered the field as a fresh power, wielding forces that were better organised and more deeply rooted in the popular mind than those of the empire, and armed with resources more efficacious than the sword.

Henry V, whose character offered so many points open to attack, succumbed in the conflict with these two forces. Towards the end of the eleventh century all fiefs had become hereditary, and bishoprics were no longer unconditionally at the emperor’s disposal; and he was therefore constrained to rely upon his dynastic possessions and his moral ascendency. In manners and education the Germany of the eleventh century lagged behind the awakening intellectual life of the Romance nations. The great effects of the Crusades had to become manifest before the crowning glory of the Middle Ages could extend to that country.[i]

With the death of Henry V the Franconian dynasty came to an end. The change of dynasty furnishes us a convenient place to pause in our narrative of the development of the Western Empire. We have seen that the centre of influence has long since shifted to the North, and that the Western Empire, though Roman in name, is essentially German in fact. Several important emperors are to come upon the scene in the next two or three centuries, and such men as Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II will make Italy the field of some of their most prominent activities. Nevertheless, these emperors are German and the records of their lives are a component part of the history of the German Empire. We shall again take up the story of the German Empire in a later volume with the accession of the Hohenstaufens. Now for a time we are to turn back to the East, to witness the development of a wonderful oriental civilisation.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[147] [As C. T. Lewis[e] notes: “The people took sides in their legends and songs with the unfortunate youth who had fought for his inheritance against a severe stepfather, and compared his fate with that of the equally unfortunate Ludolf, son of Otto the Great. Indeed, legend merged the two stories into one, and thus arose the song of Ernst of Swabia, which was long sung in the Middle Ages and represents the two friends as finally going to the East upon a crusade and meeting with manifold adventures.”]

[148] [Bryce[j] says: “Under Henry III the empire attained the meridian of its power. At home Otto the Great’s prerogative had not stood so high.”]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]