CHAPTER IX

THE FRANCONIAN, OR SALIAN, DYNASTY

[1024-1125 A.D.]

For the epoch of Henry II we have preserved to us the work of Bishop Thietmar[b] & of Merseburg, which, starting from local and personal points of view and showing the writer’s unwavering loyalty to the king, to whom the bishop owed his position, at once discloses and elucidates in a variety of communications the conditions obtaining in the interior of Germany. Although not unbiassed where the king is concerned, it is yet invaluable in respect of the details it affords; the internal conditions of the empire are clearly mapped out before our eyes. On the other hand, the tendencies which characterise the imperium of Henry II are more or less obscured from view. The bishop, who must be regarded as a contemporary chronicler, was already dead when they had taken definite shape.

On the other hand, Wipo,[c] the biographer of Conrad II with whom the line of the Salians commences, started entirely from the standpoint of the imperium. He wrote a biography of Conrad after his death for the instruction and edification of his son and successor, Henry III. The aspirations of the Salic house in the direction of world-wide power occupy the chief place in his work. The devolvement of the imperium upon the Salic house was an event of great importance both in German and universal history. Yet there is nothing so very unexpected and extraordinary in the elevation of Conrad II.

The Salians represent one of the parties that had once, under Otto the Great, risen up against him from the very lap of his own family. They are descended, as we have already mentioned, from the marriage of one of Otto’s daughters with the heroic Conrad the Red, the greatest warrior of those times. His son Otto, count in Wormsgau, received Carinthia, an appanage of Bavaria, in fief. He is the father of Bruno, whom Otto III raised to the papal see, as also of Conrad, who on his father’s death succeeded to the dukedom of Carinthia. This Conrad was married to Matilde, a daughter of Hermann of Swabia. Of their union a son was born, known under the name of Conrad the Younger.

[Sidenote: [1024 A.D.]]

Duke Conrad, father of the younger Conrad, had had an elder brother named Henry, who possessed a count’s fief in Franconia. This Henry--who was therefore to be considered the chief representative of the authority of that house, and who, had he not died before his father, would have inherited the dukedom--had married Adelheid, a sister of the powerful Alsatian count of the house of Egisheim. The issue of this marriage was Conrad II, to whom accordingly descended by right of inheritance the claims of the Conrad dynasty. The right of succession of the elder Conrad can hardly be questioned. For the prerogative of elder lines must be upheld, if we will do justice to the constant change of families upon the throne.[d]

After the decease of Henry II, it was evident to every friend of Germany that the unity of the nation must be cemented without delay if all that had been founded by Conrad I and Henry I was not to come wholly to naught. The princes and the higher ranks of nobles would perhaps have been well content to see the empire break up into its old condition of disintegration; the clergy, on the other hand, had nothing to gain by such a turn of fortune, and they consequently laboured with the utmost zeal for the appointment of a capable head to the empire. As matters stood the king could only be nominated by election, and on this occasion the election had to be held with more freedom and more solemnity than usual, because the choice was not limited to the children or descendants of a deceased monarch. In the early days of the vacancy no candidates for the highest office of the state presented themselves, and the question on whom to bestow the crown was therefore long debated amongst the princes, higher nobility, and bishops.

They finally resolved to call a solemn assembly of the people, and there to let the public opinion of the nation decide upon Henry’s successor. It is possible that the persons who were secretly managing this business of the election had already a definite plan as to who was to be king; but such a plan might nevertheless present difficulties in the accomplishment, and for this reason each party tried to use the expedient of a national assembly for the furtherance of its own particular object. But to all appearance the public opinion of the nation occupied the position of arbitrator between the various parties, and as such exercised a stronger influence upon the election than might have been expected in view of the condition of the empire at the time.

Of course, except for the bishops and clergy this national assembly was entirely composed of the greater and lesser nobles and their followers, for the towns had not yet arrived at such a height of prosperity as to claim direct participation in the affairs of the empire. And, equally of course, the subordinate bondman had no opinion to give, only the gentry being qualified to vote. Hence the lesser nobility as a body represented the public opinion of the nation, in contradistinction to the sovereign princes; and it was they who were permitted to wield so great an influence in state affairs in the matter of the solemn election to the throne after the death of Henry II.

A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

Henry’s death had taken place on the 13th of July, 1024, and on the 4th of September in the same year those qualified to vote amongst all the German races gathered together on the Rhine, between Mainz and Worms, in the neighbourhood of the old “Königstuhl” (a stone structure in the form of a chair, where the kings of Germany were proclaimed), to proceed with all solemnity to the election of a new head of the empire. The throng was considerable, and was distributed in accordance with the great duchies of the empire; the Lorrainers taking up their quarters on the left bank of the Rhine, the Saxons, Franconians, Swabians, and Bavarians on the right. The princes and bishops naturally took the lead in the election ceremonies, and they therefore met at Kamba, opposite Oppenheim. There they conferred concerning the candidates for royalty who should be proposed to the people--that is to say, to the aforesaid body of the minor nobility. The opinions they expressed always came to the knowledge of the popular assembly, so that the latter could exercise at least a moral influence upon the principal electors by applause or dissent. The conference lasted long, its fluctuations of opinion communicated a certain amount of agitation to the great throng, the minds of men were kept in suspense, and the solemn election became a scene of great animation. At length the diversities of opinion resolved themselves into an agreement that two men were worthiest to wear the crown, both of them Franconian nobles, both bearing the name of Conrad, and both being the sons of two brothers--grandsons of the famous Conrad the Red, son-in-law of Otto I. In order to distinguish between the two, one was styled the Elder and the other the Younger.

The election hung undecided between them for some time longer, till the elder Conrad, calculating the effect such a step would have upon the people, approached the younger with an amicable proposal that each of them should do his best to prevent a quarrel over the election; and to that end they should both undertake to yield sincere allegiance to whichever should be nominated by a majority of the princes with the assent of the people. When the younger Conrad had agreed to this, the archbishop of Mainz solemnly proposed the elder Conrad as head of the empire, setting forth his superior claims in a brief oration. The proposition was strongly supported by a majority of the bishops, and secured the assent of many of the princes; and when the empress Kunigunde, the widow of Henry II, handed over the insignia of royalty with all speed to Conrad the Elder, the assembly hailed him king of the Germans, and the election was ratified by the solemn plaudits of the nation. Conrad the Younger himself had given his vote for his cousin when he saw the way the election was tending, and a quarrel was thus avoided. The duke of Lorraine and the archbishop of Cologne both expressed their dissatisfaction at the result of the election, but no more serious consequences ensued; and Conrad the Elder was recognised by all parties as king of the Germans, the second of that name. This circumstance conduced greatly to the furtherance of the national interests of Germany, as did the result of the election itself; for the new king was a man well fitted to impart fresh strength and consequence to the empire.

Conrad II, it is true, was not animated by the noble spirit which leads through pure patriotism to a self-denying devotion to public affairs; on the contrary, he zealously pursued his own selfish ends, and was often led astray by motives of mere self-interest. Nevertheless, as it happened, his wishes coincided with the interests of the nation; for he strove to enhance the power of his own house, and seeking to attain this end by establishing a hereditary monarchy, he bent all his endeavours to increasing the imperial authority and, as a natural consequence, cementing national unity. Nor was he deficient in the qualities required for at least approximate success in his schemes, though we miss in him the nobler endowments for success, which advance openly to gain the object they have in view, by the help of genius, force of character, and inflexible will. But in place of these qualities he possessed a political sagacity so keen and subtle that he could carry through the most difficult schemes by covert measures. With this sagacity he combined energy, courage, and skill in arms. Indeed for the greater part of his life he had been engaged in military pursuits, but he nevertheless was possessed of so remarkable an aptitude for politics, that, being as clear-headed as he was adroit, he directed the affairs of the state with altogether exceptional skill.

CONRAD II INCREASES HIS POWER

In the year 1024 a gifted and vigorous king had at length been elected; to such a man a thorough reform of political conditions would certainly appear an imperative necessity in view of the condition to which the empire had been reduced. Conrad II had first to try to increase the property of the crown before he could venture upon a struggle against the usurpations of the nobles. This was not to be effected either easily or speedily, and he therefore endeavoured in the first place to gain time for confirming his power by friendly behaviour towards the great nobles. For this reason, after his consort Gisela had also been crowned at Cologne, he determined to begin by making a progress through Germany, for the double purpose of securing general recognition and investigating the condition of the crown lands of the head of the empire. He first went to Aachen, where an assembly of the nobles of Lorraine had been convened. The king’s most formidable enemies were the seigneurs of the higher nobility; and in order to counterbalance them Conrad was obliged to rely on the middle classes, represented at this time by the lesser nobles, the commons not having yet attained a sufficient degree of power.

During his stay in Aachen, the king won the favour of the lesser nobility by a very well calculated political measure. Most families of this class had already fallen, by the spread of feudalism, into the position of vassals to some great noble; and disputes frequently arose between them and their feudal lords, because in certain cases the latter would not allow the fief to be transmitted to the descendants of the vassal. Conrad II, who was well aware of this state of things and eager for any means of weakening the power of the great nobles, promulgated during his stay in Aachen a decree to the effect that the descendants of a vassal were entitled to succeed to the fief in perpetuity.

This was a very drastic measure, and greatly increased the popularity of the king. From Aachen Conrad proceeded to Saxony to dispose the minds of the Saxons favourably to himself. There he was obliged to have recourse to very different means. The Saxons were by this time accustomed to the unity of the German state, but they were still apprehensive of restrictions upon their national laws, and their first and most pressing demand was for the confirmation of the same. These consisted of the harsh regulations of serfdom which had come down from primitive times, the strict prohibition of unequal marriages, etc., and thus redounded to the advantage of the nobility alone.

[Sidenote: [1024-1026 A.D.]]

Conrad, however, could not afford to anger the great Saxon nobles, and he therefore confirmed “the so cruel laws of the Saxons,” as Wipo[c] phrases it. Having thus secured his recognition by the North Germans, he next collected the tribute due from the border Slavs who were subjects of the empire, that by this means he might provide himself with material resources for carrying out his designs; and then proceeded by way of Franconia to Bavaria and Swabia. On this progress Conrad established himself firmly in the popular esteem, and by the time it was finished his position seemed much stronger than before.

In Italy fresh troubles had arisen, for a party among the Lombards were desirous of overthrowing the German supremacy, and wished to transfer their allegiance to France for that purpose. On the other hand, Heribert, archbishop of Milan, was well disposed towards the Germans, and therefore journeyed to visit Conrad II, who was at that time in Constance, in which place he had likewise resided during the first year of his reign. The king received him very graciously, and lent a favourable ear to the bishop’s request that he should make a military expedition into Italy. An embassy from the opposition party, and from the city of Pavia in particular, had also made its appearance at Constance, but was harshly received by Conrad; and it is probable that he would at that time have undertaken a campaign beyond the Alps if he had not been busy with matters nearer home. The consummation of the national unity of the German race was obviously an admirable means of enhancing the power of the crown, but a considerable portion of German territory was still alienated from the empire. Part of Switzerland on the German side of the Jura belonged to Burgundy, which was ruled by an independent king.

A quarrel over the succession, to which we have previously referred, had already taken place between this monarch and Henry II, and had resulted in the conclusion of a treaty by which after the death of the childless king Rudolf the succession to his dominions was assured to the head of the German Empire.

When Henry was dead, however, the king of Burgundy tried to put a different construction on the treaty, declaring that he had bestowed the succession on Conrad’s predecessor merely as his sister’s son, and not as king of the Germans. But Conrad II being bent, as Wipo[c] observes, on the aggrandisement and not the diminution of the empire, forthwith took up arms against Rudolf and occupied the city of Bâle, which at that time belonged to Burgundy.

By this he incurred the violent enmity of Duke Ernst of Swabia, who was the “natural” heir of Rudolf, and of Gisela by her first marriage, and thus stepson to Conrad II; and as many German nobles secretly sided with the duke, while at the same time a Slavonic prince, Boleslaw by name, rebelled against the empire, and while the affairs of Italy seemed imperatively to demand the king’s presence, the latter postponed the acquisition of the rest of Burgundy to a more favourable opportunity. He first marched to Saxony to reduce Boleslaw to submission; but the Slavonic prince died before his arrival, and a civil war broke out between his sons which exhausted the forces of both.

CONRAD IN ITALY AND GERMANY (1026-1039 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1026-1030 A.D.]]

Putting off, therefore, the subjugation of the rebellious Slavs, Conrad immediately set everything in readiness for his expedition into Italy. He first convoked a diet at Augsburg, had his son Henry elected successor to his throne, and yielding to his wife’s persuasions was reconciled to his stepson, Duke Ernst of Swabia. This took place in 1026, and in the same year the German army made its appearance in Italy. Pavia was first invested, and repeated attempts were made to take it by storm; but the brave citizens victoriously repulsed every assault, and Conrad was reduced to great straits. This so enraged him that, goaded to fury, he savagely devastated the surrounding country. The German king gained little by these cruelties, and as in spite of his victory he suffered great loss at the taking of Ravenna, he might have been compelled to retreat ingloriously from Italy if his political astuteness had not come to his aid. He succeeded in bringing the king of Burgundy, on whose assistance the Lombards relied, over to his own side. Rudolf came to Italy in person to be present at Conrad’s coronation as emperor, and the courage of the inhabitants of the invaded country sank so low that even Pavia surrendered, and Conrad was acknowledged king of Lombardy. He then received the imperial crown at the hands of Pope John XIX, on the 26th of March, 1027; and after making some provisions for the pacification of Lombardy he hastened back to Germany, where in the meanwhile his presence had become extremely necessary.

In spite of the show of reconciliation, Duke Ernst of Swabia was meditating open rebellion. Conrad was well informed of the plans of the conspirators, though the secret had been carefully guarded; and therefore, after crossing the Alps, he proceeded with all haste to Ratisbon to make preparations for subduing the threatened revolt. Conrad’s plans on this occasion strikingly display his practical ability and clear-sightedness. During his absence in Italy the ducal office had become vacant in Bavaria by the death of Henry, and the king endeavoured to procure it for his own family. In view of the encroachments of the great nobles, who amassed vast wealth at the expense of the empire, this would have profited him little unless he could increase the ducal revenue at the same time. Consequently, having succeeded in getting his ten-year-old son Henry appointed duke of Bavaria, Conrad instituted a strict inquiry into the condition of the property of the empire in that province, and restored to the crown much that had been usurped by bishops and counts. By this measure the king really struck at the root of the evil. Decrees could do little to cement the unity of the empire; what it needed was to be provided with a material basis. And of this, the most necessary element in the condition to which the empire had come was the creation of a revenue which should make the head of the state independent of the accidents of private fortune for the maintenance of his authority.

The kings commonly made the mistake of trying to gain the adherence or friendship of the great nobles by presents made at the expense of the property of the empire; and therefore Conrad II acted not only wisely but honourably when, amidst the greatest dangers, he adopted the opposite course; for it was nobler to perish than to reduce the office of head of the state to a shadow, by purchasing the favour of the great nobles. The salutary effect of his firmness was quickly manifest; for after he had gained his object in Bavaria the king took vigorous measures to put an end to the agitation in Swabia. For this purpose he promptly convened a diet at Ulm to sit in judgment upon Duke Ernst in Alamannia. The duke collected an army and marched against the king, but the firm attitude of the latter had already made a great impression upon the nobles. Two counts deserted the duke, others of the conspirators followed, and within a short time Ernst’s forces were so diminished that he was obliged to submit to the king’s mercy. Conrad had his stepson conveyed in custody to the fortress of Giebichenstein near Halle, and then reduced the whole of Swabia to allegiance to the head of the empire. These proceedings added greatly to his reputation, open and secret foes now courted the king’s favour, and by the fifth year of his reign Conrad II had materially increased the authority of the empire.

[Sidenote: [1030-1032 A.D.]]

He now determined to take in hand the expedition against the Slavs, which had been postponed on account of the urgency of Italian affairs; but it proved abortive, and he was forced to return into Saxony with great loss. A quarrel with the Hungarians arose at the same time, and Duke Ernst renewed his attempt at rebellion. Conrad had recalled him from Giebichenstein and offered to reinstate him in his duchy under certain conditions; but the negotiations came to nothing, Ernst escaped from his stepfather’s court and with his faithful adherent, Count von Kyburg, essayed the fortune of war. Both were outlawed, and soon afterwards slain in a fight in the Black Forest.[147]

Conrad’s safety was consequently assured in that quarter, and he immediately invaded Hungary with an army. Here again he soon found it preferable to restore peace by the methods of political sagacity rather than by force of arms, and negotiations were therefore adroitly set on foot and brought to a successful issue. Stephen, king of Hungary, sued for peace and it was concluded on terms honourable to Germany. During the duke of Swabia’s second revolt the Slavs, against whom Conrad’s arms had proved so unfortunate, had invaded and ravaged Saxony and Thuringia.

Little could be done to oppose them, on account of the war with the Hungarians, but as soon as that was ended the German king resolved to exact satisfaction. Once more, however, he was desirous of courting success by policy rather than by arms. Mieczyslaw, the son of Duke Boleslaw, was involved in a war (as has already been stated) with his brother Otto. Now, in Conrad’s unlucky campaign against Mieczyslaw, Otto, who inclined to the side of the Germans, had been driven out of the country. With him Conrad again entered into negotiations, and in consequence Otto (who was also favoured by the Russians) appeared once more in the district between the Elbe and the Oder, occupied by Slavonic tribes, who even then were styled Poles. Conrad sent an army from Saxony to support his protégé, and the civil war began afresh among the Poles. Mieczyslaw was thus brought to a more yielding temper, and, although Otto was slain soon after, he endeavoured to establish a permanent peace with the king of Germany. A peace was actually brought about, the Polish prince submitting to tribute and to give part of the country between the Elbe and the Oder to the Germans.

[Sidenote: [1032-1036 A.D.]]

During the war and the negotiations with Mieczyslaw (in the year 1032) King Rudolf of Burgundy died. Conrad II had long laid claim to the succession, and as a certain count of Champagne, Eudes by name, opposed his pretensions, he was obliged to turn his arms westwards after concluding peace with the Poles. The count of Champagne had already occupied Neuenburg (Neuchâtel) and Murten (Morat); but by the winter of 1032 he had been forced into a somewhat disadvantageous position in Switzerland, and when, in the year 1033, Conrad II invaded Champagne itself to compel his rival to evacuate Burgundy, the latter submitted at discretion and promised the king of the Germans that he would leave the country, confirming his promise with a solemn oath. Conrad was obliged to hurry back to Germany, as another Slavonic tribe on the Elbe, the Liutizi this time, was disquieting Germany, and Othelric, duke of Bohemia, was threatening rebellion. Othelric was deposed, and Conrad was on the point of attacking the Liutizi when tidings came that Eudes of Champagne had broken his word and was again endeavouring to acquire the sovereignty of Burgundy. In the spring of 1034 the German king marched for the second time through Bavaria and Swabia to Burgundy, while another army invaded it at his command, crossing over the St. Bernard from Lombardy. From this time forward Eudes could offer but a futile resistance. Conrad was acknowledged king by the whole of Burgundy, and the country was solemnly incorporated with the German Empire. Switzerland was thereby also brought into complete union with the mother-country, and the full extent of German nationality restored. Thereupon Conrad brought the Liutizi once more into subjection to the empire, but in this war such cruelties were perpetrated that he entailed upon himself the curses of the unhappy Slavs and the reprobation of history.

Nevertheless his outward position was brilliant. Not only had he considerably extended the borders of the empire, but he had exalted the royal office to power and dignity. Tranquillity prevailed in the interior of Germany; in Italy, on the contrary, a commotion arose more serious than the disorders common in that country. There, as in Germany, the sway of the great nobles was oppressive, but in Italy disaffection was rife among the vassals, and they determined to resist the arrogant pretensions of their lords, sword in hand. The storm broke out first in Milan, and between that city and Lodi a great battle was fought which practically left matters as they had been. The emperor allowed himself to be drawn into the quarrel, and undertook a second military expedition to Italy in the year 1036.

In Italy the emperor promulgated a famous edict on the subject of estates in fee (_Edictum de beneficiis_), by which he directed that a vassal should not be deprived of such an estate except for certain offences, and then only by the sentence of the law pronounced by a court of his peers.

The appeal to the king or his deputy had a place in these legal proceedings--another clear proof of the purpose of Conrad’s policy, which aimed at weakening the power of the great nobles.

[Sidenote: [1035-1039 A.D.]]

On the other hand there are many evidences to show how greatly the royal authority had increased. For one thing, Conrad deposed Duke Adalbert of Carinthia from his high office in 1035, because he had not borne himself worthily in the Lombard disturbances; and Italy itself witnessed a deed wholly without precedent, for Archbishop Heribert of Milan, a powerful prince and highly respected dignitary of the church, who occupied almost the first place after the pope, was arrested for disloyalty by the German king.

Heribert saved himself from imprisonment by flight, and Conrad, whom he then openly defied, could hardly take any effective action against him; nevertheless the occurrence produced a profound impression. After two years’ absence from home the king returned to Germany, where he occupied himself principally with the affairs of Burgundy, and ultimately delegated the government of that country to his son Henry. In the year 1038 he proceeded to North Germany and there endeavoured to consolidate the empire by paving the way for settled legal order. In the year 1039 he fell sick at Utrecht, and died at that place on the 3rd of July in the same year.

THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III (1039 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1039-1043 A.D.]]

Among the merits of Conrad II, a high place must be given to the care he bestowed upon the education of his son and successor. Henry III was adorned with all the qualities which constitute the basis of true greatness; for not only did his admirable intellectual endowments render him capable of acquiring skill as a statesman and a commander, but his firmness and courage provided him with means of applying what he learned to practical affairs. With acute intelligence and energy he combined a high degree of moral earnestness, manifested in honourable endeavours after improvement; and as the natural bias of his mind inclined him strongly to benevolence and justice, nothing but a wise education was needed to make Henry one of the noblest of his race.[148]

Fortunately the development of his character was well cared for. His mother, Gisela, a woman of strong intellect and great nobility of soul, highly educated for her time, had a beneficent influence on him in childhood, and when the boy had thriven and grown strong under her care he was transferred altogether to the charge of the learned bishop Bruno of Augsburg, who initiated his pupil, by years of systematic teaching, into all the knowledge of the age. Then followed instruction in political affairs from Bishop Eigelbert of Freisingen, by which Henry profited so greatly that from his nineteenth year onwards his father was able to employ him in such matters. At the same time, he was thoroughly trained in all knightly accomplishments, and early sent into the field.

The twenty-two-year-old king saw clearly the path he had to follow. Even in his father’s lifetime he had realised where the strength and the weakness of the empire lay; where he should continue to act in his father’s spirit, and where he must strike out on a totally different path. Henry III, like his predecessor, desired the aggrandisement of his own house; like him he endeavoured to make the royal dignity hereditary in his family, but he scorned to stoop to unworthy means. Being convinced that his endeavours were conducive to the interests of the nation rather than subversive of them, he felt his conscience clear and thought himself justified in carrying out his designs by honourable methods. He was thus constrained to avoid much in which Conrad II would have indulged himself, and the first token of this difference was Henry’s firm resolve to raise the standard of public morals by steadfastly refusing to accept gifts in return for ecclesiastical preferment.

HENRY’S EFFORTS FOR PEACE

Even during the lifetime of Conrad II, Bretislaw, duke of Bohemia, a son of Othelric, had invaded Poland and perpetrated hideous ravages in the country. The German king--either appealed to by the inhabitants in their distress, or apprehensive for his own sake of the spread of the power of Bohemia--despatched two armies in the year 1039 to attack Bretislaw in Bohemia itself, an enterprise which ended in disaster to the Germans. In order to restore his impaired credit, Henry was obliged to undertake a fresh expedition against the Bohemian duke in the following year. This he conducted with great energy, himself leading one of the two armies he had equipped. This time victory waited upon the German arms, Prague was invested and Bretislaw compelled to submit. The latter vowed allegiance and fealty to the head of the German Empire, undertook to pay tribute, and gave hostages as a guarantee of his good faith. For all that Henry was not yet free to devote his energies to the domestic affairs of the empire, for disturbances began to be rife in Burgundy and fresh dangers loomed in the Hungarian quarter. Peter, king of Hungary, had been driven out of his country, and appealed for assistance to Henry at Ratisbon; Ovo, the new king, pursued him with an army and the enemies plundered freely in Bavaria.

In consequence Henry marched to Hungary with an army in August, 1042, to demand satisfaction for the outrage. He advanced victoriously through the country, took several fortified towns, and received the oath of allegiance or fealty from the inhabitants; but he could not induce them to take back their banished king. He therefore installed another sovereign and returned at once to Germany. In the winter immediately following (1042) he hurried to Burgundy, where he tranquillised the country by his firm and clement administration of justice. Thus he quickly reduced the refractory nobles to obedience; but on the other hand fresh troubles arose in Hungary, where the people drove out the new sovereign whom Henry had installed as soon as the latter had withdrawn from the country. Ovo made repeated incursions into Bavaria and laid waste the country on both sides of the Danube. The German king, who was consequently constrained to undertake a second campaign against the Hungarians, soon put an end to the evil, and compelled the enemy not only to make reparation but to give ampler security for his good behaviour in future.

[Sidenote: [1043-1046 A.D.]]

Then at length Henry resolved to devote all his attention to internal politics. One of the greatest evils of the times was the abuse of the right of self-help, which gave birth to a rude system of government by force under which the nation was lapsing into savagery. The weaker suffered under the heaviest oppressions, and the wise king was therefore deeply concerned to remedy first of all this aspect of public affairs. To pave the way for the establishment of a system of law he convened a diet of the empire at Constance, when he returned from his second Hungarian campaign. This took place in the year 1043, and many temporal lords, as well as bishops, appeared at it. Henry III was always present at its deliberations; he fired all who were there by his own enthusiasm for peace and justice, and brought them to a unanimous decision that thenceforth legal order should be maintained in Germany. The king issued a decree to this effect with the sanction of the diet, and thus established a peace hitherto unknown in the country. To ensure a result so happy Henry had set a noble example by magnanimously pardoning all his enemies.

From Constance, Henry proceeded to Goslar, where in the winter of 1043 he was visited by embassies from several nations desirous of testifying their respect for the head of the German Empire. So great was the esteem in which he was held that a Russian embassy solemnly offered the young king, who was already a widower, the hand of the czar’s daughter. Henry, however, haughtily rejected any such alliance, and the Russians departed sorrowfully from his court. In the same year the king married Agnes, daughter of the count of Poitiers, and at this ceremony one of the admirable traits of his character was clearly shown. Great distress prevailed in the land in consequence of the failure of the crops and an outbreak of cattle-plague; and instead of admitting jugglers and musicians to his nuptial festivities and bestowing rich presents upon them, he distributed the money among the poor, to alleviate their distress. Other events soon occurred to augment the troubles of the time, for the Hungarians a third time broke their oath of allegiance, while symptoms of rebellion declared themselves in Lorraine, Duke Gottfried trying to seize for his own the portion of the country which his father, with the king’s consent, had assigned to Gozelo, his second son. Under these circumstances Henry had only a small force to employ against the Hungarians, but once more his daring and courage compensated for the paucity of material resources.

Ovo offered battle at the head of an immense army. The German king had not yet collected all his troops, many of them having been delayed by the way. Nevertheless Henry boldly crossed the Raab under the eyes of the Hungarians, made a furious onslaught on the enemy’s lines with his handful of troops, and won a victory as complete as it was brilliant. As a result of this success Peter was reinstated as king and received the crown of Hungary as a fief of the German Empire. After these great achievements Henry swiftly turned his arms against the rebel duke Gottfried of Lorraine. The struggle did not long hang in the balance; Gottfried soon realised the king’s superior power, submitted, and was punished with incarceration in the fortress of Giebichenstein. Thus by a solemn act of justice the emperor of the Germans ratified the political principle that the dukes were responsible officers of the state. To confirm by practice the royal prerogative of nominating such officers, the dukedom of Swabia was conferred on Count Otto of the Rhenish palatinate in the year 1045; and in 1046 Frederick, brother of the duke of Bavaria, was installed in Upper Lorraine, in place of Gozelo. In the same spirit Henry guarded against usurpations on the part of other great nobles. Thus, in the year 1046, he punished Margrave Dietrich of Vlärdingen in Holland, for having taken wrongful possession of what was not his own.

THE PAPACY SUBORDINATED TO HENRY

[Sidenote: [1046-1047 A.D.]]

The affairs of Italy next attracted the attention of the German king. There the utmost disorder had crept, not only into political affairs, but also into those of the church. Ecclesiastical preferment was openly bought and sold, church dignitaries strove among themselves for power by intrigues of every sort, while, to crown all, three popes were quarrelling for the authority of supreme pontiff. Scenes of this kind confirmed Henry in his determination to inaugurate a reformation of the church. He therefore made preparations to proceed to Italy forthwith, but before starting he released Duke Gottfried from his captivity at Giebichenstein, and magnanimously reinstated him in his high office. He then crossed the Alps with a vast army in the autumn of 1046. On his arrival in Italy he found a council of bishops who had assembled at his command at Sutri to decide first of all the scandalous dispute between pope and rival popes. The king of Germany refused to tolerate any one of the antagonists, but required that they should all three be deposed. By the mingled energy and wisdom of his conduct he succeeded in carrying his point, and a German prelate, Bishop Suidger of Bamberg, was appointed head of the church at his wish. Suidger assumed the title of Clement II, and Henry received the imperial crown from his hand in St. Peter’s church at Rome, in the year 1047. One important step had now been taken towards the accomplishment of the king’s great designs, and having seen the new pope firmly established in his office, Henry III returned that same year to Germany.

There the beneficial results of the Diet of Constance were gratifyingly evident, for such order prevailed throughout the country “as no man ever experienced before.” Margrave Dietrich of Vlärdingen had indeed attempted to avail himself of the king’s absence to renew his arrogant pretensions, and Duke Gottfried of Lorraine still nourished thoughts of sedition; the two had even formed a secret confederacy against the emperor, together with Count Baldwin of Flanders. But they had but short-lived successes; Henry III promptly deposed the rebellious duke from his office, and deprived him of all authority. Dietrich lost not only his dominions, but his life into the bargain, and the whole of his territory was brought under the emperor’s sway. The credit of the imperial authority was completely restored.

Meanwhile the king displayed the most commendable vigour in the conduct of domestic politics. During the disturbances in Lorraine and Holland, which he left to his great officers to quell, he had been making progress through all parts of Germany and had despatched important affairs of state at various places. Everywhere the king’s keen glance watched over the course of justice, and the interior of Germany attained a notable degree of prosperity and contentment. This we can perceive from the fact that the cities were rising by degrees to the position of an independent element in the state. In the wars against Gottfried of Lorraine and Dietrich of Vlärdingen, the citizens, admonished by the bishops, often took up arms themselves in defence of their cities, which is evidence not only of the advance which those communities had made both in wealth and population, but also of the political importance they had acquired. It is worthy of note, also, that even then the cities were on the side of imperial authority against rebellious counts and dukes.

[Sidenote: [1047-1048 A.D.]]

Henry III was now strong enough to carry through the long-contemplated reformation of the church. In the press of business which had occupied him he had never lost sight of ecclesiastical affairs; on the contrary, he had steadily made preparations with a view to his purpose in this respect, displaying a vigour which commands admiration. The pope had previously claimed the right to nominate the emperor; the third Henry, on the contrary, exercised a decisive influence over the election of the pope, and it became almost customary that this office should be conferred by the king of Germany. The elevation of Clement II to the papacy had taken place by Henry’s desire; Clement died nine months after, and the king of Germany nominated the bishop of Brixen as his successor. This pope, who took the name of Damasus II, died a few weeks after his arrival at Rome; and Henry again filled the vacancy in the apostolic see, this time elevating a relative of his own, Bishop Bruno of Toul, to the position of head of the church. The manner in which the chroniclers speak of these important proceedings is remarkable. With them there is no longer any question of the right of the king of Germany to nominate the pope; they mention it as a matter that calls for no explanation. “Poppo, bishop of Brixen,” says Hermann,[f] “was chosen pope by the emperor and sent to Rome, where he was received with great honour.” The same thing is said of the nomination of the bishop of Toul. Lambert of Aschaffenburg,[g] who confirms this testimony, adds that on the death of the pope the Romans always sent an embassy to the king of Germany to request him to nominate a new supreme pontiff. Such a state of things was wholly without precedent, and by means of it Henry exalted, more highly than any of his predecessors, the power of the empire.

In the completion of the reformation of the church in the year 1050, one of the emperor’s chief aims was fulfilled. The effect of the measure on the country was most salutary, morals were purified and a higher standard of seriousness and industry prevailed. The system of law and order was consolidated by the subjugation of the great nobles. But it was not only the dukes and counts whom Henry kept within bounds; he inflicted sharp chastisement on members of the lesser nobility also, by confiscating their property or by other methods, if they committed any act of wanton injustice. By this means he imposed a strong restraint upon the abuse of self-help, and the towns throve and increased so rapidly that they presently began to take direct part in the affairs of the empire.

For several years Henry’s relations with foreign countries were friendly; but this peace was disturbed from 1051 onwards by the joint attempt of the Poles and Hungarians to shake off German dominion. The Hungarians invaded the empire, and in the year 1051 the emperor took the field against them in person. He advanced into Hungary itself with a great force; and though obliged to withdraw by inclement weather, his retreat was marked by valiant feats of arms on the part of the German army. In the following year, 1052, a second expedition was undertaken against Hungary. Henry III invested Pressburg, but at the intercession of Pope Leo IX he raised the siege and returned to Germany. But a genuine peace could not be brought about merely by the mediation of the pontiff; the enmity continued.

[Sidenote: [1052-1055 A.D.]]

The Peace of Tribur was finally ratified, and Henry had once more time to devote his energies to the internal affairs of the empire. Down to the year 1055 he worked hard at consolidating the legal system and developing the resources of the nation. Fresh disorders in Italy called him thither. Matters beyond the Alps had been in dire confusion for many years, for Pope Leo IX became involved in a war with the Normans in 1053 and was actually taken prisoner by them. In addition, Gottfried, the deposed duke of Lorraine, who had been reconciled to the emperor in 1050 by the good offices of Leo IX and had then accompanied the pope to Italy, had there married the widow of Marquis Bonifazio of Tuscany and taken possession of her former husband’s dominions. Henry III feared that Gottfried would stir up rebellion in Italy, and this circumstance seemed also to render the emperor’s presence in that country imperative. He had therefore long meditated another expedition across the Alps, but disaffections that arose in Germany itself and various isolated attempts on the part of some refractory nobles decided him not to quit the country.

In the year 1054 Pope Leo died and the Romans again sent an embassy to request the emperor to nominate a new pope. This he at first modestly declined to do; but, yielding nevertheless to their reiterated entreaties, he designated Bishop Gebhard of Eichstädt, his kinsman and friend, as the successor of Leo IX. Gebhard was unanimously accepted in this capacity, and assumed the papal dignity under the title of Victor II, amidst the acclaims of the people. Thus Henry III for the fourth time disposed of the papal office, and for the fourth time conferred it on a German. At the nomination of Victor II Hildebrand himself, the influential counsellor of Leo IX, was with the embassy which besought the emperor to designate the next pope, which proves how little intention Hildebrand had of opposing the will of Henry III. Like the emperor he earnestly desired reform, and showed by this step that he had no fear of undue encroachments on the part of the latter upon the privileges of the church. Thus even the strongest natures in a manner attest their reverence for the great emperor’s character.

After the appointment of Pope Victor II, the king of Germany felt himself bound to afford him the protection of his imperial authority, and in the year 1055 he started for Italy, almost at the same time as the pope. In May of that year he appeared on the plains of Roncaglia; and there the princes and feudal vassals of Italy likewise appeared, to offer the homage of sincere reverence to the king of Germany, together with their oaths of allegiance. Pope Victor II convened a synod at Florence, where, in the emperor’s presence, the laws against simony and other edicts of a reformatory tendency were either re-enacted or amplified. An inquiry was then held into the conduct of Gottfried, sometime duke of Lorraine, which ended in the acquittal of the defendant--not, so the old chronicler expressly states, because his innocence was proved, but because his judges feared that if driven to desperation he would make himself the leader of the Normans in lower Italy. His wife Beatrice was carried off to Germany by Henry III, who defended his arbitrary action in this respect by saying that Beatrice had disposed of her hand without his consent, and had moreover bestowed it upon an enemy of her country. Towards the end of the year 1055 the emperor recrossed the Alps. Several nobles were already cherishing schemes of revolt, for a conspiracy had been formed against him under the leadership of Bishop Gebhard of Ratisbon; and Gottfried, assisted by Count Baldwin, once more made his appearance in Lorraine. The schemes of the malcontents were again frustrated by Henry’s firmness; Gebhard was brought to trial and committed to prison, and both Gottfried and Baldwin were defeated in the open field.

On this occasion the emperor met the king of France at Jovi to settle various affairs of state, and here again the vigour and heroic temper of Henry III were strikingly displayed. For the French king asserted that the German Empire had unlawfully taken possession of Lorraine, whereupon Henry offered to prove the falsity of the assertion by single combat. The king of France was only too well aware of the German emperor’s superiority, and fled secretly by night across the border.[h]

THE TRUCE OF GOD

[Sidenote: [1035-1056 A.D.]]

The times were rude, manners were no less so. Ceaseless wars, the feuds of the nobles, acts of violence of every kind, combined with hunger and pestilence to bring unspeakable misery upon the nations. According to the opinions of the time, the papacy should have been a strong helper in the midst of these calamities, but Rome was the seat of the worst disorders of all and most of the popes neither deserved nor commanded respect. At length the miseries of the age aroused--first in the monastery of Cluny in Burgundian France--an austere and devout religious spirit which at first found expression, according to the fashion of the times, in penitential exercises and monkish discipline, but presently ripened into vast projects of reform.

Hence came, in particular, the recommendation of the “truce of God” (_Treuga Dei_), and hence it spread over Burgundy and France. This was an attempt to insure certain days of peace and quiet in that iron age; it ordained that no feud should be fought out between Wednesday evening and early Monday morning, and the church sanctioned this institution. So strong was the influence of the example set by Cluny (Clugny) that in a little while all the numerous monasteries in France and Burgundy joined the “congregation of Cluny,” and a sombre earnestness took possession of the best men of the time.

So it was with Henry III. In the midst of the corruptions of the age he saw no salvation except through the most drastic measures, and felt that he, as the emperor, had a special call to be the deliverer of the people. He himself set a good example; he appointed none but earnest and worthy men to bishoprics, and that without taking money or presents from them; by act and admonition he laboured incessantly for peace and conciliation. He looked upon his imperial rank as a sacred office, instituted for the improvement of Christendom, and never set the crown upon his head without previous confession and penance, which last he even had inflicted upon himself with scourges. But the more he humbled himself the more urgent did he feel was the call to raise up the church by the mighty hand of the first of earthly sovereigns.

SORROWS OF HENRY’S LAST YEARS

[Sidenote: [1045-1056 A.D.]]

The day of Sutri was the culminating point of the emperor’s life; from that time forward until he died he was engaged in an incessant struggle with adverse circumstances. The Hungarians, after overthrowing King Peter and putting out his eyes, had shaken off the yoke of the empire, and Henry’s frequent expeditions against the rebels led to no good result. Furthermore, before these events occurred, that same Gozelo of Lorraine to whom Conrad II had been so deeply indebted and upon whom he had bestowed the whole of Lorraine, had died, and Henry III conferred Upper Lorraine alone as a fief upon his son Gottfried the Bearded. Gottfried rebelled, and, as we have seen, won the hand of Beatrice of Tuscany, the widow of Bonifazio; and thus by marriage this enemy of the emperor had become the most powerful prince in Italy.

Momentous changes were also taking place in lower Italy. The Normans had there founded a dominion which began to menace the borders of the states of the church. Leo IX, like his predecessor a German by birth, went to war with them, and took the field in person after the custom of German bishops. He had been defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Civitate, not far from Monte Gargano. But the Normans, as crafty as they were devout, treated the successor of St. Peter with profound veneration, and Leo made his peace with them, outwardly at least, and repealed the sentence of excommunication pronounced upon them. After Leo’s death, Hildebrand, who directed the policy of the papal see, realised the value of the friendship thus gained; and seeing that the Normans were anxious to establish a legitimate claim to their conquests in lower Italy and Sicily, he induced them to accept their lands in fee from St. Peter, after which they became loyal vassals of the pope. This circumstance, together with the rise of Gottfried’s power, obliged the emperor to undertake a fresh expedition to Rome. In the matter of the Normans, Henry could achieve nothing, for affairs in Germany had obliged him to return thither with all speed.

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:

(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.

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.]