He had
thus regained all the German territory that he had previously held and
lost; he had established himself firmly on the west of the Oder; and from
the ground thus gained no subsequent efforts of Henry availed to expel
him.
thus regained all the German territory that he had previously held and
lost; he had established himself firmly on the west of the Oder; and from
the ground thus gained no subsequent efforts of Henry availed to expel
him.
Cambridge Medieval History - v3 - Germany and the Western Empire
Not only were the lay magnates, as ever, at feud
with their ecclesiastical neighbours, but each order was rent by quarrels
among its own members. Among the clergy of every degree, worldliness
and neglect of duty, avarice and loose living, were widely prevalent. It
was a heavy task, therefore, that Henry undertook, and he had now to
restore by his own efforts the sovereign power in face of men who had
hitherto been his equals.
In these adverse circumstances the new reign began, and by them its
course was set. The history of the reign is confused; but through it all
may be traced the king's unwavering purpose of bringing about a more
settled state of things. The large measure of success that he achieved
therein entitles Henry to a high place among the sovereigns of Germany;
but his zeal for the suppression of ecclesiastical abuses was felt over a
wider sphere, and has set him among the reformers of the Western Church.
And it is in the ecclesiastical policy that he pursued, combining as it did
the political system of Otto the Great with the reforming energy of
Henry the Third, and thus linking him with both those monarchs, that
the chief interest of his career is to be found.
The beginning of Henry's reign was marked by two grave losses to
the Empire; in the South, of the Lombard kingdom; in the East, of the
tributary duchy of Bohemia. The former event, indeed, had taken place
even before Henry had become a candidate for the throne. For within a
month of the death of Otto III Lombardy broke into open revolt; and
on 15 February 1002 Ardoin, Marquess of Ivrea, was elected King of the
Lombards and crowned in the basilica of St Michael at Pavia.
This new king was nearly related to, if he did not actually spring from,
the marquesses of Turin, and was connected also with the late royal
house of Ivrea, with whose hereditary March he had been invested about
twelve
years
since. His career as marquess had been a stormy one. During
a quarrel with Peter, Bishop of Vercelli, Ardoin had taken that city by
assault, and in the tumult the bishop was slain. Soon after, his violence
towards Warmund, the Bishop of his own city of Ivrea, had brought down
upon him a severe rebuke from Pope Gregory V. Through the influence
of Leo, Bishop of Vercelli, Ardoin was summoned to Rome in 999 to
answer for his alleged misdeeds. Yet, in spite of papal censure and
imperial forfeiture, he had kept fast hold both of his March and of
his possessions until the turn of fortune raised him to the Lombard
throne.
Ardoin may have been in truth little more than a rough soldier. Yet
he proved himself a skilful leader in war; and if his reign was unfortunate
1. See supra, Chap. VII, pp. 175-6.
## p. 221 (#267) ############################################
Revolt of Lombardy
221
a
it was not through any lack on his part of energy or courage. He cer-
tainly inspired his family and his friends with a devotion that shrank from
no sacrifice. To the lay magnates he was their champion against the
domination of the prelates, some few of whom also, free from German
sympathies, were on his side. But it was chiefly the smaller nobles, the
secundi milites or lesser vavassors, holding their lands at the will of episcopal
or secular overlords, and with nothing to hope for from a foreign sovereign,
who turned naturally to a native king whose domestic enemies were their
own. Beside them stood many of the secular clergy, equally impatient of
episcopal control; while lower down were the serfs, the voiceless tillers of
church lands, many of whom had obtained their freedom, but all of
whom it was now sought to reduce to perpetual bondage. In this endea-
vour the two bishops of Vercelli, Peter and Leo, had been especially
active; and it was the latter who, but a short while before, had drafted
the terrible decree of Otto III that no serf of the Church should ever be
allowed to issue from his servitude. And to Ardoin therefore these
freedmen and bondmen now looked as their only possible saviour.
The revolt, if primarily social, was so far national that it was directed
against those elements of authority which leaned on foreign support.
The German interest in Lombardy was still strong. Some prelates, the
Archbishop of Ravenna and the bishops of Modena, Verona, and Vercelli,
were openly hostile to Ardoin from the first; and in agreement with them
was the Marquess Tedald, holder of the five counties of Reggio, Modena,
Mantua, Brescia, and Ferrara, whose family had risen to eminence by
service to the Ottos. But the real soul of the opposition was Leo of
Vercelli, a German by birth, whose energetic character, strong intellect,
and immense acquirements made him a dangerous enemy. For he was
at once an accomplished man of letters, an able lawyer, and a practised
man of affairs. Worldly-minded, though zealous for good order in the
Church, he was ever eager to advance his material interests; and the
disappearance of the imperial system would mean his own utter ruin.
His whole energies, therefore, were bent to the overthrow of the national
king.
A progress through Lombardy secured Ardoin general acknowledg-
ment, and the administration went on without break. The hostile mag-
nates were helpless; while the rest, whatever their secret inclinations, gave
outward obedience to the monarch in possession. But Ardoin's insolent
bearing enraged his opponents, and so both sides looked abroad for help.
Ardoin sent an envoy to France to obtain a promise of armed support
from King Robert; Leo of Vercelli in person, backed by the prayers of
other Italian magnates, besought Henry, now recognised as king in
Germany, to intervene in Italy. Accordingly, Henry in December 1002
dispatched a moderate force under Duke Otto of Carinthia, in whose
hands was the March of Verona, to the aid of his Italian adherents. The
latter, headed by Archbishop Frederick of Ravenna and the Marquess
CH. X.
## p. 222 (#268) ############################################
222
Boleslav of Poland
Tedald, were already on their way to join the duke, when Ardoin with
superior forces threw himself between the allies, occupied Verona, and
seized the mountain passes beyond. A few days later he made a surprise
attack upon the enemy in the valley of the Brenta, and routed them with
heavy loss. This victory for the time made Ardoin's authority secure.
Only a few weeks after Lombardy had thus asserted its independence,
Bohemia was severed from Germany. Boleslav Chrobry (the Mighty),
since succeeding his father Mesco as Duke of Poland in 992, had built up
a powerful Slav monarchy beyond the Elbe. The various tribes occupying
the plains watered by the Oder, the Warta, and the Vistula were united
under his rule; he was allied by marriage with the neighbouring princes
of Bohemia, Hungary, and Kiev; by the indulgence of the late Emperor
he had been relieved of the annual tribute due to the German crown.
Through Otto also he had secured from Pope Sylvester II the eccle-
siastical independence of his country, with the establishment of Gnesen
as a metropolitan see. Only in his vassalage to the Empire was there left
any sign of political subjection. Now Boleslav saw an opportunity for
enlarging his dominion in the West and achieving full independence. He
overran the whole of the East Mark, or Mark of Gero, as far as the Elbe;
then, turning southwards, he seized the towns of Bautzen and Strehla,
and with the aid of its Slavonic inhabitants gained possession of the city
of Meissen itself. Pushing westwards, he occupied the mark of Meissen as
far as the White Elster, securing it with Polish garrisons. He had thus
mastered all the territory known later as the Upper and Lower Lausitz, and
the Elbe had here ceased to be a German river. Then Boleslav appeared
at the diet of Merseburg to make sure of his conquest. But his offer to
Henry of a large sum for the retention of Meissen was rejected: and
Gunzelin, brother of the late Eckhard and half-brother of Boleslav, was
invested by the king with the mark of Meissen, while Boleslav himself
was allowed to keep only the districts to the east of the Black Elster.
Thenceforth the Polish duke became Henry's determined foe. He
found support at once in German disaffection. The Babenberg Henry of
Schweinfurt, Margrave of the Nordgau, hitherto a staunch adherent of the
king, claimed investiture with the duchy of Bavaria as the promised reward
for his aid in the succession contest. Incensed by the king's hesitation in
granting the request, the margrave now made common cause with Boleslav,
whose own wrath was further inflamed by an assault made upon
himself
and his followers, though without the privity of the king, on their depar-
ture from Merseburg.
And the opportunity soon came to Boleslav for revenge. In Bohemia
there had ruled for the last three years, as a tributary of the German
crown, his cousin and namesake, Duke Boleslav the Red, a tyrant whose
jealousy had sent his half-brothers, Jaromir and Udalrich, with their
mother, into exile, and whose cruelty now impelled his subjects to drive
him out and to set up his kinsman Vladivoi as duke. While Vladivoi, to
## p. 223 (#269) ############################################
Bohemia; the Babenbergs
223
secure himself, took investiture from King Henry, the dispossessed prince
sought refuge in Poland. But when Vladivoi's own vices brought his rule
to an end early in 1003 and the Bohemians recalled Jaromir and Udalrich,
the Polish duke intervened by force, drove the two princes a second time
into banishment, and reinstated Boleslav the Red. It was not long before
the ferocious vengeance which the restored duke took upon his enemies
constrained the Bohemians in terror to implore protection from Boleslav
of Poland. Seizing the desired occasion, Boleslav craftily enticed his
kinsman into his power, caused him to be blinded, and then, hastening
to Prague, secured his own acceptance as duke by the Bohemians. The act
was an insolent defiance of Henry's authority; but the king, controlling
his indignation, sent envoys to Boleslav offering recognition if the duke
would acknowledge himself his vassal. Boleslav, however, haughtily re-
jected the proposal, and for the time Bohemia was lost to the German
crown.
Nothing, indeed, could be done as yet for its recovery because of
serious trouble in Germany itself. Already, early in the year, Henry had
had to suppress disaffection in Lorraine with a strong hand; and now he
learnt that the Margrave Henry, secretly aided by the Polish duke, was
in open revolt in the Nordgau. From Bavaria the king took vigorous
action against the rebel. But the margrave found two unexpected allies
in his cousin Ernest of Babenberg and the king's own brother Bruno.
Between King Henry and these three men a petty war was waged during
the autumn of 1003, of which the Nordgau, the wide district lying north
of the Danube between Bohemia and East Franconia, was the scene.
Here the Babenbergs were firmly established; but the king's energy soon
forced the margrave to forsake his strongholds for lurking places in the
country-side. The operations culminated in the siege of Creussen, a forti-
fied town near the sources of the Main, which was valiantly held against
the royal forces by Bucco, the brother of the margrave, while the latter
himself harassed the besiegers from outside. A surprise attack on his
camp drove the margrave into flight, scattered his followers, and delivered
Ernest a prisoner into the hands of the king. Thereupon Bucco sur-
rendered Creussen. Boleslav endeavoured first to seduce Gunzelin into
betraying Meissen to him, and on his refusal laid waste an entire
gau
west of the Elbe. But this diversion brought no relief to the duke's
confederates. The margrave gave up further resistance, and, accompanied
by Bruno and other rebels, sought safety with Boleslav. Though hostili-
ties were renewed early in 1004 by a fierce attack by Boleslav upon
Bavaria, replied to by Henry with an incursion into the Upper Lausitz,
which was frustrated by a change of weather, the confederacy was soon
after dissolved. Impelled by remorse, the two German nobles sought
forgiveness of the king; Bruno through his brother-in-law King Stephen
of Hungary, Margrave Henry of Schweinfurt through powerful friends
at home. The margrave suffered imprisonment for some months, but both
CH. X.
## p. 224 (#270) ############################################
224
Henry's first expedition to Italy
1
he and his adherents were spared the forfeiture of their lands. Bruno
also was pardoned, and having later been ordained, became his brother's
chancellor and eventually Bishop of Augsburg.
With the failure of this domestic revolt Henry was free for action
abroad. The recovery of Italy and of Bohemia were equally urgent tasks;
but the entreaties of certain Lombard magnates, including a special
emissary from the Marquess Tedald and the faithful Leo of Vercelli, pre-
vailed; and Henry, leaving the Saxons and Bavarians to hold Boleslav in
check, started from Augsburg late in March at the head of an expedi-
tionary force composed of Lorrainers, Franks, and Swabians, and after
severe toil reached Trent on Palm Sunday, 9 April. In the face of this
grave peril King Ardoin sent forward to secure the passes, while he
himself gathered troops and took post as before in the plain of Verona.
Henry thus found his advance checked along the Adige, and turning
eastwards into the valley of the Brenta, seized a pass from the Val
Sugana by surprise, and pitched camp on the left bank of the river.
There he celebrated Easter (16 April). At the critical moment Ardoin
had been deserted by most of the Italian leaders, and he had then no
choice but to retreat hurriedly to the West. Henry entered Verona, and
advanced thence by Brescia and Bergamo to Pavia, being joined at each
stage of his march by successive groups of Italian magnates, of whom
the Archbishops of Milan and Ravenna, and the Marquess Tedald, were
'the chief. At Pavia, on Sunday, 14 May 1004, he was elected King of
the Lombards, and crowned in St Michael's the following day.
Henry had thus attained his object with surprising ease; and the
ceremony he had just gone through, omitted as superfluous by his Saxon
predecessors, was the formal annulment of Ardoin's coronation within
the same walls two years before. The same afternoon a quarrel on slight
cause arose between the Pavese and the Germans, and the citizens, rushing
to arms, attacked the palace. Most of the German troops were quartered
outside; but the royal partisans within the city rallied to Henry's side, and
the assault on the palace was repelled. A furious conflict then ensued; and,
as night fell, the royalists for their own protection fired the neighbouring
buildings. The troops outside, attracted by the conflagration, stormed
the walls in the face of a stiff resistance. The Pavese were now over-
powered; numbers were cut down in the streets; and such as continued
to fight from the housetops were destroyed along with their dwellings by
fire. The slaughter was stopped by Henry's command, but not before
many hundreds of the citizens had perished and a great part of their city
had been consumed. The survivors were admitted to grace, and either in
person or by hostages swore fealty to the king.
The fate of Pavia struck terror throughout Northern Italy. All
thought of further resistance was crushed, except in the remote West,
where Ardoin in his Alpine castle of Sparone was holding out manfully
against a besieging force of Germans. The Lombards generally now made
## p. 225 (#271) ############################################
Recovery of Bohemia
225
their submission to Henry, who a few days later, at Pontelungo near Pavia,
held a general diet for the settlement of the kingdom. But the king's
mind was already made up to leave Italy; and he started at the beginning
of June on his way to Germany. After receiving, as his last act on Italian
soil, the proffer of their fealty from certain Tuscan delegates, he reached
Swabia by the middle of the month.
The expedition had in fact failed. For in spite of his coronation, of
the homage of the magnates, and of the forced submission of most of
the Lombards, Henry had not ventured beyond Lombardy; and even
there he left behind him an unsubdued rival and a disaffected people.
The horror of the burning of Pavia sank deep into the hearts of the
Lombards, for whom he had destroyed the hope of settled order under
their native king without giving them a stable government of his own.
And for himself the sole advantage he had secured was the renewed asser-
tion of the German claim to the crown of Lombardy.
Want of time was the cause of this meagre result; for Henry could
not remain long enough in Italy to effect its settlement without neglecting
the peril which menaced Germany from the East. It was necessary before
everything to oust Boleslav from Bohemia. Henry gathered an army at
Merseburg in the middle of August. The men of Saxony, East Franconia,
and Bavaria, who had been exempted from the Italian expedition, were
now called upon to serve against their nearest enemy. By gathering
boats on the middle Elbe, as though for a direct invasion of Poland, the
king hoped to mask his real intention of entering Bohemia from the
North. But the flooding of the rivers hindered his movements and gave
Boleslav time to prepare his defence. In spite, however, of resistance by
the Polish archers, Henry forced his way over the Erzgebirge (Miriquidui),
where he was joined by Jaromir, the exiled duke. On the arrival of the
Bavarian contingent, which had been delayed, Henry sent forward Jaromir
and his Bohemians, with some picked German troops, in order to surprise
Boleslav in Prague. Boleslav, however, received timely warning to make
his escape. He attempted no further defence, and Jaromir forthwith occu-
pied Prague, where, amid general rejoicing, he was once more enthroned
as duke. Henry soon after reached Prague, and solemnly invested Jaromir.
In less than a month from the time he set out Henry had made so sure
of Bohemia that not only could he send the Bavarians home, but could
claim the help of Jaromir for the recovery from Boleslav of the Upper
Lausitz. The task proved difficult through the stubborn defence of
Bautzen by its Polish garrison; but the surrender of the town at length
released the king and his wearied troops from the toils of war.
The recovery of Bohemia closed the earliest stage of Henry's career,
a space of nearly three years, during which he had made good his claim
to the German throne, and had first tried his strength upon the tasks
that lay before him. No striking events, indeed, mark off the reign into
definite periods, its course being one of slow and often interrupted accom-
C. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. X,
15
## p. 226 (#272) ############################################
226
Polish hostilities
plishment; yet the three Italian expeditions, made at long intervals, form
convenient milestones for recording its progress. Nearly ten years were
to elapse before he should again cross the Alps. The interval was occu-
pied by an unceasing struggle in which Henry was able by sheer tenacity
to win some success.
The enmity of the Polish duke was a constant menace. Though
hostilities with Boleslav were not continuous, yet three actual wars were
waged. The campaigns themselves present little of military interest.
Whichever side took the offensive, the operations had generally the
character of an extensive foray, in which few pitched battles were fought,
and decisive results were rarely attained. Boleslav, after losing Bohemia,
possessed no chief city the capture of which would have meant his ruin;
and thus final victory was only possible for Henry by the seizure or de-
struction of Boleslav himself. The duke in turn, however successful he
might be in the field, could not seriously endanger the German kingdom,
though he might enlarge his border at German expense. This he sought
to achieve in the region of the middle Elbe. The territory lying to the
east of that river, the northern portion of which constituted the East
Mark and the southern belonged to the Mark of Meissen, was the usual
scene of contention and the prize waiting on its decision. Not without
difficulty indeed was Boleslav prevented from winning a foothold on the
west of the Elbe. In Henry's absence the jealousies of the Saxon leaders,
upon whom lay the duty of defence, hindered united action. Some of
them had become secret partisans of Boleslav; some were lukewarm in their
service of the king. Especially those ecclesiastical magnates who felt real
zeal for the Church were reluctant opponents of a prince who enjoyed the
favour of the Roman See, and who had done much to further the cause of
Christianity among his own people. A strange act of policy on the part of
Henry increased their repugnance to serve against Boleslav. For during the
Easter season of 1003 he had received at Quedlinburg envoys of the Redari
and of the Lyutitzi, heathen Wendish tribes dwelling in the North Mark
and had made a compact with them. None of the Wends had been more
stubborn in resistance to the German domination, which they had long
ago shaken off; with it had gone their compulsory Christianity. Fear of
a fresh subjection and forcible conversion by the sword of Boleslav drove
them to negotiate with Henry, to whom they could offer protection on
his north-eastern frontier and active help in the field against the Polish
duke. These advantages he secured by allowing them to retain their
practical independence and still to hold to their heathen religion. The
treaty did in fact prove of no small value. Yet this alliance of a Christian
king with pagan tribesmen against another Christian prince gave deep
offence to many of his subjects; and German warriors saw with impatience
the idols of their Wendish associates borne as standards on the march to
overcome a foe who held the same true faith as themselves.
Henry was not satisfied merely to regain Bohemia and to stand on the
## p. 227 (#273) ############################################
Troubles on the West
227
a
defensive against Polish attack. He aimed at recovering the whole of
the lost territory between the Elbe and the Oder, once conquered and
Christianised by Otto the Great. After suppressing early in 1005 a rising
of the Frisians Henry summoned a general levy at Leitzkau, half-way
between Magdeburg and Zerbst, on the farther side of the Elbe; and
thence, in the middle of August, the king led his army forward through
the East Mark, where he was joined by the Bavarians under their new
Duke, Henry of Luxemburg, and by the Bohemians under Duke Jaromir.
But the troops, delayed by false guides who entangled them in the marshes
about the Spree, were harassed by ambushed attacks of the enemy. Just
before the Oder was reached, the Lyutitzi, headed by their heathen images,
attached themselves to the royal host. On pitching camp by the Bobra
(Bober) near its junction with the Oder, Henry found Boleslav stationed
in strong force at Crossen. The discovery of a ford enabled the king to
send over part of his troops, whose appearance drove Boleslav into hasty
retreat. The march was continued to within two miles of the city of
Posen. But the German army was wearied, and now halted to collect
supplies. Its want of vigilance, however, while it was scattered in foraging
parties, allowed it to be taken unawares and defeated with heavy loss.
This reverse, though not the crushing disaster represented by Polish
tradition, disposed Henry to accept an offer made by Boleslav to come
to terms. Envoys, with the Archbishop of Magdeburg at their head, were
sent to Posen to negotiate with the duke; and a peace, the conditions of
which are unknown, was established. The treaty, in any case, was hardly
flattering to German pride, for at the utmost Henry can have won from
Boleslav no more than a recognition of his authority in the Upper and
the Lower Lausitz, and a renunciation of the duke's claim to Bohemia.
During the interval of uneasy peace that followed, Henry's attention
was claimed on his western frontier. The Frisian coast was being harried
by piratical Northmen; Valenciennes had been seized by the count of
Flanders; the kingdom of Burgundy was in a state of turmoil. In Bur-
gundy King Rodolph III, the last male of his house, was struggling vainly
to uphold the royal authority against a defiant nobility. To Henry, the
son of Rodolph's sister Gisela and his nearest heir, the present unsettle-
ment, which imperilled his chance of succeeding to his uncle's crown, was
a matter of serious concern. In 1006, therefore, he made his hand felt
in Burgundy. The extent of his intervention is unknown; but the fact is
clear that he now took possession of the city of Basle. This step, how-
ever brought about, was never reversed; and the sequel shewed it as the
earliest in a series by which the independence of the Burgundian kingdom
was destroyed.
The incursions of the Northmen, this year and the next, into Frisia
were left to the local counts to deal with. It was otherwise when the
ambitious Count Baldwin IV of Flanders, one of the mightiest vassals of
the West Frankish crown, into whose hands had already fallen the castle
CH. X.
15–2
## p. 228 (#274) ############################################
228
War in Flanders: loss of Lausitz
up by Otto the Great at Ghent, presumed to violate German territory
east of the Scheldt and take forcible possession of the town of Valenciennes.
Henry, whose repeated demands for his withdrawal had been ignored by
the count, in June 1006 sought a meeting with Baldwin's overlord, King
Robert, the result of which was a joint expedition of the two monarchs
in September for the recovery of the town'. But the undertaking, though
supported by Duke Richard of Normandy, the lifelong foe of the house
of Flanders, came to naught; and Henry, to retrieve the failure, in the
summer of 1007 led a great host to the Scheldt, crossed it, and then
proceeded to lay waste the country. At Ghent, upon the supplication of
,
the brethren of St Bavo's, he stayed his hand; but by this time Baldwin
was ready to treat. His humble submission soon after, with the surrender
of Valenciennes, won for him full forgiveness from the king. He swore
peace; and also took an oath of fealty to Henry, by which, as it seems,
he became his vassal for the royal castle at Ghent. Two years later, to
secure his help against disaffection in Lorraine, Henry granted Baldwin
in fief Valenciennes, to which the island of Walcheren was afterwards
added. In thus accepting vassalage to the German crown, Baldwin won
for the counts of Flanders their first footing beyond the Scheldt.
But while engaged upon this successful enterprise in the West, Henry
had been overtaken by disaster on his Eastern frontier. Since the Polish
campaign of 1005, he had been at pains to keep the Wends true to their
compact, but, in the spring of 1007, he was visited at Ratisbon by a triple
embassy from the Lyutitzi, from a considerable town in their neighbour-
hood, and from Duke Jaromir of Bohemia, which came to denounce the
assiduous efforts of the Duke of Poland, by bribes and promises, to seduce
them from their allegiance. They declared that, if Henry should remain
any longer at peace with Boleslav, he must not count on further service
from them. The king, then preparing for the invasion of Flanders, con-
sented, on the advice of the princes, to a renewal of war against Poland.
The issue was unfortunate; for the Saxons, the proper guardians of the
Elbe and of the Marches beyond, proved utterly wanting. In the absence
of the king, Boleslav invaded the Marches in force, wasting a wide district
east of Magdeburg, and carrying away captive the inhabitants of Zerbst.
The Saxon levies slowly gathered to repel him, and, with Archbishop
Tagino of Magdeburg in supreme command, sullenly followed the duke as
he returned home. But at Jüterbogk, long before the Oder had been
reached, the heart of their leaders failed them, and their retreat enabled
the Polish prince to reoccupy the eastern half of the Lower Lausitz, and
soon after to secure possession once more of the Upper Lausitz.
He had
thus regained all the German territory that he had previously held and
lost; he had established himself firmly on the west of the Oder; and from
the ground thus gained no subsequent efforts of Henry availed to expel
him.
1 Cf. supra, Chap. v, p. 106.
## p. 229 (#275) ############################################
Crystallisation of fiefs
229
In another sphere of activity, this same year of mingled success and
disaster brought Henry, before its close, a peculiar triumph. This was
the establishment, on 1 November 1007, of the new see of Bamberg.
The completion of this cherished scheme was at once the fruit of
Henry's religious zeal and the witness to his supremacy over the German
Church. Nevertheless, it was just his claim to such supremacy in a par-
ticular case that involved him soon after in a bitter domestic quarrel,
which ran its unhappy course for several years, and, combined with other
troubles at home, effectually hindered further action abroad. At this
point, then, it is necessary to explain Henry's ecclesiastical policy, upon
which his whole system of government was based.
In right of the Crown, Henry had small material means at command
to enforce his authority. The obedience due to him as their chosen and
anointed king might be readily acknowledged by all his subjects, but was
just as readily withheld when it conflicted with private interest. Especially
was this the case with the higher nobility. The counts, though still in
theory royal officials and responsible to the sovereign for the maintenance
of public order in their several districts, had become in fact hereditary
territorial magnates, whose offices, like their fiefs and their family estates,
usually passed from father to son in regular succession. The privilege of
“immunity” which many enjoyed, and the feudal relation now generally
subsisting between them and their tenants, still further strengthened
their position. These petty potentates however, who should have been
the upholders of law, were too often its worst transgressors. Their greed
for landed wealth urged them into perpetual feuds with one another or
with their ecclesiastical neighbours, while the abuse of their seignorial
rights made them the oppressors of the classes below them. In these evil
tendencies they had been encouraged by the lax administration of the
last two reigns. Yet even more were the greater lay magnates, the dukes
and margraves, disposed to regard themselves as hereditary princes. The
dukes, in spite of past efforts to reduce their pretensions, were the recog-
nised chiefs of the separate races which made up the German nation, and,
like Herman of Swabia, were generally too strong, even in defeat, to be
displaced without risk. The margraves, holding an office less venerable, had
also won, by effective service on the frontiers, a firm position in the State.
Though dukes and margraves alike required investiture by the king, it
was rarely that a son was not preferred to his father's place. The control
of men so firmly established in power and dignity could be no easy task;
yet it now depended upon the vindication of the royal authority whether
the nation should preserve its political cohesion, or be split up, like the
adjacent kingdoms on the West, into a loose aggregation of almost in-
dependent principalities under a nominal sovereign.
It was the second Henry who by his energy postponed for two gene-
rations the process of disintegration which set in under Henry IV. To
restore the rule of law was his prime object. In the decay, however,
CH. X.
## p. 230 (#276) ############################################
230
Lessening resources of the Crown
of local justice, the Royal, or Palatine, Court, over which the king
presided in person, was the only tribunal where redress could be sought
against a powerful adversary, or whither appeal could be made from
decisions in the inferior courts. Henry knew, as his biographer tells us,
that the region left unvisited by the king was most often filled with the
complaints and groans of the poor, and he did his utmost, by incessant
journeys through the land, to bring justice within reach of all his subjects.
In many cases he punished with severity high-born disturbers of the
peace. Yet the conditions were now such that the Crown was not
strong enough of itself to compel obedience to the law. To make his
will prevail, alike in judicial administration and in large measures of
policy, he had to secure the co-operation of the magnates assembled in
general or provincial diets. At these meetings, which became more
frequent under him than under his predecessors, he was generally able, by
his fixity of purpose and his skilful address, to win consent to his designs.
Even so, however, he was largely dependent for their accomplishment upon
such material aid as the good will of the nobles might afford him. There
existed no standing army. The national levy could still be summoned by
royal command for the defence of the realm; but the only permanent
force at the disposal of the king consisted of unfree retainers (ministeriales)
drawn from the crown lands or from his patrimonial estates. But they
were insufficient for making expeditions abroad or for preserving order at
home; and it was upon the feudal contingents furnished by the magnates
that the monarch had to rely in the last resort.
Furthermore the royal revenues had for years been in steady decline.
The immense crown estates, the villae on which Charles the Great had
bestowed such care, had been broken up and largely dissipated by the
later Carolingians, partly through the granting of fiefs to reward their
supporters, partly though their lavish endowment of churches and monas-
teries. And in similar fashion the peculiar royal rights of coinage, tolls,
and markets, with others of the same kind, all extremely profitable, had
been also freely alienated to laymen and ecclesiastics. In the hands of
Otto the Great this practice had been turned to account for the strength-
ening of the throne; but under his son and grandson it had rather
served to establish the local powers in their independence. What crown
lands remained to the monarch lay scattered in fragments throughout the
kingdom, and were therefore less profitable and more difficult to ad-
minister. Henry was a wealthy king, but more through his possession of
the great Liudolfing inheritance in Saxony and of the patrimony of his
Bavarian ancestors, than through his command of such resources as were
proper to the Crown.
Faced then by the growing power of the secular magnates, Henry, if
he were to restore the German monarchy, had to seek some surer means
than the bare authority of the Crown. But the task was one beyond the
powers of a single man, and required the steady action of an ordered ad-
## p. 231 (#277) ############################################
The Church as an instrument of order
231
ministration. This was found in the organisation of the Church. Its
dignitaries Henry employed as crown officials, whom he appointed himself.
Though the bishops and greater abbots were spiritual chiefs, they were
called upon to act also as servants of the king, advising him in council,
fulfilling his missions abroad, preserving his peace within their own terri-
tories. Further, they, even more than lay princes, had to provide him with
military contingents of their vassals, often to follow him in person into
the field, sometimes even to conduct his campaigns. And while heavy
calls were continually being made upon their revenues for the public need,
the right to dispose of their vacant fiefs was frequently claimed by the
king for some purpose of his own. More especially did the royal monas-
teries suffer loss at Henry's hand; for the pious king in several cases did
not hesitate at extensive confiscation of monastic lands. Yet these
severe measures were not the outcome of caprice or greed, but of a settled
policy for the kingdom's weal.
In thus employing the Church Henry resumed the policy adopted by
Otto the Great. But while Otto, in using the Church to fortify the
throne, had cared little to interfere in matters purely ecclesiastical,
Henry sought to exercise over the Church an authority no less direct
and searching than over the State. Filled with the ecclesiastical spirit,
he set himself to regulate Church affairs as seemed to him best in
the Church's interest; and the instinct for order which urged him from
the first to promote its efficiency developed at last into a passionate zeal
for its reformation.
To achieve his purpose it was essential for Henry to secure an
effective mastery over the Church. But only through its constitutional
rulers, the bishops, could he, without flagrant illegality, obtain command
of its wealth, engage its political services, and direct its spiritual energies.
In order, however, to be sure of bishops who should be his willing agents,
the decisive word in the appointment to vacant sees must be his. In the
Frankish kingdom the old canonical rule that the choice of a new bishop
rested with the clergy and laity of the diocese had never been quite for-
gotten; but from early times the kings had claimed and been allowed the
right of confirming or disapproving an episcopal election, and this had been
enlarged into the greater right of direct nomination. The claim of the
Crown to intervene in episcopal appointments had been fully revindicated
by Otto the Great. In a few German dioceses the privilege of free elec-
tion had been expressly confirmed or granted afresh by charters, yet Otto
had never allowed the local privilege to hinder the appointment of any
man he desired. The effect of such methods was to fill the bishoprics with
royal nominees. Though the procedure was prejudicial to the indepen-
dence of the Church, yet it freed episcopal elections from those local
influences which would have made the bishops mere creatures of the
secular magnates, or at best their counterparts in an ecclesiastical dis-
guise.
CH. X.
## p. 232 (#278) ############################################
232
Royal nomination of Bishops
Otto's practice was followed by Henry, who insisted on his right to
nominate the bishops. He made no fresh grants of privilege of free elec-
tion; he often qualified it by reserving the right of royal assent as at
Hamburg, Hildesheim, Minden, Halberstadt, and Fulda, and sometimes
he withheld it altogether as at Paderborn. His general practice is fairly
illustrated by the case of Magdeburg, which fell vacant four times in the
course of his reign. This church had not received from its founder,
Otto the Great, the right of choosing its own pastor; and it was by
gift of his son, in terms unusually solemn, that the privilege was conferred
in 979. Yet Otto II made light of his own charter when, on the first
vacancy of the see, he allowed his favourite, the crafty Bishop Gisiler of
Merseburg, to supplant the canonically elected nominee. At Gisiler's
death in January 1004, the clergy of Magdeburg forthwith unanimously
elected their Provost Waltherd. But Henry was resolved that no
Magdeburg cleric should occupy the see; and demanded the election
of his own attached friend, the Bavarian Tagino. Neither the plea of
right nor the humble entreaty of the electors was accepted by the king,
whose insistence at length won the consent of Waltherd and his sup-
porters to Tagino's promotion. Through their presence at his investiture
by Henry they acquiesced in the reversal of their own previous act.
Tagino died in June 1012. Again Henry intervened by sending an envoy,
but this time to ask the electors to submit a candidate for his approval.
The clergy and vassals of the see once more chose the same candidate,
Waltherd, as archbishop. Only with great reluctance did Henry agree,
and that upon condition of a fresh election being held in his presence, at
which he himself proposed, and the electors concurred in, the nomi-
nation of the Provost. Within two months, however, Waltherd was
snatched away by death. Next day, the Magdeburg clergy, still anxious
to preserve their right, elected Thiedric, a youthful cleric, to the vacant
see; and the day following repeated the act. Henry, greatly indignant
at this proceeding, determined to enforce his will on the presumptuous
Church. He made Thiedric a royal chaplain, and then, coming to
Magdeburg, directed another meeting to be held for the election of
Gero, one of his chaplains, whom he had designated for the archbishopric.
The electors, with an express reservation of their right for the future,
obeyed, and Gero was chosen. Yet this reservation appears to have been
no hindrance to Henry when, in the last year of his reign, the see of
Magdeburg was again vacated by the death of Gero, and he secured the
succession of Hunfrid (Humphrey), another royal nominee.
To Henry, therefore, the right of election was useful for giving
canonical sanction to a choice made by himself, and the utmost allowed
to electors was to name a candidate; thus in course of time most of the
German bishoprics were filled by his nominees. Yet Henry's bishops were
men far from unworthy of their office. If few of them were learned, the
lives of few gave occasion for reproach; if capable men of affairs rather
## p. 233 (#279) ############################################
Aggrandisement of Bishops
233
than sound spiritual guides, they were not generally neglectful of pastoral
duty; some were even distinguished for evangelical zeal. They were chosen
oftenest, it would seem, for their practical capacity, and for a sympathy
with his political and ecclesiastical aims gained by long service in the
royal chapel or chancery; some, like the historian Thietmar, were chosen
for their wealth, part of which they were expected to bestow on their
impoverished sees; not a few were recommended by their Bavarian birth.
Henry was not the man to dishonour the Church by giving it worthless
prelates. Nevertheless, the bishops were his creatures, from whom he
demanded obedience; in a word, the Church had to accept a position of
strict subordination to the State.
It was not all at once that Henry was able to bring this about.
The bishops whom he found in office at his accession owed nothing to
him; and even when of proved loyalty they were not inclined to be sub-
servient. Some indeed were openly disaffected. Of such were the Arch-
bishops Heribert of Cologne and Gisiler of Magdeburg, and among
bishops, the celebrated Bernward of Hildesheim. Whether indifferent or
hostile, however, it was not the spiritual independence of the Church for
which most of them were jealous, but for the temporal power and dignity
of their own sees. Their sense of ecclesiastical unity was faint; nor did
any voice sound from Rome to remind them of their allegiance to the
Church Universal. To many even the welfare of their own national branch
thereof was of small concern beside the interests of their particular
dioceses. Papal impotence left Henry a free hand; and with the rise of
a new episcopate the cohesion of the German Church was strengthened
and its energies were revived, but only at the cost of its independence. For
the bishops learned to acquiesce in Henry's claim to ecclesiastical authority,
and zealous churchmen were not slow to enjoin obedience to the Crown
as a duty of divine ordinance. But with the Church thus submissive, all
fear that the bishops might use their means and their privileges in a
spirit defiant of the secular power was removed. They had become, in
truth, royal officials; and the more, therefore, that their position was
enhanced, the better service could they render to the king. Accordingly,
it was with no sparing hand that Henry, following the example of the
Ottos, bestowed territory and regalities upon the episcopal churches. His
charters reveal also two other special features of his policy. The one is
the frequency with which he annexed royal abbeys of the lesser rank to
bishoprics, to be held by them as part of their endowment; the other is
his extension of the recent practice of giving vacant counties into the
hands of prelates. In the former case, the purpose was achieved of turning
the smaller religious houses to better account for the service of the State
than they could be as isolated corporations; in the latter, advantage was
gained for the Crown by the transfer of local authority from secular to
ecclesiastical hands, since the bishops were now more amenable to royal
control than were the lay counts. Thus the process, by which the bishops
CH. X.
## p. 234 (#280) ############################################
234
Dual position of the Bishops
became territorial princes, went rapidly forward; although the Crown
was strengthened rather than weakened by their exaltation.
It is indisputable that the alliance between the Church and the
Monarchy brought immense advantages to both. The former, favoured by
the Crown, still further improved its high position. The king, on his
side, obtained the services of men highly educated and familiar with
business; who could form a counterpoise to the hereditary nobility, and
yet could never establish themselves as an hereditary caste; who set an
example within their dioceses of upright and humane administration;
and who shewed themselves prudent managers of their estates. Besides
all which, the revenues of their churches and the military aid of their
vassals were at his command. Their corporate feeling as members of a
national church had revived; and their general employment in the service
of the Crown, which claimed the headship of that church, made them the
representatives of national unity on the secular no less than on the
ecclesiastical side.
Yet the coalition of the two powers contained the seeds of future
calamity to the Church. It was inevitable that bishops so chosen and so
employed could not rise to their spiritual vocation. Even within their
own dioceses they were as much occupied by secular as by pastoral work.
Insensibly they became secularised; and the Church ceased to be either
a school of theologians or a nursery of missionaries. At such a price were
its temporal advantages secured. Nor was the gain to the Crown without
its alloy. For the royal supremacy over the Church depended on the
monarch keeping a firm hold on episcopal appointment. That prerogative
might become nominal; and during a minority it might disappear. The
result in either case would be the political independence of the bishops,
whose power would then be all the greater through the favours now
lavished upon their churches. This was the latent political peril; and
beside it lurked an ecclesiastical danger yet more formidable. Henry had
mastered the German Church; and, so long as it remained the national
institution he had made it, the tie of interest which bound it to the
throne would hold. Yet it was but part of a larger ecclesiastical whole,
whose acknowledged head was the Pope. The present thraldom of the
Papacy to a local despot made its claim to the obedience of distant
churches a shadowy prerogative which could be safely disregarded; but
with a future recovery of freedom and of moral influence the pretension
of the Roman See to apostolic authority over the Western Church would
revive; and the German prelates would have to choose between King
and Pope. Within sixty years of Henry's death that question presented
itself.
In his government of the Church Henry was accustomed to act both
on his own sole authority and in co-operation with the bishops in synod.
No sharp distinction is apparent between the matters he decided himself
and those he referred to the synods; in general, however, breaches of
## p. 235 (#281) ############################################
Protectorship of the Church
235
external order the king dealt with alone, while strictly ecclesiastical
questions were more often disposed of in synod.
How vigorously Henry meant to assert his right to regulate Church
affairs was seen soon after his accession in his revival of the see of Merse-
burg. That bishopric, established in 968 by Otto the Great as part of
his scheme for evangelising the Wends, had been held by Gisiler for ten
years before his elevation to Magdeburg. Such a translation was liable
to be impugned as invalid, and the astute prelate therefore induced his
patron Otto II and Pope Benedict VII to decree the abolition of Merse-
burg as superfluous, and to distribute its territory among the neighbouring
dioceses, including Magdeburg. Under Otto III Gisiler managed by skilful
procrastination to maintain his ill-won position. Henry however made
peremptory demand upon Gisiler to vacate the archbishopric and return
to Merseburg. The prelate's death before he complied, enabled Henry by
the appointment of Tagino to Magdeburg, to bring back the old position.
Tagino's first episcopal act was to consecrate Wigbert to the revived
Merseburg bishopric, of which the king by his sole act, without reference
to synod or to Pope, had thus become the second founder. No less inde-
pendent was Henry's procedure in settling the ignoble quarrel between
two of Germany's noblest prelates over the monastery of Gandersheim.
From its foundation by Henry's ancestor Duke Liudolf of Saxony in 842,
and after an early subjection to Mayence, this religious house for women
had been without question for nearly a century and a half under the
spiritual authority of the bishops of Hildesheim. In an unhappy hour
Archbishop Willigis claimed jurisdiction over it for Mayence; and the
dispute so begun with one bishop was continued later with his successor
Bernward, and by him referred for decision to Pope Sylvester II. The
papal edict in favour of Hildesheim, when promulgated in Germany, was
treated with open disrespect by Willigis. To end the scandal, Henry won
the promise of both bishops to abide by his ruling, and then, at a diet in
1006, gave judgment for Hildesheim. The result was loyally accepted by
Willigis and his next successor.
This protectorship of the Church led Henry, whom Thietmar calls
the Vicar of God on earth, to undertake on its behalf tasks of the most
diverse kind. Thus he asserted his right, both to order the due regis-
tration of monastic lands, and to require strict observance of German
customs in public worship; he took it upon him, not only to enforce eccle-
siastical discipline, but to prevent heresy from raising its head. In such
matters the synods had a right to speak, although they did so rather as
organs of the royal will than as independent church assemblies. For they
met upon Henry's summons; he presided over, and took active part in,
their discussions; he published their resolutions as edicts of his own.
But he called them to account in the tone of a master, and at the very
first
synod of his reign he rebuked them severely for slackness in their discipline.
In pressing for the removal of irregularities Henry certainly shewed
a
CH. X.
## p. 236 (#282) ############################################
236
Reform of monasteries
himself a conscientious ruler of the Church, but gave no proof of a desire
to initiate any far-reaching ecclesiastical reform. His views at this time
were bounded by the needs of the German Church; and so strictly national
were the synods he convoked that they cared but little whether the
measures they agreed upon were in consonance with general church law.
With reform, however, in one wide sphere of organised religion
Henry had long shewn his active sympathy. For already, as Duke
of Bavaria, he had used his authority to impose a stricter life upon the
monasteries of that land. He had thus helped forward the monastic
reformation which, beginning in Lorraine in the early decades of the
tenth century, had spread eastwards into Germany, and had won a footing
in Bavaria through the energy of the former monk, Wolfgang, Bishop
of Ratisbon. In his early years Henry had seen the beneficent change
wrought in Bavaria, and exemplified at St Emmeram's in Ratisbon.
After becoming duke, he had forced reform upon the reluctant monks of
Altaich and Tegernsee through the agency of Godehard, a passionate
ascetic, whom, in defiance of their privilege, he had made abbot of both
those houses. In the same spirit and with like purpose Henry treated
the royal monasteries after his accession. They became the instruments
of his strenuous monastic policy; while he also, as in the case of the
bishoprics, insisted on the right of the Crown to appoint their heads,
notwithstanding the privilege of free election which many of them
possessed. By this time, however, some of the greater monasteries had
acquired immense landed wealth, and their abbots held a princely position.
The communities they ruled for the most part led an easy existence.
Not a few houses, it is true, did admirable work in art and learning, in
husbandry, and in care for the poor. Much of the land, specially reserved
to the abbot, was granted out in fief to vassals, in order to acquit his
military service to the Crown; but these might also be used against the
Crown, if the abbot were not loyal.
Henry's monastic policy was revealed in 1005 by his treatment of
the wealthy abbey of Hersfeld. Complaints made to him by the brethren
gave him the opportunity for replacing the abbot by the ascetic Gode-
hard of Altaich, who offered the monks a choice between strict observance
of the Rule and expulsion. The departure of all but two or three enabled
Godehard to dispose of their superfluous luxuries for pious uses, while
Henry seized on the corporate lands reserved for the brethren, and added
them to the abbot's special estate, which thus became liable to the Crown
for greater feudal services. In the end Hersfeld, under Godehard, became
again an active religious community. Between 1006 and 1015 Reichenau,
Fulda and Corvey were likewise dealt with and with like results. Further,
the Crown, by placing several abbeys under one head, was able, out of
land hitherto required for the upkeep of abbatial households, to make
grants to vassals. In these measures the king was supported by the
bishops, some of whom followed his example in monasteries under their
a
## p. 237 (#283) ############################################
Foundation of the see of Bamberg
237
control. The result was a general revival of monastic discipline, and a
serious curtailment of the resources of the greater abbeys.
The lesser royal monasteries, from whose lands new fiefs could not be
granted, needed the king's special protection to keep their independence.
Henry had no use for feeble institutions, and subjected seventeen of
them to various sees or greater abbeys. If they were not abolished
altogether, they were generally transformed into small canonries, while
part of their property fell to the bishop.
Henry proclaimed his belief in the episcopal system by the foundation
of the see of Bamberg. Near the eastern border of Franconia dwelt a
population almost entirely Wendish. Left behind in the general retreat
of their kinsfolk before the Franks, these Slavonic tribesmen still kept
their own language and customs, and much of their original paganism.
Baptised by compulsion, they neglected all Christian observances, while
the bishops of Würzburg, to whose diocese they belonged, paid little heed
to them. Close by them was the little town of Bamberg, dear to Henry
from his boyhood. It was a favourite home with him and his wife, and
he resolved to make it the seat of a bishopric. The scheme required
the assent of the Bishops of Würzburg and Eichstedt. But Megingaud
(Meingaud) of Eichstedt flatly refused to agree, and Henry of Würzburg,
though a devoted subject, was an ambitious man, and demanded, in
addition to territorial compensation, the elevation of Würzburg to
metropolitan rank. After a synod at Mayence (May 1007), at which
Bishop Henry was present, had given its solemn approval, envoys were
sent to the Pope to secure ratification. By bull issued in June John XVIII
confirmed the erection of the see of Bamberg, which was to be subject
only to the authority of the Papacy. Würzburg, however, was not made an
archbishopric, and Bishop Henry thought himself betrayed. At a synod
at Frankfort (1 November 1007) there assembled five German arch-
bishops with twenty-two suffragans, five Burgundian prelates including
two archbishops, two Italian bishops, and, lastly, the primate of Hungary.
Willigis of Mayence presided, but Henry of Würzburg held aloof. The
king, prostrating himself before the bishops, set forth his high purpose
for the Church, reminding them of the consent already given by the
Bishop of Würzburg. Bishop Henry's chaplain replied that his master
could not allow any injury to his church. But the absence of the bishop
had displeased many of his colleagues, while the agreement he had made
was on record. Thus, finally, the foundation of the see of Bamberg was
unanimously confirmed, and the king nominated as its first bishop his
kinsman the Chancellor Everard, who received consecration the same day.
Henry's intention to make God his heir was amply fulfilled; he had
already endowed Bamberg with his lands in the Radenzgau and the
Volkfeld, and he lavished wealth on the new see. Thus Bamberg was
among the best endowed of German bishoprics, and the comital juris-
diction, given by Henry to some other sees, can hardly have been with-
CH.
with their ecclesiastical neighbours, but each order was rent by quarrels
among its own members. Among the clergy of every degree, worldliness
and neglect of duty, avarice and loose living, were widely prevalent. It
was a heavy task, therefore, that Henry undertook, and he had now to
restore by his own efforts the sovereign power in face of men who had
hitherto been his equals.
In these adverse circumstances the new reign began, and by them its
course was set. The history of the reign is confused; but through it all
may be traced the king's unwavering purpose of bringing about a more
settled state of things. The large measure of success that he achieved
therein entitles Henry to a high place among the sovereigns of Germany;
but his zeal for the suppression of ecclesiastical abuses was felt over a
wider sphere, and has set him among the reformers of the Western Church.
And it is in the ecclesiastical policy that he pursued, combining as it did
the political system of Otto the Great with the reforming energy of
Henry the Third, and thus linking him with both those monarchs, that
the chief interest of his career is to be found.
The beginning of Henry's reign was marked by two grave losses to
the Empire; in the South, of the Lombard kingdom; in the East, of the
tributary duchy of Bohemia. The former event, indeed, had taken place
even before Henry had become a candidate for the throne. For within a
month of the death of Otto III Lombardy broke into open revolt; and
on 15 February 1002 Ardoin, Marquess of Ivrea, was elected King of the
Lombards and crowned in the basilica of St Michael at Pavia.
This new king was nearly related to, if he did not actually spring from,
the marquesses of Turin, and was connected also with the late royal
house of Ivrea, with whose hereditary March he had been invested about
twelve
years
since. His career as marquess had been a stormy one. During
a quarrel with Peter, Bishop of Vercelli, Ardoin had taken that city by
assault, and in the tumult the bishop was slain. Soon after, his violence
towards Warmund, the Bishop of his own city of Ivrea, had brought down
upon him a severe rebuke from Pope Gregory V. Through the influence
of Leo, Bishop of Vercelli, Ardoin was summoned to Rome in 999 to
answer for his alleged misdeeds. Yet, in spite of papal censure and
imperial forfeiture, he had kept fast hold both of his March and of
his possessions until the turn of fortune raised him to the Lombard
throne.
Ardoin may have been in truth little more than a rough soldier. Yet
he proved himself a skilful leader in war; and if his reign was unfortunate
1. See supra, Chap. VII, pp. 175-6.
## p. 221 (#267) ############################################
Revolt of Lombardy
221
a
it was not through any lack on his part of energy or courage. He cer-
tainly inspired his family and his friends with a devotion that shrank from
no sacrifice. To the lay magnates he was their champion against the
domination of the prelates, some few of whom also, free from German
sympathies, were on his side. But it was chiefly the smaller nobles, the
secundi milites or lesser vavassors, holding their lands at the will of episcopal
or secular overlords, and with nothing to hope for from a foreign sovereign,
who turned naturally to a native king whose domestic enemies were their
own. Beside them stood many of the secular clergy, equally impatient of
episcopal control; while lower down were the serfs, the voiceless tillers of
church lands, many of whom had obtained their freedom, but all of
whom it was now sought to reduce to perpetual bondage. In this endea-
vour the two bishops of Vercelli, Peter and Leo, had been especially
active; and it was the latter who, but a short while before, had drafted
the terrible decree of Otto III that no serf of the Church should ever be
allowed to issue from his servitude. And to Ardoin therefore these
freedmen and bondmen now looked as their only possible saviour.
The revolt, if primarily social, was so far national that it was directed
against those elements of authority which leaned on foreign support.
The German interest in Lombardy was still strong. Some prelates, the
Archbishop of Ravenna and the bishops of Modena, Verona, and Vercelli,
were openly hostile to Ardoin from the first; and in agreement with them
was the Marquess Tedald, holder of the five counties of Reggio, Modena,
Mantua, Brescia, and Ferrara, whose family had risen to eminence by
service to the Ottos. But the real soul of the opposition was Leo of
Vercelli, a German by birth, whose energetic character, strong intellect,
and immense acquirements made him a dangerous enemy. For he was
at once an accomplished man of letters, an able lawyer, and a practised
man of affairs. Worldly-minded, though zealous for good order in the
Church, he was ever eager to advance his material interests; and the
disappearance of the imperial system would mean his own utter ruin.
His whole energies, therefore, were bent to the overthrow of the national
king.
A progress through Lombardy secured Ardoin general acknowledg-
ment, and the administration went on without break. The hostile mag-
nates were helpless; while the rest, whatever their secret inclinations, gave
outward obedience to the monarch in possession. But Ardoin's insolent
bearing enraged his opponents, and so both sides looked abroad for help.
Ardoin sent an envoy to France to obtain a promise of armed support
from King Robert; Leo of Vercelli in person, backed by the prayers of
other Italian magnates, besought Henry, now recognised as king in
Germany, to intervene in Italy. Accordingly, Henry in December 1002
dispatched a moderate force under Duke Otto of Carinthia, in whose
hands was the March of Verona, to the aid of his Italian adherents. The
latter, headed by Archbishop Frederick of Ravenna and the Marquess
CH. X.
## p. 222 (#268) ############################################
222
Boleslav of Poland
Tedald, were already on their way to join the duke, when Ardoin with
superior forces threw himself between the allies, occupied Verona, and
seized the mountain passes beyond. A few days later he made a surprise
attack upon the enemy in the valley of the Brenta, and routed them with
heavy loss. This victory for the time made Ardoin's authority secure.
Only a few weeks after Lombardy had thus asserted its independence,
Bohemia was severed from Germany. Boleslav Chrobry (the Mighty),
since succeeding his father Mesco as Duke of Poland in 992, had built up
a powerful Slav monarchy beyond the Elbe. The various tribes occupying
the plains watered by the Oder, the Warta, and the Vistula were united
under his rule; he was allied by marriage with the neighbouring princes
of Bohemia, Hungary, and Kiev; by the indulgence of the late Emperor
he had been relieved of the annual tribute due to the German crown.
Through Otto also he had secured from Pope Sylvester II the eccle-
siastical independence of his country, with the establishment of Gnesen
as a metropolitan see. Only in his vassalage to the Empire was there left
any sign of political subjection. Now Boleslav saw an opportunity for
enlarging his dominion in the West and achieving full independence. He
overran the whole of the East Mark, or Mark of Gero, as far as the Elbe;
then, turning southwards, he seized the towns of Bautzen and Strehla,
and with the aid of its Slavonic inhabitants gained possession of the city
of Meissen itself. Pushing westwards, he occupied the mark of Meissen as
far as the White Elster, securing it with Polish garrisons. He had thus
mastered all the territory known later as the Upper and Lower Lausitz, and
the Elbe had here ceased to be a German river. Then Boleslav appeared
at the diet of Merseburg to make sure of his conquest. But his offer to
Henry of a large sum for the retention of Meissen was rejected: and
Gunzelin, brother of the late Eckhard and half-brother of Boleslav, was
invested by the king with the mark of Meissen, while Boleslav himself
was allowed to keep only the districts to the east of the Black Elster.
Thenceforth the Polish duke became Henry's determined foe. He
found support at once in German disaffection. The Babenberg Henry of
Schweinfurt, Margrave of the Nordgau, hitherto a staunch adherent of the
king, claimed investiture with the duchy of Bavaria as the promised reward
for his aid in the succession contest. Incensed by the king's hesitation in
granting the request, the margrave now made common cause with Boleslav,
whose own wrath was further inflamed by an assault made upon
himself
and his followers, though without the privity of the king, on their depar-
ture from Merseburg.
And the opportunity soon came to Boleslav for revenge. In Bohemia
there had ruled for the last three years, as a tributary of the German
crown, his cousin and namesake, Duke Boleslav the Red, a tyrant whose
jealousy had sent his half-brothers, Jaromir and Udalrich, with their
mother, into exile, and whose cruelty now impelled his subjects to drive
him out and to set up his kinsman Vladivoi as duke. While Vladivoi, to
## p. 223 (#269) ############################################
Bohemia; the Babenbergs
223
secure himself, took investiture from King Henry, the dispossessed prince
sought refuge in Poland. But when Vladivoi's own vices brought his rule
to an end early in 1003 and the Bohemians recalled Jaromir and Udalrich,
the Polish duke intervened by force, drove the two princes a second time
into banishment, and reinstated Boleslav the Red. It was not long before
the ferocious vengeance which the restored duke took upon his enemies
constrained the Bohemians in terror to implore protection from Boleslav
of Poland. Seizing the desired occasion, Boleslav craftily enticed his
kinsman into his power, caused him to be blinded, and then, hastening
to Prague, secured his own acceptance as duke by the Bohemians. The act
was an insolent defiance of Henry's authority; but the king, controlling
his indignation, sent envoys to Boleslav offering recognition if the duke
would acknowledge himself his vassal. Boleslav, however, haughtily re-
jected the proposal, and for the time Bohemia was lost to the German
crown.
Nothing, indeed, could be done as yet for its recovery because of
serious trouble in Germany itself. Already, early in the year, Henry had
had to suppress disaffection in Lorraine with a strong hand; and now he
learnt that the Margrave Henry, secretly aided by the Polish duke, was
in open revolt in the Nordgau. From Bavaria the king took vigorous
action against the rebel. But the margrave found two unexpected allies
in his cousin Ernest of Babenberg and the king's own brother Bruno.
Between King Henry and these three men a petty war was waged during
the autumn of 1003, of which the Nordgau, the wide district lying north
of the Danube between Bohemia and East Franconia, was the scene.
Here the Babenbergs were firmly established; but the king's energy soon
forced the margrave to forsake his strongholds for lurking places in the
country-side. The operations culminated in the siege of Creussen, a forti-
fied town near the sources of the Main, which was valiantly held against
the royal forces by Bucco, the brother of the margrave, while the latter
himself harassed the besiegers from outside. A surprise attack on his
camp drove the margrave into flight, scattered his followers, and delivered
Ernest a prisoner into the hands of the king. Thereupon Bucco sur-
rendered Creussen. Boleslav endeavoured first to seduce Gunzelin into
betraying Meissen to him, and on his refusal laid waste an entire
gau
west of the Elbe. But this diversion brought no relief to the duke's
confederates. The margrave gave up further resistance, and, accompanied
by Bruno and other rebels, sought safety with Boleslav. Though hostili-
ties were renewed early in 1004 by a fierce attack by Boleslav upon
Bavaria, replied to by Henry with an incursion into the Upper Lausitz,
which was frustrated by a change of weather, the confederacy was soon
after dissolved. Impelled by remorse, the two German nobles sought
forgiveness of the king; Bruno through his brother-in-law King Stephen
of Hungary, Margrave Henry of Schweinfurt through powerful friends
at home. The margrave suffered imprisonment for some months, but both
CH. X.
## p. 224 (#270) ############################################
224
Henry's first expedition to Italy
1
he and his adherents were spared the forfeiture of their lands. Bruno
also was pardoned, and having later been ordained, became his brother's
chancellor and eventually Bishop of Augsburg.
With the failure of this domestic revolt Henry was free for action
abroad. The recovery of Italy and of Bohemia were equally urgent tasks;
but the entreaties of certain Lombard magnates, including a special
emissary from the Marquess Tedald and the faithful Leo of Vercelli, pre-
vailed; and Henry, leaving the Saxons and Bavarians to hold Boleslav in
check, started from Augsburg late in March at the head of an expedi-
tionary force composed of Lorrainers, Franks, and Swabians, and after
severe toil reached Trent on Palm Sunday, 9 April. In the face of this
grave peril King Ardoin sent forward to secure the passes, while he
himself gathered troops and took post as before in the plain of Verona.
Henry thus found his advance checked along the Adige, and turning
eastwards into the valley of the Brenta, seized a pass from the Val
Sugana by surprise, and pitched camp on the left bank of the river.
There he celebrated Easter (16 April). At the critical moment Ardoin
had been deserted by most of the Italian leaders, and he had then no
choice but to retreat hurriedly to the West. Henry entered Verona, and
advanced thence by Brescia and Bergamo to Pavia, being joined at each
stage of his march by successive groups of Italian magnates, of whom
the Archbishops of Milan and Ravenna, and the Marquess Tedald, were
'the chief. At Pavia, on Sunday, 14 May 1004, he was elected King of
the Lombards, and crowned in St Michael's the following day.
Henry had thus attained his object with surprising ease; and the
ceremony he had just gone through, omitted as superfluous by his Saxon
predecessors, was the formal annulment of Ardoin's coronation within
the same walls two years before. The same afternoon a quarrel on slight
cause arose between the Pavese and the Germans, and the citizens, rushing
to arms, attacked the palace. Most of the German troops were quartered
outside; but the royal partisans within the city rallied to Henry's side, and
the assault on the palace was repelled. A furious conflict then ensued; and,
as night fell, the royalists for their own protection fired the neighbouring
buildings. The troops outside, attracted by the conflagration, stormed
the walls in the face of a stiff resistance. The Pavese were now over-
powered; numbers were cut down in the streets; and such as continued
to fight from the housetops were destroyed along with their dwellings by
fire. The slaughter was stopped by Henry's command, but not before
many hundreds of the citizens had perished and a great part of their city
had been consumed. The survivors were admitted to grace, and either in
person or by hostages swore fealty to the king.
The fate of Pavia struck terror throughout Northern Italy. All
thought of further resistance was crushed, except in the remote West,
where Ardoin in his Alpine castle of Sparone was holding out manfully
against a besieging force of Germans. The Lombards generally now made
## p. 225 (#271) ############################################
Recovery of Bohemia
225
their submission to Henry, who a few days later, at Pontelungo near Pavia,
held a general diet for the settlement of the kingdom. But the king's
mind was already made up to leave Italy; and he started at the beginning
of June on his way to Germany. After receiving, as his last act on Italian
soil, the proffer of their fealty from certain Tuscan delegates, he reached
Swabia by the middle of the month.
The expedition had in fact failed. For in spite of his coronation, of
the homage of the magnates, and of the forced submission of most of
the Lombards, Henry had not ventured beyond Lombardy; and even
there he left behind him an unsubdued rival and a disaffected people.
The horror of the burning of Pavia sank deep into the hearts of the
Lombards, for whom he had destroyed the hope of settled order under
their native king without giving them a stable government of his own.
And for himself the sole advantage he had secured was the renewed asser-
tion of the German claim to the crown of Lombardy.
Want of time was the cause of this meagre result; for Henry could
not remain long enough in Italy to effect its settlement without neglecting
the peril which menaced Germany from the East. It was necessary before
everything to oust Boleslav from Bohemia. Henry gathered an army at
Merseburg in the middle of August. The men of Saxony, East Franconia,
and Bavaria, who had been exempted from the Italian expedition, were
now called upon to serve against their nearest enemy. By gathering
boats on the middle Elbe, as though for a direct invasion of Poland, the
king hoped to mask his real intention of entering Bohemia from the
North. But the flooding of the rivers hindered his movements and gave
Boleslav time to prepare his defence. In spite, however, of resistance by
the Polish archers, Henry forced his way over the Erzgebirge (Miriquidui),
where he was joined by Jaromir, the exiled duke. On the arrival of the
Bavarian contingent, which had been delayed, Henry sent forward Jaromir
and his Bohemians, with some picked German troops, in order to surprise
Boleslav in Prague. Boleslav, however, received timely warning to make
his escape. He attempted no further defence, and Jaromir forthwith occu-
pied Prague, where, amid general rejoicing, he was once more enthroned
as duke. Henry soon after reached Prague, and solemnly invested Jaromir.
In less than a month from the time he set out Henry had made so sure
of Bohemia that not only could he send the Bavarians home, but could
claim the help of Jaromir for the recovery from Boleslav of the Upper
Lausitz. The task proved difficult through the stubborn defence of
Bautzen by its Polish garrison; but the surrender of the town at length
released the king and his wearied troops from the toils of war.
The recovery of Bohemia closed the earliest stage of Henry's career,
a space of nearly three years, during which he had made good his claim
to the German throne, and had first tried his strength upon the tasks
that lay before him. No striking events, indeed, mark off the reign into
definite periods, its course being one of slow and often interrupted accom-
C. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. X,
15
## p. 226 (#272) ############################################
226
Polish hostilities
plishment; yet the three Italian expeditions, made at long intervals, form
convenient milestones for recording its progress. Nearly ten years were
to elapse before he should again cross the Alps. The interval was occu-
pied by an unceasing struggle in which Henry was able by sheer tenacity
to win some success.
The enmity of the Polish duke was a constant menace. Though
hostilities with Boleslav were not continuous, yet three actual wars were
waged. The campaigns themselves present little of military interest.
Whichever side took the offensive, the operations had generally the
character of an extensive foray, in which few pitched battles were fought,
and decisive results were rarely attained. Boleslav, after losing Bohemia,
possessed no chief city the capture of which would have meant his ruin;
and thus final victory was only possible for Henry by the seizure or de-
struction of Boleslav himself. The duke in turn, however successful he
might be in the field, could not seriously endanger the German kingdom,
though he might enlarge his border at German expense. This he sought
to achieve in the region of the middle Elbe. The territory lying to the
east of that river, the northern portion of which constituted the East
Mark and the southern belonged to the Mark of Meissen, was the usual
scene of contention and the prize waiting on its decision. Not without
difficulty indeed was Boleslav prevented from winning a foothold on the
west of the Elbe. In Henry's absence the jealousies of the Saxon leaders,
upon whom lay the duty of defence, hindered united action. Some of
them had become secret partisans of Boleslav; some were lukewarm in their
service of the king. Especially those ecclesiastical magnates who felt real
zeal for the Church were reluctant opponents of a prince who enjoyed the
favour of the Roman See, and who had done much to further the cause of
Christianity among his own people. A strange act of policy on the part of
Henry increased their repugnance to serve against Boleslav. For during the
Easter season of 1003 he had received at Quedlinburg envoys of the Redari
and of the Lyutitzi, heathen Wendish tribes dwelling in the North Mark
and had made a compact with them. None of the Wends had been more
stubborn in resistance to the German domination, which they had long
ago shaken off; with it had gone their compulsory Christianity. Fear of
a fresh subjection and forcible conversion by the sword of Boleslav drove
them to negotiate with Henry, to whom they could offer protection on
his north-eastern frontier and active help in the field against the Polish
duke. These advantages he secured by allowing them to retain their
practical independence and still to hold to their heathen religion. The
treaty did in fact prove of no small value. Yet this alliance of a Christian
king with pagan tribesmen against another Christian prince gave deep
offence to many of his subjects; and German warriors saw with impatience
the idols of their Wendish associates borne as standards on the march to
overcome a foe who held the same true faith as themselves.
Henry was not satisfied merely to regain Bohemia and to stand on the
## p. 227 (#273) ############################################
Troubles on the West
227
a
defensive against Polish attack. He aimed at recovering the whole of
the lost territory between the Elbe and the Oder, once conquered and
Christianised by Otto the Great. After suppressing early in 1005 a rising
of the Frisians Henry summoned a general levy at Leitzkau, half-way
between Magdeburg and Zerbst, on the farther side of the Elbe; and
thence, in the middle of August, the king led his army forward through
the East Mark, where he was joined by the Bavarians under their new
Duke, Henry of Luxemburg, and by the Bohemians under Duke Jaromir.
But the troops, delayed by false guides who entangled them in the marshes
about the Spree, were harassed by ambushed attacks of the enemy. Just
before the Oder was reached, the Lyutitzi, headed by their heathen images,
attached themselves to the royal host. On pitching camp by the Bobra
(Bober) near its junction with the Oder, Henry found Boleslav stationed
in strong force at Crossen. The discovery of a ford enabled the king to
send over part of his troops, whose appearance drove Boleslav into hasty
retreat. The march was continued to within two miles of the city of
Posen. But the German army was wearied, and now halted to collect
supplies. Its want of vigilance, however, while it was scattered in foraging
parties, allowed it to be taken unawares and defeated with heavy loss.
This reverse, though not the crushing disaster represented by Polish
tradition, disposed Henry to accept an offer made by Boleslav to come
to terms. Envoys, with the Archbishop of Magdeburg at their head, were
sent to Posen to negotiate with the duke; and a peace, the conditions of
which are unknown, was established. The treaty, in any case, was hardly
flattering to German pride, for at the utmost Henry can have won from
Boleslav no more than a recognition of his authority in the Upper and
the Lower Lausitz, and a renunciation of the duke's claim to Bohemia.
During the interval of uneasy peace that followed, Henry's attention
was claimed on his western frontier. The Frisian coast was being harried
by piratical Northmen; Valenciennes had been seized by the count of
Flanders; the kingdom of Burgundy was in a state of turmoil. In Bur-
gundy King Rodolph III, the last male of his house, was struggling vainly
to uphold the royal authority against a defiant nobility. To Henry, the
son of Rodolph's sister Gisela and his nearest heir, the present unsettle-
ment, which imperilled his chance of succeeding to his uncle's crown, was
a matter of serious concern. In 1006, therefore, he made his hand felt
in Burgundy. The extent of his intervention is unknown; but the fact is
clear that he now took possession of the city of Basle. This step, how-
ever brought about, was never reversed; and the sequel shewed it as the
earliest in a series by which the independence of the Burgundian kingdom
was destroyed.
The incursions of the Northmen, this year and the next, into Frisia
were left to the local counts to deal with. It was otherwise when the
ambitious Count Baldwin IV of Flanders, one of the mightiest vassals of
the West Frankish crown, into whose hands had already fallen the castle
CH. X.
15–2
## p. 228 (#274) ############################################
228
War in Flanders: loss of Lausitz
up by Otto the Great at Ghent, presumed to violate German territory
east of the Scheldt and take forcible possession of the town of Valenciennes.
Henry, whose repeated demands for his withdrawal had been ignored by
the count, in June 1006 sought a meeting with Baldwin's overlord, King
Robert, the result of which was a joint expedition of the two monarchs
in September for the recovery of the town'. But the undertaking, though
supported by Duke Richard of Normandy, the lifelong foe of the house
of Flanders, came to naught; and Henry, to retrieve the failure, in the
summer of 1007 led a great host to the Scheldt, crossed it, and then
proceeded to lay waste the country. At Ghent, upon the supplication of
,
the brethren of St Bavo's, he stayed his hand; but by this time Baldwin
was ready to treat. His humble submission soon after, with the surrender
of Valenciennes, won for him full forgiveness from the king. He swore
peace; and also took an oath of fealty to Henry, by which, as it seems,
he became his vassal for the royal castle at Ghent. Two years later, to
secure his help against disaffection in Lorraine, Henry granted Baldwin
in fief Valenciennes, to which the island of Walcheren was afterwards
added. In thus accepting vassalage to the German crown, Baldwin won
for the counts of Flanders their first footing beyond the Scheldt.
But while engaged upon this successful enterprise in the West, Henry
had been overtaken by disaster on his Eastern frontier. Since the Polish
campaign of 1005, he had been at pains to keep the Wends true to their
compact, but, in the spring of 1007, he was visited at Ratisbon by a triple
embassy from the Lyutitzi, from a considerable town in their neighbour-
hood, and from Duke Jaromir of Bohemia, which came to denounce the
assiduous efforts of the Duke of Poland, by bribes and promises, to seduce
them from their allegiance. They declared that, if Henry should remain
any longer at peace with Boleslav, he must not count on further service
from them. The king, then preparing for the invasion of Flanders, con-
sented, on the advice of the princes, to a renewal of war against Poland.
The issue was unfortunate; for the Saxons, the proper guardians of the
Elbe and of the Marches beyond, proved utterly wanting. In the absence
of the king, Boleslav invaded the Marches in force, wasting a wide district
east of Magdeburg, and carrying away captive the inhabitants of Zerbst.
The Saxon levies slowly gathered to repel him, and, with Archbishop
Tagino of Magdeburg in supreme command, sullenly followed the duke as
he returned home. But at Jüterbogk, long before the Oder had been
reached, the heart of their leaders failed them, and their retreat enabled
the Polish prince to reoccupy the eastern half of the Lower Lausitz, and
soon after to secure possession once more of the Upper Lausitz.
He had
thus regained all the German territory that he had previously held and
lost; he had established himself firmly on the west of the Oder; and from
the ground thus gained no subsequent efforts of Henry availed to expel
him.
1 Cf. supra, Chap. v, p. 106.
## p. 229 (#275) ############################################
Crystallisation of fiefs
229
In another sphere of activity, this same year of mingled success and
disaster brought Henry, before its close, a peculiar triumph. This was
the establishment, on 1 November 1007, of the new see of Bamberg.
The completion of this cherished scheme was at once the fruit of
Henry's religious zeal and the witness to his supremacy over the German
Church. Nevertheless, it was just his claim to such supremacy in a par-
ticular case that involved him soon after in a bitter domestic quarrel,
which ran its unhappy course for several years, and, combined with other
troubles at home, effectually hindered further action abroad. At this
point, then, it is necessary to explain Henry's ecclesiastical policy, upon
which his whole system of government was based.
In right of the Crown, Henry had small material means at command
to enforce his authority. The obedience due to him as their chosen and
anointed king might be readily acknowledged by all his subjects, but was
just as readily withheld when it conflicted with private interest. Especially
was this the case with the higher nobility. The counts, though still in
theory royal officials and responsible to the sovereign for the maintenance
of public order in their several districts, had become in fact hereditary
territorial magnates, whose offices, like their fiefs and their family estates,
usually passed from father to son in regular succession. The privilege of
“immunity” which many enjoyed, and the feudal relation now generally
subsisting between them and their tenants, still further strengthened
their position. These petty potentates however, who should have been
the upholders of law, were too often its worst transgressors. Their greed
for landed wealth urged them into perpetual feuds with one another or
with their ecclesiastical neighbours, while the abuse of their seignorial
rights made them the oppressors of the classes below them. In these evil
tendencies they had been encouraged by the lax administration of the
last two reigns. Yet even more were the greater lay magnates, the dukes
and margraves, disposed to regard themselves as hereditary princes. The
dukes, in spite of past efforts to reduce their pretensions, were the recog-
nised chiefs of the separate races which made up the German nation, and,
like Herman of Swabia, were generally too strong, even in defeat, to be
displaced without risk. The margraves, holding an office less venerable, had
also won, by effective service on the frontiers, a firm position in the State.
Though dukes and margraves alike required investiture by the king, it
was rarely that a son was not preferred to his father's place. The control
of men so firmly established in power and dignity could be no easy task;
yet it now depended upon the vindication of the royal authority whether
the nation should preserve its political cohesion, or be split up, like the
adjacent kingdoms on the West, into a loose aggregation of almost in-
dependent principalities under a nominal sovereign.
It was the second Henry who by his energy postponed for two gene-
rations the process of disintegration which set in under Henry IV. To
restore the rule of law was his prime object. In the decay, however,
CH. X.
## p. 230 (#276) ############################################
230
Lessening resources of the Crown
of local justice, the Royal, or Palatine, Court, over which the king
presided in person, was the only tribunal where redress could be sought
against a powerful adversary, or whither appeal could be made from
decisions in the inferior courts. Henry knew, as his biographer tells us,
that the region left unvisited by the king was most often filled with the
complaints and groans of the poor, and he did his utmost, by incessant
journeys through the land, to bring justice within reach of all his subjects.
In many cases he punished with severity high-born disturbers of the
peace. Yet the conditions were now such that the Crown was not
strong enough of itself to compel obedience to the law. To make his
will prevail, alike in judicial administration and in large measures of
policy, he had to secure the co-operation of the magnates assembled in
general or provincial diets. At these meetings, which became more
frequent under him than under his predecessors, he was generally able, by
his fixity of purpose and his skilful address, to win consent to his designs.
Even so, however, he was largely dependent for their accomplishment upon
such material aid as the good will of the nobles might afford him. There
existed no standing army. The national levy could still be summoned by
royal command for the defence of the realm; but the only permanent
force at the disposal of the king consisted of unfree retainers (ministeriales)
drawn from the crown lands or from his patrimonial estates. But they
were insufficient for making expeditions abroad or for preserving order at
home; and it was upon the feudal contingents furnished by the magnates
that the monarch had to rely in the last resort.
Furthermore the royal revenues had for years been in steady decline.
The immense crown estates, the villae on which Charles the Great had
bestowed such care, had been broken up and largely dissipated by the
later Carolingians, partly through the granting of fiefs to reward their
supporters, partly though their lavish endowment of churches and monas-
teries. And in similar fashion the peculiar royal rights of coinage, tolls,
and markets, with others of the same kind, all extremely profitable, had
been also freely alienated to laymen and ecclesiastics. In the hands of
Otto the Great this practice had been turned to account for the strength-
ening of the throne; but under his son and grandson it had rather
served to establish the local powers in their independence. What crown
lands remained to the monarch lay scattered in fragments throughout the
kingdom, and were therefore less profitable and more difficult to ad-
minister. Henry was a wealthy king, but more through his possession of
the great Liudolfing inheritance in Saxony and of the patrimony of his
Bavarian ancestors, than through his command of such resources as were
proper to the Crown.
Faced then by the growing power of the secular magnates, Henry, if
he were to restore the German monarchy, had to seek some surer means
than the bare authority of the Crown. But the task was one beyond the
powers of a single man, and required the steady action of an ordered ad-
## p. 231 (#277) ############################################
The Church as an instrument of order
231
ministration. This was found in the organisation of the Church. Its
dignitaries Henry employed as crown officials, whom he appointed himself.
Though the bishops and greater abbots were spiritual chiefs, they were
called upon to act also as servants of the king, advising him in council,
fulfilling his missions abroad, preserving his peace within their own terri-
tories. Further, they, even more than lay princes, had to provide him with
military contingents of their vassals, often to follow him in person into
the field, sometimes even to conduct his campaigns. And while heavy
calls were continually being made upon their revenues for the public need,
the right to dispose of their vacant fiefs was frequently claimed by the
king for some purpose of his own. More especially did the royal monas-
teries suffer loss at Henry's hand; for the pious king in several cases did
not hesitate at extensive confiscation of monastic lands. Yet these
severe measures were not the outcome of caprice or greed, but of a settled
policy for the kingdom's weal.
In thus employing the Church Henry resumed the policy adopted by
Otto the Great. But while Otto, in using the Church to fortify the
throne, had cared little to interfere in matters purely ecclesiastical,
Henry sought to exercise over the Church an authority no less direct
and searching than over the State. Filled with the ecclesiastical spirit,
he set himself to regulate Church affairs as seemed to him best in
the Church's interest; and the instinct for order which urged him from
the first to promote its efficiency developed at last into a passionate zeal
for its reformation.
To achieve his purpose it was essential for Henry to secure an
effective mastery over the Church. But only through its constitutional
rulers, the bishops, could he, without flagrant illegality, obtain command
of its wealth, engage its political services, and direct its spiritual energies.
In order, however, to be sure of bishops who should be his willing agents,
the decisive word in the appointment to vacant sees must be his. In the
Frankish kingdom the old canonical rule that the choice of a new bishop
rested with the clergy and laity of the diocese had never been quite for-
gotten; but from early times the kings had claimed and been allowed the
right of confirming or disapproving an episcopal election, and this had been
enlarged into the greater right of direct nomination. The claim of the
Crown to intervene in episcopal appointments had been fully revindicated
by Otto the Great. In a few German dioceses the privilege of free elec-
tion had been expressly confirmed or granted afresh by charters, yet Otto
had never allowed the local privilege to hinder the appointment of any
man he desired. The effect of such methods was to fill the bishoprics with
royal nominees. Though the procedure was prejudicial to the indepen-
dence of the Church, yet it freed episcopal elections from those local
influences which would have made the bishops mere creatures of the
secular magnates, or at best their counterparts in an ecclesiastical dis-
guise.
CH. X.
## p. 232 (#278) ############################################
232
Royal nomination of Bishops
Otto's practice was followed by Henry, who insisted on his right to
nominate the bishops. He made no fresh grants of privilege of free elec-
tion; he often qualified it by reserving the right of royal assent as at
Hamburg, Hildesheim, Minden, Halberstadt, and Fulda, and sometimes
he withheld it altogether as at Paderborn. His general practice is fairly
illustrated by the case of Magdeburg, which fell vacant four times in the
course of his reign. This church had not received from its founder,
Otto the Great, the right of choosing its own pastor; and it was by
gift of his son, in terms unusually solemn, that the privilege was conferred
in 979. Yet Otto II made light of his own charter when, on the first
vacancy of the see, he allowed his favourite, the crafty Bishop Gisiler of
Merseburg, to supplant the canonically elected nominee. At Gisiler's
death in January 1004, the clergy of Magdeburg forthwith unanimously
elected their Provost Waltherd. But Henry was resolved that no
Magdeburg cleric should occupy the see; and demanded the election
of his own attached friend, the Bavarian Tagino. Neither the plea of
right nor the humble entreaty of the electors was accepted by the king,
whose insistence at length won the consent of Waltherd and his sup-
porters to Tagino's promotion. Through their presence at his investiture
by Henry they acquiesced in the reversal of their own previous act.
Tagino died in June 1012. Again Henry intervened by sending an envoy,
but this time to ask the electors to submit a candidate for his approval.
The clergy and vassals of the see once more chose the same candidate,
Waltherd, as archbishop. Only with great reluctance did Henry agree,
and that upon condition of a fresh election being held in his presence, at
which he himself proposed, and the electors concurred in, the nomi-
nation of the Provost. Within two months, however, Waltherd was
snatched away by death. Next day, the Magdeburg clergy, still anxious
to preserve their right, elected Thiedric, a youthful cleric, to the vacant
see; and the day following repeated the act. Henry, greatly indignant
at this proceeding, determined to enforce his will on the presumptuous
Church. He made Thiedric a royal chaplain, and then, coming to
Magdeburg, directed another meeting to be held for the election of
Gero, one of his chaplains, whom he had designated for the archbishopric.
The electors, with an express reservation of their right for the future,
obeyed, and Gero was chosen. Yet this reservation appears to have been
no hindrance to Henry when, in the last year of his reign, the see of
Magdeburg was again vacated by the death of Gero, and he secured the
succession of Hunfrid (Humphrey), another royal nominee.
To Henry, therefore, the right of election was useful for giving
canonical sanction to a choice made by himself, and the utmost allowed
to electors was to name a candidate; thus in course of time most of the
German bishoprics were filled by his nominees. Yet Henry's bishops were
men far from unworthy of their office. If few of them were learned, the
lives of few gave occasion for reproach; if capable men of affairs rather
## p. 233 (#279) ############################################
Aggrandisement of Bishops
233
than sound spiritual guides, they were not generally neglectful of pastoral
duty; some were even distinguished for evangelical zeal. They were chosen
oftenest, it would seem, for their practical capacity, and for a sympathy
with his political and ecclesiastical aims gained by long service in the
royal chapel or chancery; some, like the historian Thietmar, were chosen
for their wealth, part of which they were expected to bestow on their
impoverished sees; not a few were recommended by their Bavarian birth.
Henry was not the man to dishonour the Church by giving it worthless
prelates. Nevertheless, the bishops were his creatures, from whom he
demanded obedience; in a word, the Church had to accept a position of
strict subordination to the State.
It was not all at once that Henry was able to bring this about.
The bishops whom he found in office at his accession owed nothing to
him; and even when of proved loyalty they were not inclined to be sub-
servient. Some indeed were openly disaffected. Of such were the Arch-
bishops Heribert of Cologne and Gisiler of Magdeburg, and among
bishops, the celebrated Bernward of Hildesheim. Whether indifferent or
hostile, however, it was not the spiritual independence of the Church for
which most of them were jealous, but for the temporal power and dignity
of their own sees. Their sense of ecclesiastical unity was faint; nor did
any voice sound from Rome to remind them of their allegiance to the
Church Universal. To many even the welfare of their own national branch
thereof was of small concern beside the interests of their particular
dioceses. Papal impotence left Henry a free hand; and with the rise of
a new episcopate the cohesion of the German Church was strengthened
and its energies were revived, but only at the cost of its independence. For
the bishops learned to acquiesce in Henry's claim to ecclesiastical authority,
and zealous churchmen were not slow to enjoin obedience to the Crown
as a duty of divine ordinance. But with the Church thus submissive, all
fear that the bishops might use their means and their privileges in a
spirit defiant of the secular power was removed. They had become, in
truth, royal officials; and the more, therefore, that their position was
enhanced, the better service could they render to the king. Accordingly,
it was with no sparing hand that Henry, following the example of the
Ottos, bestowed territory and regalities upon the episcopal churches. His
charters reveal also two other special features of his policy. The one is
the frequency with which he annexed royal abbeys of the lesser rank to
bishoprics, to be held by them as part of their endowment; the other is
his extension of the recent practice of giving vacant counties into the
hands of prelates. In the former case, the purpose was achieved of turning
the smaller religious houses to better account for the service of the State
than they could be as isolated corporations; in the latter, advantage was
gained for the Crown by the transfer of local authority from secular to
ecclesiastical hands, since the bishops were now more amenable to royal
control than were the lay counts. Thus the process, by which the bishops
CH. X.
## p. 234 (#280) ############################################
234
Dual position of the Bishops
became territorial princes, went rapidly forward; although the Crown
was strengthened rather than weakened by their exaltation.
It is indisputable that the alliance between the Church and the
Monarchy brought immense advantages to both. The former, favoured by
the Crown, still further improved its high position. The king, on his
side, obtained the services of men highly educated and familiar with
business; who could form a counterpoise to the hereditary nobility, and
yet could never establish themselves as an hereditary caste; who set an
example within their dioceses of upright and humane administration;
and who shewed themselves prudent managers of their estates. Besides
all which, the revenues of their churches and the military aid of their
vassals were at his command. Their corporate feeling as members of a
national church had revived; and their general employment in the service
of the Crown, which claimed the headship of that church, made them the
representatives of national unity on the secular no less than on the
ecclesiastical side.
Yet the coalition of the two powers contained the seeds of future
calamity to the Church. It was inevitable that bishops so chosen and so
employed could not rise to their spiritual vocation. Even within their
own dioceses they were as much occupied by secular as by pastoral work.
Insensibly they became secularised; and the Church ceased to be either
a school of theologians or a nursery of missionaries. At such a price were
its temporal advantages secured. Nor was the gain to the Crown without
its alloy. For the royal supremacy over the Church depended on the
monarch keeping a firm hold on episcopal appointment. That prerogative
might become nominal; and during a minority it might disappear. The
result in either case would be the political independence of the bishops,
whose power would then be all the greater through the favours now
lavished upon their churches. This was the latent political peril; and
beside it lurked an ecclesiastical danger yet more formidable. Henry had
mastered the German Church; and, so long as it remained the national
institution he had made it, the tie of interest which bound it to the
throne would hold. Yet it was but part of a larger ecclesiastical whole,
whose acknowledged head was the Pope. The present thraldom of the
Papacy to a local despot made its claim to the obedience of distant
churches a shadowy prerogative which could be safely disregarded; but
with a future recovery of freedom and of moral influence the pretension
of the Roman See to apostolic authority over the Western Church would
revive; and the German prelates would have to choose between King
and Pope. Within sixty years of Henry's death that question presented
itself.
In his government of the Church Henry was accustomed to act both
on his own sole authority and in co-operation with the bishops in synod.
No sharp distinction is apparent between the matters he decided himself
and those he referred to the synods; in general, however, breaches of
## p. 235 (#281) ############################################
Protectorship of the Church
235
external order the king dealt with alone, while strictly ecclesiastical
questions were more often disposed of in synod.
How vigorously Henry meant to assert his right to regulate Church
affairs was seen soon after his accession in his revival of the see of Merse-
burg. That bishopric, established in 968 by Otto the Great as part of
his scheme for evangelising the Wends, had been held by Gisiler for ten
years before his elevation to Magdeburg. Such a translation was liable
to be impugned as invalid, and the astute prelate therefore induced his
patron Otto II and Pope Benedict VII to decree the abolition of Merse-
burg as superfluous, and to distribute its territory among the neighbouring
dioceses, including Magdeburg. Under Otto III Gisiler managed by skilful
procrastination to maintain his ill-won position. Henry however made
peremptory demand upon Gisiler to vacate the archbishopric and return
to Merseburg. The prelate's death before he complied, enabled Henry by
the appointment of Tagino to Magdeburg, to bring back the old position.
Tagino's first episcopal act was to consecrate Wigbert to the revived
Merseburg bishopric, of which the king by his sole act, without reference
to synod or to Pope, had thus become the second founder. No less inde-
pendent was Henry's procedure in settling the ignoble quarrel between
two of Germany's noblest prelates over the monastery of Gandersheim.
From its foundation by Henry's ancestor Duke Liudolf of Saxony in 842,
and after an early subjection to Mayence, this religious house for women
had been without question for nearly a century and a half under the
spiritual authority of the bishops of Hildesheim. In an unhappy hour
Archbishop Willigis claimed jurisdiction over it for Mayence; and the
dispute so begun with one bishop was continued later with his successor
Bernward, and by him referred for decision to Pope Sylvester II. The
papal edict in favour of Hildesheim, when promulgated in Germany, was
treated with open disrespect by Willigis. To end the scandal, Henry won
the promise of both bishops to abide by his ruling, and then, at a diet in
1006, gave judgment for Hildesheim. The result was loyally accepted by
Willigis and his next successor.
This protectorship of the Church led Henry, whom Thietmar calls
the Vicar of God on earth, to undertake on its behalf tasks of the most
diverse kind. Thus he asserted his right, both to order the due regis-
tration of monastic lands, and to require strict observance of German
customs in public worship; he took it upon him, not only to enforce eccle-
siastical discipline, but to prevent heresy from raising its head. In such
matters the synods had a right to speak, although they did so rather as
organs of the royal will than as independent church assemblies. For they
met upon Henry's summons; he presided over, and took active part in,
their discussions; he published their resolutions as edicts of his own.
But he called them to account in the tone of a master, and at the very
first
synod of his reign he rebuked them severely for slackness in their discipline.
In pressing for the removal of irregularities Henry certainly shewed
a
CH. X.
## p. 236 (#282) ############################################
236
Reform of monasteries
himself a conscientious ruler of the Church, but gave no proof of a desire
to initiate any far-reaching ecclesiastical reform. His views at this time
were bounded by the needs of the German Church; and so strictly national
were the synods he convoked that they cared but little whether the
measures they agreed upon were in consonance with general church law.
With reform, however, in one wide sphere of organised religion
Henry had long shewn his active sympathy. For already, as Duke
of Bavaria, he had used his authority to impose a stricter life upon the
monasteries of that land. He had thus helped forward the monastic
reformation which, beginning in Lorraine in the early decades of the
tenth century, had spread eastwards into Germany, and had won a footing
in Bavaria through the energy of the former monk, Wolfgang, Bishop
of Ratisbon. In his early years Henry had seen the beneficent change
wrought in Bavaria, and exemplified at St Emmeram's in Ratisbon.
After becoming duke, he had forced reform upon the reluctant monks of
Altaich and Tegernsee through the agency of Godehard, a passionate
ascetic, whom, in defiance of their privilege, he had made abbot of both
those houses. In the same spirit and with like purpose Henry treated
the royal monasteries after his accession. They became the instruments
of his strenuous monastic policy; while he also, as in the case of the
bishoprics, insisted on the right of the Crown to appoint their heads,
notwithstanding the privilege of free election which many of them
possessed. By this time, however, some of the greater monasteries had
acquired immense landed wealth, and their abbots held a princely position.
The communities they ruled for the most part led an easy existence.
Not a few houses, it is true, did admirable work in art and learning, in
husbandry, and in care for the poor. Much of the land, specially reserved
to the abbot, was granted out in fief to vassals, in order to acquit his
military service to the Crown; but these might also be used against the
Crown, if the abbot were not loyal.
Henry's monastic policy was revealed in 1005 by his treatment of
the wealthy abbey of Hersfeld. Complaints made to him by the brethren
gave him the opportunity for replacing the abbot by the ascetic Gode-
hard of Altaich, who offered the monks a choice between strict observance
of the Rule and expulsion. The departure of all but two or three enabled
Godehard to dispose of their superfluous luxuries for pious uses, while
Henry seized on the corporate lands reserved for the brethren, and added
them to the abbot's special estate, which thus became liable to the Crown
for greater feudal services. In the end Hersfeld, under Godehard, became
again an active religious community. Between 1006 and 1015 Reichenau,
Fulda and Corvey were likewise dealt with and with like results. Further,
the Crown, by placing several abbeys under one head, was able, out of
land hitherto required for the upkeep of abbatial households, to make
grants to vassals. In these measures the king was supported by the
bishops, some of whom followed his example in monasteries under their
a
## p. 237 (#283) ############################################
Foundation of the see of Bamberg
237
control. The result was a general revival of monastic discipline, and a
serious curtailment of the resources of the greater abbeys.
The lesser royal monasteries, from whose lands new fiefs could not be
granted, needed the king's special protection to keep their independence.
Henry had no use for feeble institutions, and subjected seventeen of
them to various sees or greater abbeys. If they were not abolished
altogether, they were generally transformed into small canonries, while
part of their property fell to the bishop.
Henry proclaimed his belief in the episcopal system by the foundation
of the see of Bamberg. Near the eastern border of Franconia dwelt a
population almost entirely Wendish. Left behind in the general retreat
of their kinsfolk before the Franks, these Slavonic tribesmen still kept
their own language and customs, and much of their original paganism.
Baptised by compulsion, they neglected all Christian observances, while
the bishops of Würzburg, to whose diocese they belonged, paid little heed
to them. Close by them was the little town of Bamberg, dear to Henry
from his boyhood. It was a favourite home with him and his wife, and
he resolved to make it the seat of a bishopric. The scheme required
the assent of the Bishops of Würzburg and Eichstedt. But Megingaud
(Meingaud) of Eichstedt flatly refused to agree, and Henry of Würzburg,
though a devoted subject, was an ambitious man, and demanded, in
addition to territorial compensation, the elevation of Würzburg to
metropolitan rank. After a synod at Mayence (May 1007), at which
Bishop Henry was present, had given its solemn approval, envoys were
sent to the Pope to secure ratification. By bull issued in June John XVIII
confirmed the erection of the see of Bamberg, which was to be subject
only to the authority of the Papacy. Würzburg, however, was not made an
archbishopric, and Bishop Henry thought himself betrayed. At a synod
at Frankfort (1 November 1007) there assembled five German arch-
bishops with twenty-two suffragans, five Burgundian prelates including
two archbishops, two Italian bishops, and, lastly, the primate of Hungary.
Willigis of Mayence presided, but Henry of Würzburg held aloof. The
king, prostrating himself before the bishops, set forth his high purpose
for the Church, reminding them of the consent already given by the
Bishop of Würzburg. Bishop Henry's chaplain replied that his master
could not allow any injury to his church. But the absence of the bishop
had displeased many of his colleagues, while the agreement he had made
was on record. Thus, finally, the foundation of the see of Bamberg was
unanimously confirmed, and the king nominated as its first bishop his
kinsman the Chancellor Everard, who received consecration the same day.
Henry's intention to make God his heir was amply fulfilled; he had
already endowed Bamberg with his lands in the Radenzgau and the
Volkfeld, and he lavished wealth on the new see. Thus Bamberg was
among the best endowed of German bishoprics, and the comital juris-
diction, given by Henry to some other sees, can hardly have been with-
CH.
