160 (#206) ############################################
160
Henry's second expedition to Italy
peace; but Lothar refused his terms.
160
Henry's second expedition to Italy
peace; but Lothar refused his terms.
Cambridge Medieval History - v5 - Contest of Empire and the Papacy
The Billungs, the Counts of Nordheim, the Ekberts of Brunswick,
had each in turn played the leading part against the king; and now the
male line had failed in all these families, and the inheritance had fallen
to women. In 1090 by the death of Ekbert II the male line of the
Brunswick house became extinct; his sister Gertrude was left as heiress,
and she married (as her second husband) Henry the Fat, the elder son of
Otto of Nordheim. He was murdered in 1101, his brother Conrad suffered
the same fate in 1103, and the elder daughter of Henry and Gertrude,
Richenza, became eventually heiress to both these houses'. Lothar, Count
of Supplinburg, by his marriage with Richenza in 1100, rose from an
insignificant position to become the most powerful noble in Saxony. In
1106 died Duke Magnus, the last of the Billungs. His duchy was given
by Henry V to Lothar, his family possessions were divided between his
two daughters: the eastern portion went to the younger, Eilica, who
married Count Otto of Ballenstädt and became the mother of Albert the
Bear, the Saxon rival of the Welfs; the western portion to the elder,
Wulfhild, who married Henry the Black, son of Duke Welf of Bavaria.
1 Gertrude had been married first to Count Dietrich of Katlenburg; on the death
of Henry the Fat she married Henry of Eilenburg, Margrave of Meissen •and the
East Mark. He died in 1103, and his posthumous son Henry died childless in 1123.
Gertrude herself died in 1117.
## p. 153 (#199) ############################################
Supplinburg
Ascanians
Brunonings
Nordheim
Otto,
Ekbert I
C. of Brunswick,
M. of Meissen,
ob. 1068
C. of Nordheim
(D. of Bavaria, 1061-70),
ob. 1083
Eilica m. Otto of Ballenstedt
Ekbert II
ob. 1090
Gertrude m. Henry the Fat
ob. 1117 ob. 1101
Conrad
ob, 1103
Gertrude
Lothar, C. of Supplinburg, m. Richenza
later Emperor
Sophia m. Dietrich of
Holland
Gertrude
Albert the Bear
D. of Bavaria and Saxony
1
Bernard of Anhalt,
Otto of Brunswick M. of Brandenburg
D. of Saxony
The rise of new noble families in Germany
Babenbergers
KING HENRY IV
1
(1) Agnes (2)
m.
Liutpold,
M. of Austria
King Conrad III
Liutpold,
M. of Austria
Henry Jasomirgott,
first D. of Austria
Otto,
Bishop of Freising
Welfs
Billungs
Welf IV,
D. of Bavaria, ob. 1101
Magnus,
D. of Saxony, ob. 1106
Welf V,
ob. 1120
Henry the Black m. Wulfhild
Henry the Proud m.
Henry the Lion,
Otto,
Welfs
Hohenstaufen
Henry the Black
Frederick,
C. of Staufen,
D. of Swabia
Judith
m. Frederick,
D. of Swabia
| D.
Frederick I Barbarossa
153
CH. 11.
## p. 154 (#200) ############################################
154
The character of Henry V
Thus were laid the foundations of the Welf power in Saxony; the struc-
ture was to be completed when the son of Henry and Wulfhild, Henry
the Proud, married Gertrude, daughter and heiress of Lothar and
Richenza; for the house of Supplinburg also failed in the male line.
Duke Welf of Bavaria himself died on crusade in 1101, and his duchy,
now hereditary, passed to Welf V, Countess Matilda's husband, and on
his death in 1120 to his brother Henry the Black. Finally, in 1105, Duke
Frederick of Swabia died and was succeeded by his son Frederick II; while
his widow Agnes, daughter of Henry IV, married in 1106 Liutpold III,
Margrave of Austria, and so became the ancestress of Babenbergers as
well as Hohenstaufen? .
Henry V, born in 1081, had been elected king in 1098; so that, young
as he still was, he had already been associated in the government for
eight years. He will always, apart from the Concordat of Worms, be
remembered primarily for his treatment of his father and, five years later,
of the Pope; in both these episodes he shewed himself brutal and un-
scrupulous. Perhaps to modern minds the studied treachery and hypocrisy
of 1105–6 will appear more repulsive than the direct and unconcealed
violence of 1111; his contemporaries, however, viewed the two incidents
quite differently, regarding rather the nature of the victim than the
quality of the crime. His action in deposing his excommunicated father
met with fairly general approval; while the horror inspired by his treat-
ment of the Pope did considerable damage to his prestige. He was not
capable, like his father, of inspiring devotion, but he could inspire respect.
For he was forceful, energetic, resourceful, and he did for some time
manage to dominate the German nobles. With more prudence too than
his father he conserved imperial resources, and, except in Italy in 1116
when policy demanded it, he was very sparing of grants from the royal
domain, even to bishops. Of diplomatic cunning he frequently gave proof,
especially in the circumstances of his revolt and in his negotiations with
Paschal II. In particular he had a strong sense of the importance of in-
fluencing opinion. There was nothing unusual in the manifestoes he issued
in justification of his actions on important occasions, but he went farther
than this. He prepared the way. The publication of the anonymous
Tractatus de investitura episcoporum in 1109 preluded his embassy to
Paschal II by expounding to all the righteousness of the imperial claims.
And he went beyond manifestoes. When he started on his journey to
Rome in 1110, he took with him David, afterwards Bishop of Bangor,
as the official historian of the expedition. David's narrative has unfor-
tunately not come down to us, but it was made use of by others, especially
1 She had in all 23 children. By her first marriage she became mother of King
Conrad III and grandmother of Frederick Barbarossa; by her second marriage she
became mother of Henry Jasomirgott, the first Duke of Austria, and of the historian,
Bishop Otto of Freising.
## p. 155 (#201) ############################################
His forced reliance on the nobles
155
by the chronicler Ekkehard. It was assuredly propaganda, not history;
but it was an ingenious and novel way of ensuring an authoritative
description of events calculated to impress contemporary opinion.
To prevent the further decline of imperial authority, he had allied
himself with the two powers responsible for that decline. His real policy
was in no whit different from that of his father, so that he was playing
a hazardous game; and it is doubtful whether, even from his own purely
selfish standpoint, he had taken the wisest course. To obtain the
assistance of the Pope, he had recognised the over-riding authority of the
sacerdotium; he had justified his revolt against his father on the ground
of the unfitness of an excommunicated man to be king, and had used the
papal power of absolution to condone his perjury. To obtain the co-
operation of the nobles, he had to abandon for a time the support of the
towns and the reliance on the ministeriales which had been so valuable to
his father. The nobles were, as usual, anxious to make their fiefs and
offices hereditary, to obtain the recognition of independent powers, and
to prevent the establishment of an over-riding royal justice. This they
expected to ensure by the participation in the government that Henry
had promised, and in this he humoured them for the time. Their names
appear as witnesses to royal charters; all acts of government, even the
nomination of bishops, are done consilio principum. For their support was
still necessary to him, and he skilfully made use of it to oppose a united
Germany to the claims of his other ally, the Pope. He had allowed the
legates to sit in judgment on his father, and to wreak their vengeance to
the full; he had shewn himself zealous in deposing schismatic bishops at
their dictation. All this was to his interest; but, his father dead, he was
not long in throwing off the mask. It was essential that the bishops
should be loyal subjects, and so he was careful to control elections; and,
worst of all to the mind of Paschal II, he refused to discontinue the
practice of lay investiture. In this, and against all claims of the Pope to
interfere in the affairs of Germany, he had the nobles, lay and ecclesias-
tical, almost to a man enthusiastically on his side.
For the first five years of his reign the issue with the Pope was the
leading question. Apart from Count Robert of Flanders, against whom
Henry had to lead an expedition in 1107, there was no serious disturbance
in Germany. In 1108-9 he was principally occupied on the eastern
frontiers, where he successfully asserted himself in Bohemia but failed
signally in his attempt to intervene in Hungary and Poland. All this time
negotiations with the Pope had been in progress, any satisfactory
result, and at last in 1110 Henry decided to go to Rome to effect a
settlement in person and to obtain the imperial crown. At the diet at
Ratisbon at which he announced his intention, the nobles unanimously
i It is perhaps remarkable that Paschal in 1105, when he had the chance, did not
take the opportunity to obtain assurances from Henry V on investiture or on any
other point.
without any
CH. III.
## p. 156 (#202) ############################################
156
Victory over the Pope. His German policy
pledged themselves of their free will to accompany him. The summons
to the expedition was universally obeyed, and it was at the head of an
imposing army that he entered Italy in August. The absence of incident
in Germany in these years, and the ready response to the summons, shew
the unity of the country both under the king and against the Pope. The
events of 1110-11 established his authority in Italy and over the Pope as
well. He wrung from the Pope the concession of investiture and received
from him the imperial crown. Countess Matilda shewed herself well-
disposed; the Normans in South Italy were overawed by the size of his
army. At the end of 1111 his power in both kingdoms was at its height.
But it rested on insecure foundations. He had dominated the Pope by
violence, and had extracted from him a concession which provoked the un-
yielding hostility of the Church party. Already in 1112 Paschal retracted
his concession, and in Burgundy in the same year Archbishop Guy of
Vienne declared investiture to be a heresy and anathematised the Emperor,
undeterred by the efforts of Henry to rouse the nobles and bishops of
Burgundy against him; while Archbishop Conrad of Salzburg, who had
always opposed Henry's ecclesiastical policy, abandoned his see and took
refuge with Countess Matilda. Moreover, Henry's government of Germany
was only government by consent; it depended on the good-will of the
princes. Some of the bishops were alienated by his treatment of Paschal II;
the lay nobles, who had concurred in his ecclesiastical policy, were justly
apprehensive of the independence and high-handedness of his actions
in 1111.
He was determined to free himself from their tutelage, now that they
had served his purpose. So he returned to the policy of his father of
relying on ministeriales and lesser nobles, whose share in the government,
dependent as they were on his favour, would be effective in his interests
and not in their own. Above all, he concentrated on the royal domain,
and was so sparing in his grants that he gave the appearance of miser-
liness. He had not followed the common practice of making himself
popular by large donations on his accession. He bountifully rewarded
faithful service, but that was all. Such grants as he made to ecclesiastical
foundations were usually of little importance and for purely religious
purposes. The bishops fared especially badly under his regime, but, with
the working of the leaven of reform and the increasing authority of the
Papacy, they were becoming less reliable as agents of monarchical govern-
ment. To him, as to his father, the building of castles was a necessary step
to protect the royal estates from the continual encroachments of the nobles.
They too had adopted the same method of protecting their own domains,
and against this usurpation of his prerogative he used his best endeavours,
on the whole not unsuccessfully. It was, however, one of the causes of
friction between him and his two chief enemies–Duke Lothar of Saxony
and Archbishop Adalbert of Mayence. Like his father again, the rich
domain in Saxony at first attracted his main attention; it was there that
## p. 157 (#203) ############################################
The revolt of Saxony
157
he went immediately after the successful inauguration of his revolt in
Bavaria in 1105. But after his defeat in 1115 Saxony had to be abandoned.
He then turned to a new quarter, to the south-west, where lay the rich
lands of the middle and upper Rhine. We find him engaged in exchanges,
revocations of previous grants, even confiscations, which all point to the
policy of creating in this new region a centralised and compact domain.
Finally, he attempted to revive the alliance with the towns. Especially
to Spires in 1111 and to Worms in 1114 he gave important charters',
which raised the status and independence of the citizens by removing the
most vexatious of the seignorial powers over their persons and property.
He could not, however, count on their loyalty. Worms revolted more
than once, Mayence was won over by privileges from its archbishop,
Cologne was sometimes for and sometimes against him. He was unable
to win their confidence fully or to inspire the devotion that had been so
serviceable to his father.
In all this he was engaged in building up his resources, and in
attempting to establish a basis for the royal authority which would make
it independent of princely support. But he was by no means content
merely to shake off their control. He was determined to enforce the
recognition of his sovereign rights, and opposition only enraged him and
revealed the arbitrary tendency of his ideas. In January 1112, at Merse-
burg, he intervened as supreme judge to prohibit the unjust imprisonment
of Count Frederick of Stade by Duke Lothar of Saxony and Margrave
Rudolf of the North Mark. When they refused obedience to his judg-
ment, they were deprived of their dignities, which were only restored
after they had made submission and released Frederick. Two other
Saxon counts were punished with close confinement for a breach of the
peace. In July, at Mayence, he exercised another sovereign right in
sequestrating the fiefs of Count Udalric of Weimar who had died with-
out heirs; he also, it seems, with the consent of a diet, added the
allodial territory to the royal domain. Siegfried, Count-Palatine of the
Rhine, claimed to succeed as next-of-kin to Udalric; and, in his disap-
pointment, he started a conspiracy among the Saxon and Thuringian
nobles, which was joined by Lothar and Margrave Rudolf, and eventually
the whole of Saxony was ablaze with revolt. Finally, as Henry was pre-
paring an expedition to Saxony, came the breach with his former
chancellor, now the greatest ecclesiastic in the land, Archbishop Adalbert
of Mayence
1 F. Keutgen, Urkunden zur städtischen Verfassungsgeschichte, Berlin, 1901, pp.
2 The province of Mayence covered nearly half the German kingdom. It included
14 (or, if Bamberg is taken into account, 15) suffragan bishoprics and extended as
far as southern Saxony and Bohemia, and southwards to Chur at the Italian frontier.
The archbishop had precedence over all nobles, lay and ecclesiastical, and as the
leading official played the principal part at royal elections. The potentialities of this
exalted office had been obscured by the mediocrity of the three previous archbishops
14 sqq.
CH, III.
## p. 158 (#204) ############################################
158
Archbishop Adalbert of Mayence
Adalbert, son of Count Sigehard of Saarbrücken, owed his rise to fame
almost entirely to the favour of Henry V. By him he had been appointed
chancellor in 1106, before the death of Henry IV, and had received
lavish preferment and grants from his master. On Archbishop Ruthard's
death in 1109, Adalbert was nominated as his successor by the king, who,
perhaps because he did not wish to be deprived of Adalbert's assistance
on his important expedition to Italy, deferred investiture; the see
remained vacant for two years, during which Henry, by virtue of his
rights of regalia, doubtless enjoyed its revenues. On his return to
Germany in 1111, he immediately invested Adalbert, who thereupon
entered into possession of the temporalities of the archbishop, though not
yet consecrated. At once a change was manifest. As chancellor he had
been an ardent imperialist, the right-hand man of the king, who recognised
his services and rewarded them with his confidence and with material
benefits. He was probably the chosen instrument of Henry's policy
of emancipation from the control of the nobles. But as archbishop his
interests diverged, his ambition led him to independence, and the cause
of the princes became his. He took a strong Church line, and professed
an ultra-papalist standpoint, though it was he who had been chiefly con-
cerned in all the leading events of 1111; it was interest and not principle
that influenced his change of view. Personal ambition was the mark of
his career. His great aim was to establish an independent principality.
At first he planned this in the Rhine district, and, as this brought him
into contact with the royal domain, he was soon in conflict with the king.
Thwarted in this endeavour, he later turned his attention with more
success to the eastern possessions of his see, in Hesse, Thuringia, and
Saxony?
In November 1112 the breach took place which definitely ranged
Adalbert on the side of the king's enemies. It was only a year after his
investiture, but Adalbert had already had time to realise his new
environment and to adopt his new outlook. It is probable that a leading
cause of friction was the king's exercise of the rights of regalia during the
two years' vacancy. The final cause seems to have been a quarrel over
two castles in the palatinate, which Adalbert refused to abandon. At
any rate the breach was complete, and the king's indignation, which
found expression in a violent manifesto? , was unbounded. He, like
in this period-Siegfried, Werner, and Ruthard. Adalbert seized upon them at once,
and founded the greatness of his successors.
1 Cf. K. H. Schmitt, Erzbischof Adalbert I von Mainz als Territorialfürst
(Arbeiten zur deutschen Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte, No. 11), Berlin, 1920.
2 Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbücher Heinrichs IV und V, Vol. vi, p. 263. Doubtless
Henry IV had exercised the same rights during the exiles of Siegfried and Ruthard,
and it is probable that there had resulted serious encroachments on the temporalities
of the see, which Adalbert was attempting to recover.
3 Published by Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, Vol. 1, pp.
1269 sq.
## p. 159 (#205) ############################################
Henry's victory in 1113. The revolt of 1115
159
Henry II of England afterwards, raised his faithful chancellor to be the
leading archbishop of his kingdom, expecting to gain a powerful supporter,
and found in him his most dangerous opponent. Adalbert set off to join
his new associates in Saxony; the king was marching thither at the same
time, and their ways converged. The quarrel broke out afresh. Adalbert
firmly refused to yield what he held; he was taken prisoner and exposed
to severe privations. This arbitrary act, in which the judgment of the
princes played no part, increased the alarm and suspicion which had
already caused revolt to break out in Saxony.
The first revolt against Henry V was ill-organised, and was effectively
suppressed in 1113. The royal army under Count Hoier of Mansfeld won
a decisive victory at Warmstadt near Quedlinburg. Siegfried died of
wounds, and the palatinate of the Rhine was conferred on Henry's faith-
ful supporter, Count Godfrey of Calw. Count Wiprecht of Groitsch was
taken prisoner and condemned to death; the sentence was commuted to
three years' imprisonment, but his possessions were confiscated and his
two sons rendered homeless. Of the other leaders, Count Louis of
Thuringia and Bishop Reinhard of Halberstadt made submission and
received the royal pardon. Henry was triumphant, and hoped that
Adalbert would have learnt from their failure and his own sufferings the
folly of resistance; the archbishop was brought before the king at
Worms, but he refused to yield and was taken back to his prison. The
next year, on 7 January 1114, the Emperor celebrated his victory by his
marriage at Mayence with Matilda, the eleven-year-old daughter of
Henry I of England. To Mayence came Duke Lothar to make humble
submission and to be restored to favour. But the concord was immediately
broken by Henry's sudden and arbitrary imprisonment of Count Louis
of Thuringia. This further breach of the custom, by which the nobles
claimed to be condemned only by the sentence of their peers, roused
wide-spread resentment, and in other quarters besides Saxony. To
Henry's arbitrary treatment of the archbishop and the count may be
ascribed the disasters that immediately followed.
They started in an unexpected quarter. Henry had just commenced
a punitive expedition against the Frisians in May, when the town of
Cologne suddenly revolted. It was not left alone to face the wrath of the
Emperor. Not only the Archbishop, Frederick, but also the leading
nobles of Lorraine, the lower Rhine, and Westphalia joined in the
insurrection. Henry failed before Cologne, and on 1 October was
decisively defeated at Andernach in Westphalia. The news of his defeat
gave the necessary encouragement to the disaffected nobles in East Saxony
and Thuringia. This time the revolt was better organised, with Duke
Lothar at the head, and all the other nobles, lay and ecclesiastical,
participating. The two armies met at Welfesholze on 11 February 1115,
and again Henry suffered a severe defeat. Utterly discomfited, he was
forced to abandon Saxony and retire to Mayence, where he negotiated for
CH. III.
## p.
160 (#206) ############################################
160
Henry's second expedition to Italy
peace; but Lothar refused his terms. And meanwhile the Saxons revived
their old alliance with the Church party, which was able to take advantage
of Henry's defeat to raise its head in Germany once more. First the
Cardinal-bishop Cuno pronounced excommunication on Henry at Cologne
and in Saxony; then the Cardinal-priest Theodoric, who had been sent as
papal legate to Hungary, came by invitation to a diet at Goslar, and re-
peated the same sentence. In the north and north-west Henry was practi-
cally friendless. But he was not reduced to the humiliation of his father in
1073 and 1076. The southern nobles did not join in the revolt; and,
though only his nephew Duke Frederick of Swabia was actively on his
side, the other leading princes at any rate remained neutral. They did
not make use of his weakness to acquire a share in the government.
At this moment the death of Countess Matilda of Tuscany (24 July)
made it imperative for Henry to proceed to Italy to make good his claim
to her inheritance. It was all the more necessary to procure peace in
Germany. A diet for this purpose was summoned to meet at Mayence
on 1 November. Henry waited there in vain; his enemies refused to
appear, and only a few bishops obeyed the summons. Taking advantage
of his weakness, the people of Mayence suddenly assailed him in force and
compelled him to release their archbishop, giving securities for his good
behaviour; and at Spires in December Adalbert was reconciled with the
Emperor, taking an oath of fealty and giving his nephews as hostages.
The hardships suffered during his three years' imprisonment had not
daunted the spirit of the archbishop. Neither his oath nor the safety of
his nephews deterred him from his purpose of active hostility. He went
at once to Cologne, where the bishops under Archbishop Frederick, the
nobles under Duke Lothar, were awaiting the arrival of the Cardinal-
legate Theodoric to complete the plans of the new alliance. The legate
died on the journey, and Adalbert soon dominated the proceedings. First
of all he was consecrated archbishop by Bishop Otto of Bamberg; for,
though he had been invested four years previously, he had not yet
received consecration. Then, in conjunction with Archbishop Frederick
of Cologne, he held a synod at which the ban of the Church was
pronounced against the Emperor. Henry sent Bishop Erlung of Würz-
burg to negotiate on his behalf, but Erlung himself was won over, and
on his return refrained from communion with the Emperor. In revenge
Henry deprived him of the semi-ducal position held by the Bishops of
Würzburg in Eastern Franconia, and conferred the judicial authority
there, with the rank of duke, on his nephew Conrad, brother of Duke
Frederick of Swabia! .
In spite of the dangerous situation in Germany, Henry embarked on
his second expedition to Italy in Lent 1116 and was absent for two years.
In the acquisition of Matilda's allodial territories, as well as the disposition
1 This iudiciaria potestas was, however, restored to the bishop in 1120. Conrad
seems to have retained the ducal title.
## p. 161 (#207) ############################################
Ecclesiastical opposition in Germany
161
of the fiefs she had held from the Empire, he obtained considerable ad-
vantages. He was able naturally to increase the royal domain, to acquire
a new source of revenue, and also to gain adherents among the towns by
generous grants of charters. His further attempt to crush papal resistance
and to establish an anti-Pope was, as usual, a failure. His absence made
little difference to Germany. The north was hopeless from his point of
view, and the southern nobles remained quiet. The government of
Germany was entrusted by him to Duke Frederick of Swabia and Godfrey,
Count-Palatine of the Rhine. They performed faithfully and with no
small success the task entrusted to them. The position rather improved
than otherwise; the area of disturbance was at any rate diminished. The
centre and mainspring of revolt was Archbishop Adalbert; his settled
determination was to injure the royal power by every means at his dis-
posal, to win over or to ruin all Henry's supporters. Without him the
desire for peace might have prevailed, but he kept alive the civil war.
We read of continual fighting, though always on a small scale, of sieges
and counter-sieges, of attempts at negotiation that came to nothing, and
of a general disregard for law and order which gave to the robber and the
brigand an undreamt-of security.
At last, however, events in Italy affected the German situation and
necessitated the Emperor's return. The definite revival of the schism
between Empire and Papacy with the excommunication of Henry V by
Pope Gelasius II in April 1118, and the activity of the Cardinal-bishop
Cuno as papal legate,gave renewed vigour to the Church party in Germany.
Adalbert ensured the fidelity of Mayence by an important grant of
privileges, and the Bishops of Worms and Spires (the latter his own
brother) now joined him. The episcopate as a whole was no longer sub-
servient to the Emperor, whose control of elections had been considerably
weakened; while Adalbert, on the other hand, by his appointment this
year as papal legate, gained increased authority over it. The anti-
imperialists, lay and ecclesiastical, now revived the plan of 1076 of a diet,
to be held at Würzburg, to which the Emperor was to be summoned to
answer the charges against him. Henry returned from Italy in August,
just in time to prevent this, and his appearance in Lorraine speedily
restored the balance in his favour. The situation did not permit of his
acting with the masterfulness that had given so much offence before, but
his diplomatic skill was able to make use of the strong desire for peace.
He gave earnest of his own intentions when he opened negotiations with
the new Pope, Calixtus II, in 1119; he could hardly be blamed for their
failure, and he was little affected by the renewal of excommunication. In
Lower Lorraine his position decidedly improved, especially when the town
of Cologne declared for him and expelled its archbishop. Frederick made
his way to Saxony, but even that duchy was no longer a sure refuge for
the Emperor's enemies. For Henry himself was at Goslar in January 1120,
able to visit his Saxon domain for the first time since his defeat in 1115;
C. MED, H, VOL. V. CH. III.
11
## p. 162 (#208) ############################################
162
The Diet of Würzburg
and a number of Saxon nobles, including Duke Lothar, were with him at
court. The bishops, obedient to the papal sentence, held aloof, but the
lay nobles were anxious above all for peace, though a peace of their own
making. Henry wisely took no steps to revenge himself for the excommuni-
cation, and, by withholding support from the anti-Pope, facilitated the
re-opening of negotiations. Adalbert alone was stubborn against recon-
ciliation, but his very obstinacy caused the German princes to take action.
When in June 1121 he marched with an army from Saxony to the relief
of Mayence, which was threatened by the Emperor, they intervened de-
cisively for peace, and a diet was summoned to meet at Würzburg.
The diet met on 29 September, and an armistice was arranged which,
besides re-establishing order in Germany, created the necessary conditions
precedent to a settlement of the issue between Pope and Emperor. Henry
was to recognise the Pope, and meanwhile king, churches, and individuals
were to be in undisturbed possession of their rights and lands; bishops
who had been canonically elected and consecrated were to be left in peace-
ful occupation of their sees, and the Bishops of Worms and Spires were
to be reinstated, though the town of Worms was to remain in royal
hands; prisoners and hostages were to be mutually restored. The princes
then bound themselves to use their mediation between Emperor and Pope
to bring about a settlement on the question of investiture which would
not impair the honour of the kingdom, and on the other hand to act in
concert against any attempt of the king to avenge himself on any of his
enemies. The Bavarian nobles, who were not present at Würzburg, gave
their assent to these conditions on 1 November. The princes had thus
taken affairs into their own hands, and by their unanimity had restored
peace and order to the kingdom. In this they rendered it a great service,
and probably the same result could have been achieved in no other way.
But it was a restoration of their control of the government, and was a
measure of the weakness of the royal authority. The king had no alter-
native but to acquiesce; and indeed he welcomed their intervention as a
means of extricating himself from the impasse in his relations with the
Pope. An embassy was sent at the beginning of 1122 to Rome, where it
was well received by Calixtus, and three cardinal-legates with full powers
were dispatched to Germany! Archbishop Adalbert alone, in spite of a
letter from the Pope expressing his earnest desire for peace, did his best
to prevent a reconciliation, and made what use he could of the disputed
election at Würzburg which followed on the death of Bishop Erlung.
But the papal legates resisted his attempts to promote discord, and by
their tactful management of the difficult preliminaries were able to get
general consent to the holding of a council. This was summoned by them
to meet at Mayence on 8 September. The place of meeting was, however,
naturally distasteful to Henry, and, as a concession to him, the Council
eventually took place at Worms on 23 September 1122.
1 Of these legates, two became Popes—Honorius II and Innocent II.
## p. 163 (#209) ############################################
The Concordat of Worms
163
The Concordat of Worms was a treaty for peace between the two
great powers, the spiritual and the temporal heads of Western Christendom.
As such it gave public recognition to the position the Papacy had
acquired in the course of the struggle. It gave recognition too to another
fact—the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal functions of
the episcopate. Over the bishops in Italy and Burgundy royal control
was appreciably diminished; in Germany it was in effect retained. The
king abandoned investiture with ring and staff, but he could now claim
papal sanction for his control of elections, and the grant of the regalia
was recognised as implying the performance of duties to the king-quae
ex his iure debet—in return. On 11 November a diet was held at Bamberg,
composed mainly of the princes who were not present at Worms. They
unanimously ratified the Concordat, which thereby became a constitution
of the kingdom. The relations of the king with the bishops and abbots
of Germany were thus put on a legal basis, and the election of Udalric as
Abbot of Fulda gave an immediate occasion to put the new practice into
effect. Even Adalbert had been constrained to subscribe at Worms, but
he immediately wrote to the Pope attempting to prejudice him against
the Emperor. He was quite unsuccessful, however. He saw his old
associates welcoming the Concordat at Bamberg; and finally the ratifica-
tion of the Church was given at the Lateran Council in March 1123, to
which the Pope, in anticipation of the greatness of the event, had issued
a general summons in June of the preceding year, and which ranks as
the First Ecumenical Council to be held in the West. The concord be-
tween Empire and Papacy was not to be broken again in Adalbert's
lifetime.
Peace without mastery was the conclusion of Henry's struggle with
the Pope. In Germany he achieved neither peace nor mastery. The
course of time had produced a great change in the relation of the nobles,
originally royal officials, with the king? . The counts had in many cases
ceased to hold directly from the king, and as a result of marriages,
divisions of the inheritance, and the like, their possessions often bore
little relation to their titles. Above all the dukes, whose power and in-
dependence the first two Salian kings had successfully combated, had
during the long civil wars and the Church schism recovered much of their
old authority. In Bavaria the Welfs were creating an almost independent
state: a hereditary duchy with the subordinate nobles-margraves and
even the count-palatine as well as ordinary counts—in a vassal relation-
ship to the duke. There was no hostility to Henry V who did not in-
terfere, but Bavaria seems to hold itself aloof and to act as a separate
unit; at the Diet of Würzburg in 1121 Bavaria was not represented, but
gave its assent later. The Hohenstaufen were working to the same end
in Swabia, but the influence of the Dukes of Zähringen prevented them
from achieving complete mastery, and their participation in the govern-
1 Cf. Giesebrecht, op. cit. Vol. II, pp. 960 sqq.
CH. I.
11-2
## p. 164 (#210) ############################################
164 Independence of the duchies. Duke Lothar of Saxony
ment of the kingdom was more important to them than a policy of
isolation. But both Duke Frederick and his brother Conrad were
actively employed in increasing the Hohenstaufen domains, and in pro-
tecting their acquisitions by castles? . This was likely soon to conflict
with the similar policy of the Emperor in the neighbouring districts, and
perhaps it is for this reason that signs of friction between Henry and his
nephews began to appear towards the end of his reign. No such policy
was possible in Lorraine, where the division into two duchies, the weak-
ness of the dukes, and the strength of the other nobles, lay and eccle-
siastical, had destroyed all cohesion; in this region and in Franconia it
was more possible for royal authority to recover ground.
But the most important centre of particularism had always been
Saxony, and it became increasingly so under Duke Lothar. The son of a
petty count, he had acquired the allodial territories, and the consequent
prestige, of the two most powerful antagonists of Henry IV-Otto of
Nordheim and Ekbert of Brunswick. He held a position greatly superior
to that of his predecessors, the Billungs, and by his victory in 1115
became the acknowledged leader of the Saxons. His intention evidently
was to unite Saxony under his rule and to exclude the royal authority.
The Saxon nobles were by no means prepared to submit to the first part
of this programme, but Lothar vigorously encountered opposition and
usually with success; his activity extended to expeditions against the
Wends, and by these aggressive measures he protected the north-eastern
frontiers. His policy of isolation was indicated by his abstention from the
Diet of Würzburg and the Concordat of Worms. He departed from it
to some extent in 1123 when he supported, rather half-heartedly, his step-
sister Gertrude of Holland, who was allied with Bishop Godebald of
Utrecht against the Emperor. But he was quite determined to resist
royal interference within his duchy. On the death in 1123 of Henry,
Margrave of Meissen and the East Mark and step-brother to Lothar's
wife, the Emperor appointed Herman II of Winzenburg to Meissen and
Wiprecht of Groitsch (a former rebel, now tamed to loyalty by imprison-
ment) to the East Mark. Lothar treated these appointments as being
in his own gift, and gave Meissen to Conrad of Wettin and the East
Mark to Albert the Bear, son of Count Otto of Ballenstadt and grandson
of Duke Magnus. Henry V summoned Duke Vladislav of Bohemia to
support his candidates, but Lothar successfully resisted him and made
effective his claim to usurp a sovereign right. In 1124 Henry, victorious
over Gertrude and Godebald, assembled a diet at Bamberg before which
Lothar was summoned to appear. He did not obey the summons, but
the expedition decreed against him was deferred owing to Henry's pre-
occupations in the west. Lothar remained defiant, and no further action
was taken against him.
1 Frederick was famous as a builder of castles ; cf. Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici
imperatoris, Bk. 1, c. 12, SGUS, p. 28.
## p. 165 (#211) ############################################
Last
years
and death of Henry V
165
Unsuccessful in the internal struggle, the king could not restore
imperial authority in the eastern states once subject to the Empire. In
the peaceful years at the beginning of his reign he had made a determined
effort. In Bohemia his suzerainty was recognised, and his decision was
effective in favour of Svatopluk who expelled his cousin Duke Bořivoi in
1107, and on Svatopluk's murder in 1109 in favour of Vladislav, Bořivoi's
son; from both he obtained the payment of tribute. But, like his father,
he had to be content with Bohemian allegiance. His intervention in
Hungary (1108) and in Poland (1109) ended in hopeless failure.
Immediately afterwards his attention was diverted to his Italian expedi-
tion, and he had no opportunity, even if he had the inclination, to
intervene again. But, in the north-east, German influence began to
spread by another agency. The great missionary work of Bishop Otto of
Bamberg in Pomerania started at the end of Henry V's reign; idols and
temples were overthrown, and eight churches built. This was a revival of
the old method of penetration by missionaries, and though Otto's work
was done by the invitation and under the protection of Duke Boleslav III
of Poland, who wished to Christianise where he had conquered, it was
German influence that permeated the country; the new churches were
closely attached to Bamberg, and the first bishop in Pomerania was Otto's
friend and helper, Adalbert. This was to be the beginning of a new
wave of German penetration among the Slavs.
Henry V, indeed, had no part in this. In the last year of his life he
was turning his attention to a novel foreign policy. He had come into
close touch, owing to his marriage, with the English king, and he was
induced by Henry I to enter into an alliance against King Louis VI of
France, from which he hoped perhaps to recoup himself by conquest for
his loss of authority in his own kingdom. But the expedition was
unpopular in Germany; he could only collect a small force, and he was
obliged to retire ignominiously before the large army which assembled
to defend France from invasion. In 1125 he is said to have conceived
the plan, also suggested by his father-in-law, of raising money by a
general tax on the English model; it would have made him independent
of the nobles, who strongly resisted the innovation'. The only result was
to add to his unpopularity, which was increased by a severe famine and
pestilence; though this was the natural result of two hard winters, the
common people attributed to him the responsibility for their sufferings.
It was in these circumstances that he fell ill and died in his forty-fourth
year on 23 May 1125. On his death-bed he made his nephew, Duke
Frederick of Swabia, his heir and named him as his successor; the royal
insignia were placed in the castle of Trifels under the charge of the
Empress Matilda. At Spires the last of the Salian house was given royal
burial beside his three predecessors, but there were few to mourn the
ruler who had been able to win the affection of none. Fear he had
1 Otto of Freising, Chronica, Bk. vii, c. 16, SGUS, p. 332.
CH, III,
## p. 166 (#212) ############################################
166
The election of his successor
inspired, and there were soon stories current that he was not dead, and a
pretender even arose in Burgundy claiming to be Henry V; no one
wished him back, but there was much popular apprehension of his
return.
His personality was such as to inspire fear but not affection. The one
was a useful attribute in dealing with the nobles, but without the other
he could not gain the support necessary to keep them in check. The
middle and lower classes in the towns, and the lower classes in the country-
side as well, had felt a regard for Henry IV which was not merely due to
privileges obtained from him. Henry V was never able to win this regard
despite his privileges, and the revolts of important towns were often a
serious handicap to him. So the nobles, whom he had used to defeat his
father and to defeat the Pope, had proved too strong for him in the end.
Only by their renewed participation in the government was peace restored
to Germany and the schism in the Church healed. And so particularism
prevailed, and ducal authority rose again even in Swabia and Bavaria,
but especially in Saxony, where Lothar had challenged an undoubtedly
royal right by his claims to appoint his subordinates. To the end he
was defiant, a rebel against royal authority. But the imperial idea was
still strong, and so too was the hereditary principle. Had Henry had a
son, he would doubtless have succeeded to the throne with fair chances of
success. That Henry died childless was a fact of the first importance in
the history of Germany, and incidentally in the history of England as
well. His bitterest enemy, the Archbishop of Mayence, was still alive, and
it was the Archbishop of Mayence who by prescriptive right had the first
voice in the election of a king. Skilfully Adalbert used his advantage to
get possession of the royal insignia and to defeat the candidature of
Henry's heir, Duke Frederick of Swabia. Led by him, the princes
triumphantly vindicated the claim they had vainly tried to assert at
Forchheim in 1077, and deliberately rejected the next-of-kin. The election
of Lothar was a step forward towards the eventual victory of the electoral
over the hereditary principle.
## p. 167 (#213) ############################################
167
CHAPTER IV.
(A)
THE CONQUEST OF SOUTH ITALY AND SICILY
BY THE NORMANS.
When the Normans made their appearance at the beginning of the
eleventh century, South Italy was divided into a large number of
small states. Sicily was occupied by the Saracens, Apulia and Calabria
by the Byzantines; Gaeta, Naples, and Amalfi were all three republics ;
Benevento, Capua, and Salerno were the capitals of three Lombard
principalities, which were bounded on the north by the Papal State.
In spite of this subdivision caused by the anarchy which had prevailed
throughout the south of the peninsula during the ninth and tenth
centuries, Byzantine historians imply that South Italy had not changed
in any particular and that the Greek Emperors still maintained their
predominance. It is indeed true that the continual warfare and constant
rivalries between the principal towns of South Italy often led one of
the combatants to have recourse to Byzantium; appeals thus made to
the sovereign authority of the Emperor no doubt contributed to the
maintenance in Constantinople of the idea that the imperial sovereignty
was still recognised by provinces which seem in fact to have been
absolutely independent. The Byzantine possessions properly so called
now consisted only of Apulia, the region of Otranto, and Calabria, and,
although the Greek Empire gained much prestige by the reconquest of
Italy undertaken by Basil II, yet—even in the territory under its
sway-it only exercised a somewhat feeble authority and its power was
by no means firmly established.
In spite of the attempt at Hellenisation made in the tenth century,
Byzantium only partially succeeded in its efforts to assimilate the in-
habitants of the territory taken from the Lombards. Only Calabria and
the district of Otranto really succumbed to Greek influence. There was
not the same result in Apulia, where Byzantium encountered a very
strong and persistent Lombard influence which could neither be crushed
nor undermined. It was thus that the Lombards retained the use of
Latin, and obliged the Greek Emperors to allow the maintenance of Latin
bishoprics in many towns, to tolerate the practice of Lombard law, and
to admit native officials into the local administration. Thus the links
which bound South Italy to Constantinople were very weak. Byzantium
had shewn itself incapable of defending the country and giving security.
The position arising from the strength of the native element and the
weakness of the central power favoured the development of autonomy in
## p. 168 (#214) ############################################
168
Condition of Byzantine Italy
the cities and led to the establishment of real communes. On the other
hand, there were many burdens on the inhabitants, and the country was
crushed under the weight of taxes and military levies. Thus the advan-
tages derived by the populations under Byzantine sway from their sub-
mission to the Empire did not seem commensurate with the burdens they
had to bear, and there arose a general state of discontent, which at the
close of the tenth century found expression in the frequent assassination
of Byzantine officials and in constant revolts; these were facilitated by the
organisation of local bands—the conterati. It was easy for Byzantium to
overcome the first isolated attempts, but her task became more difficult
when there arose leaders capable of attracting malcontents, organising
their forces, and directing the struggle with the Greeks in a firm
resolution to attain the freedom of their country. The first great revolt
was that of Melo.
Melo belonged to the Lombard aristocracy. He was a native of Bari,
and exerted considerable influence not only in his birthplace but through-
out Apulia. Openly hostile to the Byzantines whose yoke he wished to
cast off, Melo first sought to rouse his countrymen in 1009. He was
secretly supported by the Lombard Princes of Capua and Salerno. This
first attempt failed, and the Lombard leader, forced into exile, probably
betook himself to Germany, and besought the Emperor Henry II to
intervene in the affairs of South Italy. By 1016 he was back in his
own country. In that year he entered into negotiations with a band of
Norman pilgrims who had come on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Michael
on Monte Gargano, and begged for their help in driving out the Greeks.
The Norman knights did not accept the offers made to them, but promised
Melo that they would encourage their compatriots to join him.
The Norman knights of Monte Gargano may probably be identified
with the pilgrims spoken of by the chronicler Aimé of Monte Cassino.
According to him, at a time when Salerno was besieged by the
Saracens, a band of Norman knights returning from the Holy Land
disembarked there. Scarcely had they landed before they fell on the
infidels and put them to flight. Amazed at the courage of these
unexpected allies, Guaimar IV, Prince of Salerno, and the inhabitants of
the city begged them to remain, but the Normans refused. In view of
this refusal Guaimar thereupon decided to send back messengers with the
pilgrims to raise a body of Norman auxiliaries in Normandy itself.
If we admit the identity of the pilgrims of Salerno with the pilgrims
of Monte Gargano, which is almost inevitable, we are led to believe
that the meeting of Melo and the Normans was not accidental, but that
it was arranged by Guaimar IV, who had already supported the Lombard
leader in his rebellion.
had each in turn played the leading part against the king; and now the
male line had failed in all these families, and the inheritance had fallen
to women. In 1090 by the death of Ekbert II the male line of the
Brunswick house became extinct; his sister Gertrude was left as heiress,
and she married (as her second husband) Henry the Fat, the elder son of
Otto of Nordheim. He was murdered in 1101, his brother Conrad suffered
the same fate in 1103, and the elder daughter of Henry and Gertrude,
Richenza, became eventually heiress to both these houses'. Lothar, Count
of Supplinburg, by his marriage with Richenza in 1100, rose from an
insignificant position to become the most powerful noble in Saxony. In
1106 died Duke Magnus, the last of the Billungs. His duchy was given
by Henry V to Lothar, his family possessions were divided between his
two daughters: the eastern portion went to the younger, Eilica, who
married Count Otto of Ballenstädt and became the mother of Albert the
Bear, the Saxon rival of the Welfs; the western portion to the elder,
Wulfhild, who married Henry the Black, son of Duke Welf of Bavaria.
1 Gertrude had been married first to Count Dietrich of Katlenburg; on the death
of Henry the Fat she married Henry of Eilenburg, Margrave of Meissen •and the
East Mark. He died in 1103, and his posthumous son Henry died childless in 1123.
Gertrude herself died in 1117.
## p. 153 (#199) ############################################
Supplinburg
Ascanians
Brunonings
Nordheim
Otto,
Ekbert I
C. of Brunswick,
M. of Meissen,
ob. 1068
C. of Nordheim
(D. of Bavaria, 1061-70),
ob. 1083
Eilica m. Otto of Ballenstedt
Ekbert II
ob. 1090
Gertrude m. Henry the Fat
ob. 1117 ob. 1101
Conrad
ob, 1103
Gertrude
Lothar, C. of Supplinburg, m. Richenza
later Emperor
Sophia m. Dietrich of
Holland
Gertrude
Albert the Bear
D. of Bavaria and Saxony
1
Bernard of Anhalt,
Otto of Brunswick M. of Brandenburg
D. of Saxony
The rise of new noble families in Germany
Babenbergers
KING HENRY IV
1
(1) Agnes (2)
m.
Liutpold,
M. of Austria
King Conrad III
Liutpold,
M. of Austria
Henry Jasomirgott,
first D. of Austria
Otto,
Bishop of Freising
Welfs
Billungs
Welf IV,
D. of Bavaria, ob. 1101
Magnus,
D. of Saxony, ob. 1106
Welf V,
ob. 1120
Henry the Black m. Wulfhild
Henry the Proud m.
Henry the Lion,
Otto,
Welfs
Hohenstaufen
Henry the Black
Frederick,
C. of Staufen,
D. of Swabia
Judith
m. Frederick,
D. of Swabia
| D.
Frederick I Barbarossa
153
CH. 11.
## p. 154 (#200) ############################################
154
The character of Henry V
Thus were laid the foundations of the Welf power in Saxony; the struc-
ture was to be completed when the son of Henry and Wulfhild, Henry
the Proud, married Gertrude, daughter and heiress of Lothar and
Richenza; for the house of Supplinburg also failed in the male line.
Duke Welf of Bavaria himself died on crusade in 1101, and his duchy,
now hereditary, passed to Welf V, Countess Matilda's husband, and on
his death in 1120 to his brother Henry the Black. Finally, in 1105, Duke
Frederick of Swabia died and was succeeded by his son Frederick II; while
his widow Agnes, daughter of Henry IV, married in 1106 Liutpold III,
Margrave of Austria, and so became the ancestress of Babenbergers as
well as Hohenstaufen? .
Henry V, born in 1081, had been elected king in 1098; so that, young
as he still was, he had already been associated in the government for
eight years. He will always, apart from the Concordat of Worms, be
remembered primarily for his treatment of his father and, five years later,
of the Pope; in both these episodes he shewed himself brutal and un-
scrupulous. Perhaps to modern minds the studied treachery and hypocrisy
of 1105–6 will appear more repulsive than the direct and unconcealed
violence of 1111; his contemporaries, however, viewed the two incidents
quite differently, regarding rather the nature of the victim than the
quality of the crime. His action in deposing his excommunicated father
met with fairly general approval; while the horror inspired by his treat-
ment of the Pope did considerable damage to his prestige. He was not
capable, like his father, of inspiring devotion, but he could inspire respect.
For he was forceful, energetic, resourceful, and he did for some time
manage to dominate the German nobles. With more prudence too than
his father he conserved imperial resources, and, except in Italy in 1116
when policy demanded it, he was very sparing of grants from the royal
domain, even to bishops. Of diplomatic cunning he frequently gave proof,
especially in the circumstances of his revolt and in his negotiations with
Paschal II. In particular he had a strong sense of the importance of in-
fluencing opinion. There was nothing unusual in the manifestoes he issued
in justification of his actions on important occasions, but he went farther
than this. He prepared the way. The publication of the anonymous
Tractatus de investitura episcoporum in 1109 preluded his embassy to
Paschal II by expounding to all the righteousness of the imperial claims.
And he went beyond manifestoes. When he started on his journey to
Rome in 1110, he took with him David, afterwards Bishop of Bangor,
as the official historian of the expedition. David's narrative has unfor-
tunately not come down to us, but it was made use of by others, especially
1 She had in all 23 children. By her first marriage she became mother of King
Conrad III and grandmother of Frederick Barbarossa; by her second marriage she
became mother of Henry Jasomirgott, the first Duke of Austria, and of the historian,
Bishop Otto of Freising.
## p. 155 (#201) ############################################
His forced reliance on the nobles
155
by the chronicler Ekkehard. It was assuredly propaganda, not history;
but it was an ingenious and novel way of ensuring an authoritative
description of events calculated to impress contemporary opinion.
To prevent the further decline of imperial authority, he had allied
himself with the two powers responsible for that decline. His real policy
was in no whit different from that of his father, so that he was playing
a hazardous game; and it is doubtful whether, even from his own purely
selfish standpoint, he had taken the wisest course. To obtain the
assistance of the Pope, he had recognised the over-riding authority of the
sacerdotium; he had justified his revolt against his father on the ground
of the unfitness of an excommunicated man to be king, and had used the
papal power of absolution to condone his perjury. To obtain the co-
operation of the nobles, he had to abandon for a time the support of the
towns and the reliance on the ministeriales which had been so valuable to
his father. The nobles were, as usual, anxious to make their fiefs and
offices hereditary, to obtain the recognition of independent powers, and
to prevent the establishment of an over-riding royal justice. This they
expected to ensure by the participation in the government that Henry
had promised, and in this he humoured them for the time. Their names
appear as witnesses to royal charters; all acts of government, even the
nomination of bishops, are done consilio principum. For their support was
still necessary to him, and he skilfully made use of it to oppose a united
Germany to the claims of his other ally, the Pope. He had allowed the
legates to sit in judgment on his father, and to wreak their vengeance to
the full; he had shewn himself zealous in deposing schismatic bishops at
their dictation. All this was to his interest; but, his father dead, he was
not long in throwing off the mask. It was essential that the bishops
should be loyal subjects, and so he was careful to control elections; and,
worst of all to the mind of Paschal II, he refused to discontinue the
practice of lay investiture. In this, and against all claims of the Pope to
interfere in the affairs of Germany, he had the nobles, lay and ecclesias-
tical, almost to a man enthusiastically on his side.
For the first five years of his reign the issue with the Pope was the
leading question. Apart from Count Robert of Flanders, against whom
Henry had to lead an expedition in 1107, there was no serious disturbance
in Germany. In 1108-9 he was principally occupied on the eastern
frontiers, where he successfully asserted himself in Bohemia but failed
signally in his attempt to intervene in Hungary and Poland. All this time
negotiations with the Pope had been in progress, any satisfactory
result, and at last in 1110 Henry decided to go to Rome to effect a
settlement in person and to obtain the imperial crown. At the diet at
Ratisbon at which he announced his intention, the nobles unanimously
i It is perhaps remarkable that Paschal in 1105, when he had the chance, did not
take the opportunity to obtain assurances from Henry V on investiture or on any
other point.
without any
CH. III.
## p. 156 (#202) ############################################
156
Victory over the Pope. His German policy
pledged themselves of their free will to accompany him. The summons
to the expedition was universally obeyed, and it was at the head of an
imposing army that he entered Italy in August. The absence of incident
in Germany in these years, and the ready response to the summons, shew
the unity of the country both under the king and against the Pope. The
events of 1110-11 established his authority in Italy and over the Pope as
well. He wrung from the Pope the concession of investiture and received
from him the imperial crown. Countess Matilda shewed herself well-
disposed; the Normans in South Italy were overawed by the size of his
army. At the end of 1111 his power in both kingdoms was at its height.
But it rested on insecure foundations. He had dominated the Pope by
violence, and had extracted from him a concession which provoked the un-
yielding hostility of the Church party. Already in 1112 Paschal retracted
his concession, and in Burgundy in the same year Archbishop Guy of
Vienne declared investiture to be a heresy and anathematised the Emperor,
undeterred by the efforts of Henry to rouse the nobles and bishops of
Burgundy against him; while Archbishop Conrad of Salzburg, who had
always opposed Henry's ecclesiastical policy, abandoned his see and took
refuge with Countess Matilda. Moreover, Henry's government of Germany
was only government by consent; it depended on the good-will of the
princes. Some of the bishops were alienated by his treatment of Paschal II;
the lay nobles, who had concurred in his ecclesiastical policy, were justly
apprehensive of the independence and high-handedness of his actions
in 1111.
He was determined to free himself from their tutelage, now that they
had served his purpose. So he returned to the policy of his father of
relying on ministeriales and lesser nobles, whose share in the government,
dependent as they were on his favour, would be effective in his interests
and not in their own. Above all, he concentrated on the royal domain,
and was so sparing in his grants that he gave the appearance of miser-
liness. He had not followed the common practice of making himself
popular by large donations on his accession. He bountifully rewarded
faithful service, but that was all. Such grants as he made to ecclesiastical
foundations were usually of little importance and for purely religious
purposes. The bishops fared especially badly under his regime, but, with
the working of the leaven of reform and the increasing authority of the
Papacy, they were becoming less reliable as agents of monarchical govern-
ment. To him, as to his father, the building of castles was a necessary step
to protect the royal estates from the continual encroachments of the nobles.
They too had adopted the same method of protecting their own domains,
and against this usurpation of his prerogative he used his best endeavours,
on the whole not unsuccessfully. It was, however, one of the causes of
friction between him and his two chief enemies–Duke Lothar of Saxony
and Archbishop Adalbert of Mayence. Like his father again, the rich
domain in Saxony at first attracted his main attention; it was there that
## p. 157 (#203) ############################################
The revolt of Saxony
157
he went immediately after the successful inauguration of his revolt in
Bavaria in 1105. But after his defeat in 1115 Saxony had to be abandoned.
He then turned to a new quarter, to the south-west, where lay the rich
lands of the middle and upper Rhine. We find him engaged in exchanges,
revocations of previous grants, even confiscations, which all point to the
policy of creating in this new region a centralised and compact domain.
Finally, he attempted to revive the alliance with the towns. Especially
to Spires in 1111 and to Worms in 1114 he gave important charters',
which raised the status and independence of the citizens by removing the
most vexatious of the seignorial powers over their persons and property.
He could not, however, count on their loyalty. Worms revolted more
than once, Mayence was won over by privileges from its archbishop,
Cologne was sometimes for and sometimes against him. He was unable
to win their confidence fully or to inspire the devotion that had been so
serviceable to his father.
In all this he was engaged in building up his resources, and in
attempting to establish a basis for the royal authority which would make
it independent of princely support. But he was by no means content
merely to shake off their control. He was determined to enforce the
recognition of his sovereign rights, and opposition only enraged him and
revealed the arbitrary tendency of his ideas. In January 1112, at Merse-
burg, he intervened as supreme judge to prohibit the unjust imprisonment
of Count Frederick of Stade by Duke Lothar of Saxony and Margrave
Rudolf of the North Mark. When they refused obedience to his judg-
ment, they were deprived of their dignities, which were only restored
after they had made submission and released Frederick. Two other
Saxon counts were punished with close confinement for a breach of the
peace. In July, at Mayence, he exercised another sovereign right in
sequestrating the fiefs of Count Udalric of Weimar who had died with-
out heirs; he also, it seems, with the consent of a diet, added the
allodial territory to the royal domain. Siegfried, Count-Palatine of the
Rhine, claimed to succeed as next-of-kin to Udalric; and, in his disap-
pointment, he started a conspiracy among the Saxon and Thuringian
nobles, which was joined by Lothar and Margrave Rudolf, and eventually
the whole of Saxony was ablaze with revolt. Finally, as Henry was pre-
paring an expedition to Saxony, came the breach with his former
chancellor, now the greatest ecclesiastic in the land, Archbishop Adalbert
of Mayence
1 F. Keutgen, Urkunden zur städtischen Verfassungsgeschichte, Berlin, 1901, pp.
2 The province of Mayence covered nearly half the German kingdom. It included
14 (or, if Bamberg is taken into account, 15) suffragan bishoprics and extended as
far as southern Saxony and Bohemia, and southwards to Chur at the Italian frontier.
The archbishop had precedence over all nobles, lay and ecclesiastical, and as the
leading official played the principal part at royal elections. The potentialities of this
exalted office had been obscured by the mediocrity of the three previous archbishops
14 sqq.
CH, III.
## p. 158 (#204) ############################################
158
Archbishop Adalbert of Mayence
Adalbert, son of Count Sigehard of Saarbrücken, owed his rise to fame
almost entirely to the favour of Henry V. By him he had been appointed
chancellor in 1106, before the death of Henry IV, and had received
lavish preferment and grants from his master. On Archbishop Ruthard's
death in 1109, Adalbert was nominated as his successor by the king, who,
perhaps because he did not wish to be deprived of Adalbert's assistance
on his important expedition to Italy, deferred investiture; the see
remained vacant for two years, during which Henry, by virtue of his
rights of regalia, doubtless enjoyed its revenues. On his return to
Germany in 1111, he immediately invested Adalbert, who thereupon
entered into possession of the temporalities of the archbishop, though not
yet consecrated. At once a change was manifest. As chancellor he had
been an ardent imperialist, the right-hand man of the king, who recognised
his services and rewarded them with his confidence and with material
benefits. He was probably the chosen instrument of Henry's policy
of emancipation from the control of the nobles. But as archbishop his
interests diverged, his ambition led him to independence, and the cause
of the princes became his. He took a strong Church line, and professed
an ultra-papalist standpoint, though it was he who had been chiefly con-
cerned in all the leading events of 1111; it was interest and not principle
that influenced his change of view. Personal ambition was the mark of
his career. His great aim was to establish an independent principality.
At first he planned this in the Rhine district, and, as this brought him
into contact with the royal domain, he was soon in conflict with the king.
Thwarted in this endeavour, he later turned his attention with more
success to the eastern possessions of his see, in Hesse, Thuringia, and
Saxony?
In November 1112 the breach took place which definitely ranged
Adalbert on the side of the king's enemies. It was only a year after his
investiture, but Adalbert had already had time to realise his new
environment and to adopt his new outlook. It is probable that a leading
cause of friction was the king's exercise of the rights of regalia during the
two years' vacancy. The final cause seems to have been a quarrel over
two castles in the palatinate, which Adalbert refused to abandon. At
any rate the breach was complete, and the king's indignation, which
found expression in a violent manifesto? , was unbounded. He, like
in this period-Siegfried, Werner, and Ruthard. Adalbert seized upon them at once,
and founded the greatness of his successors.
1 Cf. K. H. Schmitt, Erzbischof Adalbert I von Mainz als Territorialfürst
(Arbeiten zur deutschen Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte, No. 11), Berlin, 1920.
2 Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbücher Heinrichs IV und V, Vol. vi, p. 263. Doubtless
Henry IV had exercised the same rights during the exiles of Siegfried and Ruthard,
and it is probable that there had resulted serious encroachments on the temporalities
of the see, which Adalbert was attempting to recover.
3 Published by Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, Vol. 1, pp.
1269 sq.
## p. 159 (#205) ############################################
Henry's victory in 1113. The revolt of 1115
159
Henry II of England afterwards, raised his faithful chancellor to be the
leading archbishop of his kingdom, expecting to gain a powerful supporter,
and found in him his most dangerous opponent. Adalbert set off to join
his new associates in Saxony; the king was marching thither at the same
time, and their ways converged. The quarrel broke out afresh. Adalbert
firmly refused to yield what he held; he was taken prisoner and exposed
to severe privations. This arbitrary act, in which the judgment of the
princes played no part, increased the alarm and suspicion which had
already caused revolt to break out in Saxony.
The first revolt against Henry V was ill-organised, and was effectively
suppressed in 1113. The royal army under Count Hoier of Mansfeld won
a decisive victory at Warmstadt near Quedlinburg. Siegfried died of
wounds, and the palatinate of the Rhine was conferred on Henry's faith-
ful supporter, Count Godfrey of Calw. Count Wiprecht of Groitsch was
taken prisoner and condemned to death; the sentence was commuted to
three years' imprisonment, but his possessions were confiscated and his
two sons rendered homeless. Of the other leaders, Count Louis of
Thuringia and Bishop Reinhard of Halberstadt made submission and
received the royal pardon. Henry was triumphant, and hoped that
Adalbert would have learnt from their failure and his own sufferings the
folly of resistance; the archbishop was brought before the king at
Worms, but he refused to yield and was taken back to his prison. The
next year, on 7 January 1114, the Emperor celebrated his victory by his
marriage at Mayence with Matilda, the eleven-year-old daughter of
Henry I of England. To Mayence came Duke Lothar to make humble
submission and to be restored to favour. But the concord was immediately
broken by Henry's sudden and arbitrary imprisonment of Count Louis
of Thuringia. This further breach of the custom, by which the nobles
claimed to be condemned only by the sentence of their peers, roused
wide-spread resentment, and in other quarters besides Saxony. To
Henry's arbitrary treatment of the archbishop and the count may be
ascribed the disasters that immediately followed.
They started in an unexpected quarter. Henry had just commenced
a punitive expedition against the Frisians in May, when the town of
Cologne suddenly revolted. It was not left alone to face the wrath of the
Emperor. Not only the Archbishop, Frederick, but also the leading
nobles of Lorraine, the lower Rhine, and Westphalia joined in the
insurrection. Henry failed before Cologne, and on 1 October was
decisively defeated at Andernach in Westphalia. The news of his defeat
gave the necessary encouragement to the disaffected nobles in East Saxony
and Thuringia. This time the revolt was better organised, with Duke
Lothar at the head, and all the other nobles, lay and ecclesiastical,
participating. The two armies met at Welfesholze on 11 February 1115,
and again Henry suffered a severe defeat. Utterly discomfited, he was
forced to abandon Saxony and retire to Mayence, where he negotiated for
CH. III.
## p.
160 (#206) ############################################
160
Henry's second expedition to Italy
peace; but Lothar refused his terms. And meanwhile the Saxons revived
their old alliance with the Church party, which was able to take advantage
of Henry's defeat to raise its head in Germany once more. First the
Cardinal-bishop Cuno pronounced excommunication on Henry at Cologne
and in Saxony; then the Cardinal-priest Theodoric, who had been sent as
papal legate to Hungary, came by invitation to a diet at Goslar, and re-
peated the same sentence. In the north and north-west Henry was practi-
cally friendless. But he was not reduced to the humiliation of his father in
1073 and 1076. The southern nobles did not join in the revolt; and,
though only his nephew Duke Frederick of Swabia was actively on his
side, the other leading princes at any rate remained neutral. They did
not make use of his weakness to acquire a share in the government.
At this moment the death of Countess Matilda of Tuscany (24 July)
made it imperative for Henry to proceed to Italy to make good his claim
to her inheritance. It was all the more necessary to procure peace in
Germany. A diet for this purpose was summoned to meet at Mayence
on 1 November. Henry waited there in vain; his enemies refused to
appear, and only a few bishops obeyed the summons. Taking advantage
of his weakness, the people of Mayence suddenly assailed him in force and
compelled him to release their archbishop, giving securities for his good
behaviour; and at Spires in December Adalbert was reconciled with the
Emperor, taking an oath of fealty and giving his nephews as hostages.
The hardships suffered during his three years' imprisonment had not
daunted the spirit of the archbishop. Neither his oath nor the safety of
his nephews deterred him from his purpose of active hostility. He went
at once to Cologne, where the bishops under Archbishop Frederick, the
nobles under Duke Lothar, were awaiting the arrival of the Cardinal-
legate Theodoric to complete the plans of the new alliance. The legate
died on the journey, and Adalbert soon dominated the proceedings. First
of all he was consecrated archbishop by Bishop Otto of Bamberg; for,
though he had been invested four years previously, he had not yet
received consecration. Then, in conjunction with Archbishop Frederick
of Cologne, he held a synod at which the ban of the Church was
pronounced against the Emperor. Henry sent Bishop Erlung of Würz-
burg to negotiate on his behalf, but Erlung himself was won over, and
on his return refrained from communion with the Emperor. In revenge
Henry deprived him of the semi-ducal position held by the Bishops of
Würzburg in Eastern Franconia, and conferred the judicial authority
there, with the rank of duke, on his nephew Conrad, brother of Duke
Frederick of Swabia! .
In spite of the dangerous situation in Germany, Henry embarked on
his second expedition to Italy in Lent 1116 and was absent for two years.
In the acquisition of Matilda's allodial territories, as well as the disposition
1 This iudiciaria potestas was, however, restored to the bishop in 1120. Conrad
seems to have retained the ducal title.
## p. 161 (#207) ############################################
Ecclesiastical opposition in Germany
161
of the fiefs she had held from the Empire, he obtained considerable ad-
vantages. He was able naturally to increase the royal domain, to acquire
a new source of revenue, and also to gain adherents among the towns by
generous grants of charters. His further attempt to crush papal resistance
and to establish an anti-Pope was, as usual, a failure. His absence made
little difference to Germany. The north was hopeless from his point of
view, and the southern nobles remained quiet. The government of
Germany was entrusted by him to Duke Frederick of Swabia and Godfrey,
Count-Palatine of the Rhine. They performed faithfully and with no
small success the task entrusted to them. The position rather improved
than otherwise; the area of disturbance was at any rate diminished. The
centre and mainspring of revolt was Archbishop Adalbert; his settled
determination was to injure the royal power by every means at his dis-
posal, to win over or to ruin all Henry's supporters. Without him the
desire for peace might have prevailed, but he kept alive the civil war.
We read of continual fighting, though always on a small scale, of sieges
and counter-sieges, of attempts at negotiation that came to nothing, and
of a general disregard for law and order which gave to the robber and the
brigand an undreamt-of security.
At last, however, events in Italy affected the German situation and
necessitated the Emperor's return. The definite revival of the schism
between Empire and Papacy with the excommunication of Henry V by
Pope Gelasius II in April 1118, and the activity of the Cardinal-bishop
Cuno as papal legate,gave renewed vigour to the Church party in Germany.
Adalbert ensured the fidelity of Mayence by an important grant of
privileges, and the Bishops of Worms and Spires (the latter his own
brother) now joined him. The episcopate as a whole was no longer sub-
servient to the Emperor, whose control of elections had been considerably
weakened; while Adalbert, on the other hand, by his appointment this
year as papal legate, gained increased authority over it. The anti-
imperialists, lay and ecclesiastical, now revived the plan of 1076 of a diet,
to be held at Würzburg, to which the Emperor was to be summoned to
answer the charges against him. Henry returned from Italy in August,
just in time to prevent this, and his appearance in Lorraine speedily
restored the balance in his favour. The situation did not permit of his
acting with the masterfulness that had given so much offence before, but
his diplomatic skill was able to make use of the strong desire for peace.
He gave earnest of his own intentions when he opened negotiations with
the new Pope, Calixtus II, in 1119; he could hardly be blamed for their
failure, and he was little affected by the renewal of excommunication. In
Lower Lorraine his position decidedly improved, especially when the town
of Cologne declared for him and expelled its archbishop. Frederick made
his way to Saxony, but even that duchy was no longer a sure refuge for
the Emperor's enemies. For Henry himself was at Goslar in January 1120,
able to visit his Saxon domain for the first time since his defeat in 1115;
C. MED, H, VOL. V. CH. III.
11
## p. 162 (#208) ############################################
162
The Diet of Würzburg
and a number of Saxon nobles, including Duke Lothar, were with him at
court. The bishops, obedient to the papal sentence, held aloof, but the
lay nobles were anxious above all for peace, though a peace of their own
making. Henry wisely took no steps to revenge himself for the excommuni-
cation, and, by withholding support from the anti-Pope, facilitated the
re-opening of negotiations. Adalbert alone was stubborn against recon-
ciliation, but his very obstinacy caused the German princes to take action.
When in June 1121 he marched with an army from Saxony to the relief
of Mayence, which was threatened by the Emperor, they intervened de-
cisively for peace, and a diet was summoned to meet at Würzburg.
The diet met on 29 September, and an armistice was arranged which,
besides re-establishing order in Germany, created the necessary conditions
precedent to a settlement of the issue between Pope and Emperor. Henry
was to recognise the Pope, and meanwhile king, churches, and individuals
were to be in undisturbed possession of their rights and lands; bishops
who had been canonically elected and consecrated were to be left in peace-
ful occupation of their sees, and the Bishops of Worms and Spires were
to be reinstated, though the town of Worms was to remain in royal
hands; prisoners and hostages were to be mutually restored. The princes
then bound themselves to use their mediation between Emperor and Pope
to bring about a settlement on the question of investiture which would
not impair the honour of the kingdom, and on the other hand to act in
concert against any attempt of the king to avenge himself on any of his
enemies. The Bavarian nobles, who were not present at Würzburg, gave
their assent to these conditions on 1 November. The princes had thus
taken affairs into their own hands, and by their unanimity had restored
peace and order to the kingdom. In this they rendered it a great service,
and probably the same result could have been achieved in no other way.
But it was a restoration of their control of the government, and was a
measure of the weakness of the royal authority. The king had no alter-
native but to acquiesce; and indeed he welcomed their intervention as a
means of extricating himself from the impasse in his relations with the
Pope. An embassy was sent at the beginning of 1122 to Rome, where it
was well received by Calixtus, and three cardinal-legates with full powers
were dispatched to Germany! Archbishop Adalbert alone, in spite of a
letter from the Pope expressing his earnest desire for peace, did his best
to prevent a reconciliation, and made what use he could of the disputed
election at Würzburg which followed on the death of Bishop Erlung.
But the papal legates resisted his attempts to promote discord, and by
their tactful management of the difficult preliminaries were able to get
general consent to the holding of a council. This was summoned by them
to meet at Mayence on 8 September. The place of meeting was, however,
naturally distasteful to Henry, and, as a concession to him, the Council
eventually took place at Worms on 23 September 1122.
1 Of these legates, two became Popes—Honorius II and Innocent II.
## p. 163 (#209) ############################################
The Concordat of Worms
163
The Concordat of Worms was a treaty for peace between the two
great powers, the spiritual and the temporal heads of Western Christendom.
As such it gave public recognition to the position the Papacy had
acquired in the course of the struggle. It gave recognition too to another
fact—the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal functions of
the episcopate. Over the bishops in Italy and Burgundy royal control
was appreciably diminished; in Germany it was in effect retained. The
king abandoned investiture with ring and staff, but he could now claim
papal sanction for his control of elections, and the grant of the regalia
was recognised as implying the performance of duties to the king-quae
ex his iure debet—in return. On 11 November a diet was held at Bamberg,
composed mainly of the princes who were not present at Worms. They
unanimously ratified the Concordat, which thereby became a constitution
of the kingdom. The relations of the king with the bishops and abbots
of Germany were thus put on a legal basis, and the election of Udalric as
Abbot of Fulda gave an immediate occasion to put the new practice into
effect. Even Adalbert had been constrained to subscribe at Worms, but
he immediately wrote to the Pope attempting to prejudice him against
the Emperor. He was quite unsuccessful, however. He saw his old
associates welcoming the Concordat at Bamberg; and finally the ratifica-
tion of the Church was given at the Lateran Council in March 1123, to
which the Pope, in anticipation of the greatness of the event, had issued
a general summons in June of the preceding year, and which ranks as
the First Ecumenical Council to be held in the West. The concord be-
tween Empire and Papacy was not to be broken again in Adalbert's
lifetime.
Peace without mastery was the conclusion of Henry's struggle with
the Pope. In Germany he achieved neither peace nor mastery. The
course of time had produced a great change in the relation of the nobles,
originally royal officials, with the king? . The counts had in many cases
ceased to hold directly from the king, and as a result of marriages,
divisions of the inheritance, and the like, their possessions often bore
little relation to their titles. Above all the dukes, whose power and in-
dependence the first two Salian kings had successfully combated, had
during the long civil wars and the Church schism recovered much of their
old authority. In Bavaria the Welfs were creating an almost independent
state: a hereditary duchy with the subordinate nobles-margraves and
even the count-palatine as well as ordinary counts—in a vassal relation-
ship to the duke. There was no hostility to Henry V who did not in-
terfere, but Bavaria seems to hold itself aloof and to act as a separate
unit; at the Diet of Würzburg in 1121 Bavaria was not represented, but
gave its assent later. The Hohenstaufen were working to the same end
in Swabia, but the influence of the Dukes of Zähringen prevented them
from achieving complete mastery, and their participation in the govern-
1 Cf. Giesebrecht, op. cit. Vol. II, pp. 960 sqq.
CH. I.
11-2
## p. 164 (#210) ############################################
164 Independence of the duchies. Duke Lothar of Saxony
ment of the kingdom was more important to them than a policy of
isolation. But both Duke Frederick and his brother Conrad were
actively employed in increasing the Hohenstaufen domains, and in pro-
tecting their acquisitions by castles? . This was likely soon to conflict
with the similar policy of the Emperor in the neighbouring districts, and
perhaps it is for this reason that signs of friction between Henry and his
nephews began to appear towards the end of his reign. No such policy
was possible in Lorraine, where the division into two duchies, the weak-
ness of the dukes, and the strength of the other nobles, lay and eccle-
siastical, had destroyed all cohesion; in this region and in Franconia it
was more possible for royal authority to recover ground.
But the most important centre of particularism had always been
Saxony, and it became increasingly so under Duke Lothar. The son of a
petty count, he had acquired the allodial territories, and the consequent
prestige, of the two most powerful antagonists of Henry IV-Otto of
Nordheim and Ekbert of Brunswick. He held a position greatly superior
to that of his predecessors, the Billungs, and by his victory in 1115
became the acknowledged leader of the Saxons. His intention evidently
was to unite Saxony under his rule and to exclude the royal authority.
The Saxon nobles were by no means prepared to submit to the first part
of this programme, but Lothar vigorously encountered opposition and
usually with success; his activity extended to expeditions against the
Wends, and by these aggressive measures he protected the north-eastern
frontiers. His policy of isolation was indicated by his abstention from the
Diet of Würzburg and the Concordat of Worms. He departed from it
to some extent in 1123 when he supported, rather half-heartedly, his step-
sister Gertrude of Holland, who was allied with Bishop Godebald of
Utrecht against the Emperor. But he was quite determined to resist
royal interference within his duchy. On the death in 1123 of Henry,
Margrave of Meissen and the East Mark and step-brother to Lothar's
wife, the Emperor appointed Herman II of Winzenburg to Meissen and
Wiprecht of Groitsch (a former rebel, now tamed to loyalty by imprison-
ment) to the East Mark. Lothar treated these appointments as being
in his own gift, and gave Meissen to Conrad of Wettin and the East
Mark to Albert the Bear, son of Count Otto of Ballenstadt and grandson
of Duke Magnus. Henry V summoned Duke Vladislav of Bohemia to
support his candidates, but Lothar successfully resisted him and made
effective his claim to usurp a sovereign right. In 1124 Henry, victorious
over Gertrude and Godebald, assembled a diet at Bamberg before which
Lothar was summoned to appear. He did not obey the summons, but
the expedition decreed against him was deferred owing to Henry's pre-
occupations in the west. Lothar remained defiant, and no further action
was taken against him.
1 Frederick was famous as a builder of castles ; cf. Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici
imperatoris, Bk. 1, c. 12, SGUS, p. 28.
## p. 165 (#211) ############################################
Last
years
and death of Henry V
165
Unsuccessful in the internal struggle, the king could not restore
imperial authority in the eastern states once subject to the Empire. In
the peaceful years at the beginning of his reign he had made a determined
effort. In Bohemia his suzerainty was recognised, and his decision was
effective in favour of Svatopluk who expelled his cousin Duke Bořivoi in
1107, and on Svatopluk's murder in 1109 in favour of Vladislav, Bořivoi's
son; from both he obtained the payment of tribute. But, like his father,
he had to be content with Bohemian allegiance. His intervention in
Hungary (1108) and in Poland (1109) ended in hopeless failure.
Immediately afterwards his attention was diverted to his Italian expedi-
tion, and he had no opportunity, even if he had the inclination, to
intervene again. But, in the north-east, German influence began to
spread by another agency. The great missionary work of Bishop Otto of
Bamberg in Pomerania started at the end of Henry V's reign; idols and
temples were overthrown, and eight churches built. This was a revival of
the old method of penetration by missionaries, and though Otto's work
was done by the invitation and under the protection of Duke Boleslav III
of Poland, who wished to Christianise where he had conquered, it was
German influence that permeated the country; the new churches were
closely attached to Bamberg, and the first bishop in Pomerania was Otto's
friend and helper, Adalbert. This was to be the beginning of a new
wave of German penetration among the Slavs.
Henry V, indeed, had no part in this. In the last year of his life he
was turning his attention to a novel foreign policy. He had come into
close touch, owing to his marriage, with the English king, and he was
induced by Henry I to enter into an alliance against King Louis VI of
France, from which he hoped perhaps to recoup himself by conquest for
his loss of authority in his own kingdom. But the expedition was
unpopular in Germany; he could only collect a small force, and he was
obliged to retire ignominiously before the large army which assembled
to defend France from invasion. In 1125 he is said to have conceived
the plan, also suggested by his father-in-law, of raising money by a
general tax on the English model; it would have made him independent
of the nobles, who strongly resisted the innovation'. The only result was
to add to his unpopularity, which was increased by a severe famine and
pestilence; though this was the natural result of two hard winters, the
common people attributed to him the responsibility for their sufferings.
It was in these circumstances that he fell ill and died in his forty-fourth
year on 23 May 1125. On his death-bed he made his nephew, Duke
Frederick of Swabia, his heir and named him as his successor; the royal
insignia were placed in the castle of Trifels under the charge of the
Empress Matilda. At Spires the last of the Salian house was given royal
burial beside his three predecessors, but there were few to mourn the
ruler who had been able to win the affection of none. Fear he had
1 Otto of Freising, Chronica, Bk. vii, c. 16, SGUS, p. 332.
CH, III,
## p. 166 (#212) ############################################
166
The election of his successor
inspired, and there were soon stories current that he was not dead, and a
pretender even arose in Burgundy claiming to be Henry V; no one
wished him back, but there was much popular apprehension of his
return.
His personality was such as to inspire fear but not affection. The one
was a useful attribute in dealing with the nobles, but without the other
he could not gain the support necessary to keep them in check. The
middle and lower classes in the towns, and the lower classes in the country-
side as well, had felt a regard for Henry IV which was not merely due to
privileges obtained from him. Henry V was never able to win this regard
despite his privileges, and the revolts of important towns were often a
serious handicap to him. So the nobles, whom he had used to defeat his
father and to defeat the Pope, had proved too strong for him in the end.
Only by their renewed participation in the government was peace restored
to Germany and the schism in the Church healed. And so particularism
prevailed, and ducal authority rose again even in Swabia and Bavaria,
but especially in Saxony, where Lothar had challenged an undoubtedly
royal right by his claims to appoint his subordinates. To the end he
was defiant, a rebel against royal authority. But the imperial idea was
still strong, and so too was the hereditary principle. Had Henry had a
son, he would doubtless have succeeded to the throne with fair chances of
success. That Henry died childless was a fact of the first importance in
the history of Germany, and incidentally in the history of England as
well. His bitterest enemy, the Archbishop of Mayence, was still alive, and
it was the Archbishop of Mayence who by prescriptive right had the first
voice in the election of a king. Skilfully Adalbert used his advantage to
get possession of the royal insignia and to defeat the candidature of
Henry's heir, Duke Frederick of Swabia. Led by him, the princes
triumphantly vindicated the claim they had vainly tried to assert at
Forchheim in 1077, and deliberately rejected the next-of-kin. The election
of Lothar was a step forward towards the eventual victory of the electoral
over the hereditary principle.
## p. 167 (#213) ############################################
167
CHAPTER IV.
(A)
THE CONQUEST OF SOUTH ITALY AND SICILY
BY THE NORMANS.
When the Normans made their appearance at the beginning of the
eleventh century, South Italy was divided into a large number of
small states. Sicily was occupied by the Saracens, Apulia and Calabria
by the Byzantines; Gaeta, Naples, and Amalfi were all three republics ;
Benevento, Capua, and Salerno were the capitals of three Lombard
principalities, which were bounded on the north by the Papal State.
In spite of this subdivision caused by the anarchy which had prevailed
throughout the south of the peninsula during the ninth and tenth
centuries, Byzantine historians imply that South Italy had not changed
in any particular and that the Greek Emperors still maintained their
predominance. It is indeed true that the continual warfare and constant
rivalries between the principal towns of South Italy often led one of
the combatants to have recourse to Byzantium; appeals thus made to
the sovereign authority of the Emperor no doubt contributed to the
maintenance in Constantinople of the idea that the imperial sovereignty
was still recognised by provinces which seem in fact to have been
absolutely independent. The Byzantine possessions properly so called
now consisted only of Apulia, the region of Otranto, and Calabria, and,
although the Greek Empire gained much prestige by the reconquest of
Italy undertaken by Basil II, yet—even in the territory under its
sway-it only exercised a somewhat feeble authority and its power was
by no means firmly established.
In spite of the attempt at Hellenisation made in the tenth century,
Byzantium only partially succeeded in its efforts to assimilate the in-
habitants of the territory taken from the Lombards. Only Calabria and
the district of Otranto really succumbed to Greek influence. There was
not the same result in Apulia, where Byzantium encountered a very
strong and persistent Lombard influence which could neither be crushed
nor undermined. It was thus that the Lombards retained the use of
Latin, and obliged the Greek Emperors to allow the maintenance of Latin
bishoprics in many towns, to tolerate the practice of Lombard law, and
to admit native officials into the local administration. Thus the links
which bound South Italy to Constantinople were very weak. Byzantium
had shewn itself incapable of defending the country and giving security.
The position arising from the strength of the native element and the
weakness of the central power favoured the development of autonomy in
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168
Condition of Byzantine Italy
the cities and led to the establishment of real communes. On the other
hand, there were many burdens on the inhabitants, and the country was
crushed under the weight of taxes and military levies. Thus the advan-
tages derived by the populations under Byzantine sway from their sub-
mission to the Empire did not seem commensurate with the burdens they
had to bear, and there arose a general state of discontent, which at the
close of the tenth century found expression in the frequent assassination
of Byzantine officials and in constant revolts; these were facilitated by the
organisation of local bands—the conterati. It was easy for Byzantium to
overcome the first isolated attempts, but her task became more difficult
when there arose leaders capable of attracting malcontents, organising
their forces, and directing the struggle with the Greeks in a firm
resolution to attain the freedom of their country. The first great revolt
was that of Melo.
Melo belonged to the Lombard aristocracy. He was a native of Bari,
and exerted considerable influence not only in his birthplace but through-
out Apulia. Openly hostile to the Byzantines whose yoke he wished to
cast off, Melo first sought to rouse his countrymen in 1009. He was
secretly supported by the Lombard Princes of Capua and Salerno. This
first attempt failed, and the Lombard leader, forced into exile, probably
betook himself to Germany, and besought the Emperor Henry II to
intervene in the affairs of South Italy. By 1016 he was back in his
own country. In that year he entered into negotiations with a band of
Norman pilgrims who had come on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Michael
on Monte Gargano, and begged for their help in driving out the Greeks.
The Norman knights did not accept the offers made to them, but promised
Melo that they would encourage their compatriots to join him.
The Norman knights of Monte Gargano may probably be identified
with the pilgrims spoken of by the chronicler Aimé of Monte Cassino.
According to him, at a time when Salerno was besieged by the
Saracens, a band of Norman knights returning from the Holy Land
disembarked there. Scarcely had they landed before they fell on the
infidels and put them to flight. Amazed at the courage of these
unexpected allies, Guaimar IV, Prince of Salerno, and the inhabitants of
the city begged them to remain, but the Normans refused. In view of
this refusal Guaimar thereupon decided to send back messengers with the
pilgrims to raise a body of Norman auxiliaries in Normandy itself.
If we admit the identity of the pilgrims of Salerno with the pilgrims
of Monte Gargano, which is almost inevitable, we are led to believe
that the meeting of Melo and the Normans was not accidental, but that
it was arranged by Guaimar IV, who had already supported the Lombard
leader in his rebellion.
